Lords Sitting of 14 March 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 Rochester.

SMOKING IN PLACES OF PUBLIC ENTERTAINMENT
LORD AMULREE: 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, now that the United Kingdom is a member of the E.E.C., they will encourage local authorities to prohibit smoking in cinemas and other places of entertainment in their area as is done in the other countries of the Community.
THE MINISTER OF STATE, DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND SOCIAL SECURITY (LORD ABERDARE): My Lords, I understand that not all other countries in the E.E.C. have a ban on smoking in cinemas, and we do not believe that compulsion would be appropriate in this country. Some cinemas now provide special accommodation for nonsmokers. Smoking in the auditorium is already prohibited by the management in virtually all theatres.
LORD AMULREE: My Lords, I should like to thank the noble Lord for his reply, and I stand corrected in the mistake I made about compulsion in the European Economic Community. Does not the noble Lord think that it would be a great help to those who want to discourage the use of tobacco, particularly in the form of cigarettes, if some kind of ban could be placed upon its use in cinemas?
LORD ABERDARE: My Lords, I think that this is a matter much better left to the management. What is happening already is that the pressure of non-smokers is being felt, and I am glad to say that the Rank Organisation has now set aside accommodation for non-smokers in all
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their cinemas. I believe that that is the way we should proceed.
BARONESS SEROTA: My Lords, can the noble Lord tell us why it is not offensive for non-smoking to be made compulsory in theatres while it is in cinemas?
LORD ABERDARE: My Lords, that is a decision that has been made by the management and the only reason I can suggest to the noble Baroness is that possibly the actors on the stage prefer not to have smoke drifting into their eyes.
BARONESS BACON: My Lords, if, as the noble Lord says, seats are set aside for non-smokers in cinemas, can he enlighten me as to how they manage to keep the smoke above the heads of the smokers?
LORD ABERDARE: My Lords, that is a matter for the Rank Organisation.
BARONESS BURTON OF COVENTRY: My Lords, may I ask the Minister whether he feels that his Department could help in this particular matter? Would he agree with me that it seems that although people think it is very fussy and wrong for non-smokers to object to the smell of smoke, it is quite all right for smokers to inflict that smell on others? And may I ask him, as one who has recently been to one of these Rank cinemas, if he could, if not exert pressure, at least commend them further for what they have done?
LORD ABERDARE: My Lords, as a non-smoker, I am on the side of those who object to smoke in their eyes. It is because T commend what the Rank Organisation is doing that I specifically mentioned them this afternoon.
LORD DERWENT: My Lords, does my noble friend realise that if smoking was banned in all cinemas and theatres it would be of great help to many of us who smoke too much?
LORD WYNNE-JONES: My Lords, is it not necessary to have a smoke screen to hide the operations of the Common Market?
LORD SLATER: My Lords, every Minister of Health at some time or other has been faced with this particular question and my noble friend Lady Burton

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of Coventry was one of the forerunners in regard to the non-smoking campaign so far as British Railways are concerned who have non-smoking compartments. On the other hand, statements have been made by the Chancellor of the Exchequer in another place that the tax imposed on cigarettes or tobacco makes a great contribution towards financing the education facilities in this country and also the National Health Service.
LORD ABERDARE: My Lords, I am interested to hear what the noble Lord has said, but I am afraid that he is going very wide of the original Question.
LORD FERRIER: My Lords, as a pipe smoker who would not dream of smoking a pipe in a cinema, may I ask my noble friend whether he is aware that in a cinema the smell of cigarette smoke is not only offensive but most distracting to a pipe smoker?
LORD ABERDARE: My Lords, I was not aware of that point, but I am very interested to hear it.
LORD BLYTON: My Lords, is the Minister aware that I believe that by our entry into the E.E.C. we have given over our birthright? Do not carry it too far and stop us having our smoke.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, to return to the Minister's first Answer, may I ask whether he could explain why he approves of people in other countries in the Common Market being protected from contracting cancer of the lung, but does not approve of this happening in this country?
LORD ABERDARE: My Lords, I do not think that that was the gist of my first Answer. I certainly said nothing about approving what other countries in the E.E.C. did; I merely stated that not all of them ban smoking. Italy and Ireland have no ban on smoking and the other countries vary. In fact, such banning as there was in other European countries was mainly for fire precaution reasons and not on the grounds of health.
THE EARL OF CORK AND ORRERY: My Lords, would my noble friend care for a pinch of snuff?
LORD GAINFORD: My Lords, may I ask my noble friend the Minister
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whether he is aware that during the last months of the London County Council and the earliest months of the Greater London Council, recommendations were made for banning smoking in cinemas in the London area in spite of the excellent fire precautions?
LORD ABERDARE: Yes, my Lords. I am very grateful to my noble friend for making that point.
LORD MAELOR: My Lords, could I persuade the Minister, as a non-smoker, that half the pleasure in sitting in a cinema is derived from having a smoke at the same time?
LORD ABERDARE: My Lords, it may be for the smokers, but it is not always for the non-smokers.

"BLACK SEPTEMBER "GROUPS: PRECAUTIONS IN BRITAIN
2.43 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 whether, in view of the cruelly planned cold blooded murders committed by the "Black September" organisation at Khartoum, Munich and elsewhere, they will cause inquiries to be made as to which organisations or groups, directly or indirectly connected with the "Black September" movement, already have branches or are contemplating opening such branches in this country; and whether they will consider favourably the proposal of President Nixon that steps should be taken internationally without delay to deal with the dangerous escalation of terrorism.
THE MINISTER OF STATE, FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH OFFICE (BARONESS TWEEDSMUIR OF BELHELVIE): My Lords, we are not aware of any organisations or groups like "Black September" which have branches in this country or which are at present considering opening such branches. Her Majesty's Government strongly support President Nixon's call for urgent international action to deal with the growing problem of terrorism.
LORD JANNER: My Lords, while thanking the noble Baroness for the second part of her reply, may I ask whether she is aware that the powerhouse of the terrible incident which occurred at Khartoum the other day was the Al Fatah movement, which has a branch in this country; and would she keep in mind that the Palestine Liberation Organisation is also connected and was referred to in so far as the atrocity that occurred in Khartoum was concerned? Will she see that these organisations are carefully watched, because if—as I believe to be the case and as the Sunday Times made very clear—the Al Fatah organisation which has diplomatic immunity in Khartoum, used that very office for the purpose of arranging this affair, is it not possible that this kind of thing is going on behind the scenes here and in other countries?
BARONESS TWEEDSMUIR OF BELHELVIE: My Lords, we have made it very clear that we condemn the senseless act of terrorism in Khartoum; but, as F said in my original reply, we have no knowledge of any branch office of Al Fatah being set up in this country. I think the noble Lord will remember from an earlier Answer to a Question that there is nothing to prevent an office from being established, but that we have the power to expel an alien whom we have reason to believe is connected with any terrorist organisation.
LORD JANNER: My Lords, with the greatest respect, I hope the noble Baroness will forgive my asking a further question. We now know it as a fact that the Al Fatah was the movement which was the powerhouse of the whole incident, and it is known that the person concerned went back to Libya. Have we not to be extremely careful that nothing is being carried on here by groups who are attached to the Al Fatah movement and to the Palestine Liberation Organisation?
BARONESS TWEEDSMUIR OF BELHELVIE: Yes, my Lords, but the noble Lord will understand that his Question relates to the situation in this country and not to the situation in the Sudan. As I said earlier, we have powers to deport any person whom we have reason to believe might be connected with a terrorist movement.
LORD BARNBY: My Lords, while strongly supporting and welcoming the statement of the noble Baroness of the determination to suppress terrorism, could she indicate any possibility of defining the difference between terrorism and "freedom fighters". Is it not possible that the wrong term might be applied in the absence of an assurance that both terms are regarded as equally reprehensible?
BARONESS TWEEDSMUIR OF BELHELVIE: My Lords, I think my noble friend, with great ingenuity, is referring once again to the Question he raised yesterday about the difference between a liberation movement and a terrorist organisation. We have sought at the United Nations, with our European partners, to put forward a resolution which condemned international terrorism and called for an International Law Commission to draft a Convention on measures to prevent terrorism. That draft resolution unfortunately never came to the vote.
LORD BURNTWOOD: My Lords, may I ask the noble Baroness, with reference to her answer just now to the effect that if there was any reason to believe that any of these organisations or their members were acting illegally in this country action would be taken to expel them, whether the Government take an initiative in making inquiries, or do they wait for an incident?
BARONESS TWEEDSMUIR OF BELHELVIE: No, my Lords, so far as possible very careful watch is kept in this country on anyone who is suspected of any such ulterior motive.

RICKETS IN CHILDREN
2.48 p.m.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: 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 action they propose to take to combat the increasing incidence of rickets in children.
LORD ABERDARE: My Lords, the whole question of rickets was last extensively reviewed in 1969 when the conclusion was reached that there was no evidence of any important incidence of sub-clinical vitamin D deficiency. Recent reports of overt rickets in the Asian population and of alleged "biochemical rickets", that is, without clinical signs, in the indigenous population of one city are being considered by an expert panel of the Committee on Medical Aspects of Food Policy, and it is too early to say what, if any, action is needed.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, in view of one of the latest reports of Dr. Cooke in Birmingham and Stoke-on-Trent, and his subsequent statement that probably therefore there is rickets in nearly every school in the country, does not the noble Lord think we are wasting time, and should we not now restore the free milk to the children before their growth is stunted?
LORD ABERDARE: My Lords, the noble Baroness is quoting evidence of Dr. Cooke. It is his evidence that is going to be examined by this expert panel so as to establish what the problem is. On the second part of the noble Baroness's question, I would say that milk is not a rich source of vitamin D and what she really wants to recommend is cod liver oil.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, the noble Lord must not try to cross swords with me on these subjects; I was talking about them before he was conceived. Is he not aware of this simple fact, that milk is one of the richest sources of calcium, and that one of the things these children need to-day is more calcium? The noble Lord says he is examining Dr. Cooke's report, and of course the Government must examine it, because it is most important; but I am saying they are losing time. Let the children have their milk back, and do not be so mean.
LORD ABERDARE: My Lords, the noble Baroness may have been talking about these matters before I was conceived, but that does not mean to say that she was right. Certainly she cannot maintain that because free school milk has been stopped that has had such a sudden effect as she is alleging. This
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matter, and the whole nutritional aspect of schoolchildren and their diet, is being studied by the Committee on Medical Aspects of Food Policy, and this seems to me to be the right way to proceed.
BARONESS SEROTA: My Lords, would the noble Lord say when he thinks that it will be possible to publish the results of the survey, which he promised the House would be carried out following the Government's decision to abolish the supply of free school milk for children between the ages of seven and eleven?
LORD ABERDARE: My Lords, I really do not think that I need answer that question. It is completely different from the one on the Order Paper. The fact is that the health of schoolchildren is being kept under continuous study by a special panel of the Committee on Medical Aspects of Food Policy.
LORD MAYBRAY-KING: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that we thought we had abolished rickets, which is a poverty disease? If it is emerging now, then it is the duty of Her Majesty's Government to give very serious consideration to ways of getting rid of it.
LORD ABERDARE: My Lords, I accept that, and this is why we are asking the special panel particularly to look at this matter. There is some evidence that there may be an increased incidence among the Asian population, for various environmental reasons; but these are the problems we are looking into.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, if there has been a promise by the Government to publish the results of this survey, would not the noble Lord wish to reconsider his reply that this question was not relevant, because it seems to me to be precisely related to the Question?
LORD ABERDARE: My Lords, we are discussing the incidence of rickets, and I have already explained that milk is not rich in vitamin D. Therefore, this point lies quite outside the Question.
LORD DOUGLASS OF CLEVELAND: My Lords, is the Minister suggesting that there should be a free issue of cod liver oil instead of milk?
VISCOUNT ST. DAVIDS: My Lords, is the noble Lord saying that not only is my noble friend wrong, but also that Sir Winston Churchill was wrong when he said that the finest investment the

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country could make was to give milk to the children?
LORD ABERDARE: No, my Lords, that is a completely different question. The fact of the matter is that nowadays many more people can afford to give their children milk without free supplies.
BARONESS LLEWELYN-DAVIES of HASTOE: My Lords, has the noble Lord ever tried to persuade a child to take cod liver oil?
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, may I ask this one simple question: Is not the noble Lord aware that in this century everybody has recognised that the poor are so often much smaller than the better off because they have been denied adequate food, and particularly milk? This is a fact. I am asking the noble Lord not to waste any more time but to feed the children and solve this problem.
LORD ABERDARE: My Lords, I do not think that that arises on the Question of the noble Baroness about rickets.

RHODESIA: DETENTION OF MR. NIESEWAND
BARONESS LLEWELYN-DAVIES OF HASTOE: 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 urgently represent to the Rhodesian authorities the very serious concern felt in this country over the detention of Mr. Niesewand, the B.B.C. and Guardian correspondent in Rhodesia, and his trial to be held in secret on March 19.
BARONESS TWEEDSMUIR OF BELHELVIE: My Lords, as I made clear to the House on February 28, we drew urgently to the Rhodesian authorities' attention the concern felt in this country about Mr. Niesewand. I understand that his detention is now being considered by the Judicial Review Tribunal. Meanwhile, charges have been preferred against him for an alleged offence under the Official Secrets Act. His lawyer has reserved the right to apply for an open trial.
BARONESS LLEWELYN-DAVIES OF HASTOE: My Lords, may I thank the noble Baroness for her sympathetic reply, and ask her to accept that we understand the concern the Government feel. But may I ask her whether she is aware that that appeal to the tribunal to which she has referred has been disallowed by the Minister of Law and Order to-day, and that it has been postponed doubtless until after the secret trial to be held next Monday? Can she say whether the Government realise that this is the first of the trials from which the Press have been disallowed entry altogether? They were previously allowed entry though under restriction. Would the noble Baroness bring to the attention of the Rhodesian authorities the fact that we feel that they want to put a total blanket over the whole proceedings?
BARONESS TWEEDSMUIR OF BELHELVIE: My Lords, whether or not the Judicial Review Tribunal allowed the appeal does not affect the right of Mr. Niesewand's lawyer to apply for the trial, or part of the trial—which I understand involves the Official Secrets Act—to be held in open court. So long as he is representing Mr. Niesewand, we feel that that is much the best solution.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, may I ask the noble Baroness whether it is not the fact that since I put the original Question on this matter, to which she has referred, there have been very serious developments in this case? Is it not the first time that a British correspondent has been subjected to a secret trial in Rhodesia, by a Government that we regard as illegal, and therefore the trial will be illegal? Should it not be the duty of Her Majesty's Government, in that situation, not just to make the protest that they have already made, but to renew it in much more strong and forceful terms?
BARONESS TWEEDSMUIR OF BELHELVIE: My Lords, I am sure that the noble Lord will understand that, had we achieved a settlement with Rhodesia, the proposals in 1971 did foreshadow the lifting of the emergency powers under which Mr. Niesewand is now detained. There is no certainty that this will be a secret trial, because his lawyer has the power to apply for an open trial, if he so wishes.
BARONESS LLEWELYN-DAVIES OF HASTOE: My Lords, may I ask whether the Government are optimistic of the results of the defence lawyer's attempts to get an open trial? May I further ask whether she could call the attention of the Rhodesian régime to the fact that conditions for this extremely responsible journalist are worsening every day? He has had his typewriter and his newspapers taken away, and his visiting hours are restricted. May we ask Her Majesty's Government to call attention to this fact, which has occurred since her original reply?
BARONESS TWEEDSMUIR OF BELHELVIE: My Lords, I do not think that further representations would necessarily help Mr. Niesewand at this moment. As I understacid it, the trial is on March 19, and there is therefore not very long to wait.
THE EARL OF DUNDEE: My Lords, does my noble friend think that there might be any chance of the Rhodesian Government accepting, not ally diplomatic representative but an unofficial representative of the Foreign Secretary, such as we had in the person of Mr. Alec Ward a year ago? I am sure that the Foreign Office would like it if it was possible, and would it not be an enormous help in all difficulties of this kind?
BARONESS TWEEDSMUIR OF BELHELVIE: My Lords, this is one of the problems that arose when we were unable to reach a settlement with the Rhodesian régime. We did indeed have Mr. Ward as our representative in Salisbury, and after the negotiations were complete and we had accepted the Pearce Commission report, we were forced to withdraw Mr. Ward. I agree with my noble friend that it would be a very great help to have representation there.
LORD ALPORT: My Lords, may I ask whether I am right in supposing that Mr. Niesewand is in fact a South African citizen? Has there been any association by the South African Government with any representations made by Her Majesty's Government in this matter?
BARONESS TWEEDSMUIR OF BELHELVIE: My Lords, Mr. Niesewand was born in South Africa, but he took out Rhodesian citizenship in 1964.
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We therefore have responsibility as a British subject.

NATURE CONSERVANCY COUNCIL BILL [H.L.]
THE PARLIAMENTARY UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE, DEPARTMENT OF THE ENVIRONMENT (LORD SANDFORD): My Lords, I beg leave to introduce a Bill to establish a Nature Conservancy Council. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 1ª. —(Lord Sandford.)
On Question, Bill read 1ª, and to be printed.

PROCEDURE OF THE HOUSE
3.0 p.m.
THE EARL OF LISTOWEL THE EARL OF LISTOWEL rose to move that the First Report from the Select Committee on Procedure of the House be now agreed to.
The Committee's Report was as follows:
1. AMENDMENTS ON THIRD READING
The Committee have reviewed the guidance given on page 119 of the Companion to the effect that:—
"It is considered undesirable that an amendment which has been fully debated and decided upon a previous stage of a Bill should be moved again on Third Reading."
The Committee recommend no change in this wording.
2. UNSTARRED QUESTIONS AND SHORT WEDNESDAY DEBATES
Unstarred Questions
Following exchanges on the floor of the House on 4th August 1972, the Committee have again reviewed the procedure on Unstarred Questions and in particular the desirability (or otherwise) of the practice, which has sometimes been resorted to, of a Lord who has not previously spoken continuing the debate after the Minister has replied.
The Standing Orders on this Question are silent and it has for some time remained undecided. In section 2 of its First Report of Session 1969–70. dated 25th March, 1970, the Committee recommended as follows:—

"(a) procedure on Unstarred Questions should be regulated by a decision of the House that it is undesirable for Lords to continue the debate after the Government reply has been given, save for questions to the Minister before he sits down;

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(b) that Standing Order No. 28 [now 29] ("No Lord to speak twice on one matter") should be amended so as to apply explicitly to Unstarred Questions as well as Motions."

At the same time the Committee recommended that further consideration should be given "to the possibility of devising, as an alternative to the Unstarred Question, some other form of short debate on a motion at the end of a day's business".
The section containing these recommendations was, however, not agreed to by the House, pending consideration of other possible forms of short debate.
In the light of that decision, the House has been experimenting in the early part of the Session with a form of short debate, limited in time to 2½ hours and reserved, as regards choice of subject, for Back Benchers and Cross Benchers. The Committee recommend that this form of short debate be now made permanent.
As regards Unstarred Questions, the Committee reaffirm their previous recommendations of March 1970. These will involve amendments both to Standing Orders (in order to extend the appropriate provisions of Standing Order 29 to Unstarred Questions) and to the passage in the Companion (page 70) which deals with Unstarred Questions.
Short Wednesday Debates
As indicated above, the Committee consider that short Wednesday debates have proved a success, and recommend that they should be continued on a permanent basis. Accordingly the Committee propose that the procedure governing these debates should be that set out in the Appendix to the Sixth Report of the Procedure Committee for last session, and that the present Sessional Order agreed to on November 7th to permit the Lord on the Woolsack to put the question and so bring the debate to an end after two and a half hours should be translated into a Standing Order.
3. COMMITTEE OF SELECTION
The Committee have considered the terms of a new Standing Order to give effect to the recommendations contained in the Eighth Report of last Session (1970–l71). They recommend a Standing Order in the following terms:—
"61.—(1) At the commencement of each Session the House shall appoint a Committee of Selection consisting of the Chairman of Committees and such other Lords as the House shall name.
(2) The Committee of Selection shall select and propose to the House the names of the Lords to form each Select Committee of the House (excpet the Committee of Selection itself and any Committee otherwise provided for by statute or by order of the House) and may propose also the name of the Lord who will be the Chairman of such Committee.
(3) Notice shall be given in the Order Paper of any Motion for the naming of Lords proposed by the Committee of Selection to serve on any Clmmittee other than a Select Committee on a Private Bill."
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The Committee consider however, that the Joint Select Committee on Consolidation Bills should be excluded from the scope of the Committee of Selection. Because of the Joint Committee's special character and the particular interest of the Lord Chancellor, its Lords Members should continue to be selected and proposed to the House by the Lord Chancellor. This can be achieved by a small amendment of S.O. 49 which will except the Committee from the provisions of paragraph 2 of the new S.O. 61. The Committee accordingly recommend the following amendment to Standing Order 49:—
Line 2, at end, insert ("on the recommendation of the Lord Chancellor").
The noble Earl said: My Lords, I think it would be for the convenience of the House if at this stage I were to say something about the purpose and the background of the Committee's recommendations about Unstarred Questions, and about the effects of the Amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Ferrier, to my Motion. It is almost exactly three years ago, on March 25, 1970, that the Procedure Committee first reported to the House its recommendations on Unstarred Questions, and those recommendations were identical to those which your Lordships have been asked to consider this afternoon, as noble Lords will observe in Section 2 of this Report. The 1970 Report followed the acceptance by the Procedure Committee of recommendations made by its Sub-Committee on Observances and Customary Behaviour of the House, which had given the whole matter of procedure on Unstarred Questions lengthy and careful consideration. The reason why this matter was referred to the Sub-Committee in the first instance, was the evident confusion of the House in debates on Unstarred Questions when noble Lords had tried to speak on an Unstarred Question after the Minister had replied.
When the Committee's 1970 Report was published, opposition to the section on Unstarred Questions was expressed by a number of Back Benchers, on the ground that a decision that it was undesirable for noble Lords to speak after the Government had replied would curtail their right to speak on Unstarred Questions. The noble Lord, Lord Ferrier, then tabled an Amendment to the Motion to agree to the Report, which was similar to that which is on the Order Paper for this afternoon. As a result of that Amendment and all the representations which were made before the debate took

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place, I eventually moved the agreement to that Report without the section containing the Committee's recommendations about Unstarred Questions. It was the general view at that time that the House ought not to be asked to decide about the regulation of Unstarred Questions without having before it an alternative form of short debate to compensate for any possible curtailment of the rights of Back-Benchers. Since then, a new form of short debate has been devised which gives the choice of subjects for debate to Back-Benchers. The House has recently been experimenting with these short Wednesday debates—indeed, this afternoon is an example of such a debate—and, as noble Lords will see in the Report, the Procedure Committee consider that these debates have proved a success. This I believe to be the general sense of the House. The Committee accordingly recommend that the short debates should be continued on a permanent basis. In the light of this recommendation, the House will, I hope, agree that the right moment has now come to reconsider the matter of Unstarred Questions.
The Procedure Committee have given further consideration to Unstarred Questions at two meetings—one in December last year, and one in January this year. They have decided to re-affirm their con-conclusions reached three years ago, to recommend that the procedure on Unstarred Questions should be regulated by a decision of the House
"that it is undesirable for Lords to continue the debate after the Government reply has been given, save for questions to the Minister before he "—
or she—
"sits down".
I think that the word "undesirable" is important. It means that the House is being asked to discourage noble Lords from continuing the debate, not to forbid them from doing so by an Amendment to Standing Orders. The Committee also recommend that Standing Orders should be amended, but only to provide that the rule against speaking more than once to a Motion should be extended to Unstarred Questions. As I said when I began, I think it might also be convenient if I said something about the consequences which would follow if the Amendment standing in the name of the noble Lord, Lord
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Ferrier, were accepted. I hope noble Lords will note that I am referring to procedural consequences, and not to the merits of the Amendment. I am expressing no opinion about the merits of the noble Lord's Amendment, which the House will be able to judge in the light of his speech.
The Amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Ferrier, seeks to remove from the Report the paragraph which contains the Procedure Committee's recommendations on Unstarred Questions. To leave this paragraph out would mean, in the first place, that the procedure of the House on Unstarred Questions would remain exactly as it is now; that is, in a state of some confusion caused by uncertainty about what is and what is not the accepted practice of the House. Indeed, it is not at present clear whether or not a noble Lord who attempts to speak after the Minister is in order. I would quote as a very recent example of this uncertainty the events which took place in the House on August 4 last year, when the noble Lord, Lord Barnby, tried to speak at the end of an Unstarred Question on Rhodesia. In that debate, I think it was the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, who intervened to suggest that the noble Lord, Lord Barnby, might not be in order. There is nothing at the moment in Standing Orders, or indeed in the Companion to Standing Orders, to say that a noble Lord may not speak after the Minister in a debate on an Unstarred Question. But the conduct of debates on Unstarred Questions in recent years shows that the usual practice of the House is for the Minister to speak at the end of the debate.
The second effect of the Amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Ferrier, would be to leave Standing Order 29 in its present form. Although, under current practice, noble Lords do not in fact attempt to speak more than once on an Unstarred Question, there is no formal restriction on the number of times they may speak, and any noble Lord who spoke twice or, indeed, more often would not be out of order. The Procedure Committee took the view that the rules of debate on Motions—which, of course, forbid noble Lords to speak more than once unless they are speaking in reply to a Motion which they have moved themselves—and on Unstarred Questions should be the

