Lords Sitting of 29 January 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 Portsmouth.

MUSEUMS AND GALLERIES: CHARGES AND CONCESSIONS
LORD STRABOLGI: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will request the Trustees of the national museums and galleries to issue to donors of objects or cash, of or above a certain minimum value, benefactors' cards valid for free entrance to all of them during the benefactors' lifetimes, and whether they will endorse a minimum qualification of a value of £25 having regard to the fact that cards recording life membership of the National Art Collections Fund resulting from a payment calculated on a similar 25 years actuarial basis will entitle the holders to similar free entrance to all such institutions.
THE PAYMASTER GENERAL (VISCOUNT ECCLES): My Lords, I do not believe that we should be justified in complicating the system of charging by this exceptional arrangement. The proposal is not analogous to a subscription to the National Art Collections Fund which operates on behalf of all the museums.
LORD STRABOLGI: My Lords, I thank the noble Viscount for that reply. In order to clarify the matter, and so that the public know where they are, may I ask the Paymaster General whether the introduction of admission charges will be further postponed until all restrictions on prices are removed?
VISCOUNT ECCLES: My Lords, this matter is under consideration and I will make a statement on the date of the introduction as soon as I can.

HIJACKING OF AIRCRAFT
2.37 p.m.
LORD JANNER: 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 changes in international law they have in mind to deal with the urgent subject of hijacking sabotage, now that ICAO has dropped the United States/ Canadian draft for a direct "No sanctuary" Convention and since the alternative French proposal of adding a protocol to the ACAO Chicago Convention requires time-consuming procedures for signatures and ratification.
THE MINISTER WITHOUT PORT-FOLIO (LORD DRUMALBYN): My Lords, the Government are very conscious of the need to obtain international agreement on effective measures to deal with the urgent problem of hijacking and sabotage of civil aircraft. The Legal Committee of ICAO has just completed its meeting in Montreal. It recommended that a number of proposals put forward by various delegations should go forward to a full conference of States. At an early stage of its meeting the Committee voted to restrict the effectiveness of any separate new convention, in particular by excluding all provision for sanctions. We therefore tabled a new proposal for the amendment of the Chicago Convention which would achieve the same objective as the United States/Canadian draft Convention which we co-sponsored. The only proposal going forward to the Conference that provides for the suspension of air services of a defaulting State is the British one.
LORD JANNER: My Lords, would the noble Lord say what exactly can be done to expedite the matter? Am I to understand that the matter has to go forward in accordance with the Chicago procedure?—because this will take a very considerable time before any results can be achieved. Would it not be an advisable course now for those countries who hold the same view as I understand Her Majesty's Government hold, America and Canada, to come together to see whether something can be expedited? Otherwise the position can become a really disastrous one.
LORD DRUMALBYN, My Lords, the effectiveness of action of this kind depends on its being international and being agreed by, if not all nations, at any rate a very wide number of the 125 nations who are represented on ICAO. As to the first question, it is normal of course to have a six-month interval between the sitting of the Legal Committee and the subsequent Committee, the Diplomatic Conference of States. But I understand that an Austrian proposal that ICAO should meet in three months' time has been accepted. There would be no point in having that unless there were a Diplomatic Conference of all the States at the same time. But, as I have made plain before, this country is anxious to make the utmost progress and we hope very much that it will be possible to have the meeting in three months, and not six months as was originally arranged.
LORD JANNER: My Lords, while thanking the noble Lord for his answer, may I say that what I had in mind was the possibility of getting together those nations which I call civilised nations to see whether they cannot come to some conclusion; because is it not obvious that a bar is being thrown in the machinery by those nations who still want to harbour the criminals and who are not prepared really to stand by civilised standards?
LORD DRUMALBYN: No, my Lords. I do not think this would do at all because the nations who would adhere to any convention in that case would not be able to get the co-operation of the other nations who did not adhere to it; and ICAO has itself already ruled out the idea of sanctions in a new convention. That is why it is now proposed to amend the Chicago Convention. That can be done by a two-thirds majority.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord, in view of this depressing delay, whether perhaps the time might come for the Government to make some very forthright announcements? Will the noble Lord consider that, whereas obviously it is desirable to be extremely diplomatic, none the less lives are going to be lost in the mean-while? Could not the Government speak out rather more firmly than they have done?
LORD DRUMALBYN: No, my Lords; I do not think they could. I think we have been making our position absolutely clear all the way along the line. We joined with the United States and Canada in 1970 when this matter was first raised, and we again supported them last year when the matter was raised again after more aircraft incidents. Our position is absolutely clear. We have made our proposal; that proposal is going forward to the next stage, and we are trying to ensure that it is going forward more quickly than was envisaged before.
LORD BALFOUR OF INCHRYE: My Lords, does the Minister's last reply to the supplementary question of the noble Lord, Lord Janner, mean that one or two recalcitrant nations could in fact hold up the whole process indefinitely?
LORD DRUMALBYN: As I understand it, my Lords, as it is an amendment to a convention that is being considered this can be carried by a two-thirds majority; but I cannot go further than that at the present time. It is not true to say that it could be held up by one or two nations. We have of course had a majority against us so far on the question of sanctions. It is this that we have to try to overcome by persuading people that it is in the interest of all nations that there should be sanctions.
LORD SLATER: My Lords, can the Minister state what hopes Her Majesty's Government hold of a satisfactory agreement being reached on this important matter? Following the observations of my noble Leader and also of the noble Lord, Lord Janner, who has taken such an interest in this matter for some time past, probably every noble Lord feels that what has been happening recently is absolutely atrocious and that every effort should be made to bring it to an end.
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, a number of nations are anxious that this state of affairs should be dealt with by international action. It must be international in order to be effective. We are playing our part and doing all we can to secure that end.
LORD HARVEY OF PRESTBURY: My Lords, as it is extremely unlikely that 100 per cent. of the nations will agree on this matter, would my noble friend

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say that if 75 per cent. agreed sanctions could be evolved?
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, it is possible; but that would also require a resolution of the Conference.
VISCOUNT AMORY: My Lords, would my noble friend agree that there is great public concern about this matter and that everyone will hope that the Government will maintain the greatest possible momentum to find some kind of solution? While we fully recognise the difficulties of obtaining complete unanimity, it seems that the real crux of the matter is how to get effective action with less than complete unanimity.
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, we hope in the end to get complete unanimity, which is the only answer in the long run. We are doing our utmost to create the climate of opinion that will allow that to happen.
LORD JANNER: My Lords, may I ask one further question? If we are going to depend on the recalcitrant nations to agree, shall we ever find a solution? Can we not realise that those people who are actually harbouring the criminals are not likely at any time—and certainly not all of them—to agree to a solution? Further, is it not important that the civilised nations should get together and say, "We have had enough of this", leaving the recalcitrant nations to suffer the consequences?
LORD DRUMALBYN: No, my Lords, because the main purpose of the amendment which we are proposing is to write into the Chicago Convention the provisions of the Hague and Montreal Conventions on hijacking and sabotage. We think there is a good chance of being able to persuade the nations of the world that this is the right thing to do. It has to be remembered that there are 125 signatories to the Chicago Convention; that there are upwards of 50 signatories to the other Convention and that there is quite a chance that many more will come round and endorse the amendment that we are proposing to the Chicago Convention.
LORD ROBBINS: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord this question? Supposing—as I hope will certainly not be the case—the noble Lord himself were
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cruising round in an aeroplane which was under the command, for the time being, of hijackers, without any very secure prospect of landing safely, would he be able to say to himself: "Well, this is bad luck but Her Majesty's Government have done all that they possibly could"?
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, I should certainly comfort myself with that thought but I would also hope that if this sad event is postponed by a year or so, or even six months, I should have the assurance, at any rate, that I should be released in accordance with the Tokyo and the Montreal Conventions.
THE EARL OF SELKIRK: My Lords, will the noble Lord ensure that the countries which are unwilling to co-operate are known to the public of this country?
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, I do not think it is yet possible to say that there are countries which are unwilling to co-operate. I think we should wait for the next stage of the negotiations and then I have no doubt that full publicity will be given to those who are for and those who are against.

TEACHER TRAINING IN MODERN LANGUAGES
2.48 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 whether they are satisfied that an adequate expansion is planned for the teaching of modern languages in teacher training colleges to meet the need of modern language teachers in primary, middle and secondary schools.
THE PARLIAMENTARY UNDERSECRETARY OF STATE, DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION AND SCIENCE (LORD BELSTEAD): My Lords, the main limiting factor is the number of students coming forward for training, but my right honourable friend has arranged for additional places to be available to meet the expected expansion of demand for training places from graduates.
LORD ORR-EWING: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that in the Greater

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London area, for every student at a teachers' training college who is being trained in modern languages, four are being trained in sociology and five in drama? Does he think this is a realistic approach to the needs of the nation for the next two or three decades?
LORD BELSTEAD: My Lords, I think the noble Lord is concerned with the training of people for the teaching of languages. What the noble Lord might like to know is that between the years 1969 and 1972 the numbers of post-graduates training for teaching had increased by a third. I referred in my Answer to my right honourable friend's making additional places available; in fact the number of additional places being made available for 1973–74 is 200.
LORD MAYBRAY-KING: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that the figures given by his noble friend Lord Orr-Ewing are alarming? Does he not agree that while on the other hand in the teaching of modern languages in our schools since the War there has been a revolution in methods, in apparatus and so on, the goal of his Department must be that every normal child in Britain grows up at least bilingual in a Europe where many children have at least three languages, and that anything we can do to stimulate training colleges to provide a greater supply of modern language teachers is very important indeed?
LORD BELSTEAD: My Lords, I think that the objectives of the Government are the same as those of the noble Lord, I will certainly, however, draw my right honourable friend's attention to what the noble Lord, Lord Maybray-King, has said.
BARONESS EMMET OF AMBERLEY: My Lords, as I believe there is at the moment an investigation into teacher training colleges, would my noble friend agree that this would be the right time to impress on the headmasters—or whatever they are called—there, that they should encourage their young students to go away with at least one language at the end of their course?
LORD BELSTEAD: Once again, my Lords, I do not think that the view of the Government differs in the least from
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what the noble Baroness has said. I do not know whether the noble Baroness is referring to an important piece of research which is nearing completion now and which is a survey entitled "The Initial Training of Teachers of Modern Foreign Languages in Colleges and Departments of Education". Your Lordships may like to know that this is almost completed and may give us some answers which will be of interest and which very possibly will bear out what noble Lords have said.
LORD STRABOLGI: May I ask the noble Lord whether the Government will aim for the introduction of the direct method in all modern language classes, so that the language itself is the only one allowed to be spoken? Would they not agree that this is the only satisfactory way to teach a modern language?
LORD BELSTEAD: My Lords, I am sure that those who are responsible for the curriculum in this country, namely local education authorities and the managers and governors of voluntary schools, will look with interest at what the noble Lord has said.
LORD ORR-EWING: My Lords, will my noble friend tell the House how many schools in this country have to give up the teaching of modern languages because they lack teachers qualified to undertake this discipline? If he does not have that answer readily available, perhaps we can arrange for a Written Answer so that the House may be better informed on this serious inadequacy.
LORD BELSTEAD: My Lords, I am afraid that I do not have the answer which the noble Lord is seeking; but the number of primary school children who are being taught one language is in excess of 35 per cent. at the moment and the number of secondary school pupils who are being taught a language is, I understand, in excess of 70 per cent. I have no reason to believe that those percentages are not right.
LORD STRABOLGI: My Lords, why cannot the Government arrange for the introduction of foreign language masters? Why should public schools be the only ones that have foreign professors.
LORD BELSTEAD: My Lords, some year or so ago the number of teacher

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exchanges between this country and Europe was almost nil. The Government are planning for the most rapid acceleration of teacher exchanges between this country and Europe that has ever been known.
LORD ROBBINS: My Lords, would the noble Lord agree that the root of the trouble inspiring this Question and the exchange of views which has taken place via questions since it was put is the ultra-specialisation in schools, compelled by the entrance requirements of universities at the present time?
LORD BELSTEAD: My Lords, I must reserve judgment on behalf of my right honourable friend on that point, until any recommendation comes from the Schools Council, which is the advisory body to my right honourable friend on examination matters.
LORD THOMAS: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that it is not practical to have a full appreciation either of sociology or international drama without a woirking knowledge of international languages?
LORD BELSTEAD: My Lords, once again I believe that anyone who reads this question and answer exchange will take that on board and be interested in what the noble Lord feels.
LORD GORE-BOOTH: My Lords, would the Minister agree that it is very important in this age to take advantage of the great change in the character of our youth, who have shed the inhibitions of our generation about being heard to have anything to do with a foreign language and now are natural and keen about it?
LORD BELSTEAD: My Lords, I entirely agree. When the noble Lord, Lord Robbins, got to the point in his question about the "root of the problem" I wondered whether he was going to say that that root was that so many of us, perhaps even Members of your Lordships' House, who learned one or two foreign languages when we were very young, are unfortunately unable to speak them now. It is for that reason that the Government are pleased to be able to say that there is an increase in postgraduates going into teacher-training; it is for that reason that we are pleased
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to be able to say that we have made available 200 extra places; it is for that reason that we are especially pleased to say that we have this enormous acceleration in the exchange programme between this country, France and Germany; and finally, it is for that reason that it is of great importance that there is now going to be an expansion of in-service training for the teaching profession, the like of which has never been seen before.
LORD LEATHERLAND: My Lords, when the noble Lord said that 70 per cent. of secondary school pupils are now having language instruction, does he believe that that is the full story? Is he aware that I was speaking to my granddaughter yesterday and asking about her progress with French? She said, "Well, we haven't had a French lesson for over a month". Therefore, is the language instruction that is being given in secondary schools quite as extensive and intensive as the noble Lord would have us believe? Furthermore, may I ask him whether full use is being made of electronic language laboratories, which have proved themselves in the universities to be an enormous success?
LORD BELSTEAD: My Lords, as an ornament to the local government world, the noble Lord will know that his granddaughter's question is for the local authority and not for Her Majesty's Government. The percentage increase in expenditure on non-teaching costs, which is, of course, the relevant factor when we are talking about audio-visual aids and things of that kind, is 3 per cent. or 3½ per cent. per year.
LORD MAYBRAY-KING: My Lords, in view of what has been said from the Opposition Front Bench, may I ask whether the Minister is aware that modern languages are being taught by the direct method in all our schools and have been so taught for a long time?
LORD SNOW: My Lords, will the noble Lord take care that the first supplementary question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Orr-Ewing, is brought to the attention of his Department, for the distribution of persons who are being trained for teaching, or indeed for most other professional training in this country, is absurdly disproportionate to the needs of society or to our intellectual needs. That

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is a subject to which we must pay attention.
LORD BELSTEAD: My Lords, a great deal of information has crossed the Floor of the House in this question and answer session. May I now take away what noble Lords have said and draw it all to the attention of my right honourable friend?

FUTURE BUSINESS: DELEGATED LEGISLATION
2.57 p.m.
EARL ST. ALDWYN: My Lords, with the leave of the House my noble friend Lord Ferrers will be making a Statement, at a convenient moment after 3.30 p.m., on the implementation of Common Agricultural Policy.
Your Lordships will have noticed that on the Order Paper for to-morrow, in addition to the Motion standing in the name of my noble friend the Leader of the House seeking agreement to the proposal to set up a permanent Joint Committee of both Houses to scrutinise delegated legislation, there is a new Notice which has been tabled so that there can be a general debate on this important recommendation. Unfortunately my noble friend is indisposed at the moment, and it is doubtful whether he will be available to-morrow. He is, however, most anxious to take part in this debate, and therefore I hope that your Lordships will understand if in fact the first Motion on the Order Paper in his name is not moved to-morrow.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord; and we certainly send our sympathies to the noble Earl, who like most of us at this time of year has his traditional February cold, and wish him a speedy recovery.
In view of the slight difficulty we had in persuading the Government even to debate the Report of the Joint Committee, the least we can do is to say that we agree, so far as I am concerned, to the postponement of the general debate. If I understand the noble Earl correctly, he is proposing not to seek approval of the Report to-morrow but simply approval of the recommendations which would set up a Joint Scrutiny Com-
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mittee. Whereas I should have been averse to taking it without a general debate, I accept that it is urgent enough for us to do as is now proposed. Unless any noble Lords feel very strongly, it might be better almost to take that recommendation on the nod, rather than have half a bite at the subject, so that we can have a proper debate later on what is an extremely important Report. I certainly hope that the noble Earl will not hurry back until he has got rid of his cold, and perhaps the noble Earl, Lord St. Aldwyn, would recommend him to take some tetracycline which has worked well on mine.
EARL ST. ALDWYN: My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Lord for his ready co-operation in this matter. I will certainly pass on his messages of sympathy to the Leader of the House, and I would strongly support his suggestion that we should take the second Motion formally and have a full debate later, as soon as my noble friend is available.

ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE BILL [H.L.]
3.0 p.m.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR (LORD HAILSHAM OF SAINT MARYLEBONE): My Lords, I rise to move the Second Reading of the Administration of Justice Bill. As your Lordships will observe, it is a Bill composed, like ancient Gaul, of three Parts. The first is to deal with the law affecting justices of the peace and the magistracy. The second is a series of unrelated amendments intended as improvements of the law in the field of the administration of justice generally. The third contains the usual provisions supplementary to the first two and requires, I think, no separate mention, except that in Clause 15(4) of the Bill the date April 1, 1973 is a misprint for April 1, 1974, and will be amended to that effect, if the House sees fit, at a later stage. I hope that all three Parts of the Bill will prove uncontentious.
As in all Bills where the content is a series of unrelated parts, it is not possible for me to commend this Bill to the House without going through it in rather more detail than its relative importance really requires. I will, therefore, take your Lordships through the clauses

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so far as they require explanation on Second Reading debate. Before I approach the content of Part I I should say that as some of the provisions relating to the appointment of justices of the peace and of keepers of the rolls might be considered marginally to affect Her Majesty's prerogative, in form if not in substance, I have it in command from Her Majesty to inform your Lordships that it is Her pleasure that these matters may be regulated in future as the House sees fit.
My Lords, the primary, though, as the House will observe, not the sole, objective of the first Part of the Bill is to adjust the law relating to justices of the peace to the new structure of local government. The Local Government Act itself contained transitional provisions which were designed to tide over whatever gap there might be. But as the expression implies, the provisions were at best only transitional. I have taken the opportunity afforded by the necessity for some permanent change to take a new look at the whole system for commissions of the peace, which still bears more than passing marks of its thirteenth century origins and is framed in language virtually the same as it became after the revision by the judges in the year 1590. One feature not connected with the wording is that every name has to be transcribed manually into the commission. This practice of immemorial force, which continued unabated through the successive inventions of printing, typewriting and photography, was, unfortunately, given statutory force by the Crown Office Act 1877 and can now be altered only by Act of Parliament, which I now propose should be done. This anomaly is rendered still more inconvenient by a second anomaly, namely, that the commissions must be physically retained in their own areas. This means in practice that they must continuously shuffle backwards and forwards between those areas and Westminster as names are constantly added and removed by hand. Apart from the danger of actual loss of the commission, as indeed has happened, the extent of the inconvenience can be measured by the fact that well over one thousand appointments in 211 different commissions are made every year.
The effect of Clause 1 of the Bill is that commissions will he addressed gener-
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ally and not individually, and that the areas will coincide with the new counties. The five commission areas of Greater London and that of the City will continue as before as if they were separate counties. The Bill enables me to issue new commissions to have effect from April 1, 1974 for each of the new counties. I will take the opportunity to revise the wording. By the transitional provisions of the Local Government Act I will be able to allocate existing justices to the new commissions. The vast majority will not be affected by boundary changes. Where they will be affected individual justices will be consulted as to where they would prefer to sit.
The new appointments will be made by an instrument which will be retained in my office. Copies and notifications will be sent to the counties and there they will be held by the Lords Lieutenants. I am taking the opportunity of the Bill to bring up to date the manner of the appointment of Lords Lieutenants in this particular capacity in which they act in the old office of custos rotulorum.
Turning to the more detailed provisions of Part 1, Clause 1(2) simply gives the Lord Chancellor authority to do what he has been doing without authority for several centuries. Clause 1(5) provides for the supplemental list of justices to be consolidated into a single list instead of being kept separately for each county, and provides that a justice may continue to sit as a judge of the Crown Court despite the fact that his name is on the supplemental list, so long as he has not attained the age of 72. This provision is intended to enable experienced justices to continue to serve for two years in the Crown Court, where difficulty is at present being experienced in finding sufficient justices who are able to give the required time, especially in cases lasting more than one day. The Lord Chancellor's special authority is required before this power may be used so as to make it perfectly clear that a justice who is unfit to sit owing to age, deafness or other like cause, will not continue to adjudicate in this capacity. Clause 1(6) safeguards the position of the City of London. Clause 1(7) preserves in the somewhat altered circumstances the rights of the Duchy of Lancaster in the appointment of justices. Clause 1(8) makes the necessary formal provision that the Isles

