Lords Sitting of 9 December 1974

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

SIGNPOSTING OF COUNTRY AMENITY AREAS
Lord SANDFORD: 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 how travellers are to find country parks and picnic sites.
Lord MELCHETT: My Lords, traffic signposting of all kinds is the responsibility of the local highway authority making use of signs prescribed in the regulations made jointly by my right honourable friends the Secretary of State for the Environment, the Secretary of State for Scotland and the Secretary of State for Wales. Worded local signs are currently in use for country parks and picnic sites. A symbol for picnic sites will, however, be proposed in the new traffic signs regulations now in preparation.
Lord SANDFORD: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that that is not really enough? Why have not more highway authorities posted more advance signs to these sites? Is it not a waste of public money to provide facilities like these and then do nothing to help the public to use and enjoy them? Can the noble Lord say why new copies of the Ordnance Survey maps contain no reference to these facilities?
Lord MELCHETT: My Lords, I I would agree that it is important, having provided country parks and picnic sites, that the public is able to find them and enjoy them. The main reason why some country parks and picnic sites are not signed, or not signed well enough, is that it is a matter for the local highway authority to judge traffic needs and the priorities of places requiring signing at
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any particular traffic point. On the question of maps which the noble Lord raised, I assume that he is talking about the new Southern block sheets of the Ordnance Survey, in the 1:50,000 series. The country parks and picnic sites will be shown on the Northern block maps in this series which are shortly to be published. The production schedule for the sheets of the Southern block, published in March of this year, did not enable country parks to be put on the maps because of the lack of time.
Lord SANDFORD: My Lords, may I say I do not think that that is particularly satisfactory. If I ask a Question for Written Answer in two or three months' time, will the noble Lord try to give your Lordships a rather fuller Answer as to what provision has been made by what authorities, or will be made before the next tourist and holiday season begins?
Lord MELCHETT: Yes, my Lords, I should be happy to do that. I can say that if there is any particular site which the noble Lord has in mind which he feels is not signed satisfactorily, the Government will be happy to look into it.
Lord SLATER: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that in response to the original Question I noticed that he said most definitely that the highway authority was the responsible body for these traffic signs? Did he not omit to say that when such signs are erected in built up areas, where you have a 30 or 40 m.p.h. speed limit, then another authority is brought into operation in such considerations; namely, the police? Are the police eliminated altogether wherever traffic signs have to be established by the highway authority?
Lord MELCHETT: No, my Lords: my understanding is that the local authority would consult the police on the positioning of traffic signs. I should imagine that, on the whole, country parks and picnic sites would be outside the 30 m.p.h. limit.
Lord DERWENT: My Lords, does the noble Lord realise that in country areas, and particularly in National Parks, since the last Act concerning bridleways and footpath signposting was passed, we have more than enough signposts, and that the countryside, and the National Parks in

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particular, are looking like new housing estates? While quite agreeing that it is necessary to have road signs for people to get to picnic sites and so on, would those concerned also consider at the same time taking down some of these other obnoxious signs?
Lord MELCHETT: My Lords, I think that that is a different Question. I may say that any of the National Parks that I have visited, and I have visited most of them, do not look remotely like housing estates.
Lord DERWENT: My Lords, would the noble Lord come and stay with me sometime and see mine?
Lord MELCHETT: My Lords, I should be delighted.
Lord MOLSON: My Lords, do the Government recall that one of the main purposes of the encouragement of the setting up of country parks was to provide opportunities for rather gregarious enjoyment for the inhabitants of towns and, in consequence, to discourage everybody from going to the National Parks? Would the Government, therefore, do what they can to ensure that the inhabitants of towns are given guidance as to where they can get the relaxation and enjoyment of country parks reasonably near the towns where they live?
Lord MELCHETT: Yes, my Lords. There are a large number of maps and guides already published by the Countryside Commission, the Forestry Commission, and other bodies, and the Countryside Commission are looking at ways in which the general public may be helped to locate country parks and picnic sites.
Lord WYNNE-JONES: My Lords, would not my noble friend agree that the best way to find any place of refreshment is to follow one's nose?

EEC: CO-ORDINATION OF REGIONAL POLICIES
2.42 p.m.
The Earl of DUDLEY: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the first Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they continue to support the undertaking of the Heads of State or of Government of the countries of the enlarged Community given at the meeting in Paris on the 19th and 20th October 1972, to co-ordinate their regional policies.
The MINISTER of STATE, DEPARTMENT of INDUSTRY (LORD BESWICK): My Lords, as my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary told the Council of Ministers on 4th June the Government accept that there could usefully be co-ordination of the rules under which each of us gives aid. One of our renegotiation objectives is, of course, the retention by Parliament of those powers over the British economy needed to pursue effective regional policies.
The Earl of DUDLEY: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for his reply. I agree with him as to the need for powers to be retained for effective and appropriate national and regional aid policies. May I ask the Minister whether he would assure the House that those powers are in no way incompatible with our obligations under the Treaty, nor with the need to develop co-ordinated and coherent policies to concentrate investment in the regions suffering from the greatest disadvantage?
Lord BESWICK: My Lords, there are certain aspects which are of course incompatible with the objectives which we have set ourselves under the renegotiation proposals, but these are matters which are now being discussed.
The Earl of DUDLEY: My Lords, is the Minister aware that the regulation which has not as yet been discussed by the council governing co-ordination of regional aid policies applies to post-notification of these policies only and can in no way be considered incompatible with the retention of powers over national regional aid policies?
Lord BESWICK: My Lords, I thought that I had made it clear to the noble Earl that we are now trying to bring about a co-ordination of the rules as at present set out.

EEC AND REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT FUND
The Earl of DUDLEY: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the second Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they continue to press the Community Institutions to create a Regional Development Fund, in line with the invitation to them so to do extended by the Heads of State or of Government of the countries of the enlarged Community at the meeting in Paris on the 19th and 20th of October 1972.
Lord BESWICK: My Lords, my right honourable friend the Prime Minister expects to be discussing the establishment of a Regional Development Fund at the meeting of Heads of Government which is taking place in Paris today and tomorrow.
The Earl of DUDLEY: My Lords, while thanking the noble Lord for his most informative and helpful Answer, may I ask him whether his lines of communication with the Summit are still open? Will he urge upon his right honourable friend the Prime Minister the need to obtain a specific sum for the Regional Development Fund rather than a general and imprecise undertaking? Will the noble Lord consider whether an appropriate sum might be of the order of not less than 300 million units of account?
Lord BESWICK: My Lords, I understand that this was a revised proposal by the Commission and, of course, this subject will be open for discussion. Therefore, there is no need on my part to inject this piece of information which is known. But the matter has become rather more complicated in recent weeks and, as I have said, the whole issue is one for discussion. I am sorry that I cannot be more informative at the moment.
Baroness TWEEDSMUIR of BELHELVIE: My Lords, could the Minister say why in the last Statement, which was given to this House in writing in Hansard and in another place on 27th November, there was no mention of the fact that discussions were being reactivated on the regional policy when they had lapsed for some considerable time?
Lord BESWICK: My Lords, I beg the pardon of the noble Baroness but I do not quite understand her point.
Baroness TWEEDSMUIR of BELHELVIE: Perhaps I did not make it very clear, my Lords. Regarding the statement of future Council business—which is made once a month and which was made orally in another place on 27th November and was inserted in Hansard here the next day—I am asking whether the Minister can say why, when regional policy is so important to this country and to the Community, this point was not mentioned as being a major item in future business?
Lord BESWICK: My Lords, if the noble Baroness is now going back to the earlier question—and I understand that she must be—I cannot answer her because I do not have the Statement in question before me. But certainly there has been no doubt in my mind—nor, I believe, in the mind of the Government—that this was one aspect of the Community position that must be renegotiated.

ARMS SALE CONTROL
2.48 p.m.
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 they will take steps to control the activities of the armament companies and their intermediaries who negotiate arms sales to the Middle East, including sales through Jordan to South Africa and Rhodesia, on which vast profits are made.
Lord WINTERBOTTOM: Her Majesty's Government take all possible steps to control the activities to which the noble Lord is referring. In the case which he has in mind, British equipment

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acquired by the Jordanian Government for the use of its own armed forces was subsequently sold to an armament dealer who disposed of the equipment to South Africa. The Jordanian Government has now explained the background to this incident, which it deeply regrets, and has given assurances that in future it will dispose of British equipment only after consultation with Her Majesty's Government.
Lord BROCKWAY: My Lords, I thank the Minister for that reply. May I first ask whether the Government have replied to the very detailed documentation made to them by the Guardian? Secondly, is it not the case that these armaments were provided under assumed names, and that Centurion tanks were sent to Jordan as earth-moving tractors? Also, may I ask whether any of these armaments were made in this country? If they were not, were they licensed to other countries under the condition that they should not be sold to a third country?
Lord WINTERBOTTOM: My Lords, there is a standard drill on this matter. All equipment supplied by the Ministry of Defence to an overseas Government is for the sole use of the customer country, and should not be re-sold to a third party without Her Majesty's Government's agreement. When it is considered appropriate, firms are asked to include a similar restriction in their contracts. What happened in Jordan was that a junior official in the procurement agency disposed of these tanks to the arms dealer to whom I have referred, that the matter was noticed by the Guardian newspaper, and that Her Majesty's Government considered the allegation sufficiently accurate to make an inquiry. As a result of that inquiry the breach of agreement was discovered. The Jordanian Government have apologised to Her Majesty's Government and have undertaken that nothing similar should happen in the future.
Lord SHINWELL. My Lords, am I to understand from my noble friend's Answer—that part of it in which he said that Her Majesty's Government are seeking to control the sale of arms to Middle East countries—that no arms are being sold to Middle East countries? If so, when did we cease to sell arms to Middle East countries?
Lord WINTERBOTTOM: My Lords, as the noble Lord is very well aware the sale of arms in that area is a matter of great sensitivity. Her Majesty's Government have taken great care that nothing that we do in future will prejudice any move towards a settlement of the critical situation in the Middle East.
Lord SHINWELL: My Lords, while being grateful for that answer, may I say that I think my noble friend might be a little more specific. Does it follow from that answer that Her Majesty's Government have ceased to sell arms of any kind to Middle East countries?
Lord WINTERBOTTOM: My Lords, that is another question. I was talking about past sales.
Lord ORR-EWING: My Lords, could the noble Lord say whether the USSR, when they supplied vast quantities of arms to Syria and 2,000 modern tanks to Iraq, did this openly, or did they disguise them as earth-moving equipment?
Lord WINTERBOTTOM: My Lords, that also is another question, but I think there is nothing hidden in the matter.
Lord HALE: My Lords, with reference to the answer given to my noble friend, may I ask whether the noble Lord is aware that we were told only a few days ago that we were continuing to supply arms to Jordan, having received an assurance that this would not happen again? If we received an assurance before we supplied the first lot, and if it be true—and perhaps the noble Lord will confirm this—that these armaments were sent to South Africa and were redirected to Rhodesia, and contained some sophisticated weapons which might very seriously affect the security of Southern Africa, why are we going on supplying these arms to Jordan on a mere verbal undertaking from the same source as that from which the last one came?
Lord WINTERBOTTOM: My Lords, may I suggest that if the noble Lord feels so keenly he should put down a Question? He stated that there is a verbal assurance. I am certain that Her Majesty's Government do not deal in verbal assurances.
Lord HALE: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that I did put down a Question on precisely this point, and that I withdrew it in deference to the noble Lord who had a similar Question on the same point?
Lord WINTERBOTTOM: No, my Lords.
Lord HALE: Then, my Lords, I will put one down.
Lord HARVEY of PRESTBURY: My Lords, has the noble Lord read the report in today's Press that British Leyland are in the process of signing an agreement with the Egyptian Government to build a motor car plant there, and have given—according to the Press—an undertaking not to supply commercial vehicles to Israel? If it is to come about that commercial companies are to give undertakings not to supply commercial vehicles to another country, surely this situation ought to be looked at.
Lord WINTERBOTTOM: My Lords, that again is another question.
Baroness SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, may I ask my noble friend this question? If countries in different parts of the world observe that if they are in breach of an agreement we will be satisfied with an apology and that there will be no sanction applied, will that not encourage them to treat their agreements with us with some contempt?
Lord WINTERBOTTOM: My Lords, I am afraid that even in Jordan human error creeps in, and this was such a case.
Lord SHINWELL: My Lords, does my noble friend realise that, with great respect to him and while in no means blaming him, I do not accept—and I am saying this quite deliberately—that Her Majesty's Government are not selling arms to Middle East countries?
Lord WINTERBOTTOM: My Lords, I never said that. I was talking in answer to my noble friend about a past contract. If noble Lords want to know about present policy will they please put down a Question?
Lord JANNER: My Lords, does my noble friend realise that a breach of this kind, made in respect of an undertaking given to us, is used by other countries, such as Libya, as an argument for being
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provided with arms from other countries and using them for the purpose of attacking Israel through Egypt, and in other ways? Is it not extremely important, whatever may be the reason for Jordan's having done it, that we should realise that we should set an example in these matters and should take such steps as will make it clear to the rest of the world that such breaches of undertakings cannot be treated lightly?
Lord WINTERBOTTOM: My Lords, we do not live in a perfect world. As I said, it was an error by a junior member of the Jordan Administration which led to this mistake, for which the Jordan Government have apologised.
Lord SHINWELL: My Lords, when my noble friend advises me to put down a Question, which is what he just did, is he aware that it is the custom, the practice, of Her Majesty's Government, or indeed of any Government, when a Question is asked about the provision of arms to any country, to answer that these facts are never disclosed in public? Is that so?
Lord BROCKWAY: My Lords, reverting to my own Question, may I ask the Minister this further supplementary? Is not a much closer investigation of this whole incident necessary in view of what has been established? If Her Majesty's Government allowed these armaments to go to Jordan, why were they sent under a camouflage? Why, when the consignment of Hawker Hunters was exported, was it described as an hotel? Does not this scandal require much closer investigation than Her Majesty's Government appear to have given it at present?
Lord WINTERBOTTOM: My Lords, the noble Lord has made an assertion of which I know nothing.
Lord BROCKWAY: Then I ask the Minister——
SEVERAL NOBLE LORDS: Order, order!
Lord BROCKWAY: My Lords, I ask the Minister whether he has read the documentation from the Guardian? This statement was made there and has not been contradicted.
Baroness LLEWELYN-DAVIES of HASTOE: My Lords, I think noble Lords in all parts of the House have

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had a very good run on this matter. It is indeed a very serious question and Her Majesty's Government take it very seriously. But as we have a great deal to do this afternoon I think it might be better if we left it there.

GOVERNMENT STATEMENTS
Baroness LLEWELYN-DAVIES of HASTOE: My Lords, with the leave of the House—and this will throw light on why I felt we ought to bring an end to Questions for the moment—there will be three Statements this afternoon at a convenient moment after 3.30 p.m. My noble friend Lord Balogh will be making a Statement on energy saving, and my noble friend Lady Birk will be making one on speed limits. These will be followed by a Statement on the HS 146, which will be made by my noble friend Lord Beswick.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
Baroness LLEWELYN-DAVIES of HASTOE: My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend the Leader of the House I beg to move the Motion standing in his name on the Order Paper.
Moved, That Standing Order No. 38 (Arrangement of the Order Paper) be suspended until the Christmas Recess so far as is necessary to give the Government power to arrange the order of business; and that Standing Order No. 44 (No two stages of a Bill to be taken on one day) be suspended for the same period.—(Baroness Llewelyn-Davies of Hastoe.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

CONSOLIDATED FUND BILL
Brought from the Commons, endorsed with the Certificate from the Speaker that the Bill is a Money Bill within the meaning of the Parliament Act 1911, and read la.
Then, Standing Order No. 44 having been suspended (pursuant to Resolution), Bill read 2a: Committee negatived; Bill read 3a, and passed.

THE GREEN, ABERDEEN (BOOTS THE CHEMISTS LIMITED) ORDER CONFIRMATION BILL.
Read 3a, and passed.

SOCIAL SECURITY AMENDMENT BILL
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I beg to move that this Report be now received.
Moved accordingly and, on Question, Motion agreed to.
Then, Standing Order No. 44 having been suspended, pursuant to Resolution, Bill read 3a with the Amendment, and passed, and returned to the Commons.

EUROPEAN COMMUNITIES COMMITTEE
3.1 p.m.
The Earl of LAUDERDALE The Earl of LAUDERDALE rose to move, That this House takes note of the Fifth Report of the Select Committee (Session 1974) and the Third Report of the Select Committee of this Session on a new energy policy strategy for the European Communities (R/1472/74). The noble Earl said: My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper. The two references therein are to one document which was studied by successive sub-committees of your Lordships' Select Committee on European Proposals on two occasions and, if I may briefly explain, the Third Report from the Select Committee in the current Parliament and Session relating to Annexes to the previous subject matter, giving the "teeth", as one might say, to the policy there propounded. If I may ask the indulgence of the House straight away, I should like to explain a slight misprint that has crept into the Third Report from the Select Committee (that is, the current one relating to these Annexes), due entirely to faulty handwriting on my own part. Perhaps those of your Lordships who have the document in their hands will be good enough to look at page 3 of the Report where they will see that in Annex II under the heading "Timetable", it states that the document is "unlikely to be adopted in any form"

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at the forthcoming meeting of the Council. The phrase should read: "in its present form".
My Lords, may I start with a tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Champion, who presided over the sub-committee that produced during the last Parliament the principal Report now before the House. He chaired that sub-committee, if I may say so as one who sat at his feet, with the quiet aplomb and distinction that we expect from him; and, without seeking to break the rules of discretion by suggesting who was the source of which particular telling phrase, may I invite your Lordships to look at Question and Answer No. 103 in the Minutes of Evidence where it will be seen that the noble Lord, Lord Champion, put his finger on the whole matter at the end of our hearing of evidence and elicited the short point that Europe wants the energy and Britain has it. It is in that context that he set the framework of our Report in terms, as one might say, of Real-politik. I have been invited to move this Motion simply because I happen to be the chairman of the successor subcommittee appointed by your Lordships in the present Parliament; and may I say that I propose to be as neutral and sparing of controversy as your Lordships would expect of me.
My Lords, the Member of Parliament for my constituency, Berwick and East Lothian, canvassing one day, visited a stately home—not my own—and announced himself as the local Socialist Member of Parliament. The butler who answered the door bell said, "My Lord is non-political. I am chairman of the Conservative Association. You might find some support in the kitchen." In my non-political role, as chairman of this subcommittee, I shall do my best to approach the matter in an anodyne and peaceful fashion. This debate is not an exercise in "bashing" the European Community; this is not a crusade against the well-fortified pornography of power. As to the substance of our Report, noble Lords will have different views and will express them in different ways. If I may, I will submit to your Lordships that we need straight away to draw a critical distinction between vetting any proposals that the European Commission put up to the Council in order to discover (whatever our viewpoint may be) whether any points
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raise matters of policy or principle; and the quite different operation of eliciting the British Government's view upon them. I think a sort of warning on this occasion would be to beware of any "pop thinking" on energy to which they might be tempted.
My Lords, the Motion I move invites the House to take note; and, included in "the House", is the Government Front Bench. We therefore invite the Government as well as the House to take note both of the Reports and of the views of your Lordships' House upon them. There will be little point in this operation unless in due time Her Majesty's Government confirm to the House the assurance already given in another place, that the Government will not take part in the endorsement of Council decisions before there has been a Parliamentary debate on matters which the Select Committee refer to your Lordships' House for debate. We shall look for an unequivocal assurance on that count.
Briefly, my Lords, the sub-committee found several matters of note. The first of these was that the Community Commission propose a supranational energy agency with (I quote) "legal personality and financial autonomy "under the control of the Commission—something which on the face of it we, as a sub-committee of your Lordships' Select Committee, judged would seem to threaten United Kingdom sovereignty. It raises a fundamental issue between harmonisation in the sense of a guide to the formulation of national policies, between harmonisation of national energy policies still kept under national control, on the one hand; and, on the other hand, the pooling of sovereignty in an area which is critical to the economic and social organisation of our society.
My Lords, the Annexes point in the direction of this second interpretation in the sense that Annex I relates to the use of natural gas in power stations and proposes, so the Commission suggests, that its use should have to be justified subsequently to the Commission; Annex II applies almost the same requirement in the case of the use of oil in power stations, this time not requiring the term "justification", but admittedly under the surveillance of the European Communities Commission; and Annex III relates to the exports of oil and natural gas from

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Britain to countries outside the Community. This would be subject to the Commission's approval.
My Lords, those of us who have been trying to catch up with the subject in recent months and days were much educated by a speech given in Oxford last week by M. Simonet, the Commissioner who is particularly concerned with energy. He seemed to point in a slightly different direction when he promised that under the Commission's energy programme Britain would always retain full sovereign rights to determine the rate of exploration and production. He insisted, however, that an effective energy policy in Europe could not simply be limited to, as he put it:
"a simple sum of narrowly based national policies",
So much for the supranational energy Commission which the Commission proposed in this document. The document then goes on to propose a series of answers to the general problems of likely shortage of energy coupled with the high cost of the importation of crude oil from the Middle East. The Commission proposed that the Community's nuclear power programme should be expanded during the next 10 years in the sense of raising nuclear power station generation capacity more than 18½rom a total capacity of 12 gigawatts to 200 gigawatts. For those of your Lordships who are unfamiliar with that term, may I say that a gigawatt is a very big watt.
Witnesses from whom we heard expressed no fewer than nine times doubt about the difficulties and risks of such an expansion programme. They did so in reply to our persistent questioning, and if your Lordships would care to look at question and answer No. 55 in the Minutes of Evidence it will be seen that witnesses expressed doubts as to the desirability of this programme, even as an oil saver and even supposing the engineering and safety questions were settled. Perhaps it is not inappropriate to remind your Lordships that a Working Party set up by CEC—the Committee for Environmental Conservation, to which it may be that your Lordships will wish to refer later in this debate—under the heading, "Energy and the Environment", drew the public's attention in July 1974 to a very serious
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relationship between scale of nuclear power generation and inherent risk. It warned that a 1,000 megawatt nuclear plant in a single year produces and, normally, one would hope, contains, 1,000 times as much radioactive material as the Hiroshima bomb. On the other hand, I personally have heard Commission officials say that nuclear power—I refer now to officials who are concerned in the power programme and who are knowledgeable about it—is no more polluting than are large coal-fired power stations because radioactivity also comes from coal. I have also heard them argue that the hazards in this programme are no worse than the accepted risks of trunk road transport.
My Lords, that may or may not be so, and my purpose now is not to draw direct conclusions about the merits of the programme but to draw attention to our Report on it. However, we did make one interesting discovery. Perhaps I may remind your Lordships of an 18th century prospectus of around the time of the South Sea Bubble which invited persons to subscribe to:
"An undertaking of great advantage but none to know what it is."
We found that the Commission in their programme for energy had completely ignored the possibilities of methanol, which is referred to in our Report, and I have since learned that they have excluded it from the research and development proposals in a document, Energy for Europe—a Programme for Research, which is available through the normal sources although I have a rather tattered copy if noble Lords care to look at it.
My Lords, I think one might go a stage further and say that our witnesses more than a dozen times questioned the figures on which the Commission had based its projected programme. But Commission officials have themselves said—and I have heard them say it—that the urgency of the problem was so great and the need for Europe to face the challenge of the energy shortage was so serious, that it was not possible during the early months of this year to conduct the consultations that they would have wished with experts from national Governments. Whether or not this is sufficient justification, one point is quite

