Lords Sitting of 17 October 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 Southwark.

NUCLEAR TESTS: PROPOSED BAN
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether, in view of the expanded use of underground tests by the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R., and the Chinese and French overground tests, they will propose the holding of an international conference to consider the immediate banning of all nuclear tests and a target date for outlawing nuclear weapons with the destruction of existing stocks.
THE MINISTER OF STATE, FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH OFFICE (BARONESS TWEEDSMUIR OF BELHELVIE): My Lords, international machinery already exists at the Committee for the Conference on Disarmament at Geneva for the negotiation of arms control agreements of tile kind which the noble Lord has proposed. I do not believe that any useful purpose would be served by a move to duplicate this machinery at the present time.
LORD BROCKWAY: Yes, my Lords, but is not that Conference in 1975? Is it not very desirable that some initiative should be taken before then? Does the noble Baroness remember the undertaking given in the Non-Proliferation Treaty to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to the cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date, and to nuclear disarmament? What has been done to carry out that pledge?
BARONESS TWEEDSMUIR OF BELHELVIE: My Lords, I am sure that
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the noble Lord knows very well that we are discussing an extremely complex subject. The negotiations at Geneva, which I agree have been going on for a considerable time, have centred upon the technical problems of producing an effective system of verification for a comprehensive test ban treaty. A further meeting on this matter was held in Geneva in July.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, is it not the case now that seismic inspection has gone very far and that the method of recording earth tremors allows this to take place? In view of this technical advance, is it not possible to stop all nuclear explosions?
BARONESS TWEEDSMUIR OF BELHELVIE: My Lords, the noble Lord will know that we have always urged that those who have not signed the partial test ban treaty should do so, but at the meeting at Geneva in July to which I referred it was agreed that further research into verification techniques is required. While I would agree with him that there has been some advance in seismic monitoring. I am advised that it is not thought that there is yet a sufficient degree of accuracy.

TRACKED HOVERCRAFT LIMITED: SELECT COMMITTEE REPORT
2.38 p.m.
LORD KINGS NORTON: 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 have yet considered the Report from the Select Committee on Science and Technology on Tracked Hovercraft Ltd., and if so, whether they are able to make a Statement relating to the Committee's recommendations.
THE MINISTER WITHOUT PORTFOLIO (LORD DRUMALBYN): My Lords, the Committee's Report is a detailed document and raises many important points which cover the interests of a number of Departments. The Government are considering all the issues and intend to respond as quickly as possible.
LORD KINGS NORTON: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord.
LORD ALPORT: My Lords, may I ask my noble friend whether he is aware, in this connection, that it is the intention of some of those who have been associated with this project from the beginning, such as Professor Laithwaite and Professor Ellison, to bring together an organisation which will continue research into this very important technical development? In those circumstances, although their efforts are entirely unofficial, would there be any financial support from the Government for the project that they have in mind?
LORD DRUMALBYN: Yes, my Lords, these intentions are referred to in the Report, and no doubt will be among those that will be considered by the Government.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, do I understand from what the noble Lord says that there is still a possibility that work will continue on the linear motor? Can he say what is happening in the meanwhile to the track in Cambridgeshire?
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, I think that one has to distinguish between work on the linear motor and work on the tracked hovercraft itself. So far as the linear motor is concerned, there is still a possibility, and, as the noble Lord will be aware, arrangements have been made with Hawker Siddeley to continue work on the linear motor.
LORD HARVEY OF PRESTBURY: My Lords, in view of the interest in this matter, will my noble friend say when this is likely to occur?
LORD DRUMALBYN: No, my Lords; I am afraid that it is never possible to say that.
LORD KINGS NORTON: My Lords, is the Minister aware that the tracked hovercraft system at Earith and the linear motor are inextricably connected, and that to test the linear motor we shall need the facilities at Earith?
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, so far as Earith is concerned, the Government will take steps to keep Earith open until proposals for its future use have been examined. I understand that the
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National Research and Development Corporation have invited tenders for the demolition of the track, but no action is to be taken until decisions about its future have been made.

POSTAL CHARGES AND CHRISTMAS GREETINGS
LORD AIREDALE: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they have noted that continual increases in postal charges are causing a serious decline in the time-honoured custom of exchanging Christmas greetings by post; and whether they have any proposals to remedy this unhappy state of affairs.
LORD DENHAM: My Lords, Her Majesty's Government realise that increases in postage may have had some effect on the sending of Christmas greetings, but postage is only one element in the total costs involved. The rate appropriate for Christmas cards, like other postal tariffs, has been kept to the minimum necessary to avoid piling up unmanageable postal losses in the future.
LORD AIREDALE: My Lords, when the Minister said at the beginning of his Answer "may have", surely there is statistical proof that there has recently been a decline in the Christmas mail? Is it not worth while considering a concessionary rate which, even if it did not result in a profit for the Post Office, might bring a great deal of happiness at Christmas time to a number of people, some of whom are rather lonely?
LORD DENHAM: My Lords, every time the second-class post rate—that is the one normally used for Christmas cards—has gone up there has been a decline straight away, but this has normally been made up after a while. As to whether there should be a concessionary rate or not, this is a matter for the commercial judgment of the Post Office.
LORD BALFOUR OF INCHRYE: My Lords, can the Minister say that he will make representations to the Post Office

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Corporation that if they take the cash they should deliver the goods, unlike last Christmas, when they failed dismally?
LORD DENHAM: My Lords, I know that the Post Office is determined to avoid a repetition of what happened last year.
LORD POPPLEWELL: But, my Lords, is the Minister not aware that on this labour-intensive side of the Post Office, so far as deliveries are concerned, it is practically impossible for it to make a profit or even to cover its working expenses? Is it not time that more of the branches of communication were brought within the financial obligations of the Post Office in order that these charges, and the whole aspect of communications, can be more reasonably dealt with?
LORD DENHAM: My Lords, that may well be a point of view, but the present state of the law under the Post Office Act, which was not an Act of this Administration, is that the Post Office is a commercial organisation.
LORD SEGAL: My Lords, is the Minister aware that a serious decline in this time-honoured custom will adversely affect the income of many deserving national charities; and if this should prove to be so, would he seriously consider the issue of a special series of charity stamps in an effort to redress the balance?
LORD DENHAM: My Lords, this is primarily a matter for the Post Office, but I am bound to say that concessions for particular classes of people have always proved difficult to justify in principle and to operate in practice.
LORD ORR-EWING: My Lords, would my noble friend not consider a custom which has now become almost regulatory overseas; that is to say, the provision of a post box at the entrance to a house so that delivery can be made much more quickly, instead of the postman having to go up a small garden and deliver the mail into the house? This is widely done in the whole of North America, and enormously speeds up delivery and therefore reduces the cost to the public.
LORD DENHAM: My Lords, that is an extremely interesting suggestion but I should find it very hard to relate it to the Question on the Order Paper.

E.E.C. AND THE MONTREAL CONVENTION
LORD BESWICK: 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 has been taken by the United Kingdom Government to secure a unified policy of the E.E.C. on the issue of ratification of the Montreal Convention for the Supression of Unlawful Acts against the safety of Civil Aviation.
BARONESS TWEEDSMUIR OF BELHELVIE: My Lords, as one of the depositary Governments for ratification of the Montreal Convention, Her Majesty's Government have been active through their representatives abroad in urging ratification of the Convention by overseas Governments, including those of our partners in the European Community.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, while thanking the noble Baroness for her Answer, and acknowledging the fact that the United Kingdom delegation at Rome made a very brave effort at the Conference there, may I ask her whether it is not a fact that we are now back in square one on this very important matter? Is it not also a fact that here we have a specific, defined issue, and if we cannot get agreement on it within the E.E.C. then on what aspect of external affairs can we expect to have a policy?
BARONESS TWEEDSMUIR OF BELHELVIE: My Lords, as the noble Lord knows, the voting at the Rome Conference reflected various strongly-held views, among them, for example, that sanctions could be imposed only by the Security Council. Of the European Community member States, it is true that only the Netherlands and Denmark have so far ratified; but the Federal Republic of Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Denmark have signed or acceeded to the Convention—and the United Kingdom, of course—and we shall hope to put Orders in Council before this House shortly which will enable us to ratify.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, may I ask the noble Baroness whether she would assure me that Her Majesty's Government will try to make this a test case for the E.E.C.? We are told that as their economic policy is a failure we can now concentrate on political matters. Here is a possibility; and can the noble Baroness assure me that something will be done by the E.E.C. collectively to apply the terms of the Montreal Convention?
BARONESS TWEEDSMUIR OF BELHELVIE: My Lords, I understand that one of the main problems before some of the European Community countries is that they need internal domestic legislation; and, of course, this was also one of our problems, which we have now solved by the Protection of Aircraft Act.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
THE LORD PRIVY SEAL (LORD WINDLESHAM): My Lords, I beg to move the first Motion which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
Moved, That leave be given to the Lord Hoy to advance the Committee stage of the Breeding of Dogs Bill from Tuesday the 23rd to Thursday the 18th of October.—(Lord Windlesham.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
LORD WINDLESHAM: My Lords, I beg to move the second Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
Moved, That Standing Order No. 46 (Amendments on Third Reading) be dispensed with in its application to the Local Government (Scotland) Bill.—(Lord Windlesham.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

MAPLIN DEVELOPMENT BILL
2.49 p.m.
THE PARLIAMENTARY UNDERSECRETARY OF STATE, DEPARTMENT OF THE ENVIRONMENT (BARONESS YOUNG): My Lords, I beg to move that this Report be now received.
Moved, That the Report be now received.—(Baroness Young.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
Clause 2 [Reclamation and disposal of land in Maplin area]:
LORD BESWICK LORD BESWICK moved Amendment No. 1:
Page 2, line 4, after ("date") insert ("being not less than two years after the date of the passing of this Act").
The noble Lord said: My Lords, those who have taken a special interest in these Maplin proposals will no doubt have reviewed the arguments for and against that were made before we went into Recess. The developments that have occurred seem to me to strengthen the case against the project; but it may be acceptable to the House if we take this opportunity to review the problem as a whole. Her Majesty's Government seem to have made something of a review themselves and the Amendment I am now moving reflects their decision, announced by Mr. Rippon, to delay by two years the date by which the airport becomes operational. I am sure that the House will agree that it is essential that this delay of two years is used as positively and as usefully as possible so that the "Go", "No-go" decision, when made, is as sound and dependable as human ingenuity can made it. It may be said that in view of the Government concession already made and the further Amendment which the Minister will be moving to this clause my own Amendment will not be required. But I invite the House to take stock of the whole situation, including the worsened economic background and the Government's far from happy handling of this third London airport issue.
It is fair to say, I would claim, that no other national project has been so questioned, so criticised or so denounced—and from sources covering so wide a spectrum of our national life. It has been no narrow Party or vested interest opposition.The Times, the Financial Times, the Economist, the New Statesman, the academics, and the entire air transport industry have all expressed views ranging from doubts to outright condemnation. I have quoted from these views on earlier occasions and I shall not delay the House by repeating them; but I do insist on referring again to the Report of the Commission which was set up specifically to consider the question and which was set up in part as a direct result of a debate

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in this House. The noble and learned Viscount, Lord Dilhorne, if he were here, would recall the discussions we had in this Chamber, and outside, about the status and the methodology to be used by the Roskill Commission. There was general agreement, that with all the differing views about Stansted and the various alternatives we should all be disposed to abide by the findings of that Commission; and an enormous amount of work went into their Report. I have never thought that the effort put into that by Mr. Justice Roskill and his colleagues has ever been properly recognised. Be that as it may, it remains that the most authoritative, in-depth study ever made of the Foulness possibility led the Roskill Commission to say—and I quote from the Report:
"The nation cannot afford to decide the site for this airport on the basis of a serious misallocation of scarce resources."
And again:
"We conclude that neither direction of airlines nor subsidy of surface passenger movements is the answer to an inaccessibly-sited airport."
Nothing at all that has been said or written since then about Foulness-cum-Maplin has been better based or more authoritative than that conclusion of the Roskill Commission.
Since we rose for the Recess, we have had a remarkable statement by the Chairman of the British Airports Board in which he speaks of inadequate consultation on this issue and an estimated annual loss to the public corporation, of which he is the Chairman, of no less than £40 million a year if they are compelled to use Maplin£40 million a year as the cost of moving 10 per cent. of their total effort to Maplin with all the duplication which that entails. We have also had the study of the Air Transport Committee of the British Chamber of Commerce in which they argue most convincingly for a national airports policy and say, among other things in their summary, that collectively the effects of size, noise and the likelihood of a global solution to the environmental nuisance of aircraft noise are sufficient to write off the Maplin airport proposal as at present conceived. I must also refer to the masterly review of all the facts and figures made by the man who was Chairman of the British Airports Authority until the beginning of
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this year, Sir Peter Masefield. Anyone who still believes that Maplin is the best solution should read that article in Flight of August 16.
As against this enormous weight of informed opinion which has substantially increased in weight since we last discussed the matter, we have the anti-noise, or environmental case. I could not be more sympathetic to that case; but there are two points which must be borne in mind and which I submit are decisive. First, the construction of Maplin will not, of itself, reduce the noise around Heathrow and Gatwick and may hinder, if not prevent, its reduction. I listened with particularly great interest to the almost passionate speech of the noble Earl, Lord Howe, when lie told us last July of the noise suffered in South Bucks. But I beg him, and others who have argued with him, to believe that laying down concrete in Essex will not solve his problem. I refrain from repeating the relevant arguments supporting this contention made by Mr. Flowerdew, the former deputy director of research of the Roskill Commission. Moreover, I would say to those who argue strongly on the environmental basis that the accident of residential location is not a conclusive argument in this case. Many now living in South Bucks, of elsewhere would, if they lived in Essex, be taking an equally strong view against the Maplin proposal. This leads me to the second point so well made by my noble friend Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge in Committee, when he said that a pound spent on reducing noise is better than a pound spent on moving it away to trouble other people.
The noble Baroness, Lady Young, told us that the Government policy was to provide quieter aircraft and a new airport. But great as is my enthusiasm for aviation, I do not think that this is feasible. I know that Her Majesty's Government have shown a somewhat lamentable tendency to print paper money but I refer them to the advice recently given by Lord Rothschild who says that it is infinitely better to select priorities—and this argument is about the selection of priorities; it is about how best to spend £1,000 million.
My Lords, can we identify the points on which I think there will be complete agreement. First, the magnitude of the

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expenditure involved is such that we must as a nation avoid a mistaken decision. Secondly, Her Majesty's Government are wise in bowing to criticism and accepting the need for a further review. Thirdly, Her Majesty's Government are also wise in accepting the assessment that the need for the new runway capacity will not arise until two years after the date that they originally put forward. Fourthly—and I hope that I still have complete agreement on these points—it would be wise to use this respite in further intensive research: checking the figures, giving those engaged in the relevant technologies the maximum time to see what they can do and, importantly, for assembling all the information about regional and national considerations, and testing the Maplin case against the national rather than the South-East criteria.
Here, if I have commanded general agreement so far, the question is whether the time of two years is reasonable and whether it should be written into the Bill. Several reasons strengthen my view that this time of two years should be put into the Bill. First, the Government have selected two years as the acceptable delay in completion. There are others, including my noble friend Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge, who have made out a strong case for a five-year delay, but I thought; not unreasonably, that I might get more support from noble Lords opposite if I kept to the Government's figure of two years. But why put it in the Bill? The reason is that otherwise there will be a great temptation to foreshorten the time taken in compiling the promised reports so that commitments can be made in actual construction work. The reports which, as amended, the Bill requires the Government to lay before this House cover a very wide and important field, and it is absolutely essential that the work is done thoroughly and objectively. One year for this work would not be an unreasonable period; indeed, it may be said that the period should be longer. We have proposals, much greater than first conceived, for a whole new city, virtually extending a built-up area from Shoeburyness to Hounslow. After we get the reports on all these issues they will have to be studied and assessed and Parliament has to be consulted; and I suggest that two years for all this is not being extravagant.
Another reason why I suggest that we should put that figure in the Bill is, if I may put it this way, that the Government's handling of some of these matters recently has not commanded universal admiration. There has been more than one complaint about information being incomplete when Questions were asked or votes were taken. We also recall that "half-baked" Green Paper on the Channel Tunnel and the Government's attempt to get a financial commitment from this House before we rose in July. They bowed to criticism on that issue, and it would be sensible to acknowledge the need to avoid a similar confrontation on this occasion. Moreover there is another factor. Let us face it, our Constitution requires a General Election not later than June, 1975, and it is not inconceivable that it may come earlier. Would it not be more decent to delay the expenditure of significant sums of public money on this project until after that Election has taken place? We know that the construction consortia are eager to get going, but would it not be an affront to find a successor Government making an ultimate decision inevitably influenced or pressured by the fact that contracts had been signed, especially when on the Government's own showing there is no need for haste?
That, my Lords, is my case. The sums involved are so large and the consequences so important that all available time should be used to get the facts established. On the Government's own showing another two years is available. Nothing, therefore, is to be lost; and within a field where new knowledge comes to light almost every month something important may be gained by using those two years in an efficiently planned way. My Lords, I beg to move.
3.5 p.m.
LORD AVEBURY: My Lords, I would say a few words in support of this Amendment as my name is attached to it and, without going through any of the background figures and reports again, reinforce what has been said by the noble Lord, Lord Beswick. I agree with him on the timing. When we first discussed this subject I suggested that the period might be twenty years, but I came to the conclusion, on the final argument that he put to the House, that we should put in two years and defer