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of Scilly shall, for the purposes of the clause, form part of the County of Cornwall.
Clause 1(9) abolishes a rather absurd anomaly, of which I was wholly unaware until I became Lord Chancellor. I had no idea, and it is possible some other Members of the House have no idea, that the whole of the powers of the Commissioner and the Assistant Commissioners of the Metropolitan Police derive simply from the fact that they were made ex officio justices. So much was this so that in the Act of 1968, which abolished other ex officio justices, these two anomalous figures were retained on the commission. They may not sit in court or adjudicate, but their authority is derived from their position on the commission of the peace. I have taken the opportunity with the Home Office to put an end to what I hope will be agreed is an absurd anomaly.
Clause 2 of the Bill deals with stipendiary magistrates in the provinces. The main purpose of this clause is to enable me to appoint stipendiaries for the provinces where they are required by the work instead of waiting for local authorities to petition. In practice, the number of provincial stipendiaries has contracted in recent years at the very moment when work is increasing. This is because local authorities object, perhaps not unnaturally to paying salaries the level of which is fixed by the Lord Chancellor. By Clause 2 of the Bill the obligation to pay the salaries is now removed from the local authorities and transferred centrally, and the Lord Chancellor is given authority to appoint stipendiaries when they are required. In case there may be any belief that I am here planning a takeover from the lay bench in any parts of the country, I can assure the House that I have no such intention. So far as I can tell, there will be only one or two extra appointments required at the present time, although the jurisdiction of existing stipendiaries in the provinces will be extended to reach over the entire area of the new counties, instead of being confined, as at present they are, to the boroughs for which they were originally appointed. The Association of Municipal Authorities has accepted the change; the County Councils Association did not accept it, but has never
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in fact exercised its powers, so its failure to do so may not perhaps be of importance.
Clause 3 of the Bill enables me to provide courses of instruction for justices of the peace if or in so far as local magistrate's courts committees fail to provide courses under Section 17 of the Justices of the Peace Act 1949, or the comparable provisions, for Inner London, of the Administration of Justice Act 1964. It also enables me to supplement local schemes by providing training of any kind on a national basis.
Clause 4 is required urgently to amend the law as to the right of justices of the peace who happen to be solicitors to continue to practice their profession. It is proposed, as was proposed in the draft Solicitors Bill which was blocked last Session in another place, to confine the restriction on solicitor/justices to the petty sessional division for which the justice ordinarily sits. This has become increasingly important to achieve in consequence of the reorganisation of local government and the increase in the area of the commissions provided by Clause 1 of the Bill. The clause has the approval of the Law Society and the analogous clause will be dropped from the impending new Private Member's Bill on solicitors should this clause in the present Bill be approved by the House.
I now turn to Part II of the Bill. The first of the clauses in Part II is Clause 6. This increases the jurisdiction of county courts in relation to land and is rendered necessary by the approaching revaluation of rateable values which takes place on April 1, 1973. Were it not for the provisions of this Bill, most of the cases relating to land now tried by the county court would suddenly be removed from the county court jurisdiction by reason of the revaluation, since its jurisdiction depends on rateable value.
LORD HALE: My Lords, I apologise for interrupting the noble and learned Lord—and may I say that I am very glad, as I think everyone is, to see him back. Is the noble and learned Lord not now saying that the result of the independent revaluation will, in the Government's expectation or in his expectation, be to put up rates and rateable values substantially? Otherwise, why would it

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be necessary to increase in advance the level of county court jurisdiction for this purpose?
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, it has no effect on rates at all, since that depends on the poundage. It obviously will increase rateable values, since the original revaluation, which ought to have taken place in 1968, is now I think six years, or maybe ten years, out of date as a result of the action taken by the Labour Government.
As I was saying, were it not for the provisions of the Bill, most of the cases relating to land now tried by the county court would in fact be removed from the county court jurisdiction by reason of the revaluation, since the jurisdiction of the county court depends on rateable value, though not of course on the level of rates. I should utter a word of caution about Part I of Schedule 2 which, if you read it, looks as if the limits are being raised by a multiple of ten. This is not so. The actual multiple is about two and a half. The reason for the apparent difference is that the Schedule relates back to the original legislation which has been the subject of intermediate legislation increasing the limits in 1963 and at various other times. I am also taking the opportunity of this legislation to provide for machinery on an Affirmative Resolution to enact future extensions if necessary by means of Order in Council instead of taking up the time of Parliament with an Act.
Clause 7 of the Bill is designed to give effect to the true intention of Parliament in the Administration of Justice Act 1970, when it endeavoured to put into practice the recommendations of the Payne Committee Report. It affects the rights of mortgagors. The history of the matter briefly is as follows. Before 1962 it was common practice for a court in its discretion to grant a mortgagor an adjournment or succession of adjournments in a claim for possession of the mortgaged property by the mortgagee so as to enable him to discharge arrears due under the mortgage and thereby avoid losing his property. In 1962 it was decided in the Chancery Division of the High Court by Mr. Justice Russell (as he then was) that the practice had no foundation in law and it had, therefore, to be discontinued because there was no
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power to defer ordering possession without the consent of the mortgagee.
The Payne Committee endeavoured to reverse this process, and this was the intention of Section 36 of the Act of 1970. In a recent case last year, however, the Vice-Chancellor held that this object had not been entirely achieved, since he decided that where, as is usual in the mortgages affected by this class of case, provision is made for the whole capital sum to become due in the event of a default in payment of one or more instalments, the powers conferred on the court by Section 36(2) of the Act of 1970 could he exercised only if the court were satisfied that the mortgagor could pay the whole capital sum within a reasonable period. The effect of this judgment is to stultify the real intention which the Government of the day had in seeking to pass through Parliament Section 36 of the Act of 1970, and the object of Clause 7 of the present Bill is to enable the intention of the Payne Committee's Report to be carried into effect. The method adopted is by providing under subsection (1) that only the amounts which the mortgagor would normally have had to pay if the mortgage had continued to run in the ordinary way are to be treated as due under the mortgage for the purpose of the court's order.
The purpose of Clause 8 is to have judicial salaries of the Higher Judiciary and of stipendiary magistrates determined in the same way as, under the Courts Act, those of Circuit Judges are now determined. This has become necessary owing to the increasing number of times that alterations have had to be made. Failure to do so would put the higher Judges and stipendiaries in an inferior position as regards salary, not only to county court judges but to civil servants and other persons whose salaries are covered by the top salary review body. Clause 9 needs really no separate justification. It is the machinery clause removing the necessity of separate Letters Patent to confer a pension on the higher Judges; it alters neither the amount of the pension nor the entitlement thereto.
Clause 10 is rendered necessary by the fact that there is at the moment no means open to a Lord Chancellor, who finds that one of the judges has become too ill to carry on his work and too ill to retire. This has actually happened since

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I was Lord Chancellor. The present provision was created in order to safeguard the judges. The Bill provides equal or superior safeguards by subsections (2) to (4) which provide that I may not use the powers conferred on me by this Bill without a consultation with appropriate members of the Judiciary. The actual identity of these members appears in the Bill, and obviously it varies with the type of appointment to be considered. Clause 11 enables me to pay pensions to the President of the Pensions Appeals Tribunal. There is no provision under the present legislation for the whole-time President to be paid a pension.
Clause 12 enables me to correct an oversight in the passage of the Courts Act 1971. In providing that I might make a solicitor a Recorder, I omitted to provide—and no-one reminded me—that he might equally be made a Deputy Circuit Judge. As the lesser ought obviously to be included in the greater, this is put right by Clause 12 of this Bill. Clause 13 gives me the right to appoint deputy district registrars. At present, registrars make the appointment, but can do so only when they are not themselves available. This is a right I do not at present have and which no one has if the registrar is in fact available, but the work is too heavy. It is entirely analogous to the appointment of deputy judges; the Circuit Judge of the appropriate county court will, of course, be consulted before any appointment is made.
The remainder of the Bill is contained in Part III, which I have already dealt with. The provisions relating to justices of the peace are designed to operate as from April 1, 1974, to coincide with the commencement of the Local Government Act. The jurisdiction of the county courts is designed to operate from April 1 this year to coincide with the revaluation. Clause 7 will come into operation one month after the enactment of the Bill. I do not think that there are any other points that I need mention on Second Reading.
It was discourteous of me not to thank the noble Lord, Lord Hale, for his kindness in his personal reference to me, and I now do so. Happily, I can tell him
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that I am now firing on seven cylinders out of eight. My Lords, I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2ª.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
3.19 p.m.
LORD GARDINER: My Lords, the whole House will be grateful to the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor for the clarity with which he has explained this Bill to us. We are indeed fortunate that he has sufficiently recovered from his recent indisposition to enable him to do so. Some people object to any kind of what they call a "rag-bag" Bill, but I confess that when occupying the noble and learned Lord's office I found it extremely useful, when there were matters connected with the administration of justice to be put right, to be able to have an Administration of Justice Bill, even though it dealt with a wide range of quite unrelated subjects. We welcome this Bill, we agree with practically the whole of it, and I want to raise only three points.
First of all, on justices of the peace, who are dealt with in Part I, Clause 2, the present position, as your Lordships know, is that we have a unique system of justice under which lay citizens take a greater part than I think they do in any other country in the world. Gone are the days when the justices were the local squires; they are now representative of wide ranges and sections of the public. They decide about 98 per cent. of the criminal cases and, as the whole House knows, I am rather enthusiastic about them. Of course they are now trained. I found that, in relation to the volume of work they did, I used to get far more complaints about the professional judges than I did about the justices. Naturally, when there are 20,000 of them, about six time a year somebody says or does something silly and the Press duly take note; but appeals from decisions of justices are extremely few, and those which succeed are fewer still.
Apart from the Metropolis, where the volume of work is so enormous that it is essential to have some stipendiary justices to deal, in particular, with the smaller and rather trying cases, and perhaps with traffic accident cases, there are 11 stipendiary magistrates in the Provinces. I entirely agree with the proposals in the Bill, and I agree that it is in line

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with the Courts Act that central Government should decide what, if any, additional stipendiaries we should have, and that the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor should accordingly have power. He has told us that he is thinking of appointing one or two additional stipendiaries, and I am sure nobody will object to that. But, of course, although officially there is no Legislation Committee, we know that in fact there is and that one of the functions of the Legislation Committee is to stop Departments from taking wider powers than they really need.
What disturbs me very much is that in its present form this clause, in effect, authorises any Lord Chancellor to abolish the justices of the peace and to replace them by stipendiaries. I am quite sure that that is not what the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor has any intention of doing. It could not in fact be done, because there just are not the required number of lawyers. If the proposals were to give the Lord Chancellor power to increase the number of stipendiaries by 50 per cent., I should not object. But this power is entirely unlimited, and any future Lord Chancellor could do what I have just said, without coming back to Parliament. There are about 1,500 justices who retire each year, so that the number of justices can be run down very quickly. One stipendiary is the equivalent of about 50 justices, because the stipendiary sits alone and he sits every day, while two or three justices sit together and normally about once a fortnight. I hope that at the Committee stage of the Bill, the noble and learned Lord will be prepared to consider having some reasonable limit placed on the number of additional stipendiaries who can be appointed under this clause.
The second point that I want to raise concerns Clause 8, which deals with judicial salaries. I quite agree with what is proposed: that in future, judicial salaries should he determined by the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor, in conjunction with the Minister responsible for the Civil Service—which is, in effect, the Treasury. But I should be grateful if the noble and learned Lord could tell us a little more about the Review Bodies. I am very puzzled about this subject. On November 2, 1970, the
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then Secretary of State for Employment made a Statement of great importance in the other place. He said that the Prices and Incomes Board was to be abolished, and so were the Kindersley Committee and the Plowden Committee. He said that the
"best protection for the consumer, both as to prices and services, is to be found not in statutory control, which has been tried and found not to work over the last six years, but is to be found in the process of competition." [OFFICIAL REPORT, Commons, 2/11/70; col. 673.]
He went on:
"What we have always said and what we still say is that it is not possible to have a statutory incomes policy that works without a much larger degree of direction of labour and wages than the last Government contemplated —and I hope than any Government would care to contemplate.". [col. 675.]
Then he added, as to inflation:
"… no Prices and Incomes Board, no form of statutory control or compulsory early warning, can prevent it from happening. What we must do is get a better balance between increases in earnings and increases in production, a more effective machinery to ensure competition."—[col. 682.]
On December 4, the then Lord President, in the course of a debate, made a somewhat similar Statement; and on December 8 the right honourable gentleman the Prime Minister made another formal Statement in the other place.
It was quite impossible to reconcile the detail of those Statements, and on December 15, on a Motion to increase the remuneration of the higher Judiciary, I pointed out the difficulty. In his reply, the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor said, in effect, that Prime Ministers cannot be expected to have the details of everything at their finger tips. He said that the authentic text was that of Mr. Carr, then Secretary of State for Employment. What that meant was that the Prices and Incomes Board was being abolished, and that three Review Bodies on remuneration of highly paid groups in the Public Service would be appointed. Board A would deal with boards of nationalised industries, the Judiciary, senior civil servants and senior officers of the Armed Forces, and I think there were added later Ministers and Members of Parliament; Review Body B would deal with the Armed Forces, other than senior officers; Review Body C would deal with doctors and dentists in the National Health Service. These Review

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Bodies would all be serviced by an entirely new body, the Office of Manpower Economics, which would not be part of the Government machine. These bodies would be set up early in the New Year.
During the debate in your Lordships' House I did not criticise that. I asked two questions: first, whether the body to deal with the Judiciary would have on it someone who really knew the sort of lives which judges, particularly on circuit, lead; and, secondly, what would be the terms of reference and, in particular, whether they would deal with pensions as well as with remuneration. In his reply, the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor said that he did not think those matters had been decided. My Lords, that was in December, 1970; and we are now in 1973. While it is always possible to miss an Oral or Written Question, or even a Bill, in the other place, although one tries to keep an eye on what is happening, so far as I know there has been ever since the most deafening silence about this new structure which was declared with such a flourish of trumpets.
I should like to ask whether the Office of Manpower Economics was appointed, as it was said it would be, early in 1971; and, if so, what it has been doing since. Has Review Body A to deal with the Judiciary been appointed; and, if so, of whom does it consist, and what are its terms of reference? They may of course have been very busy behind the scenes, without that fact having reached me, but in a way it seems strange that all this was declared in 1970 and that there has been an extraordinary silence ever since. I think I have said before that I do not hold it against the Government that they change their mind. If an honest man comes to the conclusion that something he said before is now wrong, he will say "I was wrong there, and I have changed my mind." But the pace of change is rather confusing, so one cannot be blamed for not quite knowing whether the situation which existed in one year goes on existing in the next.
Then, my Lords, on Clause 12—this is a small point—the House may remember that a short time ago we had a discussion as to which judicial offices should be occupied by which half of the legal pro-
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fession. For the reasons I then ventured to explain, I feel very strongly that the great reputation which English justice has elsewhere is due at least partly, and I think very greatly, to the fact that we have a divided profession instead of, as in America, every lawyer trying to do everything. For the reasons I then explained, I regret that the dividing line between the professions has for the last quarter of a century always moved one way. I do not think there has ever been a case of barristers being allowed to do any of the things of which solicitors have always had a monopoly, but gradually solicitors have been allowed to do things which hitherto have been the province of the Bar. There was at that time a consensus between the Bar Council and the Law Society, and I well understood the very natural desire of the noble and learned Lord to rule by consensus rather than by confrontation. But again there seems to be something of an exception in this Bill, in that although a solicitor cannot be appointed a Crown Court judge, he is now, if I have understood it rightly, to be entitled for the first time to be a deputy Crown Court judge; and I should like to ask whether that has been done after consultation with the Bar Council and the Law Society.
Later in subsection (3) the clause deals with deputy district registrars and deputy county court reigstrars. Is there any real reason why a barrister, if he wanted to be, should not be considered for appointment as a district registrar or a deputy or a county court registrar or a deputy? I wondered how the noble and learned Lord might react to an Amendment to add, after the word "solicitor", the words "or barrister". I have only one other short observation, and that is as to the Short Title of the Bill, which says:
"This Act may be cited as the Administration of Justice Act 1972."
That, I assume, will be amended in due course.
VISCOUNT AMORY: My Lords, before the noble and learned Lord sits down, I wonder whether he would answer one question. He opened up to us I thought the most appalling possibility that under this Bill the Lord Chancellor of the day could abolish overnight the voluntary magistracy and substitute stipendiary magistrates. When he said that, I looked

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anxiously at my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor, but he gave no start of surprise. He did not turn pale, and I saw no trembling come over his frame. I should like to ask the noble and learned Lord whether he would beg my noble and learned friend, when he comes to wind up, to put us out of our anxiety on this score.
LORD GARDINER: My Lords, I said that I am quite sure the present occupant of the Woolsack has no intention to do that and that it would not in fact be practicable to-day because of the shortage of lawyers; but as the Bill is drafted, enabling a Lord Chancellor, for the first time, to appoint stipendiary magistrates in the Provinces, there is no limit at all, and without coming back to Parliament, not at a stroke but fairly quickly owing to the number of justices of the peace who resign and retire every year, replacement could in fact be made over quite a few number of years. I am sure the noble and learned Lord does not intend to do that, but there is a sensible case, I think, for inserting in the Bill some limit on the total number.

COMMON AGRICULTURAL POLICY: ADOPTION BY BRITAIN
3.34 p.m.
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, if it would be to the convenience of your Lordships, perhaps I might intervene now to repeat a Statement which is being made in another place by my right honourable friend the Minister of Agriculture. The Statement is as follows:
"With permission, Mr. Speaker, I would like to make a Statement about the arrangements which have been agreed to enable the United Kingdom and the other new Member States to adopt the Common Agricultural Policy. Decisions on the main points outstanding were taken at the meeting of the Council of Agricultural Ministers last week. This was the last of a series of meetings at which the steps necessary to implement the agricultural provisions of the Treaty of Accession have been worked out with our partners in the Community. The House has been informed of the progress at various stages of these long and com-
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plex negotiations, but I would now like to report on the latest decisions.
"Throughout these discussions the Government has had very much in mind the need, first, to ensure a smooth transition from our existing system of guaranteed prices to the Common Agricultural Policy, and, second, to maintain a fair balance between the interests of producers and consumers. For consumers there will be no general increase in food prices when we adopt the Common Agricultural Policy next month. During the year we shall be taking the first steps towards the Community's prices; but at the start prices in the shops should not be directly affected. Consumers should secure some advantage from the agreement to use a 'reference rate', based on the average market rate for sterling in the first part of January, to convert United Kingdom C.A.P. prices in units of account into sterling. As a result, prices in sterling terms will not go up as a result of the continued floating of the pound.
"In addition to the question of the parity of sterling, account had to be taken of the rise in world cereals prices since the agreement reached last July. Because of this the intervention price of cereals has been increased in sterling terms; but, given current world cereals prices, market prices will not be affected. At the same time, the compensatory amounts for cereals will be temporarily abated so that they do not exceed the Community levy on third country imports. These measures have been taken into account in the transitional arrangements for pigmeat, eggs and poultry. At current cereal prices the compensatory amounts between the United Kingdom and the Six for fresh pigmeat carcases will commence at around £40 per ton in February and reduce to about £25 on June 1.
"In addition, the Council agreed to our existing bacon stabiliser being phased out between now and June l and the feed formula by August 1. We also announced the abolition of the flexible guarantee. For eggs and poultry compensatory amounts will be of the order of 1·3 pence per dozen and 0·8 pence a lb. respectively.
"The transitional arrangements agreed for sugar will provide sugar

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beet growers with the equivalent of the current year's guaranteed price. At the same time, they will ensure that the obligations in respect of the import of Commonwealth sugar covered by Protocol 17 of the Treaty will be met in full. I am in touch with the refiners about the detailed arrangements. It was also agreed that the special arrangements for subsidising the price of sugar to consumers will be phased out by July 1 instead of coming to an end this month as originally intended.
"These, and other measures decided in Brussels last week, need to be looked at alongside the arrangements for other commodities which were agreed last year. Together I think they constitute a fair and balanced settlement which will allow us to adopt the Common Agricultural Policy with confidence.
"The Commission and Council Secretariat are engaged in carrying through the administrative and legal procedures needed to give affect to the Council's decisions. They now think that it may not be possible to complete this by February 1 and are discussing urgently with us and our partners this afternoon the possible need for a short period of deferment. Our preparations have been made on the basis that we shall adopt the Common Agricultural Policy on February 1 and we would prefer that date. But there were a number of technical matters arising from the decisions reached last week which had to be resolved and if as a practical matter some deferment is essential for the sake of the smooth adoption of the Common Agricultural Policy, it would be unrealistic not to accept the need for this."
My Lords, that concludes the Statement.
3.39 p.m.
LORD HOY: My Lords, we are grateful to the noble Earl for repeating the Statement made in another place; and he will understand if we had a little difficulty in following it in view of the very short notice we had, because our copy of the Statement did indeed arrive very late this afternoon. I do not blame the noble Earl for that; but, simply because the arrangements were in fact such as they were, it did arrive very late indeed.
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Despite that there are a few questions I should like to put to the noble Earl. In the second paragraph the Statement says:
"Throughout these discussions the Government has had very much in mind the need, first, to ensure a smooth transition from our existing system of guaranteed prices to the. C.A.P.…"
Is it not a fact that what is meant by "a smooth transition" is represented to-day by the highest increase ever in the prices of food in this country?
Is that in fact what he is saying in this Statement? A little later on in the same paragraph the Statement says:
"For consumers there will be no general increase in food prices when we adopt the C.A.P. next month."
While it may be true to say that there will be no general increase in prices, will there not be some specific increases in prices of certain commodities? Is it not a little misleading to use the world "general", when food prices are going to move up in certain specific instances?
The next sentence reads:
"During the year we shall be taking the first steps towards the Community prices but at the start prices in the shops should not be directly affected."
What does the noble Earl mean by the phrase, "not directly affected"? Does it not mean that while they may not be directly affected, indirectly certain prices may go up? We must have a definition of what the Government mean by that The Statement goes on:
"Consumers should secure some advantage from the agreement to use a 'reference rate', based on the average market rate for sterling in the first part of January.…"
Does not the noble Earl appreciate that this really is the worse reference point so far as Britain is concerned? Prices were at their very worst during this term. To use this as a reference rate would be a great disadvantage not only to Britain but to the consumers of Britain. I shall expect the noble Earl to explain what that means.
In paragraph 3 the Statement reads:
"Because of this the intervention price of cereals has been increased in sterling terms.…"
What he is saying is, clearly, that so far as cereal prices are concerned, they have gone up. The Statement goes on:
"but, given current world cereals prices, market prices will not be affected."