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same, and that Standing Order 29 should be amended accordingly.
So sum up, the matter of procedure on Unstarred Questions has remained undecided and uncertain for a very considerable time, and both the House and the Procedure Committee have given careful and prolonged consideration to it. The House may feel that the time has now come to settle this question finally. I therefore beg to move that this Report be now agreed to.
Moved, That the First Report from the Select Committee on Procedure of the House be agreed to.—(The Earl of Listowel.)
3.7 p.m.
LORD FERRIER LORD FERRIER rose to move, As an Amendment to the Motion that the Report be agreed to, to insert at the end ("with the exception of the penultimate paragraph of item 2"). The noble Lord said: My Lords, I intend to be as brief as I can in my speech, but I regard the recommendations which I seek to reject as of such importance that there is a good deal of ground to be covered. It may well be a pity that the Report is being discussed on a mini-debate day, because my Amendment is largely, but not wholly, the concern of Back-Benchers and, consequently, there is some measure of rough justice in taking time over procedure to-day. I am particularly regretful that this procedure debate delays the start of the main Business, and I apologise to the noble Lords, Lord Somers and Lord Henley, for being in a small measure responsible for this delay.
I think your Lordships will agree that the short debate experiment has been a success—indeed, I agree with every word that the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, has said in that respect—and the recommendation in the third paragraph on page 3 of the Report, that this form of short debate be now made permanent, is a sound one. However, I contend that experience with the ballot, in addition to a fixed day only once a month, has shown in one important respect that mini-debates do not take the place of Unstarred Questions, which concern matters of immediate topical interest. The success of the experiment is indeed a most welcome and reassuring indication of the labour of the group under my noble friend Lord
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Aberdare, whose excellent Report of August. 1971, was debated in November of that year.
Incidentally, it contains a paragraph with reference to Back-Benchers and Independents which, with your Lordships' permission, I will read. On page 8 it says:
"On the other hand, it is a fair criticism that the Party Managers may not always give as much attention to the interests of the Back-Benchers and the Independents as they should, and it is necessary not only that those members of the House should have their interests safeguarded but also that Back-Bench opinion should be reassured."
However, in my thinking these mini-debates have,as a corollary,drained off,as it were, some of the matters which would otherwise have been raised as Unstarred Questions and have thereby reduced the number of the latter. What is the result? As I see it, the result has been to enhance the importance of the Unstarred Question and to render it all the more important that debate upon it should not be unnecessarily circumscribed. Is there any need to alter the rules at all? I quote again from Lord Aberdare's Report where, in the introduction, it says:
"There are few Standing Orders, and the House runs its affairs according to good sense rather than by the rule book."
In passing, I would mention that, of course, there is an accepted rule that no second Unstarred Question should be taken after 8 o'clock.
Before I return to the Report, I should like to acknowledge the courtesy extended to me by the noble Earl the Chairman of Committees in sending me the agenda of the last two meetings of the Procedure Committee and in suggesting that I attend, which in fact I did. This is a suitable opportunity, perhaps, to refer to his speech. As soon as he made quite clear that the intention of the Procedure Committee was not to forbid a Lord to speak after the Minister had replied, I did some quick thinking, and the result of that thinking is that I feel I should stick to my Amendment, because I do not like the word "undesirable". I propose to show to your Lordships that in fact it is sometimes desirable that a Lord should speak after the Minister has replied, and I believe some other Peers may agree with me in that view. Had the wording been "though desirable it is not to be encouraged", then I should not

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have put down the Amendment which is before your Lordships; but I think that is an important distinction which should be made. As for the effect of my Amendment on the situation as it now stands, I will return later to sub-paragraph (b) of the two recommendations; namely, the question that Standing Order No. 29 should be varied.
To return to the Report, on the first page, is the first paragraph of item 2 altogether correct when it refers to
"the practice, which has sometimes been resorted to.…"?
I take issue with the noble Earl the Chairman of Committees when he says that there is some confusion. In my mind there is absolutely no confusion at all, because, so far as I remember—and I took much advice; I am thinking particularly of my old friend Sir Charles Hendricks, when I came to your Lordships' House some 15 years ago—there has always been a specific option open to any Lord other than the questioner (this is made clear on page 70 of the Companion, and I do not think it has ever been called in question) to continue the debate after the Minister has replied.
Again, in the next paragraph on the same page, is it correct to say:
"The Standing Orders on this Question are silent and it has for some time remained undecided"?
As I read from Lord Aberdare's Report, if the Standing Orders are silent then presumably there is no doubt about the matter at all. The Standing Orders are silent because from time immemorial this facility has been available. It is not undecided. It is true that it is only occasionally used—and I would emphasise this point. It is very occasionally used, and when used it has sometimes been challenged, but challenged quite wrongly.
LORD CONESFORD: My Lords, may I interrupt my noble friend for one moment? He is now dealing with certain paragraphs and criticising them, whereas his Amendment refers only to something quite different. According to his Amendment, he is asking the House to approve of the paragraphs that he is now questioning. I cannot understand why he should invite the House to approve of them and then proceed to criticise them.
LORD FERRIER: My Lords, with due respect, my noble friend has got the wrong end of the stick. I am trying to persuade the House not to approve of them. That is why I am pointing out the faults in them.
LORD CONESFORD: My Lords, I think my noble friend cannot have read his own Amendment. The Motion before the House is to approve this Report, to which my noble friend has put down an Amendment, namely,
"with the exception of the penultimate paragraph…".
LORD FERRIER: Of item 2.
LORD CONESFORD: Yes, my Lords; the penultimate paragraph. That is the only paragraph which, by his Amendment, my noble friend is criticising. He is now proceeding to criticise those parts which he is not questioning in any way in his Amendment.
LORD FERRIER: The difficulty, my Lords, was how to word my Amendment. I took the advice of the Table; because, as I shall show, I object to sub-paragraph (a) and approve of sub-paragraph (b), although other of my noble friends do not do so. The only way to cover them both was to move the deletion of the penultimate paragraph of item 2; namely,
"As regards Unstarred Questions, the Committee reaffirm their previous recommendations…"
They are reaffirming their recommendations, and it is these recommendations to which I am adverting. It is therefore, with due respect, perfectly correct for me to advert to the recommendations with which I disagree. However, I have nearly done with that.
As I was saying, this particular facility is seldom used and very seldom abused. In fact, it has not been abused, in my recollection, for many years. It is as well to remember—and this is another matter—that it was only a few years ago (namely, in 1966) that it was decided that Unstarred Questions must be taken as the last item of proceedings. It is only seven years ago. This detracted, in some measure, from their importance—there is no question about that—but I think it was a reasonable and acceptable decision. That is my personal view. Nevertheless, it was part of that process of erosion,

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which seems to be continuing, which, until the institution of these mini-debates, of which I and all your Lordships approved had been regarded by some as "Back-Bencher bashing".
Further, my Lords, it is all very well citing the exchanges on August 4, in which my noble friend Lord Barnby was concerned, but what about the occasion on November 25, 1969, when the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, who was the only lawyer to contribute, or to offer to contribute, to a debate on an Unstarred Question by the noble Lord, Lord Willis, rose after the Minister to make what was likely to have been a perfectly reasonable and useful contribution? He was interrupted by the Leader of the House, and, protesting with his usual courtesy, preferred not to make his speech, though in my view he had every right to do so. Just as had by noble friend Lord Barnby in August.
I had the advantage of a telephone conversation with the noble Lord, Lord Willis, on Monday morning. He asked me to express to your Lordships his regret that he is unable to attend until too late to-day to take part in this debate, because he is flying back from Italy. He also said that he would have supported my Amendment and remembers well his disapponitment at the exchanges which led to the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, being lost to the debate to which I have referred. That is what I mean, my Lords, by the fact that it is occasionally desirable that a Peer might speak after the Minister. The noble Lord, Lord Chorley, at the end of the controversy at that time said, if I may repeat it to your Lordships:
"I wanted to listen to the Minister in order to hear what he was going to say before I intervened in the debate. This is surely common sense, and in the ordinary way of discussion."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 25/11/69, col. 1247.]
And words roughly to that effect were used by my noble friend Lord Barnby in August.
LORD SHACKLETON: May I ask the noble Lord why, if he thinks it so reasonable, it should not be applied to all our debates, when in fact there is no Rule against it but it is the custom
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of the House that people do not speak after the Minister other than the questioner.
LORD FERRIER: I do not follow the noble Lord. Could he repeat what he said?
LORD SHACKLETON: I asked the noble Lord why he thought it reasonable that a noble Lord can speak after the Minister on an Unstarred Question when he is apparently not prepared to advocate this for general application to all other Motions where, by the custom of the House, other than the mover of a Motion, noble Lords do not speak after the Minister.
LORD FERRIER: My Lords, perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, will come to my help if he takes part in the debate, because it was his words that I was using. Nevertheless, I agree with them. As a matter of fact, on that occasion a statement followed the next day which established that his contention was right —that he had the right. That right, I believe, exists to-day and I hope will continue to do so.
This brings me to the paragraph which my Amendment suggests might be rejected. This explains the point to which my noble friend Lord Conesford drew attention. It is the fourth paragraph on page 3 of the Report, and this is the difficulty. I was advised that it would be inconvenient to word my Amendment in any other way, and the paragraph reaffirms that the two recommendations made in March, 1970, should be accepted. I am moving that they be rejected. I object to (a), as I have explained. I need not go into all the details because I have set out what I had in mind in reply to my noble friend Lord Conesford; namely, that it is not necessarily undesirable for Lords to continue an Unstarred Question debate after the Minister. What is more, for a Lord to do so is a long established right concerning which a number of your Lordships, including myself, are jealous.
As for (b), to the effect that Standing Order No. 29 should be amended to include Unstarred Questions, I personally favour that, and this in a measure answers the question put to me by the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton. However, in putting down the Amendment, I had to word it

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in the way I have done, and it was wise that I should have done so because I find that at least one of my noble friends does not agree with me over (b), and feels, like a number of people, that although it would provide against the type of abuse which has been used in time long past, it is making change when perhaps change is not necessary.
Somewhere in my researches I have come across the complaint that noble Lords use Unstarred Questions as a vehicle for their views. But of course they do. That is the object of an Unstarred Question as opposed to a Starred Question, and although what time steps seem to be proposed to "clip the wings" of any noble Lord asking an Unstarred Question, a good deal of latitude is granted at Question Time when Starred Questions and supplementaries are being ingeniously used, as they have been on a number of occasions this afternoon, for the expression of opinions: "But would not the noble Lord agree with…" that sort of vehicle for expressing views which are really not strictly a question.
In considering the whole matter, it is well to bear in mind the, as I believe it to be, inalienable right for any Peer to put down a Motion, but it would be undesirable and extravagant in time and an expense if that right to put down a Motion, was used by Lords to replace the Unstarred Question as it now stands. It is interesting to analyse the length of time taken in relation to the importance or even the urgency of some subjects raised in Unstarred Questions. Take, for instance, recent Questions such as that by the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, on December 12 last on Icelandic fisheries, which lasted for 54 minutes and was replied to by the noble Barcness, Lady Tweedsmuir of Belhelvie, and another by my noble friend the Earl of Kinnoull on Rolls-Royce on December 21, which lasted for 44 minutes. Neither of these would have had any impact at all if they had gone into the hat for the ballot of short debates to-day.
Incidentally, I noticed that in "Yesterday in Parliament" on the B.B.C. on December 13, the only item in your Lordship's procedure of the whole day which that programme referred to was the question of the Icelandic fisheries which had been raised by the noble Lord, Lord
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Kennet. My Lords, again I would remark on this question of timing as it is affected by the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Charley, and my noble friend Lord Barnby. As the matter stands, a Peer can come to a debate on an Unstarred Question with views on the matter not sufficiently strong for him to put his name down to speak. If when the Minister replies he gets an answer on what Ile had in mind then there is no need for him to speak and, therefore, time is saved, and I believe that figures go to show that this in fact is an economy of time. That is the point I wanted to make about timing. There is no doubt in my mind that this contributes to the brevity of Unstarred Questions as opposed to Motions.
My Lords, I have taken much longer than I intended, but I was interrupted—I had intended to speak for only a quarter of an hour. If I have spoken in a rather matter of fact or possibly light hearted manner, I would end on a serious note by assuring your Lordships that I would not have taken up your time in pressing this matter had I not sincerely believed that it is of very deep significance in respect of the functions of this House. Of course, the character of the House is changing, but I suggest that the usual channels in their zeal to promote the efficiency of the House as a legislating machine by this recommendation endanger the retention of our position as a debating Chamber on matters of public interest. My Lords, I beg to move my Amendment.
Moved, as an Amendment to the Motion, to insert at the end: ("with the exception of the penultimate paragraph of item 2").—(Lord Ferrier.)
3.30 p.m.
VISCOUNT DILHORNE: My Lords, I have listened with care and attention, as I am sure the whole House has, to what the noble Lord, Lord Ferrier, has said. He feels—he has convinced me and I am sure he has convinced the rest of the House—very strongly about this matter and about its importance. I do not mean to criticise the noble Lord at all, but I can perhaps claim to take a more detached view of the subject because the possibility of my taking part in a debate which follows on the asking of an Unstarred Question is now not very great; indeed, my opportunities for speaking in your Lordships' House are now not very many.

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I start by saying that in his speech the noble Lord, Lord Ferrier, has not drawn any difference between a debate which is started by a Motion and one on an Unstarred Question. He has treated the two throughout as if they were the same. The fact that an Unstarred Question is such, if I understand his speech, he contends really makes no difference at all—it is just a vehicle for introducing a perfectly ordinary debate. I venture to doubt that, and for reasons which I will state. I also challenge his observation that it is a long-established practice that, after a Minister has replied to an Unstarred Question, Peers have the right to make speeches. I do not believe that that is true at all. I know that it is his belief. But what I think I can establish is that on many occasions when the right which Lord Ferrier says exists has sought to be exercised, its exercise has been challenged by other Peers as a breach of our procedure. Whatever may be the present position (the noble Lord shakes his head but I will give him instances where that has happened, and they are by no means few), wherever that has happened, it indicates that there are Members of this House of considerable experience who do not for one moment accept the noble Lord's statement that Peers are entitled to make speeches after a Minister has answered an Unstarred Question.
It is all very well to discuss procedure on an occasion such as this, but I do not believe that disputes as to what is the proper procedure to follow, and as to whether a Peer is obeying the Rules of this House, look very good in the course of a debate, and I think we should seek to avoid them if we can. What is the present position?—and this the noble Lord cannot deny, and I will give him instances in a moment. We have had frequent disputes about this and, as the Chairman of Committees has said in his brief but very able speech, the position is unresolved. No one knows at the moment what is the right course to be taken, because that has not been determined. We are masters of our own procedure, and it does not look very good if there is a dispute between Peers as to what the procedure is. It is not, if I may say so to the noble Lord, the "usual channels" who are putting forward this recommendation; this is a recommendation put to this House by the Procedure
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Committee, which comprises many Members from all parts of the House and from all sections of the House, and, I believe, representing nearly all points of view. We had the benefit of hearing the views of the noble Lord, Lord Ferrier, before we made this recommendation last time. It is the task of the Procedure Committee, delegated I believe by this House, to resolve these problems of procedure and to bring their recommendations to this House for its approval.
I make no claim to speak for that Committee, but it is to be recognised that the recommendation of that Committee in 1970 (and I was then a Member) as to the answer to this particular controversy was not accepted by the House, largely owing on that occasion to the efforts of the noble Lord, Lord Ferrier, and so the old controversy remained unresolved. Now again the Procedure Committee, we have been told and as is indeed the case, have considered the matter, thought about it, and come forward with precisely the same recommendation. I now have the honour to be a Member of the Procedure Committee again, so I was able to hear the discussions; and I can tell your Lordships, I hope quite properly, that there were prolonged discussions about this matter, and that this recommendation, which was not accepted in 1970, has not been put before the House in any spirit of obstinacy or in any desire to cut down the rights of Back-Benchers or any other Peers. Nothing of that sort at all! It has been put forward because, after prolonged consideration by two separate Procedure Committees, they have both come up with what they believe to be the right answer for the procedure to be followed on Unstarred Questions.
Again, the noble Lord, Lord Ferrier, as he is entitled to do, seeks to prevent that recommendation—
THE EARL OF CORK AND ORRERY: My Lords, will the noble and learned Viscount forgive me for interrupting him now that I think he is about to leave that point? May I ask for clarification, because it appears to me that he is himself raising something of a novelty in the matter of procedure? Is it the noble and learned Viscount's suggestion or contention that recommendations of the Procedure Committee, or any other Committee,

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ought to be accepted by the House without argument?
VISCOUNT DILHORNE: My Lords, I have said nothing to that effect at all, as the noble Earl would know if he had listened to me. And I was not going on to another point, but I am trying to keep my remarks as short as I can. What I would say to the noble Earl is this. This House is of course free to accept or reject any recommendation which any Committee make to it, but I suggest that some consideration should be given and some weight attached to the recommendations of a Committee such as the Procedure Committee, particularly when the noble Earl knows—or I hope he will take it from me—that many hours have been spent by Procedure Committees in considering this particular problem.
May I now return to what I was saying, which was that the noble Lord, Lord Ferrier, again seeks to get this recommendation not accepted. He may succeed. He is perfectly entitled to take that course and I do not criticise it. But I for myself would feel it a great pity, for this reason. The controversy which has gone on now for so many years as to what is the right procedure to follow would be wholly unresolved; we should still go on in the same old way, and that would be a great pity. Unstarred Questions are much older than Starred Questions, which started only in 1919 and became a regular feature of our Business only in 1940. Unstarred Questions and Starred Questions have one thing in common, which is of course quite different from a Motion. They are both Questions which are directed to the Government and to eliciting an Answer from the Government. A Motion proposes a resolution which at the end of the day may be carried, rejected or withdrawn. There is no such conclusion to the discussion started by an Unstarred Question. The conclusion to that, surely, logically is when the Question is answered.
In this question before us to-day there is no suggestion of stopping or in anyway interfering with the rights of Members to rise and make speeches before the Minister answers. Nor is there any suggestion, as the noble Earl the Chairman of Committees has made clear, of inhibiting or preventing an
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indication to the Minister if it is thought that his Answer is thoroughly unsatisfactory, because one can adopt the usual device of rising and saying: "Is the noble Lord aware that his Answer is wholly unsatisfactory?", or saying something offensive of that sort and getting the point well home. But the question here is whether, after the Minister's speech and when he cannot speak again—I repeat, when he cannot speak again—other Peers should then deliver speeches. It must mean a very ragged end to the debate on an Unstarred Question and I cannot think that it is logically right. If the noble Lord wants to have an absolutely up to date debate, however short, the right thing to do is to put down a Motion and not to put down an Unstarred Question. As I understand it, he is not prevented from putting down a Motion at any time.
May I remind your Lordships of the precedents, which are rather interesting. If I go back to 1947, the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, who seems to have featured to a quite remarkable extent in these matters, was then a Minister. He made a speech which the late Lord Swinton did not like. Lord Swinton followed Lord Chorley who had answered an Unstarred Question, and directly he did so the propriety of his conduct was challenged. Lord Swinton claimed that he was fully in order—and that the noble Lord, Lord Ferrier, will no doubt seek to rely on.
I remember that during my tune in this House the late Lord Alexander of Hillsborough, who adorned the Front Bench for a considerable time, used to lie in wait for unsuspecting Ministers who were answering Unstarred Questions and get up and "bite" them when they had answered. I cannot remember whether that led to much controversy, but I suspect that it did. I come to an occasion in 1966 when the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, sought to follow the Minister who had answered an Unstarred Question, and his action was challenged. In 1967 the noble Lord, Lord Erroll of Hale, followed the Minister who had answered an Unstarred Question, and he was attacked for doing so. In 1969 this was sought to be done on two occasions. The first, if my memory is right, was during that debate on Rhodesia, when a number of Peers wanted to follow the Minister.

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Then the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, as Leader of the House, said that it was turning into a most irregular debate, and my recollection is that it was. Referring to noble Lords speaking after the Minister, he went on to say, "It can be done but it is very unusual." On another occasion in the same year the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, tried again to speak after the Minister. He tried unsuccessfully and was challenged.
LORD FERRIER: Quite wrongly!
VISCOUNT DILHORNE: The iioble Lord, Lord Ferrier, says, "Quite wrongly". That is his point of view. It has always been a matter of dispute, and the point I am making is, let us resolve these disputes; do not let them continue.
LORD FERRIER: Hear, hear!
VISCOUNT DILHORNE: The noble Lord says, "Hear, hear!" but what he wants to do, by moving his Amendment, is to leave the matter unresolved so that these disputes will continue. With that support from him I hope that he will withdraw the Amendment.
My Lords, I submit to the House, seriously, that the time has come for us to make an end to this sort of controversy. If we accept the recommendations of the Procedure Committee, that will not be the end of the day. In this House we are masters of our own procedure and we can always change it if it does not work well, or if it does not meet with our satisfaction. I believe that it will work well. But, if we accept this recommendation of the Procedure Committee, at least there will be guidance to all Peers from now on as to what is the current procedure. It will not be left indefinite. The noble Lord, Lord Ferrier, will not like it, but I am sure that if that is done he will for the time being fully comply with it, and, that being so, we shall have resolved that problem.
The only other point raised by the noble Lord's Amendment is this. Part of the paragraph he wants left out makes clear that no Peer can speak twice on an Unstarred Question. I am sure it must have been an oversight that that is not provided for already in the Standing Orders. But none the less the noble Lord does not want that change to be
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made in our Standing Orders. He has moved to delete the paragraph which would bring that about. I think it would be a pity if the position was left as it is now, and I hope that the House will reject this Amendment and support the Committee's recommendations.
3.45 p.m.
LORD ROYLE: My Lords, after the speech of the noble and learned Viscount, Lord Dilhorne, I do not think I need to speak for more than a minute or two. I am in complete agreement with the noble and learned Viscount and I hope the House will reject the Amendment. I want to say that on the odd occasions when I have sat on the Woolsack at the end of the day, while I have had no power in the matter. I have been greatly embarrassed when noble Lords have tried to speak after a Minister. I have always felt that it was not the right thing to do. A Question is a Question; a Motion is a Motion, and when a Question has been answered by the Minister that should be the end of the situation. Of that I am quite sure. Therefore I am delighted to find that the Procedure Committee have decided that Amendments will be made to Standing Orders to make this absolutely clear.
The only reservation I have is this. We can quite easily pass the Motion that the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, has moved this afternoon, but I would make a plea to the Procedure Committee to look at the situation de novo. Those of us who have served in another place always felt that it was satisfactory in every way to have an Adjournment debate at the end of the day. It was not an Unstarred Question; it was not a Question of any kind. That was a Motion, and anybody successful in persuading Mr. Speaker that he should have that half hour at the end of the day, got it. At the end of what he had to say, or if his speech was short and someone else had time to speak at the end of what he had to say, the Minister replied; and when the Minister had replied that was the end of it.
My Lords, I think that this idea would be more valuable in these days when this House is sitting later than it used to do. Adjournment debates last for half an hour, and if the Minister is on his feet at the end of the half hour he has to sit down, and the House adjourns. I want to suggest to the Procedure Committee

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that that is a way of approach; that we might scrap the Unstarred Question procedure completely and adopt the House of Commons method of having an Adjournment debate at the end of the day. I want to make one other point, which has nothing to do with this matter. I wish to ask the noble Earl, the Lord Chairman of Committees, about mini-debates. When we get further into the Session and there is a rush of legislation from another place, will the Wednesday mini-debates be in any way in danger.
3.48 p.m.
LORD ALPORT: My Lords, I wish to say one thing very shortly. I am quite clear, as I think the House is, that this debate and proposal by the Procedure Committee derives from an incident that took place when my noble friend Lord Barnby intervened after the Minister's reply during the Rhodesia debate. I do not suppose there was anybody in the House who was more angry at my noble friend for his intervention that I was, or disagreed more with what he said. But he had every right to make that intervention, if he wished to do so. In this House, where the control over our procedure is so very strong and in the hands of the occupants of the two Front Benches, it is not easy for a noble Lord to make his voice heard it he has views which may not coincide with the more orthodox views of one side of the House or the other. Sometimes it is essential that he should resort to the use of the privileges, the facilities, which are allowed him under our rather loose Standing Orders and forms of procedure. The noble Lord, Lord Barnby, did so on that occasion, and he made his point effectively; more effectively than if he had spoken before the Minister's reply. In my view he was absolutely justified in doing so.
I can see no conceivable connection between mini-debates and the point which my noble friend Lord Ferrier raised. All that is now happening is that the Ministers feel that it is unfair that a Private Member can get up after they have replied and perhaps introduce some new facts or arguments. But so far as I understand it in this House we are all equal. We defer, as we should do, to the Leader of the House and to the noble Lord who leads the Opposition. But
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fundamentally we have the right to express our opinions, whether or not the Minister has replied successfully and satisfactorily to the points that we have made, or that have been made by other speakers during the debate. This is a small curtailment of the rights of private Members in this House. My personal view—and I am reinforced in the strength of it by the speech of the noble and learned Viscount, Lord Dilhorne—is that this should not be accepted by the House, and I hope that my noble friend when the time comes will divide the House on his Amendment.
3.50 p.m.
LORD INGLEWOOD: My Lords, following what the noble Lord, Lord Royle, said I should like to make one short point in case some who have not been in another place might misunderstand the position. An Adjournment debate is not necessarily limited to half an hour, because if the business of the House ends earlier, an Adjournment debate can be at least as long as our mini-debates. Then the Minister really is at risk, because during the half hour anybody who, as a Minister, has had to reply to an Adjournment debate knows how important it is to go on to the very last half-minute or else someone will get up and speak. If he has longer than half an hour that really cannot happen, and the situation becomes one much more like a mini-debate. So an Adjournment debate serves a purpose, but it is not necessarily something that we should like to adopt in entirety from another place and introduce as an improvement here.
LORD ROYLE: My Lords, I am obliged to the noble Lord for putting me right on that, but it is not often that that happens.
3.51 p.m.
LORD CHORLEY: My Lords, my name has been mentioned several times during the course of the debate, and I would crave your Lordships' indulgence for a few minutes. First of all, I agree, as has just been said, that there is a great difference between the Commons' Adjournment debate and an Unstarred Question. I do not think an Adjournment debate provides a solution. Secondly, I agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Ferrier said. Until recently, I think the position in relation to this

