Lords Sitting of 21 February 1973

Preamble
The House met at half past two of the clock: The LORD CHANCELLOR On the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Lichfield.

ZAMBIA: RHODESIAN SANCTIONS AND TRADE ROUTES
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what conclusions have been reached by the Commonwealth Sanctions Committee on the application by Zambia for Commonwealth assistance in developing export-import routes alternative to routes through Rhodesia:
THE MINISTER OF STATE, FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH OFFICE (BARONESS TWEEDSMUIR OF BELHELVIE): My Lords, on February 19 the Commonwealth Sanctions Committee had exploratory discussions on aid to Zambia. A sub-committee is to study the question in detail.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, while thanking the noble Baroness for that Answer, may I ask whether Her Majesty's Government will give support to Canada in the strong support which Canada in turn is giving to Zambia in this difficulty; and particularly in view of the announcement this morning that Botswana has courageously announced that she is prepared to have an airlift, will Her Majesty's Government give the fullest aid to Zambia, which has probably suffered more from our policy and the policy of the United Nations, because of its loyalty, than any other territory?
BARONESS TWEEDSMUIR OF BELHELVIE: My Lords, we do in fact give aid to Zambia, and the Minister for Overseas Development has recently been in Lusaka and has had discussions with the Zambian Government. Our aid to
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Zambia amounts to £7 million a year. The proceedings of this Committee are confidential and the United Kingdom is a member of the sub-committee which will discuss in detail what is needed.
LORD AVEBURY: My Lords, would it be helpful if, in addition to the financial aid, we offered the use of Hercules aircraft of the Royal Air Force to assist with the transport of goods out from Zambia to Dar-es-Salaam and other ports?
BARONESS TWEEDSMUIR OF BELHELVIE: My Lords, all these matters are being discussed in the subcommittee. We gave £24 million of aid, including the cost of the oil air lift, from I.D.I. to 1968. We have to find the details of what is really needed.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, while thanking the noble Baroness for that answer, is it not a fact that much more is necessary in the present crisis after the closing of the frontier with Rhodesia? Is it not now necessary to give essential aid to get alternative routes to Dar-es-Salaam through the road and railway connection, and with Botswana, to assist Zambia in this situation?
BARONESS TWEEDSMUIR OF BELHELVIE: Yes, my Lords, but, as I have said, the purpose of the sub-committee is to decide what is essential aid.
LORD HAWKE: My Lords, may I ask the noble Baroness which side of the frontier is closed at the moment?
BARONESS TWEEDSMUIR OF BELHELVIE: My Lords, Zambia has closed her frontier with Rhodesia.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, to put it in its correct perspective, who closed the border first?
BARONESS TWEEDSMUIR OF BELHELVIE: My Lords, I think we all know that Rhodesia closed the border first.

COAL INDUSTRY: ABSENTEEISM AND EARNINGS
2.41 p.m.
LORD ORR-EWING: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what has been the average absenteeism in the coal mines since the Wilberforce wages award of 24 per cent. a year ago; and how this compares with the figure of the previous year; and what have been the average earnings for the same periods.
THE MINISTER WITHOUT PORTFOLIO (LORD DRUMALBYN): My Lords, as the weekly statistical statement of the Department of Trade and Industry shows, average absenteeism at coal mines in the 40 weeks to the end of December, 1972, was 16·72 per cent. compared with 17·87 per cent. a year earlier. Since December the average has risen slightly, but comparison with last year is not possible owing to the strike. I regret that figures of earnings over the two periods are not available, but for comparison, average earnings in one week in October, 1971, were £31·65, and in October, 1972, £38·21.
LORD ORR-EWING: My Lords, would my noble friend say whether, in view of the setting up of the Pay Board we shall get rather more up to date figures of earnings, since it is important that the country should be able to judge what is happening to earnings? At present these figures are collected once every six months, and the processing of them takes so long that they are not available to either House or to the public for some months after that time. Is it not desirable that we should have a rather quicker reaction to, and a greater knowledge of, what is happening?
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, I will certainly draw that point to the attention of my right honourable friend; but of course earnings are not likely to vary much once the pay settlement for the year, or whatever period is involved, has been arrived at.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, can the noble Lord say, in order to put the Question and Answer into perspective, what increase in productivity there has been in the coal industry?
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, the increase in productivity is given in Table 11 of the National Coal Board Accounts
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for the year 1971–72, up to the end of 1972. In that year, of course, the output per man shift fell from 44·1 to 41·9, but it has risen again to 45·1.
LORD BLYTON: My Lords, is the Minister aware that the coal industry is the only industry that keeps figures of absenteeism and that these questions are always put with malice aforethought? Is it not a fact that since the disastrous strike of last year (which the coalminers did not want) output has increased more than in any other industry in this country?
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, I am not quite certain what the noble Lord means by "output". I assume he is speaking of productivity. So far as the first part of the noble Lord's question is concerned, I do not think the noble Lord should accuse my noble friend of malice aforethought. I think I ought to explain that the phrase "absenteeism" covers both voluntary and involuntary absences, and about three-quarters of all absences are accounted for by sickness, industrial disease, injury or other authorised reasons.
LORD TAYLOR OF MANSFIELD: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware of the statement made yesterday in Cardiff by a member of the National Coal Board, to the effect that production this year has increased by 4 per cent. in the coal mines?
LORD ORR-EWING: My Lords, before my noble friend answers that question, would he not agree—in order to put the matter into perspective—that the immense capital investment in this industry has played a very considerable part in the increased productivity? It is not solely due to increased effort, but is also due to increased and better machinery. Is the noble Lord able to give us the figures of how much the country is investing each year in capital equipment for the coalmining industry? While we recognise that productivity has increased and are delighted that it has done so, would he bear in mind that that is partly through capital investment? Is it not true also that more than half the current cost of a ton of coal is made up of the labour content, and that we are in danger of pricing ourselves right out of the coal market if the price of coal continues to increase at the present rate?
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, we are getting away from the original Question. On the matter of production: it is a fact that production in the last year was low because of the strike; productivity, on the other hand, as I have said, has increased. So far as capital expenditure is concerned, the average capital expenditure over the period 1968 to 1972 was £67 million and the estimated capital expenditure for this year is £80 million to £90 million.
LORD SLATER: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that so far as the mining industry is concerned there are two important factors that govern a miner's life? The first is that immediately he enters into the cage he enters into danger; and secondly, a third of his life is spent in darkness. The sooner people begin to realise the importance of those two factors in a miner's life, the better. Further, is the noble Lord aware that owing to the closure of so many pits, particularly in our coalfield in Durham, men are now working at least six miles under the North Sea in order to produce the coal, travelling over 20 to 30 miles to other collieries that are on the coast and having to get up in the early hours of the morning, sometimes at 1 o'clock, in order to be on time to go down the pit at 3 o'clock at the particular colliery in which they are working?
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for that information. I am sure that we are all very well aware of the nature of the task of the coalminer at the coal face and we all appreciate it. But if I may say so, we are getting a long way from the original Question.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, as I believe it to be the fact That the morbidity rate in the coal-mining industry is one of the highest in industry, did I understand the noble Lord to say that these absenteeism figures include absenteeism for sickness of under three days' duration which, of course, might not be reported?
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, I need notice of that question, but I shall write to the noble Baroness.
LORD BLYTON: My Lords, could the Minister tell his noble friend that instead
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of answering questions across the Floor, we are quite prepared to debate the situation when the Coal Industry Bill comes back to this House?
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, I am sure that the noble Lord will be prepared to debate it on that occasion.

DOLLAR DEVALUATION AND EFFECT ON U.K.
2.47 p.m.
LORD WIGG: 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 at his recent meeting with the President of the United States the Prime Minister raised the question of the effect upon Great Britain of the devaluation of the United States dollar.
THE LORD PRIVY SEAL (EARL JELLICOE): My Lords, the Prime Minister discussed the dollar with President Nixon, but those discussions were confidential. They took place before the disturbances in the foreign exchange markets had fully developed. The United States initiative in proposing a change in the value of the dollar came later.
LORD WIGG: My Lords, would the Minister be kind enough to tell the House why on this occasion the Government are so coy? Is he aware that at the Bermuda meeting in December, 1971, the Prime Minister was extremely forthcoming both in being a party to a communiqué and in a subsequent statement when he emphasised what he called the "natural relationship" between Britain and the United States? He made a statement that it was significant that there should be continuing discussions about exchange rates. Is the noble Earl aware that, with the way that relationships have developed between ourselves and the United States, it almost looks as if we are on a parity with other defeated nations and that we are not being now informed of what happened? For all his brave words, is the Prime Minister being treated naturally?—unless that is the way his natural relationships normally develop.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, the noble Lord has had considerable experience of office, and I am sure that he knows as well as I do that on certain occasions conversations between a Head of State and our Prime Minister are confidential. It is quite hopeless from the point of view of international transactions if the confidentiality of confidential discussions is not preserved.
LORD WIGG: My Lords, it goes without saying that I entirely accept—and I hope that the noble Earl will accept it from me—and fully understand the need for confidentiality in matters of this kind. But it looks as though we are more confidential on some occasions than others. Can it be that it would be in the interests of the country that we have some objective standard of confidentality, and not one standard when it suits the Prime Minister and another when it does not suit him?
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, these exchanges happen to be two-way exchanges. There are confidences on both sides. I do not think that it would necessarily he right for my right honourable friend the Prime Minister to apply necessarily the same standards in these matters as did his predecessor.
LORD HALE: My Lords, would the noble Earl give his assurance that this was another simple operation, non-speculative, of tired businessmen anxious to ensure their hard-earned future and thus refute the alarming rumours from Paris which say that the advance guard of the 7 million dollars flew from the Western seaboard to Bonn with the ordered precision of B.52 bombers and that Mr. Nixon and Mr. Brezhnev have since been exchanging congratulatory valentines upon the increased price of gold which will reimburse the perennial loss on the Russian agricultural plan and on the 30 per cent. competitive position achieved with Japan?
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I should like to congratulate the noble Lord on a compendious and rhetorical question.
LORD WIGG: My Lords, would the noble Earl be good enough to explain to the House how it happens that on one occasion the re-alignment of the currency is welcomed and on another occasion
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not a single word has been said about it?—unless, of course, President Nixon did not tell the Prime Minister with the consequence that the Prime Minister was not in a position to comment on a matter of vital concern to this country?
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I really do think that the noble Lord, Lord Wigg, should study what I said in my reply, because he seems to suggest that there was some prior arrangement between the President of the United States and our Prime Minister. I must make it clear to the noble Lord that any such suggestion is complete nonsense. The exchange market disturbances which we are all well aware of blew up very suddenly, after the Prime Minister's visit to Washington.
LORD WIGG: My Lords, may I assure the noble Earl that I did not have that in mind at all. In fact I hold the opposite view. For President Nixon did not tell the Prime Minister that he was going to remove the 10 per cent. surcharge before he went to Bermuda, and I believe he did not tell the Prime Minister or discuss with the Prime Minister what he was going to do on the present occasion. In fact, this country is being treated not as a second-rate Power but as a fourth or fifth-rate Power. In many ways it would have been better if we had been defeated, because at least we should have been treated on equal terms with Germany and Japan.
LORD CONESFORD: My Lords, is it not a fact, so far as defeat is concerned, that Germany and Japan have the strongest currencies?
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I think their exchange rates speak for themselves.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, will the noble Earl examine the replies he gave to my noble friend and consider whether this was not rather an unusual circumstance; that is, that none of the kind of statements or information usually given after such a meeting were given on this occasion. Why were they not? It may have been forgetfulness, but I hope the noble Earl realises that there may be some justification to wonder why this was not done.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I am always very glad to re-examine answers which I have given, but I do not think that the noble Lord the Leader of the Opposition is correct in assuming that my right honourable friend the Prime Minister is forgetful. What he is not forgetful of is the confidentiality of confidential discussions.
LORD WIGG: Except when it suits him.

E.E.C.: MEETING OF AGRICULTURAL MINISTERS
EARL ST. ALDWYN: My Lords, with the leave of the House, my noble friend Lord Ferrers will be making a Statement on Ministerial discussions in Brussels at a convenient moment after 3.30.

SMALL FIRMS: THE BOLTON REPORT
2.55 p.m.
LORD STRATHCONA AND MOUNT ROYAL LORD STRATHCONA AND MOUNT ROYAL rose to call attention to the Bolton Report on Small Firms; and to move for Papers. The noble Lord said: My Lords, as one who has had some considerable associations with a number of small businesses over the years, I feel that the amount of public notice which has been attracted by the Bolton Report has not been commensurate with the importance of a subject which affects the future life of this country, both socially and economically. The Report itself says right at the outset:
"To ask whether there is a future for the small firm is tantamount to asking whether the future of private capitalism as we have known it in this country is threatened."
So far as I personally am concerned, I particularly welcome the Report as a document which adds credibility and support to a long-held intuitive prejudice of my own, that bigness is not necessarily an advantage in business—bigness is not necessarily better. Incidentally, the Report itself points out that small firms taken across the board produce a higher return on capital than the larger companies do.
This is not, I think, a Party issue; at least, I hope it is not. This Report was commissioned by Mr. Crosland and the
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Labour Government, to their credit, and has been acted upon by this Government, though, as I shall say in a moment, I hope they are going to do rather more to implement some of the recommendations of the Report than they have done so far. The Report starts off by demonstrating that the aggregate contribution of small firms is not small in itself. We are talking about 1¼ million businesses, employing some 6 million people—that is about 25 per cent. of the work force of this country—and they are producing about 20 per cent. of the G.N.P. The Report goes on to say that it excludes the agricultural and horticultural areas, and it also excludes the professions. The Committee go to some length to try to define what they mean by a small company. This is clearly a very difficult thing to do, and they felt it necessary to make those exclusions in order to encompass the very wide field they had to consider.
The overall message of the Report is regrettable and it is clear enough: in spite of the contribution made by the small firms to our economy, they are declining both absolutely and relatively, and the decline in the United Kingdom is faster than it is in any other industrialised country. The Committee then say that the decline is due, at least partly, to a hostile environment, and the Government contribution to this hostile environment is a real one, though it derives more from ignorance and insensitivity than from a conscious desire to persecute the small firm. Therefore, the Report says, it is urgent to establish a channel of communications between the small businesses and the Minister responsible for them and to give the small firms a spokesman who can put their case where it is going to be acted upon.
Having said that, I do not want my remarks to be misinterpreted as some kind of Poujadist attack on big business as such. I dare say that in this House we have more than our fair share of tycoons present; indeed, possibly that accounts for the fact that we have a relatively small number of speakers in this debate to-day, and I confess to some disappointment. We have to recognise that there are certain industries, notably industries like the motor industry and the aircraft industry, which demand large-scale organisation to undertake that kind of work. I would remind your Lordships

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that in an heroic period in this country we were scornfully described as "a nation of shopkeepers", but Napoleon went on to have to eat his words in the end.
May I turn to comment in slightly greater detail on one or two of the recommendations of the Report and the Government's reactions to them. First of all, we must welcome the appointment of the Minister. It is a pity that very soon after his appointment the particular Minister appointed was changed, but at least the appointment of a Minister shows the Government's seriousness of purpose. One reason why I personally thought that it would be useful to have a debate in your Lordships' House on this point was that the Minister was having difficulty in getting it through to the small businesses that he had indeed arrived, and that the Government had recognised the need for this appointment. The Minister himself apparently recognised this point, because in a reply to a question in a debate in the other place in June last year he said this:
"It is disturbing how many people, even small firms, are still not aware of the work of the Bolton Committee and the action that the Government have taken to improve the environment for small firms. Small firms are in no sense a minority or a specialised subject; they are a vital economic concern."
Of course, as with Oliver Twist, the small businessmen having got their Minister, they want more. The only way for the Minister fully to convince the small businessmen is to become exclusively their spokesman, fighting their case in this large Department of Trade and Industry against the much more vocal and influential voices that can be deployed by the larger segments of industry. However, for their part the small businessmen have a problem. This the Minister himself was very quick to recognise. The trouble is that there is no one acknowledged body speaking for small firms.
The Minister held a conference in November to which some 14 representative bodies were invited. I think that from that approach the Government are really entitled to say to the small firms, "Well, you set up the one body that can talk to this Minister, and maybe we will consider giving you a Minister to listen to you". But one of the problems precisely in the nature of the small
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businessman is that he is a compulsive non-joiner. He is also preoccupied with the very wide span of concern that he needs to have with every detail of his business. He is particularly preoccupied, and it is difficult for him to get away and serve on representative bodies. A direct consequence of this is the problem of trying to find the central organisations that can speak for the small businessman. This has been emphasised by some recent letters. Somebody suggested the imposition or creation of another body, a confederation, to speak for the small businessman. Letters in The Director indicated the sort of resistance there was on the part of some people to that kind of proposal.
Having referred to The Director magazine, which is the mouthpiece of the Institute of Directors and on whose Council I serve in an honorary capacity, may I say in passing that that organisation pinpoints the problem that exists in the small business field. With 40,000 members, the Institute of Directors must represent a large number of small firms; but the plain fact is that the Council positively bristles with tycoon names of national importance, and they are there to add prestige and weight to the deliberations of this body. But inevitably as a result of that, the small businessman will feel that these people may speak less than they might do in the interests of those whom he would wish to be represented. Bolton himself said that Government policies have not been formed with the interest of small firms particularly in mind; and this is the question that we want to return to. I would suggest, therefore, that possibly the Minister might consider a way of assisting the small firms to set up a representative body; perhaps they could see their way, for instance, to matching pound for pound the contributions that the small bodies might make towards setting up a central organisation with central headquarters.
Bolton was also at great pains to emphasise that small firms should not be looking for privileges; they should merely seek to mitigate the discrimination, which is not usually even deliberately contrived against them. Bolton saw no reason to exclude small firms from the four criteria that he laid down to be met before the Government could

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reasonably be asked to supply a subsidised service for industry. These four criteria were, first, that there should be a need for the service; secondly, that private enterprise would not, or could not, provide the service; thirdly, that the service must be capable of producing a national economic return; and fourthly, that the users were not in a position to pay for the service. Having said that there was no justification for providing services for small businesses particularly, Bolton then went on to suggest that advisory bureaux should be set up, and these have emerged as Small Firms Centres. They have received a very dubious reception because of the natural suspicion of businessmen towards the creation of yet another expensive organisation staffed by civil servants, who they feel—I think with a good deal of justification—are inherently incapable of understanding the small businessmen's needs. Indeed, on the whole, these Government organisations have a fairly unhappy track record, if I may use the modern jargon.
My own misgivings about the Small Firms Centres arise from the insistence on what they call their "passive role". This is liable to emasculate the effectiveness of these organisations from the very outset. If they are to serve the purpose that the Minister has said he wishes them to, as a channel of two-way communication from the Ministry and back up to the Ministry, they need to be able to reach out into industry. I would therefore suggest one or two additional functions to what I understand to be the original concept of the Small Firms Centre.
The first function concerns the question of credit taken by large companies from small companies. At page 183, Bolton, rather to my surprise, says that there is no great difference between the credit taken by large and small companies. I can only say that my experience in the engineering industry simply does not agree with that statement. I have seen (particularly in periods of credit squeeze), the most outrageous bullying by large national concerns, whose names we could not mention here to-day, of small companies, knowing perfectly well that the latter are in no position to react. The difficulty is that if the small firm tries to do anything about this, they are liable
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to be penalised by withdrawal of business on the part of the big company.
It therefore occurred to me to suggest that possibly the small firms might refer to the Small Firms Centre when they experience this kind of activity. This is a slightly cumbrous way of proceeding, I admit, but the Small Firm Centres could send their information up to the Minister, and if the Minister received more than one report concerning one particular company, he could write to that company and ask whether indeed it was the policy of the company to act in this way. I should have thought that normally this would have been quite enough to discourage the company. The advantage, of course, is that there is no need for the particular firm making a complaint to be mentioned. If the trouble persisted, I see no reason why the Minister should not elect to publish the fact that this kind of complaint has been made about the specific company. Indeed, it seems to me that at the end of the day it would be possible for the Government to say that they would introduce a discounting system for the bills of the small company on the large company, and charge the big company an exorbitant rate of interest for the service. But I am no banker and that course may be totally impractical. However, I am quite sure that this is a trouble which is widespread—and a number of your Lordships appear to agree with me—and I certainly do not accept what the Bolton Report says about the matter.
The second function is a more difficult one. On page 119, Bolton makes a plea for the banks to provide a better service to small companies. I recognise that the banks are in a difficult position here, in that it is probably true that lending £10 million to a large company creates very little more work than lending £10,000 to a small one. Furthermore, you will be dealing with a more understanding accountant in the large company. What is evidently required are some kind of simple cash flow and monitoring arrangements to aid the bank in considering applications, and we want to get away from the bank looking simply at the underlying security of the company to whom they are to lend money. This point was made in the Accountant magazine in June, 1972, which stated:
"The role of the small firms advisory bureaux could be useful indeed: it could be