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I find it difficult to see how you can put up prices without the market price being affected. I cannot see how this squares —it may be that I am unable to understand it at such quick notice. But I am sure that we will be delighted to have an explanation of these two contradictory terms. The Statement continues:
"At the same time, the compensatory amounts for cereals will be temporaily abated so that they do not exceed the Community levy on third country imports."
If they are not going to make this difference, why are they required to be abated at all? It can only mean because there is a difference.
The Statement on page 2—and I am sorry that I have to put all these points to the noble Earl, but they are extremely important to the farming community and to the consumers—says:
"fresh pigmeat carcases will commence at around £40 a ton in February and reduce to about £25 on 1 June."
Where does this figure "£40" come from? Is it the prevailing rate? If so, how does it compare with the rate twelve months ago? Let us be able to understand, if we are going to take £40 as the prevailing rate at this moment, how it compares with the rate twelve months ago. We must not accept because we are taking £40 at this moment that £25 will be an advantage when we reach the first day of June.
In the next paragraph the Statement reads:
"We also announced the abolition of the flexible guarantee."
This is in connection with the pig industry. I shall find it difficult to understand if the farming interests represented in your Lordships' House do not have something to say about this proposal; because the Statement goes on to say:
"In addition, the Council agreed to our existing bacon stabiliser being phased out between now and 1 June…"
In fact, they are agreed we ought to get rid of a provision that we had made in the interests of the bacon industry of this country. Then the Statement reads:
"We also announced the abolition of the flexible guarantee."
These two things which are regarded as of absolutely first-class importance to the pig industry in this country have to go. This is what they have agreed to. If they are not going to be affected by price,
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how can the noble Earl square that opinion with the concluding sentence which says:
"For eggs and poultry compensatory amounts will he of the order of 1·3 pence per dozen and 0·8 pence a lb respectively."
This is in fact, as I understand it, compensation for the prices that are going to be increased. If it differs from that, I shall be grateful if the noble Earl could tell me. It seems to me that the bacon industry is being sacrificed and the poultry industry is going to get a little compensation; but I do not know what it will amount to.
The Statement also says:
"It was also agreed that the special arrangements for subsidising the price of sugar to consusmers will be phased out by July 1 …".>
I want to know two things—and the noble Earl will understand my position since for a long time I was responsible in a personal way for looking after the interests of the Commonwealth sugar-producing countries. We want to know what their position is going to be. If this subsidy is going to be phased out by July 1, what does this mean with regard to the price to the consumer in this country? If it is going to be phased out, it is said that it will be phased out for the consumers; and I should like to know what will be the result in increased prices to the consumers of this country.
Finally, the Statement says:
"The Commission and Council Secretariat are engaged in carrying through the administrative and legal procedures needed to give effect to the Council's decisions. They now think that it may not be possible to complete this by February 1 and are discussing urgently with us and our partners this afternoon the possible need for a short period of deferment."
Obviously, that means that the legal decisions so far as all this is concerned are not going to be in the hands of this country but are to be taken in Europe and that after Europe has considered what they have done, they are going to tell us the results that they have arrived at. I am sorry to have put so many questions to the noble Earl, but this is a very important Statement and I shall be grateful for his answers.
3.47 p.m.
LORD HENLEY: My Lords, the noble Lord. Lord Hoy, has made some extremely valuable points with regard to the all-important question of the smooth

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transition; but I think that there are two things with regard to that smooth transsition which must be said. While there has already been a substantial rise in food prices in the shops, there has been at the same time in many cases a fall in the farm gate prices. This is something that the Government must watch. In fact, there is a great deal of room for manoeuvre because farm gate prices have remained remarkably steady while at the same time prices have gone up in the shops.
Secondly, it is important to say that for historical reasons the farm gate prices in this country have been very much lower than they probably should have been. I need only draw your Lordships' attention to the fact that farm wages are so much lower than those of any other industry in the country and to the fact that the return on capital, both fixed and working, in the agriculture industry is of an altogether different order from the kind of profits expected in other industries. These are things which I think needed to be said, and said again. I know that the Common Agricultural Policy has in the past run into difficulties. I hope that as we come into it now, we shall be able to teach the others something.
With regard to the details of the Statement, the noble Lord, Lord Hoy, has asked all the questions which I think probably need to be asked. I hope that the noble Earl will be able to satisfy us on some of them. There is one small point upon which again I am looking to the producer rather than to the consumer. I think that we are likely to be in difficulties with regard to the egg and poultry compensatory amounts. It may be that we shall have to look at the emergency action which we are allowed under one of the sections of the Treaty of Rome—I am not sure which one. I think it may be that we shall run into difficulties with eggs and poultry.
3.50 p.m.
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hoy, and the noble Lord, Lord Henley, for what they have said. I am bound to say that as one who claims that he had difficulty in following the Statement, the noble Lord, Lord Hoy, seems to have done extraordinarily well and to have
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taken in a great amount of detail. I shall try as best I can to answer the questions which he put, but he will appreciate that he put a great many questions, though I appreciate that they are highly relevant. If he found difficulty in following the Statement, he will agree that the impact of individual figures is a very difficult and complex matter to discuss.
At the outset, the noble Lord criticized the Statement for saying that it was hoped that there would be a smooth transition from the existing system of guaranteed prices to the Common Agricultural Policy. He asked how one could measure that against what was happening during a period when food prices were the highest ever. The noble Lord, Lord Hoy, is correct in saying that there has been very substantial increases in food prices, but I would assure him that this is not because of our joining the European Community. It so happens that the two things have come together. The point I wish to draw to the attention of the noble Lord is that whether world food prices have gone up or down, what we are anxious to do is to ensure that the transition from one policy to another may be as smooth as possible.
The noble Lord, Lord Hoy, also said that what was contained in the Statement would ensure a substantial increase in the price of food. It is, of course, perfectly true that the prices of some articles may go up. Equally, it is not inconceivable that not all food prices will go up. According to our latest estimates, over the next six years the price of food relative to our joining the Common Market is likely to be in the nature of 2 per cent. per annum. That does not mean that the price of food which will be affected by circumstances other than the Common Market will be restricted to that increase.
The noble Lord referred to the bacon stabiliser and the feed formula for bacon, and also the sugar subsidy, being phased out, and he implied that that was a wrong thing to happen because, as a result, British producers and consumers would be adversely affected. It has always been known that, under the terms of the European Community Agreement, when we joined the Community these various subsidies would have to be terminated. The point I wish to make is that it is

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not intended that they should be terminated upon our accession, which they could have been, but that they will be phased out over a period, which is a distinct concession to the consumer, albeit not one of great duration. The noble Lord referred to the reference rate in the Statement. This is the rate of exchange from units of accounts into pounds and has nothing to do with the price index. He said later that the pig meat compensatory amount would be £40 reducing to £25. That again is a direct concession—if one may use that word—to home consumers, because it will mean that food which comes from Common Market countries will be less expensive for us at the beginning; and therefore prices will not be moved up immediately on our accession because the compensatory amount due to the European producer will be higher at the beginning than at the end. My Lords, I have answered some of Lord Hoy's questions. Doubtless he will say that I have not answered them all. But I hope he will be able to consider these answers with care and perhaps we may be able to return to the matter in detail later.
LORD HOY: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, for what he has said, but it has not proved very satisfactory. Is he saying that poultry prices in this country will rise substantially? I know that they are to be offset by this limited compensation. The noble Earl said that I said we were wrong to get rid of the stabiliser and feed formula. I am trying to draw to the attention of your Lordships the fact that when I was responsible, or partly responsible, for agriculture in this country I was always told by noble Lords opposite that it was essential for the bacon industry that we have the stabiliser and the feed formula. The noble Earl said that my Government threw out of the window what not so long ago was regarded as essential to the industry. I want to know what is going to happen not only to the industry but also to the consumer.
Regarding sugar, the noble Earl repeated my question but he did not give an answer. Can he say—one would like to know—by what amount the price of sugar will go up to the consumer as from July 1, which is the date laid down in the Government Statement?
LORD SHINWELL: My Lords, may I ask the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, whether he would not agree that although some prices have gone up irrespective of our entry into the Common Market, many prices are bound to go up because of our entry? How does the noble Earl expect the general public to accept that in the next six years prices will rise by only 2 per cent.? What justification, what foundation, has he for making a statement like that, or indulging in speculation of that kind? I wish to ask the noble Earl a further question. Does he not realise—this applies also to Members of your Lordships' House generally; and particularly to those noble Lords on the Government side—that a rise in prices as a result of the Common Agricultural Policy will wreck the Government's anti-inflation policy? Because although there are many Members of your Lordships' House and many well-to-do people outside who could afford to sustain life even if prices do rise substantially, the great mass of the working-class people cannot remain complacent and are bound to resent it. Therefore, the Government's anti-inflationary policy, in so far as it affects the reduction or curtailment of working-class incomes, is bound in the end to cause a great deal of trouble.
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, if I may come back to the noble Lord, Lord Hoy, he said that some years ago, when he was in the Ministry of Agriculture, the bacon stabiliser was considered very important. I concede that it was a very important part of the guarantee system under the system of protection that we had. But now we are moving into a different area of agricultural policy and it is to meet the changeover that some things have to be altered. Clearly this is one of them. The noble Lord, Lord Hoy, asked to what extent the price of sugar in the shops would go up as a result of the sugar subsidy being removed. At present our current subsidy is £15 a ton and it will be phased out between March 1 and July 1. This represents about 1½p on a 2lb. bag of sugar.
The noble Lord, Lord Shinwell, asked how I could say that the price of food would go up by only 2 per cent. per year in the next six years. I think it vitally important to make clear what I said. I did not say that the price of food would go up by 2 per cent. per year. I said that according to our calculations, if

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everything else were the same, the effect of joining the Common Agricultural Policy would be an increase of only 2 per cent. per year. Obviously, as the noble Lord, Lord Hoy, said earlier, we are in a period of very high food prices, but if Russia and China have disastrous wheat years and the price of world foodstuffs goes roaring up, we cannot insulate ourselves from that. My reference was only to the actual fact of joining the Common Market and not to any effects that world prices might have on food. It is true that rising food prices will affect an anti-inflation policy, but that is the reason why Her Majesty's Government are trying to pursue an anti-inflation policy.
SEVERAL NOBLE LORDS: Oh!
EARL FERRERS: Of course it is, my Lords, because they are fully aware that if the price of food goes up, inflation is likely to hit on those less able to afford it. But the Government cannot alter world prices, which have been a substantial cause of the increase in prices recently.
LORD MAYBRAY-KING: My Lords, I should like to ask the noble Earl a technical question. He will probably know that I have been appointed by your Lordships Chairman of a Committee which is examining ways in which we as a House of Lords can take some part in the decisions of Europe before they are made. I gather that these are decisions which have been arrived at. Did they come first in the form of proposals which if we had had the adequate machinery we could have examined?
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, these were negotiations that were being continued in the Commission in Brussels at which Great Britain was represented, and of course they will emerge as Community Regulations.
LORD MILVERTON: My Lords, my name was down on the paper to make a few remarks on a point which I thought to be of some importance, but unfortunately the noble Earl on the Front Bench rose with such speed that I was unable to speak in my proper place. The point I want to raise, which I think is worthy of consideration, is one which affects—
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords is the noble Lord proposing to ask a question of the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, or is he participating in the debate that we started earlier this afternoon?
LORD MILVERTON: My Lords, I am trying in vain to participate in this afternoon's debate.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, in that case, there is one point that I should like to put to the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers. I wonder why this Statement was made to-day. If the noble Earl looks at the House of Commons Hansard for Wednesday night he will see there, in response to a Written Question, a full Statement by the Minister very much on the general lines of the Statement to-day. It seems to me extraordinary that here is a statement of policy arrived at some days ago, and the noble Earl—it may be no fault of his—was quite unable to answer the very pertinent points put not only by my noble friend Lord Hoy, but by the noble Lord who sits on the Liberal Benches, to whose questions I do not think the noble Earl had the courtesy to make one reply. I recognise that this is a difficult subject, and is something that the House will certainly have to look at, particularly the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Maybray-King. But can the noble Earl say why the Statement is being made to-day and was not made last week?
BARONESS GAITSKELL: My Lords, I should like to ask one more question on the Statement before the noble Earl replies. As one who does not understand the Statement at all, and as a housewife who does not understand words like "parity", "deferment" and "compensatory", may I ask the noble Earl one small practical question? As housewives who want to buy beef are always told to buy pork because it is cheaper—
LORD HOY: And poultry.
BARONESS GAITSKELL: —what protein are the Government suggesting instead of beef now that pork is going to be more expensive? Are housewives going to be told to get their proteins from "nuts in May"?
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, if I may first answer the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, it is true that the Government did make a Statement last week on

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the day after the Council's decision, but it was then anticipated that we should be able to give further and more complex details now. This is what I have tried to do. If I have been unable to answer the noble Lord, Lord Hoy, to Lord Shepherd's satisfaction, I can only say that I am sorry. I tried to give the noble Lord answers which, even if he did not agree with them, would be satisfactory to him. I have tried to explain the point to the best of my ability. When the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, says that I did not refer to the noble Lord, Lord Henley, or answer one of his questions. I can only say that I referred to the noble Lord in so far as I thanked him for his contribution and what he had to say upon the Statement. The noble Lord then went on to say that all the points he had in mind had already been referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Hoy, and therefore I thought the best thing to do was to refer to Lord Hoy's questions. The noble Baroness, Lady Gaitskell, asked: if the price of pork goes high—
LORD HOY: And poultry.
EARL FERRERS: And poultry—what are the Government going to suggest that the housewives should buy now? I do not believe your Lordships would wish on this Statement to have a debate on the rising price of poultry, pork or meat. I accept that these prices have risen, but I can assure the noble Baroness, as the Statement says, that these have not risen as a direct result or as a pre-result of our entry into the Common Market.
VISCOUNT AMORY: My Lords, this Statement covers a series of immensely complicated things, but the questions raised by the noble Lord, Lord Hoy, were all most relevant. Will my noble friend accept that I think—and I am sure many other noble Lords will think so, as well—that in the time at his disposal he went a great way in answering the most important of the questions.
THE MINISTER OF STATE, DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND SOCIAL SECURITY (LORD ABERDARE): My Lords, I think we have now had a fairly long debate on this Statement and we ought now to listen to my noble friend Lord Milverton.
SEVERAL NOBLE LORDS: Not Lord Milverton; Lord Hale.
LORD ABERDARE: My Lords, I apologise. I thought my noble friend Lord Milverton was next on the list.

ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE BILL [H.L.]
Debate on Second Reading resumed.
4.7 p.m.
LORD HALE: My Lords, my name, like the maidservant's baby, is very small and I can assure the noble Lord, Lord Milverton, that I have no desire to exercise any preference over him. However, as my name is first on the list, it may be convenient to follow the order, lest I find that in giving way I have lost my chance of speaking. I expect I shall not detain the House for long, because in listening to the extremely interesting discussion which has taken place on the last Statement I have forgotten almost every word that I had intended to say. I have an apology to make to the House, although it is not really my fault, because I really put my name down ex abundanti cautela. On a previous occasion I was asked whether I wished to speak on a Second Reading, and I said that as my points were mainly Committee points I would leave it until we dealt with the core of the matter in Committee. Then, on Second Reading, I heard vaguely the words "Committee negatived". I asked my neighbour what this meant, and he explained—much more courteously than I should—that "there ain't gonna be no core". In those circumstances, finding this the type of Bill that I absolutely detest, and finding it covering a large number of matters, including many arising from a large number of committees, of which I can say quorum pars parva fui, I felt that the best thing to do, having received the Bill by post only this morning, was to go to the telephone and have my name put down on the list just in case. That I did; and so it remains.
As I have said, I dislike this type of Bill. I remember when I first went to a boarding school at ten guineas a term, all in, there appeared on the table a large lump of suet which, at the age of ten, I found very attractive looking and which

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I was told was called "spotted dick". It was so called, not with any pornographic intention but because it was carefully studded with little currants outside and had almost a Dickensian appearance. I said, "That looks very attractive", and a cynical neighbour of ten years of age said, "Wait till you see what's inside." He had reason for that. The noble and learned Lord explained the Bill very clearly and some of my major apprehensions have now been removed. One knows how these things arise and I do not want to be too fastidious about it. In another place, for many years I used to pop up and ask the Minister whether the words in the Bill really meant what he said they meant. and sometimes advice would be sought from the Box and the Minister would say that with the advice that he had got—some of the highest in the world—the words really did mean what he had said they meant, even if they did not look like it. The House would then proceed to pass the Bill. Six months later a matter would go to the Court of Appeal on a high constitutional principle. The Court. with a very great wisdom, always said that they must adjudicate not on what Parliament meant but on what Parliament said, and therefore they were bound to assume that Parliament meant something by this clause and must give some interpretation to it, even if this might be difficult. Then the matter would come back to the various Ministries and a series of minor Amendments would be passed.
There are four Schedules and this is a very "bodge-podge" Bill; and it is a dangerous form of legislation too. It means that every judge, every solicitor and every counsel has to start pencilling up, making notes and alterations. The Bill deals in the Schedules with over thirty measures, some of which are referring to Custodes rotulorum. Obsolete enactments are in Part I and they include such recent measures as the Justice of the Peace Acts 1949 and 1968. When I find that another Schedule contains an amendment of the Local Government Act 1972, which was passed somewhat recently, and with the temporary or partial transfer of the Scilly Isles to Cornwall for administrative purposes it seems that I shall be in order
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on Committee in tabling an Amendment to restore Middleton to Oldham and Wilmslow to Manchester.
As I say, very many things are included in the Bill. The noble and learned. Lord who sits on the Woolsack explained the clause about mortgages, which now seems excellent—all the more excellent because it came from a Committee of which I was a member, although I had long since forgotten it. There were a great many law reform committees going on at that time. We found ourselves on the Withers Payne Committee—and it was a very happy Committee to be on because of its distinguished personnel and because we sat under the most charming and gifted of chairmen. We met for four years, during which time we considered a subject which seemed to expand as we went along. We were, in the abundance of law reform committees, rather in the position of cricketers in a public park, and from time to time a representative of one Committee would say that we had pinched his wall after we had been trying to bat against it for some months, and there was some confusion about terms of reference. I gather that a number of recommendations from that Committee have already passed into legislation and are working satisfactorily.
It is rather odd, but it is very wise and prudent that this recommendation should come into this Bill in advance of the statement made in a Written Answer to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, last week that the other part of the Withers Payne Committee will not be the subject of legislation in this particular Session. That is to be regretted. One wonders why some things can be done and others cannot. But I hope that when those concerned come to the second part they may reach my dissenting report—which, because it appears about page 350, I do not think anyone has yet read.
My Lords, it is not often that I have the slightest disagreement with anything said by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, to whom I listen always with great admiration, attention and envy, but I am not a delegate of the Law Society and never have been. I am in fact struck off the rolls and I used at one time to write them sarcastic letters to point out that the electors of Oldham selected me to represent them despite, and not because of, the fact that I was