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certain; that is, that today's debate is timely.
The Council of Energy Ministers, which is known for short as the Energy Council, meets next week on 17th December. This very day there is a Summit meeting in Paris. We have it from M. Simonet that the Summit will tackle disagreements over Community attitudes to the oil-producing countries and must also tackle disagreements as between the Community member-States on the corresponding conclusions which they should draw with regard to an energy policy in general. Although Mr. Varley has said that the Energy Council agenda is not yet fixed and the final text of the resolution relating to these matters is not yet available, we have it from M. Simonet speaking in Oxford last week that the Council must—and that was the word he used—adopt precise quantitative objectives to diversify supplies and reduce demand, especially, he stressed, in order to hasten a position where nuclear sources could account for about half the Community's energy supply in 1985.
My Lords, obscurity about the Summit and Council agendas might tempt one to query whether there is any value in having a debate just now at all. Will the Government pay heed to our debate? Are the Government already too far committed? Is this debate too late altogether? The substance of our Report was completed in July and, although thanks to printing delays it could be available only in a Rank Xeroxed form, copies were seized upon—almost like a bag of flour or a loaf of bread in recent days—by those specially concerned to have them. As to whether it is all worth it, and whether we serve a useful purpose in manning a sub-committee, in taking evidence and making our report to Parliament, and making these reports when they are debated only several months later, I cannot help being reminded of a fellow countryman of mine who was wandering home at one o'clock in the morning in Glasgow with a somewhat unsteady and zigzag step. He leaned against a lamp-post and observed opposite a doorway with a brass plate on it. He blinked and saw the surname, "Paul", which is not an uncommon name in Scotland, and then he noticed the initials "S. T." So as it was one
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o'clock in the morning he decided it was a good time to ring the bell. In due course the householder appeared, to whom he addressed these words: "That was a dashed good letter you wrote to the Ephesians, but you won't get a reply! "
The work of our sub-committee has to be conducted almost in total ignorance of proposals that may be coming forward. For example, we learned from M. Simonet's speech on Thursday that proposals we had never heard of were forthcoming regarding Community finance for British nuclear investment. We learned that proposals will be coming forward in respect of Community finance to help investment in offshore oil exploration in order to help the noble Lord, Lord Balogh, and his colleagues to deal with the multi-national oil companies. We learned that proposals would be forthcoming for Community guarantees to sustain a certain level of coal consumption, and officials have said that the Communities could take 20 million tons a year from this country over a long period. These are all uncertainties. We merely learn, largely accidentally, that these things are in the pipeline. I draw attention to them because they explain to some extent the context in which our report was prepared and in which we took evidence.
Turning now to questions for Her Majesty's Government, as distinct from what I would call a straight Parliamentary assessment, and taking note of our report on the Commission's proposals, I think we are entitled to ask the Government what else in this field is on the way. Is it true, for example, that electricity guidelines are coming? Is it true that tariff measures to ensure the optimum use of each fuel are on the way? Are we correctly informed if we heed the rumours that Tax proposals to the same end are being prepared in the Commission as proposals for the Council and for individual member-States to apply later? Is it true that what is called "an energy audit" is on the way? All these things are rumoured and are relevant to our consideration of this Report on the Commission's document. We are entitled to ask: where do the Government stand in regard to the nuclear programme outlined? Where do they stand in regard to the coal programme outlined? Where

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do they stand in regard to the Generating Boards' freedom to apply different classes of tariff in respect of different users? Where do they stand on these three annexes, particularly in regard to freedom to export energy sources such as crude or refined oil products to third countries outside the EEC? Above all, where do they stand in regard to the supra-national energy agency which has been proposed?
The form of government—and surely contemporary political life is showing us this more and more clearly every day—can never be a mere matter of choice. It is almost always a necessity, and the same must apply to the shape of the energy policy which we share. Whether that be so or not, however, surely this House is entitled above all to ask whether Her Majesty's Government will repeat to this House the assurance given to another place that on any matter which a Select Committee refers to Parliament there will be no Council decision until it has been fully disposed of in debate. My Lords, I beg to move.
Moved, That this House takes note of the Fifth Report of the Select Committee (Session 1974) and the Third Report of the Select Committee of this Session on a new energy policy strategy for the European Communities (R/1472/74).—(The Earl of Lauderdale.)
3.26 p.m.
Lord LLOYD of KILGERRAN: My Lords, I am sure that your Lordships will wish me first of all to congratulate the noble Earl, Lord Lauderdale, on his approach to this matter—I almost said "his characteristic non-political approach to this matter". I should like to congratulate him also on his chairmanship of Sub-Committee F, which deals, inter alia, with energy and to compliment him on the very businesslike and enthusiastic manner in which he has thrown himself into this work. As a full-time member of his sub-committee, I am fully conscious of the amount of work that he expects members of his sub-committee to undertake, sometimes at quite short notice, but very properly.
As the noble Earl pointed out, your Lordships are not being asked today to approve any of the proposals made in the Commission's proposals which are considered
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in these Reports. It is quite clear from the evidence which the sub-committees have taken that the Commission's proposals are in no way final. Many will be severely amended and many may be rejected entirely by the Government. But it is in my view most useful that documents of this kind should be considered. Whatever their content or source, and however much Members of this House may object to their contents or their source, they are worthwhile documents for this House to consider. And for this reason: it cannot in my view be over-emphasised that the Western economies, including our own, now have to face the prospect of total economic collapse very largely as a result of the energy problem. We are all in a phase where some miscalculation by experts, and even by politicians, in the West, can have the gravest economic consequences. That is why I submit it is so necessary to have discussions on a common energy policy, and that is why the documents issued by the Commission on energy and energy strategy are worth while considering, however much their contents may be criticised.
Of course, the EEC documents under consideration raise the issue of sovereignty and the importance of our control over United Kingdom energy sources. It is to some extent consoling to have heard what the noble Earl quoted from M. Simonet, and also what Mr. Commissioner George Thomson was reported in the Scotsman on 16th November as saying, as follows:
"It is absolutely clear from the Rome Treaty that oil and gas reserves belong entirely to the country concerned and that the country is completely free to derive the economic benefits by taxation or by nationalisation."
How far his view is accepted by other Commissioners I do not know, but this does not exclude the position that if, along with the other Western nations, we are to protect our economy, we shall have to take some form of common action on energy policy and energy strategy.
The EEC documents referred to in the Reports are clearly optimistic in relation to their proposals for coal production and for nuclear energy production. As the Fifth Report points out in paragraph 2 on page IV:
"The Commission seems to have given insufficient attention to the possibility of the economic use of methanol in internal combustion engines",

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a field where considerable economies can take place. But whatever views noble Lords may have about the technical contents of these documents, I take the view that it is very useful to have emanating from such an international organ as the EEC proposals which can be considered by the various parliaments of the West in order eventually to lay the basis of a common energy policy and to make common international action effective.
This general view seems to be very much in accord with the view of the German Chancellor, Herr Schmidt, when he was speaking in London on 30th November. If I may quote from the text of his speech, he said this:
"How can our countries and parties work together to help us survive the world's structural economic and energy crisis and save our people from the twin evils of unemployment and inflation?".
He went on to say:
"Unemployment and inflation today are not national problems. They have become world problems in the wake of the crisis of the structure of the world economic system—arising from the energy question and the balances of payment question."
Then he said:
"… the industrial States have to establish a stringent energy policy by setting aside any seductive ideas of national prestige. We have reached a point where we have to create a formula which can integrate legitimate national interests and the very dramatic inevitable need for common action."
That is my reason for presuming to intervene in this debate. Knowing the technical and other criticisms made of the EEC documents, I feel that they initiate a discussion on a common energy policy and that the production of an effective energy policy in the Community should be a first step towards economic salvation.

ENERGY SAVING
3.33 p.m.
The MINISTER of STATE, DEPARTMENT of ENERGY (Lord BALOGH): I should like to repeat a Statement which has been made in another place my my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Energy. I quote:
"As the House knows, this year our import bill for oil is likely to exceed £3,500 million. By the end of the present decade we should no longer be net importers of energy. We are almost the only major industrial country in the Western World which has this prospect. Nevertheless, the need to reduce our import bill, and at the same time our dependence on imported fuel, is acute. The need to save energy has been widely recognised abroad. Conservation programmes have already been announced by some other countries, and we are co-operating in the International Energy Agency and in the Community in considering different conservation measures. Progress has of course already been made. It is estimated for example that voluntary conservation measures this year have already saved about 2 per cent. of our normal energy consumption—worth about £150 million at current import prices.
"These savings are a good beginning. But we need to do much more in the years ahead. My right honourable friend, the Chancellor of the Exchequer made it plain in his Budget statement that the Government intend to ensure that energy prices are brought as quickly as possible to a level which reflects true costs. The best advice we have is that a move to such prices might save at least £50 million—and perhaps a good deal more—on our import bill in a full year. To rely on the price mechanism alone however is not enough. The Government has therefore considered what further steps it can take to reinforce the pressures of price. My Advisory Council on Energy Conservation has already produced a number of suggestions for the Government to consider and its work will grow and develop over the months and years ahead. The measures and proposals I announce today therefore must be

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regarded as an interim package, which we intend to extend and reinforce in the future.
"The measures the Government have decided to adopt now are:
"First: To introduce a loan scheme which will provide a source of finance for energy saving investment in industry, to ensure that such investments are not held back by cash flow problems. Loans will be at rates of interest comparable with those under the Industry Act. I expect to make available £3 million a year for this purpose. Full details of the scheme will be announced shortly.
"Second: The Government will use their powers to ensure that the next round of oil price increases bears more heavily on motor spirit than on other oil products. This move will seek further to discourage imports of motor spirit and crude oil used to produce motor spirit, which currently cost us about £500 million a year. Details will be announced when the Price Commission has finished its work on the present round of company applications for price increases.
"Third: The Government have reviewed the programme for reducing the lead content of petrol. The reduction which took effect on 1st November has added more than £10 million a year to our import bill and further stages of the programme could be very much more expensive than this. We do not intend to go back on what has been done so far but have decided that a decision on further reductions should not be made before a thorough review of all the medical and economic implications of proceeding with the programme has been undertaken.
"Fourth: About 3 million tons of coal equivalent a year is used in Government civil ad defence buildings. The Property Services Agency expect to save 6 per cent. of the energy consumption estimated for the current financial year and are planning to spend, over the next few years, up to £5 million a year on improved control equipment, draught proofing and additional insulation. These and other measures aim to achieve eventually savings of around £20 million a year,
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or more than 20 per cent. of current expenditure in this area. The Ministry of Defence expect, given normal weather, to achieve their target saving in the current financial year 10 per cent. of fuel oil and 6 per cent. of other forms of energy.
"Fifth: Public authorities other than Government, for example local authorities, use some 17 million tons of coal equivalent a year. And a further 20 million tons is estimated to be used in public sector housing. The Government are opening urgent discussions with local authorities and others concerned to see how far and in what ways savings can be achieved in this important area of our life.
"Sixth: Speed Limits: excessive speed wastes petrol, as well as costing lives. The Government have therefore decided to reduce the maximum speed limits on single carriageway roads to 50 ph and on dual carriageways other than motorways to 60 mph. Speed limits on motorways will remain unchanged. My right honourable friend the Minister of Transport will make a further statement on this later today.
"Seventh: Mr. Speaker, we will introduce compulsory limits on heating levels in buildings other than living accommodation and a limited range of further exemptions designed to protect the young, the old, the sick, the disabled and certain types of material and equipment. These standards will involve a maximum heating level of 20°C.-68°F. Substantial savings can also be made in private households, and these will be just as valuable as those in industry and commerce. I appeal for the maximum voluntary savings.
"Eighth: The Government recognise the need for improved insulation in private dwellings. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for the Environment has today laid an Order which will have the effect of approximately doubling the standards of thermal insulation required in new dwellings.
"Ninth: In all areas of our national life greater attention needs to be focused on the careful use of energy. My Advisory Council has suggested

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that company annual reports should state the expenditure incurred on fuel and the steps taken to save energy. The possibility of including this provision in future legislation is being considered. Meanwhile Boards of Directors should voluntarily demonstrate their public spirit and their good stewardship by implementing this suggestion. All Boards should make clear within their firms their commitment to energy saving and should make someone specifically responsible for achieving it.
"Tenth: Both management and employee representatives engaged in joint consultation in industry and commerce should see that energy saving is made a regular subject for practical discussion leading to early and effective action. I have written to the CBI and to the Association of British Chambers of Commerce asking them to draw the attention of their members to these points, and to give them their full support; and I have written similarly to the TUC on the important contribution which union representatives can make through joint consultations.
"Eleventh: I have decided to restrict the use of electricity for external display and advertising purposes during daylight hours. The necessary orders for this and the proposed heating standards will be laid shortly and will come into effect after the New Year holiday period. I do not propose to ban floodlighting at this time. I would, however, ask those concerned to consider urgently in the New Year whether the lights so used are really necessary outside the hours when they have maximum impact.
"Twelfth: Finally, to promote and reinforce action in all these areas, the Government will, over the months ahead, develop a publicity campaign to inform and advise industry and commerce, motorists and households, on how they can help themselves and the nation by using energy more carefully and efficiently. In addition, the heads of nationalised fuel industries have told me that they will co-ordinate energy saving publicity.
"It is not possible to estimate with any precision the energy savings which may emerge from this package, not least because many of the effects are
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cumulative over time. The Government are directly responsible for only a very small part of the nation's use of energy. Within this area some impressive savings are being made, as my Statement has shown. For the rest, while the Government can and will give a lead, and will run a major energy saving campaign, success will depend primarily on the efforts of individual businesses and households. There is no doubt that substantial savings are possible. Indeed, if we were to be able to save, within the next few years, say 10 per cent. of our total energy consumption—an amount which currently costs about £700 million a year to import—we would have made a major contribution to our national wellbeing and national future."
That is the Statement, my Lords.
3.44 p.m.
Lord STRATHCONA and MOUNT ROYAL: My Lords, the House will welcome that long and rather complicated Statement on what I suppose we may call an "energetic" afternoon in this House. We have awaited this Statement for a long time—I think I am right in saying that we have been promised it on more than one occasion—and we welcome it now it has arrived. I am sure that voluntary savings can be increased; I am glad that the Government intend to bend all their endeavours in this direction. I cannot possibly comment on all the individual suggestions in this Statement. We on this side particularly welcome the reality which is indicated on the question of cost.
The Statement is a very imprecise one. What does it mean by achieving reality on cost as quickly as possible? If I remember rightly, in that respect we have had trouble in this House earlier, particularly on the question of off-peak heaters. Then, on the question of the increased prices, are the Government saying that the saving that is resulting is purely as a result of economic pressure? Then there is the question of saving heavily on motor spirit. Is it not a fact that there is a danger of upsetting the refinery balance? If you go too strongly towards petrol saving, what do you do with the heavier fractions in the refineries? Some of us are bound to regret the third item in the Statement. Having struggled with the Prevention of Pollution Act (as I think it was finally called) we now find

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that we have to backslide on the lead content. I feel sure that this is an inevitable and sensible move at the present time.
The Property Services Agency will earn a 20 per cent. return on capital invested. This is something that we must obviously welcome; it seems totally in line with the publicity campaign which the Government are proposing. I have a particular interest in the Ministry of Defence figures, to which reference was made, because my recollection is that during the crisis last year a saving of the order of 40 per cent. was made; I agree that this was done with considerable inconvenience and damage. It is good to see that they are still doing this. I wonder whether they are being asked to do enough.
Regarding the need to protect old people, I believe that hyperthermia is a grave danger for them and I hope that the Government will bear this in mind when dealing with the seventh provision in the Statement. Many old people would be delighted if they could maintain temperatures in their homes at 68 degrees Fahrenheit. The Statement seems slightly a rag-bag in the way it is presented; it is a pity that all the industrial points on loans, return on capital and so on are not gathered together. But that is possibly a rather carping presentational point. I support everything that the Government are trying to do, but may I finally ask whether we could use the Factory Inspectorate to go to individuals and firms to point out what can be done, and then to visit again to see what has actually been done?
Lord AVEBURY: My Lords——
Lord BALOGH: My Lords, may I first answer the questions of the noble Lord, Lord Strathcona and Mount Royal, because they were a long series? I will then deal with the points which the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, wants to raise. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Strathcona and Mount Royal, for his very generous and appreciative remarks and for the way he put his questions. Regarding delay, the Government have already taken a number of steps. It was felt that the general situation had to be considered. The noble Lord asked whether the saving is merely due to economic pressure. In fact, it is mainly as a result of changing
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relativities between various production factors. By making energy a little dearer it is hoped that this pressure, so far as industry is concerned, will express itself in cost and investment decisions. As regards the implementation of the price increases, I am sure the noble Lord will realise that his point regarding old people is really concerned with this question. One will need to have a strategy for increasing costs with due consideration of social and economic consequences. Therefore, one cannot in advance say how this will be arranged.
So far as petrol and balance of the refinery programme is concerned, we are unfortunately importing petrol as such, not merely refining, and if we could save imports of petrol itself we should be very happy indeed. With regard to pollution, I would say that the basic reduction, which is important, will be maintained. As my right honourable friend said in another place, obviously the medical advice on this matter is at the moment conflicting, and we shall have to wait further to see how the advantages and the disadvantages balance. So far as defence cuts are concerned, I should have thought that as this will be over a longer period whereas last year, of course, it was thought to have been for a short period—it was shorter, as a matter of fact, than the then Government thought—we have to accept the defence experts' advice. Suggestions that the Factory Inspectorate should be used will certainly be transmitted by me to my right honourable friend and we shall see what can be done.
3.51 p.m.
Lord AVEBURY: My Lords, may we also welcome the Government's Statement so far as it goes, with the exception that the noble Lord on the Conservative Benches raised regarding lead in petrol. I should have thought the move by the Government was short sighted and that, because we face a desperate situation, this is no reason for back-sliding on the measures which we are taking to cope with pollution. So long as medical advice is that increased lead content of the atmosphere may be harmful, particularly to small children, it is quite wrong of the Government to try to save money and imports in this way. With that exception, we very much welcome the Statement.

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May I ask the noble Lord, first of all, whether the true costs spoken of in relation to the nationalised energy industries mean depreciation at replacement cost of their assets? May I also ask whether this includes the kind of return on their capital which they would be required to generate; I think it was 8 or 9 per cent. when they previously had targets of this nature at which to aim, before the price restrictions were imposed on them which made those targets impossible to meet? Secondly, may I ask the noble Lord whether in the discrimination against motor spirit—which is quite welcome for the reasons which the noble Lord has given—he will bear in mind the needs of public transport and the fact that there should not be corresponding increases in the price of diesel fuel, which would hit the public bus companies hard at a period when their labour costs are rising extremely rapidly and fare increases are having to be imposed by London Transport for this reason? Anything he can do to help the public transport industry in this respect will be most welcome.
Has the noble Lord taken medical advice on the question of maximum standards of heating in buildings? Does he not think that 20 degrees centigrade is still higher than is strictly necessary for the health and welfare of people who work in these buildings? I think that the noble Lord will agree that last winter we became used to heating standards that were considerably lower than this, and that after a few weeks one does not find any discomfort at levels of 19 degrees centigrade or even perhaps 18 degrees centigrade, which would represent a considerable further saving if extended to all offices and factories. On the question of insulation of private houses, I notice that the noble Lord mentioned only the standards of thermal insulation required for new dwellings. Will the Government consider a scheme analogous to that proposed for industry, whereby private householders are lent money to insulate existing dwellings to a much higher standard—perhaps channeling the money through building societies and adding the cost to their existing mortgages?
Finally, may I ask the Government to bear in mind that, if we want to save energy, we are not concerned solely with the use of primary fuels but must also be concerned with materials, because,
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whether one thinks of glass, aluminium, copper or steel, all these raw materials begin with inputs of energy; and in addition to saving oil, coal and gas, we mast also embark on a far-reaching programme to save the materials which are derived from that energy? May I ask the noble Lord to take a look at what has been done in this respect through the Office of Emergency Preparedness in the United States?
LORD BALOGH: My Lords, may I beg the noble Lord's pardon if I offended him by answering other questions before he spoke, but so many questions were put to me by the noble Lord, Lord Strathcona and Mount Royal. On the matter of lead, as I have already said, we are the first to regret not continuing with a reduction of lead content in motor spirits. On the other hand, the evidence at the moment is still conflicting as to whether or not the present level is tolerable. No doubt we shall have to reconsider the situation when we are in a better position to do so. I am certain that my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for the Environment will push very hard because he is under great pressure on this matter. So far as motor cars are concerned, as I stated last week the Government were concerned to prolong the 1973 legislation because under it they could regulate the absolute and relative prices of fuel, and we shall wish to shield as much as possible diesel oil as against petrol.
On maximum standards of heat, I think the noble Lord will excuse me. Coming from Central Europe, I am accustomed to better heating, or at any rate to better insulation. So far as material saving is concerned, of course I agree with the noble Lord. But I think that the relative price structure which will emerge as soon as we have this reconsideration of the mostly nationalised energy sector will influence material saving by making much higher the relative price of energy-intensive materials.
3.58 p.m.
Lord ORR-EWING: My Lords, may I reinforce the appeal from one section of our Front Bench and also from the Liberal Benches. It seems to me that this is rather a late conservation programme. The Government have been in Office for just over ten months, and it was very

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obvious right at the beginning that there would have to be very rigorous measures to reduce our imports, and, I should have thought, to restore our reserves of energies, which are much lower at the start of this winter than they were at the start of last winter. This programme seems to me too little and too late. I am surprised that no attention has been given to private housing. It is not enough at this stage simply to reserve the provision for new houses. We must retrospectively try to insulate old houses. There is a tremendous do-it-yourself movement in this country today, possibly because of the price of hiring labour, and I feel that there would be a large number of willing householders who would try to save perhaps half their fuel bills if it was possible either to grant loans or perhaps to subsidise the cost of thermal insulation to their roofs. This is the biggest loss of energy in any single sector, and this is the one factor which has been totally left out of the Government's announced plan.
Secondly, on the industrial front, would the noble Lord bear in mind, as my noble friend has said, that factory inspectors could play a useful part in encouraging energy conservation? May we be assured that the rather lavish lighting standards which were set before this crisis will be reasonably relaxed, so that people who set out to save energy—and we all found how much we could save during last winter—will be encouraged to do so?
Viscount HANWORTH: My Lords, may I also reinforce from these Benches what has just been said about house insulation, by asking the noble Lord whether he agrees that in many cases where there is no insulation in houses—and I believe that in terms of rooms that is something like 12 million—the amortisation period can be as little as just over a year?
Lord SLATER: My Lords, is my noble friend aware, in view of the lengthy Statement which he has been called upon to make in your Lordships' House about the conservation of energy in this country because of the serious position in which we find ourselves, that he ought to be complimented upon the way he has faced up to the questions which have already been placed before him by Members from both sides of the House?
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Secondly, having regard to the question which was directed to him from the Liberal Benches regarding the conservation of temperature inside buildings, is my noble friend aware of what happened on one occasion when such a measure was sought to be enforced within certain factories in this country? Then the workers walked out because of the low temperature and the atmosphere in which they had to work.
Is my noble friend also aware that some of us have very long memories and that we remember the time during the last war when buses were run in this country by gas; they had a gas cover over the top. What investigation is taking place into chemical products in the chemical organisations—for example, ICI? At one time, ICI took the lead in regard to benzole. Will my noble friend agree that it would probably be to the advantage of this country if a small committee of investigation were set up to look at these major firms, which have sources of inspection and inquiry and top scientists at their disposal, in order to see what they are able to come up with at this serious stage in our history?
Lord BALOGH: My Lords, in answer to the noble Lord, Lord Orr-Ewing, of course we should very much like to have as great a do-it-yourself movement as possible. The Department will certainly take this into account when the campaign for energy saving is mounted; it will be a very large part of that campaign. However, may I revert to my unreconstructed past and remind the noble Lord, Lord Orr-Ewing, that he does not like retrospection. I think that retrospection in this matter would be no better than, shall we say, retrospection in the North Sea.
So far as loans and subsidies are concerned, which were mentioned by the noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, I can only say that if noble Lords will look at the red book which was issued at the time of the third Budget they will see that the borrowing requirement is already at a daunting level and that this could mean a major programme. I have already said something about factory inspectors and we shall communicate with the noble Lords in writing. So far as the noble Lord, Lord Slater, is concerned, may I thank him for his very kind words. Obviously everything will be done—like the

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Committee which he recommended to consider another possible source of motor power—to investigate all ways of saving petrol.
Baroness PHILLIPS: My Lords, may I make one plea to the Minister which has not been made so far? I take very seriously the point about materials connected with the use of oil. I notice that the noble Lord mentioned that there will be a campaign. May I beg the noble Lord to put it to his right honourable friend that we do not want any more paper; we do not want any more leaflets to be showered upon householders telling them how to save energy. In my experience, those people who have to pay for energy are quite capable of knowing how to save it. This campaign should not be directed at householders. Instead, I beg the Government not to add more paper to the volume which we are burdened with already, but to look at our own affairs and start with the conservation of the numerous envelopes, agendas, and leaflets which are sent to us every day. This would be an excellent start towards conserving energy.
Lord BALOGH: My Lords, may I thank the noble Baroness for her, as usual, very earthy remarks, and may I say that we shall obviously take that point into account.
Lord RAGLAN: My Lords, while welcoming these many measures which the Government are taking to save energy, may I ask my noble friend why it is that only in the case of motor spirit is a price increase being used as a means of reducing consumption, especially when one considers that our total consumption of motor fuel is only 21 per cent. of all our oil imports? May I also ask my noble friend whether the Government will consider some way of reducing the extravagant use of street and road lighting? Some of us think that motorways are too brightly lit—and well on into the night, also, when no use can possibly be served by such illumination.
Lord BALOGH: My Lords, so far as the price effect is concerned, we do not exclude in any way the possibility of having other means. But at the present moment it seems to us that in the case of this matter, because of its complexity and the enormous difficulties of meeting indi-
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vidual demands, this is the right way of proceeding. However, I do not rule out any change. So far as road lighting is concerned, I think the noble Lord ought to take into account the fact that here there are security aspects and also aspects concerning road accidents. Although sometimes I feel that one might do more I am then confronted by expert advice and usually have to retreat.
Lord BESWICK: My Lords, we have already spent 35 minutes upon this Statement. It is an important matter, but there are two other Statements and there is other business. I wonder, therefore, whether at this point we might proceed to the next Statement.