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matter was perfectly clear. I cannot remember—and my memory on these things now goes back for a quarter of a century—that this matter was ever challenged. The occasion when the late Lord Swinton shot me down as a very junior Minister has been referred to. Naturally, I too remember that very well indeed. The point is that Lord Swinton was one of the most experienced Parliamentarians that I ever knew: and he had no doubt at all that he was entitled to speak after the Minister. My recollection is that he was not seriously challenged. Nor do I think anybody was seriously challenged until well into the 'sixties.
The Clerk of the Parliaments produced a careful piece of research, a good deal of which was put into the admirable memorandum which the Lord Chairman of Committees circulated to your Lordships just before Christmas, in which he took some of the research from Sir David Stephens, starting in 1962 and going down to the Lord Barnby case. During those ten years on about six occasions this happened. Really, these little flutters are rather enjoyable and, as has been said, they give Back-Benchers a chance to take part.
I am grateful to the Procedure Committee because, no doubt through the Lord Chairman, they invited the noble Lords, Lord Ferrier and Lord Barnby, and myself to attend these meetings. But what one notices is that the Committee are nearly all ex-Ministers; certainly those who speak are almost invariably ex-Ministers.
VISCOUNT DILHORNE: The noble Lord is an ex-Minister.
LORD CHORLEY: I agree that there is a certain untidiness about the possibility of this happening, even if, as is the fact, it only happens about once in two years. My noble Leader has a very tidy mind. I have often envied him that. But is he not on this occasion just wanting to be tidy for the sake of tidiness? I know that he has been making his own researches and has gone further back than the Swinton case, to 1943, when he found an occasion when three noble Lords spoke after the Minister. My noble friend is very honest in producing this case, which really defeats the case he is making, which is an attempt to show that it has been the custom for a long
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time in this House that noble Lords should not be entitled to speak after the Minister. In all these early cases they did speak. So far as I know, there was no protest about this procedure, until my noble Leader himself came here recently with his tidy mind and tried to stop me from intervening in a debate, the subject matter of which was very legal, on a Question by the noble Lord, Lord Willis, so far as I remember, about a policeman. Eventually my noble Leader agreed that he ought not to have stopped me.
There we are, my Lords. Are we not pushing tidiness too far? When occasionally we have been untidy, we have nearly always got something more out of the Minister than we should have got had we remained tidy and quiet. So untidiness has on occasions paid, and I think a little untidiness of that kind does no particular harm even in your Lordships' House. I agree entirely with the noble Lord. Lord Ferrier, that there is no Rule of this kind. Only in the last few years has it been suggested that one exists. But if your Lordships want to change the procedure you can have a Rule. Some noble Lords obviously want to have a tight Rule of this kind. It is entirely for your Lordships to say, but I would suggest that, on the whole, it is better to leave well alone, (or perhaps I should say, comparatively well alone) and not push the matter further. Let us accept the situation which has worked reasonably well over a long time.
3.58 p.m.
LORD BARNBY: My Lords. I want at once to associate myself with my noble friend Lord Ferrier, who in substance says, "No change". The issue now is the defence of a procedure which Back-Benchers have used over a long period of time. It has served the House well for many years, so why change it? I want to associate myself with all that my noble friend Lord Ferrier said: and whatever views may be held by Members of the House, I am sure they will agree that he has shown a depth of research into the subject and admirable application in producing chapter and verse to explain why he has put down this Amendment. For myself, I find it is a little difficult as a Back-Bencher to express my views on this subject, after listening to the noble and learned Viscount, Lord Dilhorne, an ex-Lord Chancellor and therefore once a

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member of a Government, and habituated as a lawyer to put a case with great brilliance. I can only ask the indulgence of the House when I speak in defence of what I believe is a long standing right of a Back-Bencher. I shall try to explain that, and I shall try also to avoid repeating much of what my noble friend has said.
I feel that there should be no change and we should retain the privilege which Back-Benchers have, and have had for a long time. This procedure has worked effectively. The noble and learned Viscount Lord Dilhorne, referred to confusion. If there is confusion now, why was there not confusion thirty or forty years ago? He referred to the fact that the House observes its traditions. Let us be frank among ourselves. There is a Rule which says that no speeches should be read, and every Member of this House knows that we often hear very erudite speeches read, lasting even up to half an hour to the benefit of the Record but transgressing the Rules of the House. I just wanted to dispose of the point made by the noble and learned Viscount, Lord Dilhorne. I say that there should be no change and, with respect to the House, I would say that I recognise that anybody who nowadays opposes change is inclined to incur the strictures of a large proportion of the young, to whom so many things like discipline, patriotism, citizenship and respect for the Constitution are out of date. I speak from long experience of this House and, incidentally, of the other place, too. For example, I remember well the period before the last war, during the '30s. There was no difficulty about this matter at that time and, indeed, in the '20s. What is it that has caused the difficulty now?
I put this question to your Lordships' House: What is an Unstarred Question? It is a means whereby a Back-Bencher may raise certain subjects which he considers to be of national importance, in order to get an immediate discussion of them. The noble and learned Viscount spoke about Motions and so on, but we have to ask: how long does it take to get a Motion on the Order Paper? If we talk about Starred Questions, how long does it take to get them on the Order Paper? The point about a Starred Question is that it can be put on the Order Paper—and it should be a question. It
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is within my recollection over this long period—and I should like to ask your Lordships' indulgence in referring to it—that there have been cases when a Starred Question has been put down when it would have been a more appropriate subject for a Written Answer—in other words, there was no immediate urgency.
The Unstarred Question is a means whereby the Back-Bencher can bring to the notice of the House quickly—and I repeat "quickly"—a matter on which he wants an Answer. Of course, it should be a question, as I have said, but there now seems to have developed a tendency to get into a discussion, perhaps unintentionally. My noble friend Lord Alport, to whom we are indebted for his contribution to-day, has referred to a point with which I have some familiarity —there have been cases where an Unstarred Question has developed into a debate. But often it is a matter which the questioner seeks a quick reply. Certainly I recollect well that in the '30s the Minister in his reply may not perhaps have covered one point which some other noble Lords would have wished to see covered, and probably some disappointment was felt because of this. In those circumstances noble Lords got up and naturally asked another question. There was an advantage both ways: I must emphasise that fact.
I speak now as a Back-Bencher and I speak in defence of the rights of BackBenchers and of what can be achieved by them. The Minister replies to a specific Question, but it may be that he has omitted to cover some aspect of the matter which would be of interest to another Member of the House, and that Member therefore wishes to get his point brought to the Minister's notice, and perhaps also to get it on the Record. This avoids the obligation on the Minister to give an immediate reply. It may well be that the Minister is not prepared for it. He is not committed and the matter can always be referred to later; and at some later date the questioner has the privilege of following up something which has not been dealt with. He can do this either by means of a Starred Question or by putting down a Question for Written Answer, and that surely is the best way of eliciting a great deal of information that is sought. It is on those grounds that I wish most emphatically to

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express my belief that the rights of BackBenchers should be respected in this manner. The noble Lord the Leader of the Opposition, to whom we always listen with great attention and proper respect said that if we change one, why not change all the Standing Orders? I just throw out the suggestion that should there be the need for a change in practice and the asking of questions subsequent to the Minister having sat down—which I defend most emphatically because I think it is to the benefit of the Minister that this should be so—then let us have it limited to some subsequent question, perhaps to the effect that a questioner must not speak for longer two or three minutes. A time limit might be imposed from the Woolsack, for instance. In fact we already have clocks to remind us of the time.
I thank the House for its indulgence in listening to me, but I speak in all sincerity born of long membership of your Lordships' House, which it has been my happy privilege to enjoy. This is a case where there is no need for change, and I most strongly support the case—and it is a good case—put forward by the mover of the Amendment.
4.7 p.m.
THE EARL OF SELKIRK: My Lords, may I say that I too have been a Member of your Lordships' House for some time—though not perhaps for so lengthy a period as the noble Lord, Lord Barnby—and during that time I have never had the slightest doubt that in connection with an Unstarred Question no one speaks after the Minister. It has never even arisen in my mind—and if I may say so, I have said this to noble Lords who have tried to speak, and it has been accepted without any question. The noble Lord, Lord Chorley, mentioned Lord Swinton. No doubt Lord Swinton was maddened with fury at Lord Chorley's Question—and it was not always very easy to put Lord Swinton in his place. The noble Lord, Lord Barnby, said that surely we could ask questions. Yes, that is provided for.
LORD CHORLEY: My Lords, on a point of order, it was Lord Swinton, who objected to my answering the comment which he made. He said that I had no right to speak twice. There was no question of his thinking that he had a right to speak after the Minister.
THE EARL OF SELKIRK: My Lords, I apologise if I got it wrong: it seems that Lord Swinton was in order on that occasion, and I am glad to hear it. The noble Lord, Lord Barnby, asked: could he not ask a question after the Minister's reply? Of course we all know that Ministerial Answers are never satisfactory, from either side of the House. Of course you can ask questions: this is precisely provided for. The noble Lord also talks about Back-Benchers' rights. One of those rights which has not been mentioned is that Unstarred Questions should be short. This is an enormous advantage to a Back-Bencher. If you start on a long debate people tend to say, "It is too /ate: you cannot carry it on". The real advantage of these quiet little Unstarred Questions taken late in the evening, with perhaps only two or three people taking part, is that they are enormously important and, I believe, very valuable. If we extend them into debates I believe we spoil things. The noble and learned Viscount, Lord Dilhorne, has explained carefully, and I think rightly, that this is a Question and not a Motion. It is for the Government to tell us. It is not really for us to force views on the Government. We have now passed the stage when we can leave things as they are. If we do that, we are taking a decision positively to allow people to speak after the Minister on an Unstarred Question. We must therefore make a decision to-day, and I hope it will be to reject the Amendment.
4.10 p.m.
LORD SALTOUN: My Lords, I have come here, a little like Balaam, at the invitation of my noble friends Lord Barnby and Lord Ferrier, and I am not quite sure how I am going to come down in the end. The Motion before us now shows me how much your Lordships' House has changed in the short time since I discontinued regular attendance here. I see in item 2(b), if I read it correctly, that it is proposed that Standing Orders be amended to prevent people speaking more than once on an Unstarred Question.
Your Lordships have been discussing Standing Orders. The noble Lord, Lord Barnby,will bear me out that when we came here for the first time we discovered that there were a very large number of Orders which were quite inflexible, and

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which were never put down in Standing Orders, and never received any authority of print. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Barnby, will remember that very well. One of the Orders was that on no account does any Peer speak a second time on an Unstarred Question. I am sorry that the noble Earl, Lord Longford, who was sitting close beside me a few moments ago, is not still here, because he will remember when I put an Unstarred Question there must have been half a dozen Peers itching to jump up and put me down if I had tried to speak again. The fact that your Lordships seem to need a Standing Order on this matter shows how changes come about.
Regarding item 2(a) I am bound to say that I do not agree with the noble Earl, Lord Selkirk. I am not at all sure that in the particular case I referred to somebody did not speak after Lord Longford's reply. There are occasions when, on a particularly nasty Unstarred Question, the Government reply but do not answer. Then it may well be that some noble Lord, not the one who asked the original Question, should have a perfect right to indicate that fact. I should far prefer that instead of the word "undesirable" we use a word such as that used by the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, that it is not "customary". That would cover the position.
There are occasions when people feel strongly that they ought to say something after hearing the Government's answer. I would remind your Lordships that the matter is always within your Lordships' own powers, because it is competent to noble Lords to move that the debate be now adjourned, or something like that. The House always has power over its own Members. If the Motion goes to a Division I am not at all sure that I shall not support the Government. Although the Rule may be necessary, I should much prefer to see the word "customary" substituted for "undesirable" because it may be extremely desirable even though it is not customary.
4.14 p.m.
LORD CONESFORD: My Lords, on the main question I think the House is ready to come to a decision and I rise only on one point raised by the noble
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Lord, Lord Royle. He referred to Adjournment debates in another place. One essential fact which the noble Lord, Lord Royle, had missed has already been pointed out by my colleague behind me. But there is another clear distinction: there is no limit regarding the subject that we can raise in an Unstarred Question. An Unstarred Question is, of course, a Question to the Government. In the other place, there is a great restriction: there is the absolute restriction that you must not raise anything that involves any changes in legislation. I merely wish to correct the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Royle. On the main subject of the debate I think we are ready to come to a decision.
THE EARL OF KINNOULL: My Lords, I should like to raise two points. The first is the question of the rights of Back-Benchers, to which the noble and learned Viscount, Lord Dilhorne, referred. He suggested that the right was either unresolved, or there was no right at all. He went on to say that the Standing Orders were silent on the matter, and he told us that there was case after case of this right being exercised.
VISCOUNT DILHORNE: My Lords, I am sorry if I did not make myself clear. I said that there was nothing in the Standing Orders—as indeed is the case—which points one way or the other: they are silent. I said that although some may believe that these rights exist, others do not. On many occasions this has led to controversy and dispute, which I believe is undesirable. I pointed out that the effect of carrying this Amendment would be to leave that situation unresolved, and I thought it would be better to resolve it now, and if it does not work satisfactorily we can change it later.
4.16 p.m.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, I was beginning to think that the House was getting near a point when they might take a decision on the most momentous issue that has come before us in this Session. I have to intervene because there seem to have been a number of references to what I did as Leader of the House. I must correct my noble friend Lord Chorley of two points. I came here in 1958, at the same time as the noble Lord, Lord Ferrier, and not in

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1968. On the occasion in question, when he said that I was wrong in my ruling—if that is the right word—I was nothing of the kind. I said that I was quite certain I was right. But I was wrong in saying that the Procedure Committee had settled the matter; the matter was under discussion.
I want to make it very clear that the Unstarred Question is not the monopoly of the Front Bench or the Back Bench; it belongs to Members of your Lordships' House. It can be asked by anybody who is not a Member of the Government—for obvious reasons, Members of the Government are somewhat restricted. There is no Leader of the House who, in my opinion, can possibly function successfully unless he is reasonably confident that he has the support of the majority of the House. We have no Speaker here, and no Leader can possibly seek to be authoritarian. I know of no occasion on an Unstarred Question when I have risen to suggest what I believed to be the custom of the House when I did not have the support of the House, provided that there was anybody here at all—sometimes there was hardly anybody here.
I am sure the views of the noble Earl, Lord Jellicoe, are the same as mine in saying that it is of paramount importance to preserve the freedom of your Lordships. It is important to emphasise that the Leader of the House merely performs because somebody has to do it, but the decision rests on the House. If the House does not want to listen to someone, then there are certain ways in which it can stop him. There have been times when the Leader has had to intervene for some unfortunate individual and say that perhaps the House would listen to him. I am quite certain that anybody who occupies the position that the noble Earl now holds must have absolute regard to the freedom of the House.
When we come to the question of the history of Unstarred Questions, shortly after I arrived in your Lordships' House I asked an Unstarred Question—in those days it came on early—and I seem to remember that the subject was an exponential nuclear assembly, which was a bit of showing off on my part. I was told firmly that after the Minister had
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replied I had no further right to speak again. I fully accept, and I absolutely concede to the noble Lord, Lord Ferrier, that the matter has been repeatedly disputed, but when we look at the history of the Unstarred Question the one thing that appears is that there has been no attempt to regulate it at all.
What I find very odd, going back, for instance, to 1942 when there were 14 Unstarred Questions, is that on three of those occasions noble Lords spoke after the Minister, but on seven occasions the noble Lord who actually asked the Question spoke after the Minister. But now, apparently, the noble Lords, Lord Ferrier and Lord Barnby, would maintain that the initiator historically is not allowed to do so. In fact, however, he has done so, and the point I am trying to make is that whatever confusion there may be over the history of this matter, we all bow to the noble Lord, Lord Barnby. I regard him as one of the youngest and most active Members of your Lordships' House, who never uses a note and whose memory, we know, is much longer than ours. I must admit that my memory is sometimes at fault, and my conclusion on this matter is that the position is in a bit of a muddle.
I think it is sensible for us to seek to regulate it, not by Standing Order but in the customary way of the House by taking the view that something is undesirable. The proposed amendment to Standing Orders bears on the question of a noble Lord's speaking twice, a matter which is dealt with in an old Standing Order which applies to debates and which should logically apply also to Unstarred Questions. If I understand correctly, it is not proposed that we should have a Standing Order on this matter, but that we should come to the conclusion that the unfortunate Leader should deal with it. Sometimes it is not the Leader of the House; it may be a Minister of State, and indeed the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, was landed with this situation the other day with the noble Lord, Lord Barnby, in a perfectly friendly way. Anyone who is trying to help the House needs a little guidance, and that is the purpose of the recommendation of the Procedure Committee.
I find it quite illogical that when the established custom of the House is that nobody speaks after the Minister has

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wound up except the mover of the Motion, who is expected to exercise his right to reply briefly (and the noble Lord, Lord Ferrier will have that chance) in the case of an Unstarred Question that custom should net be applied. There is no Standing Order on this matter to the effect that noble Lords cannot speak after a Minister. There is nothing even in the Companion. It is merely the established custom of the House.
LORD SALTOUN: My Lords, may I interrupt the noble Lord on one point? It certainly was an iron rule in the 'thirties and before that anybody who asked an Unstarred Question had no right of reply. It was always emphasised that he had no right to speak a second time. It may have changed since then, but that was the rule.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, the noble Lord is another of my young colleagues with a good and long memory, and I always look with the greatest respect to the noble Lord, Lord Saltoun, on procedural matters. When I was the Leader of the House I was very much guided by him as to what was the feeling and the practice of the House. At any rate he used to come and see me often and respect his view. But there was not a Standing Order; there was not a rule; it was the custom. We operate in your Lordships' House, where there is no Speaker and the minimum of rules, by our own respect for our freedom; and to argue, as has been argued, that a noble Lord may wish to speak after a Minister, (not, curiously enough, the noble Lord who has asked the Question but somebody else) in order to express dissatisfaction, seems to me ought to apply equally to Motions. About 50 per cent. of the time we are dissatisfied with the reply of the Minister—it does not matter which Minister it is—but that is no reason for turning the debate into a disorderly one. My view is that the Unstarred Question, which is not the same as the Adjournment Motion in the Commons, is a valuable right, and I am nervous about allowing it to turn into a sort of Committee stage debate.
We have enough difficulty in accommodating Unstarred Questions and I am afraid that if we do not settle this matter in a tidy way the result will be that someone will come along and seek to be
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authoritarian and there will be a rule. Therefore I hope we shall come to a conclusion on this issue. It may not be an important subject, but it is important in the terms of the way we do things in this House. I hope that the very careful recommendation of the Procedure Committee will in fact be adopted and the future Leaders of the House will be in a position to give guidance. That is all they can do. The House can still decide what is the correct procedure, but for the most part the House is very good, provided the Leader is consistent with the feeling and custom of the House, and it will generally accept his advice. I hope now that we shall be able to give the unfortunate Leader or his colleagues the sort of guidance that they need in such matters.
4.27 p.m.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I sense that the House wishes to come to a conclusion on this issue, but perhaps I should just say a word or two as Leader of the House. This has been a valuable debate about a valuable subject, namely, the Unstarred Question, and we are indebted to this magical combination of the Procedure Committee and my noble friend Lord Ferrier for having given us the opportunity for this debate and also the opportunity of hearing again my noble friend (if I may so call him) Lord Saltoun. We do not see enough of him in the House at the present time. It is very nice to see him back again.
SEVERAL NOBLE LORDS: Hear, hear!
LORD SALTOUN: Thank you, my Lords.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I believe the Unstarred Question is a valuable instrument, and, that being so, I think it is right that we should have had this discussion as to how it should operate. On this particular point, and perhaps briefly, I should like to summarise the considerations which lead me, on balance, to support the recommendations of the Procedure Committee. I will run over them quite briefly because I think most of what I wish to say has been said, and said better than I could say, by my noble and learned friend Lord Dilhorne. First, although I do not believe in tidiness for the sake of tidiness I think it is desirable that we should see where we stand here.

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Also I believe it is desirable that the recommendation of the Procedure Committee should be adopted because it sets a finite term and we see where we are in relation to an Unstarred Question. If not, I can see the debates on them being prolonged almost indefinitely. After all, this is a Question and it is quite distinct from a Motion. Therefore it follows logically that our procedure should be adapted for dealing with it as a Question—and here I find myself very much in agreement with what my noble and learned friend Lord Dilhorne has said.
As noble Lords have said, if Members of your Lordships' House are dissatisfied with the reply. or with what they think is going to be the reply, they can intervene beforehand. If they are dissatisfied along the way they can intervene and ask questions then, and if they are dissatisfied as the noble Lord sits down, they can use our time-hallowed formula and say. "Before the noble Lord resumes his seat" —and make a long speech before the noble Lord resumes his seat. I feel that all the opportunities are there. Finally—I do not wish to stress this point because it is essentially a matter within the judgment and discretion of your Lordships' House as a whole, and the recommendations of Committees, however good, are not sacrosanct—this is a recommendation made three times by a Committee of two different compositions, as it were: a very representative Committee, not a Committee which represents a Front Bench cabal or a junta of the usual channels. I do not wish to rest on this point, but it is usual to agree, although there is no obligation to agree, with the recommendations of a Committee.
Before I resume my seat I should like to say one thing to my noble friends, and that is that, as I see this recommendation, it is in no wise aimed against BackBenchers in your Lordships' House. I have explained the composition of our Procedure Committee, which is representative of all opinion in your Lordships' House. Certainly my own disposition to support the recommendation of the Procedure Committee is not coloured by any anti-Back-Bench feelings. Indeed, it was because I felt that there was a feeling in your Lordships' House that perhaps the channels were not clean and open
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enough for Back-Benchers that I asked my noble friend Lord Aberdare, the noble Lord, Lord Byers, the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, the noble Earl, Lord Perth, from the Cross-Benches, to look at our procedures. Following their report came the recommendation for the mini-debate, which has proved a very useful vehicle indeed.
All that said, my feeling is that we need to get this matter settled. Some noble Lords seemed to think that our customs were clear here, but it is perfectly evident to me, listening to this debate, that this is far from clear. We have waltzed around this subject for a rather long time and I hope (switching the dance) that this will be our last tango around it, at least for some little time to come. My preference, as I said, is for the recommendation of the Procedure Committee. Having said that, I must say that I feel less than entirely passionate about this matter and should your Lordships decide otherwise in a few minutes' time I do not think that I shall retire prematurely to my grave. This is a matter essentially within the discretion of your Lordships' House. My noble friends have been fully justified in raising and in pressing this matter, and if my noble friend wishes, as I expect he does wish, to press the Amendment to a Division, I. for one, shall gladly accept the verdict of your Lordships' House on an issue which is essentially within the discretion of your Lordships' House.
LORD FERRIER: My Lords, I think that the House wants to come to a decision on this matter and I agree wholeheartedly with what my noble Leader has said. Before submitting my Amendment, there is one point I should like to make. I did not want to interrupt the noble Viscount, Lord Dilhorne, in his speech because it was so interesting. There was also an interruption by the noble Lord. Lord Shackleton, and he more or less challenged me by saying that I did not differentiate between a Motion and a Question. As a matter of fact, I do. A Motion is perfectly clearly a Motion, and the mover has the right to reply. A Motion may be for a Resolution and then there will be a Division. On an Unstarred Question there is no right of reply by the questioner. I raise that

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point because it was said that there was some doubt about it; however, the Companion is perfectly clear on the matter. It says:
"Such a Question is entered last. Speeches may be made upon it, but the Lord asking it (since he moves no Motion) has no right of reply."
That is why there is such a clear distinction in my mind between the two.
There is one other small point. It does not apply only to Back-Benchers, as the noble Lord, Lord Barnby, suggested; anybody can speak after the Minister. When the noble Earl, Lord Alexander of Hillsborough (to whom the noble Viscount, Lord Dilhorne, referred) spoke he was a Minister and fully entitled to do so.
VISCOUNT DILHORNE: My Lords, he was Leader of the Opposition.
LORD FERRIER: He was a Front-Bencher, not a Back-Bencher—shall I put it that way? It is not confined only to Back-Benchers. When he did that it was stretching it a bit. When I said that I would agree to sub-paragraph (b), then if, as I hope, your Lordships accept my Amendment, the next thing is for the Procedure Committee to recommend that we alter the Standing Order, and that would achieve the tidiness which the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, seeks. It can be done by a simple Report.
Finally, much has been said about the contention which has arisen recently, and only recently, over this question of speaking after the Minister on an Unstarred Question. I beg your Lordships to bear in mind that this contention is caused by those who object to the speaker, and not by the speaker for daring to exercise his right to get up and speak after the Minister. With those words I would say that I have given the matter some thought, and especially after what my noble Leader has said I feel that we should resolve this matter, and I do not withdraw my Amendment.
On Question, Amendment negatived.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

FUTURE BUSINESS: GUARDIANSHIP BILL
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: My Lords, it has been represented to me that it would he more convenient to noble Lords who are taking part in the Committee stage of the Guardianship Bill to-morrow if it were postponed till Tuesday next, March 20. Subject to noble Lords having no objection to this course, this is what we propose to do.