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a solicitor—and it is not always an electoral advantage. I hope we shall not pursue too strongly the privileges of the two professions. I found when I retired recently that I did not get some of the financial privileges that are accorded to the Bar. There are privileges on both sides, and possibly sometimes there are too many. But we have managed to get on pretty well, and if his objection really arose from the clause which deals with the appointment of deputy county court registrars, I personally have to say on that clause that the only thing to which I have objected is its verbosity, its strictness and its insistence on various qualifications, which nearly always lead to further enactments and further discussion. But the power to appoint deputy registrars is obviously necessary and I would not have thought that that particular office which may, as I understand the clause, be purely temporary in cases of appointment through illness, would excite any dispute between the professions.
In those circumstances, as there is going to be a Committee and as one or two of the points I wanted to make were Committee points, I do not think I need to worry the House now—indeed, I feel I should almost apologise for coming. I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord, the Lord Chancellor. I was very glad to see him back—we all were—and I was very glad to hear him explaining this Bill with his customary lucidity, and explaining it in ways which satisfied at least one or two of the apprehensions I had felt. I shall therefore have time now to consider the matter more carefully, to read through his speech again and that of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, and then decide whether any further participation on my part is necessary.
4.19 p.m.
LORD MILVERTON: My Lords, I should now like to make a few of the points that I have been struggling to make this afternoon concerning the inclusion of local authorities in the provisions of Clause 7. I will be very brief and, because of the delays there have been, will cut down what I have to say to a matter of only four or five minutes. What is important to the local authorities and to the Association of Municipal Corporations is that both the 1970 Act and Clause
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7 of the present Bill apply to local authorities lending money. The proposals are based on a recommendation of the Payne Committee on the Enforcement of Judgment Debts. In paragraph 1391 of their Report that Committee proposed that the powers to suspend possession orders should not be applicable where the lender is a local authority seeking possession of a dwellinghouse. The Association sought therefore to have local authorities excluded from the 1970 Act provision, and they now are very anxious about their inclusion in Clause 7 of the Bill.
The reasons for this Association's view remain the same as those which were advanced in 1970. I will deal with this with the utmost brevity, but the reasons are because local authorities have the responsibility of lenders of last resort in the house-purchase field, being unable to choose their borrowers as building societies or other lenders can. They are also answerable to the ratepayers for the proper use of public money. Before taking proceedings, cases are individually examined by elected representatives answerable to the electorate for any misjudgment. Local authorities lending money are subject to such conditions as the Secretary of State may impose, and they are not free agents as are other lenders. Therefore they have some hope that perhaps the exclusion of local authorities from Clause 7 of this Bill may yet receive serious consideration from the Government.
4.12 p.m.
LORD WILBERFORCE: My Lords, I wonder whether I might raise one short point on Part II of the Bill, particularly with regard to Clauses 8 and 9. I do so with some inhibitions, but I hope I may do so since all I have to say relates to machinery rather than substance. There is a difference in the machinery in Clause 8 on the one hand, and in Clause 9 on the other hand. In Clause 8 a procedure is introduced enabling changes in the judicial salaries mentioned there to be made by the Minister for the Civil Service, the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor, or the Secretary of State, in the case of Scotland, without the necessity for a fresh Act of Parliament. But when one gets to the subject matter of Clause 9, which deals with pensions, one sees there that the clause incorporates all previous legislation by the mechanism

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of Schedule 3, which is on page 20 of the Bill. It simply sets out the legislation as it has grown up over a number of years and, as Clause 9 makes clear, the Schedule simply reproduces existing enactments.
It seems reasonable to suppose that in the near future there will be discussions with the Civil Service Department, the Office of Manpower Economics, or the Review Board. We await the answer of the noble and learned Lord on that matter to the question of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner. There will be discussions on pensions, among other things, and one would suppose that at the very least those discussions would clear up some of the jungle which one finds in Schedule 3, arising from the fact that one can go back to 1950, and that there are a number of classes of people who came in at different times with different rights and different options. One also hopes that some antiquated provisions will be modernised.
If I may mention one, there is still the provision which applies to the Higher Judiciary and which fixes their widows' pensions at one-third of the deceased person's pension. That is well below the proportion prevailing in other fields. It is well below that in industry, which is generally two-thirds, and even in the case of the public service the proportion has been recently raised to one-half—though, I hasten to say, against the making of compensatory payments. One-third is clearly out of date and one would think that that would have to be adjusted, no doubt with some compensation on the other side. My only suggestion would be —and I wonder whether the noble and learned Lord would be kind enough to consider this at some stage—whether in relation to pensions it would be advantageous to introduce, through Clause 9 or elsewhere, some mechanism which would enable, by some such mechanism as one finds in Clause 8, an agreement that may be reached with the Treasury, or relevant body, to be introduced without the necessity of a fresh Act of Parliament.
I do not want to go any further at this stage, or to go into any question of substance. I really wanted to raise this point as a matter of procedure. I have
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a precedent behind me to this extent: there is a provision of this kind in the Superannuation Act of 1972 which deals with a whole range of pension payments in the public service and elsewhere. It would not be a difficult matter, as a matter of drafting, to bring into part of the Bill, either in Clause 8 or in Clause 9, something similar to the provisions in the Act of 1972. I should be most grateful if the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack would give his consideration, no doubt after taking advice, to whether this might be a good provision to bring into the Bill so as to simplify the process of bringing pensions and related matters up to date. My Lords, that was the only point I wanted to make.
4.27 p.m.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I should like to thank the various noble Lords who have made their different contributions to this Second Reading debate. If I may go back to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, and deal with the various speakers seriatim, it may be the convenient course to take. I should like to thank the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, for his welcome back to me. I was unfortunately indisposed last week, but it was nothing more than the fashionable 'flu, which I believe is called by the rather curious name of "English 'flu", for the first time in my life. It was always the "Spanish 'flu", or the "Asian 'flu", or something else in the past. Now we apparently have evolved our own strain, which has taken its toll of a number of people, including me. I am very grateful to the noble Lord for his generous words.
If I may deal with his next observation in conjunction with that of the noble Lord, Lord Hale, I would repeat that this is a Bill of unrelated points. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, said that when he was Lord Chancellor he found that he, too, had to make use of these Bills. I do not think that the noble Lord, Lord Hale, is right to dislike them. If we are going to be serious—and I hope we are going to be serious—on the subject of law reform, one of the things we have to do is clean up the Statute Book. As the Statute Book is in a dreadful mess, with pockets of obsolete enactments of

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one sort or another, then if the Lord Chancellor of the day is going to improve matters and make the law more intelligible to the people, Parliament has to get used to the fact that a very large number of uncontentious Bills which are as dull as the suet pudding which the noble Lord, Lord Hale, consumed to his great dismay during his educational days must be digested, and it must digest a certain number of these suet puddings. I suggest that the best way of doing this is to masticate them in silence. But that is entirely a matter for the House. I am not going to wear sackcloth and ashes for producing a rag-bag of disparate things, provided it is guaranteed—as I have tried to do—that they are all improvements on the status quo.
To revert to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, I thought that his complaint about the stipendiaries had a certain amount in it, in that the provisions of Clause 2 are fairly general in extent. He was quite right to draw attention to that. I think his fears are somewhat fanciful, especially in the form in which they were taken up by my noble friend Lord Amory. There are only 2,500 barristers at present practising at the Bar, and therefore the chance that they would all be substituted for 21,000 magistrates, which is the number of lay magistrates there are, is a fanciful one, even if it were not for the assurance that I have given to the House. Even on the basis of 50 magistrates to one stipendiary, I think it would be found that the results are not within the compass of any Lord Chancellor.
It is a little difficult to know what to do in an enabling Bill of this kind, except to say that where the situation demands it some responsible member of the Government—responsible, that is, to Parliament—should have the power to make appointments. I think that over the country as a whole—England and Wales and, I suppose, Lancashire under the Chancellor of the Duchy—it is a little difficult to say in advance exactly how many will be needed, and probably unnecessary to go to Parliament every time a new one is needed. Lord Chancellors and their predecessors, the Home Secretaries, have made metropolitan stipendiary magistrates since the year dot, certainly throughout my lifetime, and I do
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not think there has been any tendency except away from stipendiaries in London in favour of lay magistrates. I would certainly go the whole way with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, in the tribute which he paid in passing to the lay magistrate system. I have taken every opportunity I could since I became Lord Chancellor to pay tribute to their work, and I entirely share the experience of the noble and learned Lord. Although I receive a great number of complaints about a great number of judges from disappointed litigants of one kind and another, and sometimes from members of the public who read rather colourful accounts in the Press of what has taken place in court, oddly enough the strongest and bitterest complaints are almost all against the professional judiciary, not against the lay magistracy. Whether there is any significance in this, I am not at all sure, but I can only say that the impression I get is much the same as that which the noble and learned Lord gave to the House.
At any rate, this is not the kind of Bill about which I have any inhibitions. I should be delighted to have suggested Amendments on this subject. If the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, desires to curb the powers which I am proposing, I am sure he will do so kindly and I will certainly look at any Amendment he or anybody else puts down; and in the meantime I will contemplate the possibility of proposing a Government Amendment, without undertaking to do so. At any rate, this is not something about which I feel any kind of false pride and I should be delighted to have any suggestions for improvement, either now or at any other time.
On Clause 8, I think the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, did, for once, nod in asking me for more information about the Top Salaries Review Body. Its Chairman is the noble Lord, Lord Boyle of Handsworth, and the noble Baroness, Lady Seear, is another prominent member of it; and Sir George Coldstream and Mr. Anthony Lloyd, Q.C., are also members of it. It has published at least one Report, Cmnd. 5001; and those proposals have, broadly speaking, been accepted by both Houses of Parliament—I think on Affirmative Resolution. So perhaps the Government have not been quite so dilatory as might

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at first sight have been thought from what the noble and learned Lord said.
As regards the deputy Crown Court Judges, I really do think that the greater includes the lesser. If your Lordships remember what we did in the Courts Act 1971 you will recall that we provided that solicitors could be recorders. In fact, I have appointed between 20 and 30 (I cannot remember the exact number) solicitors, and the reports I have had about them are universally encouraging. The recorder is a part-time judge, as we went into at length in the Courts Act, who promises to give at least 20 days of his time to judicial work in the Crown Court. As a rule, when I am dealing with a member of the Bar, before I make him a recorder I rather like to see how he shapes on the Bench. For that purpose I normally ask him to be good enough to sit as a deputy judge. If I make him a deputy judge he sits only for short periods of time; he is under no obligation to give me 20 days a year, and I am under no obligation to give him any more than the cases which come his way when he is sitting as a deputy judge. But it helps me, and helps him, I think, to know how judicial work appeals to him, and it is therefore a step before making him a recorder—a lesser step and not a greater step. Once I have made him a recorder, although I can in theory remove him for incompetence, it is a big step to take; he is paid quite a substantial sum every year as a retaining fee.
What I omitted to do, I am bound to say by sheer inadvertence, when we were discussing the Courts Act 1971, because it was done under some stress of emotion between the parties concerned, was to provide that solicitors could be deputy judges as well as recorders. I am perfectly sure that that is a sensible step. I am not secretly trying to undermine the independence or the prerogatives of the Bar, or to encroach on anything that I ought not to do; but if a solicitor can be a recorder he can also be a deputy judge, because the greater includes the lesser. I have not had an answer from the Box which would be helpful on the point, but I do not think I consulted anybody; I thought that this was a perfectly sensible thing to do. If it causes grave offence, either in the Law Society or among the Bar Council, or among the general pub-
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lic, I am perfectly prepared to consider the matter in Committee without feeling, again, any sense of false pride; but I do not think there is anything to argue about.
The next point was: why cannot a barrister be a deputy county court registrar or a registrar? I am bound to say that I have never hitherto asked myself this question. It has been part of the prerogative of a solicitor from the word "go". The reason, broadly speaking, is that, at any rate in origin, county court and district registrars do a great deal of work in relation to taxation of costs which is not usually within the professional experience of a member of the Bar. I would accept, lest the noble and learned Lord think that I have not taken it into account, that district registrars, who are almost always county court registrars wearing another hat, do in fact do the work of the Supreme Court Masters in the Provinces; and the work of these Supreme Court Masters in London is done by solicitors in the Chancery Division and by barristers in the Queen's Bench Division. Whether these are the laws of the Medes and Persians which cannot be changed, I am not prepared to say, but if the noble and learned Lord likes to raise the question by some appropriate Amendment on Committee I can go into it further. It is not a subject again, for which, or against which, I am prepared to enter the last ditch and die. My guess is that if I were to allow barristers to become registrars of county courts, none would apply, and that would solve that. But I am quite prepared to consider the point on its merits and to have my Department investigate it. It is certainly not a question which I had asked myself at any stage of my professional career until the present.
Those were the points raised by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner. I have dealt with the points of the noble Lord, Lord Hale, about this being a hotch-potch Bill. I agree that it is, but I suffer no shame from that. I was a little puzzled as to why the noble Lord, Lord Milverton, should complain that Clause 7 applies to local authorities because, so far as I can see—and this is borne out by such persons as I have been able to consult since I heard his speech—it is an Amendment to Section 36 of the Administration of Justice Act 1970,

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which also applies to local authorities. I am told (although, of course, the Government responsible was the Labour Government at that time) that the exclusion of local authorities was considered in the 1970 Act but that it was deliberately decided by Parliament at that time not to exclude them, on the ground that as regards the lending of money they are not really different from any other lender of money: they do not have to lend money; they are not compelled to, any more than building societies are compelled to lend money, or those persons who advertise in the popular Press as being willing, and even too anxious, to lend you anything from £10 to £25,000 on your mere note of hand, are compelled to lend money. It is not part of their statutory duties; it is only one of their powers. I do not really see why they should be excluded from Section 36 of the Administration of Justice Act 1970, and in their infinite wisdom the Labour Government appear to have come to the same conclusion. All I am doing is to amend that Act in a sense that is favourable to the borrower and I do not think I should be at all happy about excluding local authorities in relation to it.
Perhaps I may again explain what we are doing in Clause 7, in language that is probably simpler than absolute legal accuracy would require. The courts, again in their infinite wisdom, have decided that there is no power to withhold possession where the borrower from whom it is being sought is unable to pay the whole sum—the whole pound of flesh—due under the mortgage. Previously, as I have said, until Mr. Justice Russell decided this was illegal, it was always the practice of the Chancery Division to refuse such an order. It was intended by the Payne Committee (until Vice-Chancellor Pennycuick decided that that was not achieved by the Act of 1970), that in fact the borrower could be protected either by successive adjournments or by other procedural devices if he kept up his payments, even though the whole capital sum—the whole pound of flesh—might have fallen due owing to the stringent form in which mortgages are drawn at law; and I still think that is right. It is certainly to the benefit of borrowers and certainly in the best tradition of Lord Chancellors to protect
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borrowers who are in danger of losing possession under a mortgage. So I do not feel at all inclined to let off the local authorities and catch only the building societies and other lenders.
I cannot give the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wilberforce, a complete answer to the point that he put. Such a review as he contemplates is in existence at the present time, and I would confirm his view that a more thorough-going review of judicial pensions is both desirable and in contemplation. But I doubt whether it could be put into this Bill. It would have to include Scottish and Northern Irish judicial pensions, and, as I have said, a review is going on in consultation with the Civil Service Department. I do not think it would be ready in time for this Bill, and in any case I doubt whether this Bill could be made the vehicle for it. If it could, I should be happy to contemplate an Amendment; but I do not want to hold out hopes of that. At any rate, my general advice has been to make what I believe are called "encouraging noises" to the noble and learned Lord, and I hope he will be encouraged by the noises which I have in fact succeeded in making. My Lords, I think I have dealt with the various points which noble Lords have made and I should like to thank them again for having played a part in this debate.
On Question, Bill read 2ª, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE REORGANISATION BILL [H.L.]
4.44 p.m.
LORD ABERDARE: My Lords, I beg to move that the House do again resolve itself into Committee on this Bill.
Moved, That the House do again resolve itself into Committee.—(Lord Aberdare.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
[The LORD MAYBRAY-KING in the Chair.]
Clause 40 [Special Hospitals]:
On Question, Whether Clause 40 shall stand part of the Bill?
LORD GARDINER: On this clause may I revert to a point which I made on a Motion proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Grenfell, on handicapped people. Then I was dealing with a section of handicapped people, namely, mentally handicapped and indeed only with one section of those, namely, those in the special hospitals. A book called Bound for Broadmoor, had recently been published by a man who I am glad to know now occupies a position of responsibility. He had been for two years in Broadmoor; he was released on an application to a mental health tribunal and told to go within 24 hours. His effects, in his boxes, were put outside the gate, and there he was. I understand, of course, that there are welfare officers in the special hospital groups, but no special provision seems to have been made in that case and what he has since pleaded is, first, that it is rather a pity that the establishment is still called "Broadmoor" because there is no doubt that the public as a whole think it is a criminal lunatic asylum, as it was. Now it is not; it is a special hospital and there are a number of people there who have never committed any criminal offence at all. They are there purely for secure custody. But it is not of much help when you go to a prospective employer and he asks: "What have you been doing lately?" and you have to reply "Well, for the last five years I have been in Broadmoor". I do not see why the name should not be changed.
The second point which I was raising was the evident need for a hostel or halfway house. Anybody coming out of an institution after a period of years finds it difficult to come back into society again. For obvious reasons I should have thought anybody coming out of special hospitals would find that difficulty accentuated and I suggested that there was a great need for halfway hostels where such men could live, where they could be together and could share their common experiences. At the end of that debate the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, was kind enough to refer to what I said and he ended by saying:
"I would only say that certainly this question is still under discussion and I know that what the noble and learned Lord has said this afternoon will be carefully considered."
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Some eight or nine months have now gone by and therefore I hope I may shortly ask what the result of that further consideration has been.
I feel the more justified in doing so because in the last few days we have had the report of the Aarvold Committee. The Aarvold Committee themselves point out a number of things that I have said. They say in paragraph 27:
"A most critical decision which has to be taken about a mentally disordered offender is that regarding his discharge from hospital. At this point he loses the support of institutional care to which he may have been accustomed for many years, and usually has to face competitive economic and social pressures for which medical treatment may not have been able to prepare him fully."
Then, dealing with the process of discharge, in paragraph 39 they point out that in the local National Health Service hospitals there is a gradual process of rehabilitation,
"starting perhaps with short recreational outings under escort and proceeding by way of leaves of increasing length and, where appropriate, outside employment".
They then go on to point out that that does not happen in the special hospitals and they say:
"It seems to us that only if there are strong arguments for doing so should a patient be discharged direct from a secure special hospital to his family or to casual lodgings. As a first step the patient should preferably go either to a local hospital or to a hostel for an initial period".
We have been told that in some parts of the country hospital accommodation is at a premium. The recommendations go on to suggest, first,
"That a patient leaving a special hospital should wherever practicable go first to a national health service hospital or a hostel for an initial period of rehabilitation. We regard this as of particular importance in the case of patients requiring special assessment".
The second recommendation is
"That the process of transition from the secure hospital to the community should in all cases be as gradual as possible and to this end discharge should not be completed until all who will be concerned with continuing care have studied the case fully and are satisfied with the arrangements".
I venture to think that those conclusions of the Committee very much fortify what I, in a much more ignorant way, had been trying to say in that debate, and I should be very grateful if the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, can tell me what

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further conclusions may have been come to in the last nine months.
4.50 p.m.
LADY RUTHVEN OF FREELAND: May I say one word before my noble friend the Minister answers the noble and learned Lord? One of the greatest difficulties is the fact that if a patient goes to a legal tribunal and is discharged, he has to be discharged at once. If one is discharged by medical people and others like that one may have time, but if it is a discharge by the legal tribunal there is no time. In the particular case of Broadmoor, I know the social workers there very well and they do not have the facilities for finding accommodation for the patients who are discharged as quickly as that. I do not know which way round it goes or how it should be altered, but I know that these social workers have the utmost difficulties on that particular point. I have often talked on this subject to the physician superintendent at Broadmoor. He cannot change what has been laid down by the Department. I should like to support the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, when he says that something else must be thought of. I go to Broadmoor a great deal and I know not only patients there but also many of the medical staff and the social workers, and I know that they are in very great difficulty. I hope that my noble friend the Minister is going to be able to do something to help in the discharge of patients from the special hospitals.
LORD DONALDSON OF KINGS-BRIDGE: I should like to follow my noble and learned friend and the noble Lady in pressing this case of aftercare which, significantly, we have been able to get into the Bill—because it is entirely ignored—only by attaching it to a permissive clause for building more special hospitals, a matter to which I shall come in a minute. It is ironical that it was about fifteen years ago that Mr. Peter Thompson, the gentleman to whom my noble and learned friend referred, together with my noble friend, Lord Longford, started a committee to investigate the question of aftercare for discharged prisoners. Now, after fifteen years, a little—not a great deal but a little—has happened in that direction. It
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has been nationalised, which is very proper, and it is beginning to become effective. The need for aftercare for mental patients was, of course, just as great then as it is now, and this friend of ours, Mr. Peter Thompson, is, curiously enough, at this very minute organising a committee of exactly the same kind to look into the question. I believe he has the money to start it and something will come of it. I feel, however, that it is rather dreadful that we should have to wait for private individuals, who in this case have themselves suffered bitterly from the system, to start work of this kind which we all know is required. There is not a single person in the Service who does not know that more aftercare for mental patients is required.
If your Lordships read the excellent Report by Sir Carl Aarvold you will find that he talks as if there was such a system. He talks about a team which has to look after these people (and he suggests that there will be some hundreds of them) that have to be specially considered before they can be easily freed. There is no team. There is not only no team but there is no sign of such a team. Often the outside man responsible for these people will be a probation officer with a load of 60 or 65. With that kind of burden how can he look after the man who is potentially dangerous? It does not make any sense at all, and I hope that in spite of the fact that this subject is significantly omitted from the Bill we can persuade the Minister to include it, because it is a very important part of the reorganisation of the National Health Service.
May I say one word about the stage behind this? Clause 40 is a permissive clause giving the Government the right, which they have had for the last thirty or forty years, to build special hospitals. Neither this Government nor any other Government have built any for about thirty or forty years, and if one talks to people in the business one finds that the situation is terrible. I remember that six years ago Dr. Rollin, who runs the Horton Mental Hospital at Epsom, gave evidence before Lady Reading's Committee, of which I was a member, and said words to the effect: "I am in desperation. I am trying to run a rehabilitative mental hospital, looking after people who are sick and giving them