ROADS: SPEED LIMITS
4.8 p.m.
The PARLIAMENTARY UNDERSECRETARY of STATE, DEPARTMENT of the ENVIRONMENT (Baroness BIRK): Lords, with permission I should like to repeat a Statement which is being made by my right honourable friend the Minister for Transport in another place. His words are as follows:
"My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Energy has informed the House that the Government propose to reduce speed limits on the roads as a contribution to fuel saving.
"In assessing the amount by which speed limits should be reduced there is a balance to be struck. Lower speeds save fuel and reduce accidents; but slower journeys may be uneconomic. Moreover, if speed limits do not command general support from road users their enforcement puts serious extra strain on police resources.
"In the light of these considerations we have concluded that the 70 mph limit should be retained on motorways, but that a limit of 60 mph should be imposed on all other dual carriageway roads and of 50 mph on all single carriageway roads (unless these already carry a lower limit).
"Motorways confer important economic benefits in the movement of traffic, particularly freight. They are designed for higher speeds than other

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roads and even so are by far our safest roads.
"The 70 mph limit on the motorways also provides a differential in speed limits between heavy lorries and other traffic, while allowing these lorries to travel at economic speeds. As motorways carry only a small proportion of total road traffic, a significant saving in fuel would require a drastic reduction in speed, which could only be achieved by a major enforcement effort and loss of efficiency. I have therefore decided it would be wrong to change the present limit.
"The bulk of traffic flows on other main roads, where a reduction in average speeds by even 5 mph would save about £10 million a year in fuel costs. Recognising that in present conditions few single carriageway roads permit sustained speeds much over 60 mph, we are aiming for an effective reduction in speeds on both single and dual carriageways of between 5 and 10 mph.
"I should also remind the House that efficient driving and proper vehicle maintenance can save petrol as effectively as lower speeds. The motoring organisations and others had a lot of sound advice to offer about this last winter. If, as past experience has shown, lower speeds and more careful driving lead to fewer accidents, we shall obtain a double benefit from these measures.
"The new limits apply to all roads in the United Kingdom. An Order in respect of roads in Great Britain will be made on Tuesday, and come into operation at midnight on Saturday 14th December. In respect of Northern Ireland a separate Order will be made."
My Lords, that concludes the Statement.
Lord STRATHCONA and MOUNT ROYAL: My Lords, once again we can welcome this Statement wholeheartedly from these Benches. One point which the noble Baroness has not touched on is this. Are these speed limits intended to be a permanent arrangement and, if so, are we going to have the signs changed throughout the country, or is it regarded as a temporary measure while some kind of short-lived fuel crisis is with us?
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We also recognise that there is a tremendous problem of enforcement. Indeed, I suppose it is probably true to say that these will be mere presentational measures to bring home to the public the need for fuel saving. For instance, visitors from America have been astonished these past months to discover that there have been no speed limits in this country and they have been wondering what we have been doing. That said, are any special measures going to be taken for any additional enforcement by the police? Finally, will the noble Baroness call the attention of the public to the fact that moderate use of the accelerator, certainly in towns, can save almost more fuel than moderating one's speed?
Baroness BIRK: My Lords, in answer to the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Strathcona and Mount Royal, as I understand the position these are certainly long-term measures. It is difficult to say what is permanent, but the Government envisage them as a long-term measure rather than a short-term temporary measure. We shall see how they work out, both in regard to conservation and also from the aspect of road safety.
So far as signs are concerned, the Government believe that there will not be a need for a greatly increased number of signs since the "no restriction" sign which has applied for 70 m.p.h. will be correspondingly reduced. The motorway signs will remain the same and there may be need for a limited number of signs on the dual carriageways, but as my right honourable friend finds this is needed so it will be undertaken.
In regard to enforcement, we naturally rely on the co-operation of motorists to keep to these limits and also on the police to enforce them, as they have been doing in regard to the present speed limits. The publicity which we hope will result from these statements being made and the information given to the Press should certainly bring it to the attention of everybody concerned. The noble Lord's final point was absolutely right and has been mentioned in the reports of the Transport and Road Research Laboratory: that the use of the accelerator, and the method of braking, is an effective contribution to energy conservation.
Lord RAGLAN: My Lords, may I ask my noble friend whether she is aware that there are certain roads in this country which are technically known as "limited access dual carriageways", which look like motorways, that people regard as motorways and to all intents and purposes are motorways, but to which the speed limit of a dual carriageway will apply? It is unfair to motorists who on the last occasion were stopped by police for travelling at above the 50 m.p.h. limit, when they thought they were on a motorway, and I wonder whether my noble friend can ensure that these particular roads are exempt.
Baroness BIRK: My Lords, my noble friend may be surprised to know that, sitting as a magistrate, one heard this particular excuse so many times, long before the Government did anything about changing the speed limit. However, it is true that there may be a question about particular stretches of road and my right honourable friend has indicated that he will be glad to consider such representations. But naturally at this moment it is impossible to make any definite statement about any particular area the noble Lord may have in mind.
The Earl of DENBIGH: My Lords, can the noble Baroness tell me whether the Government will consider the reintroduction of a road fund tax based on the cubic capacity of the private motor car, thus penalising the driver of the large luxury motor car but also safeguarding the rural communities who rely very much on the private motor car as a means of communication? It would be a great help in the matter of energy conservation if the smaller motor car were used, which shows a return of many more miles per gallon than the larger motor car.
Baroness BIRK: My Lords, in reply to the noble Earl, Lord Denbigh, I am sure he will agree that this goes outside the scope of my Statement. It is really a matter for the Budget and for my right
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honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer, but I will make sure that he has notice of the suggestion.
Lord BARNBY: My Lords, while apologising to the noble Baroness for having missed the earlier part of her Statement, may I point out, as an ordinary member of the public who prefers to be driven rather than to drive and who remembers well last November when similar regulations were imposed, that if any driver maintained strictly to the agreed limit it was obvious that heavy lorries, apart from passenger cars, swiftly passed at speeds of more than 10 or even 20 m.p.h. higher. What is the use of bringing in regulations unless the Minister can say that there will be strict police action and that where offences are perpetrated severe fines will be inflicted by the magistrates?
Baroness BIRK: My Lords, in answer to the noble Lord, Lord Barnby, of course driving behaviour varies from one person to another. As he is probably aware, the limit for large lorries, even on motorways, is 60 m.p.h. So far as enforcement is concerned, I can only give the same answer as I gave to the noble Lord on the Opposition Front Bench; namely, that we rely on the drivers themselves to keep to the speed limit and on the police so far as possible to enforce it. The noble Lord will probably be delighted to hear that in fact the magistrates are constantly increasing the extent of the fines for speed offences.
Lord ROBBINS: My Lords, may I ask the noble Baroness a question which I put in pure ignorance? How do the limits that she has just announced compare with the limits imposed in the United States of America?
Baroness BIRK: My Lords, I think I am right in saying that in the United States of America in many places there is an overall limit of 50 m.p.h. We examined that and found that it was not really very satisfactory because one needs different limits on different types of road.

HS146 PROJECT
4.20 p.m.
Lord BESWICK: My Lords, with permission I will repeat a Statement which has been made this afternoon in another place by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Industry. It is as follows:
"On 22nd July Hawker Siddeley Aviation notified the Government that in their view continuing expenditure under the contract for development of the HS146 aircraft, supported by the Government in August 1973, was no longer justified and that the HS146 was unviable as a commercial project at that time. Accordingly they proposed mutual termination. Government considered that the arguments put forward by the firm were not wholly convincing and began a careful examination of their case and the wider issues involved. As part of this review I proposed to the firm that they should meet jointly with myself and the trade unions so that all those concerned in the future of the aircraft could be involved in the issues. Hawker Siddeley refused. However, I have held full discussions separately with the trade unions and the firm and have received many views from Members and the public.
"While the Government were still considering the matter Hawker Siddeley Aviation wrote to me on 14th October saying they proposed to terminate work on 21st October, unilaterally. This they did, cancelling simultaneously all the sub-contracts that had been negotiated. Since then they have stated to me that they are only willing to contemplate carrying on if the Government provide all the required funds from now on which would be at least £120 million, over the next three years at today's prices. This would represent a substantial increase on the original estimate due in part to underlying inflation and to extra costs arising on sub-contracts which would now need to be renegotiated.
"The Government have now completed a thorough review of all the options. We have had to accept that the 50-50 funding is no longer open to us and we have decided, taking all the
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factors into account, that we cannot justify 100 per cent. Government funding. The Government are, however, concerned to maintain this type of capability in the civil aircraft industry, and to give the board of the new nationalised aircraft corporation the opportunity of reviewing the HS146 project itself in the light of the circumstances of the time and their plans for the industry as a whole. Sir Arnold Hall, on behalf of Hawker Siddeley, has assured me that the Company will retain the necessary jigs, tools and drawings etc on the HS146 and relevant design capacity. The Government will be prepared if necessary to contribute towards the relatively minor costs of keeping the option open. I should add that I am now hopeful that a tripartite meeting will take place with the trade unions and Hawker Siddeley Aviation to discuss the situation and how best to maintain a design capability related to the HS146, and I have issued invitations for a meeting to be held later this week. I should also add that the Government are considering how the House could be provided with fuller opportunities for discussing this type of project in the future."
My Lords, that ends the Statement.
Lord ABERDARE: My Lords, I should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Beswick, for repeating that Statement, which I think will be received with a mixture of sorrow and relief. I think there will be sorrow that a project which at one time seemed full of possibilities has now finally fallen by the wayside, but there will be relief that the Government have accepted what was the commercial judgment of the firm concerned, Hawker Siddeley Aviation, that this project was not, in present circumstances, viable. I think that on this side of the House there was a nasty feeling that the Government might go ahead, as they did in the case of the Meriden motorcycle works, and back a project which commercially was not justified. It would be wrong at this stage to commit as much as £120 million to public expenditure, although I would suggest to the noble Lord that he could save even more money by not going ahead at all with the nationalisation of the aircraft industry.

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My Lords, also I think that it is sensible to keep the viability alive. I welcome the fact that the company and the Government have come to an agreement on that point. Can the noble Lord say what this design capability would cost? Has any estimate been made as to what he calls "relatively minor costs", and of the proportion of those which would be carried by the Government? Can the noble Lord say what saving will now accrue to the Government as a result of the final cancellation of the project? Presumably the 50 per cent., which the Government were expecting to have to find will be saved. Lastly, may I ask the noble Lord whether he can say a little more about the last sentence of the Statement:
"… the Government are considering how the House could be provided with fuller opportunities for discussing this type of project in the future."
That refers to another place. Would it apply also to this House? And what has the noble Lord in mind?
Lord LLOYD of KILGERRAN: My Lords, may I also join in thanking the noble Lord the Minister for making this important Statement. As Government action, it will involve the employment of many people. Therefore, I congratulate the Minister that he has issued invitations so quickly to the three parties concerned, so that information can be given to the trade unions about the action of the Government. May I ask the noble Lord whether it is possible for the Government, or the Minister, to inform this House of the progress in these important tripartite negotiations which we hope will take place this week?
4.26 p.m.
Lord BESWICK: My Lords, I am grateful to both noble Lords, Lord Aberdare and Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran, for the understanding way they have received the Statement. The noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, had to get in a bit of a "dig" about nationalisation, but the fact of the matter is that by taking the industry into public ownership there is no cost to real resources at all. If the industry is under public ownership I hope we can ensure that we do not get into the position of starting this sort of thing and then having to cancel it at this point. That is what we want to stop. Undoubtedly, there will be greater confidence in the industry as a result of public ownership.
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My Lords, I was asked how much would be saved by cancellation. I did not use the word "cancellation". It is wrong to use that word. The project has been put "on ice", if you like. The possibility is that when the new nationalisation board takes over, and has an opportunity to review the market, we can start again on an aircraft which, it was thought up to a few months ago by Hawker Siddeley Aviation, would have a very bright future. The cost of keeping it "on ice" will be minimal. It is impossible for me to say yet how much. The Chairman of Hawker Siddeley Aviation says there will be no real cost because the jigs and tools are there, and it is expected that the design staff will be maintained in employment anyhow, so the cost of keeping the project "on ice" will be minimal.
So far as the saving on the project is concerned, the original estimate was £40 million for Her Majesty's Government, but it had risen to something of the order of £54 million. Of course, this will not now be incurred. In answer to the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran, on the subject of invitations, I would remind the noble Lord that invitations to get together with us were issued to the company and are of some weeks standing. They have only just been accepted. Certainly I shall be glad to keep the House informed of the result of the discussion.
Lord SHINWELL: My Lords, might I ask the noble Lord who originated this project, and whether any compensation is to be paid?
Lord BESWICK: My Lords, the project was a Hawker Siddeley project and any question of compensation to the sub-contractors, if that is what the noble Lord, Lord Shinwell, has in mind, will be a matter for the Government and the company.
Lord BALFOUR of INCHRYE: My Lords, it seemed to me that in his Statement the noble Lord the Minister is rather critical of the action of Hawker Siddeley in suspending this project. May I point out to the noble Lord that Hawker Siddeley have a worldwide intelligence sales organisation. If, in new circumstances, that organisation came to the conclusion that the aircraft was not viable, surely Hawker Siddeley would be fully justified, in the interests

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of everyone (including those who own the company) in dropping the portcullis there and then, as they did? If, after further review of sales prospects, the aircraft is unfortunately (in the changing circumstances of the aircraft world) found to be unviable, will Her Majesty's Government have the courage to come forward and say, "Yes, it is not a viable proposition", or for the sake of employment, will they continue something which is not viable?
Lord BESWICK: My Lords, so far as the company's position is concerned, I should be the last to criticise the commercial judgment of this company. Nevertheless, the fact is that up to July, so far as we were aware, they thought this aircraft had a very bright future, and then there was a very sudden notification that they intended or wished to cancel. There is always a matter of judgment here, but it certainly seemed to us that there should have been much deeper consultation before this decision was reached. As for the future, the decision will be made largely on the recommendations of those who will have the responsibility for running this industry in the future.
Lord DAVIES of LEEK: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that while it serves no purpose whatsoever to castigate the British plane makers, who must be among the best in the world, nevertheless we are now facing a situation in society where Conservative, Liberal or Labour Governments, where they exist, are forced to put taxpayers' money into massive enterprise that used to be called private, and it is wrong for the dinosaurs of capitalism to be vindictive about the new face of public enterprise and public ownership? Consequently, I hope this House will have an opportunity of discussing carefully and without Party bitterness this whole problem of the new economics of the 20th century.
Lord ORR-EWING: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that his touching confidence, that in the future when this industry is nationalised no mistakes will ever be made, will not be accepted universally either in this House or the country outside? The Ministry of Defence has long been "nationalised", if I may use that term; but I recall that the Government cancelled the HS681, they can
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celled the TSR-2, they cancelled the 1154, and they bought £1,000 million of American aircraft to replace them. One wonders what the future of the British aerospace industry is going to be if no risks and no ventures are ever undertaken. They are earning £700 million in spares, aircraft and engines, many of them conceived quite a long while ago. We must have a future, and I hope the Government are going to consider whether they ought not to review, as the previous Government said they would, what is the future of the British aerospace industry. If we are to discuss these matters in the House, something I would welcome, would not a Joint Select Committee of both Houses be an appropriate body to consider technical problems and projects of this sort? There is lots of talent in this House, not least on the Cross-Benches, to add a great deal of knowledge to the Joint Select Committee.
Lord BESWICK: My Lords, if I were to say that I am equally touched by the noble Lord's confidence in the private enterprise sector, I do not think it would get us much further. Both he and I have seen over the years the way in which the capital involved in research and development of large aircraft has got bigger and bigger. It has got beyond the possibilities of a private company. It is now getting beyond the possibilities of one single country, certainly of this country. This is really at the base of the difficulties that face the Hawker Siddeley Company. I am suggesting that they do require the greater financial stability that public ownership can give them. So far as the Joint Select Committee idea is concerned, that is certainly a point of view that I have on various occasions put forward, and if it were possible to press this forward no one would be happier than I myself.
Lord TREFGARNE: My Lords, may I say to the noble Lord that, like others, I am sorry to hear this Statement, but I believe that the Government have, on this occasion, taken the right decision, at least for the time being. May I ask the noble Lord whether he is aware of the details of the licence agreement with Rolls-Royce for the manufacture of the engine for this aircraft, and whether the fact that the aircraft will not for the moment be built will have repercussions on that company? May I also ask

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the noble Lord whether when he joins in these three-cornered conversations, as no doubt he will shortly, he will convey to the trade union members our appreciation of the very civilised way in which they conducted their quite effective lobby on this matter over recent weeks?
Lord BESWICK: My Lords, I am greatly obliged to the noble Lord for what he has said on that latter point. Perhaps I may be allowed to say that one of the things which has encouraged me in recent weeks is the way in which, both in the steel industry and in this industry, we have seen what a wealth of intelligence and a wealth of knowledge is there if properly mobilised. In reply to the noble Lord's point about the engines, I think he must be under a misapprehension. The engines were, of course, Lycoming engines. There was no agreement of which I am aware for Rolls-Royce to manufacture them, and the question of the future of the engines will be a matter for discussion.

EUROPEAN COMMUNITIES COMMITTEE
4.37 p.m.
Debate resumed.
The Earl of BESSBOROUGH: My Lords, it is most unusual that your Lordships' House should have three Statements on a Monday, but I have been happy to wait, at the request of the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, because certainly two of the Statements have been extremely relevant to our debate, and perhaps also the third one. On this energy saving day I, too, am very glad that the noble Earl, Lord Lauderdale, put down this Motion for debate in your Lordships' House. I congratulate him on his speech, and if I may say so, on his new chairmanship. I know from personal experience that he has been putting exceptional energy into this job, and he is an admirable chairman of that sub-committee.
I should like also this afternoon to be non-political. However, what I must say at the outset is that the document on which this Fifth Report comments is one which is dated 5th June, and the Select Committee's Report was ordered to be printed on 18th July. That document has, of course, been quite radically revised
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since June by the Commission. The new energy policy to which the Fifth Report refers was, in fact, only a first attempt on the part of the Commission to set out how the Community should respond to the energy crisis at the turn of last year. Since then the Commission has further consulted member States and other interested bodies, such as the European Parliament, of which I am a member, and the Economic and Social Council. Indeed, throughout the year European energy policy generally, as well as policies in specific fuel sectors, have been the subject of repeated discussions and debates in the Energy Committee of the European Parliament and also in plenary at Strasbourg and Luxembourg.
Then, on 19th September this year, the Commission was asked by the Council to develop quantitative objectives for the Community and guide lines for producers and consumers of energy in the Community. Only the week before last, the Commission submitted new proposals which will be discussed in the Energy Council on 17th December, and I assume in a general way at the summit today or tomorrow in Paris. All this means that the document we are discussing is out of date, and if we stuck merely to the noble Earl's Motion—and I hope he will not mind my going beyond it—our debate would inevitably have been somewhat academic.
Neither the noble Lord, Lord Champion, who was Chairman of the Committee at that time, nor the noble Earl, Lord Lauderdale, are at fault here, but the situation has changed and the proposals have been considerably revised. I greatly regret that the Commission's latest proposals do not seem to have been circulated to the Select Committee or to be available to Members of your Lordships' House. This puts your Lordships. in my view, in a slightly ludicrous position, which I hope in future will be remedied. I know that my noble friend Lady Tweedsmuir and her colleagues are doing their utmost to get rid of the backlog of previous documents as soon as possible in the New Year.
Lord BALOGH: My Lords, I am very sorry to correct the noble Earl, but we have that document and it is not materially changed so far as policy measures are concerned. If the noble Earl

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considers that it has been changed, I should like to ask him how it has been changed in such a way that the noble Earl can call our debate today ludicrous.
The Earl of BESSBOROUGH: My Lords, I am very interested in the noble Lord's observation, but I think that my noble friend Lord Lauderdale will confirm that these latest proposals have not been circulated to the Committee. I apologise if the word "ludicrous" is perhaps a little strong, but if we do not have the most recent documents to hand then it makes it a little difficult for us—and perhaps a little academic—to discuss a Paper produced in June. If the noble Lord will bear with me, I shall come later to the exact points, or the main points, on which the new proposals differ from those first proposals.
I was making the point about the availability of documents to the Select Committee, and I think that my noble friends agree with me that we should aim at trying to discuss the same documents at roughly the same time, or at times not too far apart. However, I have been in close touch with the Commission over the week-end, and if I may bring the House up-to-date—no doubt the noble Lord will bring us even further up-to-date—I understand that the new proposals will be broadly as follows: first of all, as the noble Lord, Lord Balogh, has said, the basic, overall policy of reducing reliance on imported energy remains unchanged, but, as I understand it, some amendments (and I hope the noble Lord is aware of these) to the original targets are proposed.
As I understand it, the most important differences are, first, a greater reduction in total consumption by 1985; that is to say, 1,475 million tons of oil equivalent—mtoe ("m toes" as we call them)—instead of 1,575 million tons of oil equivalent. Secondly, there is a reduction in the objectives for natural gas, with a suggested minimum threshold of 290 to 340 mtoes instead of 375 million tons of oil equivalent. Thirdly, there is a higher objective for hydro-electric and geothermal power; 43 mtoes instead of 35. Fourthly, as I see it, the target for nuclear generated electricity again remains unchanged, but aims at a lower
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target for industrial applications of nuclear heat.
Lord DAVIES of LEEK: My Lords, has the noble Earl the solid fuel figures? I am looking at the figures while the noble Earl is quoting the new ones. What is the new figure for the solid fuels? Or do they remain the same? I am thinking of coal, for instance.
The Earl of BESSBOROUGH: My Lords, I was about to come on to those figures. It is expected that our coal production in this country will greatly increas—and also that of West Germany—but I was going to say that a little later on. The objectives of maintaining coal production at its present level remain unchanged in the new document, but closures in Holland, Belgium, and France call for an increased effort from the United Kingdom—which I dearly hope we shall be able to make next year—and also, as I say, an increased effort from West Germany. As requested by the September Energy Council—I do not know whether the noble Lord, Lord Balogh, was there, but no doubt his Secretary of State was—these figures were established after due consideration of national forecasts, taking into account their technical and economic feasibility. But I would emphasise that they are targets (and I like to defend the Commission from time to time) and not forecasts. They are statements of what the 1985 Community energy situation is likely to be in the Commission's opinion. They are not forecasts of what it is likely to be if there is no change in present policies. The figures are not a simple sum of national intentions, but represent what could be achieved by pooling our efforts at the Community level, and even in the context of wider issues posed by international energy policy on a world scale.
I recognise that the targets are ambitious—and they were criticised as being, perhaps, too ambitious in the Select Committee's Report—but I feel that the present situation requires them of us. In that connection I was encouraged to read Lord Balogh's reasonably optimistic view of the United Kingdom's fuel situation in his speech last Thursday. The obstacles to the implementation of the Commission's targets are examined in the Commission's documents, and specific proposals for overcoming them are made in

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the various guideline documents as well as in the proposed directives and regulations. For nuclear energy in particular there exists an action programme originally drawn up in February of this year. It is proposed that these targets be pursued in a flexible planning framework with annual indicative plans indentifying the decisions required at each stage and after examining the progress made and the obstacles encountered. These plans could provide the opportunity to modify targets if the long term outlook changes again as a result of new developments.
Thus, in my view, ambition is tempered by realism and flexibility. Without ambition, very little can be changed. To change the basic trends in energy supply and demand will require a major effort over a long period of time. Anything less, in my opinion, is to tinker with marginalia. The Commission's firm attachment to an ambitious nuclear target is fundamental to the restructuring of the supply pattern. If we are to hold oil consumption to approximately the same level in 1985 as it was in 1973, the growth in demand must be met mainly from nuclear sources. Otherwise there will be swingeing cuts in consumption—those today may be considered to be not so swingeing—and a considerable change in life style which I hope will not come about as a result of today's Statement.
There might also be an increased dependence on imported oil, with all the implications for security and the balance of payments which that entails. It is perhaps an interesting fact that savings on the balance of payments—and I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Balogh, will agree about this—are roughly of the same order as the increased investment effort required if the development of nuclear energy is further accelerated. Thus, in economic terms, the choice is between a high level of internal investment largely met from European resources, or a continuing drain on resources required to meet a growing import bill by increased exports or transfer of assets overseas.
The Commission's document on nuclear fuel supply policy, which was released a little over a week ago, gives the answer to the statement towards the end of the first paragraph on Page 4 of the Select Committee's Report that no mention is made of the European Atomic Energy programme. I think that the Commis-
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sion's ongoing activities and its continuing discussions with national officials, the Energy Committee of the European Parliament, the Economic and Social Council, and other bodies, show its constant involvement in the existing atomic energy efforts by different member-States within the Community.
One minor point in the second paragraph on page 4 of the Select Committee's Report on which I should like briefly to comment, is the criticism that insufficient attention is being given by the Commission to the use of methanol in internal combustion engines. Methanol is certainly a secondary fuel, usually derived from oil or natural gas. But while it may be advantageous to use, it cannot possibly solve the primary problem which is the object of the Commission's Paper. I agree, however, that it should perhaps be included in the overall new Paper which the noble Lord mentioned, Energy in Europe, Research and Development; and I shall certainly suggest this to the Commission. I think I may say that the Governments in the Community—and I hope Her Majesty's Government—attach importance to the Commission's various energy proposals.
The Commission has recently released a full-scale action programme for the rational use of energy. I am informed that United Kingdom officials took an active part in drafting this programme. The original objective of a 10 per cent. saving by 1985 by the Community has been lifted to 15 per cent. for the Community as a whole, this after discussion with member States. Individual member States have, I suppose, more or less agreed to this according to their national resources. It is possible, as I think was suggested in the Kissinger proposals, that an annual action programme will be established to review the rate of progress which should be made each year.
The policy of the proposed energy agency was to have been entirely under the control of the Council of Ministers and heads of member States. No definite proposals on voting procedure were proposed. I can say that the idea is not pursued in the Commission's latest proposals. Meanwhile, as your Lordships know—and this may be largely as a result of the negotiations undertaken by the Government, and if so I give them credit—the