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extended with great effect into active administrative assistance".
It went on:
"If such services could be supplied on a short-term loan basis, there might be more interest shown."
What I am asking is: could "signposting", which is the declared purpose of the Small Firms Centre, be extended to detailed advice and assistance in raising and retaining bank credit? Perhaps a fee could be charged for this service, which could be repaid over a period of, say, three years. Again, this seems to me to be a pump-priming operation in which the new Minister might reasonably be able to indulge.
Thirdly, just at this moment, more than ever before, assistance is badly needed by small firms in interpreting all the maze of Government regulations which are descending upon them every day. The combined impact of V.A.T. and the freeze legislation means that even firms with quite large organisations, and with ready access to legal opinion, are quite unclear as to what kind of charges they are entitled to make under the new legislation. I know of at least one firm which is unable to produce its budget for next year because it simply does not know what it will be able to charge for its services. If that is true of the larger companies, just imagine, my Lords, the dilemma that the small man finds himself in. I should have thought that the Small Firms Centre was an ideal vehicle for assisting the small man to find his way through these regulations, and to put over the Government's view as to what the regulations mean.
It is probably fair to say, as a generalisation, that "signposting" is of value only if one has a very clear idea of where one is trying to go; but at the present time a great many people are totally unclear as to where they are allowed to go. This, in turn, raises the whole question of paper work and form-filling which has cropped up both in the Report itself and in a number of articles and letters that have followed publication of the Report. The Report emphasised the undue and specially onerous impact on small businessmen where it is very often the boss himself who has to fill out the forms. It went on to mention the surprising dearth of information which exists about small
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companies. It was therefore a great relief to me to hear the Minister say that he is studying the possibility of sampling, and that he intends to refer any demand for information to the Statistical Office before sending it out—most particularly, to small companies. It is worth remembering that we get remarkably accurate results from General Election forecasts based on a sample that is sometimes as low as 2 per cent. of the electorate.
LORD ORR-EWING: They are sometimes wrong.
LORD STRATHCONA AND MOUNT ROYAL: My Lords, they are sometimes wrong, I admit. So the small businessman faces a fairly gloomy future in the next few months, knowing that there will be a cascade of paperwork on to his desk. Indeed, I feel that he may be mentally addressing the Minister in the words of an old prayer which is written up over my desk at home, which says:
"O Lord, I shall be very busy this day,
If I forget Thee, do not Thou forget me."
I do not intend to stray into all the fiscal measures which the Report has suggested and which the Government themselves have already enacted. No doubt the Minister who is to reply will remind us of some of the things they have already done. But I should like to mention one point concerning the very alarming impact of the new tax imputation system which will bear particularly hardly on small companies. It is significant that the letter addressed by the Institute of Directors to the Chancellor touched on a number of issues which are of special relevance to small firms. These are all more or less technical points: the raising of the lower limit of corporation tax; the pension disabilities of the so-called controlling directors; retirement annuity contracts for the self-employed; and the disallowance of share option systems for close companies. I can hardly expect the Minister to give us any clear ruling on these issues just before the Budget, but I hope that he will go so far as to say that he will at least represent these points to the Chancellor.
The Bolton Report identified eight important special economic functions of

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the small firm, and then went on to summarise them in these words:
"The real issue is: what part have small firms to play in preserving a healthy industrial structure and in creating the kind of society we want for the future?"
Then, in another part of the introduction, the Report stated:
"Without small firms this country would be an infinitely duller, poorer and less happy place. Fortunately the economic arguments alone are powerful enough to establish the need for an active small firm sector."
Then at the end, summarising the recommendations, the Report stated:
"Benign neglect is no substitute for a policy."
So I hope that the Minister will be able to reassure us that the Government indeed have a forward-looking policy, following the good start which they have already made. My Lords, I beg to move for Papers.
LORD AUCKLAND: My Lords, the House will be very grateful to my noble friend Lord Strathcona and Mount Royal for having given us the opportunity of discussing this very important Report, and tribute is due to Professor Bolton and to those on his Committee. I do not claim anything like the same experience and knowledge as my noble friend, because my own business career has been in commerce as opposed to industry. But I have one small interest to declare as a director of a small firm of management consultants. The role of management consultancy is dealt with on page 121 of the Report.
My Lords, the climate for small firms at the present time is a rather gloomy one for obvious reasons, many of which were instanced by my noble friend, but I believe that as time goes on the need for small firms and the expertise which small firms can give will be more generally recognised. Ironically, the company of which I am a director began carrying out management communication work with the medium and small-sized companies because we felt that to approach the big companies was rather presumptuous, but we have in fact ended up by carrying out work for some of the major, "blue chip" companies of this country. I think this is the measure of the value which small firms can give. I rather regret in some ways that the professions are not included in this Report,
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because I believe there is a need for a look to be taken at small firms of management consultants and others, who I think provide a very valuable service.
This is not a question of lame ducks and of giving Government support merely because a firm is small. Basically, I think the question is as to what role the small firm plays in this country. We have been described as a nation of small shopkeepers. Indeed, in these days of supermarkets everywhere one might be tempted to wonder: How true is this? How many small shopkeepers are there? Are we going to be run by the big combines, so that we can no longer get our tin of peaches from the village shop? Fortunately, some of these small shops still exist, although conditions are not entirely easy for them. To give an example of one firm, which I will not name but which is situated in the Highlands of Scotland, in the Moray Firth, it makes foodstuffs of various kinds and began in Victorian days, when the gamekeeper's wife prepared soup for the shooting parties. That firm has expanded, and it is now, relatively speaking, one of our greatest producers of export goods, particularly to the United States of America. It now employs, I believe, some 600 people, so under the terms of the Bolton Report I think it is still technically regarded as a small firm.
Here is an example of a company which started, literally, by employing a handful of people and which has now become, as I say, one of our greatest producers, relatively speaking. How many more small firms are there like this, which go unrecognised? I think there is a need for more publicity to be given to what these firms do, either through Chambers of Commerce or other organisations, or even through the Government's own publicity services. My Lords, one of the greatest needs these days is for good communications, whether it is communications between management and the shop floor or whether it is between the customer and the retailer. Here again, my Lords, it is the small firms who have such a vital part to play. A small company cannot afford to let its customer down, even if some of the big combines may occasionally say, "Well, you will just have to wait for this service; we have not got

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enough people available, or we just have not got time". If a small company did this, they would soon be out of business.
May I now turn to a point which the Bolton Report makes concerning small firms which have to be moved to new areas, sometimes development areas, when there is slum clearance—because many of these small firms are situated in areas where there is considerable clearance going on—and sometimes to New Towns or elsewhere. I am not absolutely clear as to the extent of the help which the Government are giving in this field, but I think it is very important that a small company, merely because it has to move on through no fault of its own, should be given whatever assistance is reasonable. Here again, my Lords, this is not asking for a subsidy: it is asking just for basic help so that the firm can resettle in its new area. Like my noble friend, I regret the fact that there are not more speakers in this debate, because there are Members on all sides of your Lordships' House who have had much experience in this field. I end by saying just this: that in this age of big combines, in this age of more mergers and monopolies which loom over us, it would be a very sad thing if the small firm went to the wall.
3.28 p.m.
LORD MOTTISTONE: My Lords, I should like to begin by congratulating my noble friend Lord Strathcona on introducing this subject to your Lordships' House at such a very opportune moment when the initial work of implementing what Bolton recommended has started, though, as I shall attempt to show, there is still a great deal more to be done. I should also like to congratulate the noble Lords opposite, whose Government saw fit to set up the Bolton Committee, but perhaps it is unfortunate that, in the end, there are no speakers from the Benches opposite in this particular debate.
LORD CHAMPION: My Lords, there will be.
LORD MOTTISTONE: And that lack of interest does not go only for the Benches opposite; it goes for our own Benches here. It is significant that part of the main message of Bolton was that people were not taking the interest in
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the small firms which those firms, as an essential part of the country's economy, deserved; and the lack of speakers in this debate is unfortunately an example of how that lack of thought, that lack of interest, still prevails. I should like to thank (though he is not in this House) Mr. Bolton for a splendid Report. I think he did a most remarkable job. He had to chart a fresh course over territory which had not been previously explored. He had to initiate many studies all on his own; and, indeed, he had to produce, in what may perhaps be thought to be a long time but which, in view of the difficult start he had, was really a short time, this compendious Report, in which he endeavoured to tackle all the main economic features that he was able to identify. I consider that he and his Committee did a first-class job, and I should like to think that this House would support me in saying that.
I should like also to congratulate the Government on the steps that they have taken so far; although I fear I shall have to go on to say that I think there is a great deal more to be done. No doubt my noble friend on the Front Bench will be telling us that they are going to do more. I hope that that will be the case. I should explain my own interest, which is that, as some noble Lords will know, I am the director of the Distributive Industries' Training Board. Because of that, I have a great deal to do with many small firms. Although, technically, the small firms defined by Mr. Bolton are not the ones on which we inflict our services if they do not wish for them, there are many other firms with whom we have a great deal to do and whose problems are identical to those examined in the Bolton Report.
My Lords, the one thing that I have learned during the course of the last four years is that the great strength of the small firm is in the independence of its management, owner, proprietor or whoever it may be. The great thing about the small firm is that it is independent and wishes to remain so. The very able people who run small firms could probably earn a great deal more money if they worked for somebody else; but that is not what they wish; and because of this they are not seeking—and I think Mr. Bolton made this clear—for subsidies, for support, for a great deal to be done for them. What they seek is

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to be left alone to get on and to develop their own resources, for this is to their best advantage and, in the end, to the advantage of the country as a whole.
Against that background, it is therefore difficult—and the noble Lord, Lord Strathcona, made this point clearly—to see what can best be done for them or with them. It is with that sort of beginning that I should like to address a few remarks to your Lordships. I shall not be addressing you for long, but for once, within the terms of a short debate and with so few speakers, it would perhaps be desirable to make a long speech instead of a short one.
The first point to make is that although the Government, by setting up a Minister specifically concerned with small firms and a Department within the Department of Trade and Industry, have made a very good start, this element of Government, when it comes to the crunch, does not seem to have the influence within the Government machine as a whole that one would hope it should have. It could be that this is because it is new; but I think that it is partly for the reason that my noble friend mentioned earlier. This is that by default—and Mr. Bolton mentions this—people generally do not think of small firms as being something they need to take thought for and account of in making their decisions. There are examples of this. Since the Small Firms Division has been set up, it does not appear to have been consulted about membership of the Consultative Committee on Company Law Review. One would have thought that that is the sort of thing that they could have been consulted about. Neither do they appear to have been consulted about British membership of the recently set up Economic Community's Economic and Social Committee. Matters of this sort, small in themselves, are examples of how, by default, the small businesses' interests are not taken care of, even when there is a section of Government to deal with them on their behalf. It would seem that the general thinking—and this goes not only for Government but for most people in what might loosely be described as the "Establishment"—is that big business is synonymous with business as a whole; whereas I think it can be shown that business as a whole is much more synonymous with small business, and particularly
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with private companies as opposed to public companies.
Of course, there are many more of them; but, as my noble friend said, they have a better return on capital than their bigger brothers and employ a substantial proportion of the country's workers. On the whole, making a broad assessment, it would be fairer if we—and I mean this House as much as Government—could train ourselves collectively, when dealing with business problems and practices and introducing regulations to deal with them, to think of the small business as being more synonymous with business as a whole. It may be that it is unfair to expect a radical change in approach by the Government—partly because, as I have just indicated, it requires a radical change in approach by us all and not just the Government—and particularly so at such a short time after they have taken the action they have to set up the Small Firms Division of the Department of Trade and Industry and its Minister.
However, I think it is true that the only proposals of the Bolton Report (apart from the actual establishment of this division) that they have implemented is, first, in initiating action to reduce form filling, which action, while very necessary and very much hoped for in itself, is not as difficult as might be many other things. After all, if you want to stop forms from being sent out, then, if you are the Government, you just stop them. The other thing that they have done is to start the information bureaux around the country. I should have thought that the bureaux might have just the right sort of balanced contribution to make that is intended; but I think it is very important that great care is given to their development.
My noble friend, in introducing this debate, said that he feared that because the bureaux were peopled by civil servants they would be viewed with great suspicion by small business. I can assure him that even when you are not a civil servant and are trying to help small businesses you are viewed with suspicion. To that extent, I agree with him; but I think that the great potential of these information bureaux is that they are not seeking to dictate; they are seeking to provide advice and help when called for. This would seem to me to fit better with the basic attitude of independence to

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which I referred earlier. But I believe it is important in developing their activities that they are given in time more "teeth" than is at present envisaged. I believe there is something here that we could learn from the United States where, I understand, similar organisations have the power to provide finance on a very generous loan basis to selected firms which are starting off in business. Furthermore, they take the trouble to make sure that the people who obtain these loans know what they are about before they get given them and are allowed to get going. That, in a gentle sort of way, in the sense that the loan would be forthcoming only to those people who ask for it (rather than to have it thrust down their throats) would be the sort of thing which could be developed in this country.
Apart from that, I think that the bureaux would have to find their way by learning what people want to know before they establish what they are going to give them. It may sound very simple, but I have had experience of this and I know that when you are trying to provide an advisory service for people, which is effectively what a training board does, it is very easy to say, "Oh, yes, you all need that, so we will force you to adopt it." Whereas in practice the better way is to say to people, "What do you need?" and then develop the work that you do for them on the basis of what you have discovered they need. I think that these bureaux need to tackle the problem from that point of view.
These really, my Lords, are all beginnings; they are not the end in themselves. What we need, as I think Bolton identified, is a framework to help the small businessman to develop his own enterprise to the best advantage with minimum interference, not only for his own benefit but also for the benefit of the country as a whole. We need more positive action, for example on taxation; this was touched upon by my noble friend. An example of this is that representations have been made by the Smaller Businesses Association to the Chancellor to show that the proposed increases in corporation tax would have the effect of reducing still further the ability of firms to plough back profits into developing their businesses. It almost seems at times as though regulations
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are framed mainly to restrict those who might cheat rather than to provide incentives for the development of their businesses by the vast majority who are only too keen to get on and do so.
To sum up, my Lords, Bolton has charted a splendid course. The Government have instituted the beginnings of machinery for following his track, but so far the effort has not captured the imagination of Government Departments as a whole, or indeed of other elements of the Establishment. What we now need is a massive effort to put energy into the machine and to get an understanding of the needs of the small business—which is accepted generally as essential to the life-blood of the country.

E.E.C.: MEETING OF AGRICULTURAL MINISTERS
3.43 p.m.
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, with the leave of the House I should like to repeat a Statement which is being made in another place by my right honourable friend the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food on the meeting of the Council of Agricultural Ministers in Brussels this week. The Statement is as follows:
"The House will recall that agreement was reached last month that we should apply the Common Agricultural Policy on the basis of a representative rate for sterling rather than our official parity. This rate was based on the average of market rates for sterling in the first two weeks of January. Since then, following the devaluation of the dollar, sterling has fallen below this representative rate in terms of the Community unit of account and the result has been an increase in import prices. However, the Council has now agreed on an amendment to the existing Community regulation which will provide for the introduction of monetary compensatory amounts for the United Kingdom—and for Italy whose currency is also now floating. In effect, these monetary compensatory amounts will take the form of additional refunds on exports from other Community countries to the United Kingdom and reductions on import levies on imports into the

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United Kingdom from third countries. The precise levels will now be worked out urgently by the Commission and the Management Committees. The calculations involved are complex but once established the rates will be subject to automatic adjustment if there are further movements of 1 per cent or more in the value of currencies. The immediate application of these additional compensatory amounts will ensure that, so far as the main basic foods to which compensatory amounts and third country levies at present apply, there will be no increases in prices in the United Kingdom as a result of the latest currency developments.
"Apart from this important decision, the Council had a further discussion on direct incentives for beef production. The Commission will be making further proposals which will take account of the experience which we and other Member States have had in this field. We also secured agreement that our growers will benefit in full from the Community subsidy on herbage seeds from the 1972 crop.
"At the request of the Commission the Council decided to defer consideration and implementation of Community farm price levels for one month. These will now be considered at the end of March and implementation would begin from April 30th."
My Lords, that concludes the Statement.
3.45 p.m.
LORD HOY: My Lords, we are grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, for repeating that Statement. Obviously there must be some questions that arise from it. Is it not a fact that all the Statement does is to indicate what is being done because of changes in the currency values to compensate for the fall in the value of the pound at present compared with when it was fixed in the first fortnight in January? May I therefore ask the noble Earl whether, when he says that the immediate application of this agreement will ensure that there is no increase in the price of foodstuffs as a result of the latest currency developments, what he is in fact saying is that because of any devaluation or any other fall in the value of currency, food prices will not rise? That
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of course does not mean that food prices will be controlled outside that fall in the currency.
May I ask the noble Earl when it is intended that the discussion is to take place on direct incentives for beef production in this country and in the Community as a whole? Obviously, that is very important to our farming community and it must link up with the Price Review. I am certain your Lordships would be grateful if the Minister could make an assessment of the value of the subsidy on herbage seeds from the 1972 crop and what it will mean in cash. My Lords, as I understood the Minister, he did not say, but it is reported, that the Commissioner for Agriculture warned the Minister against any hasty decision on farm price levels which, he said, were the basis of the C.A.P. Perhaps the Minister could confirm that this statement was made by the Commissioner and also his reason for making it. Did he feel that prices might be fixed at too high a level and become intolerable for the people in the Community?
The Commissioner also is reported in the Press this morning to have said that the series of currency adjustments since the French devaluation of 1969 made it difficult to talk any longer of common prices throughout the Community. If the Commissioner did not make that statement during these discussions perhaps the Minister can tell us the facts. Does that mean that each country will be entitled to fix its own price?
There is one last question which has to be put. This decision to postpone the agricultural year inside the Community is bound to have repercussions so far as our agricultural industry is concerned. At present the Annual Price Review takes place between the farmers and the Government, and it seems to me to be nonsense to think that one could carry out any meaningful negotiations in this respect until the other decision is made. I should like to know what are the Government's intentions inasmuch as the prices to the consumer cannot be guaranteed until what the Statement says will happen, that
"precise levels will now be worked out urgently by the Commission and the Management Committees."
Until these things have been worked out there can be no protection from the

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consumer point of view. I should like to know from the noble Earl when he thinks this is going to be achieved.
VISCOUNT THURSO: My Lords, this is indeed a complicated and technical subject. I should therefore like to ask the noble Earl whether for the moment we are returning to a status quo but that it is envisaged that we should move out of this compensatory situation at some other date. For instance, it would seem rather absurd that agriculture should operate on one rate of exchange and all other industries in the country on another. I should like to know for how long a period this situation is likely to operate, and whether it is envisaged as a permanent change in the method of computing these matters.
3.51 p.m.
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, I am grateful for the welcome which the noble Lord, Lord Hoy, and the noble Viscount, Lord Thurso, have given to this Statement. As the noble Viscount rightly said, this is a complicated and technical situation. If I may reply first to the point he made as to when we are going to move out of this situation, I think he will realise when I expand a little on what the noble Lord, Lord Hoy, said, that it is not one out of which we will quickly move. The noble Lord, Lord Hoy, was, if I may say so, a trifle confused over one point which I should like to make clear. This alteration has come about not because of the floating of the pound and the alterations which that has caused. It is an internal problem relating to the member countries of the E.E.C. because of the floating of the dollar. The result of this has been that the dollar has floated downwards 10 per cent. or thereabouts, and that imports into the Common Market countries will be affected by that amount; but as the dollar went down, so also did the pound, relatively speaking, go down, and that puts the pound out of parity with the European Community's other currencies. If that is what the noble Lord, Lord Hoy, said, then I misunderstood him, and I apologise.
It is in order to readjust this situation and to put the pound back in relation to the original parities that these arrangements have been made. This is being done in order that the imports into this country will remain at a similar level
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to that at which they would have remained had the dollar not been devalued. The way in which that will help the consumer is simply that food which is imported into this country will not go up as it would have done had these arrangements not come about. These additional monetary compensatory amounts are a new undertaking designed to look after currencies when they float downwards, whereas previously there have only been arrangements for currencies when they float upwards.
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Hoy, asked when discussions are to take place about beef and the increase of supplies of beef. These are going on now. I cannot say when the conclusions will be arrived at, but the member countries of the European Community are trying to pool their knowledge and experience of beef in order to try to find some equitable way of increasing the production of this commodity.
The noble Lord, Lord Hoy, referred also to questions of price levels within the Community. I should not wish to be drawn on that particular issue on this Statement, because the Statement refers only to bringing back to the original system of parity the relationship between United Kingdom sterling and the European unit of account which existed before. Then the noble Lord asked what is the value of the 1972 herbage crop to the United Kingdom growers. That is about £1 million. I hope that I have answered most of the noble Lord's questions.
LORD HOY: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Earl, but there are these two questions: First, what effect is this going to have on the Annual Price Review being carried out in this country at present between the farmers and the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food? Secondly, when the noble Earl spoke about the holding down of prices, the effect of this agreement is not to hold down what would be the normal trading price, but to compensate for that loss in price between the January figure and what happened as a result of the devaluation of the dollar. I only hope that this is clearly understood. If I am wrong, I should be delighted if the noble Earl would correct me, but as I read the Statement, I think that is correct. While I would not ask the noble Earl to confirm or deny that part, I should like to

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know, and I am certain the farmers of the country would like to know, what effect it will have on the present Price Review in this country.
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, with regard to the effect of this decision on prices, it is not holding prices down; it is preventing the prices going up by a disproportionate amount as a result of the revaluation by which our currency altered vis-à-vis the Common Market. With regard to the Price Review, discussions are going on at the moment, and, as the noble Lord will know, there will be two stages; namely, the annual review of the conditions of the industry, and the determination of the guaranteed prices. This particular Statement will not affect those discussions or their outcome.
VISCOUNT THURSO: My Lords, may I ask the noble Earl whether this Statement has any connection with the fact that at least one, if not two, large chain stores have reduced the price of imported lamb considerably in recent days?
EARL FERRERS: No, my Lords; none whatever.
VISCOUNT THURSO: My Lords, does the statement that this decision will keep food prices from going up apply whether these foods come from outside or inside the Community, from British farms or whatever?
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, it means that food coming into the Common Market countries, because of the devaluation of the dollar, will be subject to a different import levy from that which they would have had before the devaluation of the dollar. In addition to that, our currency has altered in relation to the deutschmark and the French franc. Therefore when we import food or wheat or any commodity from the Common Market countries they would also have been affected and this would have resulted in higher import prices. In order to retain the prices at the level they were at before, it will be necessary for F.E.O.G.A. to allow greater compensatory amounts.
VISCOUNT THURSO: My Lords, is the noble Earl saying that if we imported wheat from Canada the price would have gone up, and if we had imported wheat from France it would also have gone up?
EARL FERRERS: Yes, my Lords: because now that we are members of the European Community, although we are in the transitional state, any food which comes in from other countries is liable to the Community regulations. Admittedly, we are only in the transitional state and therefore the effect on wheat coming to us from Canada may not be as great as on wheat coming from Canada to other members of the Community.