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the decision until after the next General Election, so giving an opportunity to the people to express an opinion, which opportunity has been denied them so far under the bogus consultations entered into by the Secretary of State for the Environment with respect to routes. People were merely offered a choice between a variety of roads approaching the airport from the outskirts of London. They were not told how the traffic was to be dealt with once it had reached the Greater London boundary, and they were not given the option of stating that they did not want the airport, or these works associated with it, at all. Therefore one can attach no importance whatsoever to the results which may be produced by this survey.
The main point here is that we have to take a long-term view and not spend £1,000 million without considering the effect of the facilities coming into use in the 1980's and whether they will still be required on that scale for something like twenty or thirty years beyond that date, so that the public money which has been spent may be properly annotised. We made a mistake in the past with respect to Concorde and I argued equally against that on September 23, 1962, in another place. My advice was not taken on that occasion, with disastrous results I may say—it was not only my advice—and I hope that we shall be a little more sensible after this short debate, so that after a period of reflection the Government and the country may come to a proper conclusion.
My Lords, when I say that one must have a long-term point of view I am reinforced in that opinion, which I have expressed before, by what is happening in the Middle East to-day. When we were talking about this matter in Committee I said that it was quite wrong for us to go ahead with planning airports, or any other large-scale capital facilities, on the basis that the West would have access to unlimited oil supplies; particularly oil supplies coming from the Middle East. That is the only place from which they can come in the time scale we are talking about, between the decision to go ahead and the airfield coming into operation. I wrote to the Prime Minister earlier this year in
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another context asking whether he thought it wise to continue approving the construction of oil-fired power stations. I pointed to the dangers of a Middle East conflict as being one way in which our oil supplies would be interrupted. The Prime Minister replied that he did not take as pessimistic a view of the situation as I appeared to do. Now we see what has happened. Whether or not the Middle East conflict results in any long-term interruption of our supplies, of one thing we may be absolutely certain: that the cost of oil to Western Europe, and particularly to Great Britain, will rise dramatically over the next seven years.
Already, between 1970 and 1973 the jet fuel price has increased by between 30 per cent. and 110 per cent., depending on which part of the world you take, and estimates made of future increases, such as those by Mr. Kenneth Wilkinson, managing director of Rolls-Royce, predict a threefold to fourfold increase in jet fuel costs by the mid-1980s. I should like to be certain that we have taken this into account in calculating what the total increase in air traffic may be in this period, and whether it justifies the provision of facilities costing £1,000 million. I should like, also, to be certain that we have taken properly into consideration the effect of constructing the Channel Tunnel, a matter which we may be discussing within the next few weeks. If one takes the rather conservative estimates made by Cooper Brothers & Company and Lybrand Associates on the diversion of air traffic service by the construction of the Channel Tunnel, they amount to £28·7 million in 1980 and £46·6 million in 1990. I had the opportunity of discussing these figures with Dr. Barnardo, of British Rail, and I asked him whether, in the light of British Rail's experience when the North-Western line was electrified and the diversion of passengers from Ridgway to Heathrow on to the railways, he would not think that these figures were cautious. He replied: "Yes, that is so"; that nearly 100 per cent. of the passengers between Manchester and London switched from air to rail, and the only ones who continued to travel by air were the inter-line passengers who were carrying on to some further destination. He thought that once the tunnel was operational and you could

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travel from London to Paris in 3 hours 40 minutes, and from London to Brussels in 3 hours 25 minutes, there would be virtually a 100 per cent. diversion of the traffic, whereas of course Cooper Brothers and Lybrand Associates' estimates make provision for a lower share of the traffic being diverted.
This is without taking into account the advent of the high-speed train which further reduces the journey time between London and Paris and London and Brussels, the two which have been particularly studied. It gives the opportunity for surface transport to capture a much greater share of the market in the destinations further into Europe—Frankfurt, Dusseldorf and so on, the big Ruhr destinations, and further South into France. Also, of course, the domestic traffic: if one can travel from London to Edinburgh or London to Glasgow in four or five hours, from city centre to city centre, I daresay that most people who have to make these journeys would sooner go with certainty on the railways than problematically on the airways, particularly in the winter. You would get a large-scale diversion there on British airways motor-density populated domestic routes. So I think the high-speed train will have a vast effect on the volume of traffic being generated from London.
I think, also, my Lords, that we are beginning to consider, though not in as much detail, so far, as I should like, the possibility of services originating in the Provinces and in Scotland and going straight to Continental destinations. It is not so many years ago that I remember attending a hearing of the Air Transport Licensing Board when British Caledonian were prohibited from operating a service direct from Glasgow to Majorca because under the 1960 Air Transport Licensing Act there was a clause which said you should not materially divert from existing services. It was pointed out to British Caledonian that it was quite easy for passengers from Glasgow to come down to Heathrow and get on another plane which was already available to take them on to their holiday destination in Majorca. That has changed. People are demanding that they should be able to fly direct from Castle Donington, Prestwick or wherever it may be to their holiday destinations. This again will have a
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damaging effect on the growth of air traffic from Heathrow.
So, my Lords, for all these reasons, I think if we were to wait for the two years as suggested by the noble Lord in his Amendment, we should find that the Third London Airport at Maplin was completely unnecessary.
There is one further point that I want to make before I sit down, and I would ask the noble Lord who is to reply if he will deal with it. In the Evening Standard of August 31 there was reference to a confidential document, which is supposed to have been distributed to local authorities, outlining contingency plans which would need to be implemented if Maplin had to be scrapped altogether. This document is said to have been drawn up by the British Airports Authority. I am not aware that it has ever been publicly admitted to exist by the Government. But it deals with some essential points, such as the re-siting of the sewage works and various other matters that would have to be taken into consideration if Heathrow and Gatwick were to take up the whole of the increase in the traffic to be expected in the 'eighties.
Following on what the noble Lord said in moving his Amendment, here is a good example of incomplete information being given to the House and to the country. Apparently some privileged local authorities are being allowed to see it. I cannot for the life of me imagine why it should be concealed from your Lordships or from others who may find it interesting, and particularly those who live in the neighbourhoods of Heathrow and Gatwick, who would like to know what the effect is going to be on their environment. In any case, this article stated:
"There is a programme of improvement at both the existing London Airports costing about £100 million and aiming at catering for big increases in the number of passengers using these two airports."
If we are spending that amount of money on expanding Heathrow and Gatwick, and at the same time are talking about £1,000 million at Maplin, I suggest that there is something wrong. We have to do it, anyway. We are committed, if the figures are correct, to the expansion of those two airports. There will be the passengers going through them. Yet, at the

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same time, this is not going to be adequate, and £1,000 million of the taxpayers' money must be spent on duplicating those facilities elsewhere. I hope that the noble Lord will be able to give us a little more information on this subject and, even more, that he will publish the Report to which I have just referred. Coming back to the substance of the Amendment, if we are given two years and people are entitled to express an opinion on it at the next General Election, I personally will be well satisfied.
LORD FERRIER: My Lords, I must apologise for speaking in the way that I did, but I did glance at the empty Liberal Front Bench, and I hope the noble Lord did not mind. I assure your Lordships that I shall not detain you for long, but I am of a mind to oppose this Amendment for one specific reason, and that is that the delay which the noble Lord seeks to put into the Bill would affect development of the seaport. I take the view that this would be most imprudent; that we should do nothing to delay plans, and possibly work, which would go to the construction of the seaport. Other than that, frankly, I go the whole way with the noble Lord, Lord Beswick; and I do so for a number of reasons. I take a view which one noble Member of our Front Bench described as rather revolutionary, which I will expose to your Lordships in a few moments. First of all, the plan as now laid down has the railway terminal in King's Cross. I cannot see how that will help in connecting our existing airports with an airport at Maplin, if and when it is constructed.
The second factor which I have in mind is that we are spending a great deal of money, spread over a number of years, on the tidal barrage at Greenwich in fear of a tidal surge in the Thames. I believe that delay over Maplin would be wise, except in respect of the seaport, for the reason that planners, as time goes on, will take the view that what we are planning now is not nearly big enough. I believe that the reclamation of the sands should be extended far East of the existing planned seaport, thus narrowing the channel of the Thames, in such a way as the Dutch have done with the Scheldt, so that the tidal barrier at Greenwich will no longer be necessary.
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But the great factor, to my mind, of an extension of the reclamation towards the North Sea is that ultimately this would allow for a composite road and rail access over or under the river to Kent, especially if a new airport is to be built. I think we must bear in mind that such a connection from one side of the Thames Estuary to the other would provide direct and high-speed rail connections between existing airports of Gatwick and Heathrow and Victoria, with a new airport. The Starred Question asked earlier to-day by the noble Lord, Lord Kings Norton, has a bearing on this. It is possible that modern forms of traction may provide a high-speed direct system which would be apposite to the whole complex. It would also provide rail transportation connecting the new docks with the South of England and, as the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, stressed, with the possibility of a Channel Tunnel, which I personally do not see, but which nevertheless may come to pass.
Thirdly, it will provide a road access from Essex and the Midlands to the South-East which would provide not only a direct transport system between the Midlands and the South but would act as an orbital—an Eastern orbital—highway to the whole London area, thereby relieving the pressures in the centre. This factor, I believe, is a very important one and I might go further and say that it would be a step in the direction of still more massive development in terms of reclamation on the Dutch model of agricultural land, too many acres of which are being absorbed by concrete throughout our small island to-day. Incidentally, it should be recalled that investment in reclamation for agriculture is not so much money down the drain; it is profitable investment, it is not only outgoings.
My Lords, incidentally I notice one point in the Bill that I should like the Minister to explain if possible. Clause 2(5) reads:
"The remainder may be—
(a) used by the Authority for such recreational, amenity or other purposes"—
going on—
"but not commercial or industrial purposes."
Do the "other purposes" include agriculture and horticulture? But that is a minor point.
To conclude, my Lords, a direct highspeed service between Heathrow, Gatwick

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and the new airfield—and I think this should be borne in mind—would make dual provision for air crews and Air Force personnel in existing accommodation and predicted accommodation. I say "predicted" because between now and 1982 there is bound to be considerable expenditure for the accommodation of personnel in other airports. It would provide dual purpose provision for such people to commute with the Maplin airport, if and when it is built, and thus reduce the demand and the enormous expenditure required for the establishment of new accommodation there. For that one reason alone I would oppose the Amendment and would ask your Lordships' forgiveness if I disappear to a meeting a little after four o'clock. I shall be back as soon as possible. It is for that reason that I hope your Lordships will not think I was importunate or impertinent to jump up at this stage.
3.24 p.m.
LORD BALFOUR OF INCHRYE: My Lords, I hope your Lordships will forgive me for speaking. This is the first time I have opened my mouth in any of the Maplin debates which have taken place. I have tried not to be pro-Maplin or anti-Maplin in my views but I am quite sure that we need a much more objective, disinterested and independent report before anyone can say that he is genuinely pro-Maplin. Looking back at the Roskill Commission, they had the wrong terms of reference, and anyhow their findings are now outdated technically and have proved wrong in many forecasts. Therefore I welcome the Government pledge that there will be an objective review, Let me remind the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, of his own words:
"We agree that before there is any substantial commitment of public money to this project we ought to look again at all the factors affecting the need for the project and to make up our minds then whether and when it is right in the light of the very latest information to make a start on the project".
With those words I cannot but think that the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, ought to be supporting the Amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Beswick. I support the Amendment because, unless reclamation work and public works are delayed for two years, we shall be half committed by the time the report is in our hands. If the Government, when
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they receive a report, have already embarked upon a considerable volume of expenditure of taxpayers' money they will find it very hard, if the balance is a narrow one, to come down against the project. We are half committed, I feel, if public works are allowed to continue parallel with the consideration of this report.
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, I wonder whether my noble friend will allow me to intervene. I hope the House will not go off on a wrong tack over this. It is quite plain that until the order is made none of the major expenditure can take place and the limit of the expenditure that can be debited to the Maplin Development Authority when it takes over is £2 million.
LORD BALFOUR OF INCHRYE: My Lords, if the Government refuse this Amendment public expenditure would continue while the consideration was going on and until the Government had made up their mind. The Government decided that the first runway must be completed by 1980, and now we are told that 1982 is adequate and sufficient. We were told that 1980 was vital, was important, and that civil aviation would suffer severely if the first runway was not opened by 1980. We are now told 1982, without any supporting evidence that the harm the Government expected has in fact been dissipated by subsequent events. I do not think we should confuse the need for a third London airport with the need for new terminals. It is a very popular idea, widely spread, that the discomforts, the delays, the inadequate facilities which we all suffer from at London and other airports will be put right if we have the new Maplin airport. We can make new terminal buildings of comfort and adequacy without having to make a new airport. When we consider Maplin we should remember that fact.
My Lords, there are many risks to Maplin which I hope the Committee which is going to investigate will go into, and I mention but one. I believe the bird risk is something that should not be shrugged off lightly, as the Minister for the Environment did in another place when he said:
"There has apparently never been a fatal accident attributed to birdstrike on a United Kingdom revenue-earning aircraft.… Most

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birdstrike incidents of any kind appear to have very little effect."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Commons; 8/2/73, col. 672.]
The noble Lord, Lord Beswick, referred to Sir Peter Masefield. If Sir Peter Masefield's words are to carry any weight, the birdstrike menace is something so severe that it alone would nullify the Maplin project. If a bird weighing 2 lb. hits an aircraft going at a reasonable speed its force is no less than 20,000 lb. Birdstrikes cost the Royal Air Force £1 million last year. One birdstrike in a thousand take-offs is something we cannot afford to risk.
My Lords, that is but one factor which I hope your Lordships will be able to consider and which will also be considered by the other place. I should like there to be an inquiry which would go more deeply than has been done so far into birdstrikes and other risks. At the end of the day I believe that Maplin may well he a "dead duck". The Minister for the Environment has said we are going ahead. A junior Minister, Mr. Eldon Griffiths, is never tired of saying how necessary and how vital Maplin is to our best interests. When I read statements such as these, I ponder on the question: when does determination stop and obstinacy start? I do not know the answer, but I rather begin to think that we have gone over the line of determination and are now coming into the field of obstinacy. I may be wrong, but at any rate I can see no harm but only good coming from supporting the Amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Beswick—the taxpayers' money should not be committed for another two years from now.
3.32 p.m.
LORD HARVEY OF PRESTBURY: My Lords, I found it difficult to follow the argument of the noble Lord, Lord Avebury. He said that in two years' time a third London airport may not be necessary. He did not say why. He went on to talk about the future cost of fuel. He may well be right, but I have no doubt that even if fuel went up by 50 per cent., or even 100 per cent., it would not stop people from travelling, either in the motor car or in the aeroplane. It might reduce the number of flights, and in this connection I heard this morning that aviation fuel may well increase in price by 90 per cent. by next
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summer. I dare say the airlines will put up their fares but I feel pretty sure that most people will still travel. Flights may well have to be cut, but it still does not help in the problem facing the Government regarding airports.
I would say to noble Lords opposite—and there are quite a number of them here who were Members of the 1945–50 Parliament—that they carry very grave responsibility for the conception and the layout of Heathrow Airport. There has never been a bigger muddle: never. It is not so much the movements of aircraft, as I understand it, but the movements of people and the congestion. Every building within the apex of the triangle is congested—it is impossible to make sense out of it: it is stark, raving mad. Of course, even now it is not too late, as my noble friend has said, to build terminals round the perimeter of London Airport, and probably at minimal cost.
I am not sold on the idea of Maplin by any means, though I am perhaps a little nearer to it than I was before the Recess; but I believe that the Government have got themselves into these difficulties entirely through their own fault. They have not conveyed to the people and Parliament the facts. A great many things need to be known if you are going to change the environment in this kind of way. I still do not know when the railway may be in operation and whether it will be above ground or below ground, and, for instance, how long it will take to get to the centre of London. Communications are very important in a matter such as this. I quite agree with my noble friend who has just spoken about a new harbour: we could very well do with a new harbour. Could we not reach a compromise on this point with the land reclamation project? Land, once reclaimed, may be worth £40,000, £50,000, £60,000 an acre. As he said, it is not money thrown away. But I think we should ponder very carefully before we start building the new airport itself. Here again I support my noble friend in what he said, but I would not vote against the Government. I am prepared to give them a chance to see whether they can convey to Parliament and the public more information. We all need to know very much more about it. The case has not been made out by

