Lords Sitting of 2 July 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 Rochester
The Lord Morris—Took the Oath

MOTORWAYS: DIRECTIONAL SIGNS
LORD NUGENT OF GUILDFORD: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what is their policy with regard to fixing directional signs on the approach roads to motorways, and whether there is a prescribed radius from the entrances for the fixing of those signs.
LORD GARNSWORTHY: My Lords, the policy of the Department of the Environment and their advice to local highway authorities is that routes leading to motorways should be well signed and that the signing may start 10 miles or more from a motorway.
LORD NUGENT OF GUILDFORD: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for his informative Answer. Is he aware that, while that is good advice, local highway authorities are not uniform in their observance of it? Is he also aware that it would be greatly for the convenience of individual drivers, both private and freight, if this practice were made uniform? It would also be very greatly for the benefit of road traffic generally if there were uniformity in the fixing of directional signs to motorways at all intersections within a 10-mile radius of motorway junctions, in order to ensure a smooth flow of traffic on to the motorways. Will the noble Lord he good enough to use his influence in asking local highway authorities to implement this advice 100 per cent.?
LORD GARNSWORTHY: My Lords, I am sure the noble Lord appreciates, as the House appreciates, that local authorities being highway authorities have con-
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siderable discretion in this field. The advice given by the Department is consistent and is the same to all local authorities, although I appreciate that practice varies considerably. I would tell the noble Lord that I have pursued this matter, and I am satisfied that the Department is already doing a very great deal to persuade local authorities to fall into line with the advice that they are given. I certainly give the noble Lord the assurance which he requested in the last part of his remarks.
LORD PLATT: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that the Automobile Association is extremely helpful in this regard? I have several times notified them of signs which I think are badly placed and which tend to misinform one, and they have always taken up these matters with the local authority.
LORD GARNSWORTHY: My Lords, I am not answerable for the A.A. and I think I ought not to try to hide behind them. The noble Lord's original Question referred to the practice of local authorities and the advice and policy of the Department of the Environment, and I think I have replied fairly fully to it.
LORD SEGAL: My Lords, can my noble friend urge upon local authorities that directional signs should never be erected without clearly giving mileages?
LORD GARNSWORTHY: My Lords, I am advised that this is the practice wherever possible, and where the local authority is agreeable to doing it. But, certainly, I take note of the point raised by my noble friend and will see whether anything can be done.
THE EARL OF ONSLOW: My Lords, can the noble Lord tell us when it is not possible to state the distance from a signpost to a motorway? Surely these are not moving signposts.
LORD GARNSWORTHY: My Lords, I cannot give the noble Earl that information.
LORD SLATER: My Lords, is it not advisable to bring to the notice of the regional engineers, who are responsible for highway development, the observations of the noble Lord who asked the original Question, and leave it to those people to give directions to the highway authorities?
LORD GARNSWORTHY: My Lords, I shall draw the attention of my right honourable friend to what my noble friend has said.
LORD NUGENT OF GUILDFORD: My Lords, may I press the noble Lord one step further? Is he aware—as I am sure he is—that the motorways are the responsibility of the Department of the Environment and that enormous sums of public money are spent in constructing them, so that it is in the general interest that they should be used as much as possible? Does he think it possible that the Department of the Environment might extend their responsibility a little further into the field of the local highway authorities in order to get these directional signs adequately fixed within a 10-mile radius?
LORD GARNSWORTHY: My Lords, I think they might, but I believe that at the present juncture they do not have the power.

HOUSING SITES: RELEASE OF LAND
2.41 p.m.
THE LORD BISHOP OF SOUTHWARK: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they are satisfied with the speed at which unused and surplus lands owned by Government Departments and nationalised industries in London are being released to appropriate authorities for housing development.
LORD GARNSWORTHY: My Lords, the procedure for the release of redundant land in London owned by Government Departments gives the housing authorities and the Housing Corporation the right to make bids for such land which are given the same priority as bids by other Government Departments. Time must therefore be allowed for consultation, hut it is normally possible to allocate it within about two months of the initial declaration of redundancy, and I do not think this can be speeded up any more. Disposal of land owned by other public
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authorities is a matter for these authorities, but I am sure that they bear in mind the need for speed in dealing with each individual case.
THE LORD BISHOP OF SOUTHWARK: My Lords, while thanking the noble Lord for his reply, may I ask him two supplementary questions? First, are Her Majesty's Government satisfied that sufficient progress is being made on the Report of the public inquiry into the Greater London Development plan, and in particular the proposals made for the speeding up of overspill programmes? May I put the first part of my supplementary and ask the second in a moment.
LORD GARNSWORTHY: My Lords, I think that the best answer that I can give is that the Government are never satisfied with the rate of progress being made; they always wish it could be speedier.
THE LORD BISHOP OF SOUTHWARK: My Lords, while thanking the Minister for that not particularly illuminating reply—and I apologise for not having given him notice of my supplementary—may I ask him whether he is able to throw a little light on the negotiations that are taking place with regard to the redevelopment of London's dockland? In particular, is he content with the rate at which those negotiations are proceeding?
LORD GARNSWORTHY: My Lords, if the right reverend Prelate would care to put down a specific Question on that point, I shall do my best to answer it. Alternatively, I shall write to him giving details.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, may I ask my noble friend which Church lands have been released for housing slum dwellers?
THE LORD BISHOP OF SOUTHWARK: My Lords, is the noble Baroness aware—
SEVERAL NOBLE LORDS: Order! Order!
THE LORD BISHOP OF SOUTHWARK: My Lords, are the Government aware that the Church Commissioners will be able to supply the noble Baroness with a very long documented letter?
LORD GARNSWORTHY: My Lords, I think the right reverend Prelate would do well to write to the noble Baroness.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that the noble Baroness will be pleased to have that as quickly as possible?
VISCOUNT ST. DAVIDS: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that, although large areas are handled with some fair efficiency under the present arrangements, small areas of odd and unusual shapes in various positions, particularly those owned by public organisations such as the railways, are not in fact handled very well by the present arrangements as there does not appear to be enough imagination used in the matter? Thus, a great many useful areas of land, especially in small and vital positions in towns, are not well handled, and something more should be done about it.
LORD GARNSWORTHY: My Lords, I can assure my noble friend that the Department of the Environment is contivally exercising pressure with regard to this matter.