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United Kingdom has joined the international energy agency, an agency which, we must accept, whether we like it or not, has important supra-national aspects. Some of these discussions closely correspond to those envisaged for the Community's agency. In so far as the United Kingdom finds it acceptable to limit sovereignty over its resources in this wider context, in this wider international agency, there does not seem to me to be any obstacle to doing at least much the same within the Community itself, provided of course that the objectives and the voting procedures of the two agencies are essentially the same.
On the question of North Sea oil and sovereignty it is worth looking at the significant address which M. Simonet gave in Oxford on 5th December and to which the noble Earl referred. He said—I do not know whether the noble Earl quoted him fully in context—
"The rapid development of North Sea resources in the early 'eighties is in the interest of the United Kingdom and of the Community. No conflict of interest arises for the Community will pay the world price for what it buys and there need be no doubt that the United Kingdom always retains full sovereign rights to determine the rate of exploration and production should it at some later date decide to introduce a stricter conservation policy."
To comment on what the noble Earl said, I would have thought that probably all the Commissioners within the Commission accept that statement. For my own part, let me say clearly that Scotland—and I would hope the United Kingdom as a whole—must be the first to benefit from the North Sea oil in the British sectors. But if, as I hope, Britain may also be in a position to export some of that oil, I would hope that other member States within the Community would be offered it in the first instance at the world price. It may be that we in the United Kingdom, as I think was said in another debate recently, may want to continue to import heavy oil and perhaps not need all the lighter oil which we hope will be extracted from the seas around this island.
Let me now refer to one of the most recent Commission documents, one dated 27th November. Again I regret that I do not think this Paper is actually before the House. It has recently been released and is entitled Community Energy Policy Objectives for 1985. On page 2 that
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document states that it is the Community's commitment to find expression in the policies of the member States, and that these should be based on the guidelines adopted by the Community. To a substantial degree the Community interest coincides with national requirements because the benefit of greater self-sufficiency and economy in consumption are important for each of the member States.
My Lords, I apologise for going on for so long but I was interrupted a great deal at the beginning of my speech. I hope that the House will bear with me if I continue for a few minutes more. First, I wanted to say that that was the gist of what the Commission say in their latest document. What, therefore, I think the Commission are asking of Britain is by no means an act of charity. There is much in the proposed Community energy policy of direct interest to Britain, quite apart from indirect benefits from consequent progress elsewhere. First, the British coal industry will benefit from the political and financial guarantees which it can obtain. Secondly, further acceleration of the British nuclear effort could reduce the cost of energy to the British consumer. Thirdly, it could relax pressure on the balance of payments. Community finance—and this is important—could reduce the resource costs in these difficult times. Fourthly—I should have thought that this would be of interest to noble Lords opposite—Community finance could reduce dependence on private sources for the development of the North Sea and give the Government perhaps more room for manoeuvre in their relationship with the multi-national oil companies.
Finally, the existence of the Common Market should remove—I think this is right—obstacles to the diffusion of technology and the sharing of markets which can surely only assist the wish of the United Kingdom, and Scotland in particular, to build up a new industrial base when the revenues from North Sea oil become available. One further personal comment on the availability of Community funds: The document to which the noble Earl, Lord Lauderdale, referred was entitled Energy for Europe, Research and Development. There are various annexes. My Lords, if Community funds are to go into energy research and

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development I hope that a fair proportion will come to this country. One of our last energy debates in the European Parliament was concerned with coal gasification. My German colleagues were of course greatly interested in this because if one is to gasify coal it is easier to gasify lignite than other forms of coal as lower temperatures are required. In one of the most recent Resolutions of the European Parliament I agreed that we should include a request for Community funds to go to coal gasification research, but I added that this seemed like a piece of special pleading on the part of my German friends. I further said that if larger Community funds were to go into energy research and development in member States we should in addition to coal research also consider other alternative sources: various forms of atomic energy research, research and development of solar power, of geo-thermal and even perhaps the kind of wave power on which important research work is now being done at Edinburgh University.
I am certain that we must co-operate also on deeper sea technologies, for these are very costly. Therefore, if following my German colleagues' Resolution, which was adopted by the European Parliament on 15th November, Community funds are indeed to be made available, then they should also go into the other kinds of energy research which I have mentioned.
My Lords, I apologise for keeping the House for rather a long time, but I wanted to report the latest information which I had myself received from Brussels; and I beg all those concerned to see that, in a debate such as this, the most up-to-date Commission documents are made available to your Lordships.
5.0 p.m.
Lord WYNNE-JONES: My Lords, we are all very much obliged to the noble Earl, Lord Lauderdale, for introducing this important debate concerning these European Instruments and the Report of the sub-committee. The noble Earl, Lord Bessborough, has put forward a rather strong defence of the Community. It had not been my intention to say very much about the Community, but there are some matters which the noble Earl has raised to which I think a reply is needed. He has mentioned that the Community have removed barriers to the transfer of tech-
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nology and research from one country to another. They may have done: but it surprised me, my Lords, when I was over in Brussels three weeks ago seeing the Commission on this particular matter, that when I asked them if they had any knowledge of what was done by CCMS under NATO they said, "No, we are not allowed to talk to NATO". Although NATO are working in the same City of Brussels, there is a barrier between the Community and NATO; and, although NATO have extremely important and interesting projects upon geo-thermal energy and upon solar energy which they have been developing for some time, and although some of this work is being done in America, with which the EEC has no direct contact but NATO does, yet the EEC apparently has no contact with NATO on these important matters.
My Lords, if we really are pretending that we are setting up a united Europe, surely it is time we got rid of this sort of nonsense. One of my criticisms when we were discussing the European Community two or three years ago was just this point, that it seemed to me that it was essentially a Zollverein; it was not something which Was concerned with those important matters of the trade in ideas and communication between countries, and if it is not going to do this then I think it is going to fail entirely. I would suggest to the noble Earl that he should use all the influence he can in order to try to get the European Community to get rid of the barriers which it itself seems to have created. I do not want to press this matter any further, but it was because the noble Earl raised it that I felt it was important to call attention to it.
My Lords, the Community policy with regard to fuel is a direct result of the oil crisis, and on this we have had two or three different statements. The noble Earl has told us that there is a more recent one which makes a slight modification (but not, from what he said, any substantial modification) in the policy. What is the policy based on? It is based essentially upon, first of all, the idea that oil imports should be reduced to 40 per cent. of the total energy used in Europe. That is the first point. At the present time it is 60 per cent, and they intend to reduce it to 40 per cent. The second point is that they do not

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want gas used except as a premium fuel. They want natural gas to be used only as a premium fuel—that is to say, not for producing electricity—and that is one of the directives which they recently put forward. The third point is that they do not consider that they can do more than hold coal production at best; and therefore they come to the final point (which, in my opinion, is not based on any rational consideration, but is merely the fact that, having done a sum and having put down three items, you are left with a difference) which is that that difference has to be met by nuclear energy.
My Lords, we at the sub-committee tried to find out what were the grounds for this decision. Those of us who went with the Parliamentary and Scientific Committee to Brussels tried to find out from the Commission themselves what
evidence they had to indicate that they could do this. Frankly, I must say that they have not produced any evidence at all that they can reach the targets which they have set. This is a grave and serious matter, because it looks very nice to draw up a table—we have all seen the tables; I am surrounded here by masses of them —and the tables look beautiful. The moment you have typed out a figure, you believe it yourself: when it is printed, everyone else believes it. Really, a figure which is inaccurate in the first place is not improved one little bit by being put into print; and one wants to notice that these figures are, in my opinion, guesswork. Now the guesswork is enormous; the extrapolation is fantastic. At the present time I think I am right in saying that the total production for the whole of Europe in nuclear energy is 16 gigawatts, and they are proposing 200 in 1985. A gigawatt is approximately one large station, and therefore they are pro posing to build 200 large nuclear stations by 1985. How long does it take to build a station? I should not like——
The Earl of BESSBOROUGH: My Lords, would the noble Lord say how many stations the French are going to build? The number is quite considerable, is it not?
Lord WYNNE-JONES: My Lords, I have given the overall figure for Europe. I do not regard the French as being any more accurate in these estimates than the
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rest of the Community, but their figure is 77, I think. If I may take what the American Committee, the Sub-Committee of Energy of the House of Representatives, reported at the beginning of this year, referring to nuclear stations they said that from eight to ten years are now required, in comparison with perhaps six years for a conventional power station of the same size. As to causes of delay—and this is in America, and they are the very ones which are being copied by France; furthermore, the Americans have never built a gigawatt station based on the light water reactor, so they have not even got experience of it—they say that the causes of delay include shortages of trained manpower and manufacturing facilities, shortages of materials and the time for lengthy regulatory processes. We start in 1975, and we say that we can overcome all these and, by 1985, we shall have 200 stations of that capacity built in Europe, of a type which has not yet been built anywhere in the world. My Lords, we are living in a world of mythology; we are living in an imaginary world, if we think this can be done. I do not say that they will not build stations: of course they will. But if they succeed in building 200 gigawatt stations by 1985 it will be a miracle; yet they are basing their whole policy on this. If one looks at most of the estimates that are made one sees that they are of a different character.
This, to me, is the alarming thing about the document proposed by the Community. I have in front of me another Community document but this consists of statements of the actual consumption of different forms of fuel for every five years from 1950 up to the present time. Then it gives an estimate of what would happen in 1975 and an estimate of what would happen in 1985. These are not based on the same type of calculation that the Community has now used; these are estimates taking what is being done at the present time and asking what it is reasonable to think would be done in five years' time and so on. The estimate for 1985 for nuclear energy was that out of a total of 1,810 million tons of oil equivalent—which is the figure that the noble Earl quoted earlier—there was to be 175 million tons for nuclear energy. That is now up to over 200 million tons. At the

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same time the total was reduced from 1,810 million tons, first of all, to 1,575 million tons; then they found that they had not reduced it enough, so, suddenly, between the summer and now it is reduced by another 100 million tons.
How is this done? It is done merely by people saying, "Look, unless we consume less energy, we shall be in a pickle. Therefore let us write down a figure."So they write down a figure, first of all, of 1,574. It is now 1,475, an 18 per cent. reduction of the original forecast. In my opinion this is not the way to do this sort of estimating and calculation. I think that this has been worked out in the wrong way. Looking at the Report I should say that what happened was that they were first told, "This is what you have to aim at. Now find a way of satisfying that." So a lot of calculation was done to produce these results.
This figure of 200 gigawatts of electrical energy by 1985 compares with the figure for this country of 44 gigawatts by 1985. That means to say that Europe—that is, France, Germany, Italy and Benelux; for that is what it comes to since Ireland, is not going to contribute very much, and Denmark may contribute one or possibly two stations but no more—must each produce over the next ten years something like 50 per cent. more than we are to produce. This is a vast programme and I think that it is a dangerous programme. It is a dangerous programme because I do not think that they, or any others, yet know how they will manage to dispose of the products. In addition to that, no one knows what trouble we are going to run into over the importation of uranium. I think the noble Earl, Lord Lauderdale, will confirm that when this matter was mentioned at Brussels, a somewhat airy reply was given that there was about 4,000 times as much uranium in the sea as at present in all the deposits. There is also probably something like 100 to 1,000 times as much gold in the sea as under the ground; but to win a metal from a state of solution, a very dilute state of solution, is a very expensive and troublesome process.
I believe that Europe must go ahead and plan its programme. But I think Europe has made an error in what it is doing. I think myself that we have the opportunity of doing something better
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and that if we depart from our present course it will be fatal. Undoubtedly the best thing that we can do is to put the heaviest investment into coal; there is no question about that. We are already producing more coal than the rest of Europe. According to the estimates that have been given, we shall be producing more than 60 per cent. of all the coal of Western Europe; and the oil and the gas will run out very early in the 21st century, while coal will not reach its maximum of consumption (which will be far higher than that of oil) before the middle of the 22nd century. So we are all batting on a very much safer wicket in playing coal than we are in going for these other things. We should not neglect nuclear energy; we must go ahead with it. But we all hope that we shall not be using in the long term the methods we are using today, because no one can predict how to deal with the residues of what are produced today. Therefore this must be a short term policy, and this is all that we are concerned with at the present time; we are not talking about a long term policy.
My Lords, the noble Earl, Lord Bessborough, referred to the research done in this country into coal gasification. I would ask him to press especially that we have at the present time available in this country probably the finest teams of people anywhere in the world on research and development with regard to coal and coal products. The future is in that field and it would be a fatal mistake if we were to switch from the sort of policy on which we have now started to follow the policy proposed in this Community energy document.
5.18 p.m.
Lord KINGS NORTON: My Lords, may I begin by saying how wholeheartedly I agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Wynne-Jones, has been saying. I had intended to address a few remarks to your Lordships on the subject of nuclear energy in the particular context of the Report we are now considering but I think that the noble Lord has put the case so well that it is unnecessary for me to try to emphasise it. I should like, therefore, briefly to address your Lordships on one small front, on a matter which has been mentioned three times already this afternoon, first, by the noble Earl, Lord Lauderdale; secondly,

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by the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran, and then by the noble Earl, Lord Bessborough—the subject of methanol. We mentioned methanol specifically in the Fifth Report of the last Session rather critically and we suggested it had not been considered by the Commission in the way we believe it ought to have been considered. I gather now from what the noble Earl, Lord Bessborough, has said, that perhaps some consideration is being given to it.
He said—and I hope that I quote him correctly—that methanol "cannot solve the primary problem". Of course it cannot. None of the things that we have mentioned today—nuclear power, coal or oil or hydropower—can solve the primary problem, which will be solved by a combination of efforts in various fields. I believe that methanol or something of that character can make a big contribution.
It is probably unnecessary, but I wrote down what was stated in the communication from the Commission to the Council as being the main objective of their paper. It was:
"… to reduce the dependence on other parts of the world by increasing nuclear power generation, maintaining coal output and reducing reliance on imported oil."
It is particularly in that context that I am going to say a little about the methanol problem.
In power generation, coal, natural gas and nuclear energy can be used instead of oil; but in transport none of these can be readily used instead of oil. From the documents which the sub-committee have seen the Commission do not appear to have considered the possibilities of creating, from sources indigenous to Europe, fuels which could be used instead of petrol. If the EEC countries are, to use the Commission's phrase, to "reduce reliance on imported oil", it would appear to be a matter of major importance to consider the possibilities of making fuels alternative to oil. We have long known how to make oil from coal, though it has not seemed economic to us here in Britain to do it. I suppose the best known plant now making oil from coal is the so-called sasol plant in South Africa; but there coal is relatively cheap and I think they maintain the plant for defence reasons as well. But there
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are other ways of synthesising oil and there are other alternatives to petrol which can be made. The best known and the one specifically mentioned in the Report is methanol.
There is no doubt, my Lords, that with very little adaptation the modern automobile engine could run on methanol. With present tank sizes, we should have to call about twice as often at the filling station because the calorific value of methanol per volume is about half that of petrol. Alternatively, we might have larger tanks, but a perfectly feasible vehicle could run on methanol. This liquid fuel can be made in a variety of ways. It could be made in this country from coal or natural gas, but I quite agree that that might not in the immediate future be the right thing to do because there are strong competitive uses for these fuels and I suppose I should have to agree that, in the very short term, I do not think the prospects of getting methanol in any quantities in this country are particularly bright; but the pros and cons need urgent and expert investigation. In Europe, the situation is a little different. I believe that the Germans are already considering the manufacture of methanol from the large deposits of brown coal, or lignite, which they have and it seems to me that there should be a possibility of the EEC countries collaborating to produce methanol, in quantity if possible, from this source which, if it is not indigenous to the United Kingdom is indigenous to Europe—the great brown coal deposits of Germany.
In the longer term—and the penultimate paragraph of the Report of the subcommittee emphasises the importance of long-term alternative sources of energy supply—while we have no brown coal, we have a great deal of limestone and one can make methanol from limestone and hydrogen. We should have to have a more economic source of hydrogen than we have at present, but I think that it would be worth considering very carefully indeed whether a long-term supply of a fuel alternative to petrol could be found from limestone and sufficiently economically produced hydrogen. It is likely to be expensive, however one makes it, but at least it could be made here and I suggest that that is an extremely important reason for giving it serious consideration, because it would

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not only mean that while we were importing oil we could import less, but also that when we were exporting oil we could export more than we should otherwise have done and so benefit our balance of payments that much more. Therefore, my Lords, I believe, and I know that the sub-committee agreed, that we should study seriously and urgently the possibilities of making methanol and other alternatives to petrol and, indeed, of synthesising petrol itself not only in this country, but in collaboration with the other countries of the Community. I should like to know whether the Government agree with that general view.
As I said, I was going to say a few words about nuclear energy, but I think that the noble Lord, Lord Wynne-Jones, has made that more or less unnecessary, though I emphasise my agreement with what he said. As he said, and as I have argued several times in this House, there is a very severe built-in problem of safe disposal of nuclear waste. Disposal on the scale which is implicit in the present targets of the Commission would be a problem of the first magnitude and must be a serious barrier to the development of a nuclear energy power station construction programme until we have achieved control of nuclear fusion. So I think, with the noble Lord, Lord Wynne-Jones, that we must proceed much more cautiously than the Commission appear to wish to do.
Moreover, the noble Lord mentioned the difficulties of achieving the 1985 targets but, when one reads—and I think that the sub-committee mentioned this in its report—that the target for the end of the century is to rely for 50 per cent. of EEC energy on nuclear power, one is staggered by such a stupendous programme and one wonders whether it can ever possibly be realistic. I think that we shall have to trim the nuclear power station programme and shall have to trim it severely, and that we shall have to depend more on conventional sources of energy, augmented by, I hope, the manufacture of synthetic fuels and—though they cannot give us much—so far as they can help by the wind, the tides, the waves and the sun.
5.28 p.m.
Lord LEE of NEWTON: My Lords, I believe that the House should be indebted to the noble Earl, Lord Lauderdale, for
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the detailed manner in which he reviewed the communication which the sub-committee received from the EEC. It seems to me that one of the problems he had and one of the anxieties that he was trying to convey to us was the feeling that the Government have not made any statement about whether or not they were to retain control of Britain's own energy reserves. As a matter of fact, I shared the noble Earl's apprehensions until I read the Statement made by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Energy in another place last week. I felt much more relaxed after I had read it. The Secretary of State said:
"I am in full agreement with those who say that it is essential that the United Kingdom should continue to exercise full rights and control over these resources, because when it comes to such vital matters as exploration, depiction, disposal and taxation policies it is right that we should decide these in this House. I accept that these matters must remain in the hands of the British Government."
A little later, the Secretary of State confirmed that:
"We see the EEC energy policy at most as the harmonisation of national policies, with control exercised by national Governments."—[OFFICIAL RFPORT (Commons), 3/12/74; col. 1513.]
My Lords, that was a most vital statement and one which I certainly welcome and it can permit us to look more at the policies outlined in the Document R 1472/74 with that great fear out of our way.
As has been said, the policy statement aims at a 50 per cent. nuclear power contribution and a 30 per cent. national gas contribution by the end of the century, leaving some 20 per cent. for coal and oil. Quite frankly, I cannot see how that can harmonise with the present objectives which we have in this country. It seems to me that by that time we shall be hoping for a very large increase in our oil supply from our own resources and we are now, as I understand it, to step up our efforts to increase the capacity of our coal industry. I do not wish to convey the impression that I am opposing planning. I am all in favour of planning our energy supplies, though in the White Paper that I produced in 1965 I confined myself to what might be considered the rather parochial aspects of one nation planning for five years ahead. Here we are expected to believe that we have the

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"bones" of a planning document for nine nations looking 25 years ahead. If I may say so, I found it quite sufficient to have to look even five years ahead—and if I might be allowed to put in a "plug" for my own Paper, I got it right. The coal equivalent for 1970 was 324 million tons, which is precisely what we burned, and indeed I got the coal almost right. Strangely enough, the one that went wrong was nuclear energy.
I had intended to make many of the points that were made by my noble friend Lord Wynne-Jones. Perhaps I was a little biased—I was relying heavily on the AGRs, which encountered the same snag as every reactor system that I have heard of seems to have encountered. Therefore, my noble friend was absolutely right. He talked about the technology gap, but I would describe it as the credibility gap. It seems to me fantastic that we are seriously asked to believe that in the next few years the nations will agree on the types of reactor programmes that will solve the problems of waste disposal and supplies of uranium. Indeed, one of the issues which will determine cost is whether we can agree on the life of a nuclear reactor. At one time, 20 years was deemed to be the maximum, but many of us felt that a reactor could go beyond that. Certainly it has a very remarkable effect on the costing if you can go further than that 20-year period which we then accepted.
I listened with interest to the noble Earl, Lord Bessborough, but I wondered which paper we were debating when I listened to him. He mentioned four papers that I have never seen, all of which were supposed in some way or other to change certain aspects of the paper we are debating. My noble friend Lord Balogh, who confided that he had seen those papers, also said that they made no essential difference at all to the policy content of the paper which we are debating. So we must assume, in our ignorance, not having seen these other papers, that the content of the Paper R/1472/74 is still broadly the policy upon which the EEC intends to embark. I must say that I doubt not only our capacity to produce power stations at the pace mentioned by my noble friend, but whether we could get
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common agreement on any of the things which flow from a decision about the kind of reactor programme which is required.
Turning to natural gas, again we are asked to believe that by the end of the century we can rely for 30 per cent. of our energy supplies on natural gas. I have discussed natural gas with a great many fuel scientists. They all agree that it will be the first of the fuels to run out. We have, of course, great finds in Groningen upon which much of this forecast is based, and we have the finds in the North Sea, but we are now going to increase the pace of exhaustion of those finds. I remember Professor Schumacher arguing that there will be no natural gas left by the end of the century. We have since found some in other parts of the world, but the rate of exhaustion is probably higher now that the rate of new finds. One can look around and say, "There may well be alternative sources", and one of the sources we were tapping even before we had North Sea gas was Algeria. We had a long-term contract for importing Algerian methane, which I take it is still a valid contract. We were looking at the idea of importing from Nigeria, which also has great reserves of natural gas.
But we are now in a situation where a huge part of the world is starved of oil because of the pric—and I am thinking of the Third World itself—and where nations such as Nigeria and Algeria will be looking far more to assisting the Third World nations than the comparatively prosperous nations of Western Europe. So I should have thought that, instead of having an expectation of 30 per cent. of our energy coming from natural gas, we might not be able to get the imports we need. It is also quite probable that much of our own North Sea gas, and indeed the finds in Groningen, may well be running out quite quickly. I hear that the Germans are importing from the Soviet Union. We are trying to get safe fuel. Will anybody suggest to me that this is a way to get safe fuel—by relying on a nation which may well think in political, rather than in economic, terms of supply? However, I do not wish to take up too much time. My noble friend made certain points concerning atomic energy which I felt were right, and which confirmed what I wanted to say.