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every advantage and help to get well, but I have to lock up my corridors because I am given people whom it is not safe to have walking about." I rang him up the day before yesterday and asked how it was going, and he said, "It is worse than ever it was." I then talked to Dr. Grey, who is the medical superintendent of Grendon Prison, near Aylesbury, and he said—a fact which I knew already—"My whole work of dealing with people who are really criminal is made impossibly difficult by having people who are mentally so disturbed that they do not react to the ordinary sanctions." So both the Prison Service and the Hospital Service are shunting these people out as fast as they can.
This clause reaffirms the permission which the Government have had for many years to build these special hospitals. We must ask the Minister to give us some indication of ministerial thinking on this matter. To wait for the Butler Committee is not a satisfactory answer. That Committee has to go into a lot of very deep matters. It takes a long time to build special hospitals and we must have some assurance that they are going to be built. This point goes fairly deep. The special hospital has to be a hospital and not a prison, because a prison is a place which keeps people in and a hospital is a place which tries to get people out, and there is an enormous psychological difference. Therefore, in so far as we must have secure buildings for people who are dangerous and liable to be delinquent, it is far better to have them in the form of a hospital than in the form of a prison. People can be sent there from a mental hospital which at the moment finds it difficult to get them into one of the special hospitals because they are so crowded. If there were enough hospitals, people who are dangerous could be sent there without difficulty. Prisons which have people who seem to be psychotic can send them now under Sections 17 and 72—or whatever it may be—of the Mental Health Act, and this should be made easier. I believe that they ought to go direct from courts. The police have the right to send people to hospital but they rarely exercise it. The new bail hostels which are being set up are perfect places to examine people
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who are in difficulties and suggest that they would be much better in a place that was secure rather than in a place that they can get out of. I hope that we can have some indication from the Minister that this extremely difficult, and in many ways dangerous, position is being treated seriously and that if not to-day then in due course we may expect something constructive from the Government on these lines.
LORD ABERDARE: I am interested that we are able to have this short debate on the aftercare of patients from mental hospitals, but although the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge, seems to indicate that the Bill is at fault in not having made mention of this extremely important subject. I would suggest that it is he who is at fault, in that this Bill is to reorganise the National Health Service to provide a new administrative set-up for it, and does not affect policies of this sort. But, that said, I am glad that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, initiated this short debate, because it gives an opportunity to mention a subject which, I absolutely agree with all your Lordships who have spoken, is of extreme importance.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, began by mentioning again some of the points that he had made on a previous occasion. The first one was on the subject of the discharge, the rather sudden discharge, of mental patients from the special hospitals, and I think my noble friend Lady Ruthven of Freeland gave a very intimate sidelight on what happens in these cases and the difficulties that are sometimes presented. The first point I should like to make is that in fact 90 per cent. of the patients from the special hospitals are discharged to other psychiatric hospitals. As the noble and learned Lord mentioned, that was in the Report of Sir Carl Aarvold and his colleagues, which recommended that this was the right way: a steady progression from a special hospital into an open hospital and thence back into the community. As I say, 90 per cent. of the patients do go to other hospitals.
In the case of the other 10 per cent. who are discharged into the community, the social workers at Broadmoor, for example, and indeed the other special

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hospitals, take the utmost care possible—I am sure my noble friend will agree—to make sure that in the community to which they are going there is the possibility for them to find somewhere to live and the possibility to find some work for them. Where the Mental Health Review Tribunal is concerned there can be the difficulty that my noble friend mentioned, that nobody can foretell what view the Tribunal is going to take; and if they do discharge somebody immediately he is free to go he packs his bags and is out. This does not give the social workers the chance to make proper arrangements to make sure that he is all right when he does get out.
I would mention that these tribunals have a power, which in our experience they frequently use, to adjourn consideration of a case to enable further social reports, on the availability of suitable accommodation and so forth, to be obtained. I can only think—I have no reason for saying this other than an intelligent guess—that in the case of Mr. Peter Thompson they did know that probably he had many friends who would look after him on his discharge. There is this possibility open to the Mental Health Review Tribunal. However, there is the difficulty, as I have said, that the person can leave the hospital rapidly, and this does not give the social workers the chance that they would otherwise have.
So far as the name "Broadmoor" is concerned, we have considered this very carefully, especially after the noble and learned Lord raised the matter on the last occasion, but my right honourable friend is not convinced of the merits of making a change at this stage. One wonders how effective it would be. I am sure the change of name would attract a great deal of publicity and no doubt everybody would come to realise what the new name was, but I do not know whether it would really be as effective as one might have thought at first sight. Certainly there may well come an opportunityy, when Broadmoor itself is rebuilt, to make a change.
The noble Lord, Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge, mentioned the question of building special hospitals. As I think he knows, it is our intention to build a fourth special hospital. I can tell him
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that the planning is now very well advanced, and I hope we shall be able to make progress with that. The last point that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, made, as did the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson, was on the question of the half-way house. We are as anxious as anybody to see better provision in the community for people discharged from mental hospitals. On balance, we think it is better to provide these generally for those people coming out of mental hospitals, rather than provide special half-way houses solely for those from the special hospitals, because this again might become associated with the special hospitals and not quite such a generally acceptable type of community provision. But certainly we are encouraging the local authorities to develop their hostel provision, and we hope in the future, following the recommendations of the Aarvold Report, which, of course, only covered restricted patients, for a progression so far as possible from the special hospitals to the psychiatric hospitals and thence into the community. I hope that I have answered all the points that have been raised. I can only re-emphasise that we attach very great importance to the aftercare.
LORD PLATT: Before we finally close this debate, in view of what the Minister has said about re-building special hospitals and so on, I wonder if he could tell me whether the Department has any special plans for young people. I am told by people who treat psychological disorders in adolescence that it is extremely difficult to find a psychiatric hospital which at the same time has provisions for controlling young people who really are a danger to the community. It is not a subject I know much about myself, but I should like to know whether the Department is interested.
LORD ABERDARE: I think the noble Lord is referring to the provision of secure accommodation for young people, and this is very much in our minds. We already have one junior centre, the St. Charles' Youth Treatment Centre at Brentwood, Essex, for the very disturbed young person. Two more are planned, and we are also hoping to provide increased secure provision generally in the new community homes or the present approved schools.
LORD AUCKLAND: Before we finally leave this point, may I say that one of the great problems here is surely that of staffing. I was interested to hear my noble friend say that there are plans well ahead for the building of a new special hospital. I do not know whether he can say where the hospital is likely to be sited, because there are areas of the country which are a long way from the present four special hospitals which we have in England and Scotland. Therefore, if people are going to be transferred locally there may be some difficulty in some areas in finding a local place. We read of these special hospitals, like Rampton and Broadmoor and so on, which are desperately understaffed and overcrowded. Surely, one of the great problems in effective rehabilitation is being able to match the security which is necessary with the therapeutic treatment which is equally necessary; we must recruit more staff. I wonder whether in this connection my noble friend can say whether plans are going ahead in this particular sphere.
LORD DONALDSON OF KINGSBRIDGE: Before the noble Lord replies, perhaps I may raise one small point. First of all, I agree with him strongly that hostels should not be restricted to the restricted patients but should be open to all people from mental hospitals. That is an important point. Secondly, it is going to be quite impossible to carry out Sir Carl Aarvold's recommendations without allocating extra resources. I want the Government to realise this. To have teams of people properly looking after 400 or 500 people, who are being released at risk, involves a lot of money. It cannot just be added to people's duties at the moment, and it is very important that that should be taken into account.
May I make one last point. The Minister says—and this I knew—that there are advanced plans for the provision of one further special hospital. If they exist, could the Minister let me have the figures which suggest that this is satisfactory? I should have thought, without having any figures, that if you made a careful examination of the number of people that were at risk both from the Prison Service and from the mental health hospitals, you would need four or five additional special hospitals. I should like
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to know whether there are any facts on which that can be based.
LORD ABERDARE: I should not like to enter into too much of a debate on these particular facts, because, although noble Lords were kind enough to give me some notice of the points that were going to be raised on the Question, That the clause stand part, they are not really relevant to the Bill. I will certainly see what I can find for the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge. In answer to my noble friend Lord Auckland, the fourth English special hospital at the moment is planned to be nearby Moss Side. Of course, it is perfectly true that there is overcrowding at Broadmoor, and one hopes that the provision of better and more hospitals, by reducing the overcrowding, will not only make the treatment of the patients easier but will also enable us to recruit more staff.
Clause 40 agreed to.
Clause 41 [Nursing homes and mental nursing homes]:
5.11 p.m.
LORD ABERDARE LORD ABERDARE moved Amendment No. 116A:
Page 38, line 37, leave out paragraph (d).
The noble Lord said: I beg to move Amendment No. 116A, and I should like to speak also to Amendments Nos. 116B, 126B and 129A. The purpose of this group of Amendments is to maintain the present statutory position concerning the exemption of Christian Science nursing homes from registration under the legislation governing nursing homes. Section 193 of the Public Health Act 1936 enables the Secretary of State to exempt from registration as a nursing home a home
"carried on in accordance with the practice and principles of the body known as the Church of Christ Scientist",
on condition that an exempted nursing home should adopt and use the name of Christian Science house. Parliament inserted this provision because Christian Scientists seek healing through prayer, and the use of medical means and methods is contrary to their religious convictions. They may, however, need practical nursing care, and if it were not for the specific exemption in the 1936 Act their nursing

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homes would require to be registered even though by their nature they could not comply with the medical requirements laid down for what one normally considers to be a nursing home.
The present Bill provides for regulations to be made exempting nursing homes of particular descriptions. This was framed solely with the Christian Scientists in mind, and it was intended to use the power in their favour. We have, however, received representations from the Christian Science movement that the more explicit provision contained in the 1936 Act should be preserved. While I can assure them that there was no intention to alter their position in practice, we appreciate their desire to retain the present specific statutory exemption for their homes, and that is the reason for these Amendments. I beg to move.
LORD GORE-BOOTH: May I take this opportunity, not to comment in substance, but just to say that I have been in touch with the people who have discussed the matter with the Minister and his Ministry, and I know that they would like me to express their very great appreciation for the patience, consideration, and understanding shown by the Minister and his officials in this matter.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD ABERDARE: I beg to move Amendment No. 116B.
Amendment moved—
Page 39, line 34, leave out ("and 193 to") and insert (", 194 and").—(Lord Aberdare.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 41, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 42 agreed to.
Clause 43 [Miscellaneous functions of Secretary of State]:
5.15 p.m.
LORD GARNSWORTHY LORD GARNSWORTHY moved Amendment No. 117:
Page 40, line 39, leave out subsection (2).
The noble Lord said: I beg to move Amendment No. 117. Clause 43 deals with the miscellaneous functions of the Secretary of State, and subsection (2) authorises him to permit, for the purpose of private practice, the use of facilities available at accommodation provided under the National Health Service. The
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White Paper, in Section XVIII, paragraphs 166 and 167, sets out the general views of the Government on this point. I feel that it would not be proper that the issue should pass without consideration, and indeed challenge, for there is a very considerable body of opinion, inside and outside the Service, that is opposed, in principle and in practice, to exploitation of a public service for private gain. Inescapably, the intrusion of private practitioners, whether medical, dental, pharmacists, opticians, or anyone else who is given access to the facilities of this publicly provided service, gives rise to justifiable concern as to standards and priorities.
Let me at this point place on record the view that the Service itself should employ directly all the specialists and all the staffs necessary for manning the establishments essential for the provision of comprehensive treatment in all fields of medical care. The White Paper, in paragraph 166, says:
"The Government recognises the contribution made by the private sector of medicine to the sum of health care, through a wide variety of private hospitals, nursing homes and other institutions and through individual practitioners."
That statement is, I suppose, a recognition of the obvious. The paragraph continues:
"It"—
the Government—
"thinks it right for people to have an opportunity to exercise a personal choice to seek treatment privately."
Within reason, I have no wish to deprive anyone of that freedom. I should wish them to have the opportunity to exercise it, providing that it does not at any point conflict with the public interest.
I come to the next sentence:
"The existence of facilities for private treatment, both within and without the NHS, provides this opportunity."
It is here that the obvious and the acceptable no longer obtain. It is one thing to have private treatment provided without the National Health Service; it is quite another to have it provided within that Service. Why should the public sector support and perhaps subsidise the private sector? If there are those who wish to have private treatment, what is wrong with their obtaining it in private establishments maintained by the private sector? I want a National Health Service

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that offers to all the highest possible standards of treatment available on the basis of health need alone, and without any regard to a person's economic position. So far as possible, I want that Service to be staffed by full-time employees of all grades, directly employed by the Service in such numbers and possessing such qualifications and skills as will ensure those standards.
The idea of perpetuating private treatment within the National Health Service is seen as a possible jeopardy of the very idea of priorities for admission, and a failure to ensure that standards are related solely to the health condition of the patient. Inevitably, when patients can be accommodated in private beds there is suspicion that in many cases private patients get priority other than on grounds of urgency. Therefore the presence of private patients in our State hospitals gives rise to suspicion that there are two standards of attention.
Let me here pay tribute—and unstinted tribute—to those who do such magnificent work in our hospitals. Over the years, I have been in many different types of establishments, visiting patients, and the credit due to dedicated staffs is quite immeasurable. Some have worked, and still to-day work, under conditions which are the inheritance of an outmoded past. Others rightly, work in an environment which is the product of modern concepts and of recent creation. In the less good establishments I have not seen much evidence of the private patient; but, be that as it may, I believe it is not to the credit of the National Health Service that there should at any point be grounds for suspicion that two standards obtain in the same building.
It may be claimed that the private patient pays for the privacy and for the seeming advantages that follow from that privacy, and that, anyway, the room would be unused if it were not so occupied for private use. I doubt whether the private sector subsidises the public sector in this field. Possibly the position is rather the reverse: that if there is any question of subsidy the public sector does the subsidising when it is used by the private sector. I doubt very much whether private treatment within the public sector is as expensive as private treat-
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ment wholly within the private sector. Also, I have the feeling that the list of those awaiting admission to hospital is sufficiently long to make full use of the beds available, and, perhaps more particularly, of the staffs available to man the beds.
I myself had experience some years ago of attending what was then my doctor's surgery. On the first occasion that I visited it I was somewhat horrified to discover that he had two entrances, one for National Health Service patients and another for private patients. It is little use anyone telling me that the reception was the same behind either door. I know that it was not, because when the doctor saw me on the National Health Service side he invited me through to the other side, so I had a pretty good insight into the different standards of treatment available. Of course that was a case of a doctor exercising his right to maintain a private practice, even though he was engaged in the treatment of National Health Service patients; but suspicion must run throughout where there are those who pay and those who take as of right what the Service has to offer. I imagine that many of us are aware of patients who have been told of the difference between going into hospital as a private patient and waiting in the queue as a panel patient; one has heard of too many cases of that kind in the past.
Shortly after this Bill was issued, the threat of a first-class storm appeared on the horizon when there was a report in the Press regarding a takeover bid by an American company, which was said to be seeking to expand private patient facilities in our National Health Service. I stated a little earlier that I have no wish to deprive anyone of the freedom to choose private treatment, but not—I want to state most emphatically—at the expense of the National Health Service. So I find myself alongside people like Dr. Hugh Faulkner, secretary of the Medical Practitioners' Union, who, if Press reports are accurate—and I believe they are—regards proposals such as those recently advanced by American Medical International Incorporated as being immoral and threatening, as he is reported to have said, to cream off doctors and resources for the benefit of the few. The paragraphs in the White Paper

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to which I have referred give rise to much concern. They would seem to encourage those who seek to exploit illness for private gain. They have been seen as an encouragement to people like American Medical International Incorporated to go ahead with their proposals to seek advances of the kind that were so recently reported in the Press.
I am proud of our National Health Service, and I believe it to be infinitely superior to what they have in the United States of America. With regard to the economic consequences to the people who go into hospital in America, as compared with those who go into hospital here under our National Health Service, I believe that our position in this country is, if one may use such a term, supremely superior to what they have in the United States. I certainly want to see no Americanisation of the Health Service in this country. I want the Service to become close to the original concept of a National Health Service. I, and those who think like me, wish it to be a Service wherein priorities are based solely on health needs. I want to see it as a Service where priority cannot be purchased: it has to be deserved; it has to be needed and really merited.
With regard to caring for those in need medically, I am a believer in the religion of priorities. I see the continuance of the private sector within the National Health Service as a threat to those priorities, and as an undermining influence on that religion. I trust that in moving this Amendment I have not been unduly provocative; and I hope that your Lordships may be persuaded that this is an issue which should be taken seriously, and that the National Health Service would be the better and would be placed above suspicion if there was no question of anyone being able to purchase priority of admission or better conditions of treatment than anyone else. I beg to move.
5.30 p.m.
LORD PLATT: There is a side of me which, in some kind of perfect egalitarian world, agrees with all the ideals which the noble Lord, Lord Garnsworthy, has put before us. But, unquestionably, that world does not exist and I think it would be a very bad day for British medicine if everybody was employed full-time in
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the Health Service. I speak as one who was originally a physician in private practice but who later became a professor of medicine and saw no private patients at all; so to some extent I can see both sides of this situation. I know, in the present state of society, the enormous educative effect that private practice has. You are challenged by somebody, perhaps of your own intelligence and status, or better than your own, in a way that you are not challenged by people who are doing more day-to-day manual work and that kind of thing. They do not ask you the same questions. I think that most of the best specialists I could recommend to any one of your Lordships to-day—most of them: I will not say all—are people who spend part of their time in private practice, and I think it would be a great pity if there were no facilities for them to do so.
Quite apart from those in the medical profession, I think that, so long as there is a world in which people are not equal, either in monetary resources or in other capacities, there are people who want certain amenities. What I have always hoped is that they do not buy priority to the detriment of somebody who is getting treatment entirely under the National Health Service. On that point, of course, I entirely agree; but I think there are amenities which it is possible to buy. There are people who have more money to spend and a position in life to uphold; people who go to better and more expensive shops when they want clothes, or something of that kind, and I see no reason why such people should not have some of the conditions which one expects in private practice.
I hope that this clause is not going to be the beginning of some Americanisation of the Health Service in this country, because I believe that that would be absolutely disastrous. If I thought that that was what this provision meant, then I should very strongly support the Amendment. But I hope it is not. The fact is, of course, that medicine nowadays is so complicated. If we agree that there should be a private sector, and if I go to a specialist, say, and need certain treatments or certain complicated radiological examinations, the fact is that they cannot always be provided in a nursing home. It may be that in a place like London, which has a great many, rich foreign