NOISE PROBLEMS AND NOISE ABATEMENT
4.40 p.m.
LORD SOMERS LORD SOMERS rose to draw Her Majesty's Government's attention to the problems of noise and noise abatement; and to move for Papers. The noble Lord said: My Lords, having already had one long debate, I propose to make my short debate as short as possible. It is a long time since we had a debate on noise, and I felt it was about time we discussed the subject again. I am very glad indeed to see that I have been the means of luring the noble Lord, Lord Kinnaird, into giving his maiden speech today, which I am sure all your Lordships are looking forward to.
One of the dictionary definitions of the word "noise" is "any sound"; so I presume that under that definition I am guilty of producing noise in your Lordships' House at this very moment. My only defence is that a good many other noble Lords have been guilty of the same sin already. I suppose also that music would come under this category, and I must confess that there is a good deal of contemporary music of which it would be a very apt description. However, I propose to divide noise into two categories: that which is merely irritating, and that which is definitely damaging.
The borderline between the two is rather vague, because noise can sometimes be so irritating as to be definitely damaging to the nervous system. One of the worst sins, the most anti-social acts, I have always considered, is the use, for instance, of a radio in a garden in a built-up area or with an open window. It is an extraordinary thing how far sounds which are produced by radio can travel—much further than normal sounds. When

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I was a student and was practising regularly, I was always careful to shut the window, however hot the weather might be, but I am quite certain that no sounds that I ever produced on the piano would have travelled so far as those that a radio produces.
Another one, of course, is traffic noise: the noisy exhausts of cars. This is a rather technical question, because the fitting of an exhaust to a car is not as easy as those who are entirely uninitiated might think. You must put the silencer in exactly the right position in the exhaust system in order not to detract too much from the power of the engine. That is why smaller engines have much more rudimentary exhaust systems and, as a consequence, make a great deal more noise. Motor cycles, particularly scooters, and very small cars, mini-cars, and particularly the hotted up version, the Mini-Cooper, I find are absolutely maddening; you can hear them for miles. They sound just like a trombone being blown fortissimo. I do not think that sort of thing is necessary. I do not think that it is beyond engineering science to find some solution. Another cause is the acceleration of large diesel lorries. In that case, I believe—though I stand open to correction, that most of the noise there is mechanical, rather than that of the exhaust. That is largely because on many diesel lorries the engine is perfectly open to space. Sometimes a large diesel lorry accelerating past you can be absolutely shattering. Another extremely annoying noise is the use of those electrical chain saws which are so popular nowadays. No doubt they save a good deal of time when one is lopping a tree, but they make the most revolting noise, and I should have thought that even though it takes a little longer we still have enough muscles to use an ordinary push-and-pull saw.
One form of noisy transport, is, of course, trains. I have never failed to notice the difference between main line trains on the Southern Region and those on the suburban system. The main line trains are very steady riding and they are quieter. They are obviously well padded so far as noise is concerned. But the suburban ones are noisy in the extreme; in fact it is almost impossible to talk in them while they are still moving. That, again, is a fault of construction. It is
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cheaper, I suppose, to turn out a noisy vehicle than a quiet one. All these things go to make life a great deal more unpleasant than it need be. Successive Governments are reluctant to introduce legislation on the subject, because the noise I have been speaking about has no definitely damaging effect; it is merely annoying, and they feel that there are many more important questions to be dealt with.
Now I come to noise which is definitely damaging—factory noise, for instance. Those who work in very noisy factories must suffer permanent damage to their hearing. Is there any legislation about the compulsory wearing of ear pads while working in such circumstances? If so, I think it should be more rigorously enforced, and, if not, then it should be introduced. Pneumatic drills are a source of great noise. They are bad enough when one is just walking past them, but for the unfortunate men who have to work them, with not only the noise but the excessive vibration, it must be little short of inferno. I am very glad that I do not have to use one myself. Another problem is aircraft noise. Not being enough of an engineer, I do not know to what extent a jet engine can be silenced. Perhaps some of those noble Lords who are following me to-day will know more about that subject. There is no doubt that the noise of a jet engine at full blast is extremely unpleasant. I am again sorry for those who have to work at airports.
Finally, I should like to come to one source of noise that is quite preventable, totally unnecessary and is having a very damaging effect indeed; I refer to what are sometimes known as "discotheques" or otherwise as "pop music houses", which the young favour very much to-day. I remember once going over a youth club on the Regent's Canal. It was a beautiful old house that had been taken over by this youth club, and had been beautifully done up by the young members themselves. It was a very nice place indeed, but I passed by the open door leading into a semi-darkened room where the young were sitting round, out of which was coming a blast of sound of such enormous strength that it really very nearly knocked me flat. I have never heard such a noise. The young who sit and listen to that sort of noise every day must suffer permanent damage to their hearing. In fact, it has

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been said by qualified doctors that that is the case. I should have thought that that kind of thing could be discouraged. Even going past an open door leading downstairs into a subterranean discotheque near Charing Cross, the noise that I heard coming out has been so colossal that it has overcome all the noise of the traffic—and, as your Lordships know, that is pretty bad.
It seems to me that the young should be persuaded that, if they are to retain their full power of hearing, they must not subject themselves to that kind of noise. After all, the power of hearing is very valuable. I think it is possible that some sort of legislation might be introduced to control noise of that kind. Admittedly one does not want to introduce too much legislation on these subjects; it should be left so far as possible to the common sense of both children and parents, but I urge the Government to issue some propaganda on this subject, because we do not want, in a generation or so, to turn into a nation of semi-deaf people.
There are a good many other unpleasant forms of noise in the world today, but those that I have mentioned are some that I think we could control. Although admittedly the nation is not going to rise and fall by a reduction or increase of noise none the less I feel that it is important for the welfare of our people that we should become a little more noise free. My Lords, I beg to move for Papers.
LORD KINNAIRD: My Lords, shortly after taking my seat in your Lordships' House a noble friend of mine asked me when I was going to make my maiden speech. I told him that I would not know what to speak about. After a while he said, "Speak about something that makes you really angry". Therefore, I am grateful to be able to take part in this debate on noise and noise abatement brought about by the noble Lord, Lord Somers. I have always hated noise, but I must admit to being very apprehensive in addressing this House for the first time, and I ask for your Lordships' indulgence.
Walking about London one sees notices to the effect that owners of dogs will be fined £20 if their dogs commit a nuisance on the pavement; also if you throw away litter you will be fined £100.
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It always seems to me that these priorities are the wrong way round. However that may be, one never sees any mention of nuisance by noise. There are some noises that are quite amusing. A little time ago I had occasion to visit a depot that specialised in vintage cars. I asked the manager whether there were any eccentrics still left, and he said, "Alas! very few". But his favourite eccentric was a man who had a passion for motor horns. On the dashboard of his car there were no less than six buttons, one for each horn; three to blow in front and three to blow behind. This eccentric, when he was cut in on by a fellow traveller, got into such a frenzy that he waited for a short while until he could pass the car, when he pressed all three rear horns at once.
Generally speaking noise is not so funny. I wonder whether noble Lords saw in The Times a little time ago an article showing the effects of sudden noise on passers by. The illustration showed a picture of a man's head, on top of which was perched a bowler hat. Over the bowler hat was poised a large hammer, which, in reaction to the noise heard, would come down on the hat with varying degrees of force. For instance, a bird singing or a bicycle bell ringing and the hammer would hardly be affected at all—say 5 degrees or less. But a passing motor bike might bring the hat down by 20 degrees; a heavy lorry by 40 degrees, and so on. At the sudden roar of a pneumatic drill the hammer would bash the hat down so hard that the man's face disappeared altogether. Shortly after this article appeared an American doctor wrote that the effect of a loud noise physically—which can be proved by pulse rates, blood pressure, et cetera—is the same as being rushed at by a mad bull, and I am sure that that is an experience that not many of your Lordships would care for; at any rate, not too often.
We are all only too well aware of the ever increasing noise on the ground, but what about noise in the air? I live in a top floor flat near the Royal Hospital at Chelsea. One would imagine this to be a quiet spot, but sometimes it is not so at all. It often seems like an extension to a runway at Heathrow. When the wind is in a certain direction, starting early in the morning at the rate of at least one a minute aircraft fly over at varying degrees

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of height making the most appalling noise for hours at a time, sometimes all day, sometimes all week, and sometimes for several weeks on end. Frequently you see one plane disappearing over the horizon while the second one is overhead, and a third one approaching in the distance. They fly so low that you sometimes think they are coming in through the bedroom window. It is impossible to talk on the telephone, listen to the radio, or do anything else while this deafening noise continues. One hears so many objections from people living in the vicinity of London's possible second airport, but one never seems to hear about the noise that thousands of Londoners have to endure every day.
Your Lordships may ask: why stay in a place when the noise disturbs you? Fair enough, but I think we should be concerned about the countless numbers of people up and down the country who, for some reason or another, cannot escape their surroundings; people living on main thoroughfares, on dual carriageways, by fly-overs, and even people living in country towns not yet by-passed who can never get away. As for those unfortunates whose homes are near busy airports, a medical survey was recently taken of people living near Heathrow, the results of which showed that the number of persons admitted to hospital for mental disturbance was eight times that of the national average. That is surely a serious figure, and yet I believe it is expressly forbidden by the Civil Aviation Act 1968 to take action against airlines or aerodromes for nuisance by noise.
Noise is a devious enemy. Its waves of assault are not like those of the sea. They come at you from all directions, like flashes from a bomb as it bursts. They vibrate the air through which they pass, and, just when you think you have stopped a frontal attack, they creep around and assault you from behind. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Summer-skill for her support. I told her yesterday that she gave me confidence. So that in an age when more and more aircraft pollute the air and when, on the ground, sirens have taken the place of bells, I should like to express to Her Majesty's Government the urgent hope that they will do all in their power to reduce this
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dreadful menace of noise, caused very often quite unnecessarily.
5.2 p.m.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, I deem myself very fortunate in following the noble Lord after his maiden speech. It is a fact, as he recalled just now, that at tea-time yesterday he told me of his apprehensions and asked me whether this House is a kindly place and whether his efforts would be received. I think he will agree with me that my picture of the House was absolutely correct. Your Lordships are kind and understanding, but I can assure him that he did not need those particular attributes, because he has just delivered himself of an excellent speech which was informative and witty, and which I am quite sure, will make a mark upon this House. I ask the noble Lord to join the little club of people who devote themselves to what might be regarded as human problems, and take the very next opportunity to allow the House to hear him. I have to confess that the noble Lord gave me such a vivid description of his misery in the night, that if I were awakened by a plane in the night I should picture him and recall the conversation we had yesterday. But it is only fair to say that, as a Londoner, I live in a spot where the only noise that wakens me is the dawn chorus. I shall not tell everybody where that is, because they will immediately rush to the nearest estate agent and the prices will soar.
I should first of all like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Somers, for initiating this debate and for once more drawing the attention of the Government to the problems of noise. Of course it is understandable that in their speeches most noble Lords will devote themselves to those aspects of noise of which they are themselves particularly conscious in their own environment, as the noble Lord did just now, and will talk about noise as a nuisance. I shall speak on what I regard as the incessant—because that is a very important factor—and deafening noise which has to be endured by workers in industry. I use the word "deafening" deliberately, because I became fully alive to the potential hazard to health of the noisy machine when I was the Member for an industrial constituency. I had been the Member for a London constituency for many years, and the problems that I

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had to tackle then were certainly not those of the factory. But I was then offered an industrial seat, which was a complete contrast, and I was astonished to find men who were partially deaf at 40, who told me that their fathers who had worked in the same factory had also lost their hearing at the same age. That was quite common. I got into the habit, when I went to the social functions of the constituency, of shouting at one of the members of my own Party, because I knew that he was probably—to use a nice euphemism—hard of hearing. I was particularly shocked at the indifference of those in authority because, as the House will understand, I did not fail to express my views on this subject. I was also astonished at the fatalistic attitude of the workers. Some of them, because their fathers had been deaf at 40, regarded it as a family complaint. Others were reluctant to complain for fear of losing their jobs.
While I am pleased that the noise of the aeroplane, about which we have just heard, and the other noises which the noble Lord, Lord Somers, mentioned, have received the sympathetic attention of the Secretary of State for the Environment, the unfortunate worker who is exposed to unremitting noise for eight hours a day has, I fear, few champions in high places. He is forgotten too easily, and he is reluctant to keep on complaining because, for some extraordinary reason, he regards it as a reflection upon himself as a man, as a male. This is something which he thinks he should suffer with a smile and not complain about. I should therefore like to remind the Secretary of State for the Environment, when he reads the Report of this debate, that there exists a close relationship between a man's working environment and his health. Of course, there is a relationship in other respects, but to-day we are dealing with noise. This is not a new subject, and over the years committees have been convened to examine the problem. But it seems to me, although many committees have sat for many years, the report having been made, the Minister having thanked the committee for their kindness and for the valuable and generous amount of time which they have given to the job, their efforts are usually consigned to the pigeon-hole. Little change has been made in the legislation. The Robens Commit-
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tee on Safety and Health at Work sat from 1970 to 1972, and dealt with the subject of noise in industry in a page and a half by simply referring to the various Reports that had been made. I doubt whether the Government will experience any sense of urgency at all on being told by the Robens Committee that the time is ripe to include basic requirements on noise control in occupational and health legislation. "Basic requirements" can be interpreted as the very minimum in legislative action, but this menace to our health is of such a magnitude that the Government should recognise that legislation should be introduced as soon as possible. No mention was made of it in the last Queen's Speech, so at least let us have it in the next Queen's Speech.
Another Report Hearing and Noise in Industry, was published in 1970. The investigation was undertaken by Professor Burns and Dr. D. Robinson. It established a system of predicting the hearing deterioration caused by industrial noise. This was a most valuable document, because it made quite clear to the employer that the hearing of the worker was deteriorating as a direct result of a certain process being operated in the factory. What has been done? Very little. Despite all these surveys, the workers are still exposed to a volume of noise which these studies have proved can be prevented by appropriate legislation. Having listened to the noble Lord tell of the misery he has at night, I would ask him—and I know he is absolutely sympathetic, so this is only a rhetorical question—how he would feel if he was compelled to endure unceasing noise throughout the day of such a kind that he could not hear a question put to him by a worker standing next to him, and had then to go home to a home which was also subject to the noise of heavy traffic and to noise from the air? This is the position of many industrial workers in this country, and I feel that they should all have our heartfelt sympathy.
Again, it is important to consider the psychological effect of these conditions upon workpeople, and whether the industrial noise unconsciously contributes to the desire to strike as an escape from intolerable working conditions. I know that if I had to work for eight hours a day in some of the noise I heard in my constituency, I would listen to any strike

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leader and be half with him before he finished the argument if I was told that, as a result of a strike, I might have a fortnight in the quiet during the daytime. These are very important factors in a worker's life. There are some people who regard the manual worker as somebody who, after many years, has become insensitive and who must be regarded as a person whose central nervous system is quite different from the central nervous system of a politician or of a sedentary worker. Of course, the opposite is the truth.
I recall that, in my constituency I was invited to a little dinner (I say "dinner"; in those days it used to be cold meat and salad, as we all know) at the fishermen's club. I was astonished to find a large membership of workers at such a club in an industrial constituency. It took me some time to recognise that the reason was that this pastime provided a relief to the nervous system of the man whose working life was spent in a world of unrelieved noise. I often wondered whether those men appreciated why this pastime, this quiet business of sitting on the hank with a rod, with not a sound except, perhaps, a little noise in the water now and then, gave them so much satisfaction. It was certainly not dependent for its popularity on the large catch, for they seldom caught much. Of course they knew it gave them satisfaction, but they had not analysed why it did. Perhaps if they had analysed it there might have been a strike on the subject.
There have been plenty of documents on this subject, and I am quite sure that the noble Lord who is going to answer this debate is very well briefed, because so much material exists that one could keep on quoting for many hours. But I want to address myself now to only two things. First, the 1971 edition of the Factory Inspectorate's booklet Noise and the Worker. This was encouraging, and one hoped that the Factory Inspectorate would prod in the right places and say that something must be done. But, no: it was an excellent document, but nothing has been done. Secondly, the Department of Employment has published a Code of Practice. My Lords, what on earth is the good of a Code of Practice which is not practised? The legislation which would, of course, make this Code an important document
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is not forthcoming. The noble Lord, Lord Sandford, who I believe has these things at heart, will perhaps tell us tonight—I hope he will—that at long last the Government are considering introducing legislation which will make this Code of Practice compulsory. Inevitably, only a few employers feel compelled, for example, to monitor and record levels from specified processes, and implement the recommendations.
Undoubtedly, an important precedent was established in 1971 when, for the first time in Britain, a court awarded damages for deafness caused by noise at work. I agree that this was very important. But I have always felt that noise in industry, and the effects of noise in industry, should be a prescribed disease; and, this case now having been heard and damages given, surely cases of this nature should provide sufficient evidence for noise-induced hearing loss to be included among the prescribed diseases for the purpose of the National Insurance (Industrial Diseases) Act. This would be a very important step forward because through the National Insurance (Industrial Diseases) Act we should be establishing for everybody—for those who suffer from the noise of the 'plane and for those who suffer from the noise of the discotheque—that this noise is harmful to the ear.
However, my Lords, compensation is not the primary objective. The measure of the grave failure to introduce legislation to protect the workers is the fact that this form of deafness is preventable. We are here talking about a complaint which is a serious disability and which is preventable, and yet thousands of defenceless men and women are exposed to this risk throughout their working lives. I believe that no sum of money, however big, can compensate them for a disability which can, after all, deprive them of the very joy of living.
5.19 p.m.
EARL AMHERST: My Lords, I should like to endorse all that the noble Baroness, Lady Summerskill, has said about the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Kinnaird, which I found full of wit, interesting and thoughtful. I am quite sure that all your Lordships will be hoping to hear from the noble Lord again on many occasions.
I should also like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Somers, for giving us the

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opportunity to discuss the question of noise. I want to intervene only briefly in this debate to draw attention to an aspect of what might be called the national state of noise as it now pervades a large part of national public amusement. The introduction and the development of the microphone, with its extensions through the amplification system—transistors, tape recorders, television—means that the media reaches out, and can and does penetrate into everyone's ears everywhere all the time. The whole media has developed and achieved a miracle, through its many systems, in electrical refinement, to bring into the reach of anyone who wants to listen a vast amount of worldwide performance of every conceivable kind, as they all happen, all through the 24 hours of every day. It has made possible a highly sophisticated extension of what His Master's Voice Telephone Company in this country and Edison Bell Records Company in America started years ago—the continued building up of a vast recorded library of incalculable value both for the world's public, as well as for future historians. But, being a complicated electrical machine without a human brain, it remains totally unselective. It can and does record and amplify the very best and the very worst, and everything in between. In our modern world of entertainment it plays an all-important part. But in reaching the degree of technical excellence it has also gathered to itself the ability to produce a volume of noise that apparently knows no bounds.
Those who have happened to go to the theatre fairly recently may have noticed long oblong boxes slung on the proscenium arch on each side of the stage. In the bigger theatres there are others placed in various parts of the house. These are amplifiers attached to microphones placed sometimes in the footlight trough or in other convenient places round the stage. In theatres where the acoustics are bad they enable every one of the audience to hear every word spoken on the stage without the actors having to project to their limits. They are also a boon and a blessing to those performers whose voices are not too strong, or who do not know how to sing, or how to speak a line, as without their aid they would not be heard over the orchestra rail or the front row of the stalls. In days gone by it was not an unheard of incident when
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at the end of an operetta the heroine—always a soprano—had to bring down the final curtain on a high C. Should she falter, slip to a B sharp or even a B natural, the unfortunate lady was promptly drowned out by a fortissimo blast from the brass section of the band. It is possible that the amplification system may be a modern way of coming to this sort of rescue.
Your Lordships may also have noticed that recently, where they are playing musical shows, there is an increasing tendency to turn the thing up to the full, and for most if not the whole of the performance. It is now getting to be nearly, if not quite, impossible to distinguish what tune—of indeed there is a tune—the band is playing, or hear the lyrics—if there are lyrics—that the singers are trying to "belt out". All this may be just a deliberate way of hiding or covering up deficiencies in the writing and composing of the show, or the lack of ability of some of the performers. I have been told by someone who knows this side of the threatre business very well that a large section of the public who go to musical shows do not think they have had their money's worth unless there is a maximum of noise throughout. Also, when their favourites appear on the stage they want to hear them sound just as did on their television, radio sets or their recorders. This could presuppose that such audiences play these media in their homes at full blast. One hears many cases of people living in flats who complain bitterly of the noise of their neighbours' radio or television sets.
But for sheer concentrated noise—just noise—I recommend the average discotheque. The noble Lord, Lord Somers, made considerable mention of this. Personally, I have often enjoyed going to discotheques, but recently I have found the noise almost unbearable and overwhelming. Conversation of any sort is out of the question. All this goes on without a break until closing time. The public here are largely what is known as young people. But so is the audience at the Proms. In fact, they pack the Albert Hall. The programmes at the Proms offer an enormous range of music played and sung by the finest singers and instrumentalists. The young people applaud them to the echo. But these performances at the Proms, my Lords, are

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not amplified. It may be that the pop music, its bands, and its singers are only acceptable to their public if they are amplified almost out of recognition. If you listen to Radio 2 at any time, apart from the noise there is an all-pervading curious monotony, a never-ending African drum beat. I would defy anybody to pick out a melody or a lyric.
I am told on good authority that there is serious concern in medical circles that sustained subjection by the young to this cacophony of amplified noise may likely produce serious troubles in their hearing when they reach old or even middle age. The noble Baroness, Lady Surnmerskill, brought out more than amply the question of noise and the damage medically to the hearing of everybody. So it seems that one half of us is concerned with subduing noise while the other half is bent on producing, selling and enjoying it. Is there no middle selective way?
5.27 p.m.
LORD SANDYS: My Lords, first of all I should like to join with all the other speakers in this debate in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Somers, for giving us this opportunity of discussing the subject we are examining this afternoon. May I also say what a very great pleasure it is to take part in a debate in which we have heard a most distinguished maiden speech from the noble Lord, Lord Kinnaird, and to wish with others that we will hear him on this and other subjects on many future occasions.
That said, my Lords, what is my interest in noise? I am the son of a partially deaf father, and with what the noble Baroness said in her closing remarks about the fact that no conversation can really take place without a sense of hearing I would wholeheartedly agree from my experience of family life. I think that from this point of view alone it is sufficient argument for taking part in the debate. My father lost his sense of hearing at the age of 40 in the trenches in the first World War. He partly recovered the sense of one ear, but when he came to your Lordships' House he said it was the easiest place to hear of any chamber or any room he knew because the amplification was so good. I wholeheartedly agree with the noble Earl, Lord Amherst, in what he said on the subject of amplification.
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My Lords, the particular aspect which I should like to discuss with your Lordships is transport noise, in the two fields of road transport and aircraft. In this connection there was a debate in your Lordships' House only a week ago on transport which I felt was particularly germane. What was said on that subject in regard to the development of a silent motor I would have thought was deserving of the closest attention of the most erudite scientific and mechanically minded experts in this country, that is to say, the linear induction motor on which at present Professor Laithwaite is experimenting at Imperial College, London. The future will indeed be bright if we plan for silent motors for road and rail transport and, if possible, silent or more silent motors for aircraft. But surely we must cope with the present noisy ones. That is perhaps the most immediate fruit of this debate, although we might perhaps draw the Government's attention to a number of areas in which noise may be abated.
Aircraft noise, it has been said, affects perhaps 10 per cent. of the population in its most extreme form. Obviously, 100 per cent. of the population are affected in a minor form, but those who live in close proximity to aerodromes suffer it to the very worst extent. Here I feel that the number of people caught in the noise nuisance net when Concorde takes to the air will in years to come be very much greater. Surely, any noise abatement in this field of aircraft engine design is going to be of the greatest public concern. I recommend most heartily what has been said on the subject of research and development into quieter motors and quieter aircraft engines and the degree of priority that should be accorded to it for the future.
In the traffic noise zone, certainly over 90 per cent. of the population must be concerned and involved. I would wholeheartedly agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Kinnaird, said in that connection. We can take action here, and we must take action in the area of noise law. We have discussed noise law in your Lordships' House on many occasions. May I suggest to your Lordships that there are certain areas in which quite simple and straightforward procedures could be adapted: regulations

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could be framed and it would not require a new Parliamentary Bill to enable this to take place. I refer especially to the noise law in regard to traffic, and in this particular connection the noise tests currently being conducted or currently applied by the Ministry of Transport. Regulations in years to come should be revised, but surely we can give this matter a much greater degree of priority as a result of pressure to do this much sooner.
As your Lordships are well aware, at present the official test is carried out in the open air at 25 feet range for a vehicle travelling at 30 miles an hour, and it must not exceed the generation of 80 decibels. This is a very impracticable test because the noise level, if the test were taken down a street with tall buildings on either side, might so easily increase to over 100 decibels without the speed of the vehicle altering. Surely we need to construct a different method of measuring noise. Would it not be an excellent plan that universities which conduct experiments in this connection should give their advice? Do we not need a static test which could be easily applied—requiring a sort of car-wash, enclosed contrivance into which a vehicle would drive and be subjected to a test at certain revolution rates, and the engine would be measured accordingly? I do not feel that with our current knowledge this would be difficult, and I suggest that some research and development in this field should take place. We want realistic measurement under simple conditions.
In regard to offences under the road traffic law, as the law stands at the moment it is extraordinarily difficult to achieve prosecution of noisy vehicles, but the annual number of cases prosecuted by the police under the Road Traffic Acts is about 14,000. As I understand it, these prosecutions are based on opinion and not on fact. In other words, the vehicles are not subjected to a test. It is in the opinion of the police officer that the vehicle was making too much noise and there is no specific proof; therefore, it is the opinion of the police officer which is often accepted by the magistrate or recorder concerned. May I draw your Lordships' attention to the cost of prosecution? My information is that a conservative estimate is in the nature of £200 per case. As I have men-
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tioned to your Lordships already, no fewer than 14,000 prosecutions are dealt with by the courts in a year at the present time. On conviction, fines amount to around £5. Surely this is a hopelessly uneconomic system.
We should re-examine the position in line with a scheme now approved and agreed by the Association of Chief Constables, which is to adopt a quite different procedure. This involves setting aside prosecutions and agreeing that traffic wardens, the police and public health inspectors should be equipped with a noise torch or similar device. Then, when a vehicle which they believe to be generating more than 80 or 85 decibels passes them on a spot check, they should report it. Now that the Central Vehicle Registry is set up, or will shortly be operating from its headquarters in Swansea, with a computerised system, it will be easy to send in a standard written form saying that a vehicle with such-and-such a registration number gave a reading of such-and-such a number of decibels. The Registry will send to the owner of that vehicle, who will be checked upon with very great ease, a report saying that the vehicle would be subject to Ministry of Transport test at the earliest opportunity. "The earliest opportunity" would probably be some time ahead when the licence was clue to be renewed. This would be a better sanction. Not only would the insurance companies be most likely to co-operate with a system of this kind, if it has already been approved by the chief constables, but this is an area which would not require further legislation. It would require merely further Regulations by the Minister. I feel that if a sense of imagination were put into practice in this field it could do a great deal of good.
Finally, on vehicle registration, I would draw your Lordships' attention to one fact brought up in the debate we held a week ago. I would quote from col. 1210 of the OFFICIAL REPORT Of the debate on Transport on Wednesday, March 7. In that debate the noble Lord, Lord Popplewell, said this:
"Secondly, as regards the increased volume of traffic carried by heavy lorries is it not correct to say there has been an increase of 817 per cent. in the number of lorries over eight tons in the last six years?"