TERRORISM AND INTERNATIONAL ACTION
LORD JANNER: 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, in view of the continuing escalation of terrorism and of threats made by Arab terrorists resulting in prisoners convicted of crimes of violence being released in consequence of those threats, they will take steps to get representatives of the affected nations together with the object of taking concerted action to deal with this serious problem.
THE PARLIAMENTARY UNDERSECRETARY OF STATE, FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH OFFICE (LORD GORONWY-ROBERTS): My Lords, recent experience at the United Nations and in the International Civil Aviation Organisation has shown that the international community is not yet prepared to take the firm collective action necessary for the effective combatting of inter-
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national terrorism. Her Majesty's Government will continue to do all they can to stimulate joint practical countermeasures; the calling of an international meeting at the moment would, regrettably, seem unlikely to lead to fruitful action.
LORD JANNER: My Lords, in view of the lowest depths of depravity to which the arch-criminals have now resorted by stating that they are planning to kill children, schoolchildren, and they have already exercised that particular and terrible threat by killing 22 children in a school at Maalot is it not important that we should take up this matter with those civilised peoples—I and everybody in your Lordships' House realise the difficulty at the United Nations—who are affected, so that they may get together and deaf with the position? May I ask my noble friend one other question: in view of the fact that A1 Fatah has associated itself with the latest attack on women and children at Nahariya is it not possible for us to close their offices here so depriving them of the opportunity of throwing out smokescreens, and also to consider closing the offices of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, who are involved in all these matters?
LORD GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, apart from doing everything that we can at international conferences to speed up and improve counter-measures against terrorism of every kind from whatever quarter it emanates, we also seek every possible bilateral opportunity of making our views very firmly known. I can assure my noble friend that we have done this in regard to the cases and details that he has mentioned. As to the position of Al Fatah and its office, this is a matter that my Department and others would need to consider very carefully in the light of what my noble friend has just said.
LORD GRIDLEY: My Lords, in this serious matter affecting human lives is not the best deterrent to this form of terrorism the securing of reliable information prior to an offence taking place? Are Her Majesty's Government satisfied that they can and do obtain such information?
LORD GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, of course one could not give a perfectionist answer to such a question,

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but I appreciate what the noble Lord has in mind. We feel that we have very substantial access to the information of which he speaks. I would not wish to go into detail, and I would not wish to overstate the assurance, but I think that in so far as these matters can be dealt with they are being dealt with at least as efficiently by this country as by any other.
LORD JANNER: My Lords, may I put this further question to my noble friend: Is it not possible to do something to bring pressure on those countries that harbour those who, having been convicted of crimes, have been released from prison? It is not possible for us to do something about those organisations in this country that are deliberately helping them?
LORD GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, my noble friend refers to the possibility of exerting pressure, as he calls it, on those countries that harbour these miscreants. The United Kingdom delegation to the Extraordinary Assembly of the International Civil Aviation Organisation held in Rome last August, in fact very strongly pressed for measures of this kind, regrettably without success because those taking part were not unanimously in favour of such action. For such action to be effective it must substantially result from a consensus of view of all those taking part in such a conference.
THE EARL OF ONSLOW: My Lords, first, would the noble Lord agree that the Palestine terrorists are the descendants of Irgun Zvai Leumi, the Stern gang and Haganah? Secondly, would he agree that the most important and correct way of getting rid of this very unattractive problem is for there to be more sensitivity on the part of the Government of Israel towards the Palestinian problem?
LORD GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, I would hesitate to agree to any apportionment of blame in a situation which continues to be extremely sensitive, but is not unhopeful in relation to the initiatives taken so successfully by Dr. Kissinger in the Middle East. We would be better advised to address ourselves to the possibility of adding to the disengagement agreements broader agreements resting on Resolutions 242 and 238, to
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both of which both sides in this unhappy situation have expressed agreement.