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any means. Even to this day, since 1945, when the noble Lord, Lord Winster, went to London Airport and lifted the first sod—I think it was January 1—we still have not got a direct railway into Heathrow. Successive Governments carry a very grave responsibility in this respect.
I want to know how many aircraft will be operating in the 1980s and what size they will be: will they be large or small ones? Will the Government follow the example of the United States Government in efforts to reduce the noise level of aircraft? The Government were questioned on this subject when the matter was raised a few months ago and they are not prepared to admit—or they were not in the summer—that the Americans are making far more progress than we are in trying to reduce the noise level of jet engines. Can we be told more about that? I would say to the Government, "Get busy and inform the public. Give them as much detail as possible. They are paying for it, when all it said and done, and they are entitled to know."
3.36 p.m.
LORD DONALDSON OF KINGSBRIDGE: My Lords, I must support my noble friend's Amendment. I supported him on Second Reading and I am happy to do so again now. I asked at that time for a five-year delay, but clearly if the issue is a two-year delay I shall be happy to go along with that. Most of the arguments in favour of this Amendment have been put forward already. I shall not go through them again, but I think it might be helpful to sum them up. The balance is between a number of certainties and a number of uncertainties. The certainties are the destruction of a certain amount of good agricultural land, the urbanisation of a quiet and peaceful district and the destruction of a most admirable sailing area (and sailing is a growing amenity in this country). The greatest certainty, of course, is the expenditure of an enormous sum of money, and anyone who talks about a thousand million in 1973 will by 1983 quite clearly be talking about something very much larger. By far the most important thing, in my view, is spending this sum of money in the one place in the whole of the British Isles where it is important not to urbanise, and thereby
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making it impossible to spend such a sum of money in the areas where it is required. The last certainty is perhaps the most distressing of all. Everybody seems to be agreed that whatever we do in the way of a new airport, whether at Maplin or anywhere else, nothing will bring relief to the persecuted people around Heathrow and Gatwick within ten years. My Lords, those are the certainties.
The uncertainties are the present estimates of increased passenger and freight traffic. As the noble Lord, Lord Orr-Ewing, pointed out on Second Reading—though he did so in a different sense from my own—a one per cent. error can make a difference of 10 million passengers; that is, from 84 million to 94 million upwards. Of course the same error can do the same thing downwards. A margin of one per cent. is very low. The chances are that the estimates now being made about passenger and tourist traffic are really very unreliable indeed in relation to the rapid development of every kind that is going on. The second uncertainty was well brought out by the noble Lord, Lord Avebury: that as alternative means of transport get so very much better, will people want to fly so much? I should have thought not, but nobody knows. It is entirely uncertain. The same thing applies to the Channel Tunnel. The third uncertainty is whether the Government or anyone else can bully the airlines into using this place, because at the moment they seem absolutely determined not to go there. The fourth uncertainty concerns oil, and no one can tell where the trouble will stop.
It seems to me, therefore, that we ought not to decide on doing irreparable damage at a very great cost with an absolutely uncertain dividend. It could be that after two years the Government might be able to give better and more accurate estimates and to convince us that there must be a third London airport. I am not convinced now, but I could be convinced, and if I were I should be inclined to say that its siting at Maplin would do less harm than anywhere else in the South of England, though I can see no reason whatever why it should be there. But until we have better information surely we ought to ask for time, which is all that this Amendment does.
The arguments over the birdstrike, I think, are frightfully important. The first

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time I ever heard of this was about five years ago when sitting at lunch next to Mr. Peter Masefield. We were talking about Foulness as an alternative to Stansted, to which I was bitterly opposed, and he said that the real argument against Foulness was the birds. Nothing whatever has altered that situation. It is extremely dangerous and, from a natural history point of view, it is a fearful pity. There are occasions on which I would think it reasonable to move a feeding ground of a unique species like Brent Geese, but I would need good proof before I accepted it, and we simply have not got that.
Probably the most important uncertainty is the possibility of improvements (a) in carrying capacity, (b) in noise and (c) in take-off of aircraft. My noble friend Lord Beswick has spoken about these matters; nobody knows how quickly progress will be made. I should like to repeat my plea made on Second Reading that £1 spent on these matters would be worth a great deal more than £1 spent on this wild gamble on the Maplin Sands. I have great pleasure in supporting my noble friend's Amendment.
THE EARL OF ONSLOW: My Lords, I should like to rise in support of the noble Lord, Lord Beswick, for three overwhelming reasons. The first is a personal one: of all the queries I raised on Second Reading not one has been answered. Secondly, as the Government say they are not going to build Maplin for another two years, why cannot they therefore say that they will put in the Bill that they will not build it for two years? A third reason is that it seems to me that some sloppy thinking has gone on with this airport business, by the previous Government regarding Stansted, and by this Government over Maplin. Before we spend these vast sums of money we must get the answers right. I am not yet convinced that we have got them right and therefore I support the noble Lords, Lord Beswick and Lord Avebury.
LORD KINGS NORTON: My Lords, may I say one word in support of the Amendment by the noble Lord, Lord Beswick, and the noble Lord, Lord Avebury? If we invest these large sums in Maplin we shall be investing in the
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past; and I think we should be investing in the future. This country was at its most powerful when it was exploiting its inventions and innovations. Before we are committed to this vast expenditure we should try to assess whether not only new forms of surface transport are likely to be developed rapidly in the next decade, but also whether the kind of aerial transport which we have talked about in the past is likely to develop at the same time. We are in grave danger of building an airport which will be completely out of date by the time it is finished. Already in the Royal Air Force there are vertical take-off aeroplanes, and Hawker Siddeley are about to build a short-take-off and landing civil aircraft. These are developments which in the next decade could progress with the greatest possible rapidity, both here and abroad. We should try to make some assessment of the rapidity of these developments as well as the developments of surface transport before we commit ourselves to this great project; and two years is just about the time in which this could be done. I should feel a great deal safer if this provision, as proposed by the noble Lords, Lord Beswick and Lord Avebury, were introduced into the Bill.
3.43 p.m.
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, we have certainly had an extremely interesting debate on this Amendment. I thought I detected a certain degree of frustration from among certain speakers, particularly in the references to the amount of information that had been made available to the public and Parliament. Perhaps we have not been very fortunate in this matter. On the Second Reading debate I did my best to inform Parliament and I did so at perhaps undue length; and then, unfortunately, Hansard did not appear so the opportunity was not as I had expected. Very many questions have been raised to-day on this Amendment, but these are just the questions on which the Government have undertaken to report, and I shall be referring to this again in what I have to say. I am quite certain noble Lords will not wish me to examine in detail to-day the questions that have been raised because I would be making another excessively long speech.
The effect of this Amendment would be to impose a statutory delay of two

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years from the date of Royal Assent before the date which the Secretary of State could appoint, by an Order under Clause 2(9), as the date on which the Maplin Development Authority could begin to undertake the reclamation works authorised by Clause 2 of the Bill. If the Amendment were accepted the effect would be that the Secretary of State could make an Order at any time, but the date appointed by the Order could not be before the end of October, 1975. We envisage that an Order under Clause 2(9) would not be made until the Maplin Development Authority were ready to set in motion the procedures for the letting of the reclamation contract. Allowing six months for tendering, selection of a contractor, letting a contract, and a mobilisation on the site, an Order authorising reclamation to begin in October, 1975, might be laid in March or April, 1975.
The grounds on which the noble Lord, Lord Beswick, has justified the need for his Amendment amount to the fact that he wants to have the fullest possible inquiry. He is not deeply enamoured of the project itself, but I do not think he allowed this to cloud unduly his moving of the Amendment to-day. He referred to the reference which the Secretary of State for the Environment made in a speech on September 12 as to the date on which the runway is likely to be required. What my right honourable friend said has been widely misunderstood. The burden of his remarks then was that financially and economically we could afford to press ahead with both the Channel Tunnel and Maplin, and should do so if they were justified on their merits. The Secretary of State showed how the expenditure on these two projects together related to the national resources. He pointed out that in peak years of expenditure on them, towards the end of the 1970s, the combined expenditure would be about £150 million a year at 1972 prices.
In making his statment the Secretary of State clearly had to take account of the latest information about the likely timetable for expenditure both on the Channel Tunnel and on Maplin. The Maplin timetable now shows an airport opening date of 1982; and as timing of expenditure was the main point at issue the Secretary of State decided that it
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would be right to mention this date. When the Government made their original announcement about Maplin we said that we accepted the Roskill Commission's view that the first runway at the new airport would need to be operational by "about 1980". Since then we have said that it is our intention to have the new airport operational by the early 1980s; and a 1982 opening date is clearly consistent with this.
If I may say so, the noble Lord, Lord Beswick, made too much of the postponement by two years as he represented it. What we have been saying is that the new airport should be operational by the early 1980s and, as I said, 1982 is consistent with this. In addition, I am sure it is only right to take into account the report of the Civil Aviation Authority.
The Secretary of State's statement did not, therefore, represent any deliberate deferment of the Maplin project. It is simply that our planning for Maplin has now reached a stage at which it is possible to give a reasonably realistic date by which the airport could become operational; and it was essential to the general line of the Secretary of State's argument that this date should be stated. The fact is that the whole period between now and spring 1982 is need for the statutory, design, and construction activities essential to opening the airport in 1982. To meet the 1982 opening date we must therefore press on with our planning for all the aspects of the Maplin project. The study to which the Government are committed need not lead to any further delay, for planning and preparatory work will proceed in parallel. But an arbitrary decision to defer the start of reclamation to October, 1975, would delay the opening of this Maplin airport, and this in its turn might well lead to a need for considerable extra expenditure at existing airports.
I think that the noble Lord, Lord Beswick, argued that a start on reclamation before October, 1975, would be inconsistent with the production of an adequate report to Parliament under Clause 2(9). For that reason, it would be useful for me to give a broad outline of the Government's intentions with regard to the study. The study will cover—I am not ashamed to use the word which I used on Second Reading,

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to which the noble Lord, Lord Balfour of Inchrye, referred:
"all the factors affecting the need for the project".
The first task will be to look again at forecasts of demand and of capacity up to 1990. This examination will take account of the various ways in which critics of the Maplin product have suggested that previous forecasts in this field may now prove to have been unsoundly based. So we shall consider the effects of the Channel Tunnel on air traffic, which the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, suggested; we shall consider the effects of trends in aircraft size; we shall consider the effects of technological developments such as reduced take-off and landing, to which the noble Lord, Lord Kings Norton, referred; of the prospects for the future supply and price of aviation fuel, which the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, also mentioned; and of the likely growth in traffic passing through regional airports, which has not been mentioned quite so much as I expected. In looking at this last point we shall clearly take account of the views on regional airports recently put forward by the Association of British Chambers of Commerce.
The noble Lord, Lord Balfour, referred to bird strike. My noble friend Lord Kinnoull asked the Government a Question last June, to which my noble friend Lord Mowbray replied, about the plans to examine how the various animals and birds would be affected by the reclamation. He then said that the Government had commissioned the Natural Environment Research Council to undertake a programme of research into Maplin wildlife. This will be going on, and, as I have said, all relevant matters affecting the project will be examined, and I have no doubt at all that this will very much include bird strike.
In the light of this examination of the demand and capacity situation it will be possible to consider the various alternative ways in which the expected growth in air traffic in the South-East might be handled—either with or without Maplin. Since the last debate on the Bill, the British Airports Authority have made clear, in their latest Annual Report, their view of the implications
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for their existing airports if Maplin were abandoned. They suggest, for instance, that by 1990 Heathrow would have to be taking two and a half times as many passengers as to-day and Gatwick seven times as many, with a doubling of the number of flights in and out of Gatwick. In addition, Stansted would have to be expanded to become a major airport, busier than Gatwick is to-day—that is about 12 times, or more, the number of passengers they are taking at present. We shall, of course, be looking at all this in our study, but the picture presented by the British Airports Authority gives an indication of the likely scale of the problem.
Perhaps I might mention at this stage that the British Airports Authority are to spend some £100 million, as the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, said, on the development of London Airport in the next few years. This is simply to keep up with the rising demand that will go on rising. But our idea is that there is a limit to which it can be allowed to go on rising, and of course there is no doubt at all that very much more money would have to be poured into Heathrow if Maplin were not developed. It is not in any way a duplication of expenditure at Maplin. If Maplin were abandoned, as I said, still further expenditure on Heathrow and Gatwick would be needed. But the £100 million is perhaps a useful indication of how much it costs to handle extra air traffic at existing airports.
My Lords, when we have a view of the various ways in which traffic might be distributed among the various airports we shall then assess the alternative strategies which are open to us. This assessment will cover three main fields. First of all, noise. In the light of the latest information about the development of quieter aircraft engines, we shall produce noise and number index contours for the various airports on the basis of alternative strategies. Our assumptions about aircraft noise will be based on the best information available to us. I should like at this point to refute the suggestion made in the Press some time ago—I think in August—that the Government are suppressing information about quieter engines which has been supplied to them by the National Gas Turbine Establishment at Pyestock, and are deliberately not encouraging the development of quieter engines in order to bolster the case for

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Maplin. Our report to Parliament will contain the best information available to us on all relevant matters, without any concealment or distortion. And our policy of encouraging the development of quieter engines will continue, for we have always made it clear that, with Heathrow and Gatwick continuing as major airports after Maplin is operational, in our judgment it is only by a combination of encouraging the development of quieter engines and of building Maplin that we can bring really substantial relief to the people around these airports—a view which has received recent support from the Noise Advisory Council, who have stated, in the light of their consideration of the whole question, including the prospects for quieter aircraft, that, solely on noise grounds, a third London airport is needed as soon as practicable.
I turn to infrastructure. We shall consider also the other implications of major airport development for the surrounding areas. Our proposals for Maplin—a corridor containing a new motorway and high-speed link and a major New Town—are well known. But, of course, requirements for access links and major housing development would arise if provision for the expected air traffic growth was made at existing levels. As to cost, again, the gross cost of reclaiming land at Maplin and of building the airport, seaport and new access links is well known: we gave a figure at Second Reading of £825 million at 1972 prices for development up to 1990. We shall need to review this estimate, and, more important, to work out in detail the costs that would be involved in providing the necessary airport facilities, and the supporting infrastructure, in other ways—costs which are usually overlooked by the opponents of the Maplin project.
The airport part of the study will therefore cover all the arguments about Maplin that have been aired, both in Parliament and outside, over the last year while this Bill has been before the House. I am bound to mention particularly, especially as the noble Lord, Lord Beswick, mentioned it, the article by Sir Peter Masefield which appeared in Flight International magazine on August 16. Although there are a number of points in Sir Peter's analysis with which I would fundamentally disagree, I think that the broad picture that he presented gives a very good
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indication of the ground that our study will have to cover. I think that Sir Peter is right, also, to reject the idea that we can simply do nothing about the London airport problem, or that we should now seek another site for a new airport as an alternative to Maplin. As he says, the choice is basically between going ahead with Maplin and extending existing airports. His answer to this question is different from the one which the Government have reached. But we agree that he has asked the right question; and it is on providing a detailed answer to it that our study will concentrate.
As I have made clear, the main emphasis of the study will be on the factors affecting the need for the airport. But we shall not of course neglect the seaport proposals which are an important part of the Maplin project and which my noble friend Lord Ferrier in fact considers to be more important than the airport project. If he will allow me to say so, I found it difficult to understand how he could support that while at the same time supporting the noble Lord, Lord Beswick, in all that he said. Here we shall be consulting the National Ports Council in accordance with the Amendment to the Bill moved by the noble Earl, Lord Perth, and carried at the Committee stage. Perhaps I can here remind your Lordships that the P.L.A.'s plans for the seaport, which my noble friend Lord Aldington explained to the House in the Second Reading debate, would be affected by an arbitrary delay in the start of reclamation. As I have made clear in earlier debates, the Government are in no way committed to the P.L.A.'s proposals or to the target date which they have set; but it would not be sensible to erect an artificial obstacle to their realisation if the need for them is proved. Finally, there is the question of regional policy. The Government have put down an Amendment dealing with this which will be discussed shortly, and I shall explain then our intentions in this field.
Our study will be carried out in consultation with the bodies named in Clause 2(9) and also other appropriate bodies and, as that subsection requires, the report to Parliament will accurately reflect the views of the bodies whom we consult. This study will be a substantial

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undertaking. Work has already started on it, and is being pressed ahead with all speed. It is too early to say exactly how long the study will take, and we shall keep an open mind on the timing in the light of the way in which the study develops. At present, however, we see no reason to believe that the carrying out of a comprehensive study is inconsistent with getting a decision in time for Maplin to be operational by 1982 if the study shows that this is the right course.
In conclusion, may I say that, looked at against this background, I cannot recommend your Lordships to accept the Amendment. There is no question of a two-year slippage in all the aspects of the project. Rather we need to press ahead with all aspects of planning if the 1982 date for the opening of the airport is to remain achievable. Clause 2 as it stands surely provides fully adequate safeguards for those who are not convinced of the case for Maplin. The Government have to produce a report in consultation with all the appropriate bodies, and there will then be a further stage of Parliamentary procedure before reclamation can go ahead. In the end, therefore, it will be for Parliament to decide at that time whether the Government have made out their case. Meanwhile, we have said that we will not commit ourselves to any major construction contracts, either for the reclamation or for any other aspect of the project.
The noble Lord, Lord Beswick, has argued that, as there is bound to be an Election not later than the early summer of 1975, we should give the new Parliament (as I understood him) an opportunity to decide whether or not to go ahead with the project. So in effect the longer we put off the final decision, the better. If we were to adopt his philosophy we should never be in time in making any provisions that were necessary for the future. I give noble Lords this assurance: we intend to approach this decision objectively. We shall reach it on the basis of the best forecast that we can obtain and after considering all the relevant data we shall then bring our findings to Parliament. To tell us now that if Parliament agrees that the outcome of the review points in one particular direction, namely, Maplin, we
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are to sit with folded arms and do nothing, possibly for months and months, even if a new Parliament had not been minded to reverse the decisions—because there could be a new Parliament in the meantime—surely that would be a travesty of decision-making on important issues.
I must tell your Lordships that there is no time to be lost if the runway at Maplin is to be available in 1982. If it is not to be available in 1982 we shall probably have to make alternative provisions. I strongly suggest to your Lordships that this Amendment would add nothing of value to the clause: rather it would be highly undesirable, making it impossible for reclamation to start before October, 1975, and thus arbitrarily deferring the opening date for the airport and seaport. It would surely be quite pointless at this stage to write into the Bill a statutory time limit of this kind. It would be quite unnecessary if for one reason or another it transpired that we could not in any case get the reclamation started until October, 1975. But if our report to Parliament confirms that Maplin is the right solution and that it is needed earlier than the starting date for reclamation would allow, it would surely be absurd to have to wait until this date to make a start. As the final decision will be for Parliament when the report and Order are laid, I submit that no purpose is served by Parliament's taking a view, before the facts are put before it, of the earliest date which the Order should appoint as the date when reclamation can begin. So I hope that, despite what has been said in this debate, noble Lords will not support this Amendment.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, we are obliged to the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, for the points that he has put before us, but I am bound to tell him that they do not dissuade me from supporting my own Amendment and that in the name of my noble friend, and I hope that the House will see fit to put this delay into the Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, made a great point of the fact that there had been no delay announced by the Government. I know that since Mr. Rippon made that Statement there has been some attempt to put a different gloss upon it, and Mr. Eldon Griffiths, too, made a Statement in which