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That statistic was challenged only by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas of Chilworth, who suggested that the figure was about 400 per cent. rather than 800 per cent., and surely that statistic is a very alarming one. The growth in the number and size of "juggernaut lorries we well know about, but surely that statistic in particular should impel the powers-that-be to take action on this important subject.
5.38 p.m.
LORD WISE: My Lords, I must apologise first for putting down my name to speak and then withdrawing it and now speaking, but yesterday I did not think I should be able to attend your Lordships' House to-day. However, I am extremely glad and happy that I have been able to attend to-day, first because it was a great pleasure to listen to the excellent maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Kinnaird. With other noble Lords, I hope we shall have the pleasure of listening to him again on many occasions in the future. My Lords, living as I do in a rural area I am fortunate not to be unduly affected by traffic and aircraft noise or, for that matter, the noise of "pop" music and transistor radios, but I am particularly grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Somers, for initiating this debate, for it gives me an opportunity of bringing to your Lordships' notice a small noise problem of which I have some knowledge.
I imagine that to many farmers one of the sweetest sounds of all is that of the steady roar of a tractor as it is ploughing. I must confess that I derive considerable satisfaction from watching and listening to a tractor. In the past I have spent many days driving tractors, but I can no longer do so. I feel sure that the intolerable noise level inside some of the present day safety cabs would drive me insane. Our agricultural workers are a superb lot of chaps. They are interested in their job; they love the land on which they work and they are prepared to work hard and long hours. I know of dedicated men who have worked long hours on a tractor in order to get a particular job done while weather conditions were right. Now these men long for knocking-off time in order to obtain relief from the overpowering and incessant din within the tractor cabs. Some men are refusing to work in this type of cab and I do not blame them, for I could not do so.
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I know of men who have been hospitalised with damage to their ears or have been affected mentally; and who knows what the long-term effect may be? The engine transmission whine is accentuated in these cabs and the drumming noise is intense, and I do not feel that our workers should be subjected to this misery. I entirely endorse what the noble Baroness, Lady Summerskill, has said regarding noise in industry. Surely it is not beyond our technological skill, either to quieten the tractor transmission and engine, or to construct cabs which do not accentuate the noise. I believe that some manufacturers supply ear muffs for the drivers, but this appears to me a most inadequate and unsatisfactory method of solving the problem. I believe that if these ear muffs are worn for any length of time they become hot and uncomfortable, and also I understand that their continual use can result in an ear infection.
At one time I considered putting down a Question to the Minister asking whether the regulations regarding safety cabs could be relaxed until such time as further research had improved them and made conditions tolerable. I decided against this, for these cabs have undoubtedly saved lives. There was a tragic accident in my district a short while ago in which a young man died. Probably he would have lived had the tractor he was driving been fitted with a safety cab. These tractors and cabs are an expensive piece of equipment. Much has been done to increase comfort for the driver in the way of improved seating and heaters et cetera; but no one seems to have worried unduly about the noise affecting the poor chap who is driving. I am certain that the Government were right to bring in legislation regarding the compulsory use of safety cabs, but could we not now legislate to make the working hours of the people whose lives we have protected more worth living?
5.43 p.m.
LORD SANDFORD: My Lords, we are all grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Somers, for moving this Motion which draws our attention to the problem of noise, though I think we are all agreed that it is a problem which draws itself to our attention only too often. We are glad also that this has provided an opportunity for us to hear my noble friend Lord Kinnaird for the first time. Although

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there are a number of things we shall be talking about of which we should rather hear less, we are all agreed that we look forward very much to hearing more of the noble Lord in the future.
I think it probably true to say that most of the more widespread noise nuisance with which we have to deal stems from variations on the internal combustion engine: the diesel engine which drives our lorries, the petrol engine which drives our cars and the jet engine which drives our aircraft. It is estimated that one way or another one-fifth of the citizens in our towns and cities suffer from and are annoyed by traffic noise while in their homes. It is not thousands, as my noble friend Lord Kinnaird estimated, but some 2 million people who are annoyed and disturbed by the noise from Heathrow Airport alone. As the noble Lord has indicated, there are numerous other sources of disagreeable noise, in factories and elsewhere. I will refer to them in a moment. It is true to say that here we have a major nuisance which must be tackled more vigorously, and as this mini debate is running well within its time, I hope that your Lordships will bear with me if I deal with the subject fairly comprehensively.
I think there are four strategies in dealing with noise. The first and best is to throttle it at source. The second is to send it away from people. The third is to plan matters so as to ensure that noise and people are kept apart, and the fourth and last resort is to insulate and protect people from noise when all the other methods have failed. It is that framework that I propose to use for my remarks. I turn to the measures that can be taken to throttle noise at source, which is the best strategy of all in the long run. Some of the earliest powers of control that we have, have been on the Statute Book since 1912—the controls over the exhausts of vehicles. In 1968 a limit was prescribed on the amount of noise that an exhaust system was permitted to make. The noble Lord, Lord Somers, mentioned this briefly and my noble friend Lord Sandys dealt with it extensively, and I am glad that he did so. I was glad that he mentioned that prosecutions are running at a scale of 13,000 or 14,000 a year and I would entirely agree with him that anything that can be done to make enforcement simpler,
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cheaper and easier for the police is something which we must consider carefully, because the police have many other claims on their manpower and time. I am glad to be able to tell my noble friend that the Noise Advisory Council has already recommended static tests of the type he was suggesting. They are being considered and my noble friend's remarks will be considered in conjunction with them.
The earlier controls on the use of motor vehicles have been progressively strengthened. They apply also to horns and I hope that they apply to the kind of horn which was mentioned by my noble friend Lord Kinnaird. It is now an offence to use a horn at all in a built-up area between 11.30 p.m. and 7 a.m. The most important development in this field has been since 1969 with the introduction of regulations prescribing noise limits for classes of vehicles in use and providing that from April, 1970, new vehicles have to meet separate and lower noise limits. We were about to introduce limits of our own, but with the advent of our entry into Europe it was decided to seek for more stringent limits within the wider context of the whole European Economic Community. There is a five-year research programme, sponsored by the Government and manufacturing industry, which aims at the development of a heavy goods vehicle which would be half as noisy as the current generation of heavy goods vehicles. I am sure that will be welcomed by my noble friend Lord Sandys.
By 1970 progress in the design of aircraft engines enabled the International Civil Aviation Organisation to agree on a scheme for the noise certification of future types of commercial subsonic jet aircraft. The Air Navigation Noise Certification Order 1970 which implemented that scheme in this country requires new aircraft operating in the United Kingdom to be about half as noisy as current jet aircraft of the same weight. The prospects which this development holds out are already becoming apparent as the new and quieter aircraft such as the DC10 and the Tri-Star with the Rolls-Royce engine RB211 come into service and are heard in this country. My noble friend Lord Sandys was quite right to introduce into the debate the possibility of linear motors and any other

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kind of motor which makes far less sound than the internal combustion engine.
I now turn to the abatement of noise at source in the urban scene. A working group of the Noise Advisory Council has examined the working of the Noise Abatement Acts and the general question of noise in urban situations, and its report, entitled Neighbourhood Noise, suggested legislation under four heads to improve the general living conditions of people in towns. The first head was to speed up and strengthen the procedures under which legal action could be taken to abate causes of noise nuisance of all kinds —and under this category will come chain stores, transistor radios, discotheques, bird scarers, barking dogs, pneumatic drills, amplified music and all the other things which noble Lords have mentioned. In connection with discotheques, which was concerning the noble Earl, Lord Amherst, and other noble Lords, I can say that there is a special working group of the Noise Advisory Council looking into that problem.
The second heading which the Noise Advisory Council have considered for legislation is the creation of noise abatement zones with the object first of holding steady the noise level within a particular zone and then progressively bringing about an improvement. The two other heads are the arrangement of the control of noise on construction and demolition sites, and the power to enforce the quietening of noisy machinery. I am glad to be able to tell the noble Baroness, Lady Summerskill, that the Government have accepted in principle these recommendations, and have indicated their intention to introduce new noise legislation in the lifetime of the present Parliament.
I turn now to another strategy, that of removing the source of noise away from people when it cannot be effectively throttled at source. My noble friend Lord Sandys rightly mentioned the possibilities here under transport and traffic control legislation. I am grateful to him for his suggestions. This is a good moment to consider them, and I am glad to assure him that they will be considered. Local authorities have powers under a number of Acts to restrict and prevent access of heavy traffic, or traffic of any sort, on a number of grounds, including
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amenity. But there is now a Private Member's Bill being introduced by Mr. Hugh Dykes into another place, entitled the Heavy Commercial Vehicles (Control and Regulations) Bill, which is seeking to provide local authorities with the power positively to specify through routes for heavy vehicles, and to prohibit or restrict use in zones on certain roads in order to preserve the amenity of the area: and, of course, quietness is an element of that. The Bill would also require local authorities to put forward specific proposals for action by January 1, 1977. Here, once again, I am glad to assure the noble Baroness, Lady Summerskill, that that is legislation which the Government are supporting.
I pass now to removing the source of noise in the form of aircraft noise. The Government now have comprehensive powers for the control of noise at any aerodrome in the United Kingdom designated for that purpose. It is this that has enabled such steps to be taken as the banning of night jet aircraft takeoffs between the hours of 23.30 and 06.00 at Heathrow during the summer from 1972 onwards, and the reduction of the number of night jet movements at Gatwick, Luton and Manchester which are to be allowed this coming summer. So much for steps that can be taken under that strategy.
I turn now to the strategy of planning for people and noise to be kept apart. The Government's decision to build the Third London Airport at Maplin was based not only on the need to provide additional airport capacity to meet increasing traffic, but also on the need to bring relief at the earliest possible date to the people who are at present annoyed by noise from Heathrow, Gatwick and Luton. My noble friend Lord Kinnaird opened his speech by dwelling on this particular form of noise nuisance. More recently, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for the Environment has firmly refused to allow further development at Luton Airport on the grounds that such development would increase the degree of public inconvenience and distress already caused by noise from that airport. But most of what needs to be done to keep noise and people apart, and to plan accordingly, is in the hands of the local planning authorities. To help them with what they need to do, my right honourable friend has

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issued to them a new circular entitled Planning and Noise, and also a pamphlet prepared by the Noise Advisory Council entitled A Guide to Noise Units, by which noise of various kinds can be measured, because if planning and noise are to go together we must work by agreed criteria.
Planning, in a wider sense, can also help to mitigate the adverse effects on new development of those public works which are necessary in the interests of the community as a whole, but highly detrimental to the public interests of many other people. Here what I am thinking of, in particular, are new highway proposals and urban motorways. The Government have fully accepted the Urban Motorways Committee's recommendations that the planning and the design of new major roads should be fully integrated into the planning process. We have the Land Compensation Bill, which is shortly coming to your Lordships' House and will provide highway authorities with the power to design and construct roads to minimise the adverse effects of noise arising from them. So much for planning in order to keep noise and people apart.
But, my Lords, we need to have recourse to the final strategy to deal with the situation where all the other strategies have failed; and then we are left with the need to insulate and protect people from noise—and we come particularly later to the matter which the noble Baroness, Lady Summerskill, raised. I should like first to deal with the protection and insulation of people from noise in their own homes. Since 1966 grants have been available for the installation of sound insulation against aircraft noise round Heathrow. The terms of this scheme were approved last year. Arrangements are also in hand for bringing a similar scheme into operation at Gatwick, and at Luton and Manchester the respective corporations also intend to introduce schemes. The Land Compensation Bill, to which I have already referred, will not only establish an entitlement to the provision of sound insulation where properties are affected by excessively high noise levels as a result of public works, including roads and airports, but will also provide entitlement to compensation for injurious affection where property loses value as a result of new public works,
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such as highways, and the noise emanating from the traffic using it.
LORD DOUGLAS OF BARLOCH: My Lords, I should like to ask the noble Lord a question before he leaves the matter of traffic. He has dealt with new roads, but a great deal of traffic has been diverted off highways into residential roads. What is proposed about that?
LORD SANDFORD: My Lords. I think this all bears very much on the Land Compensation Bill, and I hope we shall be able to deal with it in that context. The other part which does not is the part about which I have been speaking under the use of the powers under the Transport Acts and the Traffic Regulations Acts, where the legislation on which we are pinning the next advance is the Bill that has been introduced into another place by Mr. Hugh Dykes.
I should like to deal now with the protection from noise of people at their workplace: this is the matter on which the noble Baroness, Lady Summerskill, chiefly concentrated. I was pleased that she did so. Up to now, the chief items of legislation have been the Factories Act 1961, which contained powers to protect people from bodily injury, and the Shops and Offices Act 1963, under which steps could be taken if workers' welfare was likely to be adversely affected. The Factory Inspectorate, working under those powers, have made some progress, but the noble Baroness mentioned the work of Professor Burns and Dr. Robinson and their publication, Hearing and Noise in Industry. Their work takes us a considerable step forward. Up to 1970, the date of their publication, the information that was available as to the precise effects of noise on the health of workers had been quite inadequate.
As the noble Baroness knows, the Secretary of State for Employment was able to publish last year a Code of Practice for reducing the exposure of employed persons to noise. It is early days, therefore, to look for actual achievements under this Code, but I am able to give her one or two examples of the steps already taken. For instance, the British Steel Corporation have made significant noise reductions by sound-proofing booths in their strip mills. Another firm has done away with compressed air as a method of moving materials about, and

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has replaced that with electro-magnetic devices, which of course are soundless. In another case, management and union representatives have agreed that the wearing of hearing protection in noise hazard areas should be a condition of employment; and in the wool industry a special team of consultants has been commissioned to advise on the modification of the machinery itself. I am also glad to be able to say to the noble Lord, Lord Wise, that the Minister of Agriculture has been consulting the industry and other interested parties about the noise level in the safety cabs of tractors, and there is shortly to be an announcement about the new regulations, based on the advice that the Minister has received.
Reverting to the Code, which was mentioned by the noble Baroness, this sets out much more fully than ever before what needs to be done to protect those at work from noise that is great enough to produce a serious risk of deafness. It applies throughout industry. Advice on the application of the Code is being given by the Factory Inspectorate on every general inspection, and in addition during the eight months since the introduction of the Code, 1,400 special visits have been made to selected factories with a serious noise problem, in order to study the problem on the ground. I also understand that the question of whether noise-induced hearing loss satisfies the conditions for prescription under the National Insurance (Industrial Injuries) Act is currently being considered by the Industrial Injuries Advisory Council, who will shortly be reporting to the Secretary of State for Social Services.
My Lords, I apologise for speaking at such length, but this is a wide-ranging subject. I should like to conclude by mentioning specifically the Noise Advisory Council, which is proving to be such a valuable agency in this field. It held its first meeting in April 1970. It was set up to review progress made in preventing and abating the generation of noise, and to advise Ministers generally. It is doing this work splendidly. The Secretary of State for the Environment is the Chairman, and the membership consists of a broad cross-section of lay and expert opinion. The Council has carried out a number of studies of speci-
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fic problems, some of which I have mentioned already. One of its projects is to provide a forward look over the trends and likely problems of the current decade.
May I say that I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Somers, and other noble Lords who have spoken, for giving us the opportunity for a debate on this subject and for an opportunity to discuss the problems involved, together with their solutions. I am glad of your Lordships' encouragement to press on with the programme to which we have set our hands.
6.6 p.m.
LORD SOMERS: My Lords, I am most grateful to all those noble Lords who have taken part in this debate, and particularly to the noble Lord, Lord Kinnaird, with whose maiden speech I am sure we were all very much impressed. Like other noble Lords, I very much hope he will often speak again. I should particularly like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, for what seemed to me one of the most encouraging replies I have ever heard him make. It is obvious that the Government are not unconscious of the problems which exist in this field. I was also very glad that the noble Lord noted in particular the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Sandys, about identification by the police of noisy traffic on the roads.
I believe this has been a constructive debate. I sincerely hope that all the work which the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, has mentioned will eventually bear its fruit and that we shall thus live in a far more silent and pleasant land. My Lords, I beg leave to withdraw my Motion.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

LAKELAND NATIONAL PARK ROAD POLICY
6.7 p.m.
LORD HENLEY LORD HENLEY rose to call attention to the Minister's decision on the reconstruction of the A.66 road in the Lakeland National Park and the urgent need for the formulation of a road policy for that Park; and to move for Papers. The noble Lord said: My Lords, I am calling attention to the Minister's decision on the A.66 because I think it has implications which are wider than might be generally supposed. The A.66 is the road which

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goes West from Penrith. It goes through Keswick and Cockermouth and on from there to West Cumberland. It crosses the Lake District and in part cuts through the National Park. The proposal is that this road should be enlarged to near-motorway standards, to link industrial West Cumberland with the M.6. The main objections were that such an extension was inconsistent with a National Park and could be avoided by various alternatives. Those objections were considered at a public inquiry over a period of five weeks, at the end of which the inspector approved the proposal for the extension of the road. The Minister has since upheld his decision.
I do not want to cover the arguments that were covered then, even in outline, though I daresay that other noble Lords may wish to touch on them. I should like to look at the attitude of mind lying behind the justification for the extension of the road, because I believe the attitude to be wrong. I believe that the implications of which I speak have gone more or less unnoticed by the Government. They are implications not only for National Parks in particular but for traffic in this country in general. It seems to me that the Government have not noticed how much ideas on traffic problems have changed over the last year or two. The logic of their decision is based on ideas which I believe to be passing. It is the mixture as before—I call it the "Let's face it, the motor car is here to stay proposition—and it is an example of letting traffic use us rather than the other way round.
When the inspector made his report, he said that his criterion of acceptance would be the compatibility of proposals with the purposes of a National Park. But from there we go straight into an equivocation. That equivocation was the suggestion that the statutory purposes of National Parks have not yet been defined. So public access by road must be the prerequisite of public enjoyment. I am not at all sure that it is true that the statutory purposes of National Parks have not been defined—in fact in the original Act outdoor recreation was one of the purposes of the National Parks. In any case, is it necessary to make a definition, and does lack of definition lead to a conclusion that public access by road
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must be a pre-requisite of public enjoyment? The report suggests that access itself is not defined. I do not know about that; but in the original Act the idea that the car was going to be part of the enjoyment of National Parks was very far from the views of those who framed the idea of National Parks; the idea was in their minds that the motor car would be restricted where it conflicted with other forms of access.
The next equivocation was that natural beauty was nowhere defined. I am not sure that that is not the worst equivocation of them all. Natural beauty in this context does not need definition; it is self-evident. Then there is the suggestion (which crops up so often) that much of the so-called natural beauty of this country is man made. I daresay it is, but this again is the kind of argument produced again and again as an excuse by the developer.
The last equivocation was the suggestion that the Countryside Commission had given no guidance as to the relative importance of conservation, access and public enjoyment. I agree. I am sorry that the Countryside Commission did not come out rather more strongly in the evidence it gave: and I beg the Countryside Commission not to be complaisent about National Parks, and I hope it will not be complaisent about its own future as well. Nevertheless, I am sorry that the inspector should have thought it necessary to hide behind that particular skirt; I do not think that that is sufficient justification for the assumption that he makes, that access by road is one of the principle purposes of the Park. That was a rather philistine attitude of mind, rather the attitude of mind—and this is rather expressed in terms in the report—that views for motorists are one of the most important things in a National Park. I should have thought that that was one of the least important. The inspector went on to admit that the proposals would damage the Park landscape, and it would mean less enjoyment for those who see and hear the road traffic from the Fells. He goes on to say that peace and solitude are vanishing anyway. I should have thought it was just that vanishing of peace and solitude that we were trying to avoid.
So much for an attitude of mind which I feel is rather feeble. There are other assumptions which are not just a feeble attitude; they are clearly wrong. First of all, the inspector rejects the effect of the proposed expansion on the planning of the Lake District as a whole. He said that that was outside his terms of reference, and it was not something he could consider; he could consider only the road itself. I cannot help feeling that this is a nonsense; that a high speed road going through the Park will have great effect on the whole of the National Park, and this should be considered as a whole. It is not only that part which the road goes through, which is what the inspector confined himself to considering; the local problems are not going to be solved by merely making a high-speed road through it. I think that there is a great deal to be considered about the feeder roads which have not been properly considered. There will be pressure on the Government to increase the number of those roads. They will find it extremely difficult to resist that.
There is, lastly, the whole question (which I do not think has been properly considered) of the Kendal-Keswick road running from North to South. I hope that we shall hear something about that. The inspector rejected any suggestions for the restriction of lorries. The whole public attitude is changing; there is a feeling now that heavy traffic must be prevented from using certain routes. I think I am right in saying that the inspector rejected the consideration of suggestions for public transport in the Park.
All these rejections seem to add up to an urgent need—and this is part of what I am drawing the Government's attention to—for the formulation of a road policy in the Park. The inspector regards conservation as being less important than short-term convenience. That is a very sad conclusion. This is not a local issue; it is an important national issue. I entirely accept that people who live in an area should have high priority of consideration as to what is done. The argument is sometimes put forward that people who live in towns in the South think that they own the Lake District and can do what they like with it. This is far from the truth. The Friends of the Lake District are, in very large part,
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people who live there, work there and have their being there. In any case, some of the local inhabitants and local authorities have to some extent been "conned" into thinking that the enlargement of this road is going to help their own traffic problems. I do not think that is so. Their traffic problems would be nothing if it were not for the other traffic coming into the area. The local people have possibly misconceived what their own interests are. I am not sure that the same is not true of West Cumberland; I am not sure that the West Cumberland route needs to go along this road at all.
There is one other point which is important, one which I know the noble Viscount, Lord Rochdale (who would have spoken in this debate if he had not had to be in Northern Ireland today), would have made. Local people have accepted the need for planning restrictions which they have often found frustrating and expensive. They have accepted them, although they have been generous, because they have felt that it was in the public interest that they should do so. Now they see the Government coming along with a proposition which they feel is out of all proportion to any damage which they might have been doing by wrong planning. The suggestion is: "Why should we have these onerous restrictions placed upon us if the Government are merely going to override the whole thing?" There will be pressure on the Government to lift some of those planning restrictions, and the Government will find it very hard to resist. This would be a great pity.
What next? What is important is the implication that this decision has, not just for the Lake District National Park, but for all National Parks. What is going to happen on the route from Sheffield to Manchester? What is going to happen in all the National Parks? This is something to which I am not at all sure the Government have given proper consideration. It seems to me that in this particular case, and indeed in other suggestions that I suspect have been coming along, a quite improper use is being made of National Parks roads. I beg to move for Papers.
6.20 p.m.
LORD INGLEWOOD: My Lords, I am sure we are all very much indebted to the noble Lord, Lord Henley, for initiat-