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Turning to coal, we in this nation preserve more of our coal potential than any of the Continental nations. Indeed, in the White Paper which I keep plugging—and this was forecasting in 1965—I hoped that by 1970 we should have 170 to 180 million tons of coal. In fact, in 1970 we burned 163 million tons, so I was not far off. Unfortunately, another White Paper decimated that and we got down to 130 million tons. Now we shall be lucky if we get 115 or 116 million tons this year. I understand that the National Coal Board intend to increase that to some 150 million tons per annum, which I think is a very proper programme upon which to embark. Looking at paragraph 6 on page 19 of the Report, one sees that they describe coal as a stopgap. This is a foolish attitude for people who are forecasting so far ahead. It is the only fuel on which they will be able to rely by the end of the century, with the exception of the oil which they wish to discourage. It seems to me that one of the problems which the Community are trying to solve is how you get a certain quantity of energy without going in for more of the coal which they still have in Western Europe.
Under these conditions, I really cannot believe that the British Government could possibly accept any part of the kind of Report which the House is now engaged in discussing. Indeed, let us take in the Report itself. First of all, in 1973 they were basing themselves on 227 million tons of solid fuel, falling by 1985 to 175 million tons, or 10 per cent. Then, because of the oil problem, that was immediately increased to 250 million tons, or 16 per cent. When the real "guts" of the case came to them, and the problems of oil struck them in 1973, what did they do immediately? They increased their demands on coal; yet by the end of the century we are asked to believe that coal will be looked on purely as a stop-gap for the production of electricity.
I was very relieved by the Statement of the Secretary of State in another place. I trust that the Prime Minister, who today is discussing these matters in Paris, will make it clear that we have not embarked upon this huge programme to supply ourselves with oil, coal and the natural gas in order to throw it away on people who do not propose to make any real effort to produce their own energy. I do not
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wish to nag. I am all for economic and industrial co-operation. I advocated this at Strasbourg as long ago as 1949, when we first began. I want to see it now, but to believe that this nation could go along with the type of policies adumbrated in the communication we are now discussing is wrong. It would be fatal. We would be quite unsure of where to go once it was clear that nuclear energy would not produce the 50 per cent. upon which the Paper is based. By that time we would be too late to be able to expand our coal production, and, therefore, there would be terrible suffering and degradation throughout the United Kingdom.
5.42 p.m.
Lord MACLEOD OF FUINARY: My Lords, as I understand it, this House is taking note of the Fifth Report of the Select Committee on A new Energy Policy Strategy for the European Communities, and this new energy policy strategy is contained in a communication from the Commission of the EEC to the Council of Ministers. Again, as I understand it, ultimately, unless some instruction comes from the British Parliament to our representative on the Council, then the new strategy policy may become the law of the Community and nationally binding upon us.
My interest is to see that certain aspects of the proposed present policy should not become binding on us. I do not intend to address your Lordships at any length. May I, for the sake of brevity and clarity, summarise my objection in a sentence and express it under two heads. In due time, I shall be asking this House to object to the control of nuclear power being shared with other nations, either with regard to civilian energy or military energy. As your Lordships are aware, the present proposition is that a Community agency should be established having a legal personality and financial autonomy, under the control of the Commission. One of the results will be a considerable increase of nuclear energy to be activated by 1985, as has been explained by several speakers.
My objection under the civilian head is not hypothetical. Only last week in France we read in the newspapers of a container of uranium ore which was split open on a train; the powder leaked out and for two and a half miles the track was contaminated. More by luck than

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good guidance, no great tragedy has occurred as a result of that.
However, as has already been explained so well by my noble friend Lord Wynne-Jones by 1985 vast events are to take place. If I may cut down his figure to relate them to France only, already France plans 50 nuclear power stations grouped in 30 atomic parks to produce 70 per cent. of the electricity in France. Again, already a giant factory is being constructed with one of the fuels, enriched uranium, being produced. This coming year, the "Superfenix" factory is being established in France, which is going to produce plutonium in vast quantities. As all of us know, all that is made in these places will have to travel by train or motor car from place to place. The result, in tens of thousands of cases of lung cancer, is sufficient for us to say that we must keep control at the civil point.
My only other heading is as follows: nor should we hand to others control of nuclear power for military purposes. Already we must agree, surely, that nuclear proliferation for military possibilities is getting out of hand. It was on 6th August 1945, that the first bomb was dropped at Hiroshima. In view of the fact that this House is never opened except by Christian prayer, may I be allowed this very short reference to what the Christian faith is. Augustine gave us his definition of God when he said that
"God is an infinite circle whose centre is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere".
The obvious Christiain claim is that this is revealed in the person of Christ.
The greatest discovery that has been made in this century in the scientific world is that there is no such thing as dead matter. The ultimate form of matter is light energy. Unless the whole Christian claim is simply a piece of poetry, this is terrifying, because Christ is not just the light of the Church, he is the light of the world and he is the life of the world. This is further fulfilled poetically in the story of the Transfiguration, which I shall not repeat, except to say that Christ became translucent. As I said, it was on 6th August that we dropped the bomb at Hiroshima; that is the day of the feast of the Transfigura-
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tion; it was a pity that we chose that day to take the body of Christ and use it for bloody hell. I am speaking as accurately as I can. This is the area in which there should be protest, at least by the Church.
I know that President Truman spoke at about the time of the dropping of the bomb. I believe he spoke completely sincerely when he said he allowed this terrible thing because it was bound to teach the nations of the earth other ways of settling their international disputes. I believe he was sincere, but we are agreed that that has not happened. Now it is the "balance of power", and the same America has locked up in cupboards nuclear power for military purposes equal to one Hiroshima bomb dropped every day for the next 170 years. Russia, we are always being told, is slightly ahead of that, because it is the "way you keep the peace". Seven years ago China was spending £7 million on nuclear research for warlike purposes and last year she spent £600 million on nuclear research for warlike purposes. It is the "way you keep the peace". Now that China has got it, of course India must have it. Very recently we have had President Bhutto of Pakistan saying, "The people of Pakistan are ready to offer any sacrifice (even to eat grass) to ensure nuclear parity with India." Then Egypt recently declared that she had nuclear power. We have had the Shah of Iran even more recently stating that "If more nations arm themselves with nuclear weapons Iran will seek possession of them sooner than you think". Why not? It is "the way you keep the peace". It came out last week that Israel now has it. France has had a centre—presumably a secret one—since the 1950s in the deserts of Palestine. This is getting out of hand.
To summarise and close, there is the obvious situation in which the then President of the United States of America little more than a year ago, arranged that the nuclear Powers in Scottish waters should be put on the alert so far as I know without consulting us at all. It was certainly in December of last year that the then President was asked by two congressmen as to what the position was with Russia. He said, "I have only got to go over to that phone, pick it up, and in half an hour 70 million people will be dead." That is one of the reasons

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why we dare not become sharers with others in the control of nuclear power. Do not let us dismiss this as just impracticable pacifist poppycock. My last quotation, and my last word, is that of Sir Basil Liddell Hart, the well-known correspondent, until two and a half years ago, of The Times, and the best known war correspondent. I have quoted this before in this House, and I may well quote it again. Here is the war correspondent saying:
"The A bomb makes nonsense of the aims of pursuing victory in a total war. The term ' pursuing victory' becomes totally absurd. Anyone who dreams or talks of ' winning the war' is worse than absurd—a menace to his country and to all humanity ".
We are spending thousands of millions of pounds for something which nobody can win. He goes on:
"To make non-violent resistance a national affair will be an extremely difficult task. Probably the most important thing is to educate people and convince them that it is a workable policy."
He ends:
"The more Governments realise their incapacity for military defence, the more they will begin to take non-violent civilian defence seriously."
Here we have the words of the best known war correspondent in the past decades in our country. In the light of this, do not let us get mixed up in sharing nuclear power for military purposes.
5.52 p.m.
Lord ORR-EWING: My Lords, I am very happy to follow the noble Lord, Lord Macleod of Fuinary, on a discussion on nuclear power. I have taken a special interest in this matter, both in my capacity for seven years as a junior Defence Minister in another place, and also because by sheer luck, or perhaps guidance from an intelligent tutor, I took my degree in nuclear physics at Oxford. It is a long subject and I take a different view. I think it is the balance of terror which has forced some of the big Powers to concentrate on conventional arms and, perhaps, more so on subversive warfare to achieve their objects.
I cannot help wondering whether the new form of World War 3 will be in the field of subversion because the balance of terror is so frightful that no nation—not even, I hope, a small one—would contemplate taking that risk. I do not think the dropping of the bomb—however terrible that was—can be thought of
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as a crime. It shortened the war and saved an immense number of lives. One is fooling oneself if one thinks that research would have stopped if the bomb had not been dropped. It might have been slowed by a year or two, but I believe each independent nation would have gone ahead with its own nuclear research and development. What the statesmen of the world have to do—and, indeed, so many have tried to do this—it to slow the proliferation of nuclear weapons to the maximum extent because the greater the proliferation, the greater the risk of accident or misjudgment. I do not want to disassociate myself from the religious background so ably put by the previous speaker.
We are looking at an expansion of energy needs of the EEC which the Fifth Report of the Committee of which I was proud to be a member, estimates at over 50 per cent. in the next 12 years ending in 1985. I believe that this is unrealistic. I do not believe the nations of Europe and we in particular will have the capital resources or resolution to expand our sources of energy at that rate. In this forecast, solid fuel is to be expanded by 10 per cent. throughout Western Europe. As was wisely said by a previous speaker, this will be largely as a result of the United Kingdom and Germany. I can only say that with troubles in the mining industry, and, particularly, with the National Union of Mineworkers, it looks as if our output this year will not meet the fairly modest target that was set of 140 million tons, despite the immense investment of capital in that industry by successive Governments.
In oil, generally, an expansion of 7 per cent. is expected. In natural gas output is to be expanded by 200 per cent. According to the forecast we are to treble the output in natural gas. I hope that this is possible; it certainly needs the least amount of capital equipment, but, as the noble Lord, Lord Lee of Newton, said, this may not be feasible. I am not in a position to comment on the 15 per cent. expansion in hydro-electric energy. In nuclear energy the most ambitious targets are set for Western Europe. Nearly 19 times as much nuclear energy is to be available for Western Europe, ourselves included, within 12 years. It takes about seven years to put a new nuclear power

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station into operation. I see that the noble Lord, Lord Balogh, suggests 10 years; that makes my case even more forceful. Certainly it takes between seven and 10 years, and 10 years is a better figure bearing in mind the problems we had with the advanced gas cooled reactor in this country. I hope that will be pessimistic for the future, I should like to see a shorter time. I do not believe Western Europe will expand 19 times their output of nuclear energy from the new nuclear power stations.
I do not want to concentrate on the overall plan because we have no control over what Western Germany or other nations will do. Admittedly we need an overall authority, but we have minimal control. We in this country are really most concerned with the nuclear power programme and with the North Sea programme. I hope that noble Lords will forgive me if I therefore concentrate on those two programmes. It costs approximately between £300 million and £400 million to build a new nuclear power station and it takes from seven to 10 years. I am not sure when our AGCs come on-stream; there is still some doubt as to the exact time. It means another huge programme on top of the announced programme, which I support entirely, of Her Majesty's Government. It is a very big investment by this country in nuclear power stations, and I doubt whether we could carry our share.
One remembers France has taken a very ambitious view on nuclear power stations and has recently taken an order to export five to Iran, and no doubt will accept orders for other places. It is not just nuclear power stations for Western Europe; it is for Western Europe and for export as well. I doubt whether this is a realistic programme.
In the matter of the North Sea I was delighted—and the quotation has been made several times in this House—that M. Simonet at his lecture at Oxford said that the United Kingdom would always retain full sovereign rights. This needs to be said loud and clear several times because there are those who sincerely doubt it. I believe Her Majesty's Government are in danger of handicapping the realisation of the North Sea by the time-scale which has been set. They are to set up a British
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National Oil Corporation in accordance with their Election plans. No single person on this side of the House is likely to change their minds on that. I would urge them to keep this to a small number of expert people. I hope that Parkinson's Law is not allowed to operate in this field. The number of people who will be able to lend their expertise is only small, and there is a danger once you start a national corporation of this sort, that it mushrooms into a great organisation of clerks, secretaries and the like, all of whom will be dependent on the nucleus of knowledge of the top people.
I would urge that the Government retain the right to pay those top people the going rate for the expertise for which they need to have aid to command. It is rather like the pilots of the Jumbo 747s; I do not think it is a very fair comment that they should be paid the same as those in the United States. But in this area of undersea oil particularly at the depths which we are now reaching most of the expertise is international expertise and much of it rests with United States personnel. We will therefore have to pay the rate for the job if we are to attract back British nationals to man up the British National Oil Corporation.
On capital investment I know at the moment of, and I have seen, two estimates—the lowest is that £500 million is going into capital investment in North Sea oil every year, and the other estimate was of £1,000 million. This is an enormous load for any series of companies however strong they are, however multinational. The Shell Company is currently putting £1 million each day of capital investment into the North Sea and even Shell and companies of that size are not free of the problems which everyone of us has in our industrial life of cash flow.
So I urge on the Government: please do not set your taxation too high. Make it flexible and do not make it swingeing, because if you do this oil plan will not come to fruition. Capital investment will not continue at the rate which is necessary. It is proposed that the North Sea oil companies, to encourage them, can charge 50 per cent. more than the cost of plant they are putting in. This seems an admirable idea in principle. But I hope the Government will note that that is very much more helpful to the large

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companies which are making large profits than it is to the smaller companies which are making marginal profits. If it is very important to get this on-stream at the earliest moment, then both large and small need to play a part.
Finally, have the Government looked to see the manner in which South Africa taxes her gold mines? They relate the taxation to the gross margin in each individual mine. This seems to me the sort of yardstick which should be used in suggesting what taxation should be applied in various parts of the North Sea. Where it is easy, and there is vast production people should pay a higher rate of tax than when it is less easy and where production is not so immense. I think that this principle should be applied to oil wells.
There is another smaller point of taxation. I understand that the present proposal is that the Minister will have to rule what constitutes an individual oilfield. I feel desperately sorry for the Minister if he really has this responsibility. It will be a very difficult judgment. When you have a production platform there, or an exploration platform, it is very difficult to make a hard ruling whether the oil is coming from a neighbouring geological structure or from your own. I would urge the Minister to get out of this responsibility, or he will be up against a large number of international geological oil experts who may well challenge his judgment or ruling.
My final point is: please do not impose swingeing taxation as has so recently happened in Norway. Norway heard, I think as a result of speeches made in the General Election campaign, that this Government of the United Kingdom is going to take 90 per cent. of all profits which the companies derive. As a result, big multinational companies are in danger of applying no more effort to Norway and of going elsewhere to make their profits. We must not set out taxation targets as high as this. We shall get the co-operation only if reasonable taxation is levied on the efforts they make. I hope, therefore, that the Government will take notice of these general ideas. If not, we as a nation are not going to realise our plans for extending North Sea production which is so essential to us and equally essential to the EEC.
6.5 p.m.
Lord DAVIES of LEEK: My Lords, as always I listened with interest to the noble Lord who has just sat down because of his constructive and workmanlike approach he brings to these problems. I do not want to enter into any cut and thrust this evening, but I want to ask why we are having this debate. What is the purpose of this debate? On another occasion when I get the opportunity, having made a study for 30 years of the dangers of radio-activity, we will talk about it. Only this week we heard about a lorry driver driving radio-active waste material and he was 200 times above the safety level but knew nothing about it. But that is not why we are having this debate. We are having the debate because the Select Committee did its duty. When we nominated this Select Committee we gave it the duty to consider Community proposals, whether in draft or otherwise and to draw the attention of the House to them. Page iv of the Fifth Report states:
"The Sub-Committee believes the question of United Kingdom sovereignty over its indigenous resources to be one of paramount importance, not least when the immediate and potential resources of coal, oil and natural gas in and around the United Kingdom exceed most, if not all of those of the other Member States."
That is the 64,000 dollar question to be looked at tonight. The nation is engaged on losing its sovereignty and that exercise is growing.
In 1962 we put down five safeguards for entering the Common Market; whether people have retreated I am not concerned. We said, first, there should be strong and binding safeguards for trade and other interests of our friends and partners in the Commonwealth—and they were friends and partners when we needed comfort and succour and stood alone in the fight against Nazism. Secondly, we wanted freedom to pursue our own foreign policy. With Dr. Kissinger entering the field, that has almost gone. Thirdly, we wanted fulfilment of the Government's pledge to our associates in the European Free Trade Area. We have forgotten that pledge. Fourthly, there was the paramount right to plan our own economy. Fifthly, we asked for guarantees to safeguard the position of British agriculture. I contend that this was brought to the House so that we could perform our Constitutional function. But

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worse than that our sovereignty is in danger.
The Select Committee drew our attention to the communication which states that the requisite support towards achieving these tasks could be assigned to a community agency—this is another group of hard-faced men in a bureaucratic setup, where members and representatives selected by Parliaments have no say at all. People can say, "Oh" and "Ah", but the fact is that this is not a democratic set up, and the Commission is of paramount importance and makes decisions with experts and a few groups of officials. It is no good regretting the fact that we have moved in and are now finding out the gains of moving in. This organisation would operate within the framework of policy definedby the Community's institutions—the word "institutions" is a hard, brittle one—things that are written on paper that have no space for manoeuvrability. You have things which are written in black and white. That is not the way to run human affairs. With the necessary financial means, it would be under the control of the Commission and would be assisted by a consultative committee.
We should be allowed to have a few consultants comprising representatives of member States and interested parties—industry, workers and consumers. The statement leaves unclear, as everything else is unclear, the form proposed for such a body—whether it is to be on the lines of the European Coal and Steel Community or some other advisory body. This will have to be fully explored by the United Kingdom Minister, for it may involve sovereignty.
We have been given figures in the Report (there has been a bigger and more accurate Report since), but they are "guesstimates" made with a slide rule and a calculus. They are not real figures. I will not enter into that question because both noble Lords who spoke on this side of the House made an excellent point. However, let us take a vital issue. We lost the American colonies because of prices. Lord North and the people he had around him took the same attitude towards America as some people take towards the European Economic Community today. They are demanding that
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the Community shall have a legal personality and financial autonomy. Even if the risk is minimal, we cannot divulge and disorganise prices. That cannot be allowed because it will lead to instability: of the market, and the Paper says that that cannot be tolerated; it would hinder the implementation of the objectives of the energy policy. So why pretend from all the statements here that energy a few years hence will be controlled by this Parliament? Energy is of paramount importance. Neither this House nor the other House will have final control over prices, ' and there is nobody in this Chamber who will contradict that after reading this Report. We are betraying what the British people believe that they have built up over centuries. America left us because her cry was "no taxation without representation". We shall have control of prices here without representation.
My Lords, I shall try to limit my speech to ten minutes and leave out the other points I wanted to make. Let me, however, ask a question. The Advisory Council on Energy Conservation is headed by Professor Sir William Hawthorne, CBE. It met for the first time in October, following the official appointment of an 18-strong team. Among the members are Sir Derek Ezra, Chairman of the National Coal Board, Dr. A. W. Pearce, Chairman of Esso Petroleum, and Sir Frederick Warner, a member of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution. It is being run along the lines of the United States Federal Energy Commission. Were those people consulted? Were they given the relevant documents from Brussels to discuss constructively the implications of this policy upon Britain's planned approach to energy? One of our safeguards was that we should have the right to plan our own economy.
I know something about coal. May I suggest that the one indigenous fuel that we have is coal. I said the other day that instead of taking miners for the next thirty years to dig a hole under the sea between France and Britain we should use the capital involved to employ miners to open up the new Selby colliery where we have a 500-year supply of coal. Soon we shall have no miners in Britain. My country is no longer sending boys to the pits. The men in the

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Scottish mining areas and in Durham are fine men and they have better opportunities than people like me had in the 1900s. When they obtain scholarships to go to university today they are not given a loan of £25 that they have to pay back later—as I did. This is a different kind of world. But we still want men to cut coal. We have got the coal, and instead of Britain talking gloomily we should pull up our socks and get down to the job in an attempt to put Britain on her feet again. Then we should do the things which traditionally we do well and build up a great Britain—not great in land ownership but great in its character.
According to the clock, there is one more minute left to me. This is supposed to be a wise group of people, but what do I find? I was delighted to hear my noble friend Lord Lee speak about them. They talk about security. Heavens above! What is wrong? Where will they get their natural gas from? His very words were that they are leaning heavily upon imports. Where are we told in the document that we are getting it from? We are getting it from Algeria, Norway, Russia and Iran. This makes a "monkey" out of NATO. It is just making a "monkey" out of our so-called defence system. For heaven's sake! let us face the fact that we have a small standing Army, and it is a good standing Army. We need defence, but energy links up with defence. Was there any consultation when the Common Market members discussed their energy policy with NATO? The answer is, No. They are two separate bodies.
My Lords, I have spoken one minute longer than ten. My point has been made. Therefore why should I reiterate the wise remarks about other subjects which have been uttered since I first began to listen to the debate today? All I will say is that the sooner Britain attends to its own house and thinks about the Common Market about 25 years hence, not just about a bunch of nations buying cheap and selling dear, the better. "The Six" are not Europe. We are a little Common Market. We want a Europe of all the nations. That, one day, is my ambition. It is an old-fashioned Zollverein that you are being led up the garden path to join.
6.18 p.m.
Viscount HANWORTH: My Lords, some years ago I received some very sound advice from our present Leader of the House, the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd. He said that whereas Front Bench speakers had to be prepared to speak on any subject, it did not behove Back-Benchers to speak unless they knew about it. Although I have a certain amount of technical background and went out recently to Brussels with the Parliamentary Scientific Committee, I am only too acutely aware that there are many areas in which I should have liked to do further research and look into the question in more detail. However, I hope that what I shall say will be of some use.
I have considered whether to depart from what I had intended to say but I think my speech is argued fairly tightly and stresses a number of the points which have already been made, although from a slightly different angle. First, my Lords, if there is any lesson that we can learn from the past, it is that no detailed energy policy or forecast has stood the test of time, particularly when based upon economic considerations. I believe, however, that certain factors and constraints are reasonably beyond doubt when considered in the short term, and it is wise to be quite clear at the outset what they are. We can also list the long-term possibilities and then make a reasonable estimate as to the earliest date upon which they might affect the issue.
Working on these lines, I believe that the only energy sources which will be of major importance—and I underline "major importance"—in the short term are coal, oil, natural gas and fusion reactors. We can forget for the moment the other possibilities such as solar power. Nevertheless, we must press forward research on the most promising of them and we must never forget that if fusion reactors became a practical possibility we might then wish that we had not committed too much capital investment upon other long-term lasting solutions. I certainly believe what other speakers have said—that somebody ought to look more carefully into the methanol solution for providing fuel for vehicles. I have a feeling that the "with it" thing is to talk about the hydrogen economy for the future, and it may well be that that is

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at least one remove away. We may have to use—and it will be better to use—a methanol or possibly benzol solution if we run into difficulties with regard to fuel for vehicles.
Ideally, I believe it would be best to make greater use of mined coal and conserve the smaller resources of fuel and natural gas, but being realistic it does not seem that this is a practical solution, either politically or economically. I am therefore afraid we may have to arrive at the conclusion that if we can maintain and slightly increase our present output, that is the best we can do. Let us, however, never lose sight of the possibility that if we could produce mined coal in quantity, reasonably cheaply, that would be by far the best solution since we have long-term reserves.
I therefore conclude that from the EEC point of view their concentration on increasing power obtained from fusion reactors is the only answer if they want to lessen their dependence on outside resources of oil. My impression is that although their reactor programme is probably impracticable, it is set as a target, and in spite of what has been said this evening I really do not see that there is much else they could recommend. I think this point has been made by other noble Lords. The Commission started with a requirement and said we have got to meet it, and therefore the answer is 150 (or whatever the figure is) reactors.
If, however, we look at this from a purely national and British angle it is probably not very attractive. It looks as though North Sea oil and gas will solve our problems by the 1980s and will last for some years. Although it is very expensive to win such oil, I should not think that the drain on investment resources, which this country now cannot afford, will be comparable with an all-out nuclear programme. Judged on a Community basis, I think it is understandable that they might hope that we will share some of these oil and gas resources if life in the Community becomes difficult. But, as I am going to emphasise in a minute, it is terribly important, as most other speakers have said, that we do not part with our sovereignty on this issue without some very strong factors in favour of doing so.
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In other words, we must get something really substantial in return.
Also, do not let us forget that although it is fairly easy to transport oil and natural gas there is a very definite limit to the distance over which electrical power can be transported. Therefore one does not easily foresee vast quantities of electrical energy being brought into this country from the Continent. I know some people will say that it is already done; and so it is, but I am speaking about large quantities. If we were to allow our natural resources of oil and gas to be used up, I do not see any way in which Europe or the EEC could easily repay us in energy terms.
I am personally in favour of membership of the Common Market and I think, if necessary, we should go some distance towards falling in with their plans, but I would say "some distance" only, and then only in strict horse trading terms. If they really do want us to increase our nuclear programme, what about suggesting that they provide the capital for doing so at virtually no interest rates? This might benefit them and us. It would mean that there was in the Community more power—more energy—and equally it would provide employment here. That is what I mean by "horse trading ".
Having said all this, if we are to remain in the Community—and I hope we do—I would believe it to be a mistake which might later work to our disadvantage if we were to be wholly unco-operative. I think we must try to be reasonable; from what we have heard today about the EEC point of view and the statement that our sovereignty would be preserved in this matter, I think this is not unreasonable.
I do not think one can leave the subject of fission reactors without mentioning the safety and the disposal of waste products. Here again my views are based on a certain amount of information, but it is a very specialist subject. All I would say is that I have probably studied it a little more than some of the extreme protesters. I believe that there is a risk with a nuclear reactor; the question is whether that risk is acceptable. My own feeling is that it is acceptable. Philosophically in this uncertain world I think we must say that it is not only life alone that matters; it is also the quality