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he purported to explain what was meant by Mr. Rippon when Mr. Rippon said that the date would be put back by two years. According to the Financial Times of September 25, Mr. Eldon Griffiths said at the end that he
"regretfully concluded that 1982 was a realistic date and that we ought to make this clear so that people would no longer be working on the basis of the 1980 target".
That is what he said. There has been a delay of two years and it really is not helping the Government's case to try to twist words which have been uttered by a Government Minister. There has been a delay of two years. All I am saying is that we should, in a deliberate, planned way, use these extra two years which we now say we have, in order to make certain that the decision, when taken, is as soundly based as possible.
The noble Lord said that they had to press ahead with their plans: of course they must press ahead with the plans and most commentators have said that there should be research going on. I am not against making the plans. My Amendment will affect the actual construction work. That is what the two years' date relates to. Also I suggest to the noble Lord that the time I am giving is time that can be fully used to assemble the information that they have now said they will bring before the House. In the Bill it is required of the Government—and I have thanked them and others have thanked them for putting this in the Bill—that the Secretary of State shall consult with the Civil Aviation Authority, the British Airports Authority, the National Ports Council, the Port of London Authority, the Maplin Development Authority and such other persons as appear to him to be appropriate, and shall lay a report of those consultations. I want to make certain that these are not just consultations which conform to the letter of that law but not the spirit. I want to make absolutely certain that those consultations are as full as possible. I want to get all the facts. The noble Lord knows as well as I do of the work that is going on now in the Gas Turbine Establishment, and at Farnborough and elsewhere, and as I have said, almost every month we get new information as to the problems and some of the solutions. Not always is the thinking going in one direction; sometimes it
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may be decided that this is not right and that another avenue should be explored. But if we have two years, let us not try to have these consultations rushed through to satisfy the wording of the Act, simply to try to get work started. By all means let planning continue, but bear in mind, too, that against the wishes of the Government we now have this undertaking to consider the national aspects of the seaport.
The noble Lord himself said on the Recommitment stage that although his noble friend Lord Aldington made the speech he did, no proposals had yet come forward from the Port of London Authority. When those proposals do come they will have to go before the National Ports Council, and it was the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, who said that this would take time. That was his argument against accepting that Amendment, but that Amendment is now in the Bill, and that time will have to be taken. I say to the House that this two-year period is not going to be a period of delay; it is going to be a period that can be fully used, so that when we start we shall start on the basis of the fullest information that we can obtain.
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, will the noble Lord forgive me for interrupting? What we are really talking about is if, as we think, a report based upon the necessary consultation with the appropriate people is ready, is it right to delay artificially the starting of the reclamation if we find we do not need all the time the noble Lord thinks we need? Is it right then not to get on with the job that has to be done so as to leave the maximum time possible for the work on the ground before the time when we need the first runway in 1982?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, the noble Lord can put it that way, but I can put it another way. The Government can get on the telephone to some of the various authorities and can say, "We want this information by Christmas" They can say that. I go even so far as to say that in certain cases they may have said that already. But if they are going to have their consultations in that way, that is not doing the business in the way I think the House wished it to

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be done when we accepted the Amendment in the first place. These consultations have to be as complete as possible. I do not believe that the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, would seriously controvert this. If all is done not only for the specific matters relating to Maplin but in relation to the deep water possibilities in Southampton, on the West Coast of England and in Scotland, and those possibilities are to be fully considered before making a decision about the Port of London proposals, if all
that is gone into as well, as it ought to be, the two years is not too long a time. I therefore suggest that we accept this Amendment. It will not hurt anybody. On the Government's own calculations it will not put back the date at which we can get this airport in operation if we decide to go ahead with it.
4.14 p.m.
On Question, Whether the said Amendment (No. 1) shall be agreed to?
Their Lordships divided: Contents, 67; Not-Contents, 105.

CONTENTS

Albemarle, E.

Fulton, L.

Phillips, B.

Amherst, E.

Gaitskell, B.

Platt, L.

Archibald, L.

Garnsworthy, L.

Popplewell, L.

Arwyn, L.

George-Brown, L.

Rathcreedan, L.

Avebury, L. [Teller.]

Gifford, L.

Ritchie-Calder, L.

Aylestone, L.

Hale, L.

Rowallan, L.

Balfour of Inchrye, L.

Hall, V.

Sainsbury, L.

Beswick, L.

Henderson, L.

Segal, L.

Birk, B.

Henley, L.

Shackleton, L.

Blackett, L.

Hoy, L.

Shannon, E.

Blyton, L.

Jaques, L. [Teller.]

Shepherd, L.

Brock way, L.

Kennet, L.

Shinwell, L.

Buckinghamshire, E.

Kings Norton, L.

Slater, L.

Champion, L.

Leatherland, L.

Somers, L.

Chorley, L.

Llewelyn-Davies of Hastoe, B.

Strabolgi, L.

Davies of Leek, L.

Lloyd of Kilgerran, L.

Summerskill, B.

de Clifford, L.

McLeavy, L.

Taylor of Mansfield, L.

Donaldson of Kingsbridge, L.

MacLeod of Fuinary, L.

Wade, L.

Douglas of Barloch, L.

Meston, L.

Wells-Pestell, L.

Douglass of Cleveland, L.

Molson, L.

Wright of Ashton under L L.

Energlyn, L.

Monckton of Brenchley, V.

Evans of Hungershall, L.

Onslow, E.

Younger of Leckie, V.

Foot, L.

Pargiter, L.

NOT-CONTENTS

Aberdare, L.

Effingham, E.

Limerick, E.

Aldenham, L.

Elliot of Harwood, B.

Lloyd-George of Dwyfor, E.

Alexander of Tunis, E.

Elton, L.

Long, V.

Alport, L.

Emmet of Amberley, B.

Loudoun, C.

Atholl, D.

Erskine, of Rerrick, L.

Lyell, L.

Auckland, L.

Falkland, V.

Mancroft, L.

Balerno, L.

Ferrers, E.

Margadale, L.

Balfour, E.

Ferrier, L.

Maybray-King, L.

Barnby, L.

Garner, L.

Merrivale, L.

Belhaven and Stenton, L.

Goschen, V.

Mersey, V.

Belstead, L.

Gowrie, E.

Milverton, L.

Berkeley, B.

Grenfell, L.

Monck, V.

Bledisloe, V.

Grimston of Westbury, L.

Mowbray and Stourton, L. [Teller.]

Brabazon of Tara, L.

Hailsham of Saint Marylebone, L. (L. Chancellor.)

Brooke of Cumnor, L.

Moyne, L.

Brooke of Ystradfellte, B.

Hankey, L.

Northchurch, B.

Cawley, L.

Hanworth, V.

Nugent of Guildford, L.

Cholmondeley, M.

Harvey of Prestbury, L.

Oakshott, L.

Clwyd, L.

Hawke, L.

Penrhyn, L.

Coleraine, L.

Hayter, L.

Perth, E.

Colville of Culross, V.

Hereford, Bp.

Porritt, L.

Colyton, L.

Hodson, L.

Rankeillour, L.

Cork and Orrery, E.

Hood, V.

Rathcavan, L.

Courtown, E.

Hurcomb, L.

Reigate, L.

Craigavon, V.

Hylton-Foster, B.

Rochdale, V.

Daventry, V.

Inchyra, L.

Rochester, Bp.

Denham. L. [Teller.]

Ironside, L.

St. Aldwyn, E.

Drumablyn, L.

Kinloss, Ly.

Salisbury, Bp.

Dundee, E.

Kinnaird, L.

Sandford, L.

Eccles, V.

Lauderdale, E.

Sandys, L.

Stamp, L.

Stratheden and Campbell, L.

Vernon, L.

Stocks, B.

Strathspey, L.

Wakefield of Kendal, L.

Stonehaven, V.

Teviot, L.

Ward of Witley, V.

Strathclyde, L.

Thomas, L.

Windlesham, L. (L. Privy Seal.)

Strathcona and Mount Royal, L.

Tweedsmuir, L.

Wise, L.

Tweedsmuir of Belhelvie, B.

Young, B.

On Question, Amendment agreed to.

4.22 p.m.
LORD BESWICK LORD BESWICK moved Amendment No. 2:
Page 2, line 23, leave out subsection (5).
The noble Lord said: My Lords, the purpose of this Amendment which I now move is to enable the Government to explain a point which they failed to explain in another place. It was raised there but there did not appear to be time to have an adequate discussion. What is being said here is that the Government are giving to the Authority power to take over far more land than is necessary for the seaport and the airport, and the question arises as to why they want so much. One estimate I have seen suggests that they are making provision for seven times as much land for the airport as would reasonably be expected for a two runway airport. Also they have the power compulsorily to acquire land in Clause 6 and in Schedule 4, to acquire rights or to institute rights over other land, and again the question is asked for what purpose is this land needed.
Of course, the Government will say that the purpose of the land is for the functions of the Maplin Development Authority in relation to the two projects, the airport and the seaport. But there is this phrase: "and for purposes connected with those matters". The question I am putting to the noble Lord is, will he define what are those "purposes connected with those matters"? It can be said that anything that is done or will be done in that part of England, if they have the seaport and the airport there, will be in connection with the purposes of the airport or the seaport. One can well understand that there will be arguments in the future that the Maplin Development Authority are compulsorily acquiring land which was not envisaged at the time Parliament passed this Bill. I think, therefore, that it should be made quite clear exactly what they have in mind, what are these purposes, how limited are they going to be, and, moreover, why the Government are making
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provision for taking over land in such quantities. I am only asking for information here; I shall not press it to a Division. But I would be grateful to the noble Lord if he could answer some of these questions which are asked in all good faith. I beg to move.
BARONESS YOUNG: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Beswick, has asked why it is necessary to have any land that is extra to the precise requirements for the airport and the seaport, and he has said that this has not been made clear. He quoted a figure that I understand he had read somewhere which suggested that the amount of land extra to those requirements could be as much as seven times that of the airport and seaport. I should like immediately to repudiate that figure. I cannot imagine where it came from. The figure that has been quoted of the amount of land that might be surplus—and I emphasise "might"—is about 3,000 acres of the reclaimed land.
The reason why this surplus land arises is, as I understand it, a technical reason to do with the reclamation of land. Tests are being carried out at Wallingford on the effects of reclamation, the effects on the sea and the various operations connected with the reclamation project, to see what is the best shape and size for the reclamation of the airport and the seaport. It is thought that this will lead to some extra land being available when all this is concluded. I cannot say precisely how much this will be because it will be determined by the scientific investigation at present going on. That is the answer to the first question, as to why there is land which is extra to requirement.
We then turn to the question of what should happen should there he land extra to requirement, and this is set out in Clause 2, subsection (5). I should like to repeat the assurance that has already been given, that there will be no major industrial complex at Maplin on the reclaimed land. Furthermore, we have indicated in the Bill and at Second Reading that any commercial undertakings or any other kind of undertaking will of course be subject to all the statutory controls. Use

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of any extra land would, of course be covered by the structure plan of the Essex County Council and would be subject to all the normal planning controls of a local authority. Furthermore, as is stated here, it must meet with the approval of the Secretary of State. So that as far as any other proposal for this extra land is concerned it would be subject to this double safeguard of the normal statutory procedures as well as meeting with the approval of the Secretary of State.
VISCOUNT MERSEY: My Lords, I wonder whether the noble Baroness could tell the House if there is any estimate at this stage of the amount of land we are hoping to reclaim at Maplin in aggregate?
BARONESS YOUNG: My Lords, is the noble Viscount asking about the total amount of land required for the airport and the seaport?
VISCOUNT MERSEY: My Lords, I am asking how much land we are hoping to reclaim under the whole scheme from the sea. Do we know that? Have we any figure for that?
BARONESS YOUNG: My Lords, the first part of it is about 14.000 acres. This could be extended.
LORD SOMERS: My Lords, who on earth would be likely to want land for recreational or amenity purposes next door to an airport?
BARONESS YOUNG: My Lords, I am very glad that the noble Lord, Lord Somers, has asked the question about who on earth would want extra land. I should have thought that if there was one overriding problem in the whole of the South-East of England it is the question of land. It seems to me that almost every issue in matters of planning comes down to this. Here we have an opportunity to increase the amount of land. I should have thought a recreational use would not be incompatible in this situation.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, the noble Baroness has rather loosely paraphrased what I tried to say. I did not say that the power of the Authority should be limited to the precise land that would be required for the airport and the seaport. Of course I did not say that, and I understand that there must be a margin for possibilities. But I am not quite certain
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that the noble Baroness explained why such a large margin should be provided for. Certainly the figure of seven times that of the land required for a two runway airport related to that part of the land which will be reclaimed for the airport, and I take her word for it that this is an exaggeration; but it still remains the fact that, as the Bill now stands, we shall be giving power to the Authority to take over, to compulsorily acquire, and to reclaim, far more land than would appear to be needed. I am not certain why she said this was necessary.
She did not answer my point about the vagueness attached to the words in the Short Title of the Bill, where it says,
"required for the construction and operation of the airport and the seaport and for purposes connected with those matters."
If they have the powers in connection with such a really wide definition there is a liability of some trouble in the future. I wonder whether the noble Baroness would give thought to defining rather more clearly what those purposes are likely to be.
BARONESS YOUNG: My Lords, perhaps I should have made clearer in my original remarks the point about the extra land. Clause 2(2) makes clear that the intention is to reclaim the amount of land that is required for the airport and seaport. I hope that I have explained that because of this research that is being undertaken the exact shape adopted could lead to something extra. The second question was what were the "purposes connected therewith". This would cover the access roads connected with the airport on the reclaimed land. The Maplin Development Authority has no power to undertake anything other than reclamation. It is not seeking powers to use land for any purpose at all; it is simply there to reclaim the lands. It reclaims them for the purposes of the airport and the seaport, and, if part of that land is required for access, for that purpose.
On Question, Amendment negatived.
4.35 p.m.
LORD DRUMALBYN LORD DRUMALBYN moved Amendment No. 3:
Page 3, line 15, at end insert ("and shall state in that report his assessment of the likely effect on other regions of any development to be carried out in or near the area in which land is to be reclaimed")
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg to move the Amendment standing in my name. At the Committee stage the noble Earl, Lord Perth, put down an Amendment which would have required the report to Parliament under Clause 2(9) to include an assessment of the regional implications of the project. In the light of comments on the drafting of the Amendment the noble Earl did not himself move it, and when it was moved by the official Opposition it was narrowly defeated. The Government thought about this again, and the effect of the Amendment which they have now put forward is to provide that the report will cover the sort of factors that were referred to by the noble Earl, Lord Perth, and other speakers in the Committee stage debate.
There are various ways in which the regional implications of Maplin will need to be considered. First, there is the question of regional airport policy. The extent to which we may expect to see a larger proportion of total United Kingdom air traffic handled at regional airports will be covered in the report under Clause 2(9). The Civil Aviation Authority have commissioned studies of the airport needs of the regions in the next few years, and we shall be taking account of the results in our study as they become available. We shall be considering the recent publication by the Association of British Chambers of Commerce, with its major proposals for airport development in the regions.
Second, there are the regional implications of the proposed seaport, with which I think my noble friend was more concerned. As with all major port developments, the Port of London Authority's proposals for the Maplin seaport will require authorisation under Section 9 of the Harbours Act 1964. Before giving authorisation the Secretary of State is obliged to consult the National Ports Council, who will consider all aspects including the viability of the proposals and their implication for other ports generally.
Then there are the wider regional questions that arise. Basically, what we are concerned with here is the impact on the total national economy of the major expenditure of money and construction resources that will be involved in the Maplin project as a whole—including not
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only the reclamation and the construction of the airport and seaport, but also the associated access links and new town.
As was pointed out at Committee stage, much of this additional expenditure is basically a function of the decisions on the location of the airport and the seaport. Broadly speaking, if the results of our study show that there is a need for new airport facilities in the South-East, then the provision of these facilities will represent a major call on construction resources and on public investment wherever they are provided. For instance, a major growth of air traffic handled at Stansted would require massive public investment in new access facilities and in urbanisation. The study will identify the overall costs of the various alternative ways of dealing with the need for new airport facilities, and will thus enable us to identify how far the Maplin project would actually involve extra investment in the South-East, compared with providing extra facilities at the existing London airports.
But we accept that, even when all these comparisons have been made, there remains a perfectly valid question about the implications of major public investment in the South-East for the other regions. I can assure noble Lords that the Government fully understand this. Indeed, that had already been made clear in the Statement which the Secretary of State for the Environment made on September 12 at the time of the publication of the Channel Tunnel White Paper. In that speech the Secretary of State put into perspective the call on resources which the two major projects—the Tunnel and Maplin—together would involve, and showed that, even in peak years at the end of this decade, the gross annual expenditure would represent about 0·3 per cent. of gross domestic product. In terms of the load on the construction industries the two projects would, at their peak, represent less than 4 per cent. of present national output of contracts on new works, and might require some 10,000 workers out of the total national force of over 1½ million.
On the basis of these figures the Secretary of State concluded that, large as these projects are, they are manifestly not so large that they will overstrain our resources, either nationally or regionally. Moreover, the Secretary of