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ing this debate and I am glad to be able to take part in it because for years we have all been too slow in formulating a road policy for National Parks. On this particular issue my line is somewhat different from that of many other critics, perhaps because I know the area so well and it is for me an extremely sad occasion. I have a personal interest in both the line that the Government have chosen and what is called the "alternative line". I declared it in detail when we debated this same subject only two years ago and I will not take up time doing it again tonight unless any noble Lord wishes me to spell it out.
As I see it, the root of the problem of main roads in the Lake District and also roads serving industrial West Cumberland —and one cannot separate the two—is that there is no good coast road, and because three counties have been concerned in the past with improving the coast road, nothing has ever been done because it has never been the responsibility of one particular authority.
There is of course an urgent need to improve the communications with West Cumberland and also with Barrow. Do not let us forget Barrow; it does not happen to be in Cumberland but it is just as important and half the population along the coast lives in the neighbourhood of Barrow. I am very concerned with this whole problem. With regard to the actual decision of the Government, to prefer the A.66 to the so-called alternative Sebergham route, I am one of those who think that that line is the correct line. But having said that I object most strongly to the scale of works that are proposed along that line and to the way it is proposed to handle some of the most precious land in this country, in particular Bassenthwaite lake side and the neighbourhood of Keswick, where their proposals would be disastrous.
I have been misrepresented locally, as your Lordships can well imagine, because I have not echoed all the cries about "the road, the road and nothing but the road" which certain councillors in West Cumberland have been chanting for some time. But I think it is the job of all of us, now that the main decision has been made—the Ministry first giving us a lead and then the County Council, individuals, amenity societies and other organisations as far as lies in their power
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—to see that this work is done with the minimum damage to amenity and in particular the minimum—I will not just say "damage"; I will say "destruction" of Bassenthwaite lake edge. Here let me say how sad it is that the Cumberland County Council are so insensitive to the needs of the National Park and so ready to sneer at the views of the Lake District Planning Board.
It has been said before, and I have little doubt that when my noble friend replies he will say it again, that it is not the intention of the Government to build a motorway right through the National Park: that all they want to build is an innocent 24-foot single carriageway with verges, and that they are only going to dual it for six miles out of something like 30. I have heard that said so often. But the six miles happen to be along one of the most beautiful unspoilt water edges in this country and where, after they have done their worst, instead of trees, natural scrub and occasional view points looking across to Skiddaw—and that is the view that Tennyson looked at when he wrote much of his best verse—we are going to see something like a seafront with a masonry retaining wall at times rising actually out of the water. I do not know how the Government square this with the Council of Europe's Declaration of Management of the National Environment whereby, among other things, Governments are urged (and I think our Government have accepted this) to safeguard immediately unspoilt lake shore and coast line and to ensure free access to them. It seems a very strange way of implementing that declaration.
But whereas there are certain parts of this road which urgently need improvement, I still think it is not too late for a rethink in regard to the section running along Bassenthwaite edge. From the very start the Department of the Environment has shown in its Press handouts that its mind is set on a scenic route, such as the noble Lord, Lord Henley, has already mentioned. The great thing is that the motorists shall see everything as they drive along and that the 60 mile-an-hour alignment is something sacred—nothing less will be considered. This may he all right in many places in Britain, and more so in the United States of America; but I would submit that one of the few unspoilt parts of the English Lake District

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is one of the last places where you want to build a scenic route on that scale. The Lake District is too small and too precious for such intrusion. Once we have it we can never put the original back.
Going a little further East, we come to Keswick, where everybody will agree that a by-pass is necessary; but again, the whole of the decision seems to have been spoilt by the scale and the size of the proposed viaduct. Perhaps in his reply the noble Lord can tell us how high the viaduct is to be, and then we can picture for ourselves what it will look like against a backcloth of Skiddaw. The scale seems to be based on the assumption that the population of West Cumberland is likely to rise steeply. In fact few will accept that, yet that does not mean that I am undervaluing the need for better communications for West Cumberland. We all accept that there is such a need and it is interesting that at the inquiry one West Cumberland industrialist gave evidence to the effect that he played down the idea that there was a single extra job in building this road on the scale proposed as against doing the work a deal less grandiose. I fear many people have been misled by propaganda, a great deal of its emanating from the county councillors.
I should now like to return to the lake side. That is the part of the road which I know best, much of which has been in my family for a very long time. I am very proud that it is so different from many of the built-up areas of coastline and other lake shores covered with sporadic and speculative buildings, much of it dating from Victorian and post-first war limes. Some would say that is shabby. That is its charm. It happens to be several miles of uninhabitated lake shore free largely from hamlets, villages and modern buildings.
I would submit that it is perfectly possible to widen the existing carriageway, although I admit, having taken engineering advice on this, that in places it is rather more difficult than building a dual carriageway and hence of course much less attractive to the engineers, who always prefer the simpler and more straightforward job and possibly minimising the danger of complications in maintenance from soft rock such as could
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arise from cutting back the banks. It ought not to be so difficult since the public inquiry have visited Yugoslavia and seen the amount of tunnelling that they have done in many places there. Tunnelling in two or three places along this lakeside would be a solution greatly preferable to a dual carriageway along the whole lake.
Now I would say, in passing, that if other courses are rejected, it is also possible to put a bridge across the narrow end of the lake up at the North West corner. By so doing, although you would lose something up there (and everybody admits that) you would leave the major part of the lake, running all the way down towards Keswick, undisturbed. That was the idea of my advisers and what they proposed to me as the best solution. I will say no more, but when the havoc along the lakeside becomes more apparent then I think people will begin to regret that the idea of the bridge was not investigated more closely, because something of that sort is commonplace in Switzerland and in Italy, and it can be infinitely preferable to a masonry wall rising for a considerable length out of the water.
I also find it a matter of regret that the Secretary of State has rejected all the inspector's recommendations except one —for the minor changes and improvements along the line of the lakeside. One would have expected that after he had got the main part of his case accepted by the inspector he would have leaned over backwards to try to meet the objectors on as many small points as he could, particularly those affecting amenity. But no! This again strengthens my feeling that the Ministry—there has been a change of Ministers during this period, so I will have to say "the Ministry"—made un their minds from the very start what they wanted, and in consequence rendered the inquiry an expensive five weeks' formality.
There is also an unsolved mystery in all of this and I would ask the Minister when he replies if he will clear the matter up. What was the understanding between the previous Government and the noble Lord, Lord Stokes—I am sorry that he is not in his place this evening—before his firm would build a factory in West Cumberland? Everybody knows that the road needed improvements, and every-

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body knows that some assurances were given about road improvements. But what were those assurances? There must have been some correspondence, but no paragraph of that correspondence has ever been made public, nor has any Minister spelt the matter out in terms to show that he was completely independent. I fear that the late Government have created a difficulty for themselves and for their successors in this matter, but I think that we deserve to have it spelt out. As nothing clear has been said about this point and no correspondence published, I think we are entitled to continue to have our misgivings. I am convinced that these arrangements—and they may have been very good arrangements from his point of view—were not without some influence on the final decisions.
I turn now to procedure, because this long-drawn-out business has revealed a great many shortcomings in the matter of procedure. If I appear personal in what I say. I would at least claim that I am speaking at first hand. We are told that these inquiries are open to all, and of course inspectors listen to the humble as readily as they do to leading counsel acting for great corporations. But if evidence in an inquiry of this length is to be relevant and constructive, it is no good an individual turning up one day in the middle of the fourth week, saying his short piece, and going away. If he wants his evidence to be relevant and constructive, either he or his representative must attend for a large part of the time. In my case—and as I say I have certain interests on both roads—I concluded that the costs of learned counsel —begging the pardon of my noble friends here—would not be justified, and that what I needed first and foremost was the services of a good engineer. For the rest, we planned our case as cheaply as we could, and it cost us about £1,000. My engineer, Robert Fane, produced the only original ideas put forward throughout the whole five weeks of the inquiry. There was no penny received towards the cost involved. I am not squealing; I am saying this only so that others may take this as a warning. I would add that we are hoodwinking ourselves to pretend that in such inquiries we have found a happy solution to many problems, and least of all, the problems of major road proposals in a National Park.
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Also on procedure, it is extremely unhappy for county councils to be asked to act as agents for the Department of the Environment—or what was the old Ministry of Transport—on work of this sort. Admittedly, it buttresses the egos of some people such as the chairman of the highways committee and some of his staff but it throws up also just as many problems as it solves, I hope that it will never again happen in the Lake District, because among other consequences, it is a way of keeping everybody in the dark for a very long time. The county councillors are rendered virtually powerless since their servants are working in the main for central Government and therefore take their orders in part from them and also are no longer in the same way wholly the servants of their own council.
Still further on procedure: under the present conventions it appears possible to delay the issue of plans to those concerned until a very late date. That is grossly unfair to all those who are vitally interested, and it puts them under additional difficulties. Here I should like to pay tribute to Cumberland County Council who disobeyed all the ruleA. They at least realised that the rules were, intolerable and helped people like me. No doubt they got rapped by the central Government, but I should like to pay a tribute to the fact that they appreciated this and did their best. Needless to say one was never allowed a plan but I was allowed to have a glimpse now and then. On the papers served, there have been references to numbers on the Ordnance Survey and so many square yards or thereabouts. Even after the inquiry, when the actual compulsory purchase orders were being served—and they are dated December 18, 1972—no plans as yet showing exactly what land is required have been circulated. That to me is very difficult to understand. We asked at the end of January if we could have plans, but we have not as yet had any and I still have no idea how much, if any, of that lake shore it is intended to leave with me. I have no idea at all. This all seems to me much more like the procedures in one of the Communist countries of Eastern Europe than what we are accustomed to in this country.

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I have spoken long enough. The Lake District—and I shall quote this again—has been said by a great man to be so small, so beautiful and so vulnerable, and now we see a Government which have just inflicted a deep wound on it. Some of us will remember a magnificent debate 18 months ago when the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, made a remarkable speech in which he said:
"Our concern …is …with the whole quality of life, and if that phrase lifts our thoughts to the highest arts of civilisation it also takes them to the underlying gifts of nature, to fresh air, clean water, fields and forests, the birds, beasts and fish that belong in them, to golden sands and blue seas, in fact to the whole choir of the Benedicite, and also to the peace and quiet without which that chorus can neither be joined nor enjoyed. It is these natural gifts, these boons, that we can no longer take for granted. They need to be protected, to be conserved, to be cared for, to be fought for, in a war against the din and clatter, the muck and grime, the soot and slime which is fashionably labelled pollution'."—[0Fricim, REPORT, 9/12/70, col. 969.]
That is a magnificent paragraph. Since then the noble Lord has been visiting National Parks and he had created such a good impression. Yet after the Government's decision, and when one looks at the details, I am left wondering what to believe and what will come next. But one thing I know, I could have wished the reputation of Conservative Governments in the past to have been higher in this field of caring for the beautiful things in this country. Now I know that it bears a deep stain.
6.38 p.m.
LORD STRANG: My Lords, I propose to look at this case in the light of my 12 years' experience as Chairman of the National Parks Commission. We shall find, I suggest, how inadequate are the two Acts of 1949 and 1968 as instruments for the protection of the landscape. Those two Acts are the National Parks Act of 1949 and the Countryside Act of 1968. Before the 1949 Act was passed expectation ran high. The late Lord Birkett said confidently:
"When National Parks are established the fairest places in these islands will be secure from all assault."
After the Act was passed, the then Minister of Housing and Local Government, Mr. Harold Macmillan, committed himself in 1952 to the statement that in
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National Parks amenity considerations have priority over industrial and material needs. That was not a quotation from the Act; it was an interpretation of the Act, and a very optimistic interpretation at that.
Mr. Henry Brooke, as he then was, was nearer the mark when he said in 1959 that the scales were heavily tipped in favour of beauty and remoteness but sometimes there might be exceptional weight on the other side. Already, we see, the problem was a problem of interpretation. And of course things have not turned out as Mr. Macmillan said he thought they should. In an address to the Ramblers' Association in 1962 I said that the main threat to National Parks came from the Government itself and from the great statutory and private developers. I added that where a Government Department had had plans for erecting large installation in a National Park I could remember no case where it had been diverted from its purpose by anything that the Commission might say about the intentions of Parliament as embodied in the Act.
Again in 1966, when I ceased to be Chairman of the National Parks Commission, looking back, I confessed sadly that on the whole we had for 12 years fought a losing battle in defence of the landscape. We had not lost every engagement. We had had some successes, some of them considerable; but in matters of landscape what is lost is lost, irrevocably lost, and is not to be compensated for by other things which may be for the time being saved. In that battle the Act of 1949 was too vague in its terms to be of more than limited assistance. And the Act of 1968 is no better. The pity is that there is nothing in either of those two Acts so clear and so definite as Mr. Macmillan's statement which I have quoted.
In public inquiries before an inspector appointed by the Minister, and in proceedings of Select Committees of Parliament, the vagueness of the terms of the two Acts is of advantage to the promoters of developments and of disadvantage to the objectors. The interests of development are concrete and quantifiable. The plea of the defender of the landscape is subjective and not measurable. He is driven to appeal to the spirit rather than to the letter of the Acts and to put for-

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ward his own interpretation of their terms. It is easy, therefore, for opposing counsel to attack the very basis of his argument. The prime example of this was the Cow Green case, where a brilliant counsel by powerful cross-examination destroyed the evidence of the botanists. In proceedings before inspectors or before Select Committees it is hard to guess how the decision will go. It is rather a tossup. What seemed a strong case may fail; what seemed a weaker case may succeed. Much will depend on the composition of the particular Select Committee. Much will depend upon the outlook of the particular inspector. Much will depend also on the view which is taken of the meaning of the two Acts which govern the issue. They are open to a variety of interpretations.
We used to think that we should have a better chance if the Minister would appoint an independent inspector at a public inquiry rather than one of his own staff. Well, in the present case we have had an independent inspector. No one could be more independent than my old friend and colleague, Rob Scott. He is a man of keenly questioning mind and of the clearest integrity. He conducted his inquiry and reported on it with exemplary care. He found for the Minister. I think the conclusion he reached was a regrettable one, but I cannot find it in myself to say that, given all the circumstances and given the unsatisfactory terms of the two Acts, it was an unreasonable one. The conflicting issues were finely balanced. When, for example, the 1968 Act says, in Section 37, that due regard is to be had to the economic and social interests of rural areas, this is all very right and proper. But it does give a point to the developer. It does give a point also to that powerful and disturbing slogan, "Bread before beauty", used, I remember well, by Welsh workers demonstrating in force in favour of a nuclear power station in the Snowdonia National Park.
In my day the Commission worked out their own interpretation of the Act when they faced the inescapable and growing threat of large-scale intrusion into National Parks in the interests of industry, communications and defence. We thought it right to give priority to preservation. We accordingly urged that there should be the strongest presumption against large-
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scale intrusive development. Such a presumption, we thought, could be rebutted only if it could be irrefutably demonstrated that there was an overriding national necessity for it and if there was no feasible alternative. In the present case there was a feasible alternative outside the Park: not, admittedly, an easy one, but an alternative, and one which could well have been adopted for the sake of the National Park. Instead of which, for the sake of West Cumberland, there is to be a disfiguring gash across a choice area of landscape, another nail in the coffin of a National Park, bread before beauty.
These are sad days for National Parks. The Act of 1968, as I feared at Second Reading, does not seem to have done them any good; and with every technological advance the prospect gets worse. There are some further similar road problems looming up in National Parks, and in their latest report the Countryside Commission are not very cheerful about them. I now ask again, as I have asked before, when shall we have a Government which will firmly say, "Thus far, and no further"?
6.48 p.m.
LORD CHORLEY: My Lords, I should like, in the first place, to thank the noble Lord, Lord Henley, for giving us the opportunity of debating this matter. I would underline, although it really does not form part of the speech I wish to make to your Lordships, the fact that the Secretary of State's decision runs flatly contrary to the case of the Countryside Commission and also the Lake District Planning Board. It is all part of the same trouble which the noble Lord, Lord Strang, has told us about so clearly in what I found a very doleful speech. I worked on the Hobhouse Committee and have been in the National Parks movement ever since it started, and I should like, on behalf not only of your Lordships but of the whole community, to thank Lord Strang for the outstanding work he did as Chairman of the National Parks Commission over all those years. England is becoming a defaced place over many of its most beautiful areas, but certainly he did his best for all that time, and a successful best in many ways, to protect those splendid areas, the National Parks, and particularly perhaps the Lake Dis-

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trict, which owes him a deep debt of gratitude.
The orders which we are considering to-night in this debate are a disaster to everybody who is a true lover of the Lake District National Park, and indeed of the Lake District as a whole. They are going to lead—and it does not seem possible to stop this without an Act of Parliament, which obviously will not be passed—to the build-up of a sort of highspeed motor track along which juggernauts, as I personally always like to describe these terrific industrial vehicles, will sweep with all their noise, rumbling, smell, destroying the peace which Wordsworth found among the silent hills. And it was in those parts—there is no reference to it at all in the inspector's report —that Wordsworth and Coleridge rambled across the fells. Many of the most inspiring passages in Wordsworth's great poetry—which I should say is of greater value than all the industry in West Cumberland—were thought of, and some of it written down, there.
The object is to turn this into a sort of industrial environmental road in order that these great juggernauts may come and go into West Cumberland. What the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, said is very true. It has never been denied that there was a sort of compact between the noble Lord, Lord Stokes, and the Government that they should have this road. At that time, of course, we did not know how excellent an alternative route there is, which the inspector in his report agrees is completely viable. After that one finds it almost inconceivable that the Secretary of State for the Environment can reject this alternative route.
I should like to echo what the noble Lord, Lord Strang, said about the inspector, who obviously was doing his best, like the pianist we were asked not to shoot at. He was a most considerate inspector. He sat through all this difficult period when the electricity strike was at its worse. His report is in many ways a model. The only pity of it is that it came to such wrong conclusions. This is understandable, because he was, as it were, pulled out of his retirement from a busy life in Whitehall in Government employ. He was not really equipped to pass upon a problem of this kind. In a way, it is surprising that he did as well
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as he did, although all through the report there are places where quite obviously he was not at all sure of himself—and indeed he says so from time to time as the report goes along. If I had unlimited time I could pick out a number of passages in the report. In one place he said:
"I was very much of the mind to suggest that the Keswick by-pass should be suspended while a real study was made of the problem of traffic in Keswick."
This is the kernel of the whole of this business. This is just one example, of a substantial number. Another very important example has been referred to by the noble Lord. Lord Henley—who did not altogether forgive the inspector for this, but it was not easy for him, pitched into this job, with a Department which quite obviously had not thought these things out. He says in one of the paragraphs (I think paragraph 99) that the Department admitted that they had no regional policy in respect of roads. How could the man come to a sensible opinion on which to advise the Secretary of State in these circumstances?
There are many ironies in this report. One of the greatest of all is that all this, as the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, has suggested, really came into being for the purpose of helping the employment situation in West Cumberland. The protagonists were all there; the councils, the county council itself, and many industrial people living in those parts. The irony is that Sir Robert Scott finds that the chance of building up West Cumberland into a large industrial centre is so small that it would not be justifiable to spend the comparatively small sum of money in making the alternative route a fit route to take heavy industrial traffic. His proposals are put forward on the basis of the vastly increasing tourist traffic, so he is going to mix them up. Nothing can be more horrible than mixing up the great tourist traffic of the Lake District and these heavy long vehicles, these heavy juggernauts. As I was on my way to Penrith to give evidence at this inquiry, I decided to refresh my mind on the site at Bassenthwaite Lake, to which the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, referred. We got out of the car and walked to the water's edge, and we were not there for more than two or three minutes, but during that time about a dozen enormous great

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juggernauts passed behind us on the road which, at that point, is built up at the back with some kind of volcanic rock which reverberates. Really the noise given out by these vehicles as they went past, one after the other, across the waters of this beautiful, silent lake was terrible. I only hoped that the inspector himself would have a similar experience when he got there, but he evidently did not.
One of the weaknesses in his report is that he does not at any point seem to appreciate what these juggernauts involve in a countryside like the Lake District. They are passed off as the equivalent of "1·75 passenger car units". That is ludicrous. All your Lordships will have met with these long vehicles when driving your cars about the roads. In these Lake District roads they are quite terrible. To say that one of these things passing along beside Bassenthwaite is the equivalent of 1·75 passenger car units is quite absurd.
I was glad that the noble Lord, Lord Henley, put the debate on to a general footing and did not concentrate entirely on the A.66 itself. There are a few matters, some of them of rather a general character, to which I should like to refer. The first of these—and this is basic to all these inquiries—is that the inspector's report, which is a long, well-written and interesting document, was published at the same time as the orders were made by the Secretary of State. Just think what that means. Nobody outside the Department had had any chance of studying this. Informed opinion was not allowed to get to work until it was too late for it to have any effect on the Minister. Is not this altogether wrong? They had it six months, during which time we, who were interested in this, could have been thinking about it, making suggestions about where it could be improved, about weaknesses in the argument and that sort of thing. But we had no chance at all. Informed opinion, which is essential to modern, well-functioning democracy, was just ignored. The Secretary of State himself works entirely on departmental advice and on the opinion of the inspector and, so far as I know, he never looked at the place himself.
I should like to contrast that with the action of Mr. Marsh, who was Minister of Transport in the Wilson Administra-
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tion when a much less serious matter arose in South Westmorland at Levens. A road had been projected by the road engineers, and road engineers are not at all interested in natural scenery. It appears in the report itself that the principal road engineer who gave evidence said, "There is no difference between building a road in a National Park and building one anywhere else. It is a road engineering problem." But Mr. Marsh went there and saw the superb old avenue of forest trees which had been growing at Levens Hall ever since the time of Charles II who had Beaumont, the famous gardener of Louis XIV, to advise him on his gardens. When Mr. Marsh saw that with his own eyes, he immediately overrode his inspector. He said, "It would be a crying shame to destroy this lovely avenue of trees", so the road was moved. But the present Secretary of State did not do that. He did not go there to have a look for himself. Mr. Marsh went there long before what one might call the Peter Walker era of the bright new world, which for a time took us all in, though if Mr. Walker had still been at the Ministry this decision might well have gone the other way.
Not only does the Secretary of State not take a personal interest in this matter; we in Parliament are not allowed to take a personal interest in it either. We cannot do so, because these orders do not have to be laid and I suggest that that, again, is a serious weakness in the present situation. I raised this point in the debate which we had a week or two ago on the Brooke Report on Delegated Legislation, and the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, in answering the debate, said that he thought there was a case which certainly deserved consideration as to whether orders made in respect of roads of this importance ought to be laid so that Parliament could exercise some control over them. I suggest that, at any rate in National Parks, roads of this importance certainly ought to be under Parliamentary control and I hope that before long it may be possible to get this point into a Bill. I should like the Minister to give serious consideration to this suggestion.
As I said, informed opinion is not given the opportunity of bringing its weight to bear on the inspector's report,