SMALL FIRMS: THE BOLTON REPORT
4.0 p.m.
Debate resumed.
THE EARL OF COURTOWN: My Lords, I join with other noble Lords in giving a belated welcome to the Bolton Report. It contains much useful information and many recommendations. It emphasises the importance of small firms in the economy. I speak as one who has spent almost a lifetime in large scale industry. But even large scale industry is made up of many smaller bits and I have learned over the years to admire and study what small firms are doing. Although I have no interest now in a large company, I should perhaps declare an indirect interest in that I am Chairman of the Regional Management Centre Council based on Portsmouth Polytechnic.
In what I say to-day, I propose to concentrate on the problems of management in small firms, because it is on management—and good management in particular—that these firms either will or will not flourish. It has been brought out very clearly by previous speakers that it is difficult to make small firms accept a service, even if that service will he useful. There must be an atmosphere among small firms inducing them to make use of that service.
Small firms have many advantages. Management knows much more about all levels of the business. Decisions can be taken much more quickly, and so long as management is willing to change, it can make changes much more quickly. Small firms are also geared much more to the development of the entrepreneurial atmosphere—an atmosphere in which the good entrepreneur will flourish—and one

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of the things that large firms have to study is the extent to which they can establish a similar atmosphere within their own companies. Small firms have administrative simplicity. They can do without records and internal discussions, and there is hardly any need for writing internal memos, because one person often deals with a wide range of activities.
In industrial relations small firms have a good record. People at the top know those at the bottom, and vice versa. In the two years to 1969, the Report tells us, only 1½ per cent. of the small firms had any strikes. On the other hand, it is probably significant that two-thirds of small firms have no union representation at all, and only 8 per cent. of them are completely unionised. Large firms certainly try to obtain the advantages of small firms through the decentralisation and simplification of procedures; and they know full well that small firms concentrating on limited ranges of products are highly competitive.
As against this, small firms have their disadvantages, particularly in the manufacturing field. They can obviously spend much less on research and development, although in many industries there are useful research associations. They are unable to mount marketing and distribution activities on the same scale, especially in exports, and there is no doubt that it is in the export field that much of the difficulty arises. They have greater difficulties about finance, to which reference has already been made. In many industries the size of the economic production unit, in these days of advanced technology, is too large for the small firm to be able to finance. Also as has been mentioned before, Government regulations may take a great toll of the management's time in small firms, whereas the large firm can take such regulations in its stride by means of its own records and procedures.
The Common Market is undoubtedly going to bring pressure on firms to grow, or else go out of existence. It is in this area of growth that the problems of management will be most pressing, but there is still a place for small manufacturing firms in specialist activities. If they concentrate on fairly simple products, and on making them cheaply and well, they can flourish greatly in the Common
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Market. For example, I know one small company which concentrates on making mattress buttons and its business is world-wide. In fact, the managing director, whenever he stays in an hotel—even in the most distant pants of the world—pulls aside the sheet on his bed and often finds his firm's mattress buttons underneath. This is an example of how a small firm can be extremely successful in concentrating on the making of one fairly simple product and achieving a large output, with the economies of size and of large production, while remaining an efficient unit.
If, as I suggest, one of the main problems of small firms is that of growth, what are the difficulties attached to this? Entrepreneurial or technological skill often does not go easily with organising ability. People who have built up a small business quite often find that when it comes to delegating authority down the line they do not find it easy. Many small firms are perhaps run by only one, two or three people and there is a wide gap below them. High-grade, well-educated young men and women are not often tempted to go into such firms. They do not see regular chances of promotion, and the Bolton Report mentions that comparatively few members of management in these small firms have themselves any formal qualification. The merchant banks report that the commonest failing in small firms lies in their management ability.
It is undoubtedly important that there should be an atmosphere of improving management in these companies. How, then, can management be improved? I believe this can be linked under two headings: consultancy and management education. It is important that members of management in small firms should have people with whom they can consult regarding their various managerial problems. The Report tells us that the most likely people to whom they might go for advice are accountants, solicitors, bank managers, chambers of commerce and trade associations, in that order, and then there follow the business consultants and the C.B.I. What sort of advice can these people give? The Report does not tell us, but I suggest that very few of them are going to give advice and help on the problems of growth.

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It is very often helpful to have a consultant to look at a business and make recommendations for reorganisation or for changes in the management and activities of that business; but it is much more useful to have a situation in which there is continuous contact with advisers. Management decisions are made through recognising the factors which affect the situation and then weighing these in the light of changing circumstances. Some of these factors can be quantified, but many cannot, and having someone, a consultant of some sort, in continuous contact with a concern, and with whom the management can discuss new problems and get his advice and help in weighing these factors, can be extremely useful. In many cases management consultants do not find small firms profitable to work with, except some firms who have specialised in small time consultancy with small firms of consultants. The universities, technical colleges and Research Associations are also mentioned in the Report. It is stated that the polytechnics and technical colleges stand in higher repute than the universities. That is natural, because the polytechnics and technical colleges are geared much more to post-experience work and part-time learning of one sort or another. More co-operation is recommended with these. Many of these colleges and, indeed, universities have started their own small firm centres as a means of communication with the small firms within their region.
So far as Government bodies are concerned, the industrial liaison service has been discontinued. This was based on local polytechnics, technical colleges and universities and, in some cases, the staff have been absorbed in those bodies. The Department of Trade and Industry have set up a small firms department and I shall be interested to hear from the Minister what the plans for this department are. And of course Government provide extremely useful export services.
Then, going on to management education, this has to be linked closely with consultancy. Management education is not something which can be done totally in any form of training college; it must be integrated with learning on the job. Most small firms, as the noble Lord, Lord Mottistone, implied, are not geared to send people on courses, but local courses are likely to be the best supported.
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The industrial training boards in many industries did not cater for small firms, particularly in management education. We now have the National Training Agency coming under the Department of Employment. This, as noble Lords know, was set up to provide the type of training which was not available through the training boards, and it was particularly mentioned that certain types of training were better done on a regional basis. I do not know whether the Minister can tell us anything about what the National Training Agency is doing about management education.
Then there are the regional management centres which have been set up, based in the main on polytechnics in various parts of the country. The noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, in a previous debate, gave the information that the Department of Education and Science is responsible for co-ordinating management education. One wonders, with so many Ministries interested in various aspects of this subject, what the D.E.S. are doing to co-ordinate it. I do not imply by this that there is need for any strong co-ordination, but at least we need to be sure that these new bodies that are being set up find out what is happening in other institutions within their neighbourhood.
To finish, I should like to emphasise that I believe small firms have an important place in the economy, and that it is right to encourage them. They have acute problems of management, many of which have been mentioned in this debate, but they have to realise what they need in management, and they have to find out how to help themselves. It is no good various bodies being set up to help them if they are not going to make use of those bodies. They have to get geared towards training themselves for growth and, in particular, for training future generations of managers. I shall be very interested to hear what the Minister is going to say, and what the Government are proposing to do in this field.
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, it is my duty to inform the House that the Ministerial Statement and subsequent exchanges, for which this debate was recently interrupted, occupied 16 minutes of the House's time. The time

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limit for this debate is thereby advanced to 5.39 p.m.
4.16 p.m.
LORD JACQUES: My Lords, I apologise for intervening; I will be very brief and to the point. I wish to raise two issues of fiscal policy which tend to militate against the small firm. The first point is with reference to the encouragement of industry in the development areas. The previous Government relied very heavily upon cash grants. The policy of the present Government is to rely upon tax incentives. I know that there has been some change of mind in that respect, and I am probing to see how far that change of mind has gone. I think it will be accepted on all sides of the House that in new business in a development area it is highly likely that there will be losses in the first few years. It will take some time in order to make the business profitable. When you have a system of cash grants it means that the firm, whether large or small, can take advantage of those cash grants immediately. But when the incentive is not a cash grant but a tax incentive, it means that the small firm that has only the one factory in the development area gets no advantages because it has no profits against which to set the tax incentive. The large firm which has merely a branch factory in the development area will be able to use its tax incentive gained in the development area against profits which have been made elsewhere. It is clear, therefore, that the present policy of tax incentives in the development areas militates against the establishment of the small firm in the development areas. I ask that that point should be given further consideration.
The second point I wish to raise is with reference to corporation tax. The proposed changes in corporation tax will militate against the small firm. At the present time a company pays 40 per cent. in corporation tax but, in addition, the income tax which it deducts when distributing profits has to be accounted for to the Revenue so that the percentage of profits which goes to the Revenue is 40 plus. It is proposed that from 1972–73 there will be a change. The company will pay 50 per cent. in corporation tax but will not have to account to the
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Revenue for the income tax deducted from distributed profits. The position will be changed in that there will be a charge of 50 per cent. and that will be the end of the matter, whereas formerly it was 40 per cent. plus the income tax deducted from the distributed profits.
I should like to compare that change in its effects upon a private company and its effects upon a public company. In the case of the private company, it is relying upon retained profits for additional equity capital. The public company can get additional equity capital on the Stock Exchange. It is true of course that the private company can go to the bank and raise a loan, but often it will be relying upon future retained profits in order to repay that loan. Before 1972–73 a private company paid 40 per cent. in corporation tax and if it paid no dividends it had 60 per cent. of its profits left for expansion. If corporation tax is increased to 50 per cent., it means that the private company will have its corporation tax increased from 40 per cent. to 50 per cent.—an increase of 25 per cent. The profits which it retains for future expansion will be reduced by 17 per cent., so that it is quite clear that the small private company which retains its profit for future expansion is going to be badly hit by that change in taxation.
Let us compare that with the effect of that change in taxation upon a large public company. On the average, a public company pays 61 per cent. of its profits, after taxation, to the shareholders. In such a company, before the change in tax it would pay—and I will use only whole numbers; I will not go into decimals–21 per cent. to the shareholders; 23 per cent. would be available for expansion, and 54 per cent. would go in taxation. Now, 54 per cent. goes in taxation because the company is responsible to the Exchequer, not merely for the 40 per cent. corporation tax but for the tax which has been deducted from the dividends paid to shareholders. The net position is that 54 per cent. goes in taxation; 23 per cent. is available for expansion. But, when you have a 50 per cent. rate of corporation tax, and the company keeping the tax deducted from dividends, you have an entirely different position. Once again, 21 per cent. goes to the shareholders, but only

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50 per cent. is paid in tax, not 54 per cent. as before. Consequently, 28 per cent., instead of 23 per cent., is left for expansion. So this change of policy in relation to corporation tax tends to hit the private company and tends to the advantage of the public company; and, generally speaking, that will tend to hit the small firm and to aid the large firm. I should like the Minister to comment on those two questions of fiscal policy and at least to promise that they will have some consideration.
4.24 p.m.
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, we have had a very interesting debate and I should like to start by thanking my noble friend Lord Strathcona and Mount Royal for initiating it. It is now some time since the Bolton Committee reported. As has been said, the Bolton Committee was set up under the last Government in November, 1969, and I must compliment our predecessors on their choice of Chairman and members of the Committee. They were a most distinguished quartet, very well qualified for the task that they were given. It was no easy task and one that, as my noble friend Lord Mottistone said, had never been attempted before. They made a penetrating and objective analysis based upon a careful collection and sifting of the evidence (such as it was, one must add), resulting in some 56 recommendations. I say "such as it was", not because of any unwillingness of people to send in evidence but because the statistical facts were to a considerable extent not known. But we do know now a good deal more of the facts about small firms in this country, and we know also of their problems as well as their value to the community as a whole. May I say how grateful the Government are—it has been said before but I feel I must say it again, and I do so most willingly—to the Committee for their outstanding accomplishment.
The Government wholeheartedly accepted the Report and immediately went ahead with the task of evaluating and, where possible, implementing the recommendations contained in it. Indeed, some changes were made in the tax system on the basis of the Committee's interim findings in January, 1971, well before the Report was published in November, 1971. The Committee took the view that small firms,
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"suffer from a number of inequitable and unnecessary disabilities, mostly imposed by Government, which amount to discrimination".
They thought that Government had not imposed these difficulties deliberately, but had not sufficiently appreciated the importance of the small firms sector in the economy. Their complaint against Governments, they said,
"is simply that the interests of small firms are neglected because it is nobody's job to consider them".
They therefore proposed, as their major recommendation, that a division should be created within the Department of Trade and Industry
"to ensure that the interests of the small firms sector and the maintenance of its ability to fulfil its proper role in the industrial structure are never allowed to go by default".
They also recommended that a Minister of the Department of Trade and Industry should be expressly designated as the Minister responsible for small firms and to oversee the work of the division. These recommendations were implemented at once. One of the Under-Secretaries of State at the Department of Trade and Industry was given special responsibility for small firms, and a special division was set up to support him.
Since the Committee reported, first Mr. Ridley, then Mr. Grant, and members of their staff, have been having extensive consultation up and down the country with many kinds of organisations with an interest in small firms, with industrial firms and with individual people who in one way or another have an interest in the wellbeing of small firms. Before the Committee reported few of us could have realised that, despite all the mergers, amalgamations and takeovers since the war, there were still some 820,000 small firms, excluding agriculture and the professions, employing some 30 per cent. of industries concerned with review, and with a net output of one-fifth of the output of those industries; this one-fifth amounted to £3,500 million, so we are talking about a very substantial sector of the community. If, of course, one includes agriculture and the professions then the number of small firms is 11 million. Perhaps I should say that these 1¼ million small firms are estimated to employ nearly one-third of the people who work for their living, including the self-employed, and to account for nearly one-fifth of our gross national product.

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That is high. I find this reassuring because it means that the regenerative process must still be very much alive, and it must mean that the complications of our modern society and economic life have not deterred independently-minded entrepreneurs from launching out on their own, with their energy, their ideas and their savings, and in some cases, possibly, their "golden handshakes".
The outstanding conclusion of the Report was that although the small firm sector had been declining both in substance and in its share of economic activity, small firms had special inherent advantages which should ensure that they continued to survive in the foreseeable future and to make the important contribution that they are making to the organisation of our economic and our social life, provided that the disabilities which have been imposed on them are removed, and provided healthy and fair competition is encouraged throughout the economy. As some of my noble friends have mentioned, they did not recommend subsidies or subsidised services. They said
"We think it wrong in principle that firms should in effect be bribed to take action which, if it is worth while at all, will increase their profitability."
They expressed the view that Government should only provide a service if it is needed and private enterprise cannot or will not provide it, and should only subsidise services if the economic benefit to the nation deriving from them is greater than their cost, and the users cannot pay or should not be expected to pay their full cost. They recognised that circumstances could arise in which it would be desirable to support small firms, but at present it should suffice to remove the disabilities and provide the one service that they believed was needed, namely, the "signposting" service. This has been commented on by a number of my noble friends and I shall come to it in a minute or two.
I have been invited to say something about the recommendations and about the way in which they have been met. There were 13 about taxation, a subject of great importance to small firms, for whom retained profits, as the noble Lord, Lord Jacques, has just been telling us, are an important source of investment
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capital; 15 about form-filling (a task which usually falls upon the proprietor) and five about planning matters, including compensation for compulsory purchase. The Committee also said that the industrial training levy/grant scheme was inappropriate for small firms; that the various systems of Government procurement ought to be examined centrally to see whether small firms get a fair crack of the whip; that a special study should be made of the immediate effects of joining the European Economic Communities; that the impact of our competition policy upon small firms ought to be re-examined; that we should raise the limits for the disclosure of companies' turnover and individual directors' fees, and that we should increase to 10,000 square feet the area of factory space below which an industrial development certificate is not required.
As soon as the Report was published the Minister and his staff went to work with a will on all the recommendations which I have mentioned. This was no easy task because many of the policies which they covered were not the responsibility of the Department of Trade and Industry and, as the Secretary of State made clear on November 4, 1971, the appointment of a Minister with special responsibilities did not imply any change in the accountability of other Ministers; nor, incidentally, was there to be any intervention by the Minister responsible between Ministries and those whom they served. However, 13 liaison officers have been appointed from other Departments to ensure adequate co-operation, and although not all the recommendations have been found fully acceptable, some were implemented in full and some in part.
For example, special provisions in the field of taxation were made in the 1971 and 1972 Finance Acts covering, among other things, the restoration of tax relief on loans and the assessment of close companies for shortfall and estate duty, which will benefit small firms. It is also of very special interest to small firms that a reduced rating of corporation tax was envisaged in the 1972 Act for companies whose profits do not exceed £25,000. My right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer was careful not to state firmly what the corporation tax is going to be, but he did say that there would

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be this advantage for firms whose annual profit did not exceed £15,000, with tapering relief for companies with profits up to £25,000. Another section provided for the payment of capital gains tax in the case of deemed disposals to be spread over eight years, and this also was important for small firms because it is in the giving of loans to up-and-coming people in the small firms that the managership interest in the company can pass from a sole holder to somebody else.
That has dealt with taxation. In addition, as the Committee recommended, the Companies Act was amended by Statutory Instrument in February 1972 to relieve firms of the obligation to disclose their turnover if it was not above £250,000, and their individual directors' fees if the total of them was not above £15,000. Perhaps I may say in passing that this was something that we pressed for from this side of the House when the Companies Act was passing through the House in 1968.
As announced in the White Paper on Industrial and Regional Development, we abolished industrial development certificates in the development areas and special development areas and raised the limits below which they are not required to 10,000 square feet in the South-East and 15,000 square feet elsewhere. This removes the long-standing grievance of small firms which want to expand but cannot afford, so to speak, to split themselves into two areas.
In the field of industrial training we agreed with the Bolton Committee that the levy/grant system had never really been suitable for small firms and the training boards are now discussing the appropriate exemption limits for each industry. We have looked at Government procurement across a wide field and have found no evidence of discrimination, and we have satisfied ourselves that our small firms have nothing to fear from our accession to the European Economic Communities. Indeed they may have a great deal to gain, for it is evident that small firms on the Continent gained through the coming together of the Six.
The arrangements for scrutinising all Departments' statistical forms are to be strengthened. The Central Statistical Office has now to be consulted on all new surveys and on any significant alterations
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in existing ones. We are also looking into the possibility of setting up a central register of business, which would help to avoid duplication, make sampling easier and allow for the maximum possible exemption of small firms. There are to be more explicit rules for the use of Departments' statutory powers to collect figures; we are going to distinguish between compulsory and non-compulsory forms; and aggregated statistical information will be freely interchanged between Departments. I emphasise the word "aggregated" because it is very important that individual confidentiality should be maintained. Whenever new inquiries are in prospect a special exercise is now mounted to assess what the burden will be upon individual companies; and much greater use is now being made of man-hour estimates—that is, how long it will take the average firm to fill in the form. In the past we have been too apt to think only of what is the cost to the Government.
An even larger and more intractable area is that of administrative forms, such as those which have to be filled in to obtain licences of various sorts or I.D.C.s or financial assistance. All Ministers are now doing everything they can to see that the burden of such forms is reduced. Whenever new forms are devised, the expenditure of time and effort by those who have to fill them in is to be assessed and taken into account and will be re-examined periodically, and the expertise of statisticians is to be fully utilised in designing such forms. However, we do not intend to implement the Bolton Committee's recommendation for a computerised central data bank because of the danger to individual privacy.
My Lords, I am not going to accept the invitation which was offered to me by the noble Earl, Lord Courtown, to go into future taxation, but I shall most certainly look at the record to see whether there is any point at which, at this delicate time in the period of our Parliamentary year, there is any comment I can make on it.
A question about industrial development has been raised. The noble Lord, Lord Jacques, talked about the possibility of encouragement to industries in the development areas. He said that the tax incentive system militates against small

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firms. We now have the buildings grant, the plant and machinery grant and, where there is need of special assistance, the possibility of giving this under the Industry Act, notably by way of loan. There is also the need to supply small firms with accommodation to which they can move quickly. One of my noble friends, I believe it was my noble friend Lord Auckland, mentioned the case of firms who have to move elsewhere from an area that is being cleared. On January 15 an announcement was made that there were to be thirty-three advance factories in England, all but three of which are of 15,000 square feet or less. In Scotland two out of ten are to be of 15,000 square feet or less, and in Wales, one out of ten is less than 15,000 square feet—and is in fact of 10,000 square feet.
In the related field of planning and compensation for compulsory purchase the Committee made five recommendations. Not all were accepted, but I would commend to your Lordships the White Paper on Development and Compensation, Putting People First. That contained a number of proposals of particular interest to small firms. For example, subject to the approval of Parliament the blight provisions are to be improved: there is to be a right to advance payments of up to 90 per cent. of compensation; there is to be special compensation for dispossessed elderly traders and businessmen so that they may retire instead of having to start again further down the road; and there will be payment, as of right, of compensation for disturbance for unprotected business tenants. Those are all useful improvements for small businesses. Local authorities have been asked by the Government to bear in mind the needs of small firms in areas which are being redeveloped and to use their powers to give sympathetic treatment to them when they are dispossessed. As I have said, the regional assistance under the Industry Act is available for small firms equally with large firms, and the same applies for dispossessed firms. The Government have sent several reminders to local authorities urging them to use their powers sympathetically in re-housing small firms displaced by re-development schemes.
I come now to the new signposting service which the Committee itself said was its major recommendation. The
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Bolton Committee drew attention to the wide range of advice and information available, if only small firms could be persuaded to use it. The Committee recommended that a network of small firms' advisory bureaux should be established by the Government in important industrial centres, and they described it as a pure signposting or referral service, or, one might say, as a bridge between those who want advice and help and those who are able to give it. They said that the service should be well publicised, and noble Lords have mentioned the fact that even the existence of the Small Firms Division is not sufficiently known just now. It will become better known undoubtedly through the centres. The Committee thought that such a service would provide information and would give assistance on technical, financial and management problems by providing introductions to the appropriate sources of professional, commercial or official advice. It would provide a source of firsthand information to the Small Firms Division about the progress and problems of the small firms sector. The Government accepted that advice: we shall be opening offices in London, Glasgow, Cardiff and Birmingham, and in six other centres in the Provinces. They will be known as Small Firm Information Centres and will be based on the Department of Trade and Industry's regional organisation. They will be run on a uniform basis at public expense. They are intended to be able to give advice personally, by telex, by telephone, or indeed by correspondence.
My own personal advice to firms would be to make personal contact first with the centres and after that they will find that it will be much easier to consult them by telephone, or by other means. They are not intended to supplant the wide range of advisory services which already exist—although I am bound to say that such services vary considerably in quantity, quality and type in different parts of the country. On the contrary, they are intended to help to make better use of them by referring inquiries to the appropriate sources of advice. It is our hope that the centres will, in this way, bring many new members to existing organisations—such as the Small Business Centre of Aston University, and the chambers of commerce which do such