NATIONAL LIFESAVING CAMPAIGN
2.52 p.m.
LORD JANNER: 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 are aware that only 10 per cent. of swimmers in Great Britain learn how to save life and in view of this and the fact that accidental deaths by drowning are more than 700 annually, whether they will identify themselves actively with this year's National Lifesaving Campaign, which the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents and the Royal Life Saving Society have organised; and whether they will provide adequate grants for training purposes in respect of lifesaving.
THE MINISTER OF STATE, HOME OFFICE (LORD HARRIS OF GREENWICH): My Lords, the Government support this campaign and my honourable friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Home Office spoke at its launching. The Home Office has prepared supporting publicity. The Royal Life Saving Society and the Surf Life Saving Association receive annual grants from the Sports Council, and local authorities generally have power to assist the water safety activities of voluntary organisations.
LORD JANNER: My Lords, while thanking my noble friend for that Answer, as this is a matter of immediate importance may I ask whether, through the various media, he will speed up the Government's action so that Ministers who speak at various functions—for example, at the opening of swimming pools and so on—definitely express their concern about so many people indulging in water sports when they are themselves not able to save their own lives, even if they swim, and certainly are not able to save the lives of other people? Thus we should emphasise that they should be trained for such a purpose wherever and whenever it is possible.
LORD HARRIS OF GREENWICH: My Lords, the Government take a serious view of this campaign. They are supporting it by making posters available to the organisers of the campaign. A short film has also been made available. My right honourable friend the Home Secretary announced on May 7 that he was setting up a Working Party on Water Safety Measures. In fact, this Working Party will sit for the first time this month.

BUSINESS
BARONESS LLEWELYN-DAVIES OF HASTOE: My Lords, I thought it might be helpful to the House if I informed your Lordships today that there will be no Friday Sitting this week as had been previously supposed.

ARBITRATION BILL [H.L.]
THE LORD CHANCELLOR (LORD ELWYN-JONES): My Lords, I beg leave to introduce a Bill to give effect to the New York Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards. I beg to move that the Bill be now read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 1a,—(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Bill read 1a, and to be printed.

NATIONAL PARKS
2.56 p.m.
BARONESS WHITE BARONESS WHITE rose to call attention to the need to review policy in National Parks and in other areas of landscape conservation and scientific interest; and to move for Papers. The noble Baroness said: My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper. I should like to start by offering warmest thanks on behalf of noble Lords in all parts of the House to the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, and his colleagues on the Committee which reviewed National Parks policies. This Report is the main subject of our debate this afternoon.
The Report on the whole has been warmly welcomed both by the public
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authorities concerned and by the voluntary amenity and conservation societies. A great deal of discussion has already taken place outside Parliament and it seemed to me appropriate that we in this House should have the opportunity to consider the Report this month because requests have been made that comments and suggestions, and maybe criticisms of the Report, should be submitted before the end of July. Frankly, I wish that more noble Lords had felt able to take part in the debate, but, of course, the day of the debate, which should have been to-morrow, was changed to meet the convenience of some of our Scottish colleagues. Scottish business had been put down for to-day. Her Majesty is holding a Garden Party in Holyrood House and, out of consideration for Scottish noble Lords, it was agreed that the business might be changed. But it has, I know, inconvenienced several noble Lords who would have taken part, and naturally one very much regrets that.
However, I am happy that my noble friend Lord Castle has chosen this occasion on which to make his maiden speech. He and his wife, at least, in earlier days, were notable walkers in what is now National Park territory, in company with the late Hugh Dalton to whom, with Lewis Silkin, we owed the first legislation on National Parks—the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949. We should not forget the debt we owe them. My strong Welsh interests and the fact that my noble friend Lord Goronwy-Roberts will be speaking for the Government in the debate will lead me to take most of my illustrations from the Principality of Wales where three of the 10 National Parks are to be found, as well as a significant number of National Nature Reserves and sites of special scientific interest.
In fact, noble Lords may not know that about one-fifth of the total land area of Wales is within designated National Parks. Other noble Lords will speak from their own experience in England and perhaps on this occasion we will miss the Scots less than we would otherwise do because Scotland has no National Parks. The first principles in this matter are the same for all of us. The need for the review, which is embodied in this readable and well-produced document, arose for two reasons. The

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outstanding reason was the difficulty experienced in the 25 years since National Parks legislation was enacted and the difficulty experienced in practice in reconciling the two conflicting aims of National Parks, the first being the preservation and enhancement of natural beauty and the second being the enjoyment of that beauty by the general public.
The time had also come to examine the structure of the National Park administration and the financial report that has been received following the legislation in 1949 and 1968, and also in relation to the re-organisation of Local Government which took place this year. I think that most noble Lords who have read the Report will agree that perhaps the most important paragraphs in it are paragraph 15 in Chapter 2 and paragraphs 10 and 11 in Chapter 8. With your Lordships' permission I will read from those paragraphs because I think they set out this dilemma in clear terms. In Chapter 2, paragraph 15, the Committee says:
"The first purpose of National Parks…—the preservation and enhancement of natural beauty—seems to us to remain entirely valid and appropriate. The second purpose—the promotion of public enjoyment—however, needs to be re-interpreted and qualified because it is now evident that excessive or unsuitable use may destroy the very qualities which attract people to the Parks."
Then, in italics for emphasis, the Committee say:
"We have no doubt that where the conflict between the two purposes, which has always been inherent, becomes acute, the first one must prevail in order that the beauty and ecological qualities of the National Parks may be maintained".
When they examine this conflict of interest in further detail in Chapter 8, paragraph 10, (and I make no apology for quoting this because I think it is such a very important statement), the Committee say:
"Because of these increasing pressures and because deterioration is so hard to reverse we believe that the statutory purposes of the parks should be restated".
They go on to say:
"We see no reason to amend the first one, preservation and enhancement of natural beauty, though 'conservation' might now be considered more appropriate than 'preservation and enchancement', while 'natural beauty' is an odd term for landscapes that have been
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so much modified by man … that term is, however, well established and is understood to embrace both scenic beauty and wild life."
They go on in the next paragraph to say:
"It is the second purpose … that needs qualification";
and they repeat:
"We recommend that the statute be amended to make it clear that their enjoyment by the public shall be in such manner and by such means as will leave their natural beauty unimpaired for the enjoyment of this and future generations".
There the dilemma, the conflict of interest, is very clearly stated.
In discussions in which I have taken part it has been suggested that possibly the absolute requirement to leave unimpaired natural beauty is not entirely practical, but one might adopt the concept that,
"Enjoyment by the public shall be in such a manner and by such means as will not cause deterioration of the environment beyond its annual ability to recover."
This precept would set the acceptable limit to wear and tear caused by human pressure on the living environment, although, of course, it does not cover geological damage or man-made works. We want to know this afternoon where the Government stand on this principle. It is important to know, and if noble Lords doubt it I would refer them to the Report by the distinguished diplomat Sir Robert Scott, who was appointed the inspector for the Inquiry into the A.66 road scheme through the Lake District. Sir Robert complained bitterly that he had no precise instructions in this matter, that he was not informed as to the relative importance to be attached to amenity considerations. He said that definitions of environmental value were imprecise and unsupported by firm Government policy. So it will be seen that the attitude of Government is of real consequence in such situations.
LORD INGLEWOOD: My Lords, will the noble Baronness allow me to interrupt her? Would she not agree that in that Inquiry the Government were entirely on the side of the vandals?
BARONESS WHITE: My Lords, I will leave the noble Lord, whose name is on the list, to make his own speech, because I was not dealing with the merits of the decision which was reached; although I