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State made it clear that the Government are determined to continue to support growth in all the regions, and that their pursuit of major projects which need to be in the South-East, and which are essential to national expansion and prosperity, is in no way inconsistent with this aim.
My Lords, we recognise that Parliament, when it comes to consider our report, will want to see a fuller statement of these issues. As was argued at Committee stage, it does not seem necessary to include in Clause 2(9) a full list of all the issues to be studied, and we have not attempted to put one there. If, when the report is laid, Parliament takes the view that an important issue or important issues have not been properly covered, then the remedy will be in its own hands. However, we recognise the very real concern about regional issues, and are therefore glad to give these special prominence in the Bill. I beg to move.
4.40 p.m.
THE EARL OF PERTH: My Lords, I think we have very nearly, or perhaps entirely, got Clause 2(9) right now. We have got in the words "the National Ports Council", and now we have this Government Amendment, which I think embraces the points in all the worries that we had at Committee stage and is better worded than the Amendment which the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, other noble Lords and I put down at that time. So I think it would be right to welcome this Amendment. But before I do that wholeheartedly, I should like to touch on one or two things that the noble Lord said about the report. Not only do I assume that it is going to cover Maplin, the airport and the seaport and the New Town, but I hope, since it is an integral part of the whole of the South East, that the Channel Tunnel will also come into the general assessment. I think it is an essential part of the whole. I should be grateful if the noble Lord could give us some assurance that that will be the case.
Generally, I think my anxieties, and indeed the anxieties of all the noble Lords who spoke on Committee stage, concerned such worries as the vast expenditures involved on these vast new projects, and how much they might upset the
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economic balance of the country as a whole. We have heard certain reassuring things about this, but I think it is something we want to know much more exactly after the studies have been made. Then, we know that if all of this goes through it will change the face of the country and will change the whole balance of transport—not only air, but all the roads, and so forth. Again, I assume that this aspect will be covered in the report. Lastly, and most important, it will inevitably lead to the magnet of the South East drawing more and more people from other parts of the country. It is bad enough already, but this is inevitably going to make it worse. I think it is very important that in these studies the degree of what may happen is very fully considered. But on the assumption that all these matters will in fact come out in the reports, and in particular making the point that the Channel Tunnel is an integral part of the whole in the sense that it must be considered, then I, for one, would support this Amendment and thank the noble Lord for it.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, I am glad that the noble Earl, Lord Perth, said that we had nearly got it right, because I think the clause would have been better had we accepted the Amendment about two years. I say that because if one looks at what is involved here one sees that we are putting upon the Secretary of State and upon Her Majesty's Government a very important responsibility. They are undertaking to assess, but if they are going to assess the situation properly with regard to the other regions of the United Kingdom then they are going to need every bit of the time that I suggested we should provide for in the Amendment. However, having said that, I, too, should like to say to the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, that I appreciate the fact that they have got a form of words which is probably better than the words which were defeated on the last occasion—by 86 to 88, I think it was. They have a superior form of words, and I am very happy to accept them. Will the noble Lord tell us what is the time-scale which they now envisage for this matter? When do they expect to be in a position to lay before the House the results of their inquiries, their consultations and their assessments? When can we expect that

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they will be coming to us for approval for further work?
4.45 p.m.
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, I am most grateful to the two noble Lords who have spoken for their reception of this Amendment, which is a genuine attempt to meet the points of view which they expressed. I can give the noble Earl, Lord Perth, an assurance on the subject of the Channel Tunnel. In fact, I have already said that this will be one of the matters which will be looked at in conjunction with the airport and seaport of Maplin; and he will have noticed that the Amendment refers to:
"any development to be carried out in or near the area in which land is to be reclaimed".
We thought that this covered the situation completely in the way he would wish it covered. It is because we recognised the magnet effect, as he called it, of the South East that, on further consideration, we decided to put this Amendment down, to make quite certain that this magnet effect will be taken into consideration. In making this provision, we are doing it in order to meet a specific need arising in the South East and one which would have to be met otherwise, and are trying to ensure that it will not go beyond the purposes that we have in mind. We have to look at it from this point of view, and I think the noble Earl knows perfectly well that, from his point of view and mine, the interests of the regions are likely to be very carefully studied in the whole of this matter.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, I am afraid the noble Lord has not answered the specific question I put.
LORD DRUMALBYN LORD DRUMALBYN My Lords, the noble Lord asked me a specific question which I am afraid I am not in a position to answer. It would be wrong for me to give a definite answer on this point. I think that, in a sense, he is doing exactly the opposite to what he was trying to do in the first Amendment. He is now trying to tie me down to a particular date. I am afraid I cannot he tied down. We shall take the time that we need to take in order to fulfil our undertaking.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, I am not trying to tie the noble Lord down at all. I know he cannot say that it will he Tuesday the 22nd January, or something like
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that, but can he not give us any indication of the sort of thinking which the Government have? They strenuously resisted the Amendment I put down; they must have had something in their own mind as to what their timetable would be. I ask the noble Lord to give us some indication of the sort of progress which they expect to make within a given time.
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, I am afraid I cannot do this, but I will convey what the noble Lord has said to the Secretary of State, and it may be that in another place he will be able to give that indication.
LORD THOMAS: My Lords, I welcome, of course, the Amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn. I wonder whether I may be allowed to say, without getting into the question of the time-scale, how important it is from my point of view, as a practising airline operator, that the go-ahead for Maplin should not automatically mean that all airport development in the regions will be frozen and sterilised. There will be the inevitable extrapolation and increase of traffic during the 10, 11 or 12 years before Maplin is operational, and I think it would make confusion all the more confounded if no provision were made for looking after some of that ex-pansion at the existing regional airports.
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, I think that this is something which will have to be looked at in the survey, but at present it is a matter of discussion. I assure the noble Lord it is not something that is being let go by default.
Clause 10 [Havengore Creek]:
4.51 p.m.
THE PARLIAMENTARY UNDERSECRETARY OF STATE, DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION AND SCIENCE (LORD SANDFORD)THE PARLIAMENTARY UNDERSECRETARY OF STATE, DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION AND SCIENCE (LORD SANDFORD) moved Amendment No. 4:
Page 6, line 4, at end insert ("and the Authority may provide installations for facilitating the use of the channel.").
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg to move Amendment No. 4 and to suggest that it might be for the convenience of the House to consider with it Amendment No. 5, for much of what I have to say will cover both. We now move to subjects

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of rather a different nature and scale from those which have occupied us so far on this stage of the Bill but they are of great importance to those whom they concern; namely, that large and growing number of people who enjoy "messing about in boats" including those who (totalling about 500 a year) make use of Havengore Creek, and, in particular, those small sailing vessels which are capable of using this passage and between them making about five passages a week. The Amendments are not only of particular importance to this group but also of signifinance in showing in a general way an earnest of Her Majesty's Government's: intention to deal sympathetically and generously with all the legitimate interests that could be adversely affected if, after the review that we have been talking about has been considered. Parliament gives a "green light" to Maplin.
As your Lordships will recall from what I said on the earlier stage of the Bill, the clause which is amended, Clause 10, was inserted by the Commons following the Report of their Select Committee. It was considered by our Select Committee and it was further considered on recommitment by this House. The purpose of the Amendments to the clause is to make it still easier (subject to the limitations already specified in the clause) for the boats which go through the Havengore Creek now to do so in the future. This has been achieved in two ways. First, the Maplin Development Authority are given further powers by Amendment No. 4 to provide installations for facilitating the use of the channel through the creek. These could include moorings or slipways to help those sailing vessels which pass under the bridge who can do so only by lowering or up-stepping their masts and other similar facilities to easy passage under the bridge. These would not be needed for sailors as expert as the noble Viscount, Lord St. Davids, who, I understand, can do it under weight; but it is conceivable that there might be sailors who would he glad of somewhere to moor up for this operation. The power in the first Amendment is to provide the wherewithal for the M.D.A. to provide these installations. Subsection (2A), contained in the second Amendment, gives the Secretary of State discretionary power to make grants towards the cost of facilities of that kind.
Then we come to subsection (2B), the second part of Amendment No. 5, which gives the Secretary of State discretionary power to make grants towards the conversion of boats needing more than four metres clearance above water level habitually passing through tile creek at the date of the passing of the Bill to enable them to pass under the bridge, the present bridge being one which could be lifted to allow the passage of such boats. This use of this grant would normally apply to enable masts of sailing boats to be lowered and if other works are required they would not be ruled out.
My Lords, while speaking to this Amendment I should like to tell the House that, at the instigation of my honourable friend the Parliamentary Secretary in another place, the Yachting Association and local interests have been approached in order to set up a working party to deal with the various issues, aspects and possibilities that are involved in the Maplin project and in cases similar to those that I have just described in order to provide a forum in which problems like this could he tackled. Your Lordships might like to be reminded that the power and duties which are now available to regional water authorities and the Water Space Amenity Commission can go beyond what I have been saying and the powers of the Maplin Development Authority under Clause 2(5) to provide for the recreational use of land reclaimed but not needed directly for the purposes of the airport. I should like to commend these two Amendments to your Lordships. I think that we can now say that the interests of the local sailing community have been very fully considered and in particular that we have done all that can be reasonably asked of us to secure the continued use of Havengore Creek to the extent that it is now used.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, before my noble friend Lord St. Davids poses a much informed series of questions or makes a much more authoritative intervention, may I ask one simple question? Does what is provided here make it possible for the Authority to dredge this channel or not? What is meant by "providing the installations"? I was persuaded by the argument made on the Committee stage of the need for dredging the channel. I understood that it did not involve much work and that it would

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have met all or most of the objections being put forward. I cannot see from the Amendment or from what the noble Lord has said whether, in fact, the Government with all the good will they are showing (so I am told) still are leaving themselves the possibility of meeting this requirement.
VISCOUNT ST. DAVIDS: My Lords, I must thank the noble Lord for putting down this Amendment. If the rest of the Bill is right, this clause is not only right but a matter of natural justice. At the moment Havengore Creek is a public waterway with a public right of navigation dating from time immemorial. It is a right unlimited to any particular person and also a right unlimited in height. In other words, craft with masts of any height can pass through it. This right is being taken away. I know that there are arguments about this, but in my opinion I think the noble Lord has got it right and a right of navigation of unlimited height craft must be taken away. To begin with, I cannot imagine that the height of the bridge suggested by local navigators could possibly have been viable. It was enormous. It would have been a brute of a thing, even if it were possible to finance and build it. What is more, the access ramps on either side, not only for roads but also, and even more terrific, for railways, would have been something quite out of this world.
I had more sympathy for their second idea, that a tunnel should be built under the waterway to allow access to the new airport and seaport. I think the proposers of this got it slightly wrong in that they called it a "tunnel". They might have got more sympathy had they pointed out that it was a simple dig in soft earth and that the waterway would have been carried across this in a very light aqueduct. So really it would be a cutting with an aqueduct rather than a tunnel. Even this would cost a great deal of money though less than a bridge, and in my opinion it would still not have made matters right. I cannot believe that the one bridge, or tunnel-aqueduct, or whatever one may call it, would have been all that would be needed to connect up the airport and seaport with the rest of Britain. I feel sure that many other bridges would be needed in time. Not only will the waterway need to be bridged for road and rail, but also power and
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telephone cables and oil pipelines and other things will have to be stretched across it. It would be quite impossible to put any of that work underneath the waterway or at any considerable height above it and therefore the Government are right to fix a reasonable height which could be attained at a reasonable price and to say that that is to be the navigation height.
There are two things that I should like to add. One is that it would be possible cheaply to increase the navigation height and the usefulness of the waterway extensively, as my noble friend Lord Beswick has just said, by digging the channel deeper. I do not know what effect this would have on the tides flowing through the channel, but it should be possible to find out fairly easily. In my opinion, it should be possible to prevent any bad effects by fitting a tidal door at the Thames end of the waterway which would equate its effect with that of the existing hump of sand at the Broom-way. If this were done, there should be no objection from a physical point of view to this waterway being deepened, and this would be a very cheap way to make navigation far easier and more useful to vessels of a certain height.
Nevertheless, my Lords, there still remains my other point; that is, that we are taking away a right which has existed from time immemorial; and those people who use the right have either to be compensated financially, if the right is to be abolished, or aided to adapt their vessels to taking a channel of a new size. I am sure therefore that this Amendment is very valuable. My own opinion is that what is proposed will cost the Development Corporation very little money. Many of the larger vessels have very deep keels and could not take Havengore anyway. The bigger vessels find it more convenient to go round the land rather than through Havengore simply because the nature of the tides in the area means that it is quicker to go round rather than to hang about waiting for high water through the creek. It is the small craft which cannot take the outer sea-route in safety which will need this, and the number of small craft is growing rapidly for a whole number of reasons. The number is growing because the proportion of small craft to large craft is changing. More

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small boats are being built than big ones; perhaps taxation has something to do with that. And, of course, because the area is becoming built-up, more boats will be used there.
In these days small craft are usually built with mast-dropping gear in any case. Very few are not designed to take mast-dropping gear. I do not think it will cost much money to change any of these small craft over to lowering masts. I believe that the noble Lord is conferring a slight benefit on the yachting community, though he may not realise it, by increasing the number of craft with mast-dropping facilities, because I believe it to be safer than fixed masts which are normally used in small craft. It will force yachtsmen to examine their gear carefully. Often small boats have gear aloft which is not examined from year to year. It cannot be examined by climbing the mast because it puts a strain on the mast. There was a recent case in this connection published in the yachting papers this month. The idea that dropping masts should be pushed and even subsidised is one that I approve of.
There is one small thing about this clause that I do not like. It does not seem at all clear how much of the cost of installing mast-dropping gear will be borne by the Exchequer. Will the Exchequer pay 100 per cent. or 10 per cent. of it? That is something that the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, might tell us. If the owners of craft are having this right taken away, and are to be put to the extra cost of dropping a mast every time they go through the creek, the proportion of the cost borne by the Treasury ought to be nearer 100 per cent. than 10 per cent.
LORD SANDFORD: My Lords, I am grateful for that reception, and glad to know that the noble Viscount, Lord St. Davids, feels that this small further Amendment will be useful and appreciated by those whom it was concerned to help. May I deal with the question posed to me by the noble Lord, Lord Beswick? The position that is secured by the Bill is that the Maplin Development Authority has a duty to maintain the status quo, as it were, in the channel under water; that is to say, to keep it dredged to the extent that it is dredged
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at the moment; no more and no less. There are two authorities here which have certain duties. There are things they must do and things that they might do. They have the power to close the creek altogether during the period of construction and also they have the power in exceptional circumstances, which are not thought likely to arise, to close it altogether if quite untoward expense seems to be required to maintain it arising from unexpected siltation in the creek. That is provided for in Clause 10(4) but it is not a power which could be exercised without the Affirmative Resolution of Parliament. This is not to say that the Regional Water Authority, which also has duties in recreational matters, might not subsequently exercise their duties to make the greatest recreational use of the water for which they are responsible by causing the channel to be dredged so as to make it available to some boats that are not able to use it at present. That, I think, is the position as it stands at the moment about who has to dredge the channel or who might dredge the channel in all those various circumstances. The noble Viscount, Lord St. Davids, asked me about grants. The intention is that the grant should meet the full reasonable cost of doing this work. I beg to move.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, may I ask him whether the short answer to my question is: No, the authority will not have the power under this Amendment to dredge the 20 or 30 yards wide hump of sand which is giving the trouble?
LORD SANDFORD: My Lords, if I had to compress my answer to one word, it would have been "no".
LORD SANDFORD: My Lords, I beg to move Amendment No. 5.
Amendment moved—
Page 6, line 17, at end insert—
("(2A) The Secretary of State may, out of moneys provided by Parliament, make such grants to the Maplin Development Authority towards the cost of providing the installations mentioned in subsection (1) above as he may, with the consent of the Treasury, determine.
(2B) If it appears to the Secretary of State that, before the passing of this Act, the owner of a vessel requiring clearance above water level of more than four metres habitually

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navigated Havengore Creek in that vessel and—

(a) that, without a reduction of the clearance so required, the channel maintained in accordance with this section would not allow or have allowed such access by it as is mentioned in subsection (2) above; but

(b) that the clearance so required has been or could be sufficiently reduced by conversion of the vessel at reasonable expense;

he may, out of moneys provided by Parliament, make to the owner such grant for or towards the cost of the conversion as he may with the consent of the Treasury determine."). —(Lord Sandford.)
Clause 25 [Interpretation]:
BARONESS YOUNG BARONESS YOUNG moved Amendment No. 6:
Page 14, line 28, leave out ("undertaker' ") and insert ("undertakers' includes the Post Office and otherwise").
The noble Baroness said: My Lords, this is a minor corrective Amendment to include the Post Office in the definition of statutory undertakers. Clause 22 of the Maplin Bill gives the Maplin Development Authority power to make payments to local authorities or statutory undertakers whose expenditure is increased as a result of the reclamation and development of land at Maplin. As originally drafted, Clause 25 of the Bill defined the statutory undertaker by reference to the Town and Country Planning Act 1971. But while the Post Office are generally regarded as being on a par with statutory undertakers such as the gas and electricity undertakings, they are not formally included in the Town and Country Planning Act definition, and it is anomalous for the Post Office to be outside the scope of Clause 22. The Amendment puts this right. I beg to move.
Schedule 4 [Acquisition of land]:
BARONESS YOUNG: My Lords, I beg to move Amendment No. 7, and at the same time to speak to Amendment No. 8. These are both drafting Amendments corresponding with general usage and with the definition in Section 290(1) of the Town and Country Planning Act 1971. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
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Page 22, line 11, leave out ("undertaker") and insert ("undertakers").—(Baroness Young.)
BARONESS YOUNG: My Lords, I beg to move Amendment No. 8.
Amendment moved—
Page 22, line 13, leave out ("undertaker") and insert ("undertakers").—(Baroness Young.)