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good work in many parts of the country. It is in this way, I would say to my noble friend Lord Courtown, that it will be possible to guide firms to appropriate assistance, whether it concerns management education or management consultancy. We hope also that these centres will fill another gap; that they will provide the Small Firms Division with a continuous flow of up-to-date information about the achievements as well as the difficulties of the small firms. In other words, if small firms use the centres, as we hope they will, and tell them where the shoe is pinching as well as asking for information, then that kind of information will go directly back to the Small Firms Division at the Department of Trade and Industry.
I took note of what was said about credit finance in this connection by my noble friend Lord Strathcona and Mount Royal. I have no doubt that if firms bring to the attention of the centres cases where they are being forced to give long credit to much larger firms, it will then be possible for the information to be collated at the Small Firms Division and no doubt appropriate action will then be taken.
My noble friend Lord Strathcona and Mount Royal asked whether assistance could be given to small firms to set up their own body. That really is a matter for small firms themselves, but we have the Devlin Report on Industrial and Commercial Representation, and as your Lordships will know this is a matter which is very much under consideration and debate at the present time. The noble Lord made a number of valuable suggestions; I have already referred to one. He spoke about applications to banks for credit. The Committee found that the banks themselves were doing more to educate their managers in the needs of small firms at the present time, although they gave the impression that there was still some way to go. I do not think that it would be right to encourage the idea that the Government themselves will provide short term loans. Several of my noble friends have referred to the sturdy independence of small businesses. One of the difficulties is that, generally speaking, the greater the distance they can put between themselves and Governments of all complexions, the happier they are.
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We hope that through the measures I have mentioned we shall be able to break down to some extent their tendency to keep themselves apart from Government, because I am sure that with the steps we are taking they will realise that Government are ready and willing to help them in every way they can. He also mentioned the need to interpret the maze of regulations and spoke of a cascade of paper work, and he mentioned the difficulty firms may experience in deciding what charges for services they make in the light of the present counter inflation legislation. These are the sort of questions that the centres will no doubt be equipped to answer, although I entirely accept what my noble friend Lord Mottistone said, that the centres will themselves have to learn what it is that people want to know. I have already dealt with the question of form filling. In so far as the various changes that are coming about at the present time require it, again the centres will be able to give information on whatever it may be that will affect the small firm.
I hope I have answered my noble friend Lord Auckland on management consultancy work. He asked what role the small firms play in this country. It is very obvious that small firms play a very important role in many ways, some of them as satellites of larger firms sending most of what they produce to the larger firms, some of them in straight competition with larger firms. The noble Lord drew attention to the fact that historically, at any rate, large firms were once small firms, and he mentioned one in particular in the North of Scotland that we had not much difficulty in identifying. What we want to do, of course, is to make certain that such growth is always a possibility just as it has been in the case of that particular firm, which, after all, did not start so very long ago.
My noble friend Lord Mottistone said that the strength of the small firm lies in its independence; that it is not seeking for a subsidy and that it wants to be left alone. He asked what consultation there had been about the membership of the Consultative Committee on Company Law Review and on the Economic and Social Committee of the E.E.C. One of the difficulties about the small firms at the present time is that they are not

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wholly cohesive. But there are the two organisations: first of all, the Smaller Businesses Association, and secondly, the Smaller Firms Council of the C.B.I. It must not be thought, because there has not been anybody with special knowledge of the small firms nominated to either of those two bodies, that their interests were not taken into account at the time when the appointments were made. This certainly was done. The noble Lord says that the Government should think of the small firms. I can assure him that the Government are thinking of them at the present time and did think of them on those particular occasions.
I am grateful for the contributions of the noble Lord, Lord Jacques, in pointing out two of the difficulties of the small firms. I hope that I have dealt adequately with them, but if there is anything further, in the circumstances, perhaps I should say, of the impending Budget, I shall be glad to discuss the matter with him.
In conclusion may I say this. The Government have confidence in the ability of the small firm to survive and prosper, and, given their vigour and sturdy independence, each to work out its own salvation. We have already implemented most of the Bolton recommendations for the removal of disabilities. We are firmly committed to paying more regard to their special problems in the future than has been paid in the past. Our work is not finished, I can assure your Lordships, when we have given effect to all the recommendations in the Bolton Committee's Report we feel we can and should implement. We have not confined our attention to the interests of small firms to Bolton recommendations; for example, the Small Firms Division has worked with Her Majesty's Customs on V.A.T.; it has played its part in the planning and implementing of control of prices and incomes, and of the application of selective assistance under the Industry Act; and it is making its contribution on E.E.C. proposals which may affect small firms. In a word, we are not committed to maintaining the small firms sector at any particular level, but we are determined that no future inquiry will be able to accuse this Government of neglecting them. Small firms now have a voice to speak for them within Government, and it is a voice which is speaking; it is a Division
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in the D.T.I.; it is an officer in each of 13 other Departments to watch over their needs, and a network of offices all over the country to help them to look after themselves and to make their proper contribution to the economic and social life of the nation.
4.57 p.m.
LORD STRATHCONA AND MOUNT ROYAL: My Lords, this debate has been shorter than our allocated ration of time, and I do not wish to detain your Lordships much longer. I should like, first, to join with Lord Mottistone and Lord Drumalbyn in paying tribute to the work of John Bolton and his Committee, and to thank the Minister for his recognition of the importance of this sector. In a sense, I found his remarks perhaps a little too reassuring. I believe I should have been happier had he been slightly more alarmist over what we have been talking about. I am not totally convinced that we have nothing to fear from accession to the E.E.C., because I still worry about the threat of the cascade of paper in the small companies. However, we must welcome the rather belated recognition by the Government that not only does it cost the Government money to send out forms but it actually costs the companies money as well. If the debate has done nothing else than establish that. I welcome it.
I hope the noble Lord, Lord Auckland, was satisfied with the assurances given about advance factories and assistance to companies who have to move. I also welcome the remarks made about small firms centres, which were in line, I think, with the comments made by Lord Mottistone, that they will have to feel their way. I take heart that we shall receive a sympathetic hearing of any complaints made by small firms about unjust coercion by their bigger customers. We of course accept the Minister's statement that small firms still have a degree of suspicion of Government and perhaps wish to keep their distance. We hope that the small firms centres will gradually bridge this distance more effectively in the future.
I should, incidentally, have mentioned with particular gratitude the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Jacques, and the answer that the Minister gave him, which

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I think perhaps went some way to removing the difference which Lord Jacques saw between the impact of taxation on the small company and its impact on the large one. This depends entirely upon the rate at which corporation tax for small companies is fixed by the Chancellor. That leaves me only to say that I willingly give two cheers to the Minister and to the Minister for small firms, and I hope that on a future occasion we may have the opportunity to give them three cheers. My Lords, I beg leave to withdraw the Motion.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

COAL INDUSTRY BILL
Brought from the Commons; read 1ª, and to be printed.
FIRE PRECAUTIONS (LOANS) BILL
Brought from the Commons; read 1ª, and to be printed.

THE RACE RELATIONS BOARD
5.0 p.m.
LORD BROCKWAY LORD BROCKWAY rose to draw attention to the recommendations of the annual report of the Race Relations Board for the enlargement of its terms of reference and activities; and to move for Papers. The noble Lord said: My Lords, the Race Relations Board has been in operation now for four years. I think it is generally accepted that both the Race Relations Act and the Board which has administered it have been of value to our society. I would say that in three particular cases it has been important. The Act created a climate; there was a law against racial discrimination, and it had its effect over the whole community. Secondly, discrimination in the public services and in places of public resort has very steeply diminished. Perhaps that was mostly the effect of the previous Act. Thirdly, discriminatory advertisements have almost entirely disappeared. In the fields of employment and housing, the subject of the second Act, the effects have been more uncertain. The first point that I should like to urge upon the Minister
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is that research in this field is necessary. As I understand it, discussions are taking place between the Race Relations Board, the Home Office, the Community Relations Commission and P.E.P. on this subject. I should be grateful if the Minister, when he replies, could indicate what progress has been made in those discussions.
The present functions of the Race Relations Board are limited. Its duty is mainly to deal with individual complaints of unlawful discrimination. When those complaints are established, it seeks conciliation and assurances that discrimination shall not be repeated. I take the view that the feature of conciliation in the work of the Board is perhaps its most important aspect. There are nine conciliation committees scattered about the country, composed entirely of voluntary workers; I think that the whole House would wish to pay tribute to the service which those voluntary workers have given. The number of individual complaints is falling. Last year it fell from 967 to 828. I shall return later on to what I regard as the significance of that reduction. The Board has a second function: it can also investigate suspected unlawful acts, even when no complaint is made. In contrast to the fall in the number of individual complaints, it is significant that in the opposite direction the number rose last year from 57 to 89.
In the Annual Report—and I hope all Members will read it because it is a very important document—a number of recommendations are made for the extension of the activities of the Board. I do not propose to deal with them in detail as I intend to concentrate on its most fundamental recommendation; but for the purposes of record I think that they are worth repeating. The first is that the respondent and witnesses should be required to disclose information to the Board. That is not now compulsory. The second is that there should be an examination of the exemptions to what is regarded as illegal discrimination; the Board particularly asks for the repeal of the sections dealing with employment on ships and on racial balance in factories. To these I add consideration of the Act as it applies to clubs, in view of the recent decision of the House of Lords' Judges. Thirdly, the Board recommends that the courts should be empowered to award general damages. They

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have no power now to require damages for suffering resulting from discrimination. Fourthly, it asks that the Board should have the power not to investigate complaints which are trivial. At present when a complaint is made and discrimination appears, the Board is required under the terms of the Act, to investigate it. That has led to absurd situations, such as the occasion, if I remember it aright, when it was suggested that the sale of Scottish porridge should be illegal. The Board asks that it should not necessarily be required to take up trivial cases of that kind.
Perhaps other speakers may deal with those recommendations, but I want to concentrate on the fundamental recommendation found on page 22 of the Report in paragraphs 81 and 82. The Board, having given its reasons, then says in paragraph 81:
"We therefore consider that the Act should be amended to give the Board powers to investigate without the need to suspect that any individual unlawful act has been committed. Individual acts of unlawful discrimination discovered in the course of such an investigation would be dealt with in the normal way. But, additionally, if the investigation revealed circumstances in which discrimination was likely to occur, the Board would formally call such circumstances to the attention of those concerned and make recommendations for change; such formal notice would be admissible in evidence in any subsequent proceedings for unlawful acts of discrimination.
"82. We consider that the granting of such powers would increase considerably the ability of the Board to engage in work of a preventive character. The Factory Acts are an example of legislation where the agency responsible for securing compliance does so more by prevention than by dealing with individual breaches. The mere existence of such powers would stimulate steps to promote equal opportunity."
I think we are now beginning to see that racial discrimination is not primarily a matter of individual victimisation; that discrimination exists in a wider social pattern within the community, in industry, in the environment surrounding the individual, in housing, in employment and, due to the racial feeling which still persists, in relations in industry, to promotions to jobs of authority, such as foremen and supervisors and to staff appointments as well as in the renting or purchasing of houses, particularly in white residential areas. Racial discrimination has now become not so much a
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matter of personal individual suffering as a part of society as a whole.
I am not suggesting that the Race Relations Board can deal with all the problems to which I have just referred. Many of them, such as the shortage of housing and the extent of unemployment, which arouse ill will against the immigrant competitors, are embodied in our social and economic system, but I suggest that there is large scope for the Board to contribute to the prevention of discrimination when practised contrary to the law and when, as at present it is so often undetected. In the passage which I have already quoted, the Board gives the parallel of factory inspectors. They have a duty to see that legislation providing for safeguards against accidents and for health is observed. If the rights of factory inspectors were limited to suspected cases, violation of the law would occur much more often and the deterrent value of a possible visit would be removed. I suggest that, from the point of view of the future of our society, racial discrimination is equally deleterious and dangerous. All the Board is asking is that its functions should be extended so that they become preventive as well as remedial.
In conclusion, I want to draw the attention of the House to a developing factor. We now have in our midst a large number of children of Commonwealth immigrants, who have been born in this country, who have gone to school with white children, who have most often been accepted as equal scholars and playfellows and have had a sense of equality—and who are now leaving school and going into the world. When Commonwealth immigrants arrive they very often accept the conditions here; they do not make complaints, because the circumstances are part of the society which they have joined. But that will not be true of the new generation of school leavers. They will not accept conditions of inferiority and humiliation, when in education they have been accepted as equals. Warnings have been sounded by many of those who are conscious of this situation that there may be an explosion from the new generation unless their need for equality in the world they enter is met.
May I give one illustration of what I mean? In industry, there has often been

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segregation of Commonwealth immigrants, and there is a good deal to be said in favour of it, partly because they did not know the English language and very often because it has even been the desire of the immigrants themselves to work and live in a community. Those conditions will no longer apply to the school-leavers. They will be familiar with the English language and will have had friendly associations with English children in the schools. I want to urge upon Her Majesty's Government that they face the fact that considerable changes are now necessary. The Board appreciates the position. I ask the Government to give it the opportunity to assist in transforming conditions which may become dangerous to society if it does not adjust itself to the new situation. I believe that that can be done only if we give the Board the extended rights for which it asks. My Lords, I beg to move for Papers.
5.20 p.m.
BARONESS SEEAR: My Lords, I must begin with two apologies and one explanation. I greatly regret that, for reasons over which I have very little control, I was not able to be in my seat for the opening of the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Brockway. Then, I am afraid that because of a meeting of a committee that I chair, to which I was committed before this Motion was tabled, I must also apologise to the noble Viscount for the fact that it is unlikely that I shall be able to be here at the end of the debate. My disclaimer is that I am a member of a conciliation committee, and therefore may perhaps be regarded as an interested party in this debate.
My Lords, I would go along a considerable way with much that has been said by the noble Lord, Lord Brockway. However, there would be very little point in my repeating, far less adequately, the speech that he has made, and I wish instead to approach this whole problem from a slightly different angle. The Race Relations Board, set up under the Race Relations Act, has been struggling with a problem difficult in itself and, in my view, likely to get more difficult, although we have tended to think, as a country, that having passed the Act and set up the Board there is good reason to hope that everything will come all right in the end. But there are two aspects to the problem
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of developing harmonious race relations in this country, and it is to only one of those aspects that the Board, by its very nature, can primarily direct itself. The Board is there primarily to carry out the provisions of the Act. It is more than merely a body for enforcement, but this is its first task; and it is seen, and has to be seen, as a body to deal with the enforcement of the law. But the development of harmonious race relations requires creative acts of imagination backed by well-financed acts of administration if we are to reach the target that we have set ourselves of an harmonious society. I would suggest that we have given far too little attention to this side of the race question, and that it is unreasonable and indeed impossible to expect the Board either to do its primary task properly or indeed to take on the whole of the work that needs to be done.
I submit, my Lords, that we have not at present analysed what the problem of race relations in this country really is. Moreover, we have allowed a multiplicity of bodies to be concerned with the handling of race questions. A number of different Government Departments are involved: the Department of the Environment, the Home Office, the Department of Employment, the Department of Education and Science—and it must be an open secret that from time to time these different Departments get in each other's hair, if I may use so unparliamentary a phrase. Then there is the Institute of Race Relations; and then, of course, there is the Community Relations Commission, with its somewhat loosely attached units in different parts of the country. Those of your Lordships who have been closely connected with this work must know that there is not inconsiderable chaos between these different bodies, and this does not help either in defining the problem or in approaching a solution of it. So I would say that the first job, if the Race Relations Board is to do its part properly, is to look at the other side of the question and to see what kind of organisation we really need if we are properly to handle the very large amount of work that in fact needs to be done.
We need, too, to clarify what are our objectives here. It is easy to talk about the development of harmonious race relations, but what sort of race relations are we trying to develop? Do we want (to

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use language which is current in the race industry) to develop a mosaic pattern or do we want a melting pot, or do we want a mixture of the two? Do we want to encourage different cultural groups to maintain what is best in their own culture, or do we want to minimise the differences in every way we possibly can? Or is it right to have one approach for one part of the work and a different approach for another? For example, it is crystal clear to me, at any rate, that so far as the field of work is concerned we must go for the melting pot and we must go for it thoroughly. We have not worked these matters out; and the bodies which are trying to deal with this question we have left shamelessly unsupported with the resources necessary to do it. The Community Relations Commission has, in this year's budget, two-thirds of a million pounds to do the job of developing good community relations in this country. This, I submit, is a sop to our consciences, but it is not the backing that is required for the really creative policies that we need.
This argument can be developed in many ways, but I do not intend to do so. I merely wish to say that, along with a discussion about the Board to-day, we must surely resolve to discuss this other side of the work and look at the resources that we are prepared to commit to it. I would suggest that we are probably going to need, sooner or later, some kind of body, an authority, backed with really adequate finance and free to a considerable extent from the trammels of Civil Service control, which very largely interfere with many of the things that the people concerned are wanting to do. This is not because the Civil Service wishes to interfere, but because Civil Service rules and regulations make it extremely difficult for the people concerned to get on with the job that they have to do. Indeed, the extent to which the Community Relations Commission often has to rely on funds drawn from foundations in order to carry out work which is most assuredly the responsibility of the community as a whole, and for which the community should pay, should give us very considerable reason to review the whole of what we are attempting to do in this field.
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My Lords, we in this country, in comparison with the Americans, have so far been extremely fortunate. It is of course a very different problem, both in scale and because of the different histories in the two countries; but, as the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, has said, there are many people (and they are far closer to this problem than I am) who believe that this relative calm may not endure. The noble Lord has referred to the question of the school-leavers. This is indeed an urgent problem. We know from recent studies that there is the particular problem of the West Indian adolescents. We do not understand this problem, and so far our policies for dealing with it have been quite inadequate. Then, there have been warning signs in industry; the warning signs that have come, for example, from the textile factories in the Midlands. These suggest that the relative peace and calm, and the acceptance by the immigrants of tacit discrimination, particularly in the area of promotion and advancement inside the industrial field, is something which may well not endure. We have been given time. To a not inconsiderable extent, we are squandering that time. If we continue to squander it, my Lords, it is possible that here, too, in this country, before the decade is out, there will be frustrated and angry men with their rifles on the roofs.
5.29 p.m.
BARONESS WHITE: My Lords, I am sure I am expressing the views of all your Lordships when I say that we are very grateful indeed to my noble friend Lord Brockway for having provided us with the occasion for discussing the extremely important Report of the Race Relations Board. This Report appeared last summer, and the Government have therefore had time to consider the recommendations made therein. We hope that later this afternoon we shall hear from the noble Viscount the Government's views on these recommendations. It is not the first time that the Race Relations Board in its Report has dwelt on the need for certain extensions of its powers and responsibilities. Therefore the Government do not have the excuse that these proposals are brought forward without some notice. I should like to join with the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, in his expression of gratitude to those who work, as does the noble

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Baroness, Lady Seear, on the conciliation committees, of which there are nine in various parts of the country. We appreciate that the Race Relations Board and all connected with it are in a sensitive area and have to walk delicately, but it is only right that we should try to bring forward in this debate what appear to be some of the real problems.
In reading the Report I was struck by the comment that the Race Relations Board has to rely on offices in five cities only outside London and it noticed that the flow of representations to it, as one might expect, is greater in the places where it has these offices. Its remedy for having relatively sparse representation geographically is to try to maintain relations with other organisations who may hear of instances where things are going wrong. This is admirable so far as it goes, but it seems to me that we are reaching a point where much more fundamental consideration should be given to this whole question of setting up bodies designed to safeguard citizens' rights. We have here this particular concern of ours this afternoon. We have recently in this House been discussing the National Health Service Reorganisation Bill where we are setting up community health councils and an Ombudsman to safeguard citizens in other directions. In certain local authority areas we have welfare rights officers established to help the citizen in his dealings with the Department of Social Security. Last week there was published in another place a Police Acts (Amendment) Bill which envisages setting up regional tribunals to deal with citizens' complaints against the police. If the Bill on discrimination against women reaches the Statute Book finally either in this House or in the other place presumably there will be some mechanism whereby its provisions may be carried out. Although I do not think that this is the occasion to pursue the subject it seems to me that we are in some danger of establishing a conglomeration of bodies dealing with citizens' rights and that this is an aspect of the situation which appears to need a great deal more thought that anyone has so far given it.
As things stand, the Race Relations Board relies on its own machinery and such other organisations as appear to co-operate with it. When I made inquiries
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about this, I asked what was the flow of information from the community relations councils established in various parts of the country. As one would expect, this varies a good deal from one to the other. Some are forthcoming and others seem not to see the relevance of instances of discrimination which must come to their attention but which they do not seem to pass on to the Race Relations Board. In the light of some of the hard things that have been said about the police in the context of race relations, I was much encouraged to learn that some police forces are very good indeed about contacting the Race Relations Board if they have occasion to suppose that the law has been breached—and not least is this so in the metropolitan area. With the brickbats that are sometimes thrown at the police, when one can offer them congratulations one should do so; and I am happy to do so in this context.
I am glad that we have in the Minister himself and in the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, two people learned in the law who can comment on the legal aspects of the proposals made for the extension of power, particularly in Section 7 of the Annual Report. I look forward to the stringent mind of the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, addressing itself to these matters because I do not profess to be adequately experienced to judge how far legally these proposals hold water. All I can say is that to someone who is a lay person most, though not quite all, suggestions in this section for amending the Acts seem to be valid.
I am interested in the introductory paragraph to this section in which the Board indicates its concern that it should not be exclusively a body dealing with individual complaints. The Report points out the weaknesses of such procedure. I was interested to have drawn to my notice the words of the Solicitor General in the other place in the debate last week on the Bill on discrimination against women. He quoted, with approbation (one supposes from the way he put it), evidence given by an American witness to the Committee examining the Bill of the noble Baroness, Lady Seear, in which this witness pointed out that to confine oneself to individual complaints really is not adequate and that if one is looking at industry, for example, on employment where discrimination is

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accepted and widespread, one should not reduce the operation to that of following up individual complaints.
This really is the message of this part of the Report of the Race Relations Board. It goes on to make various proposals, in particular in Paragraph 81, where it wished to have the rights and "powers to investigate without the need to suspect that any individual unlawful act has been committed." In other words, it wants to be able to take preventive action. It also wishes to have the right to obtain information. I hope that on both these matters the Minister will be able to give some positive indication as to what the Government intend to do. As I understand it at the present time if the Board is in difficulty over obtaining its information it is able, as it explains in this part of the Report, to take court proceedings in order to get discovery of documents and then, if the documents do not provide as strong a case as it expects, it abandons the proceedings—which is what Paragraph 84 calls "fishing for evidence".
As we have given to a number of bodies in various Statutes rights of obtaining evidence, I cannot see why the Race Relations Board should not have rights equivalent at least to those of the Highlands and Islands Development Board in Scotland which, I am astonished to learn, can obtain all kinds of information and can serve notices on persons that they must supply required information within three months. There is, in addition, a large range of provisions under trade descriptions and monopolies and restrictive practices legislation, and so on, whereby persons or bodies are obliged to give information without having to go through the sort of procedure which at present the Board has to undertake if it wishes to get this kind of information.
On some of the other propositions for amendment of the Act I am not quite so certain. Here I should be much interested to hear the views of our legal luminaries. For instance, there is the question of general damages. One can obtain special damages at present; but general damages is one thing suggested in paragraph 89. I am not quite certain that I would altogether go along with the suggestion that one should claim
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monetary compensation for loss of dignity or injury to the feelings. It seems to me that it would be very difficult to compute that loss. I am well aware that such a facility exists in the New Zealand legislation which came into force last year, but I am not entirely satisfied that conditions here are the same, or that that provision is necessarily one that I should be disposed to support. On the other hand, as was indicated by my noble friend Lord Brockway, I think we should all support another provision contained in the New Zealand legislation; namely, that the Board should have discretion not to investigate a complaint which seemed to be trivial, frivolous or vexatious; but I repeat, I should be glad to hear the legal arguments for and against the proposals.
My Lords, on the social side, with which one feels better able to deal, we have some extremely important problems which are becoming more and not less acute especially, I think, in the sphere of employment. It seems to me that we are in grave danger of making permanent a situation which may be acceptable when immigrants first come to this country because they may well recognise that their skills are not perhaps fully adequate or that they have language or other difficulties. But if this situation is allowed to become stratified and solidified it will have a very serious effect on the second generation, and unless this problem is tackled with firmness now, I think that the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, was quite right when he suggested that we may be on the way to a very explosive situation.
We have a position in a number of industries where it has become the custom for immigrant workers to be employed in certain processes on certain shifts and so on. This situation, if it is not tackled, may lead to most serious social consequences in the future. To my mind, the primary responsibility here rests squarely on management. I want to say a word in a moment about the trade unions; but I think that management sets the tone, and if management is determined that there shall be no discrimination the probability is that the practice will be accepted which makes discrimination, so far as possible, non-existent. But management has to face this matter and take specific action.