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of life. We have to make certain sacrifices and accept certain dangers in that respect.
I agree that the disposal of active waste is worrying, not so much on the short-term basis but possibly in the long-term for future generations. Nevertheless, if we do not foresee these reactors going on too long, I believe the problem can be dealt with and probably some means of disposing of it satisfactorily will ultimately be found by science. There is however another disturbing factor, and that is the possibility of sabotage or blackmail. I should like to have expert opinion on this point. However, I do not believe that it would be at all easy to create a major accident in a reactor without a good deal of preliminary and highly technical work in over-riding all the safety devices, and the biological shielding is quite bomb-proof. I think we must see this danger in the context of other, and what I believe are far greater, dangers in the nuclear field. It will not be very long before many of the smaller nations have the ability and stocks of plutonium necessary to build some atomic bombs. Moreover, large terrorist organisations might well steal sufficient plutonium for the purpose. Admittedly, the more reactors there are built, particularly breeder reactors, the easier it may be to acquire the plutonium. I nevertheless conclude that the size of the EEC reactor programme will not very greatly increase this danger, and I am afraid that in the years to come we shall have to face the possibility of atomic blackmail. If we deal with such threats with resolution, as I believe we shall have to, I do not rate those dangers too highly.
Finally, it seems to me it is a pity that the Commission have paid so little attention to the very great increase in the utilisation of energy which can be brought about by using low grade heat from power stations. This was mentioned in the House not long ago. The point is that if you take heat at a reasonable temperature it will lower the efficiency of the plant. However, taken overall most of the energy put in will be used. Whereas at the moment you are probably only getting 35 per cent. or so efficiency from a power station in terms of electrical output, you may well raise this to something like 80 per cent. or better if you can employ
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a low grade heat for such things as district heating or industrial processes. I should have thought that this is certainly something that the Community should stress, particularly with a programme which means siting many new power stations. No mention is made of a European grid system.
My Lords, I am not convinced—and again this is where I feel very short of technical knowledge—that the gasification of coal in situ is being investigated and pressed forward with sufficient energy. This could be enormously important in the future, if we find we cannot win our coal by the conventional methods.
6.30 p.m.
Lord STRATHCONA and MOUNT ROYAL: My Lords, there was a moment when the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Leek, rose to speak when I thought he was going to say that the whole of this debate had been quite unnecessary. But I discovered that he was launching into an impassioned attack on the whole concept of the Common Market. To that extent, he certainly agreed that our debate this evening is performing a useful purpose—even for him—in calling our attention to the dangers which he sees in the situation postulated by this Report.
Lord DAVIES of LEEK: My Lords, I thought that the entire debate would centre around the issue of the sovereignty of this House and the other one. That is why I concentrated on that issue. Consequently, I think it is an important debate.
Lord STRATHCONA and MOUNT ROYAL: My Lords, I am glad we agree that it is an important debate. I want to congratulate my noble friend Lord Lauderdale, if I may, not only for having initiated the debate, but for the remarkable way in which he summarised at least those documents which I have seen—and we all agree there are quite a number which some of us have not seen but which, perhaps, we should have. But I will come back to that point in a moment.
It seems to me that the Fifth Report and the document which the Fifth Report is discussing, which I call the study document, are dealing with two of the most important issues which confront us at this moment. The first important issue is our relationship with Europe, and the

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second is the very fundamental question of where we are going in our energy policy. I shall not try to follow all the many highly technical speeches made by noble Lords who have given us the benefit of their views this afternoon. Those views have been extremely valuable. However, we should address ourselves to what seems to me to be a rather fundamental matter; the procedural and political points which raise certain fundamental questions about how we make decisions, how communications are carried out between the EEC and this Parliament, and the whole issue of British Parliamentary control.
My Lords, the first question that this raises in my mind is this: what is the composition of the body which produced this Report? At the outset of the examination by the Committee of one of the Ministry witnesses, we find the Lord Chairman of the Select Committee saying:
"We are conscious of the fact that the energy policy strategy proposals are not those of your Department and, therefore, you have no responsibility at all for them".
That strikes me as being an extraordinary situation. We have here a Paper setting out very far-reaching technical and policy guidelines for the future of our country. It even goes so far as to postulate the setting up of a new decision-making process by a new organisation. Yet, so far as I can discover, these conclusions and recommendations have been conjured up by a process which was once called "exalted brooding", a process that takes place without any consultation with the constituent members of the Community.
Under those circumstances, it is not surprising that the Select Committee Report says:
"Essential information of the possible energy contribution expected from each Member State is not included in the Communication, yet such would seem essential for consideration of the financial and physical resources needed."
In preparing a document of this kind, would not one have expected that the initial input would have been the plans and projections of the individual member-States? I think in a way that this was the point that the noble Lord, Lord Wynne-Jones, was making. He was making a plea for starting from some fairly solid ground. I shall probably get my
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metaphors mixed, but the noble Earl, Lord Bessborough, said that we must regard many of these figures as targets. If one is to shoot at a target, one must first of all be able to see it. I think the noble Lord, Lord Wynne-Jones, was suggesting we do not even have a firing point.
My Lords, of course I would accept that the process would then come back. One would have the initial input of the country's forecast of what it was to do. This would go up to the central body who would consider it and produce a report. It is likely that the constituent member-States would then want to moderate and revise their own targets and intentions in the light of the advice indicated by the broader picture. I do not want for a moment to decry the need for co-ordination, harmonisation, whatever one calls it; far from it. Indeed, last week in this House several noble Lords from all sides of the House were calling attention to the enormous potential savings that we were foregoing in the sphere of defence by our total failure to achieve any reasonable degree of rationalisation and harmonisation in the equipment and research and development spheres. We should be thoroughly ashamed of it. To the extent that this Report represents an attempt to try to tackle that problem, then we really must welcome it.
My Lords, I think that this applies also in the case of nuclear energy, although I find that I am brought back to the occasion when we were talking about what the nuclear energy policy should be. We were told then that the experts disagree. Under these circumstances, one can imagine the difficulties that the Commission find themselves in. So, if this is the first attempt to draw up a coherent energy policy for Europe, we should welcome it. It does at least focus our minds on some of the problems, and, perhaps, it calls attention to some of the decisions that if we have not made already, it is high time we started thinking about making; such decisions as how we are to obtain informed information on which to base those decisions. I regret very much that we find ourselves having comments to make about this Report, claiming that it is largely in "Cloud Cuckoo-land". It lacks credibility and reality. This was a point taken up by many noble Lords.

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My Lords, then we come to the thorny question of timing, procedure, Parliamentary control and sovereignty. If we are to have any kind of Parliamentary control at the initial stages of policy-making, Parliament would like to have a discussion to give some guidance to the EEC Commission on how our minds are moving. This would act as an input. Then one receives their detailed proposals, and one has the opportunity to discuss them. I am not absolutely certain what stage we have reached, because we are all agreed that we have been galloping to try to catch up.
We have had all these documents, and we have had the noble Earl, Lord Bess-borough, doing his best, if I may say so, to bring us up to date with documents that I think were published only this morning. Certainly I have never even heard of the Third Report which has curiously appeared after the Fifth Report; I think it appeared last week. Then we had the Minister in some doubt as to whether the latest directives did or did not modify the discussion Paper on which we started the debate. I do not want to labour the point, but it clearly is rather a ridiculous situation. One noble Lord used a better word; I think it was Lord Bessborough.
The Earl of BESSBOROUGH: Lord Balogh did not like it.
Lord STRATHCONA and MOUNT ROYAL: The whole of this discussion is being based on a document which was printed on 18th July and became available on 28th November. I think we have a procedural and management and information problem to which we must address ourselves.
Lord DAVIES of LEEK: My Lords, this is exactly what happened to the brontosaurus. It could not get the message from the centre to the other parts of the body; so it was finished.
Lord STRATHCONA and MOUNT ROYAL: My Lords, they in fact lasted for several thousands of years, of course. It depends on what stage in our evolution you see us as being at the moment. The other thing that shook me a little in reading this document was the, I suppose it is called, "Eurospeak" that we are going to have to get used to. The first thing we were introduced to were these gigawatts, which I think are 1,000
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million watts. Then there was another very curious creature, perhaps some
relation to the brontosaurus, which is called a "mill-toe", which is animadverted to at the bottom and it means million tons of oil equivalent. I notice that the tons in this case are spelled "tons" and not the other kind of Euro-tonnes we seem to be using a good deal lately, which is "tonnes".
Then there was a most strange statement that I could not make very much sense out of. On page 15, for example, we see at the top—I am looking at this lurid-coloured document—
"The cost of proposed policy must be compared with the costs that could be attributable to a less voluntaristic evolution of energy supply ".
A little further down the same page it says:
"A problem arises for it does not suffice if investments are macro economically feasible ".
I would not know, but this is not the normal language of the ordinary Parliamentarian, I would suggest, and I can imagine Lord Conesford and Sir Ernest Gowers revolving in their graves if they saw that kind of thing produced for us here.
However, that is really a carping criticism which perhaps I can get away with rather late in the evening at the risk of wasting your Lordships' time. There was another splendid one on page 19.
Lord LLOYD of KILGERRAN: My Lords, I am so sorry to interrupt the noble Lord, but I am trying to follow his very bitter attack, it seems to me, upon the administration of the EEC. I understood that when the matter was discussed in another place one of his honourable friends pointed out when he was chairman of the committee that what the Parliamentary institution concerned had to do was to consider the report that was before it and not to consider how these reports were produced. But now the noble Lord is referring to another report; I have not got the reference to it, and I am trying to follow him in his very serious criticism of the Commission's methods.
Lord STRATHCONA and MOUNT ROYAL: My Lords, I am sorry if I have led the noble Lord into some difficulty. There are quite a number of documents kicking around. I think this one

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is a kind of public version of a rather thicker mimeographed document. The other example of the strange comments that I wanted to call to your Lordships' attention occurs when they refer to the desire not to use natural gas to burn as a fuel in a power station. It says:
"This fuel should as a general rule be reserved for more economic uses than fuelling power stations."
What on earth is that supposed to mean? I think it is possible that this was prepared in French and translated into English. I understand that in the Irish Parliament they make their speeches in English, they are recorded in Erse, and then translated back into English when they quote from them. So we can see the kind of difficulties we might get ourselves into. However, these are all rather laborious ways of saying that we have an administrative problem, which is a little more than just an administrative problem because it means that there is a danger of our losing our Parliamentary influence on important issues. This is a point that has been made time and time again in various speeches this evening.
Of course, we are delighted to hear M. Simonet accepting a statement that was made by my noble friend Lord Carrington right at the beginning when he said that the oil is ours. I think some of us were quite surprised by that, and I am very pleased that M. Simonet has once again confirmed that.
We had a long argument about the possible extent to which nuclear power could take over our power requirements in future years. I accepted the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Wynne-Jones, that these projections were unreal. Many other noble Lords thought the technical problems were being treated altogether too lightly and too cavalierly and that we were building castles in the air—reactors in the air, if you like. The danger of that, of course, is that it is an invitation to neglect some of the other sources of power. If we think we are going to be safe to rely upon nuclear power, I think the sense of this debate is that we have another think coming. There is an obvious gap opening up, and we do not believe that this document has recognised this possibility.
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Clearly it raises the question as to whether our nuclear research and building programme is the right one. This is an old, old story. The British aircraft industry, for example, was always in the habit of having far too many aeroplanes under development. We have tended to want to hedge our bets rather than put all our eggs in one basket. I would suggest that on balance our development of our own nuclear reactor is probably about right. There is a temptation to say that the French are beating us to the export market. I should have thought that even if it proved that the PWR is the right route, it will not be too difficult for us to get back into that technology again if we should ever need to. There are all the difficulties of fuel supplies and control of pollution. We have talked about the fast breeder reactor, which the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury, once described to me as a controlled atom bomb. We are not near to having a safe fast breeder reactor yet, so far as I can make out, and the fusion reactor is still, I should have thought, well into the next century, so we cannot rely on this.
This leads us back, does it not, to the reliance that we are going to have to place on our own coal industry? I was delighted to hear that our technologists are as good as any in the world when it comes to modern utilisation of coal. I think it was said once that you have to invest something like 10 per cent. annually in the coal industry merely to stay in the same place, as your seams run out. The Selby field will do little more initially than keep us topped up where we are. We are going to have to run very hard to stay in the same place, and so far we have gone back a little. But do not let us again get seduced into the argument of saying we can neglect these industries because we have the North Sea oil. I am not going to go into an argument with the noble Lord as to whether or not the Government are in danger of frightening off the oil companies. I believe they are in danger of doing so, but I do not think they have yet done so. Let us leave it at that. We have a number of Bills in preparation in another place which will be coming up to us, and that will be the time to discuss them.
I have said one or two unkind things about the Commission and about the

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document that we have been arguing about. I did not want to damn the effort. My fear is that the manner of its presentation, and the manner in which the figures have been prepared, are in danger of doing real harm to the laudable aim of attaining a rational and co-ordinated energy policy.
6.51 p.m.
Lord BALOGH: My Lords, may I first of all congratulate the Lords' Members of the sub-committee on energy of the Select Commmittee of the House of Lords on what seems to me a most thorough and admirable piece of work on the proposals of the EEC Commission "towards a new energy policy strategy for the Community". May I also congratulate the noble Earl, Lord Lauderdale, in particular for his hat trick. He has become a chairman of the Committee, he has initiated the debate, and made a most excellent speech. We have crossed swords very much in the past, but for once in what follows I think that he will see that we are in close intellectual contact with one another.
Before I go into other details, may I make two remarks. The first remark concerns the noble Earl, Lord Bessborough. I do not believe that he is suddenly producing a Paper. I must confess that I only got it today, but that is a little local difficulty in my Department rather than anything else, which I shall try to clear up.
The Earl of BESSBOROUGH: My Lords, may I say one word to the noble Lord on this point. As he knows, in the European Parliament Committees, which are rather like Select Committtees, all parties are represented, and the Commissioner often gives us prior information. He consults us in advance—and sometimes when there is only a gleam in his eye—as to what is to be produced. In this case he was so good as to come to me and give me a partial summary of this document, which I understand is perfectly in order under the procedure of the European Parliament.
Lord BALOGH: My Lords, it must have been a very partial communication, because I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Strathcona and Mount Royal, when he says that this is not the way to run a railway, and far less a way to run Europe. However, I can assure the
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noble Lords that during the debate I have been looking into the question of whether this makes our debate ludicrous, as the noble Earl has recorded, or not. I can assure noble Lords that it does not. The maximum divergence from the original target is 3 percentage points. I would call it "minimal" rather than "ludicrous".
Obviously, the first question to answer is, how ought we to consider these documents. That is a very important question, because, as the noble Lord, Lord Strathcona, said (and perhaps I may omit the "Mount Royal", because I shall have to refer to the noble Lord again) it is most important that it should be done in an orderly manner. I can say that the usual channels will arrange to find time for debates on any European proposals for legislation which the Committee recommends merit debate. It has been the Government's repeated intention that debates should, whenever possible, take place before final decisions are made in the Council of Ministers. I hope that that satisfies the noble Earl.
The Commission's Papers are unquestionably potentially most important documents. I think that the noble Lord, Lord Strathcona, was confused, and I think that he confused me too. I had thought that I could give the answer, but I am not so sure now. There are two documents: one dated July is called Towards the New Energy Policy, and the other was not printed in July but was said to have been published in Brussels on 27th November. Both Papers are potentially the most important documents to have come out of Brussels since our accession to the Community. They are long and complex documents, and the subcommittee's task was arduous. I think I may say that they have acquitted themselves with distinction. I shall limit myself to the points made on these documents, although I see perfectly the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Orr-Ewing, which have been noted. I think that he will find that they will have largely been acted upon, and I am quite sure that there will be occasion to debate them as well as the question of the military uses of atomic energy. I hope that your Lordships will forgive me if I speak slightly longer than usual—perhaps not so long as last time—because the issue is very complex.

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I think that the approach of the subcommittee to the document in question, which is an important document, and to the whole question of Community energy policy, can best be illustrated by the third paragraph from the bottom of page 4 of the Fifth Report. The noble Lord, Lord Davies of Leek, has already quoted it, and therefore I shall not read it again, but it refers to the main problem of sovereignty. I can accept this statement without any qualification whatsoever.
May I also remind the House of the robust Statement made last year in this House by the then Conservative Secretary of State for Energy, and which the noble Lord, Lord Strathcona, partly quoted. I have a longer quotation:
"North Sea oil belongs to us—and that is that."
For once I could not agree more fully and wholeheartedly with the noble Lord, Lord Carrington. Indeed, we all agree on this, and we intend that the United Kingdom Government should continue to exercise full control over our North Sea resources
Within this framework, but only within this framework, we should like, at the Energy Council Meeting of Ministers on 17th December, to take as positive a line as possible in finding areas of agreement with our partners. But, as my right honourable friend the present Secretary of State for Energy said in another place last week:
"I am in full agreement with those who say that it is essential that the United Kingdom should continue to exercise full rights and control over these resources because when it comes to such vital matters as exploration, depletion, disposal and taxation policies it is right that we should decide these in this House. I accept that these matters must remain in the hands of the British Government."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Commons, 3/12/74, col. 1513.]
I do not think that you can ask for a most positive assurance. Fortunately, the basic principles of our right to the control of, and benefit from, our new resources are not disputed by the EEC Commission.
Noble Lords will have seen reports of a speech made by M. Simonet in Oxford, but he was also reported in Brussels to have said:
"Nous n'avons pas l'intention d'organiser une expedition pour vous priver ni des benefices economiques de ces decouvertes ni même du controle que vous exercez sur elles'.
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or in English:
"We do not intend to organise an expedition to deprive you either of the economic benefits of these discoveries or even of the control which you exercise over them."
If, indeed, that is what M. Simonet said—and the noble Earl, Lord Bessborough confirms it—it accords with our own view. The answers by the Secretary of State for Energy in another place show how we intend to exercise that control.
The Select Committee also referred to the timetable for consideration of the Commission's proposals, particularly in relation to the acceptance of the proposed objectives in principle. Therefore, in our view—and I believe in the view of some other member States—the Commission's targets are over-optimistic. That is certainly true, as the noble Earl and my noble friend Lord Wynne-Jones said, of the proposed target for nuclear energy of 200 gigawatts installed capacity by 1985. We contend that this is unrealistic. It is also true that there was insufficient consultation between the Commission and the member States in preparing this document. However, a great deal of discussion has taken place since. In the course of this discussion, it has become apparent that the Commission has taken a far more optimistic view of the possibilities than have other member Governments in formulating their own proposals. I do not want to pursue this matter, because of the lateness of the hour. The United Kingdom does not object to the concept of Community targets, but insists that the Community should be realistic; that they should be—as the Resolution of the Council of 17th September recognised—regarded merely as guidance for formulation of national policies and no more.
It might be helpful at this stage to comment on the policy proposals which the Commission has made for each fuel. Apart from their exaggerated size, to which I have already referred, the Commissions' proposals for the electricity sector are generally sensible. We certainly accept that electricity has a major part to play in the development of our energy potential, and the draft directives attached to the Commission document are relevant to the electricity chapter of the Report. The draft directives take up the suggestion in the Report that the use of natural gas in power stations

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should be limited, and that the construction of new Oil-fired base-load plants should not be authorised except in special circumstances. Neither of the draft directives is acceptable to us in the form in which they are proposed by the Commission, but in discussions among national experts in Brussels some progress has been made in making the directives acceptable to us.
The Commission's proposals on coal do not pose any particular problems to us; in this perhaps we differ somewhat from some of my noble friends behind me. But I do not regard the directives as realistic, given the fact that the sinking of a new coal mine (especially of gigantic coal mines such as the Selby Field might be) takes time and the time factor in this case is such that we cannot rely on much more. Moreover, as the noble Lord, Lord Strathcona and Mount Royal, said, we have to run very fast in order to stay put. There are a number of coal mines which will become exhausted in the next few years. Therefore I do not think we can rely very much on what the Commission says regarding this area, but we shall do our best, both in manpower recruiting and otherwise, to achieve a realistic target.
The Commission's proposals on oil pose greater difficulties although our main criticism is their lack of relevance to the real problems of oil supply and prices which are confronting us as a potentially self-sufficient country. The first objective is a common approach to other oil consumers and to the producing countries. This is clearly desirable, but there are well-recognised limits to what the EEC can do by itself. Effective co-operative arrangements between consumer countries and a dialogue with the producing countries can only be conducted by a group which includes the main consumers outside the EEC—more especially the USA and Japan. I shall return to this point. Then there is support of development schemes for making energy more effective, and other research. The scheme—which is for only £10 million to support technical research and which is likely to come up at the forthcoming Council of Energy Ministers' meeting for approval—is limited, although obviously welcome.
However, I must strongly emphasise that it is most regrettable that a more
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active attitude to it has not been adopted by our own industry. Only one British project has been put forward, though five others are from a majority American/French company located in Britain. We are doing our best to encourage British industry to make the best use of any opportunity that offers itself, and we hope that they will now begin to realise the importance of not missing out on anything which could improve their relative position in all industries, but more especially in a growth industry such as this one.
The third objective of the Commission is for arrangements to deal with the supply difficulties. This is an important objective but it has now been met as well as it can be by arrangements made on a wider international basis. I refer, my Lords, to the international energy programme in which all EEC members, with the exception of France, are participating, together with eight other OECD countries, including the USA and Japan. The agreement provides for international cooperation across a whole range of energy problems; but the most immediate part is a scheme for sharing oil in an emergency. Under the scheme, participants agree to operate a sharing arrangement on a basis that takes account of all available oil, both domestic and imported, to use stocks accordingly and, in parallel, to take measures that achieve a corresponding degree of demand restraint.
It is the fact that the United States, by far the largest consumer of oil in the world, is willing to co-operate by reducing demand and sharing its available supplies in a crisis, which makes the scheme effective and worth while for us. Nothing which Europe could have done on its own would have been anything like as effective or as relevant to the real problems of oil supplies as this international energy programme. The United Kingdom considers this programme to be a major breakthrough in international co-operation in the energy field. We recognise, however, the need for the EEC to have proper information on oil movements within the Community and for some supervision of price movements in times of shortage. On these aspects, we are prepared to accept much of what the Commission says.

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As my right honourable friend said in another place last Tuesday, 3rd December:
"The proposals … are concerned mainly with ensuring effective consultation between member States and the co-ordination of national energy policies. I, for my part, while respecting the provisions of the treaty, will continue to resist any proposals by the Commission that could interfere with our ability to carry through our Continental Shelf policies in accordance with the overall energy and fiscal objectives that have been laid down by the House."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Commons, 3/12/74; col. 1513.]
I hope that this statement will reassure noble Lords on both sides of the House.
The regulation at Annex III to the document—dealing with common rules for import and export of oil and gas to and from third countries—proposes the extension of certain existing regulations providing for surveillance, through a system of licences, and subsequently for protective measures under which the Commission could impose controls and on which the Council would decide by a qualified majority. This is unacceptable and we have said so. In this view the United Kingdom has not been alone. Other member countries share this view. The use of these regulations, which were framed for other purposes—in particular, dumping—is artificial. In times of shortage the international energy programme arrangements, to which I have already referred, would provide the main safeguard for Community members without, incidentally, infringing any Commmunity rules.
Finally, there is the objective of a proper organisation of the oil market. This is a complex area of policy, involving the multi-national companies, which needs a good deal of further study and discussion, and at this moment I should not like to comment on it. The Commission's proposals for gas are aimed at doubling the share of this fuel in total energy consumption. This would be done by expanding imports from third countries, but also by encouraging prospecting within the Community. So far as we are concerned, we shall use all the gas likely to become available from our sector of the North Sea, and we have to include some from the Norwegian sector. We are not convinced by the projections of the Commission.
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I should like to refer to the Commission's tentative proposals, to which the noble Lord, Lord Strathcona, has already alluded, to set up a Community agency having legal personality and financial autonomy. The Select Committee rightly draws attention to the implications of this proposal on sovereignty, as also did the noble Lord, Lord MacLeod of Fuinary. We do not at the moment see the relevance of this proposal. The EEC energy policy should, in our view, involve a common effort to achieve agreed objectives. Achieving these objectives is largely a matter of harmonising the policies of member Governments. In these circumstances, we do not see any need at present for an agency along the lines suggested by the Commission. The sub-committee noted that this statement leaves unclear the form proposed for such a body, whether it is to be on the lines of the European Coal and Steel Community or of some advisory body. This will have to be fully explored by the United Kingdom Minister, for it may involve sovereignty. As my right honourable friend said:
"There has been comment on the suggestion in [the document] that the objectives proposed could be assigned to the Commission's energy agency and that it could take legal and binding decisions and have financial autonomy over the United Kingdom Government. The Government see no need for such an agency and we shall say so quite frankly. We see the EEC energy policy at most as the harmonisation of national policies with control exercised by national Governments ".
What we need at this stage is a coordination of objectives, an exchange of information and full co-operation, both within the Community and on the wider international scene.
The Select Committee also raises the question of energy conservation. I would refer noble Lords to my right honourable friend's Statement, which I repeated to this House today. So far as Europe is concerned, I would accept that there is considerable scope for co-operation. In fact, this is a matter which we have been discussing with the Commission and with our partners. On the 17th December, or at an earlier or later date, the Council of Ministers will probably be asked to give further impetus to discussions between national experts, which we hope will result in an increased measure of co-operation and co-ordination.