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should be disposed to agree with the noble Lord. The point I was endeavouring to make was that unless there is some Government reaction to the recommendation of the Sandford Committee, then in future inquiries the same difficulty will arise. One therefore asks oneself: can one now, in the light of the recommendations of the Sandford Committee, expect, if not an absolutely firm attitude, at least a firmer attitude on the part of Government?
My Lords, of course I recognise, as did the Committee, that these questions are far from simple. The conflict is not just between man and the natural environment: it is also between the differing interests of those who come into an area and those who live there, who earn their bread and bring up their families there. Moreover, I believe that this conflict is nowhere more acutely felt than in the Snowdonia National Park, for the area of which my noble friend was Parliamentary representative for very many years and where, to the other stresses, is added that of the divisions caused by language. Within this general problem of conflict of interest there is, perhaps, the particular relationship with those who own or farm the land.
The Committee are perfectly frank about this. In paragraph 5.45, for example, they say quite plainly—and I quote:
"Public access "—
that is, to the National Parks—
"brings no gain to farmers and landowners";
and I am afraid that some Welsh farmers referred to in that chapter appear, perhaps, excessively inhospitable. But this defensiveness against the intruder from without expressed itself in the strongest form last year, so far as Wales is concerned, when due to the opposition to the proposed designation of a new National Park, the Cambrian Mountains Park, it was turned down by the then Secretary of State for Wales without so much as a public inquiry. Even the Council for the Protection of Rural Wales, of which I have the honour to be President, was against this scheme on the grounds that designation as a National Park would encourage visitors in increasing hordes, and that this would inevitably change the whole character of the area—in their view, for the worse.
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My Lords, I have mentioned these Welsh examples because I think they express in the most graphic form the very real conflicts which arise within this conception of Parks which, unlike their American counterparts, are neither nationally owned or nationally administered. I agree with the Report that to change the name, "National Park", even though in some respects it appears to be a misnomer, would not help to change the behaviour of that small minority who really abuse the facilities of the Parks. But I believe that what is important is to act in such a way as to improve the relationship with the local people who live and work in the Park areas, and to make them feel fairly treated when, at the same time, one is asking them to receive many thousands of their fellow citizens into their midst.
I believe that the positive suggestions in the Report go a long way to make this possible. In particular, I very strongly support the proposals in Chapter Eighteen for management agreements. At present, legislative power is lacking to conclude such agreements, which would be positive as well as negative in character, and would be binding upon successors in title. We have, of course, special planning controls in the areas of National Parks, but for the most part planning controls are negative, and I believe the Committee were absolutely right in saying that, by themselves, they are not enough and more is needed. If I may quote from paragraph 10 of Chapter Eighteen, it says:
"The basic features of a management agreement would be that the owner would give a written undertaking to manage the land in accordance with a detailed plan, which might include both restraints and positive requirements. The authority would agree to make payments to the owner in recognition of any restraint on the productive use of the land and of the additional cost of any positive actions he takes in the public interest under the agreement".
Without such agreements. I do not believe that we shall get the best out of our Parks in the years of increasing pressure which lie ahead.
I understand, following the opinion of the Committee, that legislation would be needed, but there is one area where such a policy could be tried out now; namely, in Snowdonia itself, where an extensive area was taken into public ownership in 1968 when the Vaynol estate came on to