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There was an interesting report over the weekend regarding a very large advertising firm, one of whose agents, quite plainly, was acting in a strongly discriminatory way. When this fact was brought to the attention of the management consultants themselves, one of their directors said he was extremely glad the matter had been raised. He said: "It is a salutary reminder to us that we must be much more explicit to the firms we employ. I find that the instructions given by their agents are incredible." One could produce a number of examples. The noble Baroness, Lady Seear, mentioned the problems there had been in the hosiery industry in the Midlands. It so happens that about a month ago I was visiting another firm not far from where these difficulties had arisen, and where virtually the same processes were being carried out—where one had the knitters and beamers and so on about whom the troubles had arisen in the neighbouring firm. But in the firm which I visited there was no such trouble, and I am convinced that that was because management were on the look-out for possible discriminatory practices and had made certain, so far as they could control the situation, that these would not happen.
If one reads the report of the investigation made, at the request of the Government, by Mr. Kenneth Robinson into the dispute at the Mansfield Hosiery Mills in Loughborough one recognises that, important as responsibilities of management are, responsibility also lies with the trade unions. In the report one finds Mr. Robinson saying that the union leadership said that they acknowledge precisely the same obligations to their Asian members as to the rest of their membership. Nevertheless, their failure to press home this policy in the face of the resistance of some of their members had led them into conflict with the Race Relations Board. Mr. Robinson goes on:
"I am satisfied that the Asian members of the union have accepted and are prepared to follow the procedures of their union, but their understanding of these procedures is less than complete. Positive action is required by the union to correct this state of affairs."
I think the question of union responsibility is very important. Some unions take their responsibilities more seriously than others. For example, the Transport and General Workers' Union, of which I was a member for many years, makes a
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practice when interviewing potential officers to ask them specifically what is their attitude to race relations problems. Presumably, if their answers are not considered satisfactory, their chances of promotion to officer level within the union are thereby diminished. So there is a dual responsibility here which does not come directly in one sense from the Race Relations Board but which could, I think, be fostered by it if it was allowed to take the same positive attitude for which it asks.
This problem is, I think, particularly acute where the West Indians are concerned; more particularly, with those born in this country. One has had special difficulties over West Indians because they do not have the close community relationship based on religion and culture which many other immigrants have, particularly those from India and Pakistan. They have a language problem which has gone very largely unrecognised in many parts of the country. I think that some of us were rather shocked by the report on immigrant pupils in England by the National Foundation for Educational Research, which report came out in 1971. There it was pointed out that there is a real language problem where West Indians are concerned because their version of English is not the same as that commonly used here. This is not unnatural because it is perhaps based on English as it was spoken two centuries ago.
I very much hope that, among other things, the proposals made in that report will be carried out by the Government, because we are now reaching the stage where more and more second generation children are coming into the employment field in this country. It seems to be extremely difficult to get accurate figures. I have done my best, and I am grateful to those who have given me such figures as seem to be available. So far as I have been able to ascertain, at the present time, of young people in this country of immigrant origin aged between 12 and 21—the teenage group with which we are all so much concerned—some 47,000 out of 67,000 were born in this country. Even if these figures are not precisely accurate, if that proportion is correct, then one can see quite easily that we have a significant group of people who are not themselves immigrants and who

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therefore are likely to be peculiarly sensitive to any kind of discrimination, whether real or suspected.
This brings me to my final point. No matter what we do to encourage the Race Relations Board, or to extend its powers, as it requests, it is not likely to be successful except in a climate of opinion in which it has a considerable degree of public support. We shall of course always have the rabid minority, among whom I include Mr. Enoch Powell, who has been speaking again, to my mind, in a most irresponsible way this weekend. We need to counter that positively, and more particularly in two fields. The first is that of education, where we need not only education of immigrants but education of our entire school community in the value of a multi-cultural society. We had a debate some time back on this subject and we discussed the importance of what is taught not only in schools but, as I think even more importantly, in the colleges of education and the departments of education in the universities. One is well aware that the Department of Education, as we pointed out forcefully the other day, does not control curricula; but it has ways and means of encouraging education in this context of a multi-cultural society, so that our own children are given some appreciation of the history and contribution to civilisation of the countries from which some of our immigrants come and can thus have a proper sense of values in the matter. Education, therefore, is one extremely important element in creating a climate of opinion in which the Race Relations Board can do its work adequately and successfully.
But, my Lords, the political stance of Parliament and Government is of extreme importance. We had a speech by Mr. Robert Carr delievered in Cambridge on Monday of last week in which he said:
"The Government is firmly committed to the pursuit of positive policies to maintain and improve good community relations."
That of course is admirable so far as it goes; but, unfortunately, he tacked this on to his statement of January 25 on future immigration policy. When we are told that we are going to have immigration in future at an irreducible minimum level, and then we have provisions
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(which we shall be discussing next week) whereby we considerably increase the probabilities of immigration from certain parts of the Commonwealth and not from others, it leads to a certain amount of cynicism and I am afraid does not help those who are endeavouring to improve good community relations.
I should like to know what the Government are doing so far as employment in Government Departments is concerned, because from such inquiries as I have been able to make, again this is not entirely reassuring: there are fair words, but not a great deal of action. It would be interesting to know how far the Government have taken to themselves the recommendations in the most interesting Report of the Department of Employment called Take Seven. I think they investigated the employment practices and the opportunities available in seven firms, and they made some successful and interesting recommendations, but how far have these been followed so far as the Government are concerned, as one of the largest, if not the largest, employer in the country? I hope that we may hear something about that, because all of this adds up to the climate in which the Race Relations Board does its work. We have action where immigration is concerned, but one has sometimes the impression that one has words rather than action in some respects on race relations. I hope I am wrong in this, and that in the speech we have from the Minister he will be able to give us not just fair words but some positive indication of action by the Government to improve these matters.
Those of us in this House who are concerned with race relations sometimes find it a little discouraging when we go to Ministers on matters which are not perhaps within the purview of the Race Relations Board but impinge on it, and have to wait many weeks before we can get any kind of response. The noble Lord, Lord Belstead, may know one of the instances that I have in mind—and I mentioned to a colleague of his at the Home Office, the Minister of State, that I might be mentioning this subject to-day. Where people make representations concerning immigrants of one sort or another, it would be encouraging if the Government were able to give replies to inquiries with perhaps a little greater

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sense of urgency. It does not help also when one has reports in the Press of instances such as that of a stateless Ugandan person who was somehow impeded from coming to this country to see his wife after their child had died. All of this adds up to a climate in which it is more difficult for those who are dealing with race relations to act. So, in thanking my noble friend Lord Brockway for giving us a chance to discuss this matter, I hope also that it will prove to have given the noble Viscount the Minister an opportunity of giving us some further information about the proposals of the Government.
5.59 p.m.
LORD DERWENT: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, knows that there are many occasions when I do not agree with him, but I should like to start by saying that I agree with the way in which he set out the problem. Where I am going to differ from him is on certain matters in the Report which I do not like and which I feel need a word of warning, if no more. As regards the speeches of the two noble Baronesses, they both said that there was great urgency to this matter because there might be an explosion. Indeed, that is possible. But explosions can come from both directions. One word of warning I would utter is that, however fast one moves, one must be careful that one moves correctly. If what I might call the "race relations lobby" (I am not being rude about it) wishes to move too fast, without due thought, the explosion may well in certain areas come not from the immigrants, but from the people who resent their presence.
This is a short debate and I intend to raise only a few matters arising in the Report. In at least one or two of them I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, but I should like to issue a word of warning regarding the others. Starting with purely factual points and not those relating to the policy of the Board at all, I should like first to turn to paragraphs 22 and 23 which deal with insurance. I know something about insurance, having spent many years in that line of business. The Board takes the view that immigrants have an unfair deal—I am putting it broadly—in two lines of insurance. One is car insurance and the other is life assurance. It then
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proceeds to set out what it thinks should be done. Unfortunately, it seems to me that the Board members do not necessarily know very much about the insurance business.
The first essential for a good insurance company is to see that one policy holder is not treated better or worse than another. One tries as far as possible to treat policy holders alike, but if a person shows an undue risk then he has to pay more for his insurance, or perhaps he may not be able to get it at all. In the matter of car insurance, for instance, we know that an undergraduate is asked to "pay through the nose" as a rule, and there are good reasons. It seems to me that in paragraph 22 the Board have become a little muddled. They take the view that some insurance companies are unreasonable in insisting on too long a period before an immigrant can get car insurance at normal rates. They suggest that after three years the immigrant driver should be treated the same as everyone else, though some insurance companies take a ten-year period.
I entirely agree that in the ordinary way, if a man has been driving here for three years, three years is an adequate period; but there are other reasons why special rates are charged. There are certain groups of immigrants—I will not mention them in detail—who have been found not to look after their vehicles and not to spend the money on them that other people do. As a result, they are a bad risk. This situation probably springs from the fact that the countries they come from do not have very much mechanical knowledge or experience—that is partly the reason. But for a Board such as this to try to say how an insurance company should run its business seems to me quite outside practical considerations.
Speaking of life assurance, I think the question is much more difficult. This is a long-term business and, as the Board themselves point out, there may be a worse expectation of life perhaps in the country of origin than there is for normal citizens in this country. Again, as they themselves point out, it may be many years before there are sufficient statistics available about mortality on which to rely. Life assurance companies who have no experience of any particular country should be free to assess for themselves

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the cases of the ex-nationals of that country. If I may cite my own experience as an example, I was a director of a company which had great experience of Nigeria, where the company had done life business for a very long time; and their mortality experience in Nigeria proved that the rate was much worse there than the mortality rate for normal people here. What is not known, of course, is whether, when people from Nigeria come to live here and stay for a long time their mortality rate will eventually become the same as for citizens of this country. But to say that such immigrants must be treated the same as people in this country must be wrong. One must really leave these things to be decided by the people who understand this business and not merely by those people who wish to do good to the immigrants.
Turning now to paragraph 24, I hope that the Government will look at this again. The Report mentions cases of discrimination in the private housing sector which are mostly related to people seeking rented accommodation. The Report then goes on to talk about discrimination in buying houses, and I believe they are right in their view about that. However, in the case of rented accommodation trouble arises as often as not in a house which is divided up. One must realise that this situation leads to more bitterness in racial relations than anything else, and I wonder whether the Act is right if a landlord cannot say, for instance, "I have two Pakistani families in my house so I must not have a Sikh family coming in." Or, of course, he may say, "I have two English families living in my house, and because they cannot bear the smell of Indian cooking I will not take an Indian family in." This is not a question of buying a house but of sharing it in the form of rooms, or a flat. I believe, and have always believed—indeed, I have proof of it—that this situation causes great damage to racial relations; that is, forcing a landlord, where a house is being shared, to take particular people. I believe that action can be disastrous and that the Government ought to look at that problem again.
The noble Lord, Lord Brockway, referred to paragraphs 80 and 81, and I believe these paragraphs were also referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady
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White. Here the Race Relations Board is asking for the right to go—and presumably enter—for interrogation, even where there is no suspicion. There already exist considerable powers: there are powers to do all the things it wants at the moment, if there is a suspicion. But here it is asking for power to do something that even the police cannot do, namely, to interrogate someone without having any suspicion. There are thousands—and I mean thousands—of what the general public call "snoopers" who have the right of interrogation and entry into premises without a warrant, almost invariably for health or safety reasons. There are, for instance, gas and electricity inspectors, factory inspectors, and so on, all dealing with health or safety matters. Here one is asking that a body, which the noble Baroness suggested should not be under Government control, should have the right to interrogate people, and I imagine also the right of entry, without any suspicion of any kind, on the off-chance that they might find something wrong. If anything is going to cause more ill feeling, it is that suggestion.
I imagine that we all approve of paragraph 90, to the effect that the Board should not have to investigate nonsensical complaints. I am sure everyone agrees with that. Perhaps I might refer also to paragraph 88 which says:
"This means that discrimination against Irish citizens and citizens of any foreign country on the ground of their nationality is not unlawful."
I know there was a recent case of such a kind. I wonder in fact whether it should be made unlawful. That case was dealing with employment, but I take this paragraph also to refer to housing. One has to be careful in this direction. When Bradford was being rebuilt there were notices in practically every landlady's room saying, "No Irishmen", because the Irish at that time were all navvies who drank themselves silly on Friday nights and used to beat up the lodgings. The landladies did not mind Pakistanis or anybody else, but they put up signs saying, "No Irish". I think that is illegal now. But should it be illegal? That is another matter that ought to be looked at.
My Lords, that is all I have to say—I have been quite long enough

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on a short debate. But those are words of warning. I do not think one should accept these recommendations because of people so involved in race relations as a matter of course. One must remember the other side, and anything that may cause people to be anti-immigrant, as some of these suggestions might, can do no possible good to race relations.
6.11 p.m.
LORD GOODMAN: My Lords, may I add my thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, for having introduced this subject, and giving us an opportunity of discussing this extremely interesting and important Report. Perhaps I might start by saying that it is evident that this is a most carefully prepared and efficient document. It reflects very great credit on the people who prepared it, and it reflects even greater credit on the work that it describes. I say this because I have a few words of criticism to make about it which I would not like to be uttered except against a background of complete approval of everything that the Board is trying to do, and the immensely important objective that it is trying to achieve.
The major problem in this Report has been reflected in almost every one of the speeches that we have heard this evening, except perhaps from the last speaker. That concerns some uncertainty of the nature of the problem with which we are dealing and, more important, of the magnitude of the problem. We find the matter reduced in essence in the last paragraph of the Report, which reads:
"Although we consider that the law should be strengthened and that the Government could play a more active role in ensuring that the principle of equal opportunity is more extensively applied, the realisation of the social purposes of the Act will essentially depend on voluntary action by all concerned. The Act by itself is not sufficient to prevent racial discrimination from becoming an extensive and entrenched feature of our society. We consider, however, that the chances of avoiding this situation would be increased if the combination of measures that have been suggested in this Report are taken in time and effectively implemented."
That expresses with immense clarity the duality of viewpoint contained within the Report. There is almost only one viewpoint expressed, except in a few paragraphs, and in the recommendations.
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The viewpoint expressed in this Report, and demonstrated by the statistics of the Report, and the tables that appear of the prosecutions and complaints et cetera, reflect most satisfactorily that this is at the moment an eminently containable problem. The Report nowhere suggests that we are confronted with an imminently explosive situation. I do not believe that we are, from my own observations, upon which I would not rely for a scientific assessment of this vital matter. My own observations, for what they are worth, suggest that we are containing the problem. There are a few people passionately, frenziedly engaged in making utterances that do not help the situation; but there are very few of them, and they are nearly always people whose political future seems to depend on their prophecies of woe being fulfilled. All I can say is that they have not seriously aggravated this problem. The fact that people of such exceptional oratorical talents have not succeeded in aggravating the problem to me demonstrates that the problem is not so acute as we might think it to be. If it is indeed the case that the problem is not so acute, one must wonder at some of the recommendations. I believe, as I think this Board believes, that if we allow this problem to be dealt with in a kindly fashion by persuasion, by the action of these splendid volunteers who are engaged in giving advice, in conciliating, in trying to reduce problem areas where they are to be found, if we regard these problems as being appropriately dealt with by these measures, I wonder whether the recommendations contained in this Report are either necessary, or, frankly, even wise. This is the view that I have of the matter.
If we look around, we see that coloured people seem to be settling down perfectly happily in large sections of London. I motor through London and see numbers of them in one place, and fewer numbers in another. Nowhere does one seem to see any imminent collision or conflict at this moment. It may well be that things could happen to transform the whole situation. But we ought not to anticipate these events. We do harm to the situation by suggesting that it is necessarily going to blow up. It seems to me that it is necessarily not going to blow up. If we remain, as I hope we do, a kindly and generously-minded people, capable of

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absorbing a relatively small section of people from other cultures, accustomed to other conditions, as has always happened in the past, and if we continue to believe that this will happen in the future, we need not take too pessimistic or too drastic a view of what needs to be done.
I believe that the whole of the opinion I am expressing now is inherent in this Report. If one were to ask the members of the Board whether their view is that it is a situation that will contain itself and solve itself, or that it is a situation that is so dangerous that we need to have pressure guages watched every second of the day, it is at the former conclusion that they would unhesitatingly arrive. There are some rather comforting facts in this Report: first, the relatively few numbers of complaints dealt with. Of course it is said that the relatively few number of complaints may be due to the fact that people do not complain because they believe that the Act is ineffective. That is conjectural, and I do not think it is damaging by itself, even if it happened to be true. The Act is there, people can resort to it if they want to. If their grievance is sufficiently acute, if the pain of their feeling is sufficiently acute, they will complain, or someone will complain on their behalf. I have a firm conviction that that would happen. I do not think we need be unduly worried by the paucity of complaints. Anyway, there is a slight absurdity in seeking to legislate on that basis. If we were to seek to legislate by the paucity of complaints on any number of heads, the amount of legislation with which we would now be dealing would be even more overwhelming than it is at the moment. We must accept that people who do not complain when given an opportunity of complaining on the whole are not minded to complain and have not a lot to complain about. If we start from that position then the drastic recommendations for the enlargement of the powers of the Act are unnecessary. We ought to consider first that the Act is barely four years old. To start amending an Act after four years can only be necessary if there is a considerable weight of evidence that something is seriously wrong with it. I do not see much sign from this Report that something is seriously wrong.
I do not wholly agree with the last speaker about insurance companies and
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matters of that sort. Such questions are pre-eminently well dealt with by tactful approaches to the insurance companies. I was not moved with horror by the notion that we should seek to control or in some way regulate the activities of insurance companies. A great deal of the activities of the Department of Trade and Industry, and the late Board of Trade, were concerned with seeking to regulate the activities of insurance companies. I have a feeling, too, that the explanations that the noble Lord gave—I was about to use the word "specious", but that would be unfair to the noble Lord—are not wholly convincing. It cannot be necessary to ask a man who is applying for life insurance what his racial character is. It only needs a pair of eyes on the part of the doctor who is examining him for the purpose to determine that the man is of one colour or another. So long as insurance companies are minded to employ doctors who are not colour blind, I think this problem could be resolved.
LORD DERWENT: My Lords, may I make myself clear? The question is not one concerning certain countries that these people come from. Certain companies do not accept the people because the companies have experience about mortality, or they only accept them at a higher premium rate. This is not because the fellow is black, but because he comes from a particular part of the world.
LORD GOODMAN: My Lords, I am not sure that that is a very happy description of the activities of the insurance companies concerned. I do not think they should exclude a whole classification of human beings because they come from a particular spot. I think that it might be pointed out to them that this is likely to cause a good deal of social disquiet and unhappiness, and they might vary their practice to the extent of accepting applications on their merits.
Here I think one sees that the kind of thing dealt with by this Board is dealt with with tact and discrimination and I am sure always with a good possibility of good will. I should not have thought that a sensible, responsible insurance company, if it was pointed out to them that in a very sensitive area of the population something they are doing is likely to cause unnecessary unhappiness, would