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nor is Parliament able to exercise any control over what is done. Contrast that, my Lords, with the position of the National Trust, on the Committee of which I served for very many years. If the National Trust has declared a property inalienable, it is entitled to have a Parliamentary Committee sit on any proposal by a Government Department, or by anybody else, to interfere with that piece of land. If the Department proposed a road scheme of this kind across a National Trust property, the National Parks Committee would undoubtedly insist on the matter being brought before a Select Committee of Parliament, which it has in fact done on more than one occasion in the past. These National Trust properties are important, but hardly stand up in importance to this 12 miles' stretch of the A.66 through the very heart of the most beautiful part of the Lake District. So I suggest that it is high time that Parliament exerted itself and took charge of this sort of situation.
It is getting late, and there are many other points which I should have liked to make about this subject. In particular, I should have liked to criticise in detail where I think the inspector went wrong, although this has been done to quite an extent by earlier speakers. I think he was much too insensitive to natural beauty and, indeed, in one of his paragraphs he stated that he thought the objectors over-emphasised the importance of the scenery and the natural beauty. It is almost impossible to believe one's eyes when one reads a sentence like that. How can the convenience of traffic be allowed to take precedence over the beautiful natural scenery of the English Lake District, which is famous throughout the world and is known even by people who have never set foot in this country, but have read the poems of Wordsworth—one of our greatest national heritages? So I think that the inspector went badly wrong there.
Throughout this report one has the feeling that he was not quite sure of himself, and I do not think he was really quite sure of himself when he penned those lines. I have already mentioned the fact that he did not consider sufficiently carefully the destructive effects of heavy commercial
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traffic, of long vehicles, in a small beautiful area like the English Lake District, whose roads have to be magnified into something in the nature of motorways before they can properly use them. That is the sort of way in which he went wrong.
If one had time, one could point to passage after passage in the report in which mistakes like that are made. This all emphasises the importance of really thorough discussion with informed people. Before this order was made, I should have liked Professor Buchanan to examine this report in detail. I am quite sure that he would have been able to show where it went wrong very much more skilfully and persuasively than the noble Lord, Lord Henley, and myself and other speakers in this debate. We must use this report in order to get the present position put right. The noble Lord, Lord Strang, has pointed out how very difficult this will be, because we shall require a new Act of Parliament. For goodness sake! my Lords, let us get down to it and draft an Act of Parliament which will prevent this sort of thing from happening in future.
7.7 p.m.
LORD MOLSON: My Lords, I should perhaps begin by describing my personal interest in this matter. I was Chairman of the Standing Committee on National Parks from 1963 to 1968, and Chairman of the Council for the Protection of Rural England from 1968 to 1971, and I am now President of that body. I do not intend to go into details about this decision, which I regard as a lamentable and a regrettable decision. This is a battle which has been lost. But I am very much concerned about some of the principles which appear to have been laid down by the inspector and which it appears to me the Secretary of State accepted in his letter of decision. What is needed is a far clearer appreciation of the constitutional position of the National Parks and of the way in which they should be treated by Government Departments.
I am fearful that this decision will be treated as a precedent for industrial roads being driven through other National Parks. There is, indeed, a proposal for a great industrial thoroughfare going through the High Peak from Sheffield to

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Manchester. I am not wholly comforted by the statement in the letter of decision that:
"The Secretary of State wishes however to make it clear that because of the particular problem of road communications with West Cumberland his decision in this case has no implications for policy on road standards in National Parks generally."
That is all right so far as it goes, but in paragraph 6 of the same letter we read:
"The inspector accepts that an improved Sebergham route would be a valid alternative to the A.66 as a trunk road link between West Cumberland and the M.6 which industrial through traffic for West Cumberland could use".
This appears to be a serious error in the ratiocination of this letter of decision. It is disquieting that the inspector does not appear to have understood the clear implication of the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949. The purpose of National Parks was clearly stated to be: first, preserving their natural beatuy; and, secondly, promoting their enjoyment by the public. We all recognise that the development of motor traffic since 1949 has made it more difficult than Parliament realised at that time to preserve the National Parks in all their beauty and, at the same time, to facilitate their enjoyment by the public. But those still remain, in that order, the undoubted purposes of National Parks.
Nor, strangely enough, has the inspector understood what is meant by "access" in the Statute of 1949. It clearly is not intended to be access to National Parks by motor cars. If the noble Lords will turn to Part IV of the Act, they will see that it refers to access to open country, and there are a great many sections of the Act which deal with covenants for ramblers and people on foot or on horseback to obtain access to open country. It was not intended that access should mean increasing facilities for motorists to drive into the middle of National Parks. On the contrary, Section 93 gives power, for the first time, for the restriction of traffic on roads in order to ensure that the purposes for which the National Parks were designated can be achieved. Again, it is surprising that the inspector says that he does not recommend that any restrictions should be imposed upon big industrial vehicles using the A.66, and he says that restrictions would be difficult to
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enforce. Almost all traffic regulations are to some extent difficult to enforce, but that is not any reason for not having them. Indeed, the whole trend of public opinion and of Government policy is to impose more and more restrictions upon traffic in the general interests of the community at large. What is being done in towns can equally well be done in National Parks. We already have Oxford Street closed to private cars for part of its distance; and in the case of almost every new town which has been built during the last few years there are pedestrian precincts in which traffic is not allowed to go.
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Strang, with his long experience during his distinguished time as Chairman of the National Parks Commission, has referred to the way in which Ministers of Health or Ministers of Town and Country Planning of both the main political Parties in this country, have interpreted what was intended to be done and have given assurances that that was the policy of their Government. There is nothing I would add to what Lord Strang has said, but one of the most serious things at the moment is the danger of roads being widened and improved inside National Parks in such a way as to destroy the amenity of the Parks. In addition, there are these great highways which are being built in order to enable industrial traffic to pass through them and large numbers of char-a-banes and so on to approach them.
I am going to ask your Lordships' indulgence to quote at some length from a Report which was presented to the second "The Countryside in 1970" Conference, because I think it sets out extraordinarily clearly what ought to be done about the road policy of the country, and I should like to have it on record in Hansard so that one can ask the Government whether they are prepared to accept in general outline that this will be their policy. This was the report of Study Group No. 7. It says in paragraph 22:
"The problems of motorised access to the countryside, and the passage of traffic through the countryside, clearly require consideration on a national and regional scale, and as an integral part of the general process of town and country planning."
I interrupt my quotation at this point to say that I cannot understand why the

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inspector said in his report that his decision about this road had no bearing upon the general planning of the National Park.
I leave out a few sentences of this report and go on:
"From this would emerge a plan for a countryside highway system with national, regional and local networks."
I leave out a few more words and go on:
"The basis of the road plan should be a skeletal network of main roads based on the present primary routes, that is, motorways, trunk roads and some Class I roads, on to which through traffic is directed …While these main through roads should be planned and landscaped to cause the least possible damage and dislocation to the countryside and while they should, if at all possible, be routed round rather than through National Parks and Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty, the smooth and rapid flow of traffic on these roads must have priority over other considerations".
In the next paragraph it says:
"Within the skeletal networks"—
and obviously that means inside National Parks and places of that kind—
"particularly in the vital environmental areas within the meshes of the 'grid'—the preservation of the environment and the retention of countryside values must in general take precedence over the smooth and rapid flow of traffic. In all such environmental areas … we should ensure that the motor car does not dominate or defile the scene".
I think that was an extraordinarily well thought out and clearly stated objective and I do so much hope that the Government will be willing to accept it as a general principle. Certainly so far as the National Parks are concerned I think it is absolutely vital that this unfortunate precedent in the case of the Lake District should not be followed in other cases.
My Lords, I had hoped that the creation of the Department of the Environment would make sure that roads and transport would be treated in future as what they are—a means to an end, a service for the community—and that the broad considerations of the environment would be given precedence over merely engineering or material considerations.
7.21 p.m.
LORD HUNT: My Lords, I have been visiting the Lake District as a climber and a walker for the past 40 years, but it is not on grounds of personal memories or sentiments with regard to the past that I enter the lists on the side of the conservationists but in the sense so movingly
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expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, in the speech referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, earlier this evening. I feel that I must enter these lists to express my horror and astonishment over the Minister's decision to approve these plans for the A.66. Here is the naked contradiction between conservation on the one hand and ease of access, unrestricted access by mechanical means, to or through an area of unique natural beauty on the other. My Lords, the point has already been made, but let me repeat it. The argument for industrial access from the M.6 by the A.66 to the industrial area of West Cumberland simply does not stand up. There is an alternative, and this point was conceded by the inspector in his report. Yet by building this great throughway which bisects the Lake District in its Northern part the industrial traffic which will use it and will benefit and profit by it will be most detrimental to the scenery and the amenities in the National Park itself.
I personally also do not underrate the harm that tourism attracted in this particular way will inflict. If you broaden the access route so as to make it all that easier for more and more people to come into the National Parks, particularly one as small as our English Lake District, not only to aid but positively to abet the scenic viewer, we shall see the roadsides and the lakesides littered with tin cans, paper and plastic bags. Noise, fumes and a visible volume of fast moving, heavy traffic beneath Saddleback and along the shores of quiet and remote Bassenthwaite lake will ruin the sense of peace and remoteness which are the precious heritage of our Northern lakeland, hills and dales. What is more, these human and mechanical intrusions will, I foresee as an ardent amateur ornithologist, drive away a lot of bird life which shares and is part of this heritage. The Government's disregard for the aesthetic aspects of this matter is quite amazing.
But, my Lords, there is another conflict of interest which particularly concerns me, and that is the conflict between the amenity of a mountain area as a means of recreation and adventurous activities, particularly perhaps in the interests of young people on the one hand, and those who, fairly enough, simply want to sit in their vehicles or

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at the roadside, by the lakeside and look. We must keep enough outlets for adventure and personal exploration and the development of the skills and the degree of fitness required to undertake them safely and properly. There are few enough of these already. For heaven's sake do not make them fewer still!
I should like to stress again how small is this area of mountains and lakes in the North-West corner of England. If you expose one part of its small total area to the roar of traffic and the hordes of tourists' where is the challenge to our young adventurers in the hills or on the water on either side of the motorway? How can they find remoteness? How can they develop their navigational skills in remote country? Who would accept any more that the testing challenge of a gold award expedition under the Duke of Edinburgh's scheme should take place in the Northern lakes once this project has gone through?
Finally, my Lords, finishing as other noble Lords have done on the general points rather than on this particular catastrophe which we have coming to us, in principle we are seeing the whittling away of these incalculably important pieces of our heritage. I should like to urge that more provision be made, by all means, for the sightseers and the country lovers in country parks adjacent to or alongside the National Parks, but preserve the National Parks for their unique qualities of remoteness and keep them unchanged. I would only wish that the Minister who presides over a Department which was set up precisely to conserve our environment and not to promote the tourist trade or to develop industrial communication would think again.
7.27 p.m.
LORD HEWLETT: My Lords, I have listened with the greatest care to every contribution made in this debate and I have removed from my comments those which have already been amply covered, save and except for those that I should like to suggest deserve further underlining and supporting. May I say first that I find it an extremely ironic situation that we should have finished just before 6 o'clock debating the problems of noise in the environment and that the Government
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should say as strongly as they did what marvellous steps they are taking to prevent the incursions of noise upon humanity, and now I am afraid that my noble friend Lord Mowbray is going to try to defend something which has brought noise to one of the quietest and remaining quiet corners of England. I find this a very difficult task for him to undertake, and I regret that this Government should have to defend what I think we have to admit has been a serious error of judgment. I would beg even at this very late hour, when orders have already been issued, that steps should be taken to have another look at it to see whether it is possible—as I am sure it may be—to use the alternative route to which so much reference has already been made.
Coming as I do from the North-West of England, I could claim some intimate knowledge and association with the Lake District over a period of 33 years. As noble Lords have said, it is the unique nature of the Lake District that it has remained almost entirely unindustrialised, undisturbed and unpolluted since the beginning of time. But for slate quarrying in the Langdale valleys, a small amount of lead mining centuries ago and the equivalent of an explosive plant in the First World War and I believe even in Napoleonic times, there is agriculture, largely grazing, water and tourism.
The problem of the Lake District, in my submission, is the characteristic that is its very charm, as the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, has said, namely, its very smallness. England's highest park Scafell Pike is a mere 3,000 ft.; England's longest lake, Lake Windermere, can be seen from end to end from various high points in the Lake District. But all is in proportion and, alas!, the very boom in terms of transport and industry of the M.6 motorway is well nigh the doom of the Lake District itself. By reason of car congestion at principal holiday times that is becoming quite unmanageable. The routing, as the noble Lord, Lord Henley, said, on the North-South trunk road from Keswick to Kendal of heavy lorries is quite disproportionate to what that road can accept, and where the road has been widened, going up Dunmail Raise, a great deal of the natural charm and beauty has been ruined already. I beg your Lordships to consider most carefully before

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any further incursion whatsoever is permitted upon this gem within the British Isles. The need is to inhibit the ill effects of the motor car and the heavy lorry in such an area, and not to increase it.
One of the successes locally in the Peak District, in the Goyt Valley, not so many miles from my own home, has been the banning of private motor vehicles in a secluded valley, and the provision of restricted but adequate local transport for those who wish to enjoy a walk in the environment of that Valley. It is not a new trunk road that is required for the Lake District; it is that there should be a total by-passing of the whole area so far as trunk traffic is concerned. This is a unique opportunity which we have at this time of preserving the only Lake District we have—Scotland and Ireland and Wales, yes; but in England itself, the only Lake District. I would suggest there is still time for intervention to be made to prevent what I fear, as other noble Lords have said, to be a ghastly precedent; for if this can be done in what is the gem of the North-West of England it can be done in any other National Park that has been devised, or in any new National Park that may yet be designated.
Bassenthwaite Lake itself is the most unspoilt of nature, and it should be left that way. In the interests of traffic flow I have not the slightest doubt that some wretched planner has his eye on the middle of Hyde Park, or the Backs at Cambridge, or Christchurch Meadows at Oxford, or the Close at Salisbury or at Wells. Already the late noble and learned Lord, Lord Birkett, has fought in this very Chamber, and fought successfully, to prevent the wholesale wrecking of Ullswater; while more recently, as the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, has said, there has been a battle over the Levens Bridge and the Levens Forest, and that happily was successfully concluded.
Why cannot the so-called planners—I am sorry, I consider them in altogether unmentionable terms in many instances—get the message, that we want no railway, airport, trunk road, New Town, industry, or any other development, in places of unique natural beauty? We do not need their services. They have plenty to do in Lancashire and other parts of the North-West which are the grey and
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wretched areas of environment, where the quality of life, as I said in my earlier speech—
LORD INGLEWOOD: My Lords, would the noble Lord allow me to intervene? In case the wrong impression leaves this House, would he not agree that the development of the Lake District could well follow the development of Switzerland, where there is a great variety of occupations on a small scale and a very high standard of living? Is not the real trouble here that too many of those gentleman to whom my noble friend refers as "planners" are thinking in terms of creating a sort of miniature Ruhr in West Cumberland and this is just something of their dreams and could never happen, but Switzerland should be our model? In Switzerland there is no damage to amenity but a most prosperous community.
LORD HEWLETT: Indeed, my Lords I take the noble Viscount's point and accept it wholeheartedly. What I think is so important about the aspect of this particular scheme is the fact that, alas! the Lake District is nowhere near the size of Switzerland, nor even of one of the minor Cantons. In fact it is only a matter of less than 100 miles in one direction and scarcely more than 50 in the other. Therefore, the area should be totally by-passed in terms of heavy traffic. One of the great gifts to the Lake District is the fact that the railway never intruded; nor aircraft, either. So I would accept the noble Viscount's point.
I would say to your Lordships: Let us keep the English Lake District as indeed the finest of our National Parks and one of the greatest of our heritages. This and other places of great natural beauty should be strengthened, as the noble Lord, Lord Strang, suggested, by an improvement in the legislation to protect the conditions of the National Parks and make it virtually impossible for any armageddon, be it a vehicle, a "juggernaut", or be it an armageddon of Government indeed, to interfere with its total independence and isolation from industry and politics alike. If this House says unequivocaly that it will have no more of this nonsense in respect of the National Parks, then the message may well get throug to the planners and the other authorities who may come forward with these schemes. It is indeed as

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in the days of the Armada, in the First Elizabeth's reign, that the bright lights on Skiddaw should warn the Burghers of Carlisle: let those bright lights indeed continue to be beacons yet, and not headlights or traffic lights or—Heaven forbid! —no-parking signs, picnic areas, and other organised inhumanity.
My Lords, the Lake District's beauty is in the fact that it is precisely not organised; it is natural beauty. I would suggest that we should not need to have to put these views time after time in this House or in the other place. There are new, accepted standards of environment which should be inviolate. There should be no need to protest about the intrusion of Government or industry or any other factor. We ought to be able to set them up with such powers in the National Parks that they cannot be destroyed or interfered with in the future. I would suggest that, as the noble Lord, Lord Henley, stated, the private citizen is prevented by planners and by legislation from ruining the countryside, and rightly so. The planning conditions laid down for him should be manitained and upheld by the planners and by the Ministeries themselves. They should be prepared to acknowledge and accept, just as willingly as the private citizen, the acknowledged, improved standards for the better environment.
In the interests, I submit, of a better quality of life, is it not time that Governments as well as we Members of this House set an example in these matters and did not allow the lowering of standards, either through our negligence or through our unfortunate ineffective legislation in the setting up of National Parks, and did not allow these depredations to occur, to the great and lasting damage of the community? I would ask the noble Lord, Lord Mowbray and Stourton, to assure this House that to start with this scheme creates no precedent; and secondly, that if it is humanly possible within our Constitution for a stay of execution to be made, it should be made, and maintained until the whole matter can be further and extensively reviewed. In listening to this debate one finds there are aspects in the handling of the whole matter which, if they are as they are reported by various noble Lords who have taken part in the debate, give one cause for very serious alarm. It sounds, as I said earlier, that there are not just motorised juggernauts, but those of Gov-
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ernment which have been involved. I am awaiting most keenly the Minister's reply on the principles and the procedure, and even possibly upon the propriety, of what has transpired. I hope that he will be able to answer this House, and, if possible, preserve for future heritage this most beautiful part of the English Lake District.
7.38 p.m.
LORD WAKEFIELD OF KENDAL: My Lords, I had not intended to intervene in this debate, but having listened to the noble Viscount, Lord Inglewood, and heard the concluding remarks—
LORD INGLEWOOD: My Lords, in the interests of accuracy may I say that this promotion, which is now music to the ears, in fact is not true?
LORD WAKEFIELD OF KENDAL: My Lords, having heard my noble friend Lord Inglewood, and also the concluding remarks of my noble friend Lord Molson, I rise to ask the Government to give an assurance, if they can, that if this scheme goes through there will be a real and determined effort to put amenity rather than engineering first in this road which it is proposed to drive, in addition to the one that is already there, along the shores of Bassenthwaite. I very much hope that everything possible will be done to preserve that lake access and the opportunity for people to picnic by the lake, and that in every way possible the scenery will be preserved. My noble friend Lord Hewlett referred to Dunmail Raise. What a tragedy there was when the road improvement took place there—if you could call it an improvement. There was no need to put great white concrete kerbs along the roadside. Why cannot these roads, which have to be improved because of the traffic, be left in as natural a state as possible? My noble friend Lord Inglewood suggested that perhaps tunnelling might be a good way to preserve the scenery. That would cost a bit more, but what does cost matter when we are discussing these things? The stretch of road is so small; in fact the Lake District is a very small place. If you are going to drive a road through at this spot do not have the wide grass verges, which are necessary on motorways, but keep the roadside as natural as possible.
If they are going through with this proposal, I urge the Government to try

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to put engineering considerations second and amenity and the scenic preservation of the roadside first. If that can be done there will be some saving of the situation; but if it is not done it will be a shame and disgrace in the centuries to come. Surely this can be done; and not only in National Parks but also in other places where conservation and preservation are necessary and desirable. The engineering side of road improvements for the benefit of traffic must be put second and amenity considerations first. That is the narrow point I wish to make. I hope that we may have a firm assurance from the Government that the policy of putting engineering second and amenity first will be followed, and then some good may come of it.
7.42 p.m.
LORD CONESFORD: My Lords, I regret to delay the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, even for a few minutes. But I should like to add my voice to the angry protests that have been made. There have been appeals to my noble friend who is to reply for the Government to say that this decision constitutes no precedent. He can say that until he is blue in the face, but it will not prevent this from being a precedent. It will be a precedent and a ruinous one, and we all know it. My Lords, I suppose that I have been a politician in your Lordships' House and in another place for about 37 years. I have fought, so far as I could, for the amenities of town and country. It is appalling to me, as a very old man, to think that I cannot claim to have done any very great good in either place. My only claim to have done anything is that I have helped to stop some frightful follies from being committed. I had the honour of winding-up for Lord Birkett in the debate to save Ullswater. In 37 years of public life, that was the most exciting day I had. It was one of those debates in which you did not know what the result would be.
One thing that encourages me in this debate—and it is my only hope that it will have any effect—is that we have been unanimous. Everyone who has spoken, from these Benches and from the Opposition Benches (I have no doubt what line the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, will take) and from the Cross-Benches; the noble Lord, Lord Strang, and the
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noble Lord, Lord Hunt—and may I say how much I agree with him—has been of the same opinion. One of the undoubted principles of planning, which I have urged upon Government after Government in debate after debate, is that if you have a piece of country of priceless value, or a piece of noble townscape where people love to live, whatever else you do, do not destroy it. Do not even place it at risk. The only other thing I would say—I know that it has all been said before—is how very much more important and more difficult is the problem in this country than in almost any other place in the world.
Nowhere else in the world is there more beautiful scenery but nowhere in the world is that beautiful scenery quite so vulnerable. Wherever mankind commits frightful follies by bad planning, either in the country or in towns, it will no doubt do great harm, or some harm. I expect that the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, will know the Rocky Mountains of Canada and their great beauty. But if some foolish thing were done there by man, it would be so small in scale compared with the beauty that would surround that folly that it would do no irreparable harm. But the scenery of England is of quite a different kind. It is subtle and small and gentle and vulnerable. It would be as easy to destroy the beauty of the Downs, which I think one of the most beautiful things in all nature, by ill-considered building or development as it would be to destroy some masterpiece of painting in the National Gallery by hacking it with a knife.
My Lords, it is the same with the Lake District. The scale is small and the beauty is vulnerable. The only point at which perhaps I differ from the splendid speeches which have been delivered from both sides of the House to-night is that I find it impossible to accept this decision as final. As long as an outrage has not been committed, surely it is possible to prevent it. I have little hope that my words will reach those Members of the Government who have some power in this matter. I am, I have no doubt, much too old and negligible. But perhaps the unanimity of this House on this occasion may make some impression, even on those who seem to have no care for beauty.
LORD KENNET: My Lords, I am sorry to have missed the earlier debate on noise. Having been, as deputy to my noble friend, Lord Greenwood of Rossendale, the first Chairman of the Noise Council, I am glad to have been able to attend this debate on coming back from abroad, and to have heard it opened by my successor as Chairman of the Council for the Protection of Rural England, and to have heard the distinguished speech of my predecessor as Chairman of that Council, the noble Lord, Lord Molson, during the course of it. The noble Lord, Lord Hewlett, referred to the bright lights of Skiddaw waking the burghers of Carlisle, and that is a terrible thought, but I think that actually it was only a red glow on Skiddaw which awaked the burghers of Carlisle. And if in this debate we can introduce something of a red glow which might possibly look like a warning light, a stop light, to the Government, which would prevent them from permitting development of this sort, we shall not have been talking in vain.
I will not attack the inspector's report. I do not think it matters so much whether he showed confidence or lack of confidence, or good judgment or bad judgment, as the fact that the Secretary of State's decision is a disastrous one. Mr. Rippon was not bound to follow the inspector's report. Secretaries of State do not always do that. It was a decision which goes right against planning common sense. There is, indeed, little to be said for it. It was, I think I am right in saying, Mr. Rippon's first big planning decision as Secretary of State. I remember that an earlier Secretary of State in the present Government, Mr. Peter Walker, when he first took office made a big planning decision about a brewery in Lancashire at a place called Samlesbury. It completely ruined a very small and vulnerable (our favourite word) little valley—and there are not many of them around in that part of Lancashire—and there was an outcry. But I will say this for Mr. Peter Walker: that he learned quickly, and never again did he make such a bad decision in planning. Unfortunately, Mr. Rippon does not seem to have learnt from his Lake District decision. He has already placed the Tring By-Pass in a place that cuts into the escarpment of the Chilterns. He has placed the
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motorway by Winchester through the Water Meadows, within half a mile of the cathedral, and he has committed the unbearable and ridiculous solecism of confirming Ringway 1 and knocking down 15,000 houses in Central London—a sort of touchstone to good or bad planning. That anybody should have approved such a ridiculous idea at Cabinet level almost passes belief.
To return to the Lake District road, when I used to be a junior Minister concerned with these things I never thought that I should wish to bother Parliament with planning decisions of this nature, whether a road should be expanded. I always thought it was right that they should be taken by the Minister after a public inquiry and an inspector's report. But I must say that this run of four road decisions by Mr. Rippon, one after another in a very few months, makes me begin to wonder whether Parliament was wise to delegate so much to Ministers in the past. In delegating anything, of course, you have to rely on getting a succession of reasonably sensible Ministers one after another: and I think we have had them in the matter of planning up to and including Mr. Peter Walker. It seems as if that circle has now broken, and I wonder whether the time will come when Parliament will need to think again and require that these road orders and other planning orders should come before them for confirmation.
But to come to the point, West Cumberland needs an improved road. I think it needs it not because I regard it as a reasonable hope, as was said earlier, that it might become a miniature Ruhr—I think that was Lord Inglewood's phrase. It is not going to become a miniature Ruhr, because it is in the wrong place; it could never hope to be that. But it is a very depressed industrial zone; the people are poor, and they have the right to all the help that central Government can bring to them in order to improve their standard of living up to something like that in other industrial parts of the country.
LORD INGLEWOOD: My Lords, if the noble Lord will allow me to interrupt, I was not exaggerating. I was trying to make the point that there are some people of influence in the North of England who feel that the increase of population is an important thing to achieve. There are