GOVERNMENT TRADING FUNDS BILL
5.14 p.m.
THE EARL OF GOWRIE: My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now resolve itself into Committee on this Bill.
Moved, that the House do now resolve itself into Committee.—(The Earl of Gowrie.)
House in Committee accordingly.
[The VISCOUNT GOSCHEN in the Chair.]
Clause 1 [Establishment of trading funds for certain services of the Crown]:
THE EARL OF LAUDERDALE THE EARL OF LAUDERDALE had given notice of his intention to move Amendment No. 1A:
Page 1, leave out line 17.
The noble Earl said: I beg to move the manuscript Amendment standing in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Balerno, at page 1, to leave out line 17; that is to say, to omit from Clause 1(3) the words, "(b) the Royal Dockyards". It embarrasses me a little that by the rules of the game my Amendment comes before that put down by the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, who one would have hoped to have heard first in this debate. However, I understand that it is the Government's wish to look at these two Amendments together, and therefore it falls to me to open the batting.
LORD SHACKLETON: So far as I am concerned, I certainly do not wish the two Amendments to be taken together. They bear on separate subjects, and I should not be satisfied until I had moved my Amendment that the Government should deal with it.
THE EARL OF GOWRIE: Perhaps I should say that I am very willing to take the Amendment of my noble friend Lord Lauderdale separately. It simply occurred to me that substantive points that I wish to make to the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, might also apply to my noble friend's Amendment. If the Committee are willing, I will take my noble friend's Amendment first.
LORD SHACKLETON: I shall be interested to hear what the noble Earl, Lord Lauderdale, is going to do. I must say I find it slightly difficult at this short notice to correlate these two Amendments. I have the greatest respect for my fellow geographer, the noble Earl. Lord Lauderdale, but I will await and hear what he has to say on the dockyards. I propose to talk about the Ordnance Survey.
THE EARL OF LAUDERDALE: If it is acceptable to the Committee, I will address myself briefly to the Amendment standing in my name, because only having had my attention drawn to the matter at the last moment, it occurred to me possible, and therefore prudent to make a probe on the subject, that the inclusion of the dockyards might mean including the hydrographic survey. If my noble friend the Minister would care straight away to assure us that the hydrographic survey is not in any way affected by this Bill, I shall be happy to give way to him at once so that he might dispose of that and we can get on to Lord Shackleton's more serious and interesting Amendment.
THE EARL OF GOWRIE: I am grateful to my noble friend. That seems to be the best way to deal with it. I can assure him that the hydrographic survey has nothing whatever to do with the Royal Dockyards.
THE EARL OF LAUDERDALE: In that case, I need not move my Amendment.
LORD SHACKLETON LORD SHACKLETON moved Amendment No. 1:
Page 1, leave out line 20.
The noble Lord said: I rise to move the Amendment standing in my name and those of the noble Lord, Lord Balerno, the Royal Scottish Geographical Society President, the noble Earl, Lord
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Cranbrook (who is wholly with us in spirit, but unfortunately has been ill; we wish him an early return) and the noble Lord, Lord Avebury. I apologise for being rather short on the subject of the dockyards, but it was because the dockyards had, as I understand it, been subject to the Mallabar Inquiry that I felt the two matters should be separate.
I think I should apologise to the Committee in that only three days ago the noble Lord, Lord Balerno, and I had a letter in The Times on this subject. I may say that, in principle, I prefer us to conduct our debates in the House rather than in the newspapers. It was purely the accident of chance that the Government suddenly announced a change of policy that, whereas our letter originally was intended to relate to the earlier correspondence, it got overtaken by events. I am bound to say that the letter to The Times did actually have rather more effect in the first instance than just putting down the Amendment. But I should not wish to suggest that we should always conduct our debates in advance in the newspapers.
My Lords, this Bill has had a strange history and if I may dwell on it for a little while it may save time later. It was introduced in the Commons under the Second Reading Committee arrangements by which it did not have a Second Reading on the floor of the House. The Second Reading Committee took place at a time when Hansard was not being printed, and therefore nobody knew what was said in that Committee. The Standing Committee in another place lasted exactly two minutes, being devoted to congratulating the Chairman of the Committee on his brilliant handling of the proceedings; and it was not until midnight, during the very final stages of the Bill, that a number of noble Lords woke up to the significance of this proposal. Part of my complaint to the Government in this connection is the way in which this has been introduced, and —I will not say the deliberate secrecy with which these matters were dealt with, but the absence of open Government which we have been advised by this Government and by previous Governments would he their practice. They said this when in Opposition but tend to forget it when in Government.
It is a fact that the particular proposals have led to a major controversy in the scientific world, and not only in the scientific world but among those who use maps, who failed to find much Parliamentary recognition until we came to our Second Reading debate here. I would say that, partly as a result of pressure by a number of bodies—the Royal Society and practically every professional body one can think of in the country, the Ramblers' Association, the Youth Hostel Association and an almost inexhaustible list of people who are concerned with maps and the two societies with which the noble Lord, Lord Balerno, and I are connected—and partly perhaps as a result of a rather unsatisfactory questionnaire which was sent out, the Government backed down on two proposals that they had made; namely, that the future of the 2½ inch map would depend on the numbers of copies and the editions would depend in effect on the degree of public support and the tertiary levelling would disappear as a routine service and become a repayment service.
One of our difficulties has been that we do not know how those decisions were reached, and although one is very gratified that there appears to have been a complete reversal of policy it is disturbing that all we know is that there was a review within the Department—apparently an internal management review. The Government may say that they did not concern themselves with the particular matters that I am talking about—the 1/25,000 map or the matter of the tertiary levelling. If that is so, of course I will accept it but we do not know how two suggestions of such a serious nature should be announced, in effect, as Government policy—and I have the quotations here—without any consultation other than apparently what went on within the Department. We welcome this change of policy, and indeed it is arguable that we have gained most of what we wanted when we criticised these proposals in the first instance, but I am bound to say that if that policy had been carried through it would have meant the end of tertiary levelling and even now we do not know what the density will he.
It is clear that the Government still intend to continue with their policy of commercialisation of the Ordnance Sur-
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vey. I welcome the statement of the Secretary of State that they will still continue to provide a public service, but at the same time Mr. Rippon said this—and I quote from the Press notice which was issued at the time of their letter to the Royal Society which was also issued to the Press, but I do not think was published:
"the more commercial approach announced in February this year would be pursued".
He went on to add this:
"This did not mean that services which could not be made to pay and for which there was no generally acceptable substitute would necessarily be abandoned. Services provided by Ordnance Survey which were in the public interest to continue would still be made available with, where necessary, Exchequer support."
This represents a fundamental change of policy, and it will be fair to the Government to argue that they have adopted this change of policy even though the Ordnance Survey is still not financed by a trading fund.
I must comment further on this because the Government are inclined to regard the trading fund device as essentially a managerial device which does not necessarily affect policy, that it is derived from Fulton and is really only another way of running the Ordnance Survey. But the coincidence of the change of policy with the decision to include the Ordnance Survey as a candidate in the Government Trading Fund Bill was bound to arouse suspicion. I am concerned, as indeed are many people who use maps, that the availability and cost of these maps is likely to be determined much more by a commercial approach.
It is not so very long ago that Sub-Committee E of the Estimates Committee in 1963 pointed out that an interdepartmental Committee in 1866 recommended that maps should not be sold at a price less than the cost of printing; that is to say, excluding the cost of survey. The first question I would ask the noble Lord is whether they intend to load part of the cost of the survey on to the maps. The recommendation from 1866 may be thought to be rather old-fashioned but it was in fact approved by the Treasury in 1931 and again in 1950 that the cost of survey would not be loaded on to the maps, but we now find a much more commercial approach.
Here again I want to suggest to the Government that a decision to set up a particular form of management affects the purposes of the particular operation. I have seen this time and again in industry where pressure has been growing all the time for accountable management, for proper cost allocation, for separate profit centres which have at times affected policy. I submit that if the Ordnance Survey is to be included among those to be financed by a Trading Funds Bill, it is of paramount importance that we should know the policy to be followed.
We have been told repeatedly that all the Government are doing is following Fulton, and that I, as the Minister responsible in a previous Government for Fulton, ought to be very pleased about this. I have gone back and looked at Fulton again, and the Government Trading Funds Bill does not follow the Fulton recommendation. The Fulton recommendations were either to have accountable management including trading accounts in Government or to hive them off entirely and the Minister is not even answerable for them in Parliament. They become like a nationalised industry. This is not going to happen with the Trading Funds Bill. I do not blame the Government for the decision they have taken, but they cannot plead Fulton as their justification for this. Furthermore, the Ordnance Survey is listed in an honest way by the Government in the Bill. I should like to ask the Government, since they have seen fit to include this, what are the assets of the Ordnance Survey and how they propose to value them, because that is required by Clause 2 of the Bill. Are they proposing that there will be an issue of public dividend on capital? What return do the Treasury expect from an organisation which at the moment depends for rather more than two-thirds of its expenditure on direct financing? I would submit that, before we come to any conclusion as to whether the Ordnance Survey should be included in the Bill, we should have an answer to these questions.
The truth of the matter is—and all Governments fall into this kind of trap at one time or another—that the Department concerned, looking for suitable candidates, because it is a popular idea nowadays that you can hive things off, have alighted on the Ordnance Survey as
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an obvious candidate. I agree that it is an obvious candidate; but when you consider it more closely it appears to be a rather unsuitable candidate, especially if the consequence of its being financed by a Government trading fund is the further commercialisation of the Ordnance Survey.
I do not think it is appreciated how wide a section of the general public uses maps, nor is it appreciated how far educationists depend crucially on maps. The only market survey information which is available from a study made not long ago suggests that the great majority of the two and a half inch map-users are in fact schools. But when we inquired whether the Department of Education, under the "customer-contractor principle", was to be the customer we were told that the Department was not at that moment really interested. Therefore I would submit that we ought not to alter this system until we have had a proper inquiry. The Institute of Geological Sciences feels the same, and so do many other bodies. It is necessary to point out that not only will this policy of the application of copyright to an area in which information is available only from Government sources have very serious implications, but it is also arguable that other services such as the Stationery Office might also be involved. For all I know, the Stationery Office or Parliament might try to get back the cost of the Hansard writers, and it may be that the Stationery Office ought to load the cost of some census-taking into the publication of those reports. I submit that we are going in a very dangerous direction if we are to charge for information which can be derived only from public and Government sources.
One effect of my Amendment, which is quite a moderate one—and there are two Amendments running together—is to strike out the Ordnance Survey from the list of candidates. The second effect, since it will still be possible to make the Ordnance Survey into the kind of creature to be financed by a Government trading fund, would be to require that there should be some form of inquiry and consultation, together with a report, before any Order is laid—because the Government still retain the power, even if my first Amendment is carried, to finance the Ordnance Survey by a trading

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fund. I was therefore proposing, in the words of the Bill concerning Maplin—because they are exactly similar—to require that there should be consultations and that those consultations should be published.
The Government have been alarmed by the agitation that is taking place. They have offered to the Royal Society that they should in fact be consulted and that they should have a committee which would represent scientific interests. But, of course, this goes very much wider than the scientists. It affects professional bodies—surveyors, engineers and others—who may not be represented, and it affects a wide range of people with public interest, such as youth hosteliers, travellers, mountaineers and others who enjoy the countryside. I hope, therefore, that the Government will be inclined to accept an Amendment which does not in any way destroy the purposes of the Bill but gives us what we have not so far received; namely, an inquiry similar to that carried out by the late Lord Davidson—and great tributes have been paid in your Lordships' House to the noble Baroness by those who have been concerned in this matter. That inquiry was carried out before the war, 35 years ago. I hope that the Government will be prepared to announce that there should be a similar inquiry, in which all those who are concerned, geographers and all the rest, will have a full opportunity to thresh out the matter, and that the Government will then state their policy before they in fact proceed to bring in an Order which we know could not be amended and indeed would not even come before this House, since it would come only before the House of Commons. I hope, therefore, that we shall make some progress on this matter to-day. I beg to move.
LORD BALERNO: I wish to support all that the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, has said. To Scotland, the knowledge of this Bill and it effect on the Ordnance Survey came somewhat tardily. As President of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society, I am most grateful for the "tip off" given to me by the President of the Royal Geographical Society, which enabled me to make some remarks on the subject on the Second
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Reading of the Bill. When I returned to Scotland I found that there was considerable consternation at that time, particularly of course among geographers. It is normal for academics, when the month of August comes round, to go into a state of academic hibernation. The fact that quite a number of them took time off to consult and to organise a protest was significant of their feelings. This is all the more remarkable if your Lordships recall that geographers combine their vacations with an extension of their work and that this takes them very often into places of extreme scenic beauty and interest, and it makes them reluctant to put pen to paper.
I have prepared a very full speech, but I do not propose to deliver it. The noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, has made a very clear statement of the reasons that lie behind these Amendments. Therefore, I shall dispense with most of my speech and merely add a footnote to one point made by the noble Lord about communications. This point may be made by the Government in the future. My suggestion—and it merely extends what the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, has said—is that when such matters are contemplated, then before the Bill is drafted or the Order made there should be information given to the two societies involved—in this case the Royal Society of London and the Royal Society of Edinburgh. If these Societies are informed, they are in close touch with scientists, not merely those who are Fellows of their respective Societies but also with the scientists working in their areas in general. They can pass that information on to the bodies or professions concerned, the disciplines concerned, and they in turn can be put in touch with the Government Department that is considering such matters. Suitable scientific advice of a guaranteed decent quality can be given to the Government. If something like this had happened in the case we are considering there would not be the confusion which has arisen. It would not be too much to say that it has turned up a hornet's nest in the geographical circles in this country, and a lot of that would have been dealt with beforehand and we should have had a more satisfactory solution to this problem. I am not going to bore your Lordships any longer, there are others who wish to speak and I will let them do so.
5.41 p.m.
LORD AVEBURY: The noble Lord, Lord Balerno, said that the Government have stirred up a hornet's nest with this proposal. One has to remember that for every letter that appears in The Times signed by distinguished academics there are probably a thousand other people who are affected by these proposals and who have either not heard of the proposals or, if they have, would not dream of putting pen to paper and writing to The Times about them. Nevertheless, their interests are just as important as those of the academics. The noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, mentioned in passing people like the youth hostellers, and many others, who use the 2½ inch map and who would have been affected if it had not been for the concessions made by the Government, which I should like to welcome at this stage.
I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, and the noble Lord, Lord Balerno, that we have not gone far enough in merely recognising these concessions; we want to get written into the Bill some further safeguards that will ensure that we do not go too far down the road of making this organisation into a commercial operation which is entirely inappropriate for it. The noble Earl, Lord Gowrie, said on Second Reading that the concept of a trading fund requires that a significant part of the operation of the organisation should be of a trading nature; whereas the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, reminded us this afternoon that two-thirds of the finances of the organisation we are discussing this afternoon comes from a Vote. So one can only draw one conclusion from these figures: the Government would intend, if the Ordnance Survey were made into a trading fund organisation, to reduce significantly the money coming out of the Vote. One cannot claim that only one-third represents a significant part of the total operation.
The solution that the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, has devised is a very useful one in enabling the Government, as it does, to avoid any loss of face. If we strike out the words "Ordnance Survey" from Clause 1 it is still possible for the Government, if they see fit, to make the Ordnance Survey into a trading fund under the omnibus subsection later, but they can only do so providing the inquiry has been undertaken which the
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noble Lord proposes to insert in the Bill later. This is only reasonable. Such an inquiry ought to apply, as is set out in the Amendment, not only to the Ordnance Survey but to any other organisation which is going to be affected in this way.
What are the Government trying to do? They are trying to save a few thousand pounds and, in my view, the only way that that can be done is by diminishing the quality of the service. There is a remarkable contrast: earlier this afternoon we were discussing a project on which the Government are merrily going to spend £1,000 million, while here we are arguing about the ways in which they might be able to save a few thousand pounds. It is "chicken-feed" and if the Government have any intention of reducing the quality of the service provided by the Ordnance Survey—and that would he the result of putting it into a trading fund—they ought to have second thoughts on it. They should accept these Amendments which do not prevent them from doing it if it appears desirable, but requires them to come forward with all the facts. We are supposed to have an open Government now; we see precious few signs of it. Here is an opportunity for the noble Earl who is going to reply to do more than pay lip service to that principle.
5.45 p.m.
BARONESS WHITE: I should like to support my noble friend Lord Shackleton and the others who have taken part so far in this debate. I do so because I have the honour to be the President of one of the senior amenity societies in Wales. We also are very much concerned with this matter. Naturally we would be entirely in favour of consultations taking place with the Royal Society of London and the Royal Society of Edinburgh and the two Royal Geographical Societies, but I would endorse the plea made by my noble friend Lord Shackleton that any consultations which should take place, if the Government, as I hope they will, accept these Amendments, should be extended to the wider public, who also use Ordnance Survey maps, particularly the large-scale ones. I always feel very happy indeed when I come across individuals or groups of people in our Welsh countryside who are sufficiently interested and intelligent to use the Ordnance