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visitors and so on, it is possible to run a place with such facilities; but very few places can. Certainly it could not be run, I am sure, in a town the size of, say, Bedford or Derby. So if you are going to treat private patients at all, you find yourselves compelled to make some kind of use of facilities which are primarily provided by the Health Service.
I think that perhaps the words of which we are in danger of losing sight are,
"on such terms as the Secretary of State may determine".
I should like to hear from the Minister—and I hope I shall—that there will be no question of one sector subsidising the other, and that the terms which the Secretary of State will determine will be the use of certain beds which have been put aside for private patients, the use of laboratory facilities and, to a limited extent, perhaps, the use of X-ray facilities when necessary, for which I assume a fee would be exacted. It is a great advantage if doctors who are in private practice can have their consulting rooms as near to the hospital as possible, and if possible within the hospital; and, of course, there are many hospitals in which it is possible to have the use of consulting rooms for a fee, where private patients can be seen quite separately from the rest of the hospital.
I think we need to preserve this arrangement, and I can assure the noble Lord, Lord Garnsworthy, that the advantages are not by any means always on the side of the private patient. I know private wings of hospitals in which there are continual complaints, especially of the nursing, unfortunately, and where the private patients ring bells 20 minutes before anybody comes anywhere near them, whereas in a ward where there are many other people that kind of thing cannot happen. Sometimes, too, the private wing or the private nursing home lacks facilities that can be found in any good hospital. So I am somewhat divided in my mind over this Amendment because I want the best for the National Health Service and its patients, but I believe that in the present state of society, which I think will always be the state of society, there is room for the two types of practice to continue.
LORD GRENFELL: Before the Minister replies I should like to tell your Lordships a little story. At Queen Mary's, our children's hospital, not long ago we had a private patient, a little Greek girl, with hydrocephalus, which is water on the brain. Her mother could not speak a word of English, but she was so deeply grateful that she learned two words, which were, "England, good—England, good". We managed to get hold of a priest of the Greek Orthodox Church to help her out with the language. That child has now gone back to Greece, and we hope to great success. Our consultants give a tremendous lot of their time to the health of this nation. In our children's hospital we have only five beds open to private patients, and they have been of infinite value to people coming from abroad who would otherwise have had to come on the chance of getting a bed. I trust that this will not be taken any further, and that my noble friend will resist this Amendment.
5.38 p.m.
LORD SLATER: I rise to give support to the Amendment so ably moved by my noble friend Lord Garnsworthy. Some of us have very long memories, and we can go back into the past and well remember the tremendous battle that took place in relation to the introduction of the National Health Service in this country. The noble Lord who has just resumed his seat gave as an example the service that was rendered to an unfortunate child from another country. All this amounts to is reciprocity. If the facilities which operate here operated in other countries, to which many of our people go on holiday, so that they were not faced with tremendous hospital bills as a result of illness during the course of their holiday; if there were that sort of reciprocity by some form of association between nation and nation, then this situation would not arise. This is one aim that the Ministry of Health ought to be striving for; and during the course of our Administration we endeavoured to get more reciprocity, as we did even during the period when Mr. Kenneth Robinson was in office as Minister of Health.
If the Government reject this Amendment I can see a return to what happened before the National Health Service came into operation. Many of the hospitals

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in this country would never have been able to function at all if it had not been for the voluntary contributions that used to come through flag days, and so on, and also the contributions that used to come from hard-working men and women within industry. I can quote the case of my own county, and of the colliery that I came from. Because of the amount of contributions we made to benevolent organisations, the deductions noted on our pay packets were such that we used to say in those days, "I would rather have what is on the 'off-take' side and take that home, than the gross wage". Because of our contribution to the R.V.I. in Newcastle some of us were made governors of that particular hospital. The hospitals of those days would never have been able to operate had it not been for the voluntary contributions made so willingly, not only from employees but also from industrialists themselves, up and down the country. We must bear in mind that each of us, irrespective of his standing or station in life, is an integral part of a great nation. Therefore every member of society has a right to equality of treatment and opportunity, and for such succour as we are in a position to give because of the policies we introduce and seek to pursue.
I listened with great interest to what the noble Lord Lord Platt had to say. He said that he had been a general practitioner, then a professor, and so on. He said that he was listening to this particular Amendment with great interest. As an independently minded man I must say that this pay-bed system is something to which we have been opposed ever since the Health Service came into operation. I sat on two hospital management committees before becoming a Member of Parliament. From that experience I know that we in this country have some of the finest young men and consultants in the profession. I sincerely hope, with the noble Lord, Lord Platt, that we never adopt the American system of operation. I know that at one time a number of people in the medical profession left this country because, so far as they were concerned, the capitation fees were not satisfactory. They had been giving their services to the noble cause of working within our hospitals; but there was some agitation among the medical profession within the Health Service because young
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people felt that they were not being allowed to reach positions in the profession to which they thought themselves entitled. This kind of thing always operates and always will operate. If we are to give way now, what is to stop this system spreading like an octopus—putting out its tentacles perhaps even into local government activities? It may be that sanitary officers, surveyors and architects with spare time on their hands will then take up forms of private practice alongside the practices and duties imposed on them by the local authorities. We have got to be careful about where we are going and what we are seeking to do.
One thing the people of this country will never forget. It is that the Tories voted against the Second and Third Readings of the National Health Service Bill. At election times the Conservative Central Office argument was that they did not vote against the principles of a National Health Service but only in order to make certain amendments and alterations to improve the Bill. But it must be said that once you vote against the Second Reading of a Bill, you vote against the Bill as such; you vote against a National Health Service. The Tory Party of to-day is not in that position. They believe in the Health Service because of the work it has been able to accomplish in the past. In fact, we have had some good Ministers of Health from the Tory Party. I can think of one who, if he had not been sacked would have been one of the best Ministers of Health ever produced in this country, so far as the Tory Party is concerned. At the moment he happens to be the Father of the other place.
I make my speech extemporaneously, not from notes, allowing my mind to operate in the best way it can in difficult circumstances and it gives me pleasure to support my noble friend in the Amendment that he has so ably moved. We sincerely hope that the Minister will not fall for a form of extension of the pay-bed system. This could only generally injure those who are waiting for admission to the hospitals. I hope that noble Lords will give this serious consideration before making up their minds. Some of us remember that in the old days, if you had £50 in your pocket, you could get a

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bed in the R.V.I. and have special treatment immediately. But at the same time there were very long queues in the industrial centres of the North, queues of people who could not get into the hospitals—although they were paying pennies hard-earned at the coal face to keep the hospitals going. Now the hospitals belong to the State and the State has a responsibility. I hope the State is going to face up to that responsibility and see that the majority of the people, rather than the minority, of this nation are properly taken care of.
LORD PLATT: Before the noble Lord sits down may I ask him if he remembers what I remember: that the National Health Service was brought into fruition by Aneurin Bevan, who was not a member of the Tory Party? It was, I think, the intention of the Government of either colour to bring in the National Health Service; but it actually fell to the Labour Government of that day and it started with the private sector. I do not think that it has grown like an octopus. I know that there are always some people who will not play fair in any circumstances. I do not say that unfairness does not exist; but this was the way the Health Service was designed. I do not think it has been a calamity.
LORD SLATER: I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Platt, that Aneurin Bevan was the first Minister of the Health Service. That is true. Many of our people had their arguments, even with the Minister of Health on our side of the House, as to how the Service should operate in respect of the setting up of Regional Boards, management boards and so on. As the noble Lord, Lord Platt, knows, Aneurin Bevan at the time had a difficult battle with the medical profession to get the National Health Service into operation.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: I do not wish to delay the Committee because there is a great deal of work to be done, but after listening to my noble friend I recognise that he has put the case very well. I would say to the noble Lord, Lord Platt, that the question before the Committee is not the one to which he addressed himself. He put the case for private practice and for a public service.
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He said that in his career he had derived much benefit from the fact that he had been in a position to practice as a physician privately and subsequently to have a public appointment. I agree with him that it must have been an interesting experience, from which he derived much benefit.
But the question before the Committee is not whether we should abolish private practice, or whether we should allow private practice to proceed with public practice. That matter has been accepted; the doctors felt that it would be injurious to them that their freedom should be taken from them. We recall the arguments advanced when the Bill was first introduced, about what would result if they were not allowed to practice privately. But that is not the question. The question which the noble Lord, Lord Platt, did not answer and which is before the Committee is: should the Government give doctors practising privately the opportunity to have accommodation in what primarily is a public institution; namely, the hospital?
I should like to hear the answer to that question from the Minister. So far as I am concerned if doctors wish to practice privately they may well do so. But I feel that the time has come when the people of the country will feel a little aggrieved if they find that accommodation which should be reserved for the public is, and will be under this Bill, offered to private practitioners.
5.53 p.m.
LORD ABERDARE: With respect to the noble Baroness, Lady Summerskill, I must make clear that the question before the Committee is not: should the Government give doctors accommodation in hospitals? The effect of this Amendment would be to prevent the Secretary of State from making available to doctors facilities for private treatment in health centres and similar institutions.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: Exactly.
LORD ABERDARE: But not in hospitals, although this is a much wider question. I should like to confirm to the noble Lord, Lord Platt, and other noble Lords who have mentioned the matter, that the Bill in no way changes the present situation. As in so many other cases that we have been discussing, the Bill

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merely repeats the present powers of the Secretary of State, in this case the powers relating to private practice. The second point, which is a curious one, is that not only were the origins of the National Health Service in a measure put forward by Members of the Party opposite, and especially, as has been mentioned in the debate, by Mr. Aneurin Bevan, but also the legislation now governing private practice was introduced by the Party opposite.
The treatment of private patients in hospitals and the powers conferred on the Secretary of State to authorise facilities and to determine charges are governed by Sections 1 and 2 of the Health Services and Public Health Act 1968, which was in the time of the last Government. This Bill does nothing to disturb those powers. So the powers of the Secretary of State so far as concerns private practice in hospitals remain as they are at present. Therefore to some extent we are going rather wide of the present Amendment in discussing private practice in hospitals.
I think it would be less than courteous to the noble Lord were I not to say a word in reply to what has been said to-day; although I think the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Platt, who has such wide personal experience of the medical profession, gave most of the answers to the noble Lord. He did not dispute the existence of private practice, nor did the noble Baroness, Lady Summerskill. What I think is in dispute is whether facilities should be made available in National Health Service hospitals.
The first point which I am sure is well known to your Lordships—although I do not think it has been specifically mentioned—is that in respect of urgent cases, which are treated straightaway on their merits, there is no discrimination between private patients or non-paying patients. I am sure that all your Lordships who have had the misfortune to suffer any kind of accident would willingly bear me out. The second point I should like to make is that the privilege of a private patient is to choose his consultant and to pay for a private room. But when it comes to the cost of this to the Health Service I can assure your Lordships that he pays the full economic cost. This is reviewed annually and those of your Lordships who have seen what are the charges in the National Health Ser-
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vice hospitals will be sure that it is the full cost. A great many private patients grumble and disbelieve that it is the full economic cost, but certainly it is. The private patient is paying his tax which supports the National Health Service just as much as any other patient.
This really is what I should like to say in answer to the noble Baroness. I think that one of the advantages is that the consultant has all his patients together in one hospital. I am sure that the Committee will know many eminent consultants who are thereby able to spend a great deal of time in the hospital and may very often spend more time with the National Health Service patients than with private patients. Certainly in London where travelling is difficult, there are great advantages if the patients are in one hospital. In general, I would say that we believe that there are great advantages in allowing private practice as it always has been allowed and we have no intention of changing the situation. The Bill will make no difference whatever to the present situation, nor is there anything sinister to be read into this clause. It is merely a repetition of the present powers of the Secretary of State and he will continue to exercise his powers responsibly, as he always has. Of course private beds have to be authorised by him and there is no intention of affecting the present Service.
I should say a word about the effect of this Amendment. As I have said, in respect of private patients in hospitals governed by the Health Services and Public Health Act 1968 the effect of this Amendment would be to deprive the Secretary of State of the power to permit family practitioners to provide services under the National Health Service from accommodation provided by him, which in most cases is health centres, and also to use these premises for private practice. There are many services which these practitioners can offer to patients and for which there is no reason why they should not make a charge. For example, examination for purposes of insurance; for employment reasons; innoculation for overseas travel; certain items of general dental treatment; the sale of some common household remedies for which no prescription is necessary or the provision of private spectacle frames. It would cause considerable inconvenience to the

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public if they could not obtain these services in the premises where they get their National Health Service treatment. These are powers which for general medical practitioners have existed since 1949 but the power to permit the other three types of family practitioners to undertake private practice from publicly provided premises dates also from 1968 in the Health Services and Public Health Act of the last Government.
I think noble Lords opposite will realise that there are great advantages in allowing general practitioners to give these services in health centres and publicly owned premises. It is not contemplated that the Secretary of State would wish to permit private practice on other than a limited scale. The intention is to continue to follow the two basic principles which are at present observed in dealing with requests for authority to practice privately at heath centres: first, that no person is permitted to practice privately who is not prepared to offer the full range of appropriate services under the National Health Service to those requesting them; and secondly, that those seeking advice or treatment under the National Health Service receive no less favourable attention than private patients. So I believe that there is nothing sinister in this clause. Taking it wider, and speaking generally of private practice in hospitals, this Bill will not in any way change the present position. I hope that with these assurances the noble Lord will see his way to withdraw the Amendment.
LORD GARNSWORTHY: I raised the question of the bid of the American Medical International Incorporated for pay beds in hospitals and the matter of taking over a hospital or a considerable part of a hospital. The noble Lord gave no indication as to what the attitude of the Secretary of State would be to proposals like this. I appreciate that this bid came to naught, but it seems to me that this is a first-class opportunity for the Minister to make clear the Government's view on this matter and also on what the noble Lord, Lord Platt, and I referred to as the Americanisation of the National Health Service.
LORD ABERDARE: As I have said, I did not come along prepared to debate the whole of private practice in hospitals,
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and I apologise if I have not satisfied the noble Lord on all the points that he raised. As he rightly says, this particular bid did not even reach the Secretary of State; it was refused before it came to the Department. Therefore it is difficult for me to answer what is really a hypothetical question. However, I cannot imagine, with our present shortage of hospital beds, that there is ever likely to be any question of selling off part of an active and well-used hospital.
BARONESS SEROTA: It is reassuring to have that reply from the noble Lord, but I think it would be even more reassuring if he could deny the report which I confess I was surprised to see in The Times at the beginning of the year, which said that
"the Department of Health is considering possible forms of co-operation between the public and private sectors of medicine."
This was quoted as a statement from a Department of Health official. I will not read the rest of the quotation from The Times. It appeared in other papers as well, and caused real concern among those of us who are committed to a National Health Service of the kind that my noble friend Lord Garnsworthy described.
LORD ABERDARE: I am astonished that there should be any cause for alarm in any such statement. It would refer, I should think, to talks that my right honourable friend had with a number of charitable bodies that run private hospitals. This, I should have thought, would be eminently to the benefit of us all. The talks were most useful, and I should like to pay a sincere tribute to many of these organisations—a number of them are religiously based—who give an enormous amount of assistance to people requiring that sort of service.
LORD AUCKLAND: I think the last words of my noble friend will give reassurance in all quarters of the Committee. We certainly do not want a specialised system of American medicine in this country. I am sure that, although there are some outstanding physicians in America, this is agreed on all sides. The point I want to make is that there are in the Bill the words, "as the Secretary of State may determine". This, as I see it, is the vital part of this clause. If there is a danger of National Health

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Service patients (I may say that my family and I are all on the National Health Service and receive excellent treatment) being left in the cold, so to speak, because private patients are receiving unreasonable priority in treatment, then this is wrong, and of course under this clause the Secretary of State may intervene.
Some of your Lordships may have seen a short time ago a programme on Panorama which went, rather slantedly I thought, into the whole question of private practice and the National Health Service. I believe that the region chosen was Birmingham. If my figures are correct, I think that something like 1·8 per cent. of the patients treated by National Health Service doctors and nurses were private patients. That, I think, is a fairly small number. It Is true that certain men patients prefer to be in a ward rather than a private room. I know people who have been in a private room as private patients who have not received the treatment for which they paid.
There is also the question of the pharmacist and the optician. I am not suggesting that National Health Service pharmacists are under-employed; far from it. There is a great shortage of pharmacists, and indeed of radiologists, in the National Health Service. But unless it can be proved that National Health patients are suffering delays through pharmacists being used exclusively by private patients, I feel that this Amendment, as drafted, meets the problem which noble Lords are seeking to remove in the clause.
6.9 p.m.
LORD GARNSWORTHY: I should like to say, first, how grateful I am to the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, for his seemingly unfailing courtesy in replying to the case that has been presented in support of this Amendment. I am sorry if he did not appreciate what I hoped the Amendment might achieve. It is difficult on this side to produce Amendments that when examined by those who are in the employ of the country do not prove to be faulty. Let me say right away that my Amendment, as I have been advised, would prevent the Secretary of State from allowing consultants et cetera from using National Health Service facilities for the purpose of private practice. It may have seemed to the noble Lord
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that I was going somewhat wide of the Amendment, but I do not think I went beyond that. In any case, if the debate has gone a little wide, I nevertheless think that a useful purpose will have been served because we have probably dealt with points in the clause on which it might have been necessary to put down Amendments.
Let me say right away that I believe we are still somewhat unhappy—or perhaps I should say dissatisfied—at what the noble Lord had to say about the bid by American Medical International Incorporated, because there appeared in The Times of January 2 the following
"Dr Stanley Balfour-Lynn, chairman and managing director of the Harley Street clinic, said the project was proposed after it had been found that cash shortage was delaying development in some private wings. He was commenting on a report that American Medical Internaional Incorporated wanted to take over and expand private patients' facilities in the health service. The Department of Health confirmed that Sir Keith Joseph, the Secretary of State, had had discussions with representatives of the clinic in 1971."
That certainly gave rise to a good deal of speculation as to whether the Secretary of State had at any time contemplated movement into the National Health Service by the private sector in the way proposed by the American Medical International Incorporated. I want to say that we still have considerable misgivings and we should like to know beyond any doubt that the Secretary of State is at no time likely to accept proposals of this order.
LORD ABERDARE: I am very grateful to the noble Lord for giving way, but I have now perhaps a rather better answer for him than I had before. My right honourable friend replied in another place to Dr. David Owen, and perhaps I could quote his words:
"I met the Director of the Harley Street Clinic in April 1971 at his request to discuss ways in which private enteprise might collaborate with the National Health Service. One suggestion put to me was that the Harley Street Clinic might take over a private wing of a National Service Hospital, and develop it as a separate private hospital. I made it clear that I could consider such a proposal only if it came from the hospital board concerned and then only if it adequately safeguarded National Health Service interests and National Health Service patients. I have in the event received no such proposals.
I have no plans for handing over National Health Service facilities for development by