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be unwilling to adapt their practice without any serious loss to themselves. This is not an important point, but it illustrates the fact that it is not necessary to use a sledgehammer to crack a nut.
The noble Baroness, Lady White, invited me in the most polite and flattering terms to express my views on the legal suggestions in the Bill. I start off by dealing with a major one. It really turns on the assessment you take of the situation. If you take the assessment, as I have said, that there is a very grave situation indeed, then you might consider employing a corps of inspectors to go around the countryside to assess the state of relationships in particular factories and whether or not there are matters of which complaint ought to have been made but about which no complaint has been made, and about which there is at the moment no suspicion that a complaint should be made. This might be a very extreme measure in a very dangerous situation. You might have to do this if you thought that by so doing you were averting the possibility of a national and domestic catastrophe. But in the atmosphere which is reflected by this Report, I should have thought it not only highly unnecessary but highly undesirable. What you particularly do not want to do is to emphasise the distinction between the different segments of the employees who are to be found in the organisation. To send in an inspector to inquire as to whether one particular category of employee has a complaint that he has not enunciated or uttered in any form, and of which no one has even a suspicion, seems to me very calculated to draw precisely the discrimination that you are seeking to avoid. Hence, I would be strongly opposed to this proposal, unless we are told by the Government that there is a really dangerous situation to deal with.
As to the other proposals, there are proposals which seem to me to be very much at variance with the debate we had recently about changes in the criminal law. We were all urging upon the Government that the right of silence should be meticulously preserved. We are told here that, in respect of this particular category of offence, which would of course enhance it into an offence of exceptional gravity, the person suspected of committing the offence should be
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required to incriminate himself out of his own mouth before a prosecution. Here again, one can justify a recommendation as extreme as this only if there were an extreme situation. My Lords, this is a short debate, and it reflects the excellence of this new system whereby we have short debates that we all know that we shall be home for dinner by 7 o'clock. I would not wish in any way to spoil this happy procedure. May I conclude by saying just this. The work of this Board is invaluable. The passing of this Act reflected the most civilised values that this country possesses. I do not think it was an intrusion into personal liberty; it was a highly necessary measure to ensure that we were seeking to regulate situations that have gone desperately wrong in other parts of the world. But I do not think we want to make too much of a mouthful of it. And while we can hope that the situation will regulate itself, and that on the whole one can rely on the inherent qualities of the British people to deal with the situation, then I should be strongly opposed to unnecessary and excessive reforms.
6.24 p.m.
LORD GRIDLEY: My Lords, before I make a comment on the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, who has just sat down, may I say how grateful we are to the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, for introducing this debate. If I may make a few comments on some of the speakers who succeeded him, I would say that I could not agree more with what was said by the noble Baroness, Lady White. In our schools it would be a great value that our school children as they grow up should be taught something about the Commonwealth and the histories of the peoples who have come from various parts of the world and are now living among us. If I might now say something to the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, we are always tremendously impressed with his speeches—they are extremely fluent—but I cannot go along with quite the complacency with which he looks at this subject. I personally do not consider that it is necessary to amend the Race Relations Act in any great degree, and I would agree with him in connection with that proposition. But, on the other hand, we have in this country situations which I feel could become extremely explosive. I think I detected

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in the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Seear, a situation in which she felt there were currents outside the operation of the Race Relations Act existing in this country—problems which are not being faced at the present time and which, perhaps, if we do not look at them and try to be constructive about them now, may entail a difficult situation coming before us in a future which is not too far ahead.
We have had on the last two Sundays (and I regret having to mention this) two very interesting debates put out by B.B.C.1 called "Sunday Debate". One was on the permissive society, and the other one last Sunday I think was on Immigration or Race Relations. The protagonists in that debate, which has not yet been concluded, were Mr. Enoch Powell on one side of the table and Mr. Mark Bonham Carter on the other. I do not know how many people watched that debate on television, but assuming there were something like 8 million or 10 million who were watching what occurred then, I must say in all seriousness that my reaction was that the most inflammatory situation occurred. Mr. Powell gave what I considered to be quite a lucid and calm exposition of the dangers of large numbers of immigrants coming to this country and what would be its position in the foreseeable future. Then we had, when questioning started, the Chairman of the Race Relations Commission in this country, of all people, depicting a situation which occurred in Wolverhampton, Mr. Powell's constituency, some four years ago, I think, when a certain rather disgusting act was perpetrated by a coloured immigrant. I will not describe it because I think it is too dreadful to do so. Accusing Mr. Powell of being extremely racialist for having brought up this question at all, and in spite of the fact that the Chairman, Mr. Robin Day, had asked for calm and deliberate consideration of the great issues which they were then considering, this matter got completely out of hand.
My feeling about this matter is that the coloured people who are here who are reasonably decent people would not like to have seen that kind of thing occurring on British television; the white people would probably consider that the only exponent championing their causes was Mr. Powell himself—that is to say, in
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Wolverhampton; the people who have had this act perpetrated against them by coloured people would feel that the only person looking after them was Mr. Powell, and other Europeans or white people up and down this country would feel that this was a terrible thing to be happening in Great Britain and would have an adverse feeling toward all immigrants who were here. I mention this only because I think it is a most unfortunate thing for the Chairman of the Race Relations Commission to have brought it up on television.
LORD GOODMAN: My Lords, I hesitate to interrupt the noble Lord, but I happened to see the particular programme and it is rather relevant to say (I am sure Mr. Mark Bonham Carter needs no defending from me) that what Mr. Mark Bonham Carter put to Mr. Powell was that he had suggested that such an act was typical of black people. This was really the point of the discussion; not that he was instancing it as a single occurrence, but that Mr. Powell had suggested that this was typical. I think, if I may say so, that Mr. Mark Bonham Carter got the better of that debate.
LORD GRIDLEY: My Lords, I think the noble Lord said he did not see it; but I did see it—
LORD GOODMAN: I did see it, my Lords.
LORD GRIDLEY: My Lords, I did not hear that he said it was typical of black people. I understood Mr. Powell to say—I am subject to correction on this—that he felt there were people in his constituency who had a right to bring this to the notice of their Member of Parliament. I feel it is unfortunate that Mr. Mark Bonham Carter ever brought the subject up.
How should we deal with this situation? We now have the excesses perpetrated in Uganda. We have a large number of Africans in this country, and British people have seen these excesses perpetrated overseas. I feel it is only right to bring this to the notice of the House because there are two sides to the argument. We have the Africans here and we also have the indigenous white people. Would it not help, in the circumstances, to rectify the unfortunate impression and the taint which may fall upon Africans who are resident in Britain

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if we could get some understanding on the part of their own leaders and if they would refute in public the excesses perpetrated overseas? These matters are possibly beyond the province of the Race Relations Board and the Community Relations Act, but I feel that they are problems which exist to-day in this country and which cause fear among the white people; and if we are to have better race relations we must take into account some of the problems and the fears which face white people. Only in that way shall we get better racial understanding.
6.32 p.m.
THE MINISTER OF STATE, HOME OFFICE (VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS): My Lords, this has been a constructive debate. Over the centuries in this country we have always had people of other nationalities and other cultures who have come in and we have been very much enriched by the contribution they have made to our way of life; but I think we have also to remember that within the last 15 years or so we have accepted a really very large number of immigrants, a great number of whom are coloured immigrants, and we have not done too badly in absorbing them. I do not think that any other country in the world has had to face an influx on this scale, so I think our record has stood up, as it has done over the centuries.
To-day, despite what the noble Baroness, Lady White, said, I am not going to get involved in the subject of stateless Ugandans. I am sorry, but I will not be drawn into that. But although it is, in a way, coincidence, it is quite a good thing that in another place the House should be discussing the immigration rules, because whatever some Members of this House may think, I do not believe that we can go on with this process of absorption unless we now seek to limit the number of new immigrants who come in. Once they are here, they—and the ones who are here—should have equal rights and privileges with the rest of the population. But I do not think it is any use disguising from ourselves the fact that there are areas of strain, and I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Dement for reminding us, in effect, that there are two sides to race relations: there are those who come in from somewhere else and there is the indigenous population among
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whom they come to live. In those circumstances we need a positive policy and to it many different people and agencies can contribute and are contributing. I agree—and I think this was the tenor of the speech made by my noble friend Lord Gridley—that it is better if they work away quietly without too much fuss, because dramatic initiatives are rarely the best way to attack race relations problems.
I want first to say a word about what the immigrants themselves are doing to help this problem. I am glad to find that they are going into local politics. They are trying to get into another place. I am glad to find their participation in the community relations councils, of which there are more than 70 round the country. I have met them myself when I have been to places where there is a local council of social service. I have met them in Oldham, I have met them in Leicester, I have met them in Slough; and the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, will know the proud and helpful record of immigrants and their contribution to the life of Slough. I remember the irresistible little black girl in the adventure playground in Liverpool who insisted on showing me with the greatest of pride every single piece of apparatus and gave me a warm kiss on the cheek at the end. This is what they do to contribute, and I do not think we should forget about it.
But the noble Baroness, Lady White, rightly stressed that the Government must have a positive stance and attitude on this matter, and therefore I should like to tell the House what we are doing about it—and it is not a bad list. In the first place, I think one has to bear in mind the urban programme. This is a scheme—and I accept its origin in the Party opposite—which attempts to deal with areas of poverty and deprivation: quite often the city centres, quite often the areas where immigrants live. The problems that arise from these areas are also set out in the criteria, and the problem of immigration is one of the criteria that is adopted. It is worth remembering that over the past four years between £20 million and £25 million have been spent on urban aid; over the next four years it will be £40 million. That is a positive contribution on the ground to what this debate is about.

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One speaker mentioned the Department of Employment Race Relations Advisory Service study called Take Seven. I think it was the noble Baroness, Lady White, who referred to that. It was a study in 1970 and 1971 in which seven reputable firms in different parts of the country and different industries, employing a substantial number of coloured workers, took part. It showed that there were problems but they did not find overt discrimination. They found that all the firms believed in a policy of equal opportunity, but they also found that there were variations in positive application and the publicity given to this policy inside the firm. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady White, that the need emerged for the employers' policy to be better publicised and better understood at all levels and by all employees. It is the job of management, and equally, it is the job of trade unions, and I welcome what the noble Baroness said on that subject.
That employment Advisory Service in the Department of Employment is always available for those who wish to take advantage of it. That is only one example of its work. When one looks at that Department one must not forget that it has the ordinary industrial conciliation machinery. I think that twice in this debate the dispute at Loughborough has been mentioned, and that is very much a case of the sort referred to in paragraph 74 of the Report of the Race Relations Board. A court of inquiry under Mr. Robinson was set up. I believe it successfully resolved the dispute, and what I think one should do is to recognise that the Board is right in spotlighting in its Report the need for action in the field of employment. But we should not belittle the ordinary industrial processes which apply right across the whole range of industry, and the help that they can give. These, after all, are supplementing the special in-industry machinery under the 1968 Act. If I heard the noble Baroness, Lady Seear, aright, she talked about the "race industry". Leaving aside Peter Simple, I am not sure that there is such a thing as the race industry as such, or if there is that it is a good thing. I believe that we should not try to pick out this problem as a special problem. If, for instance, the ordinary Department of Employment conciliation machinery will
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deal with the dispute, so much the better, even if there is a racial element in it. I do not think that we should highlight these things as being specially racial and therefore different, if we can avoid it. However, I pick her up only on the phrase; I do not suppose there was any significance in what she said.
BARONESS SEEAR: My Lords, may I say that the emphasis in the noble Viscount's speech, I think, is on the word "if".
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: My Lords, I entirely take what the noble Baroness has said. It was just a word. I recognise the implications.
The noble Lord, Lord Brockway, asked me next about the P.E.P. situation which is foreshadowed in paragraph 93 of the Report itself. I am very pleased to be able to tell the noble Lord and the House that there is a new research project with the ideas of the Race Relations Board very much behind it, which will be undertaken by P.E.P., financed jointly by the Home Office and the Gulbenkian Foundation. It is to be a survey of disadvantage and discrimination and will include research among employers for practices and policies to try to get the national picture. There will be case studies of local housing authority policies and practices in six areas. They aim to interview 3,650 men and women from West Indian and Asian communities to see how they have fared since being in this country. They aim also to have a comparison survey so that they will have, as it were, a control group of the indigenous population. That is an interesting venture and I am glad to be able to answer the noble Lord directly on it. We hope that it will start soon.
It may very well be true, as various noble Lords have said, that we should be looking more closely still and following up some of the indications that we have about performance of immigrant children in schools. I knew about the language problem among the West Indians. I was not altogether surprised about it, but it is interesting to have it highlighted by the noble Baroness and by the source which she quoted. But I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, that the generation now at school, the generation born in this country, and their progress

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(how they get on when they start to take jobs), may very well be the acid test of our true integration with the immigrants. I understand the point about the compartments of work into which the first generation of people who come may fit and may be content, but which should not be "stratified"—a word which the noble Baroness I believe used—so that these become traditionally areas for immigrant workers and there is nowhere else where they may be likely to get a job. That is a very important point to watch and I am glad that it has been emphasised this afternoon. That is something which the Government must look at also and is something for my noble friend Lord Belstead and his Department.
Then there is the question of the Civil Service Department. The Race Relations Board points out in its Report that we should give a lead as model employers operating and monitoring a policy of equal opportunity. One noble Lord asked me, "Are we applying this in Government"? The answer is that for some time the Civil Service Department has been discussing with the Race Relations Board how to formulate precise guidelines on this matter for all the Departments of Government. We have a great deal of helpful and valuable advice and information from the Race Relations Board. It is obvious that that will go to matters like training and management policies. These things will feature in the guidelines, but we are trying in that way to take the lead as employers in this particular field. The Home Office has been further picked out because we have now obtained the services of Miss Nadine Peppard, who is so well know in this particular connection that I need hardly describe her background. She has been doing wonderful work with the Ugandan Resettlement Board just lately, and invaluable that has been. Now she can be spared from that task and she is joining the Home Office as a special adviser on race relations. We have been picked—I suppose it is only fair—as a Department that can be specially advised. She will look at the Home Office itself and see how our employment and promotion prospects go. She can advise us also in relation to the other services for which we are responsible, such as the police. Certainly one would wish that they would ask for advice before she got among them,
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but I am certain that she will be available and glad to advise them if they should so wish. The Uganda resettlement problem has diverted some of our resources in the whole of the race relations field, but I am glad that we shall now have Miss Peppard, and what she teaches us can be applied to other Departments as well.
My right honourable friend the Home Secretary has asked the Community Relations Commission to investigate unemployment and homelessness among West Indian youths. That was another particular point which the noble Baroness, Lady Seear, mentioned. We are making a special investigation into this matter. It was something which was recommended by the Select Committee of another place, and we use the Race Relations Board under the 1968 Act because it is there specially to advise my right honourable friend on anything he should particularly refer to it. He has chosen this one problem at this particular moment. When I say that he has chosen it to deal with this particular problem, I mean that he is in touch all the time with the Race Relations Board about its work and the way in which it may be developed, modified or improved and there is no lack of continuing dialogue about that.
Finally, I should mention that we must plainly respond to the Select Committee of another place on the police/immigrant relations. We value the Report which that Select Committee has produced, and not least that part of paragraph 342 where the best examples of police leadership were given high praise. I thank the noble Baroness also for what she has said about the police and the example that they set. We are very carefully considering that Report and concerting a reply to it. In what I have just said I have, I believe, mentioned ten areas of Government activity, which is a considerable package when added to what is being done by the quiet collaboration of many private people, both immigrants and indigenous, to whom I offer support and encouragement from the Government as wholeheartedly as I can in what they are doing.
That is the preface to the Race Relations Board itself, because I think it is right to show that there are many things going on in this field. I agree with everybody

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else who has spoken on this matter, that to its work must go much of the credit for the wide acceptance now which I believe the race relations legislation enjoys. The noble Lord, Lord Goodman, said that the 1968 Act at least is only four years old. It is difficult to remember that it is so new as it has already got itself ingrained into our way of thinking. I agree with all those noble Lords—the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, the noble Baroness, Lady White, and others—who wish to congratulate and commend the Race Relations Board and to say how beneficial have been the activities that it has been pursuing. Of course its main attack has been on the individual cases of discrimination. It points in its Report to the falling-off in the number of cases. There are three possible reasons for that. One of them could be the pure success of the policy. I note that the Board tells us that the settlements it has been getting lately have been of a better quality. Possibly it lacks powers, and possibly there is an unwillingness to complain. I was very interested in the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, about this, because I think he strongly suggested that it was not lack of powers, at least of those three, that was the cause of a falling off in numbers. I do not know. It certainly has not been shown to me that it is lack of powers that has brought about this situation.
The Board suggest a number of minor amendments. As it is a short debate, perhaps I may be forgiven for not going through all the amendments, but I promise that they will be studied very carefully. On the unreasonable complaints such as the Scottish porridge—and noble Lords must remember that Scottish porridge is plural if they ever wish to refer to it. I wonder whether the Board cannot deal with these complaints in an administrative way so as to cut down some of the time spent.
There is the new decision from this House, sitting in its judicial capacity, about clubs. I do not think I had better go very fully into this to-day. What the House has done is to clarify the meaning of the present law, but it is a singularly sensitive and complex area, and I should think that the Race Relations Board itself will want to look at and consider
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the practical effects of the case and the implications for the Board's work. Certainly we should wish to do so as well. I think it is too soon for me to comment on that matter. The various points that have been made on these less important, though no doubt very strongly felt, suggestions for amendment perhaps we can take away and study.
LORD JANNER: My Lords, before the noble Viscount leaves that subject, will he assure the House that the decision given by the Court of Appeal will be very carefully studied by the Government, because it does raise very serious problems, problems which have faced the country for years. It may result in a big disadvantage to certain sections of the community who hitherto have been prevented from joining clubs in consequence of restrictions which have been imposed by them, even such clubs as have been on ground leased to them by public authorities. Perhaps the noble Viscount would say that he will give this matter his very early attention.
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: My Lords, I thought that that was what I was saying. Of course the Government will. It is the decision of this House rather than the Court of Appeal to which one should refer, because the Court of Appeal was reversed; it is the decision of the House of Lords itself that we should be considering. I was looking to see what was said about clubs by my predecessor of another Party at the time of the passing of the 1968 Act. In fact I think what the House has decided is remarkably similar to what was said then. But of course we will consider this, and I promise the noble Lord, Lord Janner, that this will be done.
It is perfectly plain that the weight of this debate has been concentrated on the suggestion in paragraphs 81 to 84 of new powers which the Board suggest it would like to have. I am not sure that its existing powers are all that bad if it wants to take the initiative. One notes its increased use of Section 17 and there are three cases in Appendix 6 which it has selected to show how it uses this. I am told that counsel's opinion has now been given to the Board that its powers under Section 17 are wider than it originally thought. One has also to remember that where it is invited there is

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no restriction or problem which prevents it from advising anyone on employment or housing or anything else. What it suggests is that it should have an entrée where it is not invited, nor necessarily welcome, and, incidentally, that it should be armed with quite substantial powers of investigation in the process, where a breach of the law is not even suspected. I am not certain about the Highlands and Islands Development Board, but I have a nasty suspicion that it was an extremely controversial point that the noble Baroness raised about their information seeking. At any rate, the other powers of this sort relate to a state of a breach of the law, or a possible breach of the law, which is being investigated. I am not sure that this is therefore a correct analogy.
Certainly we need education and we need persuasion and we need coaxing and cajoling—I entirely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, about this—to develop perhaps a code of equal opportunity, of good practice in employment, and this sort of idea is now increasingly familiar in the industrial field. If there is no complaint, if there is no suspicion under Section 17, and if there is no code or practice against which one can compare what is actually going on inside some particular firm, I think we should be slow and cautious—I agree with my noble friend Lord Derwent on this—before we legislate in the way suggested, and we should be careful when we look at this analogy with the Factory Inspectorate to see whether this is really quite as accurate as is suggested.
What would happen if an unwilling employer being investigated under these powers was accused of not providing equal opportunity? It would not be a matter of discrimination. Suppose he simply disagreed. Is this justiciable? I do not think it is. There is no foundation, there is no background against which one can judge whether or not the Board is right or the employer is right. What is possibly even more important, having gone through this performance, unwilling though the employer may be, is whether this is likely to be conducive to conciliation, which, as the Board says and the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, emphasised in his speech, is the underlying philosophy of the 1968 Act? Would
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this be conducive to conciliation? I am bound to say that I very much doubt it.
For somewhat the same reasons, the lack of an objective standard against which to judge what is going on, I am equally doubtful about the non-discrimination or equal opportunity clause that the Board suggests towards the end of its report should be put into Government contracts. I do not want to be totally negative about it. I say that we have no objective standards, but on this we shall surely get some guidance, for example, from the work of Miss Peppard, certainly I hope from the work of P.E.P. and the work in the Civil Service Department that I mentioned earlier. We really must have the knowledge to state what the equal opportunities consist of in practice before we start trying to apply them, let alone apply them by force of law.
On the extension of the Board's powers, I think much of the same research that I have spoken about will help to see whether there are standards and guidelines which could be the foundation of still more positive action. The Race Relations Board is looking and seeking experience; the Government is researching; we are looking and seeking experience, and of course we are also acting in the field where the problems are found. So we are not idle in this respect. I would suggest to the House that we should do what the noble Baroness, Lady Seear, said, and get a little wiser about the whole of this subject before we rush into legislation which is wider than that which we now have. Having said that, I will study, and I will see that my right honourable friend studies, and those in the Home Office study, all the speeches made to-day, because they have been constructive and helpful and thoughtful. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, for giving us the opportunity to discuss this Report, and for me to give an up-to-date picture of what the Government are doing in this field.
7.0 p.m.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, I think that all those who have followed this debate have felt it to be worthwhile. My own feeling has been that I should have liked so much to join in the broader considerations of this problem rather than keep to the Question that I had on