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I should like to say a word about the meeting of the Council of Energy Ministers which will take place in Brussels on the 17th December. We do not yet have the final agenda, but certainly there will be a discussion on a resolution based on the conclusions of the document referred to in the Select Committee Report, possibly modified (but not very much modified) by the new document. There may possibly be a separate resolution on coal policy, on oil and gas policy and—although, on the whole, this seems more likely to be deferred until later—on nuclear matters. Another document on which discussion seems probable is a Paper entitled Energy for Europe, which sets out the Commission's ideas on the future pattern of energy research and development in the Community.
In closing—and I have once more tried your Lordships' patience very much—I should like again to congratulate the noble Lords on the sub-committee, who accomplished a daunting task. I think we agree on all sides on the importance for the future of our children, and of our children's children, of the issues involved. We must be careful. I have already pointed out that the Commission have not disputed that the ultimate sovereignty over our oil is ours, and that we cannot be deprived of the advantages which flow from the discovery of that oil—and I want to stress the point that it has been accepted. We shall preserve these rights and benefits, and we shall look very carefully at all resolutions and proposals for specific measures by the Community from that point of view. The advantages that accrue to the United Kingdom contribute significantly to the Commission's objective, which we endorse, of reducing dependence on external and uncertain supplies of oil.
The United Kingdom's contribution to this objective is indeed considerable. Our oil and gas, our investment in coal pro duction and nuclear power, and the energy——conservation——programme announced by my right honourable friend, will play a major part in reducing overall European dependence on imported oil, and thus in dealing with the threat to the world economy posed by the sudden and brutal increases in the price of oil. The sub-committee calls attention to the
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necessity for careful scrutiny of proposals which, each taken separately, cannot be said to constitute a questioning of our sovereignty but which, taken together, could be so. As the quotations from my right honourable friend's speech show, the Government are alert to their responsibilities. We must beware—and this is how I shall finish—lest, as in an old Central European story, the delightful situation in which we have the oil and they have the policy should be transformed into a different situation in which we have their policy but they have our oil.
7.17 p.m.
The Earl of LAUDERDALE: My Lords, may I first thank all noble Lords who have been good enough to take part in this debate and to bring to bear on the subject a range of scholarship and experience which has given it particular value. It would be churlish not once again to refer to the noble Lord, Lord Champion, who was the editor and the mastermind of the Report which we have been discussing this afternoon. I should like particularly to thank the noble Lord, Lord Balogh, for his kind words to myself and, if I may put it correctly, a most helpful approach to the subject which is exercising all our minds. We are grateful in particular for his assurance that it is the Government's intention that, so far as possible, debates recommended by Select Committees shall be held before decisions at Council level are taken. I think it is only fair to warn the noble Lord (and, through him, the Government) that we may want to press that a little further on another occasion and to get the further assurance that there will be no decision until a debate has taken place—and the noble Lord, Lord Balogh, as a logician, will quickly appreciate the distinction in formal logic between those two propositions.
In thanking all noble Lords who have taken part, I must particularly thank my noble friend Lord Bessborough for this exercise of his burdensome dual mandate. Noble Lords sometimes take for granted the effort of those of our company who also attend the Parliament in Strasbourg. The effort to attend there and attend here, and to be in both places on the most useful occasions, is something which requires great assiduity and toughness of

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fibre. We are very grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Bessborough, for his participation today. He told us of document after document that has yet to reach our desks, and the noble Lord, Lord Strathcona, likewise breathed a prayer which we have all breathed at times, that it would be nice to discuss some of these matters early on.
My Lords, there are times when members of the Select Committee, bewildered by the swift-changing forecasts of the forthcoming Council agenda, feel a little like Mr. Harold Macmillan when he was debating economic matters some years ago in another place, on which occasion he said:
"I sometimes feel like a man looking up trains in last year's Bradshaw."
Between the demands of the Parliamentary programme here and the changing pattern of the Council of Ministers' agenda, some of us feel sometimes that it is somewhat like riding two parallel escalators at different speeds.
My Lords, we have been greatly interested in all that has been said. I think that, with a varying degree of emphasis and a variety of angles of specialist knowledge and approach, a broad majority consensus has emerged that the policy that the Committee believe the House should consider has at least been sired in ambiguity and born in paradox. But must we whistle in the dark to keep up our courage? Are we forever to live bold with the valour of ignorance? May we not hear a little more from the Government, perhaps not now but on another occasion, on one aspect of the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Balogh? He stressed the British position on sovereignty and we were all much comforted by that. He went on to say that the Government proposed to take a positive line in seeking agreement with our partners. That too we applaud. But may we hear at some time what really is in the wind about Community investment in British offshore oil exploration and in the nuclear development programme? That is something, however beautiful it may sound to a believer's ear, which carries certain overtones which are less attractive to (shall I say?) the agnostic or the sceptic.
At any rate, the issue in general is not a mean one. A decade of urgency is at hand. The question might well have been
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whether policy should have been debased without being debated. The noble Lord's assurances have carried us 90 per cent. if not 99 per cent. of the way that we hoped to be carried. He has therefore by implication assured us that "taking note" is no mere formality and that the energy policy will not be allowed to disperse in a cloud of unknowing or to evaporate in a chaotic whirligig of pragmatic illusions.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

EUROPEAN COMMUNITIES COMMITTEE
7.23 p.m.
Lord HILL of LUTON Lord HILL of LUTON rose to move, That this House takes note of the Eighth Report of the Select Committee (Session 1974) on the Doctors and Dentists directive (COM(69)127). The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper. In inviting the House to take note of this Report, I would first remind your Lordships of the relevant provisions of the Treaty of Rome in this respect. Article 3 of the Treaty states that the activities of the Community shall include the abolition as between member States of obstacles to freedom for persons and services. That is the basic provision. The details are developed in Title III of the Treaty. Articles 48 to 51 in Chapter 1 lay down that freedom of movement for workers shall be secured within the Community; Articles 52 to 58 in Chapter 2 provide for the movement of self-employed persons; while a third set of Articles in Chapter 3 deals with persons living in one member country providing services in another.
Oddly enough, the draft directives, as we have seen them hitherto and as we have studied them, relate directly to self-employed persons like general practitioners, but not to employed persons like hospital staffs; but I am told that revised drafts yet to be revealed are to be prepared covering both self-employed and employed persons, using the powers in Chapter 1 referring to workers. No one will deny that hospital staffs, medical and lay, are workers. There have been other changes since the Eighth Report was printed. Indeed there is an unending stream of changes in all the documents emerging from Brussels and it is not easy

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to keep abreast of them, despite the painstaking help that we have had from the Department of Health and Social Security.
But, my Lords, tonight I will describe briefly and as best I can the present position. First, a general point: these draft directives apparently affecting only doctors and dentists have an application to all professions; for all are covered by the Treaty. The doctors have been taken first, with the dentists and the veterinary surgeons soon to follow; but the provisions for the doctors are to be the model with appropriate modifications for all professions. The Treaty is comprehensive in its coverage. Even the lawyers are not excluded; although I suspect that they will be the last in the queue.
A word now on the present position in this country. As your Lordships know, the General Medical Council admits to the medical register those who complete courses of instruction in teaching establishments that it approves and who satisfy the examination requirements that it lays down. Nationals and non-nationals are treated alike in this matter of full registration. In addition, non-nationals registered in their own countries can be entered here on a temporary register while they hold particular posts, without requalification here. Neither of these procedures is affected by these draft directives. What the directives require is that any national of a member country who is medically registered in that country shall have the automatic right to be entered in the register of every other member country without further test of any kind. This is complete mobility—and with it goes the right to practise in that country as a general practitioner or, with few exceptions, in a hospital or other post, so that there will be inter-changeability of qualifications and freedom of establishment. The Commission will be responsible for the operation of the scheme and they will be advised by an Advisory Committee which will keep under review the quality of training and the developments in training in all member States, reporting any shortcomings to the Commission. It will lay down minimum periods of medical training as well as qualitative standards.
So, my Lords, what will happen to the role of our own General Medical Council? For the home product, its
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position and powers will be unchanged; although, of course, the home-produced doctor will be free to practise in other member countries. For the temporary registered foreigner, too, the position will be unchanged. For the overseas doctor registered in this country—say, the doctor from India or Australia—the position will be unchanged here in the United Kingdom; although, if he is not a United Kingdom national he will not be free to practise in the other eight countries.
As for the power of General Medical Council, at present, if an approved teaching establishment here or overseas lapses below the approved standard, the General Medical Council can decline to register its graduates until they reach its standards and the establishment meets its criticism. Will it enjoy this power over continental teaching establishments within the Community which lapse below the standards it expects from similar establishments in this country? We have not found it very easy to obtain a clear reply, and this is not in any way the fault of the Department. We were told in evidence that the procedure would be for the GMC to report to Brussels, when the Advisory Committee would investigate and advise the Commission of any necessary action, and that the ultimate right to reject a graduate of a teaching establishment which was thought to have lapsed would remain, though the case could go to the European Court.
The next version we had was that there would remain to the GMC a right to defer the consideration of applications in such circumstances. There is a latest version: it is that the member States which suspect that a qualification is below par would inform the Commission which, to quote the exact words,
"shall examine the matter as soon as possible and shall confirm, if such is the case, that there is compliance with the minimum standards."
That is the end of the quotation and there is no mention of deferment. It is all very puzzling. However, my own view, for what it is worth, is that for the GMC to retain the absolute right to reject would be inconsistent with the Treaty.
Now a word on the Advisory Committee to the Commission. This is, incidentally, a development due mainly to British argument and British pressure. This body is absolutely crucial to the maintenance

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of the standards of medical education. The Committee will advise and the Commission will decide. On present form, the Committee will consist of 27 members, three from each member State, one a practising doctor, one a teacher and one a representative of the country's registering body. There is still some discussion about this. Our doctors, who have been fully consulted throughout, want a larger representation of teachers—they want a post-graduate teacher as well as an undergraduate teacher to belong to the Committee, and they want national medical associations to provide the practising doctors; but these are matters which are still in the melting pot. Unfortunately, however, we have no information about the powers and duties of the Advisory Committee, though it is on the effectiveness of this body that the quality of medical care in the Community will depend. It seems most unlikely that the Advisory Committee will have the power to inspect the teaching establishments of the Community. It may be thought—and I venture to say this, though unwilling to depart from the path of neutrality—that, bearing in mind the heavy public interest, we should know in detail the powers and procedures of the Advisory Committee before we yield up our own procedures.
My Lords, there is another problem which is not unimportant to medical care. Should there be a language requirement for practitioners claiming admission to our register from another member country? To take an extreme case, should a doctor not knowing a word of English be permitted to set up in general practice in this country and to treat patients? Similarly, should a British national not knowing a word of German be permitted the automatic right to treat patients in Germany? The answer to this question is simple and direct: the Treaty of Rome does not permit a language requirement. To insist, say, on an incoming Italian doctor, who is entitled to be entered automatically on our register, learning some English first would be discrimination and it is forbidden by the Treaty. There is of course nothing to prevent a hospital, in appointing a foreign doctor, taking into account in making that appointment the candidate's knowledge of English; but if such an incoming practitioner decided to set up in a practice in an under-doctored
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area, nothing could prevent it, even though he knew no English.
What has been done in the latest version of the directives is to allow member States to establish information centres from which migrating doctors may obtain information on health and social laws and on codes of professional ethics. "May obtain information" on these subjects: there is no mention of language. I suppose, in a way, that this is not surprising. The primary purpose of this plan of freedom of establishment is not of itself to raise the standard of medical practice; it is to apply the principle of the Treaty of Rome that within the Community there should be freedom of movement and interchangeability of qualifications as part of the Community ideal. Of course the Advisory Committee will seek to maintain the highest possible standards, though one might be forgiven for fearing that a Commission in Brussels with no powers of inspection will not easily be wholly effective in this matter of universities and other teaching establishments from Sicily to Copenhagen and from London to Frankfurt. However, it must be frankly admitted that we ourselves do not at the present time apply a language requirement to foreigners seeking full registration after qualification in this country.
My Lords, certain other questions arise in one's mind. Will all this lead to an exodus from this country of doctors whom we sorely need? After all, standards of remuneration are much higher in France, Germany, Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg than they are in this country. Will British doctors leave the country in search of sun or cash, or both? I do not know; nobody knows. While it is anybody's guess, the movement to other member States could be considerable.
Finally, my Lords, may I remove two doubts which may have arisen in people's minds. The first relates to the power to discipline doctors: all the doctors on the register, migrants and others, will remain unaffected. Secondly, as we all know, there are in this country very large numbers of doctors from overseas who are fully or temporarily registered. Of course, they are absolutely essential to our hospital service and will in no way be affected. If they are not nationals of this country, they will not be able to claim registration in other countries of the

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Community; but, setting that aside, fortunately for us, their position will remain unchanged. Incidentally, they often come from countries which need them greatly but, because of the greater attractions of this country, they come here. However, that is another subject.
To sum up, I would emphasise to the House that we are looking now at the general plan for the freedom of establishment of all professions. We are not considering a problem which purely concerns doctors. We are in effect
considering the problem of all professions and of the gains and losses which flow from the application of a fundamental principle, the freedom of establishment contained in the Treaty of Rome. My Lords, I beg to move.
Moved, That this House takes note of the Eighth Report of the Select Committee (Session 1974) on the Doctors and Dentists directive (COM(69)127).—(Lord Hill of Litton.)
7.41 p.m.
Lord ABERDARE: My Lords, this is indeed a very important Report from the sub-committee of the Select Committee and we owe a great debt of gratitude to the noble Lord, Lord Hill of Luton, for allowing us to discuss it this evening and for having set us on our way with such a carefully considered and competent speech, if I may humbly say so. I do not feel that there is very much more I can add to what he has already said. We are indeed fortunate in this House in having people who are prepared to give up their time to serve on these sub-committees. From reading the evidence, one is made aware that this sub-committee contains a most active and intelligent group of people who are watching our interests in this respect.
I certainly found the Report we are considering tonight a great deal more illuminating than the draft directive it was commenting upon, which I found completely out of date and hardly worth reading. Clearly it was drawn up long before this country became a member of the European Economic Community. It refers only to the original six members. It is drafted in their own terminology and, in the words of my noble friend Lord Lauderdale during the last debate, it is
"like looking up a train in last year's Bradshaw ".
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This Report certainly brings us up-to- date, and what the noble Lord, Lord Hill of Luton, has said brings us even more up-to-date on what has happened since the Committee itself reported.
I would agree with him straight away on the importance of the proper solution of the problems of the medical profession, because it will lead the way into the kind of arrangements to be made for other professions within the European Economic Community. This was made quite clear in the debate we last had in this House on 10th April 1973, when we considered the European Economic Community and the professions. We had a number of distinguished speeches on that occasion—one of them from the noble Lord, Lord Cohen of Birkenhead—on the problems of the medical profession. The noble Lord made it quite clear that this present directive is totally un-suited to our own medical profession, especially in view of the fact that there are only quantitative requirements for qualification and for specialist status, and that the requirements pay no heed to the quality of the training.
Since that directive was issued a great deal of work has been done by a great many people who are mentioned in the Report and to whom we should express our gratitude: the Standing Committee of Doctors in the EEC, the EEC Committee of the BMA and officials of the Department of Health and Social Security, who have all co-operated to ensure that the Economic Working Group comes to conclusions which take into account the problems of the British medical profession. Personally I am very happy to hear that the idea of an Advisory Committee on medical education has won general acceptance. This seems to me to be the right way forward for the medical profession and, in due course, for other professions.
I listened with great interest to what the noble Lord, Lord Hill of Luton, told us about the problems which will attend this Committee and the kind of decisions which it will have to take. I can only express the hope that sufficiently eminent people will be appointed to the Committee to give it the status it will undoubtedly require if it is to do the kind of job envisaged for it. I notice that there are still a number of details to be worked out about its operation, and

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I should like to ask where these details are being worked out. Is it something with which the Economic Working Group are concerned, presumably with advice from the Standing Committee of Doctors? Can the noble Lord give us any idea as to when these new arrangements are likely to be finalised in a directive that is acceptable to all the members of the EEC?
The noble Lord, Lord Hill, also drew attention—very rightly and with great clarity—to the question of the language barrier, which certainly seems to be a very serious drawback. I am still not quite clear how it can happen, because it is my recollection that doctors—that is, doctors who work for the National Health Service rather than those in private practice—work to contract. If they are in the hospital service they have a contract, and if they are GPs they are individual contractors to the Health Service. As things stand at present I should have thought that all doctors were in contract to an Area Health Authority. If that is so, I can quite see that it is right that an Area Health Authority should not in any way discriminate against a doctor, regardless of whether he comes from this country or from a member State of the EEC, provided he has equal qualifications. But I would have thought that language was one of those qualifications and I would not have thought that it was really conceivable for an Area Health Authority to give a contract to a doctor, whether in the hospital service or as a general practitioner, if he spoke no English. I may have this slightly wrong, I suppose, in the case of a general practitioner in an area which is "under-doctored"; but does he still not need a contract and would it not be within the powers of an Area Health Authority not to give a contract to a person who might be registered, but, in their view, would not be suitable because he was unable to speak sufficiently good English?
I do not think I can add anything further to what the noble Lord, Lord Hill of Luton, has said. I should like to know something about the time-scale, if possible; that is to say, when it is hoped to finalise these arrangements. I noticed that in the course of the evidence given to the sub-committee mention was
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made on page 3, paragraph 5 to "draft directives as now amended". I suppose, therefore, that documents exist which are not as out-of-date as this COM (69)127, because these other documents are amended and up-to-date. I think that it is rather a pity that we cannot see these draft directives "as now amended", and perhaps it is even more of a pity that it is unlikely the subcommittee saw them either; at least it does not say that they saw them in the Report. I wonder whether these draft directives are available in their amended form. If so, it would enable us to see exactly what progress was being made.
7.50 p.m.
Baroness SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Amulree, has had to leave, because he always makes a very informed contribution to debates of this kind. I have studied these directives, and on the face of them I think any doctor would agree that they appear to be innocuous. But I was very impressed by the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Hill. When we give further thought to it, we can really only surmise how they will operate.
In the field of language, I am quite shocked to think that a doctor can come over here without any knowledge of our language, customs or ways, and establish himself in a consulting room and invite patients—simple, ignorant men and women who normally have great faith in their doctors—to come in to see him. I hope that this will be altered by the time this really becomes a fait accompli. I am raising a point which I am sure none of the male Members of this House has thought about. It is only because I am a woman who has been concerned very much with the approach to women in medicine over the years that this has occurred to me. I am going to talk about what might be a by-product if these directives are followed and this scheme comes into operation.
I was surprised to hear the noble Lord, Lord Hill, say—and I am interested to think that this is the way in which his thoughts have been running—that he thinks there will be an efflux of doctors from this country to the Continent. He may be wrong; I may be wrong, but I think the opposite. The fact is that Britain has fewer doctors per thousand

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of the population than any other European country. I think his answer to that would be that the European doctor is paid more and therefore the doctors from Britain will be tempted to go to Europe. We must recognise that the doctor is often a dedicated man and however much he may be paid in France—if he is unemployed it would be because so many doctors were working there—he would find it difficult to conduct his profession as he would like to conduct it. Of course he would be very attracted to the thought of going to a country where he found ample room. What I am going to say anticipates that more doctors will come to this country than will leave it. If we are to judge from the present emigration pattern, they will all be men.
The noble Lord, Lord Hill, is an absolute authority on these things, and I believe we lose about 400 qualified men every year from this country. Women doctors seldom emigrate, because a woman is a home maker essentially; she is not a roamer. More than that, we have to remember that most women doctors get married these days and they marry business men or professional men. Because their husbands are working in this country for the most part, they tend to remain in this country. Therefore, I think we can anticipate a further influx of male doctors from abroad.
I have said this before. It is ironic that since that fatal mistake was made of reducing the number of medical students by 10 per cent., in the past years we have had a potential source of supply of doctors in our talented girls, all of whom can speak perfect English, yet this has been deliberately by-passed in favour of doctors who cannot speak English and know nothing of our customs and ways. One has only to go into a casualty department to see the casualty officer, without adequate English. He probably thinks that he has basic English, but he is trying to struggle through the work with unfortunate people who have had to go there because of some medical emergency.
The governors of our medical schools have deliberately discriminated against women although the country has been desperately short of doctors. When it became difficult to ignore the high academic standard of these young women, the medical schools resorted to the trick
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of demanding a higher standard in the "A" levels for girls than for boys. I hope nobody here will question this. I was on the Select Committee on Sex Discrimination and we discovered this when a professor from a medical school informed some members of the Select Committee what was happening: making the standard higher for girls to get into medical schools than for boys was a way of keeping women out of medical schools. However, I am glad to say that after years of trying to defend this discrimination against women, the medical schools have been forced to adopt a more liberal attitude and the percentage of women in them, particularly in the Provinces, is much higher than it was; but there is no question of any equality.
As I see it—and we can only surmise—we shall have a large number of men doctors who have the right to establish themselves here permanently. We shall see the reactionaries in our medical schools being given the excuse they are longing for to limit the number of medical students, and undoubtedly the axe will fall on women, if the past is any guide to behaviour. My argument stems from what has happened in the last twenty to thirty years. If we are to introduce some measure of justice at this stage, I believe that before these directives are put into operation the medical schools should be told that they should aim at least to provide educational facilities for equal numbers of both sexes.
The curious part about these directives—the noble Lord, Lord Hill, will correct me if I am wrong—is that I cannot see any limit to the numbers of doctors who may come in here; there is no limit. This is the most extraordinary thing. According to this, we may be swamped, and nobody has suggested in these directives that there may be some way of limiting the numbers, which makes my case even stronger. Inevitably, if there are large numbers of doctors coming in here and establishing themselves, it will be necessary for medical schools to say, "Once more we must limit the number of our medical students, we do not want them. Europe is providing fully qualified doctors." No doubt there will be some people who will say, "This is very nice. We shall be able to save quite a lot of money because Europe is paying for the education of these doctors and we

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in Britain are enjoying the luxury of having them fully qualified and coming to us without having to provide money to educate them."
These are matters which should be considered very carefully before this scheme becomes operative. I understand that the Government have been advised by the British Medical Association (EEC Committee), the General Medical Council, the Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals and the Council for Post-Graduate Medical Education. As I have considered the position of women in this scheme, I should like to know—and I do not ask the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, to give me the information today; he might give it to me in a letter—what proportion of these advisers are women.
I understand that prejudice and discrimination against women medical students exists not only in this country but is common on this side of the Iron Curtain. I have to confess that when I crossed the Iron Curtain into Russia and China I found such a change in approach that it was scarcely believable! Women medical students in Russia and China are welcomed, educated and given jobs of great responsibility. I was glad to see that the Secretary of State for the Social Services, in expressing her gratitude to overseas doctors for the service which they have given, said that traditionally they came to the United Kingdom for further experience and training. She expected that to continue, and added:
"But it remained our policy to reduce excessive reliance on help from that source ".
What I am saying to the House tonight is that we in this country have a great source of supply of excellent doctors if we like to use it. They can be found in every town in Great Britain where bright girls are denied an opportunity of a career in medicine because of the prejudice and discrimination exercised by those in charge of medical education.
Now we are going to take part in a change in the professional world not only of medicine but, as the noble Lord, Lord Hill of Luton, said, in other professions. I think it is right at this stage to anticipate what the repercussions may be in every field of medicine for both men and women. The new influx of male doctors will offer an excellent excuse for the old policy I have
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described to be resuscitated unless special provisions are made and the greatest vigilance exercised at this stage.
8.2 p.m.
Lord ANNAN: My Lords, I rise to speak in this debate only because the Vice-Chancellors' Committee have asked me to express on their behalf the general agreement with the directives as they now stand, and to congratulate the Government and the previous Government for having carried out some remarkable negotiations in Brussels and saving us from a very rigid, bureaucratic approach by which the number of hours of instruction was to be the sole criterion for determining whether a doctor was qualified or not. In this debate I know that a great many people took part and we have achieved a very considerable success by compelling the Community to accept this notion of an Advisory Committee.
First of all, the representations that we made ensure that adequate standards of practical training should be achieved. The second achievement was that the Advisory Committee should be set up. I understand that its composition was rather different from the view of the noble Lord, Lord Hill of Luton; that is to say, there should be a representative of Government, a representative of the profession concerned—in this case medicine—and a representative of the teaching profession, in this sense the universities.
Lord HILL of LUTON: My Lords, the truth is midway between our positions. It was of the Government; it is now registering bodies; but many of those registering bodies in some countries are Governments.
Lord ANNAN: I am grateful to the noble Lord. My Lords, the Standing Committee of Doctors of the EEC. and that includes (does it not?) a representative of the BMA, has expressed some opposition to two features of this Advisory Committee. They have expressed some doubt as to whether the way of nominating these representatives is right. I think the medical profession, perfectly understandably from their point of view, wanted three separate representatives, as it were, to be nominated without question and that no Government could possibly