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commercial companies."—[OFFICIAL, REPORT, Commons; 23/1/73, col. 79.]
I am very grateful to the noble Lord for allowing me to intervene.
LORD GARNSWORTHY: I am most grateful to the noble Lord and I trust he will appreciate that because of that reply there is still some concern as to whether we can rely on the Secretary of State always to resist in this way. It seems to me that the reply he gave on that occasion is not as clear or as definite as many of us would like it to have been. Nevertheless, I am extremely grateful to the noble Lord for repeating it here.
I listened with the greatest interest to the noble Lord, Lord Platt. He always gives your Lordships' House something to think about. But in this instance he has given others something to think about as well—I think he has possibly given those who might be inclined to go into private beds something to thing about, before they do so, because it indicates that advantages are not always on the side of the private patients. I hope I am not putting too liberal an interpretation on what he said, but I thought that here was a pretty good warning of: "Look out! you may not get value for your money." I hope that a great many people will take note of what he had to say. Certainly I did not at any point suggest that everybody should be employed in the National Health Service. The noble Lord said it would be a bad thing if everyone was so employed. I made it perfectly clear that I respect the right of people to use private practice and private services, but that I thought they should do so outside the National Health Service. I am grateful to the noble Lord for what he has said. If I had made the point that the advantage does not always lie on the side of the private patient, my word may not have been as cogent as his.
LORD PLATT: May I just make one point. A friend of mine, who is a consultant to a very well-known teaching hospital in London which has a dearth of accommodation, advises his private patients to go into a general ward because they will get in much quicker.
LORD GARNSWORTHY: There you are. It seems to me that my Amendment
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would better serve the interests of those who think that they can buy something that is not available for them. May I say this to the noble Lord, Lord Grenfell: St. Mary's Hospital at Carshalton has done quite remarkable and outstanding work over the years. One knows of the tremendous support given by the noble Lord to that hospital. I doubt that this country could not make five beds available to people from overseas who desperately need the services of Queen Mary's. One appreciates the unique character of the hospital. One recognises its tremendous achievement and I think all of us would feel extremely sad if we thought that any child, no matter where it came from, if it needed the specialisation of Queen Mary's could not be given treatment without regard to ability to pay. I thought that my noble friend Lord Slater to some extent referred to that matter when he said that that could be dealt with on grounds of reciprocity. I am also grateful to my noble friend Lady Summerskill for what she had to say.
I believe the debate has served a very useful purpose. I have the feeling that we shall want to come back on this at Report stage. I have no intention of pressing this Amendment to a Division but I think it might be as well, if the Committee so desires, to negative it at this stage. I feel that this is a matter of considerable importance and that the Committee should allow its voice to be heard.
On Question, Amendment negatived.
6.19 p.m.
LORD ABERDARE LORD ABERDARE moved Amendment No. 118:
Page 41, line 11, after ("medical") insert ("or dental")
The noble Lord said: If I may, I should like to speak to Amendment No. 119 as well as to Amendment No. 118. These Amendments involve no change of policy but put beyond doubt our intention that the duty imposed by this clause should include provision for facilities for dental clinical teaching and research concerned with clinical dentistry. I beg to move the first Amendment.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD ABERDARE: I beg to move Amendment No. 119.
Amendment moved—
Page 41, line 13, at end insert ("or, as the case may be, clinical dentistry"). —(Lord Aberdare.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
On Question, Whether Clause 43 shall stand part of the Bill?
6.20 p.m.
LORD DAVIES OF LEEK: Without delaying the Committee for too long, may I say that I have noticed that when we were discussing the Amendment we forgot one word here, because it is not only accommodation that is needed, but facilities. Despite the excellent answer that the Minister gave about the use of facilities by the whole gamut of qualified people—surgeons, consultants, pharmacists, and others—I would point out that "facilities" is a big word in modern scientific medicine. I know of machines now that cost thousands of pounds, and I see them used nearly every day. They can make an analysis in a matter of moments, whereas the old practitioner, and even a highly qualified chemist, may have to spend days carrying out an experiment on blood counts. These can now be done in seconds on expensive machines. Consequently, when we are talking of facilities I take it that these machines would be available for the doctors to use. The relative words which qualify this are:
"… on terms as may be determined by the Secretary of State".
Therefore, if expensive machines that had been paid for by public money were being used, and each time they were used the cost was high, the Secretary of State should see that, without being exorbitant, a fair price was being paid for them.
Despite our criticisms on both sides of the Committee, throughout the nation in a general way we are proud of the National Health Service, and I should like a statement from the Minister before we pass this clause that if any such fundamental change as the Americanisation of the Service were to take place, not just the Minister but Parliament would have the opportunity of debating and determining upon such a Draconic change in the Health Service.
LORD ABERDARE: This clause relates to general practitioners using health centres, and the chances of very expensive equipment being used there
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are rather less than they would be in hospitals. In general, there will be no change whatever from the present situation. So far as Americanisation is concerned, we have heard a lot about it in this debate. Our system is quite different at the moment, and will remain quite different. As my eldest son was in hospital in America very recently I am very well aware of what that system is.
Clause 43 agreed to.
Clause 44 agreed to.
Clause 45 [Notices of births and deaths]:
LORD ABERDARE: I beg to move Amendment No. 120. This Amendment is necessary to make the provision intelligible.
Amendment moved—
Page 42, line 4, after ("to") insert ("be"). —(Lord Aberdare.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD ABERDARE LORD ABERDARE moved Amendment No. 120A:
Page 42, line 15, leave out subsection (3).
The noble Lord said: The purpose of Clause 45(3) was to continue, so far as possible, the present procedure whereby local authorities are informed of the birth of children in their area. Section 203 of the Public Health Act 1936 provides that a person attending the birth of a child shall, within six hours of that birth, notify the medical offer of health for the council which is the welfare authority for the area. This requirement is additional to the requirement to register the birth, and is intended to enable the medical officer of health to arrange for a health visitor to attend the mother, and for the provision of any care which should be provided for the mother and child under Section 22 of the principal Act. With the abolition of the appointment of medical officer of health, the notification of birth would be made, in pursuance of subsection (2) of Clause 45, to the prescribed medical officer of the Area Health Authority. Subsection (3) would ensure that the prescribed medical officer passed the notification to the local authority through the director of social services. A review of the proposed procedure has suggested that notification so soon after the birth would not provide

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information of use to the director in identifying mothers of families at risk. About 90 per cent. of all births take place in hospital. Social services departments are not equipped to follow up all notifications of birth, and it has never been contemplated that they should do so; this would be the task of the health visitor at the instance of the prescribed medical officer of the Area Health Authority.
A statutory requirement on the prescribed medical officer to pass notifications of birth to the director of social services would be justified if it was necessary to ensure collaboration between the health and social services. However, the routine passage of this information so soon after birth would present the social services department with a volume of unprocessed information which might hinder, rather than help, them in the discharge of their duties with regard to mothers and young children. Close collaboration between the Area Health Authority and the local social services authority is essential, and social problems noted by social workers in the hospitals, by midwives and by health visitors, should be brought to the attention of the social services authority. On review, we consider that the procedure proposed in subsection (3) would not achieve this, but that the joint consultative machinery proposed in Clause 10 should ensure the development of a proper system of collaboration between the authorities. That is the reason why we are proposing to delete subsection (3). The Association of Directors of Social Services, the County Councils Association and the Association of Municipal Corporations have been informed of the proposal to withdraw the subsection and have raised no objection.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 45, as amended, agreed to.
THE EARL OF ONSLOW THE EARL OF ONSLOW moved Amendment No. 121:
After Clause 45 insert the following new clause:
Chaplains
". An Area Health Authority or any Board of Governors of Hospitals listed in Schedule 2 to this Act shall have the authority to appoint such full-time or pert-time chaplains in the Health Service as they think fit."
The noble Earl said: This Amendment which I and my noble friend Lord
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Grenfell are moving arises out of a weekend that I spent with a friend who does great work for the Royal Marsden Hospital. She tried to "touch me" for some money for a fund she was trying to raise to enable that hospital to employ a chaplain. Surprised, I asked, "Does not the Health Service provide one?" She informed me that there was a circular in existence which limited the employment of chaplains to hospitals of 750 beds or more (I believe this is Circular 63/80). It would seem unnecessary to regulate the employment of chaplains on the grounds of numbers and numbers alone. The Royal Marsden is a hospital for cancer, with 214 beds. Several of those are doubtless terminal cases. Cancer still has a dread attached to it that no other fatal disease seems to attract. Perhaps I am being a little cynical, but the imminence of death tends to bring people slightly nearer to God than is their normal wont. Relations also need comfort and succour. The Royal Marsden Hospital have said that they regard a chaplain as, and I quote, "an essential part of the ward team". The local vicar, in this case the Vicar of St. Mary the Boltons, does all that he possibly can. He has an enormous parish whose spiritual needs he cares for, and thus cannot give all that is required.
In this Amendment we are not trying to force any religious creed down somebody's throat, or force a parson to the bedside of a dying atheist. There could be a hospital which is dealing with, say, 2,000 patients who are not nearly so seriously ill as those at the Marsden. Such a hospital may have a lesser need for a full-time chaplain than a hospital such as the Royal Marsden. This Amendment is designed to allow Area Health Authorities and boards of governors, whichever is applicable, to use their discretion as to their own needs. There is nothing mandatory about the Amendment; it is only permissory. Of course it will be assumed the decision would be taken only after consultation with the appropriate section of the Ministry and the Churches themselves. I beg to move.
6.30 p.m.
LORD GRENFELL: I rise to support my noble friend who has so eloquently made the case for the Royal Marsden Hospital. As he says, in the past it has

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been the rule of the Ministry that full-time chaplains would be authorised only when the hospital concerned had 750 beds of the denomination of the chaplain concerned. Is it not time that we in this reorganisation should cease playing the "numbers game" and really consider the character of the hospital and the real spiritual needs of the patients, and indeed the relatives and staff? My noble friend has described the needs of the Royal Marsden, and I wish to give your Lordships some indication of the needs of Queen Mary's Hospital for Children at Carshalton, which is in my group. In this hospital children come in at a few hours old for emergency operations for spina bifida and hydrocephalus, and we have emergencies such as road casualties and burns which come in at any time of the night or day. One can fully understand the need of the parents in their desperate circumstances for some form of spiritual care; and even if they are not active Christians they wish to talk to someone who is, although attached to the hospital, not (dare I say it?) of the establishment. Hence it is highly desirable that the chaplain should be available immediately, day or night.
The chaplain at Queen Mary's has four hospitals to deal with, with the help of an assistant chaplain, with special responsibility for St. Ebba's, the adult mentally handicapped hospital in the group. He is fully of the opinion that the whole of his time could be fruitfully spent among the patients, parents and staff at Queen Mary's, but as we have under 750 Church of England patients we cannot employ him full-time. A dedicated man in the Church simply cannot break off a conversation with a parent or child, as one sees it on television, by saying, "I'm sorry. That's all we have time for. Goodbye." The fact is that in some hospitals the chaplains are asked to do far more than they can possibly do, and I know they would all agree that the "numbers game" must cease and discretion be given to the Area Board, with the consent of the Ministry, to take into account the type of hospital and the needs of the patients and staff in making the decision as to whether a full-time or part-time chaplain should be appointed.
Maybe I should explain to the Committee that the duties of a part-time chaplain are usually carried out by the local
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vicar, who, after all, also has his own parishioners to look after and cannot be on call all the time. I know that the Chaplains Advisory Committee of the South-West Metropolitan Board, of which I am chairman, fully support this Amendment as it is a real step forward in the humane, spiritual treatment of patients. We have just given two examples of the urgent need for this Amendment. I feel there will be widespread endorsement of our action in moving it, so I trust that my noble friend will be able to accept it.
6.33 p.m.
THE LORD BISHOP OF LICHFIELD: I should like to say how grateful I am for the fact that the work of our chaplains has been brought into consideration because, with all the changes coming over the National Health Service, it is important that the chaplains should know where they stand. I have seen this work for very many years. In years gone by, when I was Bishop of Leeds, I was responsible for the chaplaincy services in the Leeds General Infirmary, and for a number of years I have been chairman of the Hospital Chaplaincies Council of the Church of England and chairman of the joint committee in which the Roman Catholics and the Free Churches and ourselves combine. I have noticed a very definite shift in the emphasis of the work. In years gone by it was perhaps quite frequently the duty of the chaplain to go into a ward and conduct a ward service. That may sometimes be done now, but increasingly the chaplain is finding that the way in which he is most appreciated is by visitation among individuals and going round to patients bed by bed.
It is obvious that work of that nature is highly time-consuming. This gives emphasis to the point that the figure of 750 cannot always be taken as a suitable yardstick in regard to whether or not a full-time chaplain should be appointed. In addition, the chaplain is finding his work very time-consuming because of the way in which anxious relatives are sometimes only too thankful to have him to talk to at a time of great stress. That again, is a reason why we hope that, whenever possible, a room will be available for a chaplain, so that he may have a place where he can conveniently interview people of that kind.

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Another point that the Churches have frequently emphasised to the Department is the fact that the chaplain's work cannot be assessed simply by the number of patients, because such an assessment does not adequately take into account the chaplain's duty to the staff. I know that the Department, and the Ministry before them, have always said, "The figure is the yardstick and the work among the staff is taken for granted with the work among the patients." All right: I understand that. But the fact is that the staffs in our hospitals are now enormous; and, further, among our staffs, we have a great number of overseas nurses. I have served on the Birmingham Regional Hospital Board for many a year and, as I have said before now in your Lordships' House, in regard to some of the hospitals I do not know where we should be from the nursing point of view without that kind of devoted work that we receive from these people. Very often these nurses have not homes in these parts to go to. They need someone to help them, to care for them. I am not denying that the hospital authorities will do all they can. But, as was said just now by the noble Lord, Lord Grenfell, it is sometimes of help to these people if somebody who is not quite in the hospital hierarchy himself is there to assist. We are finding that our chaplains increasingly are having to give a great deal of time to work of this kind. So I would add my voice to this plea that the—I was going to say "almost sacred figure of 750" should not be taken in future as necessarily the yardstick.
Here I would pay tribute to my Roman Catholic and Free Church friends, who have said that they would support the efforts that we are making to see that whenever possible there is a full-time chaplain in the district general hospitals. These district general hospitals are enormous places, with enormous staffs, and the patients in them come from a wide area. For instance, in the hospital where I was visiting a patient only the other day, the local incumbent is part-time chaplain, and I have no reason to believe that he does the work, together with his curates, other than excellently. Nevertheless, as I looked at that colossal hospital I felt to myself, "Here, surely, is a place
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where there should be a full-time man." Of course I do not deny for one moment that for many a year to come the great majority of the work will be done by the part-time chaplains. Here, again, I would say how appreciative I am of the splendid work that is done by the parttimers—not merely those of the Church of England, but those of the Church of Rome and the Free Churches, as well. I would pay tribute to the partnership that exists between our Churches in this work because I have found it most exhilarating and encouraging. Therefore, as I have said, because a number of the hospitals will be smaller they will have part-time men; but what I would plead for is that we should not use this figure of 750 necessarily as always the yardstick.
I should like to be absolutely fair: and the fact is that the Department have not been quite so inflexible recently as used to be the case. I know of hospitals where the figure of 750 of a particular denomination is not reached and yet there is a full-time man. For that I am most grateful. But I also know of a case where there used to be a full-time man and where the auditors came along and said, "The number of patients has now gone down and the full-time man must cease." But that is the one case I know of as compared with several cases where the Department have allowed a full-time man, despite the fact that the figure of 750 was not reached.
I should be most ungrateful if I spoke this evening without paying a tribute to the way in which the Department have supported the chaplaincy work in the hospital service. Time and time again we have had really first-class support, and the fact that we have such a large training programme for our would-be chaplains and new chaplains is due entirely to the generous financial support which the Department have made available. What is particularly interesting is that the demand on the part of the clergy for these training courses is steadily increasing, and I think I am right in saying that we hardly ever have such a training course—and we normally have three a year—which is not over-subscribed. This shows that there is an increasing desire on the part of the clergy to equip themselves efficiently for this specialised work.

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I do not deny for one moment that the great majority of the clergy will be deployed in the parishes. Certainly in my job I am always trying to get as many as I can into the parishes. But there is also room for a very definite, specialised ministry, and what the Churches are most anxious to do is to see that we make our contribution as well as we possibly can; and if that figure of 750 were always insisted upon I should say there would be occasions when we should not be able to do all we hope to do.
So I am most grateful to those who have drawn our attention to this matter this evening and I greatly hope that when the Minister replies he will give careful consideration to the points that have been made.
LORD BALFOUR OF INCHRYE: Before the Minister replies may I plead for support for this Amendment? It seems to me to be eminently suitable in one way which so far has not been mentioned: it is a decentralisation from the centre of authority to the local area, which is something we wish to see extended. As regards the actual proposal, I happen to have had a close relative in a hospital for many months and I cannot pay sufficient tribute to the work which I saw the chaplain in that particular hospital doing. It is not only the spiritual guidance and care for the patients, but he himself—and one assumes that the general body is as good as this man—is a dedicated man who can do so much for all the patients; and whether they be Christians or whether they be Humanists does not matter. He cares for them in his Christian way, and I believe that we in this House cannot afford to let pass an opportunity to give those who know best—the area people—the authority to obtain the services of men such as I have just mentioned and as the right reverend Prelate has just been speaking about.
6.45 p.m.
VISCOUNT AMORY: How very fortunate we are in this House, for every debate I attend I am impressed with the wealth of experience that is brought to bear on our discussions. I think this Amendment is a case in point. My noble friend Lord Onslow raised the matter, which had been brought to his attention
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and which he thought was a strong case. My noble friend Lord Grenfell, with great knowledge of the administrative side of the National Health Service, has supported it, and there are many other noble Lords here to-night—and I can see several on the Benches opposite—who have immense experience of this kind of thing. Then we had rising from the Episcopal Benches the right reverend Prelate the Lord Bishop of Lichfield, who himself turns out to be a hospital chaplain. That is the kind of thing which always rejoices my heart when I attend debates in your Lordships' House.
We are all concerned to ensure that the human aspects of this service shall be as good as we can possibly make them. I am sure it is unnecessary for me to add a word to what has already been said, and that when my noble friend replies he will show his sympathy for the points that have been made and will do his very best to meet them.
BARONESS NORTHCHURCH: May I be allowed to support this Amendment as strongly as I can. It is quite unnecessary for me to say anything more in detail because I am in complete agreement with the speeches that have been made. I cannot say how glad I am that this point has been put forward, because I am quite sure that its acceptance is absolutely essential.
LORD DAVIES OF LEEK: From this side of the Committee may I support this Amendment. I happen to have experience, in a case of long illness of somebody very close to one—a wife—of what can be done in a hospital, and also I know that in one mental hospital that I used to visit and that my wife still goes to, the lonely and the sick are given the kind of succour that they need through a meeting with a chaplain there.
Finally, I was delighted to hear the right reverend Prelate speak about special training for this type of chaplaincy. I am quite sure that this kind of contribution can make great human progress inside a hospital. I am delighted because in this arid, material world that we seem to be living in at the moment here is an opportunity for introducing—without counting the cost, which will not be all that much—a human note which shows that other

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things beside medicine can cure a man's soul.
LORD PLATT: I do not want to detain the Committee but I seem to be the only person present who has spent his life, almost, working in a medical field in a hospital and I should like to support everything that has been said in favour of this Amendment and to vote strongly in its favour, unless the noble Lord in his reply says that all this can be done without putting it into the Bill. So I just have that qualification for speaking and I should like noble Lords to know how strongly I support it. I have perhaps one other qualification, and that is as the "statutory atheist".
LORD ABERDARE: I think it is indicative of the priorities of your Lordships' House that this should have been the first Amendment tabled on this particular Bill. It was the first on the Marshalled List when it was tabled by my noble friend. I have certainly listened to what has been said with the greatest sympathy and with respect, if I may say so. The right reverend Prelate is typical of the very best of the sort of cooperation that we have from the Churches —himself a hospital chaplain and now a member of a Regional Hospital Board. We are indeed most grateful for this cooperation and most anxious to see it continue into the new National Health Service.
I can only say on this particular Amendment, as I believe the noble Lord Lord Platt, thought I might, that it really is not necessary. Already under the Bill Area Health Authorities will have discretion to employ such officers as they determine—this is paragraph 10 of Schedule 1 —subject to any regulations that may be made by the Secretary of State. But I hasten to add that these regulations will relate to remuneration, qualifications, manner of appointment, and so forth, and will not restrict an Area Health Authority in their appointment of chaplains, either whole-time or part-time.
May I say how glad I was to hear my noble friend Lord Balfour of Inchrye mentioning the importance of decentralisation in these matters. I am sure it is right that the responsibility should lie with the Area Health Authority. But as
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I say, they have it under the Bill already, and there are reasons why it is not very desirable to mention just one single category of staff whom they have the discretion to employ. It would certainly be inconceivable to list them all and, therefore, I should like to suggest to my noble friends that after I have spoken they might consider withdrawing this particular Amendment.
Although the discretion will lie with Area Health Authorities, we think it right that the Department should issue revised guidance for the new National Health Service and we are at the moment in consultation with the Churches on what that guidance should be. We have no desire at all to interfere centrally with the Area Health Authorities' freedom of appointment, but there are several reasons why we think it right that there should continue to be guidance. First of all, I believe that in many hospitals there is considerable advantage in part-time appointments simply because the chaplain will then be working both in the hospital and in the community. That is one of the aspects of the Bill that is very prominent. One of the objects for the Bill is to bring together hospital treatment and treatment in the community and in people's homes, and it would seem that there might well be advantages that chaplains should work both in the institution and in the community. The right reverend Prelate spoke of the district general hospitals and the need for a full-time chaplain there. That may be so. Equally, it might be more appropriate to appoint more than one part-time chaplain, should they be available, simply for the reason I have given, that the link with the community is very important to people who are coming and going from hospital.
The second reason we believe some guidance is useful is the fact that appointments of this sort have certain manpower implications for the Churches. I do not know what the right reverend Prelate thinks about this, but it could be undesirable if there were too many whole-time chaplains taken up with hospital work in an area where chaplains generally were short in the community. I repeat, in the last resort it will be for the employing authority to decide, after consulting their appropriate Church authority, whether