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the market and my right honourable friend Mr. Callaghan, who was at that time Chancellor of the Exchequer, provided the funds with which to purchase a considerable proportion of the estate. A pledge was given at that time that in due course the land would be sold back to those former tenants of the estate who wished to buy their holdings, but subject to agreement on conditions.
The main condition was of course access, for which, incidentally, the Countryside Commission already has powers of compulsion, including compulsory purchase if need be. However, as I understand that no sales have yet been completed in this area even after this considerable lapse of time, can we be assured by my noble friend Lord Goronwy-Roberts that none will be completed without the kind of agreement proposed under the management agreement passage in the Report to which I have just referred? Alternatively, as landowner, the Secretary of State for Wales could, I suggest, in lieu of sale offer very favourable tenancy agreements which could take fully into account the kind of provisions mentioned in the passage which I read. He would not need to wait for legislation, but could act now as a good landlord and, in such circumstances and in the present state of agriculture, such a proposal might have its attractions.
It seems to me that, having taken the dramatic step of buying a large area in the very heart of Snowdonia with the opportunity of comprehensive management of one of the most hard pressed mountain areas in the whole country, one should not let it go without making the most of it. Otherwise, it will have been a rather pointless exercise. I hope very much that my noble friend will be able to enlighten us, particularly as I was able to give him notice that I would wish to raise this matter.
I shall now turn to matters of more general interest, though I have also given notice that I have two further Welsh problems on my list: namely, the staffing position in the Brecon Beacons Park and the protection of the Pembrokeshire coast. However, I will deal with those in their due place. First of all, I should like to touch on the question of finance. Although it is twenty-five years since
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the Act establishing National Parks was put on the Statute Book, all of us who are interested in them know only too well that resources have never been adequate, let alone generous. Consequently, we all very much welcomed the Sandford Report's recommendation of a much increased national contribution. The "lion's share", as it was put, was to come from central sources in recognition not only of national interest, but of the fact that, for the most part, those using the Parks do not live there and do not pay local rates. This undertaking, although it did not go quite as far as the Countryside Commission would have wished, has been met, but there are some extremely disturbing aspects of what has been happening since.
I think that a number of noble Lords who are interested in the National Parks will have seen the much-quoted article in The Times of April 27 by Malcolm MacEwen, himself a member of a Park Authority. He pointed out that, as a result of receiving extra money from the Exchequer for National Park purposes, certain local authorities with Park responsibilities are regarding this additional contribution not as the basis of flesh expenditure on the needs of the Parks, but as a subvention in relief of rates. There is the further problem where capital expenditure is involved that, as I understand it, a Park Authority cannot go out-with the agreed capital pool which has been allotted to the authority concerned. In other words, even if it had the money, if its capital project was not in the programme which had been approved, the Park authority could not spend the money for the purposes which it would regard as important. This has, as I understand it, occurred in the Snowdonia National Park, because the Gwynedd Authority is already very fully committed. It may also have occurred elsewhere.
So one has very grave apprehensions that unless these two conditions are dealt with the gesture which the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, and his colleagues managed to obtain from the Treasury may be far less valuable than it at first appeared. I am very well aware that at the present time the reorganisation of local government has made for difficulties, and that the new structure of the Park Authority administration itself must have time to settle down, so that one should

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not jump to hurried conclusions. Nevertheless, one cannot but be disturbed at the attitude of certain authorities nor fail to be apprehensive that, if money is not devoted to Park purposes, the Treasury will in due course turn round and say, "You have not really been spending very much. Therefore you do not need very much", and that the Government's contribution, if not actually cut, will not be increased as might well be necessary.
I think, also, that the attitude of certain local authorities—and I do not wish to particularise on this point, though those who know the Parks will, I imagine, know which ones I mean—is somewhat disturbing. This is very important, because of the past history of the matter. There have been discussions for many years about the best administrative structure for the National Parks. As we all know, the Peak Park, in Derbyshire, has its own board with full powers of action and the right to precept. This means that this year it will both take the extra grant from the Treasury and continue its precepting, so that its expenditure on the Park will be nearly double what it was last year. The Lake District Park also has a board, which is not quite as powerful as that of the Peak, but everywhere else the Parks are administered by an authority which is dominated by the county council concerned—at last, one is happy to think, by single county councils instead of joint committees, with the one exception of the Brecon Beacons, which still has multiple responsibility.
Sir Jack Longland, in his report to the Countryside Commission which preceded the Sandford Committee, and Lord Redcliffe-Maud in his Report on Local Government, both recommended the Peak pattern of a quasi-independent board for all National Parks. This suggestion was not accepted and I do not quarrel with that, but the corollary is that, if county councils wish to retain their position at the end of the five-year review period recommended in the Sandford Report, they must be seen to be taking their full share of interest in the needs of the Parks. In cash terms, this means sustaining their share of expenditure. Meanwhile, they will also be judged by the quality of the management plan for each Park which is due to be presented not later than 1977. These plans will be awaited with very keen interest.
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At long last, we have in each park a National Park officer whose sole job is the good management of the Park. Hitherto, this has been the part-time concern of some other county official. I am sure that we all welcome this very much indeed. Here, if I may once again be domestically Welsh, I draw attention to the position of the Brecon Beacons Park, where the officer appointed as the National Park officer is on a lower scale of salary than applies to any other Park in the country. I am well aware, as a resident of the new county of Powys, that we have been obliged to pay less than any other county in the Kingdom on account of our sparse population, and that one cannot make an exception for the Park officer. But I earnestly hope that this whole position can be urgently rectified by the Government adopting a more intelligent formula for Powys salaries in general, which at present I regard as a disgrace, and this would solve the problem of the financially inferior position of the Powys National Park officer.
Now I should like to turn to some of the few but important controversial aspects of the Report: First, the one on which the Committee was perhaps most sharply divided, the proposal for the designation of national heritage areas within the parks. The case for and the case against such designation is spelt out in detail and very clearly in Chapters 20 and 21. In all the discussions which I have attended since the Report appeared I have heard strong exception taken to the name "national heritage area". The reason for this is that even among those who support the idea there is apprehension that if one labels an area as being of especial value and interest it will inevitably draw people to it, and what should be preserved as a wilderness or a place of lonely enjoyment will become a "honey pot"—to use the current jargon. So I think the name should go. We seem to be incapable of designating something as special and then leaving it alone. The furthest one could go would be to use a low-key bureaucratic term—if one has to have any term at all—such as "special management area", which would have no emotive overtones for tourists or visitors.
But there are doubts about the concept itself, quite apart from the name, and a fairly widespread view that to single out