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Survey maps, because that means they are probably taking a serious interest in the countryside and are concerned to know about it and find their way intelligently around it. They should be warmly encouraged in their use of the large-scale map in particular, and we are glad to know that is being reprieved to some degree. I do not want to prolong the argument but simply to let the noble Earl, Lord Cowrie, know that there is widespread interest in this matter which is by no means confined to the professional people, the scientists and educationists. It is a very wide interest indeed. I hope that the noble Earl takes this matter seriously.
LORD MOLSON: I rise to support these Amendments. I am not absolutely sure they go far enough. It is a remark, able and regrettable thing that the Government should apparently have decided provisionally upon a considerable change of policy regarding the financing of the Ordnance Survey without having held a proper inquiry beforehand. The Ordnance Survey is a scientific undertaking, dating back, as we have been told, to 1866, which is of the utmost importance from the point of view of scientists as well as those who are hikers and those who are concerned with the amenities.
The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, spoke about this as being only an attempt to save a few thousand pounds. It is a great deal more serious than that. The purpose of these Government Trading Funds, as the Bill says, is that they should pay their way taking one year with another. I am advised that the cost of the Ordnance Survey each year is something in the neighbourhood of £11 million; and what they obtain by the sale of maps and royalties charged to other map makers is somewhere in the neighbourhood of £4 million. Therefore there might be a considerable sum of money involved. I consider that it would be a serious change of policy if it were seriously intended to put the greater part of the cost of this scientific survey upon those, whether Government Departments or private individuals, who buy maps, whether the maps are published by Her Majesty's Stationery Office or by private individuals who no doubt pay some small royalty.
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The original announcement by the Director-General of the Survey, made with the authority of the Secretary of State for the Environment, also proposed the abolition of tertiary bench-marks and the discontinuance of the publication of the 2½ inch map. We very much rejoice that there has been a change in the Government's policy; but it makes one wonder why it was that these proposals were originally made. It appears that there was an inquiry conducted in the privacy of the Department of the Environment. I do not think it would be at all satisfactory if a conclusion were arrived at upon a matter of this importance if only the opinions of the learned societies, and I hope the amenity societies for whom I speak, were to be consulted about it.
Reference has been made to the Davidson Committee which reported in 1938. I understand that it was as a result of the recommendations of that Committee that the 2½ inch map, which I believe was of immense value to the Armed Forces during the war, was introduced. Similarly, they also recommended a 1/1,250 scale map for towns only. The whole of the administration of town and country planning has been immensely simplified by the publication of this very large scale map, and the report of my lamented noble friend Lord Davidson in 1938 was the kind of comprehensive study of the whole matter which I think provides a precedent, and I very much hope that before the Government come to any conclusions about making any fundamental change in the present organisation and scope of the Ordnance Survey they will set up a committee similar in scope and authority to that over which my late noble friend presided and which produced such valuable recommendations in 1938.
As the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, has pointed out, this Amendment does not prevent the Government from implementing this policy if, after due consideration, it is found to be the right one. It only removes the power from subsection (2) of Clause 1, but it can still he included under paragraph (g) on page 2; so that it is a moderate Amendment and indeed, as I have said, I am not quite sure that it goes quite far enough. Certainly I hope that the Government will respond to what has

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been the view of every speaker this afternoon, representing as we do a great variety of interests. I hope that the Government will respond.
THE EARL OF LAUDERDALE: My Lords, most of what I wanted to say has now been said, but may I just add these words in support of the two Amendments. First, as has been stressed already, the public demand for the services of the Ordnance Survey is much wider than is commonly recognised and by no means limited to hikers and pleasure seekers. Industrial location decisions are taken by companies on the basis of maps. At this moment there are proposals for industrial development of great significance for the North West of Scotland around Loch Eriboll and elsewhere. That is an area which is still without the 2½ inch to a mile map. Indeed, 60 per cent. of Scotland is still without such a map, so that had there been any temptation to cut back on it, which at one time there was, it would have been very, very serious and would have caused serious damage to the economy.
The maps are required for environmental planning, they are needed for the now common, and increasingly common, discussions of land use; they are needed for the containment of pollution, and they are needed for archaeological research. I agree with my noble friend Lord Molson. My only complaint about the second Amendment standing in the names of Lord Shackleton and Lord Balerno is that I am not quite sure it goes far enough, because the scope of paragraph (g) of subsection (3) of Clause 1 is really rather frightening. Some 130 years after the Geological Survey was established we still do not have a 6-inch geological survey map, in both solid and drift editions, for all parts of Britain, let alone an aeromagnetic survey. Can we be quite certain, as things stand with this Bill, that the Meteorological Office responsible for research in geophysics may not one day find itself a candidate for a trading fund? Are we quite certain that this will not happen to the National Environment Research Council's research into solid mass, inland waters and the oceanographical work of the seas and oceans? These might equally well become targets for the predators of the Treasury masquerading under the pleasing guise of
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a trading fund. On these matters we must be willing to do battle. Therefore I appeal to the Minister to accept at any rate the spirit of this Amendment, particularly that spirit which would affect paragraph (g) of subsection (3) of Clause 1. This is very serious. It is a wide-ranging Bill as it stands, and everybody who is concerned with geography in the widest sense, human, political, physical or whatever, must surely range themselves behind these Amendments and should, I think, express gratitude to the noble Lords, Lord Shackleton and Lord Balerno, for having set these Amendments off.
5.57 p.m.
LORD ARWYN: I wish to support the Amendments to both clauses. In order to be brief I read from notes. If the Ordnance Survey is included in this Bill it could lead to a disintegration of other existing organisations, such as the Institute of Geological Sciences, who are identified, as is the Ordnance Survey, as public services. They are both connected and concerned with maps. This may be art opportunity to emphasise once more the vital importance to our economy of the work done and to be done in the near future by the Institute of Geological Sciences. Many times in the last eight years I have tried to draw the attention of the Government concerned to the need of a far more thorough geological survey than has yet been done in depth and area of our mineral resources. If the income available for such surveys is to depend on the sale of maps we shall be in a sad mess.
We who are concerned with the extractive industries are aware of the excellent work done with limited resources by the geological surveyors, but they have yet to be given adequate tools to finish the job. The practical work has to precede map-making. It is not a question of profit-making on maps. This is information we must have of all the mineral resources in this country. The total of present information is very inadequate and seems in danger now of becoming less. Some twenty-seven years ago my noble friend Lord Shinwell established the Mineral Development Committee, which sat for two and a half years and of which I was a member. In one of our early meetings we met officials of the Geological Survey and we learnt that their only drilling tool was an 11 ft. auger

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hand-drill. At that time holes thousands of feet deep were being drilled in South Africa and America. We were able to recommend better, but still not adequate, equipment; but if we had not taken action who knows other than that the 11 ft. auger hand-drill would still he their drilling equipment to develop a science which was even then 100 years old.
There is still not anything like sufficient awareness of the need for support for a large-scale geological survey to ensure our future. If we are to rely oil profits on maps we deserve to he the laughing stock of other nations. We need an urgent full-scale inquiry into the future of the Ordnance Survey and the functions of the Institute of Geological Sciences, and all undercover action by the Department of the Environment or any other Department should be suspended. The publication of vital map series must not be allowed to be dependent upon market sales support, and certainly not the services rendered by the Ordnance Survey and the Institute of Geological Sciences. There is more than one aspect to profit motives, and the profits which may be derived from map sales are insignificant in comparison with having available scientific information on our dwindling resources. I would even go so far as to say that these maps should be free. That would be a real public service.
6.3 p.m.
LORD ENERGLYN: I should like to emphasise the anxiety which I share with my noble friend Lord Shackleton concerning the impact of the trading fund upon the policy of an institution like the Ordnance Survey. I personally believe that if we introduce trading fund activities into this form of organisation it is bound to change its character, and I should like to draw your Lordships' attention to the fact that this is the finest —and I emphasise the words "the finest"—Ordnance Survey in the world. It has set standards of survey for the world and it would be a sad day if we were to lose the identity of this institution.
Others have spoken about the impact of maps upon our daily lives and I will not dilate upon their scientific merits, because others can do it just as ably, or more ably. I should like to point out
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that the impact of a map upon any country is its accuracy and there are no maps in the world produced more accurately than those produced by the Ordnance Survey. I am absolutely sure that if we were to introduce some kind of commercialisation into this, some kind of reduction in the standards of cartography would be introduced because of the cheaper or more rapid form of production. Therefore, I join with my noble friend in asking the Government to delete the Ordnance Survey from this list because it is a centre of excellence that this country can still happily afford. Even if we do not want to advance that argument, it is a centre of excellence that this country cannot do without because it sets a standard of accuracy upon which the law of the land must ultimately be based.
6.5 p.m.
THE EARL OF GOWRIE: I understand that it will be in accordance with the feeling of the Committee if I address myself to both Amendments, and although the hour is late by the early standards of our Session, and I promise not to be very long. I think it would be wrong of me to restrict myself simply to the Amendments and not to answer some of the points made in this debate, because feeling in the Committee has been so very strong. Since so much of the discussion on the Bill has been focused on the Ordnance Survey, I should perhaps start by making it clear why the Government included it in the list of "possibles" in the Bill, and I know it was this original inclusion that caused concern to the noble Lord the Leader of the Opposition and to others.
The announcement made by the Secretary of State in February made clear that we fully accept the fact that the Ordnance Survey has a national role to play, and a very important role indeed, as all speakers have suggested. The Government unconditionally accept that there will be a number of services of the Ordnance Survey which it is desirable on public service grounds to maintain, and we accept this not only in cases where they cannot recoup their costs from receipts—and we must remember that they make charges at present; this is not something being foisted upon them —but also where it is considered desirable, again on public grounds, that these services should be sold at a price

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below cost in order to remain widely available. The Secretary of State's decision on the 2½ inch map, which I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, and the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, and others, welcome, surely bears out this point. But this decision is not inconsistent with a trading fund, provided that the support for particular services can be in the form of specific payments, from, for example, the Department of the Environment's Vote for specific work done. It would not work if the payment had to be in the form of an open-ended subsidy. I am genuinely sorry that the suspicions of the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, were aroused, I believe needlessly, and I am genuinely pleased that the decision went his way.
I do not wish to assume the wounded air of one who has been stung by a hornet, as I think my noble friend Lord Balerno suggested, but I cannot emphasise too much that we must be clear that trading fund financing is not a goal; still less in absolute terms is it a policy; nor is it really about commercialisation, as the noble Lord, Lord Energlyn, a distinguished geologist, feared. It is a method of setting up the financing of certain suitable organisations. It assists accountable managements, which is to do with running the organisations in such a way as to define and allocate the personal responsibility of the men and women who manage them. In other words, it reduces one kind of facelessness—something I am sure we could all agree to find efficient as well as humane. It finances them, secondly, in such a way as to make it possible for the items of work of such organisations—their "output", in the jargon—to be measured in appropriate relation to costs and use of capital. To do that helps the defining of tasks as well as letting the taxpayer know clearly where public money may be needed.
The Government's view is that there could well be advantages in terms of public accountability and of the internal management of the Ordnance Survey, if a trading fund were introduced and a clear distinction was made in the accounts and system of financing between what services were supposed to be managed on a commercial basis, and what services should be provided as a public service.
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But, as I explained on Second Reading, it may be several years yet before developments in management and accounts now in progress enable the Government to take a firm decision on this.
LORD MOLSON: Before my noble friend leaves that point, I wonder whether he would explain how it is possible to avoid conducting it on a strictly commercial basis, in view of the wording of Clause 4, which imposes upon the responsible Minister that
"in the discharge of his functions in relation to the fund it should be his duty—
"(a) to manage the funded operations so that the revenue of the fund is not less than sufficient, taking one year with another, to meet outgoings which are properly chargeable to revenue account".
THE EARL OF GOWRIE: I think I can make two points on that. First, as I said, it may be some time before the Government even consider it appropriate to suggest that trading fund financing would be suitable for the Ordnance Survey. In terms of the mechanics of trading and financing generally these are questions of accounting to do with one section of public money being used and accounted for in such a way as to provide the maximum clarity as to what areas should, as it were, be profitable, and what areas should be provided as a service. I do not think that this is really in any way underhand or inconsistent because, after all, many Government operations already operate on grounds of profitability, as the noble Lord knows. As I said, I wanted to deal with the concern and criticism about consultation since the Secretary of State's Statement in February. I must emphasise that the Statement made by my right honourable friend last February was seen by us as the beginning of a process of consultation about the future activities of Ordnance Survey. It marked the completion of a review of the management system for Ordnance Survey, not a review of the individual map series. I can assure the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, that that was the case, as I think he asked if that was so.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, if I may interrupt, how does the noble Earl square the argument that it is part of consultation just to announce that the tertiary levelling will become a repayment service? Also, how was this decision taken? We know that it was not taken

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by the Committee. We do not know how the decision was arrived at; but it was announced as a policy decision. I do not want to make life difficult for the noble Earl because I think it will be difficult for him for a time.
THE EARL OF GOWRIE: My Lords, it is a feeble answer to say that I am coming to that, but if the noble Lord will bear with me to the end of my speech, he will find that the Government recognise, as I have done, that there was concern and that they propose to do something about it. We feel that some of this concern was misplaced. I do not wish to delay the House by reading out the published material, but if the noble Lord will look at the February Statement of the Secretary of State, the Statement which in fact set the hornets out of their nest if you like, he will find what I have said about this Statement being the beginning of a process of consultation borne out. A review was to be undertaken by the Department about the needs of the public sector for maps. I do not think this was an unreasonable way to carry on.
My Lords, the first two aims of the Ordnance Survey specified by my right honourable friend re-affirm the continuing national role of the Survey as envisaged by the Davidson Committee. May I say how glad I was to see the wife of the noble Lord, Lord Davidson, my noble friend Lady Northchurch, listening here to-night and say what tribute we would all make to the work of her husband in this field. This Statement also laid stress on the surveys taking account of the needs of users and in particular of making sure that any service justified on public service criteria met those needs. I presume we are all agreed that there is no point in continuing a public service unless it does meet such needs. The Statement was immediately followed by a very extensive, wide-ranging inquiry into user needs directed particularly in the first instance to three Ordnance Survey products or services where it had become clear there was a need to identify more clearly the extent and nature of the needs before deciding on the future form of the products and services concerned. The response to the questionnaires which formed the basis of the inquiry was encouraging. I think
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the noble Lord's words in The Times were a little deprecatory about questionnaires. But I should have thought that this was a reasonable way of ascertaining views. There was a marked level of response, and information was provided in detail. The information from the inquiries enabled the Secretary of State to take decisions in principle that the 2½-inch map series and the tertiary benchmark service should continue. The review is now virtually complete, and the work of detailed analysis of the requirements of both public and private sectors has begun. Only when this work is completed will it be possible to take decisions on the detailed specifications of the maps and services in question.
My Lords, perhaps here I may deal with the question put to me by the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, as to the cost of the survey in terms of map prices. The decision to recover part of the cost of the survey in the price of the maps was taken by the Labour Administration in 1967 as part of the cost of expanding the Survey's activity. I see no reason in logic in not recovering the survey costs where one can. I emphasise the last point of that rubric. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, for the formidable weight he successfully brought to bear on these decisions, but I cannot accept that there was any lack of open government in this matter. Indeed, with admittedly far less experience than the noble Lord. I would say the story provides something of a textbook case of open government.
At this point I should like to make reference to a question asked by my noble friend Lord Balerno. I do not wish to delay the House by reading out already published material, but if my noble friend will read my right honourable friend the Secretary of State's letter of October 2— and I would be delighted to send it to him if he has not got it—especially the last paragraph, some of his fears about consultation with other bodies may be laid. I will undertake myself to see the consultative process extends, as I believe it now does, to Scotland as well. It would be most inappropriate for me, with a Scots name, to stand here and refuse to do that.
My Lords, I come now to charges for public information, another item which