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the Order Paper. The Question on the Order Paper was:
"To draw attention to the recommendations of the annual report of the Race Relations Board …"
Perhaps inevitably the discussion has gone much wider, and, as Members of the House know, I am interested in those broader issues. I am not complaining, because I think that if I did complain attention might be drawn to that fact when I put certain questions in this House. Nevertheless, I tried to discipline my speech by referring only to the recommendations. The House benefited from the fact that I lost three pages of my notes, and therefore my speech was much shorter than usual. I regretted that, and I shall regret it as I read the report in Hansard, because I think that the logical sequence was a little absent too.
I shall refrain from making a comment upon each of the speeches that have been delivered. The speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Seear, and the speech of my noble friend Lady White from the Front Bench, were, as we all expected from their experience, tremendously apposite to the broader problems. In these few concluding remarks I want just to fasten on what seemed to me to be the fundamental issues. I listened to the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, with great interest. Just let me say to him that I do not expect an immediate explosion on the issue of race relations. When I used the word "explosion" it was in relation to the school-leavers of the next generation. It is urgent that we should make great changes so that they may feel that their experience of belonging with the other children in their schools is not denied in the world to which they come. It is in that respect that I think that a possible explosion may occur in the future unless we take action.
It is terribly difficult to measure the degree of racial discrimination at the present time. I take a little more pessimistic view than the noble Lord. It is probably deeper and wider than he seemed to indicate when he said that, on the whole, we were getting on pretty well. However, we need much more information and research about that, and I shall refer to that aspect almost immediately. If I do not refer to the speeches of the
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noble Lords, Lord Derwent and Lord Gridley, I ask them to appreciate that I noted their points. If I were a Minister I would say that I would write to them on those issues, but I am afraid that I have not the facilities to do that. I want to come to the concluding speech of the noble Viscount, Lord Colville of Culross. May I say how delighted I was to hear that Miss Peppard is to join his staff. I have known her for years. I have considerable affection for her character as well as a great admiration for her ability, and I am sure that if she acts as an adviser on community relations at the Home Office it will be greatly to the advantage of the Home Office, and I hope that the Home Office will accept the recommendations that she makes.
The real issue which came out of the remarks of the noble Viscount was the central issue which I raised: whether the Race Relations Board should deal with individuals who feel that they are the victims of racial discrimination, or whether the Race Relations Board should seek to prevent the conditions from which racial discrimination arises. In the pages of notes that I missed I had quoted from its Report of 1970–71. In that Report the Board said:
"It appears to us increasingly that the question of racial discrimination in employment needs to be seen primarily not in terms of active discrimination against individuals, but in terms of an acceptance or tolerance by everybody, including coloured workers, of employment situations in which equality of opportunity is consciously or unconsciously denied."
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: My Lords, may I just say to the noble Lord that I do not disagree with that. What I was saying was that I was not certain that it should be allowed, as it were, to force its way in. The powers now allow it to go where it is welcome and where it is invited. That was the distinction that I was drawing. I do not deny the truth of what the noble Lord is saying at all.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, I do not want to be too long, but I shall try to come back to that in a sentence or two in a moment. I just want to add what the Board says in its Report this year in commenting upon that. It says:
"We consider that this applies also, in varying degrees, to the other fields covered by the Act. If this is so, then the central need is to prevent the development of occupational and

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residential patterns which reflect lack of equal opportunity."
The noble Viscount says that the Board already has the right to intervene where it suspects discrimination, but for the reasons that I put forward when I was opening this debate I strongly urge that that is inadequate. It would be inadequate in the case of factory inspectors who were thinking of laws regarding accidents and health. In my view racial discrimination is just as important, and I do not take the view that, just as factory inspectors are accepted in industry, inspectors of the Board dealing with racial discrimination should be regarded as unacceptable.
I was tremendously encouraged by the fact that the noble Viscount reported upon the research which is to take place. The Board has been in existence for only four years, and it is twenty years since I first introduced a Bill in the House of Commons against racial discrimination. I introduced it for nine years in succession before any Government would accept it. I am not impatient with the time it took, but I would say that if Her Majesty's Government will carry out, in association with the Race Relations Board, the research which the Minister has indicated, then the tremendous knowledge that may come from that research, if it is done thoroughly, will put us in a position where we can come to the right conclusions upon this matter. I do not have the authority of the Board for saying that, but that research and information would be valuable and we could then act correctly upon it. My Lords, I beg leave to withdraw my Motion.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

FIRE SERVICES (NORTHERN IRELAND) ORDER 1972
7.10 p.m.
THE MINISTER OF STATE FOR NORTHERN IRELAND (LORD WINDLESHAM)THE MINISTER OF STATE FOR NORTHERN IRELAND (LORD WINDLESHAM) rose to move, That the Draft Fire Services (Northern Ireland) Order 1972, laid before the House on December 19, be approved. The noble Lord said: My Lords, this Order follows closely the provisions of a Fire Services Bill which had a Second Reading in the Northern Ireland House of Commons at Stormont
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shortly before prorogation. The purpose of the Order is straightforward: it is to provide for the establishment of a single fire authority to be responsible for the fire cover for the whole of Northern Ireland. The present position is that fire cover is the responsibility of two fire authorities; namely, the Northern Ireland Fire Authority and the Council of the County Borough of Belfast. The former caters for the whole area of Northern Ireland other than Belfast, while the latter has responsibility within the area of the County Borough of Belfast. The Northern Ireland Fire Authority was established in 1950, when that Authority and the Council of the County Borough of Belfast became the two fire authorities for Northern Ireland. These authorities operate under the Fire Services Act (Northern Ireland) 1969, which consolidated the Fire Services Acts (Northern Ireland) 1947 to 1965.
The establishment of a single fire authority for the whole province in the future will have the effect of creating a brigade of roughly 1,200 men drawn from the existing two fire brigades. This manpower strength corresponds to the optimum brigade size of between 1,100 and 1,300, which was proposed by the Holroyd Committee in its Report on the fire service in Great Britain. The Order also envisages changes in the financing of the fire services, by providing for the new authority's funds to come from the Exchequer and the Consolidated Fund of Northern Ireland. Under existing arrangements, the Northern Ireland Fire Authority's funds are derived partly from a Government grant, and partly from a levy on local authorities. The Council of the County Borough of Belfast receives no direct financial assistance from Government towards the cost of fire services. As a result of this reorganisation, the fire service of Northern Ireland will become a regional service and a regional rate will be levied for the purpose of financing all regional services in Northern Ireland.
Before concluding, I think it would be the wish of noble Lords in all parts of the House that I should pay tribute, on behalf of the Government, to the conspicuous bravery and dedication to duty which has been shown by members of the fire service in Northern Ireland since the present emergency began. All too often in Ulster it is the bomber, the sniper, the

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rioter, the arsonist, who occupy the fore-front of our attention. Yet it is my hope—indeed it is my belief—that when their destructive activities have ceased, and a more stable society has returned, what will be remembered most of this ordeal is the way in which so many ordinary people saw their duty as citizens and continued to do it. One of the most important of these duties in any society is the provision of a fire service. Risks are, of course, inseparable from any fire service. The man who, even in normal circumstances, puts his life at risk to protect others deserves our admiration. But in Northern Ireland the familiar hazards of fire-fighting are compounded. The fireman has no way of knowing what hidden risks a fire may conceal, or how confused and dangerous may be the situation in which he must do his work.
In this context, I am afraid it is inevitable that injuries are all too common place and, as noble Lords may have read, two weeks ago in Belfast, a young fireman was shot and killed while fighting a fire. It is a terrible reflection that servants of the whole community should have to run these special risks. But of this the firemen in Northern Ireland, like the police, the ambulancemen and others in various forms of public service can be proud: they prove beyond any doubt that the people of Northern Ireland, as a whole, are determined to maintain the essential fabric of their society, despite the many assaults upon it by those who resort to violence without enough thought of the consequences. The motto of the City of Belfast, being translated, is "For so much, what do we give in return?" Men such as these give an answer. It is one which deserves to be heard in this House, and beyond. My Lords, I beg to move.
Moved, That the Draft Fire Services (Northern Ireland) Order 1972, laid before the House on December 19, be approved.—(Lord Windlesham.)
7.17 p.m.
LORD GARNSWORTHY: My Lords, the House will be very appreciative of the manner in which the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, has introduced this Order. If I may say so, he has introduced it with his usual care and clarity and we are very grateful to him for the trouble which he invariably takes when introducing Orders
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dealing with Northern Ireland. The only claim which I can make to speak with any authority in regard to this Order is that for years I have served in the field of local government and at various times have played a part on fire brigade committees. I well recall the first fire brigade committee on which I served. We had a chief officer and one fireman and that was our total full-time strength. I also have the considerable privilege of being vice-president of the London Fire Liaison Panel. It is because of that interest and experience that I stand here speaking for this side of the House in connection with this Order.
As the noble Lord said, unlike many Orders on Northern Ireland, this Order follows consideration of a Bill in the Stormont House of Commons, the provisions of which were very similar to those contained in this Order. The Bill was introduced there on March 1 last year and it received its Second Reading on March 16. Altogether, it was debated for slightly under an hour-and-a-half, and I understand that there was not a quorum throughout the whole debate, which means that there was an attendance of less than 10 members, including the Speaker, out of a total membership of 52. So I suppose it is reasonable to say that when the Bill was before the Stormont House of Commons it was not regarded by that House as a highly contentious matter. Nor did the length of time this Order took in our own House of Commons at Westminster suggest that it was very controversial, since it was disposed of in a little under 40 minutes. Nevertheless, despite its apparently non-controversial nature, one feels that it is infinitely preferable that Northern Ireland should have a new legislative assembly that commands the proper participation of its members in consideration of matters such as are dealt with by this and other Orders. To that end, I take this opportunity to emphasise the urgency of introducing the promised White Paper and the holding of provincial elections. The indications, judging from the public Press, are that we shall get the White Paper about the middle of next month. I think there will be general agreement that that will be none too soon, and the event will be awaited with interest.
My Lords, every time we debate a Northern Ireland Order one is reminded

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of the political vacuum in Northern Ireland itself: a vacuum that must be filled with all speed possible, since there is nothing more non-productive than a vacuum. It is a situation in which the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, and his right honourable friend have our very deep sympathy and understanding; and to the extent that they can proceed with speed commensurate with the urgency of the consideration they will have our full support in the pursuit of appropriate policies. We welcome this Order in the same way as we have welcomed each of the measures based on the recommendations of the Macrory Report, and we see it as an essential part of the reorganisation of local government in Northern Ireland, in which most functions are to be run on a province-wide basis.
My Lords, I have no wish to repeat all that was said in the other place when this Order was discussed there on February 5, but there are some matters I wish to comment on, and one or two, perhaps, to pursue. On this side of the House we are pleased to note and approve that the new force is to be known as the Fire Authority for Northern Ireland. The original suggestion, that it should be known as the Ulster Fire Authority, could have given offence to one section of the community, and the Advisory Commission are to be congratulated on having made the change. We have a very real reservation in regard to the constitution of the new Authority. It is a point which was raised in the other place by my honourable friend Mr. Stanley Orme, and by Captain Orr. We see no reason why the City of Belfast should have as many representatives on it as the other district councils together, since their population is twice that of the City of Belfast itself. Neither are we particularly enamoured of the fact that the Minister is entitled to appoint more representatives than will be appointed by the totality of local government.
Then, my Lords, I have to say that we are very disappointed that members of the Fire Brigade Union are not to have specific representation on the Authority. If this was a Bill at Committee stage, I could move an Amendment to deal with the point; but an Order cannot be amended, so all I can do is to seek an assurance that the Minister (or, under direct rule as it obtains at the moment, the Secretary of State) will use his powers
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to appoint at least one member of the Fire Brigades Union to the new Authority. This matter was raised in the other place, and the Minister, Mr. Peter Mills, referred to the conversations he had had with the union. He said there was no doubt of their full co-operation, and how impressed he was as a result of the talk he had with them. He indicated—and here I refer to column 177 of the OFFICIAL REPORT for February 6—that he would follow up this point about representation. At least, he said that what had been stated by my honourable friend on that occasion would be noted, and I must say that I took it that that referred to this matter. I would ask the Minister to say, if he can, whether something is contemplated to meet that request.
My Lords, the Order deals with the structure and financing of the new fire fighting force, but mention should also be made of the more substantive features of the force—and, indeed, they have been touched on by the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham—namely, staffing and equipment. One understands—and I thank the noble Lord for the figures that he gave—that the two present fire authorities employ a total of about 1,170, and that the new Authority will employ an estimated 1,242. That is an increase of only 6 per cent., accounted for almost entirely, as I understand it, by an increase in part-time firemen. The Fire Brigades Union believe that an urgent and substantial increase in establishment is required, and that this should be concentrated on increasing whole-time fire cover. I believe that they have a good case. In the year before the troubles began the two existing forces received a total of 6,800 calls. In the first year of the disturbances, the number had risen to 8,700. Perhaps the Minister will be able to tell us how many calls they dealt with during the whole of last year. I do not think he mentioned this, but if he did I missed it. I should be grateful if he could perhaps give us the figure. I ought to have given him an indication that I intended to ask that question, and I am sorry that I did not. I realise that that is a point I overlooked when I was talking with him and indicating the matters on which it would be useful to have some information. I shall quite understand it if he is not able to deal with that matter this evening. Then, if the noble Lord is

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able to give this figure, he may be able to compare the increased load with the change in manpower over the same period.
Men need the right equipment, and there is some concern about the urgency with which one can expect the standardisation and improvement of equipment for the new force. In Stormont, Members were told about a working party on equipment which was appointed in June, 1971. Certainly by March of 1972 it had not reported. Possibly the Minister can tell us whether they have done so now; and, if they have, what they had to say in regard to this matter. I think it would be of advantage if the Minister could give some reassurance on this point dealing with equipment.
My Lords, I should like to join with the Minister in the very deserved tribute he paid to the members of the fire fighting service in Northern Ireland. He will have commanded unanimous support from everybody in the House; and, if I may, I should like to add to what he said by expressing the deep appreciation of Members on this side of the House to all the firemen in Northern Ireland who have given such outstanding service under most exceptional circumstances. The Minister spoke fluently upon this point, and I shall not labour it beyond what I have said. We hope that this Order, and the measures that flow from it, will assist those members of that fire-fighting service in the brave and essential work of which the Minister spoke so well.
LORD WADE: My Lords, I should like to thank the noble Lord for explaining the nature of this Order. I was not intending to raise questions to-night, but if he is able to give some indication of the cost to the British Exchequer of the fire services in Northern Ireland I think that would be of interest. But I shall not press it if he has not the information to hand. My main reason for rising is to add my tribute to the members of the fire services in Northern Ireland. They are working in extraordinarily difficult circumstances, and what they are doing is appreciated.
7.29 p.m.
LORD WINDLESHAM: My Lords, I should like to thank both noble Lords who have spoken in this debate for what
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they have said, and particularly for the tributes they have paid, adding to what I said from this Box on behalf of the Government concerning the work being done by firemen in the present very difficult circumstances in Northern Ireland. I was particularly grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Garnsworthy, for taking so much trouble in preparing his speech, and also for letting me know the main headings that he intended to cover. What I did not know before he spoke just now is that he had served over a considerable period on various local authority fire committees, including one controlling what surely must have been about the smallest fire-fighting force in the country at the time, if it only had a strength of two, one whole-time and one part-time man.
LORD GARNSWORTHY: A fire chief and one whole-time member.
LORD WINDLESHAM: Still very small. The noble Lord asked about the composition of the new Fire Authority for Northern Ireland which is to be composed of nine members nominated by the Minister and eight elected representatives. The eight elected representatives include four from Belfast and four from the remainder of Northern Ireland. The noble Lord, Lord Garnsworthy, wondered why there should be that balance bearing in mind that the population of Belfast is of the order of 600,000 out of a total population of 1,500,000—the proportions are not quite what he indicated. Still it remains true that Belfast is smaller in terms of population.
What we were anxious to achieve in this merger was a marriage between equals. These are two well-established fire authorities, Balfast and the Northern Ireland Fire Service, and they have worked together closely. We wanted to avoid any appearance of a take-over by one of the other. It thus seemed to us that parity of representation was the best manner in which to proceed. This means, for example, that in nominating nine members the Secretary of State will be able to think particularly about the country area representation without disturbing the principle of trying to treat the merger as a marriage of equals. The Ministry will, as I explained in my opening remarks, be providing all the funds for the new Authority and it is therefore

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right that it should have the power to appoint a majority of the members. It is also important that the Ministry should have sufficient scope to ensure that the Authority is made up of a good cross section of the community as a whole. If it happened that the chairman was one of the nominated members—and it will be a matter for the Authority to elect its own chairman—there would then be an equal balance of eight elected and eight nominated members.
The noble Lord also asked about direct representation of the Fire Brigades Union on the new Fire Authority for Northern Ireland. This is a matter, as he rightly said, which was raised in another place and it is something that my right honourable friend the Secretary of State has looked at as my honourable friend the Parliamentary Secretary said that he would. There are a number of comments I might usefully make at this stage. The first is that the Fire Service Act (NI) 1969, bars from membership of the Fire Authority any employee of the Authority. The Order adapts the Act to cover the new Authority and therefore no Fire Brigades Union member who was himself directly employed by the Authority could under the present law serve as a member of the Authority. Second, and perhaps going rather wider, it is important the Authority should represent the community as a whole. It is to serve the community that the Fire Service exists. Questions of pay, conditions of service and so on are all, as the noble Lord will know from his experience in this field, settled on a United Kingdom basis by the National Joint Council for local authorities' fire brigades.
Third, I believe it is true to say that there is no union representation as such on any local authority fire services at present in Britain. I do want to make clear, however, that the closest possible co-operation is maintained with the Fire Brigades Union. I have met representatives of the union myself on two occasions and I expect to be seeing them again before long. My honourable friend, the Parliamentary Secretary, has also had an opportunity to meet Union representatives recently. I understand that the Working Party composed of the two chief officers and the two senior administrative officers has arranged to meet representatives
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of the Fire Brigades Union on February 27 and is planning to have a full discussion on various matters in relation to the merger, and any problem of concern to the union representatives. The Working Party intends to invite the union's help in the solution of any problems and we are confident that this help will be forthcoming.
The noble Lord, Lord Garnsworthy, next asked about the number of calls in 1972 and the staffing of the two Brigades. The statistics I have are that in Belfast in 1972 there were 4,601 calls, including 482 false alarms. In the area covered by the Northern Ireland Fire Authority, there were 7,348 calls including 1,426 false alarms. The manpower position is that in Belfast the Brigade is composed entirely of full-time firemen. In 1972 the total strength was 310. In the area covered by the Northern Ireland Authority, the Londonderry Brigade (which I have had the pleasure of visiting and presenting awards to at the Northern Command Headquarters) is full time. In the Authority's area as a whole there were 109 full-time and 730 part-time employees. The noble Lord's final question concerned a Working Party which was set up to consider the question of equipment. I believe the position here is that the Working Party keeps the situation under constant review and reports to the Ministry if and when the need arises. Action has been taken on recommendations made so far.
To the noble Lord, Lord Wade, I would only say in reply to his question about cost of the fire services in Northern Ireland that, as I explained in my opening remarks, the cost of the Belfast Fire Brigade is carried at present by the ratepayers of Belfast, whereas the costs of the Northern Ireland Fire Authority are met by Northern Ireland funds. In the future the new Authority will be financed by means of a regional rate levied in Northern Ireland. Thus the fire services are financed from within the Northern Ireland economy. The wider relationship between the Northern Ireland economy and Whitehall in the overall financial context was set out in a paragraph of the recent Paper for Discussion which I do not think I need refer to again.