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intervene or refuse to accept a nomination, for instance, of the medical profession.
I am not sure that that has been achieved. As I understand it, the position is that if a Government do not want, for example, the particular representative of the teaching profession who has been nominated, they can say that they refuse to accept him. On the other hand, as I understand it, the Government concerned certainly could not nominate someone of their own wish. They would have to ask the institution concerned, either the medical profession or the universities, to nominate somebody afresh. Here again, although there is this slight, small "niggle", we have achieved a reasonable compromise. I do not think the Government could simply throw out nominees and put their own nominees in. There was, I understand, a second objection by the medical profession. That was regarding the undergraduate and postgraduate parts of the profession being represented by the same person. Unless one increases the numbers so largely in the Advisory Committee it would be difficult to achieve separate representation for each of these parts of the medical profession.
We in the universities well recognise that the BMA is in a difficulty. They supported nobly the British notion of the Advisory Committee and it was something which came from this country. They worked with the Committee of Vice-Chancellors to achieve this particular compromise, which is crucial to the whole professional qualification problem in the EEC. But, of course, as always happens, the BMA is also a member of the Committee of Doctors of the EEC. Indeed, I understand that they provide both the President and Secretary, and here they naturally get opposition and want to try to get agreement among the medical profession of the EEC. In this case they might find themselves up against some of their European colleagues.
I am deeply suspicious in this debate of those countries which have a much more authoritarian administration than in this country—namely, France, Belgium and, indeed, in one sense, Germany. I believe they are intent, if they possibly can, to wreck the idea of the Advisory Committee. The French in particular
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are deeply opposed to this idea. It goes against the whole tradition of French Government which is a very highly centralised form of government, and the bureaucracy is the body which really lays down the law. Advisory Committees of this kind are absolutely unknown in France—it is no business of the public to provide an Advisory Committee at all! I see the medical profession is in this difficulty; I hope they will stand firm and stand by the notion of the Advisory Committee. I hope they will not go contrary to what I understand is the policy of the Government at the moment.
If I may now move from that point to the speech of the noble Baroness, I am surprised at the notion that this country is to be flooded with male doctors from the continent of Europe and that this will therefore give an opportunity to the reactionary medical schools in our country to cut down on the number of women who are admitted to them and who will then become doctors. I have always thought that the noble Baroness has a very good point in this regard. Indeed, in previous debates on this matter I have agreed with her that in the past there was discrimination against women in our medical schools. As I once said to the noble Baroness, I thought that some time-in the long distant past the medical schools' intake was governed very strongly, in London at any rate, by the need to provide the best rugger side possible! But, having said that, these days are past, and when the noble Baroness asks what guarantee there is against such discrimination coming back, there is a very good guarantee; that is, that the Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals laid down as a principle, which they published—I think it was in the days when Mrs. Thatcher was the Secretary of State for Education and Science—that there could be no quotas and no kind of discrimination against women in medical schools. I might add that the quotas which we had in the 1950s and 1960s had been imposed in medical schools in order to compel them to produce a number of women doctors. So the notion of a quota was not in the first sense discriminatory; it was a way of stopping discrimination.
Baroness SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, I know that the noble Lord has

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always been a champion of women, but if there is prejudice and discrimination, people who are governed by these horrible considerations think out ways to outwit the quota. I have just told your Lordships about it. After the quota was established, the professor told me, they thought out an excellent way of saying: "We are not having enough women good enough to accept". So they were demanding higher "A" ratings from girls than boys. I am telling this to the noble Lord, who has been wonderful in the past, to show to what depths people stoop in order to exclude women.
Lord ANNAN: My Lords, the noble Baroness has quoted a case; I could quote a great many cases against that being the common practice in medical schools today. I believe that this is a matter of the past. It is past history, but nobody would wish to minimise the degree to which the campaign which the noble Baroness has for years conducted on this matter has been brought, I believe, to a successful conclusion in which we do not any longer, and we will no longer, tolerate that kind of discrimination against women doctors.
I do not want to make a speech about the composition of our medical schools. I wondered whether this picture—of the influx of male doctors producing a complete change in not merely the structure of the profession in the country but also the intake in the medical schools—was not just a trifle far fetched. But I understand the noble Baroness's passion on this subject. The only request I am making is that the Government should confirm that the position that we have reached in the EEC debates on this matter is as satisfactory as could be expected, in view of the understandable compromises and negotiations which must be conducted between member States.
8.14 p.m.
The Earl of HALSBURY: My Lords, my name is not on the list of speakers but may I make a brief intervention on this language question. The danger is not from the general practitioner who speaks not a word of English. If he spoke not a word of English he would not have a patient. The danger is that man who speaks English not quite so well as he thinks he does. One can have an Honours degree in a
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foreign language but still not speak it very well in the colloquial sense. Even a doctor trained in the Home Counties would have to learn many new dialect words, such as "nesh" and "mardy", if he wanted to practise in the industrial North; otherwise he could not communicate with patients. This is a danger against which no system of licensing, or insisting on educational qualifications, will ever safeguard us. This is the real danger and we ought to keep our eyes on it—the failure to communicate because knowledge of the language is not quite good enough—rather than on this imaginary figure, the man who speaks not a word of English and yet has the temerity to come here and to try to practise.
8.15 p.m.
Lord PLATT: My Lords, my noble friend Lord Halsbury has spoken for one minute. I hope that I shall not take much more time than he did. But just before we wind up, as the noble Lord, Lord Amulree, has had to withdraw, I thought I might just thank the noble Lord, Lord Hill of Luton, first of all, for so clearly expounding the present position, which I am sure many of us were almost as ignorant about as I myself was, and secondly for his chairmanship of the sub-committee. I agree with my noble friend Lord Halsbury about this language difficulty. After all, one need not go to see a doctor if he cannot speak one's language at all. If he speaks nothing but Italian one need not go to see him.
Baroness SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord what one does if he is the only doctor in the neighbourhood?
Lord PLATT: My Lords, that is a matter for the Health Service. I do not think that there will be a large exodus of doctors from this country, owing to the notorious inability of English people to speak any language except their own. I rise only to emphasise this question which the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, raised. We are well protected from the posible dangers of this situation, which I do not think are tremendously great, by having the Health Service. As the noble Lord, Lord Hill of Luton, has clearly said, one need not appoint a Danish or an Italian person, who cannot speak any English, to be a house surgeon

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or a registrar in a hospital; one has complete control and just does not appoint them.
I am not quite sure of the situation in general practice. It seems to me that the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, was not quite sure, either. I suppose a person has a right to put up a plate if he is qualified, but does he then get any of the privileges of the Health Service? Can he, for instance, prescribe drugs which his patients will obtain free on the Health Service? If he wishes for those privileges, does he not have to have some kind of a contract with what used to be an executive committee and is now I think a family doctor committee? Is there not some kind of choice on the part of the committee as to whether or not they will accept this doctor? I ask these questions simply because I want the answers, which I do not already know.
8.18 p.m.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, there was a debate in your Lordships' House on 10th April 1973 when the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, explained fully the processes by which the Community worked to produce the directives which give effect to Article 57 of the Treaty of Rome, which requires provision to be made to facilitate the freedom of movement of professionally qualified persons. The noble Lord, Lord Hill of Luton, has dealt fully with this matter, and if he does not think I am being impertinent I would say how much I, and I am sure everyone in this House, appreciated what was a most balanced and informative speech. I have not been asked to say that; nor have I been asked to say what I am proposing to say now, which is that I think we owe a great debt of gratitude to the officials at the Department of Health and Social Security who over the months have burned the candle at both ends in order to get across to the Advisory Committee and the people with whom they have been negotiating our own particular views—and with very great success. Our discussions over the past months have been particularly designed to ensure the maintenance of a very high professional standard of medicine.
Also in the debate which took place last April a good deal of attention was focused on the arrangements whereby Her
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Majesty's Government consult with the various professional interests at home. I propose now simply to draw attention to some of the most important issues and to set the scene by describing the present state of progress which has been reached in those proposals. The medical and dental directives have been under discussion in the Council of Ministers for a number of years, long before the accession of the United Kingdom to the Community. During that time it was decided that all doctors, whether employed or self-employed, should come within the scope of the directives, as is permitted by Articles 45, 49 and 57 of the Treaty to which the noble Lord, Lord Hill, made detailed reference.
Since then the United Kingdom has participated fully in the discussions on the medical directives and has brought forward—and I want to emphasise this, my Lords—some constructive proposals, all of which have been formulated only after prolonged consultation with the bodies representing the professions at home. So there has been very close liaison between the Department and the various medical associations in this country. As yet there have been no discussions on the proposals relating to the dental profession, but obviously—and the noble Lord, Lord Hill, drew attention to this point—the pattern developing for the medical profession had implications for the dentists and, indeed, for practically every other profession for which similar proposals exist or will be prepared. The Government have recognised throughout the interests of other professions in the doctors' directives which were chosen by the European Commission to pioneer the way.
This opportunity should be taken to draw the attention of your Lordships to the work undertaken by the European Standing Committee of Doctors in connection with medical directives, and I am sure your Lordships will be interested to know that this year Mr. Lewin, who is Chairman of the Council of the British Medical Association, was appointed Chairman of the Committee, and that Doctor Derek Stevenson became the Secretary General. The Committee has played a large part in convincing our European partners of the importance of defining the minimum standards of training by reference to the quality of that

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training, rather than simply to its duration. This is really the important point—the quality, not so much the duration.
My Lords, the House should also be aware that consultations have taken place on the issues arising on the medical directives with the British Medical Association's EEC Committee, the General Medical Council, the Committee of Vice Chancellors and Principals and the Council for Post-graduate Medical Education. My noble friend Baroness Summerskill raised the question of the number of women members. I was not sure whether the noble Baroness was referring to the number of women members on these various bodies, or to the women members of the
Committee which will consist of three experts and three alternates from each member State. In that first case, they would come from the professions, the university world and the General Medical Council. The provision for alternates will allow for the inclusion of members with expert knowledge of postgraduate education. If my noble friend was referring to the three members and the three alternates, I have to inform her that at the moment no nominations have yet been made and I can only draw the Government's attention to what she has said tonight. However, the noble Baroness can rest assured that, so far as that
Committee is concerned, no nominations have yet been made. If my noble friend is referring to the other bodies with which she is more familiar than I am, she will know that, out of a membership of 47, the General Medical Council has, I think, two women. The Council for Post graduate Education is made up of 30, and I understand that there are two women. The Vice-Chancellors' Medical Commit tee—the noble Baroness may like to talk to her noble friend Lord Annan about this—is made up of 8, and I believe that there is one woman on that Commit teex2014;—
Baroness SUMMERSKILL: The statutory woman!
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: —and a very delightful person, sometimes, my Lords. The British Medical Association's EEC Committee is made up of 10 members, two of whom—20 per cent.—are women. In other words, 8 per cent. of the total of these bodies are women.
Baroness SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, I regret to see that the noble Lord, Lord Annan, has just gone.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: No, he is here.
Baroness SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, may I remind the House that the noble Lord, Lord Annan, said that nothing has changed.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, if nothing has changed there has been an improvement over the years.
Lord ANNAN: My Lords, I was talking about medical schools. The noble Baroness should not joke about that.
Baroness SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, I never joke about women.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, the new ideas which have been put into the discussion by various United Kingdom bodies seem to have stimulated an examination of the proposals that has resulted in improved solutions. Most of the important issues have now been settled at Council Working Group level, and I have been asked—I think by the noble Lord, Lord Hill, and also by the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare—why the latest texts of the medical directives have not been laid before your Lordships' House. My understanding of the situation—I want to be perfectly frank about this—is that some of the matters have yet to be agreed and are at present under discussion. Until they have been agreed it will be a little unwise to make known the substance of them. But I understand it is hoped that there will be agreement in the near future, and they should be available within the next six months. In fact, the medical directives will probably come into effect during 1976, and in order to give effect to the directives in this country amendments to our own legislation will be necessary.
Therefore, through a long process of discussion and negotiation the United Kingdom delegation eventually persuaded their partners in the Working Group to have criteria for medical training set down in the directives. These criteria will be sufficiently flexible to take account of future developments in medical training, while safeguarding the final standard which is achieved. They include adequate scientific and clinical knowledge and

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supervisory experience in hospital. It has always been urged by the United Kingdom that it was not sufficient to set down the criteria; it was necessary also to have the means of ensuring that they were fulfilled in practice. The machinery which was proposed for this was an expert Advisory Committee. Such a committee could ensure that the training courses in the member States maintained a high and comparable standard that would lead to qualifications which were recognised by all member States. This has now been accepted by the Community.
My Lords, in the case of the medical directives a draft Council decision makes provision for an Advisory Committee on Medical Education. The committee will consist of three experts and three alternates. Perhaps I need not pursue this matter, because I have dealt with it already. Provision is made in the directives for doctors who are established in one country to offer their services in another without changing their place of residence. This situation occurs, for example, in frontier regions where doctors regularly cross the border in the course of their normal work. It also can arise when specialists are called in from another country to assist in the treatment of patients, when their knowledge and skills happen to be required at a certain time. It has seemed desirable to Her Majesty's Government to make provision for this kind of activity, provided that there were adequate safeguards. It has now been agreed that the activities of doctors providing services will be subject to control, in that such doctors will be subject to the normal disciplinary rules governing the practice of the profession in the country that they visit.
It had been hoped that it would be possible to require doctors seeking to establish themselves in another country to spend a period acquiring knowledge of the practices of that country, and demonstrating a command of the language. In this matter I have to be perfectly frank, and admit that it is difficult to provide such a period of adaptation without erecting a further barrier, to the removal of which the directives are dedicated.
So far as language proficiency is concerned, the regulations on the freedom of movement of workers within the Community mean that any doctor from a member State seeking employment in a
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post in our National Health Service hospitals or community health services could, if the employing authority wished, be subject to an assessment of language proficiency. It is now proposed that the directives should include provisions for doctors other than these to be given advice on the acquiring of an adequate knowledge of the language of the country in which they seek to establish themselves. The directives will also provide for centres of information in each State, which doctors may attend to learn about medical practice in that State.
In total, these arrangements seem to be satisfactory and, after all, it is improbable that doctors without an adequate knowledge of English would wish to try to establish themselves here, or would attract patients if they did. But I think we must bear in mind that in this country, as in every other country, there are pockets of other nationals. For instance, I can think of one place in this country where there is a very high concentration of Italian workers, and perhaps it would be reasonable for one, two or more Italian doctors to come over and minister to their own nationals. We do not envisage any serious problem, because we feel that those coming over will come in the main for that kind of purpose. Doctors who do establish themselves in another country will face many difficulties initially, and it is to be expected that they will readily avail themselves of any facilities which will enable them to settle down. It should be borne in mind that some doctors may move in order to make specific contributions, as I have just said.
The House will be well aware that in the United Kingdom we have at present no statutory system for registering medical specialists. Recognition is accorded to those obtaining National Health Service consultant status. This presents a difficulty, for our European partners need to have a means of recognising specialist qualifications similar to their own. The whole question of specialist registration, as many of your Lordships know, is currently being reviewed by the Merrison Committee. Meanwhile, it would be possible for a competent authority in the United Kingdom to issue a certificate on completion of specialist training which would be accepted by the competent authorities in our partner countries.

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The original proposals set a firm face against the possibility of part-time postgraduate training. This is understandable, because of concern about the possible abuse of such a system. In the United Kingdom, however, part-time training under proper safeguards has been an established part of our system of medical education. It is particularly important in the case of married women doctors with children, who would otherwise be unable to undertake such training. This is significant in the United Kingdom, because of our large and growing population of women medical students and doctors. Not only would it be a loss to them personally; it would deprive society of a good deal of medical skill. Happily, an acceptable solution to this problem has been found which will permit member States to continue to allow approved part-time training so long as the standard is in no way impaired. Within four years of the adoption of these directives, the question will be reviewed to see whether any changes are needed in the arrangements.
The medical directives will give freedom of movement to doctors who are nationals of a member State and who have qualifications acquired in a member State. As the noble Lord, Lord Hill of Luton, pointed out, doctors who are nationals of a third country or who hold qualifications acquired in third countries, do not come within the scope of the directives. This means that the directives will not affect in any way our existing arrangements for registering and employing in this country doctors from such other countries as Australia and Canada and India.
The Eighth Report of the Select Committee draws attention to the exercise of official authority and employment in the public service. While the great majority of National Health Service posts are already open without restriction of nationality, in certain member countries the doctors in the public hospitals have the status of being civil servants. This effectively restricts these posts to nationals of the member States. Right of access to those posts within three years of the adoption of the directives by doctors of other member States has now been assured by draft Council Statement.
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We now come to a point to which the Select Committee attaches great importance. The mutual recognition of qualifications is based on mutual trust and the assumption that the European doctor carries out broadly comparable functions and is trained to an approximately equivalent standard in each member State. In general, therefore, a doctor who is suitably qualified and allowed to practice in any one State will be accepted and permitted to exercise his profession in any other State. The competent authority of a receiving State—in the United Kingdom it is the General Medical Counci—will satisfy itself that the doctor genuinely holds the qualifications he claims, and will then admit him to the register. It is not envisaged that there will normally be any reason to interrupt the usual process. It is, however, conceivable that at some time a situation might arise when the General Medical Council, or the competent authority in another country, has justifiable reason to doubt whether graduates of a particular teaching establishment have been trained to the standard required by the directives. This is a matter which can be dealt with.
When this matter was raised by the Lords' Select Committee, departmental witnesses said that, in the last resort, if the General Medical Council has reason to believe that the qualifications given in a particular teaching establishment fail to reach the standards set by this country, it will have the same right to register or not to register as is enjoyed at the present time. The Committee was told that this was unlikely to happen in practice, and it should be stressed that we do not anticipate this event arising. If the situation did arise it would be a a quite exceptional event, but the Select Committee were right to consider the possibility. Their overriding concern, like that of the Government, is to safeguard public health.
Subsequently this specific point was further discussed in the Council's Working Group. However, the opinion expressed in Brussels on the legal position arising under the draft directives was not completely in accord with what the Departmental witnesses had believed the position should be and would be. As a result of the Select Commitee's examination and our further pursuit of this matter

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in Brussels, the Community has now recognised that there was a gap in the provisions. They have agreed to a Council Statement, the terms of which have almost been finalised, which aims to provide the sort of safeguard the Government consider to be sufficient, and I hope this will be available in the not too distant future.
Should the unlikely event occur the sequence of events might be as follows. First, the General Medical Council would probably contact the competent authority in the member State to see whether the difficulty could be resolved; secondly, if this did not result in a satisfactory solution, the General Medical Council would warn Her Majesty's Government and the Commission would be informed; thirdly, the Commission would no doubt avail themselves of the services of the Advisory Committee in considering the problem, and meanwhile the General Medical Council would defer registration, pending confirmation by the Commission that the criteria for training had been complied with.
It will be seen from the foregoing that a great deal of thought and effort has gone into ensuring that the medical directives which facilitate the freedom of movement for doctors safeguard the public health and maintain our standards of medicine. The close co-operation and efforts of the profession have been of great value in helping us to meet these objectives. What will be the result of adopting these directives, your Lordships may well ask. In the immediate future nothing very dramatic is likely to result. A few doctors may move from one country to another, but there are of course still restrictions which will tend to limit movement. I think language is a very real one. Perhaps the younger doctors will begin to take advantage of the right to move and, as time goes by, there will no doubt be an increase in the number of exchanges which take place at present. As your Lordships know, for one purpose or another some 900 doctors leave our shores every year. Some 550 of them annually do in fact return. In the long run we believe this movement of professional persons will be to the benefit not only of the profession itself but also to the ultimate advantage of the public as a whole.
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My Lords, I do not know whether I have covered all the questions which have arisen. I hope I have. The criteria for medical training have been laid down in the directives, and Article I of the Directive on Co-ordination provides that
"during his complete training the student must acquire adequate knowledge of the sciences on which medicine is based, a good understanding of the scientific methods, including the principle of measuring biological functions, the evaluation of scientifically established facts and the analysis of data; sufficient understanding of the structure, functions and behaviour of both healthy and sick persons as well as relations between the state of health of the physical and social surroundings of the human being".
It then says,
"There must be adequate knowledge of clinical discipline and practices providing him with a coherent picture of mental and physical diseases, of medicine from the point of prophylaxis, diagnosis and therapy, and of human reproduction; suitable clinical experience in hospital must be undertaken under appropriate supervision."
So far as I have been able, I have tried to deal with the question of language posed by the noble Lords, Lord Hill of Luton and Lord Aberdare, as well as the possible problem of doctors going abroad.
My Lords, perhaps the only other useful thing I can say relates to the Advisory Committee on Medical Education. I think I was asked the terms of reference of the Advisory Committee on Medical Education. The draft Council decision provides that the task of the Committee
"shall be to help to ensure a high standard of medical training in the Community with regard to both the training of the general practitioner and of the specialist".
The draft Council decision provides that it will carry out this task by exchanging information as to training methods and content, by discussion and consultation, with the object of developing common approaches to the standard to be attained, and by keeping under review developments in medical science and education.
My Lords, with regard to language, perhaps I can add this. We should not be able to apply language tests to doctors entering to become general practitioners. They are not National Health Service employees. For National Health Service general practice there are selection procedures for all established practices. In the future, as now, language proficiency will no doubt be taken into account.

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At this stage I do not think I can add anything that is useful. I would conclude where I began, by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Hill of Luton, for raising this matter, and by thanking the officials of the Department of Health and Social Security who are very much seized with these problems, and who, over a period of many months, have improved the conditions for entry into this country.
The Earl of SELKIRK: My Lords, if the noble Lord will forgive me for interrupting him, have there been any moves with regard to training in law? There are aspects of the medical profession into which the law enters, and which differ from country to country. Has any consideration been given to that?
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, so far as I know, there have been no such directives at this time. As I understand the position, it really all hangs upon what is the final outcome of the doctors and dentists directives, because what is decided for the doctors will have a very marked bearing on the other professions. But in answer to the question of the noble Earl, Lord Selkirk, I do not think there has been any progress.
8.49 p.m.
Lord HILL of LUTON: My Lords, I will be very brief. First of all, may I thank those noble Lords who have spoken in this debate and, perhaps even more, those who have had the fortitude to stay to listen to others speaking. Secondly, may I warmly endorse what the Minister said about the industry, the effectiveness and the co-operation shown by the members of the Department responsible for this burdensome, unending and difficult task. Of course I accept the point of the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury, that the man who believes he is speaking good English is more dangerous than the man who speaks none at all. I will answer the question if I may—although I ought not to do this—about the contract of the general practitioner. Everyone on the British Medical Register is free to set himself up in practice where he likes outside the National Health Service, and in an undoctored area in the National Health Service, without anyone
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else's permission. That is the fact of the situation.
Lord ABERDARE: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord whether automatically he gets a contract from the Family Practitioner Committee?
Lord HILL of LUTON: My Lords, he puts his name on the register in an under-doctored area, where any registered medical practitioners are free to go. This of course, is full of unknowns. We do not know how the Advisory Committee will work. While I am full of admiration for the Minister's glowing, glossy anticipation of how it will work, he knows and I know that neither of us has the faintest idea how it will work until we see the terms of reference, the powers, and indeed perhaps after a period of working. We do not know whether doctors will leave this country for more sun and greater remuneration in certain European countries. We just do not know whether there will be an outflow. I have my suspicions, doctors being human, and, as Lord Halsbury knows, rather more than human. No one knows, but it might happen, and if this results in an outflow of doctors to the wealthier countries of Europe from the poorer countries of Europe, then I think it will be dangerous, if not disastrous.
Lord HOY: My Lords, if the noble Lord will forgive me, when he is making this argument I think he will also take into account that a considerable number of doctors who sought their Eldorados abroad have now returned to this country to practise under the National Health Service.
Lord HILL of LUTON: My Lords, it could well be. Nobody knows the answer. I think what is worrying me in all this business is that there is such a mass of paper; there are so many changes in directives; there is so much inevitable confusion and so much is unknown that we in this country are in danger of being submerged by all this, even covering it with cosy and hopeful interpretations. We may find profound changes in our life in this country, and in this respect in all probability profound changes in professional life and organisation.

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If I may make one last observation, this at least shows the advantage of periodic debates in this House in which the Select Committee, under the chairmanship of the noble Baroness, can bring forward matters on which it and the public should be informed and which should be debated. If ever there were justification for such debates, it seems to me to be in the two debates we have had this evening.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I take it the noble Lord would not deny that our intervention over a period of a good many months now has created a far better situation than any of us could have envisaged, and that there is no reason to suppose that our officials will not be able to do as well in the future in bringing about the state of affairs that we want as they have succeeded in doing in the past?
Lord HILL of LUTON: My Lords, with the first part of the noble Lord's observation I agree; great progress has been made. With regard to the second part, I get more cynical and suspicious as I get older, and I do not propose to share that glow of optimism that further changes will be made, even for the delight of agreeing with the noble Lord.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

EUROPEAN COMMUNITIES
Third Report from the Select Committee made, and to be printed.