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bothered the noble Lord, Lord Shackle-ton, both in The Times and in this debate. The noble Lord suggested that there was something wrong in the principle of the Government charging for providing information that can come only from central Government services, and in particular in the idea of royalty payments from commercial map publishers. There may well be a case to argue that in the case of information acquired by Government as an essential part of the actual process of Government, no charge should be made for making the information available. I am not sure that I would accept this in its entirety. In particular, there would seem to be a strong case for expecting the user to pay at least the costs of putting the information in a form suitable for publication. But I concede the noble Lord's case. This argument would not seem to me to extend to cases where the information is not collected by the Government for its essential purposes, but because it is considered that a Government body is in a better position to do the work than a private one. The large-scale survey work of Ordnance Survey is surely in this latter category. In such cases the arguments as to how far the costs should be carried by those who benefit from the service and how far by the general taxpayer need to be looked at on their merits. We must remember, as I think perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, did not, that charges for Ordnance Survey services already exist. It is surely right because there are many bodies making use of the services—lawyers, estate agents and the construction industry generally—who can afford them.
LORD SHACKLETON: Why does the noble Earl say I have forgotten? Of course, everybody knows that when the Ordnance Survey provides a particular service for a particular purpose it will charge for this service. I have not argued that.
THE EARL OF GOWRIE: My Lords, perhaps I was being a little hard on the noble Lord. Let me say that I did not think he mentioned this or brought it out in his argument. There are always more worthy candidates for Government support than resources available and it is essential that those resources should be applied to those things that have the
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greater priority. I do not believe that scrutiny of my remarks will suggest that the Government give anything but high priority to the work of the Ordnance Survey. Questions on valuation of assets are still being considered, but under the arrangements they will be brought to Parliament on the Draft Order, and the same applies to considerations of public dividend capital.
My Lords, I must come quickly to the functions and financing of the Survey. In considering this matter, it is important that we should recognise that there are three issues which have tended to be confused—what an organisation should do, how it should be managed, and how it should be financed. Most of the discussions on the Ordnance Survey have been concerned with the first; that is, what an organisation should do. But this Bill is primarily concerned with the last. The questions about the criteria which determine the standard of service which it provides are the ones which are of clear concern to the users of the service and where consultation has a very important role to play. There are then separate questions of what its relationships to Ministers should be and what management system and accounts are required. Finally, there is the question of how it should be financed. These are the questions which Parliament will need to consider when a draft Order for a particular trading fund is laid before them.
In spite of, I hope vigorously and accurately, defending the fact that the Government's feelings are a little bit hurt about charges of lack of open government on this question, we acknowledge the genuine disquiet which has been expressed about the form of consultation in this case, even as we feel that it was perhaps a little over-emphatic and a little misplaced. We are, therefore, prepared to accept the spirit underlying the Amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, and my noble friends Lord Balerno and Lord Cranbrook. May I say how much we all wish that Lord Cranbrook will soon be back with us.
First, so far as the future functions of Ordnance Survey are concerned, the Government propose to publish a review document in the coming months. This will first explain more fully the reasons behind the statement of aims of Ordnance Survey set out by the Secretary of State

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last February. It will then summarise the results of the recent consultations on three specific activities and the Government's decision on them. Finally, it will outline the continuing arrangements for Ordnance Survey to establish the needs of users, including consultations with the appropriate professional bodies. In this connection the Royal Society have welcomed the Secretary of State's proposal for improving arrangements for Ordnance Survey to be made aware of the requirements of scientific interests. I hope that also will allay the fears of my noble friend Lord Balerno. I am sure that my right honourable friend the Secretary of State would welcome other suggestions for improved consultation on a continuing authoritative basis from other professional bodies. Perhaps I should say here to the noble Lord, Lord Arwyn, that my information is that the Institute of Geological Sciences and the Ordnance Survey are altogether things apart, but I will relay what he said to the Secretary of State for the Environment. This review document we are proposing could, subject to consultation through the normal channels here, provide an opportunity for a debate by your Lordships.
Secondly, so far as the future method of financing the Ordnance Survey is concerned, the Government propose that the Bill should be amended on Report to achieve essentially what is envisaged by noble Lords' Amendments. The effect would be that if the Government decided to proceed with the trading fund for Ordnance Survey, or for any other part of government which was largely concerned with providing a service to the general public, it would carry out the appropriate consultations and it would lay the results at the same time as it laid the draft Order.
I should, perhaps, finally, explain why I am suggesting tabling an alternative rather than accepting noble Lords' Amendments as they stand. First, I am advised that in the usual way in some small manners they are technically defective. Secondly, they would impose a duty of consultation in respect of all trading fund bodies that may be proposed under the general power. While I accept that this would be appropriate in those cases where an organisation provides a substantial service to the general public, such as is the case under discussion, it is
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not really appropriate in those cases where a trading activity is primarily within Government. The list of named candidates shows that the former are likely to be the exception rather than the rule.
My Lords, I have welcomed this Committee stage and these speeches as a continuing part of the review process that we have mentioned, and I hope that, in view of the very firm assurances I have given, the noble Lord will not press his Amendments at this stage.
LORD SHACKLETON: There are several aspects of the noble Earl's speech on which I should like to comment. I should like him to clarify one point. Would he say again precisely what it is he is proposing should be laid in the event of a decision to go ahead with an Order on the Ordnance Survey? He said it would be laid in the same way as an Order, at the same time. This is not the purpose of my Amendment, and, furthermore, Orders under this Bill are only laid before another place.
THE EARL OF GOWRIE: I think I can dispose of this best and quite briefly by saying that we are genuinely anxious to meet the noble Lord's proposals. For reasons I gave, we wish to do this by Government Amendment. This will, of course, be subject to fullest discussion here, and I am anxious to study carefully what the noble Lord has said, just as I am sure he is anxious to study what the Government's case is. I am sure we can meet the spirit of the noble Lord's Amendments at Report stage. I do not think it is unreasonable to ask that we should wait until that stage.
LORD SHACKLETON: This is very crucial, because what in effect the Government are asking me to do is to withdraw my Amendment and not move the second Amendment. I remember the experience on the Nature Conservancy Bill where the noble Earl, Lord Cranbrook, pressed on and defeated the Government and ensured that we got the right Amendment. None the less I must accept—and I do—the statement of the noble Earl, Lord Gowrie, that he means this fully and fairly, but with this condition. After all, the Ordnance Survey may not be subject to a trading fund, as he says, for several years. I would prefer there to be a proper inquiry now. I cannot see why the Government do not go ahead and

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agree to appoint a Davidson-type committee. I nearly used those words in the Amendment, but I thought it better to use words which the Government were likely to appreciate because they were taken from one of their own Bills, the Maplin Bill. But the noble Earl must be quite clear that I would not be satisfied, nor I think would my noble friends be, unless the Amendment called for a full-scale inquiry, and the results laid before both I louses of Parliament. The idea of it being laid like an Order fills me with horror, because it is the delegated legislation procedure which is so extremely unsatisfactory.
Increasingly I wonder whether Parliament is capable of doing its job properly. I had thought of putting down an Amendment to provide the sort of procedure for sending such matters, the Order in draft, to a Select Committee. But it is the custom that we do not in legislation, as a rule, make arrangements with regard to our own procedure. Sooner or later Parliament will have to face this. Therefore, I am really very disquieted about this matter. I think in Parliament we have got to face our responsibilities, especially when we find that, owing to pressure of business, another place misses out entirely on a matter of this kind.
LORD MOLSON: I wanted to make sure that the noble Lord the Leader of the Opposition is not going to agree to withdraw his Amendment before he sits down. I think we must have a further explanation, and I should like to make a few points about it.
LORD SHACKLETON: I assure the noble Lord that I was not intending at this moment to withdraw my Amendment, because I still need some further satisfaction on the conditions and I was dealing with some of the points.
The noble Earl, Lord Gowrie, made a powerful speech. I hope he will not take it amiss if I say that I have heard management consultants about ten years ago making similar speeches. It really makes me very sad to hear this type of management jargon, which I know is not in accordance with the noble Earl's nature, determining how we proceed with a matter of this kind. I should like to make it clear that all our remarks here are in admiration of the Ordnance
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Survey. I should not wish their distinguished Director General, General Irwin, to feel that there is the slightest criticism of him, but there has come into industry and government this fashion of allocation of costs, and it can be carried too far.
I shall have some further remarks to make on whether the clause shall stand Part of the Bill. I shall be interested to hear whether my noble friends are prepared to accept this assurance. Even now I do not think that there is a full appreciation of what the effect of charging for information is. We have seen earnings from royalties going up steadily. I am told that at the time when I was in the last Government we agreed to a major reversal of policy on allocation of survey costs. I must take my responsibility for that, though obviously I did not know about it. But who does know about these things? This is what is worrying. Ministers do not always know what is happening. The loading of charges is going to have a serious effect, and the application of copyright is already leading people to break the law. They are not sure whether they are breaking the law. If you reproduce an Ordnance Survey map, or get some friend with the equipment to do so, and have not got a licence, you are liable to a royalty charge. There is need for a major investigation of the whole situation. We are going down a path—not followed by the United States, where these matters are wholly, and remain, in the public domain—which can lead us into trouble, without sufficient gain in return. The noble Lord, Lord Molson, is going to speak, but I should like to know more closely what the assurance will be.
6.33 p.m.
LORD MOLSON: I have always noted that Treasury counsel, the draftsmen of Bills, are resentful and reluctant to accept any Amendment drafted by laymen. On many occasions they are able to show that their arcane craft is not fully understood in all its ramifications, and therefore at the Report stage a different form of words is introduced. Frequently that is justifiable, but sometimes I very much doubt whether it arises from anything except professional pride. We are now considering an Amendment which is "leave out line 20". Line 20 says:
"(e) the Ordnance Survey;"

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If we go on to paragraph (g) we find that the Government would obtain power that this Act applies to the following Crown services. Paragraph (g) then says:
"any other service, managed by a Minister of the Crown or a government department, in whose case the responsible Minister and the Treasury are satisfied that its operations consist of or include trading operations or operations in the nature of trading …"
My noble friend said that the reason he was not prepared to accept this Amendment, but would introduce an Amendment at the next stage, was because there was some technical defect in it. In the case of complicated Amendments there are frequently technical defects only understood by those familiar with the arcane craft of the Parliamentary draftsmen. I feel that we all ought to be able to understand what is the technical defect in this Amendment, which proposes only to delete the words "the Ordnance Survey".
6.35 p.m.
THE EARL OF GOWRIE: I think that the technical defects I had in mind pertained to the second Amendment. I take my noble friend's point about the arcane mysteries of Parliamentary draftsmen. Unfortunately they are as arcane and mysterious to me as I suspect they are to most Members of your Lordships' House. I think I should say that it has become somewhat of a convention to accept their word for it first, and then scrutinise what they put out second, and I do not think that that is reasonable. A little earlier in his remarks my noble friend Lord Molson asked me a question which I have not answered. Perhaps he would like me to answer it now. Section 4 does not preclude payments from votes for services as part of the revenue. If the noble Lord wishes me to return to him, or make way for him, I will, but at this juncture I should like to say to the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, that we accept that the consultations should be laid before both Houses of Parliament—and I said earlier that it would be possible, through the usual channels, to debate them—in good time before any Draft Order, if need be, were laid. What I am asking the noble Lord to accept is that we like the spirit of his Amendments and are anxious to meet it.
LORD SHACKLETON: After hearing the noble Lord, Lord Molson, I am
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tempted to say, "All right, we will move the first Amendment because nobody can quibble about the meaning, and we will await the Government's Amendment and see how it does". My instinct, as always, is to co-operate with the Government. They have had a rotten time the last two or three days. They have been beaten in practically every Division, even when the Opposition were voting for them. I quite agree that they did all right to-day, and their morale must be a little restored. I shall be interested to know what the noble Lord, Lord Balerno, has to say before I ask leave to withdraw my Amendments, which it is my inclination to do. If, as has happened, the noble Lord, Lord Molson, or any other noble Lord wishes to refuse that leave, then we will take it to a Division.
THE EARL OF GOWRIE: We are not fighting for the exclusion of the first Amendment, because accepting the spirit of all the noble Lord's Amendments means that this would be excluded from the Bill. We are suggesting that we believe that we can meet the objections of noble Lords very fully by putting down a Government Amendment on Report. Since we can discuss this matter fully on Report, and since leave may be refused on Report, I cannot see why we should not leave it until then.
LORD MOLSON: My Lords, I have followed my noble friend's argument very clearly, and he has made the point that he intends to do this. Therefore, quite obviously the Government will accept the Amendment, and then the matter can be put right on Report, simply amplifying it. So I recommend that we should not withdraw this Amendment.
LORD SHACKLETON: I feel in somewhat of a difficulty. I think I must tell the noble Lord on this point that I wish to be helpful. Since permission to withdraw an Amendment can be refused, I ask leave to withdraw my Amendment.
THE EARL OF GOWRIE: Before the noble Lord sits down, may I say that if it is the will of the House that the Government accept this Amendment, they are quite prepared to do so.
LORD SHACKLETON: The first Amendment?
THE EARL OF GOWRIE: The first Amendment.
LORD SHACKLETON: Then I do not withdraw it.
6.40 p.m.
On Question, Whether Clause 1, as amended, shall stand part of the Bill?
LORD SHACKLETON: There are quite a lot of things I should have liked to say on Clause 1, because it may be that we shall have to put down a rather exceptional Amendment on Report stage; that is to say, either to leave out Clause 1, which one should not really do on Report stage, or to leave out, say, "the Stationery Office"—because, again, I would be interested to know how this Bill is to apply to some of the other candidates. I must say that I should have quite liked to continue the managerial argument, but I think it would be a mistake to do it now, and therefore I merely mention that I may wish to say something more on Clause 1. We shall be coming on later to the second Amendment; and it may be that other noble Lords will want to speak about some of the very mysterious other clauses, which really do need quite a lot of explanation.
Clause 1, as amended, agreed to.
Clauses 2 to 5 agreed to.
Clause 6 [Orders]:
LORD SHACKLETON LORD SHACKLETON moved Amendment No. 2:
Page 6, line 4, at end insert—
("Provided that, in relation to an order under Section 1(3)(g) above, before making such an order the responsible Minister shall consult with such persons as appear to him appropriate, and shall lay a report of the consultations and of his conclusions in respect of each service before Parliament.")
The noble Lord said: I think I should move this second Amendment formally at this point as we have discussed it, in case the noble Lord, Lord Molson, wishes to carry it into the Bill; but if I rightly understand it, this is the area in which the Government will meet us, and since I do not think this particular form of words has any merit except that it follows precisely the Government draftsman's drafting, I can think of a much better Amend-
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ment and I shall hope for that from the noble Earl. I beg to move in order to enable any noble Lord who wants to speak to do so.
THE DEPUTY CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES: The Amendment proposed is: page 6, line 4, at end insert the words printed on the Marshalled List.
LORD SHACKLETON: If no noble Lord wishes to speak to my Amendment, I ask leave to withdraw it.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 6 agreed to.
Clause 7 [The Mint]:
On Question, Whether Clause 7 shall stand part of the Bill?
LORD MOLSON: I should like to ask for an explanation of the drafting of this clause. The Chancellor of the Exchequer is the Master of the Mint. This clause says:
"For purposes of this Act the Chancellor of the Exchequer is to be regarded as the Minister responsible for the administration of the Mint",
and it provides that the concurrence of the Treasury shall not be required for the making of Orders. In view of the position of the Chancellor of the Exchequer as the de facto head of the Treasury, even if the Prime Minister be also the First Lord of the Treasury, is it not unnecessary to make this special provision, which apparently is that the Chancellor of the Exchequer does not have to agree with himself in proposals that he puts forward?
THE EARL OF GOWRIE: I agree that we seem to have a somewhat Heath Robinson arrangement here, but there is an explanation and I will do my best to make it clear to my noble friend. Subsection (1) of the clause makes it clear, as he pointed out to us, that for the purposes of this Act the Chancellor of the Exchequer is the responsible Minister for the Mint. This clarification is necessary because Section 4(1) of the Coinage Act 1971 provides that the Chancellor shall be the Master of the Mint; that is to say, an officer of the Mint. It is most unusual for the Chancellor to be named in an Act, statutory

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powers being vested in the Treasury; that is to say, in the Board of the Treasury. But given the provisions of the Coinage Act, the present solution seemed to be simplest.
LORD MOLSON: I am very much obliged to my noble friend.
Clause 7 agreed to.
Remaining clause agreed to.
House resumed: Bill reported with the Amendment.

POSTAL CHARGES SINCE 1950 FOR INLAND LETTERS AT THE BASIC WEIGHT STEP

…

…

First Class*

Second Class*

Date

Not over

Charge

Percentage Increase

Not over

Charge

Percentage Increase

At 1st January, 1950

…

…

2 oz.

2½d.

—

2 oz.

1d.

—

At 1st June, 1951

…

…

—

—

—

4 oz.

1½d.

50

At 1st January, 1956

…

…

—

—

—

2 oz.

1½d.

—

At 1st June, 1956

…

…

—

—

—

4 oz.

2d.

33

At 1st October, 1957

…

…

1 oz.

3d

20

2 oz.

2d.

—

At 1st October, 1961

…

…

—

—

—

2 oz.

2½d.

25

At 17th May, 1965

…

…

2 oz.

4d.

33

2 oz.

3d.

20

At 16th September, 1968

…

…

4 oz.

5d.

25

4 oz.

4d.

33

At 15th February, 1971

…

…

4 oz.

3p

44

4 oz.

2½p

50

At 6th March 1972

…

…

2 oz.

3p

—

2 oz.

2½p

—

At 10th September 1973

…

…

2 oz.

3½p

17

2 oz.

3p

20

* The rates shown for the dates before 16th September 1968 were for the letter post and printed paper post. Use of the printed paper post was confined to specified articles in unsealed envelopes.

THE CHARITY COMMISSION
LORD BEAUMONT OF WHITLEY LORD BEAUMONT OF WHITLEY asked Her Majesty's Government:
What is the cost of the Charity Commission for the last year for which there are figures, the number of employees, how many of them are legally qualified, how many of them have accountant's qualifications and how the Charity Commissioners perform their statutory duty of promoting the effective use of charitable resources by encouraging the development of better methods of administration.
THE MINISTER OF STATE, HOME OFFICE (VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS): The cost of the Charity Commission for the year ended March 31, 1973, excluding the rent of the buildings occupied, was £731,000.
The staff complement on July 1, 1973, was 337, but 25 posts were unfilled. Of