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I hope this reply covers the various points that have been made.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

FINANCIAL PROVISIONS (NORTHERN IRELAND) ORDER 1973
7.39 p.m.
LORD WINDLESHAM LORD WINDLESHAM rose to move, That the Draft Financial Provisions (Northern Ireland) Order 1973, laid before the House on January 24, be approved. The noble Lord said: My Lords, this Order is one of a series which have been enacted in Northern Ireland at intervals of about two years to deal with miscellaneous matters of a financial nature. Much of the Northern Ireland legislation concerned with Government lending and Government capital expenditure provides that these costs may be borne on the Northern Ireland Consolidated Fund, subject to cumulative limits which are reviewed and increased from time to time. That is the main purpose of this Order. The increases set out in the Schedules are required to accommodate anticipated transactions for the next eighteen months or so. I should make clear that they do not themselves imply approval for actual expenditure up to the new cumulative limits.
Article 3 provides for increases in the limits on three forms of expenditure in particular. These are: grants for the development of public services; capital expenditure on public service accommodation; and expenditure on industrial development. In due course the Department will be submitting estimates of expenditure on these items for approval by Parliament in the normal way. Article 4 provides for the expansion of the amount which may be outstanding from the Northern Ireland Government's Loan Fund which lends substantial amounts to local authorities and other public bodies in Northern Ireland. Article 5 extends the borrowing powers of the Electricity Board for Northern Ireland. This should cover borrowings until March 31, 1973, when the E.B.N.I. will be absorbed into the new Northern Ireland Electricity Service. Article 6 contains provisions for further issues of up to £500,000 to the Ulster Land Fund. This fund was established
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in 1948 and has been mainly used to finance grants to the National Trust for the acquisition of historic buildings, and to the Ulster Museum and the Ulster Folk Museum for capital expenditure.
Articles 7 and 8 deal with two unrelated financial matters. Article 7 concerns fees payable for the registration of companies in Northern Ireland and provides for the Northern Ireland Ministry of Commerce to alter these fees by regulation, subject to approval by both Houses of Parliament. A similar provision is already in force for Great Britain. Article 8 seeks to amend the statutory requirements for the issue of Northern Ireland Treasury Bills so that for reasons of convenience they may be prepared and issued on behalf of the Ministry of Finance by a bank. These, briefly, are the provisions of this Draft Order which, of course, concerns financial business and, as such, has already been the subject of scrutiny in another place. I beg to move.
Moved, That the Draft Financial Provisions (Northern Ireland) Order 1973, laid before the House on January 24 be approved.—(Lord Windlesham.)
LORD GARNSWORTHY: My Lords, I should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham once again for the detailed explanation of this Order which he has given. I think it is correct to say that this is the sixth financial measure relating to Northern Ireland with which we have been concerned. I gather that before the Easter Recess we shall be considering the seventh measure, the Appropriation (No. 1) Order 1973. The Orders that we have already considered have enabled the House to deal with all the general issues regarding the financing of Northern Ireland, and in any event the next measure will in effect be the Northern Ireland budget for 1973–74. Then, I take it, there will be ample opportunity to discuss broad issues. My Lords, all the detailed points that we should have wanted to raise from these Benches were raised in the other place and dealt with quite satisfactorily. Therefore I am happy to content myself this evening with giving the briefest of welcomes to the Order which is a routine and technical one. The important point to notice is that it merely raises the statutory limits, as the noble Lord has

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indicated, and does not approve them. My Lords, we support the Order.
LORD WINDLESHAM: My Lords, I was apprehensive at the momentary presence of the former Chief Secretary of the Treasury.
LORD GARNSWORTHY: My Lords, I shared that apprehension.
LORD WINDLESHAM: I thought that some penetrating questions were going to be put. As the noble Lord, Lord Garnsworthy, said, this Order is a routine one, but none the less important for that. It is a technical measure. It does not sanction any additional spending but only raises the ceilings. I am grateful for the response of the noble Lord to the Motion to approve this Order.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

TELEVISION REPORTS OF PARLIAMENTARY PROCEEDINGS
7.45 p.m.
LORD FERRIER LORD FERRIER rose to ask Her Majesty's Government whether in the light of the recent decision of the House of Commons against televising proceedings, and in view the fact that television has become the basic vehicle of news and information to the majority of the people, they will now insist that, in terms of Clause 13(1) and (2) of the Licence and Agreement, regular reports of the proceedings of Parliament are broadcast on B.B.C. 1 on the same lines as "Today in Parliament" on Radio 4. The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg to ask the Unstarred Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper. I hasten to assure your Lordships that the Question has nothing to do with televising the proceedings of Parliament. I asked an Unstarred Question in somewhat similar terms on June 22, 1971, and the reply I received on that occasion was that whereas under Section 13(4) of the B.B.C. Licence and Agreement the Minister may require the Corporation to refrain from publishing anything, he has no power to direct that any matter shall be broadcast. I was not altogether satisfied with that reply, but, it being an Unstarred Question, no more could be said. In any case the position was that the problem of televising the proceedings
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of Parliament had still to be decided in another place.
My Lords, I hardly expect to be satisfied with the reply of my noble friend to-night, though I keep on hoping that some day some Government, on behalf of Parliament as a whole, will face up to the present situation. I do not see this as any Party matter. I believe sincerely, even passionately, that as things stand the public is not sufficiently informed about the processes of Parliament, and that their indifference stems from the fact that they have little or no access to news of what actually goes on in the Palace of Westminster. Such inquiries as I have made go to show that many people are interested, but they have no information on the subject, hence their frustrated indifference. I would not have ventured to trespass again on your Lordships' time had it not been that since that Question in 1971 to which I referred, four important changes have taken place in the situation. The first is the spread of colour television, which is so marvellous that television has unquestionably established the "box" if I may so call it, as was quoted in a leader, I think in the Telegraph:
"as the basic vehicle of news and information to the majority of the people."
The second change is that Parliament has now decided not to go forward with televising its proceedings and the third is that there has been a change of B.B.C. chairmanship, though I have no knowledge of the views of the noble Lord, Lord Hill of Luton, any more than I have of the views on the subject of Sir Michael Swann. But the fact is that there has been a "new broom" installed.
The fourth change, my Lords, is that the programme "To-day in Parliament" on Radio 4 is no longer, after April 1—a rather ominous date—to be at 10.45 p.m. When is it to be broadcast? I am credibly informed at 11.00 p.m. The new Radio 4 schedule, as reported in the Press by the correspondents, indicates that "A Book at Bedtime" will be read at 10.15 p.m. and a new arty, musical theatrical review programme, called "Kaleidoscope", will run from 10.30 until 11.00 p.m. So "To-day in Parliament" is to be broadcast three-quarters of an hour after "A Book at Bedtime". Verb sap! This, my Lords, tends to illustrate my contention that the most

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important Parliamentary programme is being pushed into a corner. Is it surprising that the people as a whole know little, and consequentially care mighty little, about it?
The Press, other than the "heavies" give little or no space to it. Even the "heavies" give it less space than they gave a number of years ago. Incidentally, the cost of buying two newspapers, say one "heavy" and one "popular", for a year is much more than the cost of running and licensing a television set. On the radio the B.B.C. programmes "Today in Parliament" and "Yesterday in Parliament" are superb examples, in my opinion, of what can be done in 15 minutes; though "Today in Parliament" is now reduced to 14 minutes by some sort of programme parade. I do not know what it costs to produce, but whatever it is, I believe that Parliament and the people are heavily in debt to the staff concerned: the B.B.C. certainly get their money's worth in terms of skilfully edited and produced, unbiased and up-to-the-minute material. But who listens to it? The "Today in Parliament" rating, according to the figure given to me by the B.B.C., is 150,000. "The Archers" rate at 1½ million; and on television "Nationwide", between six and seven o'clock, rates at 8 million. The time of 10.45 p.m. is too late for working folk, though some listen in bed; and a later hour of course would mean still fewer listeners. But for "Yesterday in Parliament" at 8.45 a.m. the bulk of the population are at work. It has a rating then of about 1 million. Who are the listeners? They are mainly retired folk, housewives in their homes and white-collar commuters listening to car radios.
Section 13(2) of the B.B.C.'s Licensing Agreement reads as follows:
"The Corporation shall broadcast an impartial account day by day, prepared by professional reporters, of the proceedings in both Houses of the United Kingdom Parliament."
By the way, my Lords, the B.B.C. started programmes of this nature before it was ever in their Charter, and the section that I have read was drafted before there was ever a television service. These two programmes certainly comply with the letter of the Agreement. But do they comply with the spirit of it in present-day
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conditions? Of course the B.B.C. contend that there is other coverage of Parliament, both on radio and television. This is partially so; but it is processed stuff. It does not meet with the requirements that I have just read, in which respect "Today in Parliament" stands alone with its sister programme of the following day. There is "The Week in Westminster" at 9.45 on Saturday morning for 30 minutes. That is not too good a title, because the content is not purely factual. That rates at 250,000 listeners. Of course it is by no means peak viewing time at quarter to ten on Saturday morning. "From the Grass Roots", at 11.45 on Sunday morning, I have only heard once in my life, and I will not comment on it other than to say that it is processed stuff and it is broadcast at a time when many potential listeners are in church. Nevertheless, it rates at 350,000.
On television, I think quite highly of "Westminster" at 7 p.m. on Saturday. But it is not a good title. It would be much better, in my view, if it were called "Window on Westminster", or something of that sort. Sometimes it goes even wider than "The Week in Westminster". But it has two remarkable disadvantages. First of all, it is on B.B.C. 2, which is not a channel generally available, especially in Scotland. The second disadvantage is that for much of the year it is concurrent with "Dixon of Dock Green", with 13 million listeners. That does not leave many for "Westminster". Indeed, it is no wonder its rating is so small: and, in fact, it is so miniscule that I am informed that the B.B.C. prefer not to say how many listeners it has.
So, my Lords, the only programme of any consequence to comply with the requirements of Section 13(2) is tucked away in a corner. Not so the more popular and far from impartial "World at One"—I refer to the comments after the one o'clock news—which rates at 2,850,000, compared with the 4 million who listen to the news. I think that programme tends to be unbalanced. It sometimes reminds me of the sins of omission which were such a feature of the "British Empire" series. In the letters that I received inevitably after the stand I took over the "British Empire" series there was a considerable volume of

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opinion that subversive elements were gaining too much power in the realms of broadcasting and television. I am inclined to be of the same view, though I would not attribute any deliberately subversive motive to the individual who in the coloured still facing page 226 of the B.B.C. Handbook for 1973 hung the Union Jack upside down in the hands of a standard-bearer of a patrol of redcoats. I thought that a very suitable envoi to the whole series. However, joking apart, to think that there are not employed in the industry people dedicated to an alien ideology is to bury one's head in the sand. I am not suggesting any sort of witch-hunt, but I suggest that the authorities must be sensible, and that to give a fairer measure of time to the obligations of Clause 13(2) would be a proper thing to do. The B.B.C.'s obsession about competition with the independents is, in my view, an unworthy one. Ratings are there for analysis so far as they are concerned, not to be used as a spur to entertainment value, which is too often regrettably in terms of triviality and dirt—but that is another question.
I had the privilege on Monday last of addressing a small group of padres—and I say "padres" because there were several denominations present. The subject was "Parliament As I See It". Parish ministers and priests have their fingers on the pulse of a wide cross-section of the people, and I took the opportunity during discussion time to sound them on the subject of which I speak. I pointed out some of the difficulties, the most important being that Divisions in the other place come after ten o'clock, so that "Today in Parliament", to be complete, must be late. One said that he always listened to "Today in Parliament" at 10.45 when in bed, but nothing would induce him to do other than switch off at 11 o'clock. All agreed as to the prominent place taken in the lives of most people by television. Most agreed that, if it was to be done at all, television presentation would have to be a "talking head"—and that, as some of your Lordships will know, is a phrase they use in the business for a news reader speaking. With all the disadvantages (many of the people I consulted were not in favour of still photographs; and I know I am right in saying that when the Select Committee of your Lordships' House considered
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edited reports at the time of our experiment a good many years ago they were also opposed to the idea of stills), the consensus of opinion was that, in addition to the radio programmes, deploring as they did the 11 p.m. time, television presentation would have to be of "Yesterday in Parliament" if it was not to be either late or in the middle of the peak of the evening's entertainment. The question we asked ourselves was whether a talking head "Yesterday" programme could form part of "Nationwide" somewhere between 6 and 6.45 p.m. "Nationwide" has a rating of 8 million. As for the radio, what about 11 p.m., for "Book at Bedtime", and "Today in Parliament" at 10.15? That might allow for a "Stop press" for the result of a Division before the end of the programme.
Be that as it may, I have come to the conclusion that I agree with the proposal ventilated in The Times during the last few days, that a Committee of Inquiry on the future of broadcasting would be a wise step. I would go further and suggest that its terms of reference should include specifically—and I repeat "specifically"—the reporting of Parliament. I would go still further and say that any future franchise of the Independent Authority should contain an obligation similar to that of the B.B.C. This may sound an extravagant idea. I do not know how many of your Lordships saw a panel programme on television recently the subject of which was broadcasting, and in which the head of the Columbia Broadcasting Corporation in the United States took part. He held the view that the United States of America was originally in error in not including an obligation upon all broadcasting circuits to give a modicum of space daily on the lines of Section 13(2).
In conclusion, the fact remains that the television screen has replaced Parliament as the political forum of the nation. I believe, although I may be wrong (and I hope I am), that this is a dangerous situation. I do not believe that any Government—and I have already said that this is not a Party matter—cannot bring pressure to bear upon the B.B.C. (although they can do nothing at present about the I.T.A.) and demand that the old-age obligation—one that existed long before television—which is

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set out in the section I have read, is observed not only in the letter but also in the spirit. I repeat my belief that far more people want to know about Parliament than might appear to be the case; that the general indiffierence stems from a lack of communication, and that this is a dangerous situation for our system of Parliamentary democracy. I am certain, however, that it can be remedied.
8.3 p.m.
LORD WADE: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Ferrier, is to be congratulated on the framing of this Question and on the amount of time and thought he has given to preparing his case. As to the question of whether the general proceedings of Parliament should be televised—and I appreciate that that is not the issue which the noble Lord is raising to-night—this House, as I understand it, has indicated that it is broadly in favour. I believe that that is right and that eventually it will come to pass. I believe the time will indeed come when the proceedings of Parliament will be televised. But we are aware that this House cannot give effect to its wishes in that respect so long as the other place takes a contrary view. Nevertheless, I believe that some of the arguments which can and should be deployed on the subject of the televising of Parliamentary proceedings are relevant to the Question which the noble Lord, Lord Ferrier, has raised to-night. It is in the interests of Parliamentary democracy that the public should have the opportunity of seeing and hearing as much as possible of what goes on in Parliament, and it is very important that what they see and hear should be balanced. I have not actually read what the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Sheffield said about another place after listening to a debate recently; therefore I cannot comment on it. However, any adverse impressions might be offset to some extent if the whole of the debates in both Houses were seen in their proper perspective. But whether the impression is good or bad, I believe that the public ought to have the opportunity of seeing and hearing more about the proceedings of Parliament.
So far as the televising of Parliamentary proceedings is concerned, I am not advocating an unabridged version. I imagine that most of those who watched
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the internal television experiment came to the conclusion that the shortened version was preferable. However, I would emphasise that to produce this kind of programme will require great skill and expertise. Here I refer to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Ferrier, about the programmes on sound radio, "Today in Parliament" followed by "Yesterday in Parliament". Those programmes undoubtedly achieve a very high standard and we are entitled to ask why it is that they are so widely appreciated. In the case of the morning programme, I think it is first because of the timing; but it does achieve a balance, and also there is the teamwork that goes into it. Of course, there are times when one has made what one thinks is an important contribution to a debate, only to find that one's speech is not mentioned. Being human, one may regret that, but one must accept these disappointments philosophically. I believe it is a balanced programme; and the key to its success is the teamwork, the long experience of those engaged in the preparation of the programme and the highly professional approach involved. I believe all those qualities would be relevant to the kind of programme that is being advocated to-night by the noble Lord, Lord Ferrier. I agree there are anomalies at the present time. On the instructions of Parliament—and it is indeed on the instructions of Parliament—we have these two linked programmes on sound radio. There is nothing really comparable on television. The practical question, as I see it, is: What can be done about it in the absence of permission to allow cameras into the Palace of Westminster?
I am not quite so convinced of the probable success of what the noble Lord has referred to as "the talking head". I am a little uncertain whether that type of programme would be appropriate for a mass audience on a major network. There is a danger that if it is shown only, say, on B.B.C.1, a substantial part of the audience would switch over to I.T.V. However, I should welcome any attempt to try out a programme along those lines. I believe that there should be two "talking heads" and not one, and that the heads should be those of experienced presenters; and in the background I believe it would be essential to have the benefit of the teamwork and the years

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of experience that go into the preparation of "Yesterday in Parliament".
However, we have to recognise—and I have referred to the B.B.C. and the I.T.A.—that this programme, broadcast by the B.B.C., is in accordance with the B.B.C.'s Licence and Agreement. If this idea of extending the programme to television is adopted, surely it should be applied to commercial television and also to commercial radio, when this comes into being, for in any case there are no practical or professional difficulties in the way of presenting a programme about Parliament on commercial radio. My Lords, to sum up, I think the noble Lord was right in paying tribute to "Yesterday in Parliament". It has a fairly substantial audience, and certainly a regular number of listeners. If it were possible to extend that kind of programme to other media I think it should be welcomed.
LORD FERRIER: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, I would emphasise that my worry is for the working folk, the people who during the week are at work by eight o'clock in the morning and in bed by ten o'clock in the evening.
LORD WADE: My Lords, I appreciate the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Ferrier. What I was trying to explain was that if the powers are applied to B.B.C. television without any comparable powers in the case of commercial television, the viewers to which the noble Lord is referring would be inclined to switch over to another programme. I am not in favour of compulsion, but if you are going to have it you must have it for both.
8.12 p.m.
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, I feel that I owe your Lordships an apology, and particularly to my noble friend Lord Ferrier, for standing here and answering this Question which my noble friend Lord Gowrie was down to answer. Unfortunately, my noble friend succumbed to 'flu this afternoon and was eventually prevailed upon to go to bed with suitable advice regarding medicinal or pseudo-medicinal preparations to take with him. I know that he was sorry to do so, because he did a large amount of work preparing an answer to this debate, and I hope that your Lordships will extend whatever indulgence may be necessary if
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the remarks I make fail to meet the standard which my noble friend would have reached had he been here.
I must say—and here I share the sentiments of the noble Lord, Lord Wade—that we are grateful to my noble friend Lord Ferrier for putting down this Question, because it gives us the chance of debating the subject once again. I am sure that all noble Lords will agree with my noble friend Lord Ferrier that it is most important that the proceedings of both Houses of Parliament should he generally and thoroughly known to the public, and this debate gives us the possibility of discussing the merits of one way of doing this. I should also like to associate myself with his congratulations to the B.B.C. for the work which they put in on "Today in Parliament". As so often happens, one tends to take these things for granted; one tends to forget the point which the noble Lord, Lord Wade, made, that a great deal of time, effort, work and professionalism goes into producing such a programme.
The debate also gives Parliament the opportunity to let the B.B.C. know whether Parliament thinks that the Corporation is fulfilling its obligations. It would be fair to say that debates in Parliament are one of the most important ways in which the broadcasting authorities are kept sensitive to public opinion. Here I would make the distinction that, particularly in such a matter as this, where it is the content of programmes and the distribution of programmes which are concerned, it is what Parliament thinks as opposed to what the Government thinks which is important. As my noble friend Lord Denham explained to the House in a similar debate on a similar Question put down by my noble friend on June 22, 1971, to which my noble friend referred, I am bound to say that I must tell him at the outset of a fact which I am sure he knows: my right honouorable friend has no power to require the B.B.C. to broadcast on television a similar programme to "Today in Parliament". It is right that he should not have the power, for it is a long-standing constitutional convention in this country, one which I believe we should think very hard about before altering, that the broadcasting authorities are wholly and solely responsible for what is broadcast in their programmes, and the Government do not intervene. If

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we intervene with the positioning of programmes, or their content, even in the way in which my noble friend and noble Lord, Lord Wade, have tried to persuade us this evening, we shall find ourselves embarking on a very slippery slope indeed.
I suggest to my noble friend that it is for the individual Houses of Parliament to invite the B.B.C. and the Independent Broadcasting Authority to broadcast the proceedings in whatever form each House would like; but it is for the B.B.C. and the I.B.A. to decide whether or not to do so. As in all other questions of programme content, the ultimate decision rests with the broadcasting authorities alone, and must rest with them. In his Question this evening, my noble friend Lord Ferrier is proposing that the B.B.C. should be asked to broadcast on television a similar programme to "Today in Parliament" on Radio 4. The noble Lord, Lord Wade, went a little further and said that if the B.B.C. were to do this, then similar facilities should be made available on independent television.
LORD WADE: My Lords, in order to get the record right, I said that if the B.B.C. were required to do this then the I.B.A. should be required also.
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, I accept the distinction. There is a considerable weight of opinion in the House that the proceedings of both Houses of Parliament should be televised, although that may not be the view of the majority of your Lordships. We had a debate on this subject in 1969 and it is not appropriate—indeed the noble Lord, Lord Wade, and my noble friend specifically avoided this—to go into the matter this evening. What has been proposed to-day is what one might almost describe as a compromise or half-way stet) which should be considered on its merits. Of course the B.B.C. already provide numerous ways in which opinions which are expressed in both Houses of Parliament are disseminated.
"To-day in Parliament" is a 15-minute summary of the proceedings of each House broadcast each day on Radio 4 after the bulk of the daily business in Parliament has been completed. It is repeated again next morning as "Yesterday
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in Parliament". In addition to these daily broadcasts when Parliament is sitting, there is the "Week at Westminster" broadcast on Saturday mornings which reviews the week's business and includes discussions with noble Lords and Members of another place. There are special programmes on Parliamentary proceedings which are of local interest on Radio 4 for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Then there is the programme to which my noble friend Lord Ferrier referred called "Westminster", which is broadcast on B.B.C.2 television on Saturday evenings and which depicts the background to the political scene. I accept his remarks that the B.B.C.2 has limitations in not being readily available to all parts of the country, particularly to his part, Scotland.
It is obvious that your Lordships regard those programmes as very valuable. Most would agree that it is a reasonable allocation of timing, taking into account the demands of broadcasting time and the rather specialised nature of the subject. I fully accept that there are some noble Lords—and both noble Lords who have spoken to-day have drawn attention to this—who might feel that 15 minutes a day on radio does not do justice to the business of Parliament. My noble friend Lord Ferrier said that television audiences have increased considerably, and I would agree with him over that. Television is now watched by millions in the evening and the audiences for radio at that time are obviously small. And it could be argued that the interests of democracy would be the better served by having the summary on television as well as on radio.
My Lords, impressive though these arguments may be, I am bound to tell your Lordships that it is the Government's view that the B.B.C. are meeting their obligations under Clause 13(2) of their Licence and Agreement to which my noble friend referred and which he read out. The B.B.C.'s present view is that, unless they could televise the proceedings of Parliament, they would prefer not to broadcast a television version of "To-day in Parliament". They do not think that a television summary, whether or not illustrated with slides of the

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speakers and of the subjects of their speeches, would make interesting viewing or offer significantly more than the sound summary. The B.B.C. believe that people who like to follow Parliamentary proceedings—and here they would probably part company with my noble friend—are quite satisfied with the present arrangements.
There is much force in what both the noble Lords have said this evening. While I am bound to tell the noble Lord, and can only repeat to your Lordships, that Her Majesty's Government have no power to direct the B.B.C. along the lines which my noble friend's Question has advocated, I have no doubt that the B.B.C. will listen to the strength and the substance of the views which have been expressed by your Lordships this evening and will consider whether, and how, they should act upon them. I know that the B.B.C. lake Parliament's views very seriously, particularly on a subject such as this.
LORD FERRIER: My Lords, before the noble Earl sits down, may I say that I am not sure whether I heard him aright. I think he implied that I said that 15 minutes was not sufficient even on the radio for broadcasting the proceedings; or he may have applied that remark to the noble Lord, Lord Wade. But I think 15 minutes is quite enough on the radio.
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, if I gave my noble friend that impression, I am sorry; I did not intend it. What I meant to say was that on the whole the B.B.C.'s view was that people who are interested in the particular subject which we have under discussion consider that the facilities which the B.B.C. offer are adequate.
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That was the point on which I meant to say that my noble friend and the B.B.C. might part company.