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certain areas would diminish the attention paid to the rest of the Park. I do not share that view. I believe that there are some areas which merit extra and special care. But there are genuine differences in this argument between those people whose opinions one respects. That being so, the statesmanlike thing to do is to support the proposal in paragraph 20.21 that the Countryside Commission should be encouraged to experiment in one or two selected places to see how such a special management scheme could work. Only then could one reach a fair and considered judgment.
Another area of controversy, which I believe one or two noble Lords wish to speak about particularly, is forestry. Again, I have found among the amenity and conservation societies with whom I work complete agreement that afforestation of bare land, as described in Chapter 10, should be brought under planning control—incidentally, both within and without National Parks. But there is much less certainty about other operations though some support for control over felling and re-planting. We should be glad to know the Government's reactions, because nothing can change a landscape so much as forestry, which includes both public and private enterprise. It is quite true that it requires expertise as well as aesthetic judgment and one must keep a balance, but when one sees what has happened to some most cherished landscapes one cannot but question present procedures.
Needless to say, there is no unanimity on another controversial proposal, that of the proposed power of compulsory purchase of land as set out in paragraph 18.16. Even those who accept the logic of the argument that in addition to the compulsory powers which already exist—and they are considerable—one should be able to acquire land for the main purpose for which a Park exists, namely, the preservation and enhancement' of natural beauty, most of us would prefer to proceed by voluntary agreement. Ideologically, sitting as I do on these Benches, I personally am in favour of the public ownership of land, but I recognise what passions it arouses, and not least in rural Wales. I should much like to see, therefore, funds available, as suggested by Mr. John Cousins, for purchase, at any rate
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by agreement. If there is no Land Fund on which one can draw, a Park authority or the Countryside Commission cannot act quickly if the opportunity arises. If one hesitates about overall compulsory purchase powers one then is surely obliged to provide adequate means for proceeding by agreement. I regard this action as one of the very important matters arising out of this Report.
I have mentioned management schemes with particular reference to agriculture. There is another kind of management which matters very much namely, that of areas of ecological and scientific interest. Here one must recognise that Park Authorities cannot expect to have the full range of knowledge at their command, even if they appoint an ecologist to their staff. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, in its very well-argued note on the Report, put this very plainly. They said:
"Only an organisation with a national view of conservation problems and needs and the experience which comes from it can be properly competent to fill the role."
The chosen instrument is, of course, to hand in the Nature Conservancy Council. In most areas it is already in very close contact with the Park administration, but has it enough resources to do the job? Without scientific backing one cannot judge how far and in what way an environment may be at risk. The Nature Conservancy Council is at present under great pressure in some areas to undertake special work in relation to the possible exploitation of oil or natural gas. Such exploitation will bring gain to our economy and conservation work elsewhere must not be allowed to suffer any deprivation on that account.
This of course applies equally to work in National Nature Reserves and areas of special scientific interest whether in a National Park or not. So I hope again that we may have an assurance that the Nature Conservancy Council will be given the resources to carry out the kind of work in the National Parks, without which, as I said, we cannot really judge whether the environment is at risk, and if it is, how to deal with it.
I had given notice to my noble friend that I hoped to touch on one aspect of conservation which did not come within the remit of Lord Sandford's Committee, namely, the growing interest in the