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there are circumstances which justify the appointment of a whole-time chaplain for fewer than the number of patients which may be in the advice that is given.
May I just say a word to my noble friend Lord Onslow on the subject of the Royal Marsden Hospital? I have the greatest sympathy with that particular case and it was one on which the Department were consulted. As my noble friend knows, they gave their view that, even taking into account the very special nature of this hospital, there was some difficulty in advising the Marsden to appoint a whole-time chaplain. The guideline of 750, as the right reverend Prelate has said, has often been breached, but in this case, I think I am right in saying, the situation was that there were about 150 patients of the Anglican faith; and one has to ask oneself whether it is right to employ one chaplain whole time to look after the needs of an average of about 150 patients. Is this in fact the best use of a chaplain's available time? I should not like to be dogmatic about it because I recognise, as my noble friend does, the very special situation at the Royal Marsden. But the advice we gave, after careful consideration, was that we thought that 150 was a bit on the low side. My noble friend has spoken to me about this and I shall certainly continue to talk to him about it, if I can be of help. I hope that, with my assurance that the powers lie with the Area Health Authority; with the caveat that we shall be issuing central guidance and that we are in consultation with the Churches on this, and that it would be rather awkward to mention chaplains when there are many other categories of staff whom Area Heath Authorities will be employing, that my noble friends will feel able to withdraw the Amendment.
LORD GRENFELL: Before we cease this argument, I believe I heard the Minister say that the Department would be giving advice on numbers. If they are giving advice on numbers, and the figure goes back to, or is incorporated at, 750, we shall be back where we started. I wonder whether the Minister would give an assurance that, if it is a question of numbers, the number will never be as high
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as that and that consideration will be given to the hospital rather than to the number of patients. Even if it is only the hospital, the number of patients and the staff, that would be of some help.
LORD ABERDARE: I did say that this revised guidance was under consideration with the Church authorities. I should not like to commit myself on exactly what the advised number will be. All I would say is that, as the right reverend Prelate has said, this number has been breached on occasions recently and that in future it will be a case for the Area Health Authority to consider very carefully the particular needs of the hospital in mind against the norm which we should hope to discuss and agree with the Church authorities.
LORD BALFOUR OF INCHRYE: Would the Minister make clear one small point? He suggested that this Amendment was unnecessary because powers already exist, and he quoted the word "officers". The point I should like to make is that some boards of governors, possibly even some Area Boards, might interpret the word "officers" in a narrow form and not realise that it does include chaplains. Would the Minister take steps to make quite clear, if he does not want the word "chaplain" put into the Bill, that the word "officers" would include chaplains within its terms?
LORD ABERDARE: Yes, I certainly undertake to make that quite clear.
THE EARL OF ONSLOW: I should like to thank everybody who has spoken far better than I, and with far greater knowledge than I possess, in support of this Amendment. I would also thank the Minister very much, because I have been "bending his ear" on and off for the past six weeks and he has been very sympathetic. I believe that my noble friend Lord Grenfell and myself are happy with his reply, and I therefore ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 46 agreed to.
Clauses 47 to 51 agreed to.
Clause 52 [Acquisition and use of land and other property]:
7.0 p.m.
LORD BELSTEAD LORD BELSTEAD moved Amendment No. 123A:
Page 44, line 36, at end insert—
("(1A) Section 128 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1971 (which among other things provides that where a Minister acquires consecrated land or land comprised in a burial ground compulsorily he may, subject to the safeguards provided by that section, use the land for the purpose for which he acquired it notwithstanding any obligation or restriction imposed by ecclesiastical law or anything in any enactment relating to burial grounds) shall apply to consecrated land and land comprised in a burial ground within the meaning of that section which is held by the Secretary of State for any of the purposes of the health service and has not been acquired by him as mentioned in subsection (1) of that section as if the land had been so acquired for those purposes.")
The noble Lord said: Under Section 128 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1971, if the Secretary of State acquires compulsorily any consecrated land or land comprised in a burial ground he is empowered to use that land for any purpose for which he acquired the land, subject to the requirements of any regulations made under that Act. The Amendment to Clause 52 would extend the Secretary of State's power under Section 128 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1971 to all land held by him (including special hospital land) for any purpose of the Health Service as defined by this Bill. The powers currently conferred by Section 128 are not available to the Secretary of State in respect of land vested in him under Statute, which will vest in him by virtue of this Bill or which he acquires by agreement.
Some hospitals vested in the Secretary of State include burial grounds, and there are at present serious legal obstacles to development of this land for hospital or other Health Services purposes. The one real difficulty, and the one which I am submitting to the Committee this evening, is that it is contrary to Section 3 of the Disused Burial Grounds Act 1884, as amended, to put a secular building on a disused burial ground. It is possible to obtain exemption from this section by special Act of Parliament, but such a course would involve the Hybrid Bill procedure. This would mean a Private Bill introduced by the Department which has to go through all the stages of a public
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one. I should add that the use of powers under Section 128 is subject to regulations currently in force which prescribe the conditions governing the use of land containing a place of worship or used as a burial ground. The regulations also include conditions relating to the removal and reinterment of human remains and the disposal of memorials and registers. These regulations will apply to the more comprehensive powers under Section 128 sought by this Amendment. I beg to move.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 52, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 53 [General ancillary provisions]:
LORD ABERDARE LORD ABERDARE moved Amendment No. 123B:
Page 44, line 42, at beginning insert—
("(1) If the Secretary of State considers that by reason of an emergency it is necessary, in order to ensure that a service falling to be provided in pursuance of the Health Service Acts is provided, to direct that during a period specified in the directions a function conferred on any body or person by virtue of those Acts shall to the exclusion of or concurrently with that body or person be performed by another body or person, he may give directions accordingly and it shall be the duty of the bodies or persons in question to comply with the directions; and the powers conferred on the Secretary of State by this subsection are in addition to any other powers exercisable by him.")
The noble Lord said: The subsection which this Amendment seeks to add to Clause 53 would empower the Secretary of State to take appropriate action in an emergency to secure the effective continuance of health services. It would enable him to direct that the function of any body or person under the Health Service Acts should be performed by any other body or person during the period of the emergency. The only significant difference from the comparable power provided in Section 54 of the National Health Service (Scotland) Act is that the Secretary of State would have the option to direct that the functions in question should be performed by one person or body to the exclusion of the person or body normally performing such functions or should be so performed in parallel by both, so that where, for some reason such as a natural disaster destroying premises, the functions were insufficiently performed, they might be supplemented

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without there being an obligation for complete substitution.
This provision would fill a gap in the Secretary of State's present powers. Under the present Act he has power, after inquiry, to declare a Health Service body to be in default and to authorise any person to act in its place until a new body is appointed; but this is a blunder-buss weapon which he would not wish to use to meet a purely temporary difficulty. The new provision would enable the Secretary of State to make arrangements for dealing with such a situation of difficulty in the future and for discontinuing any such arrangements, without resort to the use of his default powers. This would be a very exceptional use of these powers, but it could be important in a major civil emergency or some similar difficulty. I beg to move.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD ABERDARE: This Amendment is to correct a drafting mistake. The word "appointment" should be "apportionment". I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 45, line 16, leave out ("appointment") and insert ("apportionment"). —(Lord Aberdare.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 53, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 54 [Interpretation etc.]:
LORD ABERDARE: This is consequential on Amendment No. 100B. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 46, line 8, at end insert (""preserved Board" has the meaning assigned to it by section 15(6) of this Act;").—(Lord Aberdare.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 54, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 55 [Orders and regulations etc.]:
LORD BELSTEAD LORD BELSTEAD moved Amendment No. 125:
Page 46, line 38, leave out ("sections 14(2), 53 and 57(2)") and insert ("section 14(2) or 53 of this Act or orders appointing a day in pursuance").
The noble Lord said: In the Bill there are many references to "the appointed
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day "which is defined in Clause 54(1) as being
"such day as the Secretary of State may by order appoint."
Under Clause 55(1), as drafted, these orders are subject to the Negative Resolution procedure, whereas "appointed day orders" under Clause 57(2) are not. The purpose of this Amendment is to provide that both types of appointed day order, although having to be laid before Parliament after being made, are not subject to Negative Resolution procedure. I beg to move.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD BELSTEAD: This is consequential on Amendment No. 106C. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 46, line 44, leave out ("and 23(2)") and insert (", 23(2) and 24(2)").—(Lord Belstead.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 55, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 56 agreed to.
Schedule 4 [Minor and consequential amendments of enactments]:
LORD ABERDARE: This is a drafting Amendment to correct a technical defect in the consequential Amendment made by paragraph 21 to Section 35 of the 1946 Act. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 59, line 32, leave out from ("proviso") to end of line 36 and insert ("after the word "Council" there shall be inserted the words "or Area Health Authority").—(Lord Aberdare.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD ABERDARE: This is a drafting Amendment. I will go into some detail if noble Lords wish, but it is purely a matter of drafting. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 61, line 11, leave out ("Board").—(Lord Aberdare.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD ABERDARE LORD ABERDARE moved Amendment No. 126:
Page 63, line 24, at end insert—
("40A. In section 80(1) of that Act (interpretation), in the definition of "medicine", for

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the words "includes any prescribed chemical re-agent" there shall be substituted the words "includes such chemical re-agents as are included in a list for the time being approved by the Secretary of State for the purposes of section 40(1) of this Act.")
The noble Lord said: The definition of "medicine" in Section 80(1) of the 1947 Act includes "any prescribed chemical reagent". The list of chemical reagents which may be prescribed is sot out in Part II of Schedule 3 to the National Health Services (General Medical and Pharmaceutical Services) (Scotland) Regulations 1966 as amended by the Regulations of 1971. This Amendment simplifies the procedure by providing for chemical reagents which may be dispensed to be set out in a list approved by the Secretary of State for that purpose, so that changes in the list made in consultation with representatives of the medical and pharmaceutical professions can be implemented without awaiting amendment of the Regulations. It follows the pattern of paragraph 40 of Schedule 4, which provides that appliances which can be supplied by pharmacists should no longer need to be prescribed by Regulations but may be included in a list approved by the Secretary of State. I beg to move.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
7.10 p.m.
LORD ABERDARE LORD ABERDARE moved Amendment No. 126A:
Page 65, line 21, at end insert—
("(1A) In subsection (2) of that section, for the words "under the said Part 11" there shall be substituted the words ",otherwise than under Part IV of the said Act of 1946,".")
The noble Lord said: I beg to move Amendment No. 126A, and perhaps I may also speak to Amendment No. 129B. These Amendments involve no change of policy, but by correcting a technical drafting defect maintain the present position under the National Health Service Act 1951, that no charge may be made in respect of a dental or optical appliance supplied by a hospital to a patient for the time being resident in a hospital.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD ABERDARE: I beg to move Amendment No. 126B, which is consequential on Amendment No. 116A.
Amendment moved—
Page 74, line 39, leave our paragraph 97. —(Lord Aberdare.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD ABERDARE LORD ABERDARE moved Amendment No. 126C:
Page 77, line 34, leave out from beginning to end of line 46 and insert—
("114. —(1) In section 48 of that Act (which provides for the reporting of cases of notifiable diseases and food poisoning to local authorities), for subsection (2) there shall be substituted the following subsection—
(2) The officer who receives the certificate aforesaid shall, on the day of its receipt (if possible) and in any case within forty-eight hours after its receipt, send a copy of the certificate—

(a) to the Area Health Authority within whose area are situate the premises whose address is specified in the certificate by virtue of paragraph (a) of the foregoing subsection; and

(b) if the certificate is given with respect to a patient in a hospital who came there from premises outside the district of the local authority within whose district the hospital is situate and the certificate states that the patient did not contract the disease or the poisoning in the hospital—

(i) to the proper officer for the district within which the premises from which the patient came are situate, and

(ii) to the Area Health Authority for the area in which those premises are situate if that Authority is not responsible for the administration of the hospital, and

(iii) to the proper officer of the relevant port health authority constituted in pursuance of section 2 of the Public Health Act 1936 if those premises were a ship or hovercraft situate within the port health district for which that authority is constituted.")

The noble Lord said: I beg to move Amendment 126C. Paragraph 114 of Schedule 4 to the Bill makes a number of minor and consequential amendments to Section 48(2) of the Health Services and Public Health Act 1968, which relates to the reporting of cases of notifiable diseases and food poisoning. However, Section 48(2) did not provide for notification of the port health authority where the premises from which the patient comes is a vessel. This Amendment remedies the omission. The opportunity has also been taken to redraft the subsection and to amend the references to "medical officer of health" to "proper offices", which is the appropriate term under the Local Government Act 1972.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD ABERDARE LORD ABERDARE moved Amendment No. 126D:
Page 77, line 47, at end insert—
("114A. In section 62(1) of that Act (which provides for references to vessels in the Public Health Act 1936 and references to ships in the Food and Drugs Act 1955 to include references to hover vehicles), for the words from "hover vehicles" to "air" there shall be substituted the words "hovercraft within the meaning of the Hovercraft Act 1968".")
The noble Lord said: I beg to move Amendment No. 126D. Section 62(1) of the Health Service and Public Health Act 1968 includes reference to "hover vehicles", which are defined as "vehicles designed to be supported on a cushion of air". The purpose of this Amendment is to bring Section 62(1) into line with the Hovercraft Act 1968, by replacing the words "hover vehicles" by "hovercraft, which are defined in Section 4 of that Act.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
On Question, Whether Schedule 4, as amended, shall be a Schedule to the Bill?
7.15 p.m.
BARONESS SEROTA: I hesitate to intervene as the Committee is now making such rapid progress towards the end of a very long Marshalled List, but I should like to ask the noble Lord a question about paragraph 124 of the Schedule, which amends the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act, 1970. I was a little concerned to read this. The noble Lord may recall the long debates that we had on this particular area of concern during the passing of that piece of legislation. I well recall the noble Baroness, Lady Masham of Ilton, speaking on this question of the need to separate younger patients from older patients in our hospitals. As I read it, this particular paragraph in Schedule 4 will transfer from the present Regional Boards to the Secretary of State the responsibility for securing, so far as is practicable, that younger patients are separated from older patients in hospital. I am not quite sure how the Secretary of State would do this. Presumably he would do it through circulars and exhortation. I personally should have thought that the Area Health Authorities, which are to be the prime operational units for providing health services, might be more appropriate—or possibly the Regional Boards.
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I should be grateful if the noble Lord could tell us of the Government's thinking behind this paragraph, and most particularly how he thinks the Secretary of State is going to see that, so far as is possible, younger patients are separated from older ones in the hospitals up and down the country.
LORD ABERDARE: There is nothing sinister about this matter. It is simply that references to the previous Regional Hospital Boards and Boards of Governors had to be superseded by some new words, and it was thought convenient to leave this to the Secretary of State (who has the ultimate authority in the National Health Service), who will no doubt exert his authority through the new Regional Health Authority. In turn they will lay the responsibility on the Area Health Authority, who are the executive bodies concerned with the hospitals. I can assure the noble Baroness that the Secretary of State himself is just as determined to see that, so far as is practicable, the older and the younger patients are kept apart. I would claim that we have had a pretty good record in our building programme for the younger chronic sick. This is basically a matter of words. There will be no diminution of effort in the individual hospitals to achieve the right end, but it will come down the line of authority from the Secretary of State. I hope that that answer is satisfactory.
BARONESS SEROTA: I was delighted to hear the last sentence of the noble Lord's reply, namely, that pressure will continue to be exerted to achieve the objectives which we all have very much at heart. I find the trail a very long one, from the Secretary of State to the Regional Board and then to the Area Health Authority, and then no doubt from the Area Health Authority in due course to the district management team. This is a matter that has to be arranged locally, although, of course, it is subject to building programmes, both major and minor. I make the point now, and perhaps the noble Lord would be prepared to consider it.
The duties of the Secretary of State under this Bill are really enormous. I should have thought that this was one of the burdens that could have come off his shoulders and been administered locally

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in the area, or possibly by the region, rather than in the way suggested by the Bill. I have made the point. I know that in a sense it is a minor one, particularly in the context of this very long Schedule, but it is a matter of great concern to many people, and I hope that the noble Lord will accept that I have raised it to-night in that spirit.
Schedule 4, as amended, agreed to.
Schedule 5 [Repeals]:
LORD ABERDARE: I should like to move Amendments Nos. 128 and 129 together. These Amendments rectify an incorrect description of the enactment which is subject to partial repeal.
Amendments moved—
Page 83, line 4, leave out ("Registration of"),
Page 83, line 5, after ("Deaths") insert ("Registration").—(Lord Aberdare.)
On Question, Amendments agreed to.
LORD ABERDARE: I beg to move Amendment No. 129A, which is consequential on No. 116A.
Amendment moved—
Page 83, line 8, column 3, leave out ("193") and insert ("194"). —(Lord Aberdare.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD ABERDARE: Amendment No. 129B is consequential on Amendment No. 126A. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 85, column 3, leave out lines 24 and 25. —(Lord Aberdare.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD ABERDARE LORD ABERDARE moved Amendment No. 129C:
Page 86, column 3, leave out lines 24 to 27.
The noble Lord said: This is a minor tidying-up Amendment, designed to ensure that there is no change of substance in the arrangements for prosecuting nursing and residential homes, other than that which follows naturally from the transfer of responsibility for registering the former from local authorities to the Secretary of State. I beg to move.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD ABERDARE: This Amendment is consequential on the Amendment to Schedule 4, paragraph 114 of the Bill;
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that is, Amendment No. 126C. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 88, line 6, leave out from ("48") to end of line 9. —(Lord Aberdare.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Schedule 5, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 57 [Citation, commencement and extent]:
LORD ABERDARE: This Amendment is consequential on Amendment No. 126, and provides that paragraph 40A of Schedule 4 shall apply to Scotland. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 48, line 29, after ("40,") insert ("40A,"). —(Lord Aberdare.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 57, as amended, agreed to.
House resumed: Bill reported, with the Amendments.

RATES REBATES (LIMITS OF INCOME) ORDER 1973
7.23 p.m.
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON rose to move, That the Draft Rate Rebates (Limits of Income) Order 1973, laid before the House on December 19, be approved. The noble Lord said: My Lords, in moving this Order, I should like to speak also on the Draft Rate Rebates (Limits of Income) (Scotland) Order 1973, which I propose to move immediately afterwards. The purpose of these draft Orders, which I commend to the House, is to maintain broadly the coverage of the rate rebate scheme which was introduced in 1966. It is just one year since the House last debated a Rate Rebate (Limits of Income) Order. The need for the 1973 Orders stems directly from the decision of my right honourable friend, the Secretary of State for Social Services, to have annual upratings of National Insurance retirement pensions and other social security benefits—an improvement in the social security system of immense importance to many people in this country. The object of the rate rebate scheme is, as the House knows, to help those with low incomes, whose rates are

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not already paid in full by the Supplementary Benefits Commission, to pay the rates on their homes. Rate rebates are granted to those whose gross income falls within certain limits.
I will explain how the scheme works. Under the scheme the ratepayer has to pay the first £3·75 of his half-yearly rate bill. Provided his gross income does not exceed prescribed limits, the ratepayer is entitled to a rebate equal to two-thirds of the difference between the £3·75 I have just mentioned and his half-yearly rate bill. At present, the prescribed income limits are £12·00 a week for a single person and £14·75 for a married couple. Those income limits are increased by £2·50 a week for each dependent child. If the House approves the draft Orders, these limits will be increased to £13·50 a week for a single person and £16·50 a week for a married couple. The addition for each dependent child will go up to £2·75 a week.
In England and Wales entitlement to rebate in the half-yearly rate periods beginning in April and October is based on gross income in the previous periods July to December and January to June respectively. This means, for example, that the rebates payable from April, 1973, will be based on gross income in the period July to December, 1972. In Scotland, the rating year begins somewhat later and the six-monthly income assessment periods begin in April and October. Thus the increase in social security benefits from last October will be matched by an increase in income limits bearing on rate rebate for the period concerned. This is why nobody has yet lost as a result of last October's increase in pensions. I think that that explanation may be sufficient, but if the noble Lord, Lord Garnsworthy, or any other noble Lord wants further details I shall be happy to give them. Needless to say, I commend these Orders to your Lordships. My Lords, I beg to move.
Moved, That the Draft Rate Rebates (Limits of Income) Order 1973, laid before the House on December 19, be approved.—(Lord Mowbray and Stourton.)
7.28 p.m.
LORD GARNSWORTHY: My Lords, the House will be very grateful to the
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noble Lord for the explanation which he has given. He has reminded the House that a year ago we considered the very same matter, and he has said, quite rightly, that it has been agreed that there will be an annual review, which has proved very necessary. The inflationary spiral has risen at such a rate that it would have been quite shocking if there had been no review of the rate rebates scheme. I am wondering what effect the new valuations will have on claiming rate rebates. If the Press of last Thursday (I think it was) were correct, many tenants living in council houses are in for a very lively and unpleasant shock, and it may well be that there will be a considerable increase in the number of people applying for relief under this rate rebates scheme. Accepting the necessity for a rate rebates scheme in the existing inflationary situation, but regretting that the increase is based on earlier income and not on present income, it would be churlish to do other than give a welcome to these Orders. But one hopes that the Government, having been persuaded to abolish policies which they opposed at the last Election and fought desperately to resist, and now being compelled, as it were against their wishes, to carry out those policies, may be a little more successful in containing this inflationary pressure which bears so heavily on those with the smallest incomes.
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Garnsworthy, for the welcome which he has given to these Orders. The noble Lord chided the Government, and I should just like to say that, in theory, the new rating valuations should not necessarily mean that councils will have to increase their demands. If a council needed £1 million before—
LORD GARNSWORTHY: My Lords, I think the noble Lord has missed the point. It is the incidence of rating which matters, and it will fall more heavily on the domestic ratepayer, and much more heavily on the council house tenant, than has heretofore been the case, if the figures in last week's Press are anywhere near correct.
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: Yes, my Lords; I take the noble Lord's point. I think we shall have to wait and see whether these gloomy tidings are borne out by the facts. For myself, I do not think they will be. There is one other point I should like to make. Rebates are not of themselves a means of giving social benefits; they are a means of moderating a tax. Of course, if the rates were to be greater, so the Government's portion would be greater still. My Lords, I think I have probably said enough, and with that I again commend this Order to your Lordships.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

RATE REBATES (LIMITS OF INCOME) (SCOTLAND) ORDER 1973
7.30 p.m.
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: My Lords, I beg to move that this Order be approved.
Moved, That the Draft Rate Rebates (Limits of Income) (Scotland) Order 1973, laid before the House on December 21, be approved. —(Lord Mowbray and Stourton.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.