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others who think that it is our duty to look after the people who are there and improve their standards, and not to think of increased numbers. I feel that some of that thinking lies behind the scale of this road.
LORD KENNET: My Lords, I apologise to the noble Lord for carelessly attributing to him views that he was only reporting to the House. Among the things that a Government can do for the isolated and impoverished community is to improve communications, and the proposed road does precisely that. So I think that all of us on this side of the House would be far from saying that there should be no better road, not even a motorway in time to come, to West Cumberland—and of course the decision where to put it was quite a difficult one. But the point is this. Supposing this road succeeds in its purpose and West Cumberland does become a prosperous industrial zone; and supposing that people do become more wealthy. At the moment it is going through a National Park, and it is a great scandal; there will be a viaduct here and a dual section there, and a bit of brute vertical wall arising out of the water of Bassenthwaite. That may be defensible, although I do not think it is. But supposing it succeeeds in its purpose, and there is great wealth there, then there is going to be overwhelming pressure on the Government of the day to turn it into a full-scale motorway; and to turn that road into a full scale motorway—because everybody will be used to it already; there will already have been expenditure on it —will by then cost a greater differential to put the road somewhere else than it would now before the A.66 is improved in the first place. This, I think, is the error.
When success in one venture; namely, the enrichment of West Cumberland, depends on failure on another venture; namely, the protection of a National Park, then it seems to me that it is time to start again. Obviously, the right place for this road was North of Skiddaw. If you cannot hope to drive it through the National Park and prevent it turning into a motorway in ten, twenty or thirty years' time, then it ought to go somewhere where it does not matter if it does turn into a motorway if it succeeds in its prime purpose. That place is North of Skid-
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daw on the Solway slope outside the National Park. I should like to ask the noble Lord who is to reply to tell We House how much more it would have cost to go North of Skiddaw, and how much longer it would take travelling at 60 m.p.h. to go North of Skiddaw. I am sure that the first will be an impressive figure of some millions of pounds more; but I think the second will be an unimpressive figure, and going at 60 m.p.h. it would probably only take ten to 15 minutes more to get round Skiddaw from the M.6 where it goes to Scotland.
To conclude, my Lords, I share—and I hope that all of us on these Benches share—the alarm, almost the horror, certainly the disdain for this rotten planning decision which has been expressed by noble Lords on the other side of the House. I think it is only a few years since it would have seemed no more than a bad dream that anyone should have thought of putting a dual carriageway on a wall beside Bassenthwaite Lake. If you can do that, then there is no limit to what you can do, and, speaking seriously, anything can happen. I will not name it, because noble Lords will have their own nightmares—and that one is practically a nightmare. I think we have gone a long way from Lord Sand-ford's Benedicite; the high hopes that he held out to the House of the sort of Ministry they were going to be across the road in the triple towers, in that remarkable speech. It has indeed been belied by this decision and by the three others that I have mentioned in the series of four.
During this debate the Government have been asked to change their minds and to put the road somewhere else. I do not know what the statutory situation is, but in most planning decisions once the Secretary of State has made up his mind he cannot go back and change it, because to do so would land, not him, but the local authority, with a very large compensation bill: it would fall on the rates, and in common human justice he could not do that, Whether the Secretary of State as Minister of Transport can change his mind, I do not know. I should like to ask the Government whether in law he can. And if he can, would he land anybody up with compensation? I should not have thought so. There is no direct loss of revenue or capital value incurred by anybody as a result of a change. It

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will be interesting to hear what the noble Lord, Lord Mowbray, has to say about this. If he cannot change his mind in law, then I think that all that those of us who have the interests of the National Parks and the recreation of the people at heart can hope for is that somebody may find a legal flaw in the decision and take the Secretary of State to the High Court and get it reversed there.
8.0 p.m.
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: My Lords, I have listened, needless to say, with very great interest to the points which have been made during the course of this debate. The views which your Lordships have expressed are of course a reflection of the great depth of feeling which the Government are aware has been aroused by the A.66 proposals. There are many noble Lords who treasure the Lake District above all our National Parks. We are not Philistines. I believe it was Coleridge who said:
"'Tis sweet to him who all the week
Through city crowds must push his way,
To stroll alone through fields and woods
And hallow thus the Sabbath-day."
I think this is a feeling which is probably sympathetic to the tone of our debate to-day. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, made that point particularly well.
We are all grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Henley, for having brought this subject out into the open. Your Lordships' House has produced an enormous range of talent during this debate to-night and noble Lords have spoken with great knowledge and depth of feeling. I should like to say to the noble Lord, Lord Molson, who read out the general principles which should guide Government when dealing with roads, that I found myself completely in agreement with him I should not think that any Government, and certainly not the present Government, would disagree with the general principles that he enunciated. We had what seemed rather like a note of slight despair from the noble Lord, Lord Henley, when he spoke of the "mixture as before". That is not really so and I should like to stress at this moment that we perhaps should clarify what is being done.
The Government know exactly what is happening. The Daily Telegraph last
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Saturday talked, as some noble Lords have to-day also, of
"pushing a motorway through this beautiful Lake District."
That is not the fact. We are not doing that. My noble friends Lord Molson and Lord Wakefield, like many other noble Lords, seemed to be under the impression that this was what was to be done. I might say that we are dealing here with the improvement of 33 miles from Workington to Penrith; we are proposing to improve those existing 33 miles of twisting and narrow single-carriageway trunk road. For the most part we are going to widen the road to a width of 24 ft., with appropriate verges. I would say to my noble friend Lord Wakefield that we are not going to have concrete kerbs and roads: it will be black asphalt and it will not be the eyesore that he seems to fear.
LORD WAKEFIELD OF KENDAL: My Lords, if I may interrupt my noble friend, I would point out that it is so already. As you go westwards from Penrith into Keswick, with those Fell views in front of you, the road has already got these great wide verges and wide concrete kerbs. It is not a case of spoiling what is there: the artificiality is already happening. It is there.
LORD HEWLETT: My Lords, if the noble Lord will forgive me, may I say that from Dunmail Raise and on the bypass by the Vale of St. John, going up to Keswick, precisely the same thing applies. It may not be a motorway, but it is going to be a heavy arterial industrial road.
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: My Lords, I was talking about the improvements which are now under discussion. Obviously I cannot argue about what has been done in the past. On these 33 miles will be four sections of dual carriageway on the improved realigned road; but these are only going to amount in total to 6½ miles. It will not be, as the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, said, 6½ miles along Bassenthwaite; it will be 6½ miles in totality out of the 33.
LORD KENNET: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord how much dual carriageway would be along Bassenthwaite?
LORD INGLEWOOD: My Lords, I apologise if I have overstated it: it is certainly several miles. Would my noble friend not agree with me that that particular road, which is going to have two 24 ft. carriageways, with the verges to what are called "the appropriate standards", will make this road exactly the same as the A.1 running through Nottinghamshire?
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: My Lords, perhaps I might leave the Bassenthwaite question until later, and then I will answer the questions put by the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, and by my noble friend. The dual carriageways, to the extent that I have described, are being provided, for example, where improvement of the existing carriageway is needed to give adequate forward vision when overtaking. This would require more earthworks, and consequently more disturbance of the landscape, than retention of the existing road as part of a dual carriageway system and provision of a separate new carriageway. Westwards of Keswick, whenever possible, use is being made of the disused railway line from Workington to Penrith. I think that my noble friend Lord Hewlett, in his powerful speech, rather suggested that railways had not penetrated to the Lake District. I am sure that my noble friend will realise that the disused railway is to be used by the Government for parts of the new road to avoid taking up more land.
LORD HEWLETT: My Lords, with respect to the Minister, I said they now have no railway. My comment was a fair one. That was the only railway, which is now disused, in the Lake District.
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: Yes, my Lords, but the railway did penetrate there: that was the point I was making. And we are going to use it. This is going to have considerable advantage in minimising the severance of property and the loss of agricultural land. I believe that the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, asked me a question about compulsory purchase orders. He mentioned the fact of his not having seen a plan. My information is that before the district valuer commences his negotiation to acquire the land, the Treasury has to approve what the district valuer is suggesting and after that the compulsory purchase order is made and the land-
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owners can see a plan of the land in general terms on a scale of 1:2,500 in the council offices.
LORD INGLEWOOD: My Lords, I did not in fact mention anything about price: I particularly avoided saying anything about that. All I said was that I thought it very remarkable that when compulsory purchase orders were issued, the landowner was first told about this in very general terms and then served with details, and then months after that there is no plan saying what land in fact it is intended to acquire. They seem to refer to parts of certain Ordnance numbers. Furthermore, I should have thought that anybody concerned, by standards of normal courtesy would be given a plan and not have to trail to the county council offices to make a tracing there on his own. However, perhaps we might leave this point: it is really a small one.
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: My Lords, I agree. I felt I should say that the district valuer was also involved in this.
LORD KENNET: My Lords, I wonder whether the House would permit me to intervene? The noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, has suggested that we might leave the point. I think that is very generous of him but if he makes a complaint that his land is to be taken without his receiving the courtesy of a map showing what part is to be taken, is it a proper answer to his question—which is of course also of interest to the whole House—if the Minister then introduces the district valuer and seems to imply that the noble Lord was complaining about the price he was likely to receive?—which he was not.
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: My Lords, I take the point. It is all part of the process which the noble Lord fully knows about. I really must draw the attention of your Lordships to the fact that this debate is limited to 21, hours, and if I am to get through my speech I shall only do so by going slightly faster and not allowing myself to be interrupted. I say that with great respect to your Lordships, but we are very strictly bound by our rules on these debates.
One of the main planks of those who have opposed the Department's proposals

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is that improvement of the A.66 through the National Park is incompatible with the National Parks and Countryside legislation. The noble Lords, Lord Strang, Lord Chorley and Lord Molson have drawn attention to this. I must remind them that Section 5(1) of the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949 said the purposes of the Act included,
"promoting their enjoyment by the public".
and that Section 1(2) of the Countryside Act 1968 spoke of
"encouraging the provision and improvement for persons resorting to the countryside, of facilities for the enjoyment of the countryside".
By far the mater part of the traffic which does and will use the A.66 has its origin and/or its destination within the Park. Having considered all the arguments in the chapter of his report headed, "The Road and the Park" the inspector concluded that access is and must remain one of the principal purposes of the Park because this is a pre-requisite to public enjoyment. It has been argued that his interpretation of "access" is misleading because it is used in the 1949 Act only in the context of access to open country where the public can roam at will, on foot or on horseback; but no one, I think, will deny that the public cannot enjoy a Park unless they can get there conveniently and safely by normal means of transport.
I would also remind critics that although Section II of the 1968 Act enjoins Ministers in the exercise of their functions relating to land to have regard to the desirability of conserving the natural beauty and amenity of the countryside, it was not intended that this should be to the exclusion of every other consideration. In Section 37 of that same Act it states that a Minister must also,
"have due regard to the needs of agriculture and forestry and to the economic and social interests of rural areas".
In this context it is perhaps of no little significance that improvement of the A.66 has been vigorously supported, not only by the West Cumberland local authorities and Cumberland County Council but also by all local authorities on the line of the route within the National Park.
LORD HUGHES: My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt the noble Lord, who has been interrupted so frequently, but I
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noticed that earlier on he was tearing up pieces of paper after he had read them. It must be obvious to the noble Lord that lie is not going to persuade anybody who has spoken in this debate by reading out what I feel is a most appalling brief that he has been provided with. Would he not accept, not as a jocular but as a reasonable piece of advice, that he should forget about the rest of the brief, without committing himself to anything, and tell his right honourable friend the general tenor of this debate?
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: My Lords, I have very great respect for the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, and my right honourable friend will listen to what he has said, but if the noble Lord will do me the kindness of listening to the points which I have here he will see that it is not a bad case. I do not think we have to blush or be ashamed. We must not prejudge this matter. The noble Lord, Lord Henley, talked about "conning" I do not think that is an appropriate term; we are not trying to con anyone. The noble Lord, Lord Chorley, suggested that informed opinion had not had a chance to do anything about this matter—
LORD CHORLEY: My Lords, informed opinion could not do anything until it received the report. It received the report on the same day as the Orders were laid. What possible chance was there of its influencing the Minister?
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, and other noble Lords who have spoken to-night, gave evidence. They were the informed opinion. The noble Lord is part of the informed opinion. The inspector took the measure of noble Lords and their advisers. He produced a report which my right honourable friend has considered, and he has issued his instructions.
It is true that there is a conflict between conservation and access, however this is defined, and the inspector complained that he was given inadequate advice by those who appeared at the inquiry on the priority to be given to these Park purposes. The Government are well aware that improvement of the national road network and the continuing increase in car ownership have exerted new pressures on National Parks. Indeed, this was one

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of the main reasons why the Secretary of State in July, 1971, appointed a Committee under the chairmanship of my noble friend Lord Sandford to review National Parks policy. This Committee has been considering, among other things, the effect of motor-borne visitors on Parks. I cannot of course anticipate the recommendations of the Committee, but I can say that none of the evidence submitted to it has advocated restricting access to major tourist centres such as Keswick.
I should like to thank my noble friend Lord Inglewood for his kind reference to my noble friend Lord Sandford. The noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, referred to the Keswick By-pass. It is obviously going to affect a very sensitive area on the route. He asked me in particular about the height of the bridge. I am advised that on the Keswick Northern By-pass there is to be a two-level junction at its eastern end and a bridge over the River Greta, 740 ft. long and 100 ft, above the river. When viewed in relation to the topography of the surrounding area, which has dictated the reed for the two-level junction, and the landscape treatment which the Department proposes, one realises that these are not structures standing starkly above their surroundings but, through careful design and treatment, they will blend into the landscape and may indeed even become a feature of it.
One of the nubs of this debate has been the section dealing with the Bassenthwaite Lake. My right honourable friend has been criticised severely by your Lordships and others for not accepting the inspector's recommendation that the line of the proposed second carriageway alongide Bassenthwaite Lake, which follows the railway line, should be modified to reduce the amount of encroachment into the lake. I can assure you that this recommendation was very carefully considered. It would be possible to re-align the carriageway to bring it nearer to the existing road, but the conclusion was that the length of the embankment and its appearance from the Lake or the eastern shore would be much the same. The effect upon the land lying between the two carriageways would, however, be extremely damaging. More trees would have to be cleared and, because of the difference in levels between
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the two carriageways, high retaining walls would need to be constructed. The noble Lord, Lord Kennet, had a picture of a vertical wall. I am advised that it will be a sloping bank with a gradient of 1 in 3, of chipped stones with shrubs planted around them.
LORD KENNET: My Lords, may I, for the sake of posterity, ask the noble Lord to repeat that? He said there would be chipped stones with shrubs along the banks of Bassenthwaite. That is right, is it not? I could hardly believe my ears.
LORD HEWLETT: Just as Coleridge described it!
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: My Lords, there is the existing road and we are now making, use of the railway. The railway will be the Southbound road. It will not have a vertical wall.
LORD KENNET: Not into the Lake.
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: Not into the Lake.
My Lords, reduction of the distance by which the new carriageway encroaches on to the Lake is not of critical importance, since a new share line is established in either case. The critical factor is what happens to the land between the new and existing carriageways. The wider the gap between the carriageways, the greater the scope for preserving the existing trees and therefore for preserving the landscape. It is not perhaps widely known that getting on for half the existing western shore of the Lake is artificial, but the scars of the railway construction have been healed by the passage of time and the growth of vegetation. The Department proposes to plant trees and shrubs to speed up the process of natural rehabilitation.
There will be along the Southbound lane on the old railway a footpath. That will be nearest to the Lake. So when we speak about tunnelling and things like that we are opening access to views of the lake for pedestrians which have not been there before.
LORD INGLEWOOD: My Lords, this reference to a footpath which was spoken about a great deal at the inquiry, will the noble Lord expand on that and tell us a little more? At one time it was even going to be cantilevered out over

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the water, but it will mean (will he not agree?) that it will be immediately adjacent to the Southbound carriageway where nobody would want to walk with 60 m.p.h. juggernauts going along at exhaust level with his head.
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: My Lords, I think the noble Lord is being a little fanciful. If there is a footpath it is not on the road; it is alongside. If you do not look at the road you can look at the lake and at Skiddaw.
LORD HEWLETT: And get run over in the process, my Lords!
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: My Lords, not if you stick to the footpath. I should like at this point to pay tribute to the inspector, as other noble Lords have done—
LORD KENNET: My Lords, before the noble Lord leaves that point, I wonder whether he could answer my question about the length of dual carriageway beside the lake?
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: My Lords, I have detailed maps here and if I may I would rather pass the map to the noble Lord so that he can see it for himself. I am watching the clock. The inspector conducted a marathon public inquiry into our proposals at Penrith over a year ago and I think everyone has admired the clarity of his report. Among all those who have complained over his main recommendation, that the Secretary of State should make the orders for the proposed A.66 improvements, no one has actually faulted Sir Robert Scott's careful and, I might add, eminently readable report.
I should like to speak briefly about the second part of the Question. As I have already pointed out, we recognised the pressures exerted by the continuing increase in car ownership and usage in National Parks. The Government also recognise the opportunity which the A.66 decision has created for a new look at traffic management problems in the Lake District. With through traffic attracted to an improved A.66, it may well be possible, as I have suggested, to restrict heavy through traffic from using parts
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at least of the A.591 road from Keswick to Kendal. This is a matter for which Parliament has given powers to local highway authorities, in this case Westmorland and Cumberland County Councils. They have such a possibility under active consideration. There are obviously problems, such as over enforcement of restrictions, since, as I have already said, a high proportion of heavy vehicles using roads in the Park have business in the Park, serving those who live and work there.
LORD MOLSON: My Lords, if I may interrupt my noble friend, I was aware, of course, of those powers. Why then did the inspector say that he did not recommend the use of those powers to restrict industrial traffic on the A.66 road? Really, my noble friend must not think that because this deplorable decision has been taken about the A.66 that that is any reason for us to be especially pleased at the introduction of some traffic restriction on another road.
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: My Lords, there are parts of the Lake District which must have access, as I have just been explaining. My noble friend has described the inspector's report correctly. My right honourable friend has to look at the general picture. I think one of the things that came out was that even if he did recommend the Sebergham route being used for heavy traffic it would still not be sufficient. There would still have to be improvements to the A.66. This is the point which we must grasp. It would not solve the entire problem.
The A.66 improvements will not be completed for two or three years. To examine traffic management possibilities and problems such as these over the Lake District as a whole, together with its approaches, the Department has decided that a meeting should be called at an early date in the Lake District, of representatives of the statutory bodies concerned: the local highway authorities—that is, Cumberland, Lancashire and Westmorland County Councils; the Lake District Planning Board; and the Countryside Commission under the chairmanship of the Department of the Environment's Regional Director in the North. Invitations to the meeting went out last weekend and we suggested a

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joint study by a Working Party with wide terms of reference:
"Having regard to the desirability of preserving the natural beauty of the National Park and of improving opportunities in it for the enjoyment of the countryside and for open air recreation, while providing suitably for the convenience of those who live in the Park, to consider the movement of road traffic in the Park and on the approaches to it, to examine the scope for and means of controlling that traffic and standing vehicles, and to make recommendations".
I am sure your Lordships will welcome this initiative by my right honourable friend. I should like to say, like the noble Lord, Lord Henley, how sorry I am that the noble Viscount, Lord Rochdale, was not able to be here because he wrote very fully and his letter will be taken fully into account in the course of the proposed traffic management study which will, I hope rapidly, agree recommendations for action.
If the county councils, who are the traffic authorities concerned, approach my right honourable friend the Secretary of State he will give sympathetic consideration to the banning of through heavy traffic on the A.591 route. It would not be feasible to stop all such traffic, as noble Lords will be aware, because of traffic which has a delivery or collection point in the area, but it would obviously cut out a sizeable proportion of such traffic. Earlier I referred—
LORD KENNET: My Lords, I hope the noble Lord will forgive me—
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: My Lords, I only have eight minutes—
LORD KENNET: My Lords, the House will not agree that it is not feasible to control heavy traffic simply because somebody is delivering goods. It is perfectly feasible to make a regulation saying "No heavy traffic will come on this road", whether or not it is delivering goods.
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: My Lords, I think that is unreasonable. If there is a load of something it has to be delivered. You cannot make people live in a desert, and I believe that if the noble Lord will think about what he has said, he will see that it is unreasonable.
LORD KENNET: My Lords, I have thought it over and I do not think it is
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unreasonable to insist that in certain places goods should be delivered by light lorries and not by heavy ones. If the noble Lord, speaking on behalf of the Government, is saying that it is always unreasonable to make this stipulation, I think the House will wish to take note of this important statement of Government policy.
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: My Lords, I am only saying that where deliveries have to be made by lorries one has to allow that to be done, and I think any local council representing their voters' interests would not wish to do otherwise. Of course we would wish to keep what noble Lords have referred to as "juggernauts" from this area as much as we can.
Getting hack to the requirement of the Countryside Act of 1968, that Ministers should have regard to the desirability of conserving the national amenity of the countryside, in this context I think it is proper for me to remind noble Lords of the considerable environmental benefits which can be gained within the Lake District from this improvement of the A.66. The by-passing of tourist centres such as Keswick and Cockermouth (where at present heavy traffic passes William Wordsworth's birthplace), for instance, and other places along the line of the route, will do much to relieve the traffic congestion which anyone who knows these centres will have experienced, and deplore, particularly at the height of the tourist season. Furthermore, it is hoped that the improved M.6/A.66 link to West Cumberland will attract heavy vehicles away from the A.591 Kendal to Keswick route and thus relieve places such as Ambleside and Grasmere in the very heart of the Lake District. This is a point which I think is well worth considering carefully in connection with the proposal in regard to the A.66. The Eastern end of the Keswick Northern by-pass on the A.66 has been deliberately designed to encourage through traffic from the West to continue along the A.66 to join the M.6 at Penrith instead of branching off South from Keswick.
I have mentioned the special attention which has been given in the design of this road to the use of landscaping techniques to minimise the effect of the road on the landscape. Active consideration is also being given to the provision of

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special facilities on the route, such as viewing points and picnic areas at selected places. The new carriageway and footpath along the disused railway by Bassenthwaite Lake will open up to visitors views of the Lake and of Skiddaw beyond, which are almost totally hidden from the existing road. There is indeed much scope for the development of the A.66 in the Lake District as a scenic route for public enjoyment and, after all, whatever the original intentions may have been, many present-day visitors to the Parks do want to enjoy the scenery from their cars. The noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, instanced Switzerland. I have motored round lakes in Switzerland and Italy and they are enjoyable places.
8.30 p.m.
LORD HENLEY: My Lords, I have just time to wind up. The noble Lord's speech has indeed exposed the weaknesses of the Secretary of State's decision. I shall say no more. He has had an awful battering. He has no friends and I shall leave the matter there. I am less concerned with the actual details of this road, as I said at the beginning. The issue of the road itself was debated over five weeks and nearly everything that the noble Lord said emerged at that inquiry. What I am concerned with is the ethos behind the inspector's reasons for his report. As 'the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, said that by itself would not necessarily have been important because a Minister can reject a report, but the fact that the rather Philistine and equivocal reasons put forward by the inspector have been accepted by the Minister is indeed sad. It seems to me that what has emerged from this debate is that there has been no serious planning and thought at all about roads in the area.
I was very struck by what the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, said. He quoted the inspector as saying that at one moment he would have liked to stop the inquiry "until we have examined the Keswick traffic problem". That is a very remarkable statement. He also said that the Department admitted that they had no regional policy in respect of Lake District roads at all, and he actually quoted the paragraph. This indeed will
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lead, as the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, said to a gradual whittling away (because there is no proper policy) of what remains of the very small amount of natural beauty left in this country. As the noble Lord, Lord Conesford, said, it is a ruinous precedent.
There also emerged the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Strang, that the inadequacy of the existing legislation, and in particular of the two Acts, with regard to National Parks. That is really only one point. The inadequacy of the legislation applies to a great deal of planning in this kind of context. But so far as the National Parks are concerned there is this "vagueness"—-I think was the word used—about the terms which allow a developer with his concrete propositions to "make hay" with an objector, who can only appeal, as your Lordships frequently did, to Wordsworth and Coleridge. How effectively this was done was demonstrated at Cow Green in another equally disastrous decision.
I am about to be told to shut up because, as your Lordships know, this is a short debate and there is about one minute to go. I end by reminding your Lordships of what the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, said, that if you can do the kind of things that are proposed along the lakeside at Bassenthwaite, you can do anything. I have "called attention" as I hoped to do, and some extremely distinguished noble Lords who have had immense experience in this field have joined me. The noble Lord, Lord Mowbray, has been battered by people interjecting every two minutes, but I hope that the Government will take note of what some of the extremely distinguished noble Lords in your Lordships' House have said to-night. With that I can do no more than ask leave to withdraw my Motion for Papers.
THE DEPUTY CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES (LORD CHAMPION): My Lords, is it your Lordships' pleasure that this Motion be withdrawn?
SEVERAL NOBLE LORDS: No!
THE DEPUTY CHAIRMAN: The Question is, that the Motion be agreed to?
On Question, Motion agreed to.

INDEPENDENT BROADCASTING AUTHORITY BILL [H.L.]
Reported from the Joint Committee on Consolidated Bills with Amendments, and re-committed to a Committee of the Whole House; Bill to be printed as amended.
SLOUGH ESTATES (UTILITY SERVICES) LIMITED BILL [H.L.]
The CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES informed the House that the Promoters do not intend to proceed further with the Bill: Ordered, That the Bill be not further proceeded with.