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marine environment. I do not just mean by that any threat there may be from oil or gas developments. We have so far no marine National Parks and they would be very much more difficult to manage than areas on land. I am aware that a report issued a couple of years ago under the auspices of the Natural Environment Research Council concluded that such enterprises were not needed. But since then in certain areas, and I refer particularly to the Pembrokeshire coast, we have seen a growing threat by groups of skin-divers who descend and sometimes ravage. I am not speaking of commercial poaching of molluses or crustacea, though I know that occurs, nor am I speaking about those who disturb ancient wrecks; but I am speaking of the denuding of the inshore seabed of natural features. I believe that situation merits further study and I should be very glad to hear of any steps which may perhaps be in prospect so that we can, for once, get in in time before too much damage is done.
My Lords, there are many other matters arising out of this valuable Report on which I should like to touch—in particular perhaps transport and traffic management in Parks, on which so much else depends—but time does not permit. I should like to have said something about the country parks, one of the best things to come out of the 1968 legislation; and I was very glad to learn that some 130 country parks have been established by the local authorities which can act as buffer zones, so to speak, drawing off large numbers of people and thereby, of course, protecting the National Parks from too great pressure. Again I am worried about the present financial arrangement with local authorities. Until now the progress has been good, but with the new financial scheme it is much less certain that local authorities in the future will use resources for country parks. I only hope that my fears in this direction are ill-founded.
Finally, there is the question of whether further National Parks ought to be designated and whether, if they were, such designation would do more good than harm. There are various candidates—some have been looked at in the past, like the Norfolk Broads and the New
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Forest there are parts of Essex and parts of Dorset including the Poole-Purbeck coastline which might well be considered. My own belief is that if the main proposals in the Sandford Report are carried out, and provided proper finance is made available for warden services (including the organisation of volunteer wardens and for all the other matters for which money is needed), then good would ensue if further designations were made and this would enable us to hand on our trust to future generations without shame.
My Lords, public consciousness of the value of our national heritage is growing, especially among the young. I hope that noble Lords will have noticed, from the quite remarkable figures in Table 9 on page 51 of the Report, the phenomenal growth in membership during the past few decades in the voluntary recreational and conservation bodies in this country. This by itself is surely conclusive evidence of the increasing interest and concern which is being shown by the public. We must not fail this or future generations, and I believe that with co-operation all round between the public, statutory bodies and private persons and associations we shall not do so. My Lords, I beg to move for Papers.
3.33 p.m.
LORD SANDFORD: My Lords, I am glad to be the first to thank the noble Baroness, Lady White, for giving us this opportunity to debate National Parks and for introducing the debate with such a splendid speech. My gratitude is tempered with two reflections: the first is the wording of her Motion which, on the face of it, would indicate that she thought that Lord Sandford and all his colleagues had done nothing of note or worth over the last two years, but I am glad to hear from her speech that on the whole she approves of what we have been up to. The second reflection is that in the course of conducting this review I always had the benefit of the Minister of State for Wales, my right hand and co-chairman, Dr. Margaret Davies, one of the most experienced Countryside Commissioners, also from Wales, and Mr. Bill Siberry from the Welsh Office. I find myself engineered into a position where I stand here single-handed inside a Welsh pincer movement.

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Nevertheless, I hope I can acquit myself satisfactorily among all these Welsh examples. I think it is taking a slightly exaggerated view of Welsh nationalism to field a spokesman from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, but nevertheless we all look forward to what the noble Lord, Lord Goronwy-Roberts, has to say, I, too, welcome the presence in this debate of the spouse of a former Transport Minister; I attach great significance to that and look forward to hearing what the noble Lord, Lord Castle, has to say.
Before going any further, I should like to record my tribute (and add it to that of the noble Baroness, Lady White) towards the founding fathers of the movement which led to the creation of the British National Parks 20 to 25 years ago, and particularly to the vision, not only of the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, and others whom the noble Baroness mentioned, but also to Sir Arthur Hobhouse, Mr. John Dyer and others. Their vision has resulted in a higher proportion of land—something like 9 per cent. compared with 1 per cent. in America—being designated as National Parks in a country which is more densely populated than most. There are two factors which together pose a greater challenge in the administration of the Parks than is faced by any other country which has National Parks. The people who have administered the Parks up to this moment have met that challenge short of staff, starved of funds and operating in a fragmentary framework, and I believe that my colleagues on my Committee would want to join with me in recording on this first Parliamentary occasion our appreciation of what has nevertheless been achieved. I should like to go on and give my best wishes to the new regime, those with statutory responsibility for inaugurating this new regime, and in that connection, to welcome to this debate my noble friend Lord Ridley who, as many noble Lords will know, has been appointed by the Association of County Councils to chair the Committee which they have set up to guide and assist the county councils who have responsibility for National Parks. We look forward to what he has to say in that capacity as well as what he has to say in has capacity as chairman of county councils which have Parks.
May I, before passing on to more substantive matters, take this opportunity
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of thanking my colleagues on the Committee which conducted this review with me. I should like in that connection to record with our thanks the value which we derived from the local consultations which we carried out. As our Report says, we had meetings with all 10 National Park Authorities; we had three meetings in each of the 10 Parks with those who owned and were primary users of the land, with those representing the various amenity bodies and with those representing district councils—30 more meetings. In addition to that, we had over 20 further meetings to which the general public were invited to come and give us the benefit of their views. That amounts to 60 separate local consultations. That was an arduous undertaking, but I mention it and stress it because I hope that the value which we found—and indeed we found the greatest value in doing that—will encourage other National Park Authorities to carry on. Our impression—particularly of the public meetings—was that this kind of thing has not on the whole been done before. I regard it as an indispensable item in the satisfactory running of the Parks and I hope it will be continued. After all, as the noble Baroness has reminded us, there are a great many potentially explosive and conflicting interests in the Parks and this constant consultation is one effective way of helping to resolve them.
My Lords, may I add a little to what the noble Baroness has already said by way of reminder as to the context of this Report? It was commissioned by my right honourable friend, Mr. Peter Walker, then Secretary of State for the Department of the Environment in which I served, because he realised that after 20 years or so it was time to take another look. The National Parks had come of age; their youth and puberty had been a turbulent and unsatisfactory time from many points of view, and certainly great changes had taken place in the social structure of this country. Notably (and we have gone into this in some detail), we now have a greater population with more leisure time (and this is something that we went into a few weeks ago), more money to spend other than on essentials, more cars to move around in, more motorways to move around on and

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a more highly developed taste for "getting away from it all" in the towns and out into the country: so there was certainly a need to look at the matter again.
In addition to that, local government reform provided the chance to make a number of changes—a chance which had to be taken before our Report was published. As the noble Baroness said, the chance was taken to do four things: first, to introduce a new administrative pattern which put an end to the fragmented responsibilities between two or more committees which operated in several of the Parks, to their very great disadvantage; to put an end to the administration of Parks by officers who were doing it on a part-time basis (because we now have National Park officers and their own staff in each Park, so that everyone has the benefit of the Peak Park in that respect); to put an end to the uncoordinated management of the land and water space in the Parks, with each land-or water-owning authority going its own way regardless of the purpose of the Parks—and in place of that we have a statutory requirement to devise a National Parks plan to pull it all together. Fourthly, the opportunity was taken in the course of local government reform to put an end to topsy-turvy financed mainly by local rates. Specific reminded us, the National Parks were mainly financed by local rates. Specific items were grant-aided, but the vitally important aspect of administrative costs were not grant aided at all. All that has been put right by the Local Government Act 1972.
I should like to take this opportunity to express my personal pleasure that all this has been implemented, especially the financial provisions about which I gave very firm personal pledges, first on behalf of Mr. Peter Walker and then on behalf of Mr. Geoffrey Rippon; and it has fallen to Mr. Anthony Crosland to implement them. I am naturally delighted that all three gentlemen have not only fulfilled those pledges but fulfilled them handsomely. However, I must say that I very much share the considerable misgivings expressed by the noble Baroness, Lady White, as to the reaction since then of the local authorities. I hope very much to hear both from my noble friend Lord Ridley, speaking on behalf of the county councils, and from the noble Lord, Lord
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Garnsworthy, speaking on behalf of the Government, that they are watching the situation and have formed firm ideas as to what to do if no improvement is in sight; because I very much agree with the noble Baroness that this is not in the least what was intended—in other words, this treating of the contribution from the Exchequer as a relief of the rates. What is needed is to get extra finance into the National Parks, and everybody will have to think very carefully about the basis on which they agree to these arrangements if an improvement to that situation is not in sight soon.
Still dealing with the context of this Report—and I must apologise for doing so at length—I should like to stress how unique and distinctive are the English and Welsh National Parks. They are not empty wildernesses as they are in so many other countries. A quarter of a million people live in them; 17 trunk roads run across them (and not just the A.66!), and they are used for extraction of minerals, the production of food, the conservation of water and the training of four Armed Services as well as housing the quarter of a million people to whom I have just referred. So they are very different, and much more difficult, places to administer.
As well as continuing the planning policies which have marked the first twenty years, we need to embark on a giant feat of co-operation between the established primary users and owners of the land and the water in the Parks, and to strive for a comprehensive partnership in their management, as the noble Baroness said. The management will be for a multiplicity of purposes, including recreation, and I hope that our Report provides a basis and a framework for knitting together the variety of policies now coming forward. Perhaps I may remind your Lordships what they are. The new national forestry policy cannot be much further delayed. We know it will give more emphasis to recreation and amenity, and I hope that our Report shows reasonably clearly how we think the new policy can be adapted to the Parks. The new Water Act which we have just enacted lays fresh and new importance upon making full use of water space for amenity. And what a splendid challenge is now presented both to the water authorities and the forestry authorities by the concept of Kielder Water. This is a mag-

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nificent water space for recreation, set in what I believe is the largest man-made forest in Europe.
Two committees, one under Mr. Stevens and the other under Sir Ralph Verney, will before long produce recommendations which will need to be specially implemented in the National Parks in respect of mineral extraction. We have the benefit of what was said by the Committee chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Nugent, on how the Defence use of land can be reconciled with other uses. It is interesting to see from his Report that on the whole wild life prefers troops rather than tourists. I believe we are at a stage when landowners—this came out during our debate on the use of leisure—and the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors are showing interest and imagination in providing for recreational uses on private land in the countryside. Farmers, I know, are taking a great deal of interest in the upland management schemes in the Lake District and other Parks as an indication of what will he involved for them in entering into management agreement.
I hope during this debate to hear something about the reaction of the highway authorities to all this. We devoted a fairly lengthy and detailed chapter to this business. I think most of your Lordships will agree that what we see in the latest motorways reflects a growing sensitivity by highway engineers to the environment and in particular to the rural environment. I would hope the influence of the Landscape Advisory Committee, which has considerable responsibility for that, will begin to make its influence felt among the local authorities and right down to the grass roots and the authorities who are responsible for the design and improvement of roads.
The National Park Plan provides a framework for knitting all these strands together. To implement it we shall need more qualified staff, more highly trained and skilled in countryside recreation, to devise and excute appropriate policies, and I am glad that the Countryside Commission have that matter firmly in hand. We shall also be relying very greatly on the front line troops in all this—and I am glad that the noble Baroness mentioned them—the National Park and Countryside Rangers, sometimes also called Wardens,
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their part-time assistants and volunteer auxiliaries. These, it seems to me, are needed not only for the management of estates for recreational purposes but, more importantly, for their role in personally mediating the needs of the visitors of the National Parks to the natives who live there and mediating the interests of the natives to the visitors. It is this work done on a personal basis which, as much as anything, leads to the smooth running and enjoyment of the Parks.
I come to the implementation of these policies over the next generation, the second strand of our review. Looking forward twenty years on it seems to me there will be four points of advance: first, conservation. The noble Baroness has stressed the fact that we have concluded that this purpose must be given primacy so that the National Parks, whatever else happens to them, are passed on to the next generation not only unimpaired but enhanced. This means that we must keep up our guard and extend the scope and strength over the whole range of planning policies and development control. Further measures of planning control over farm buildings, road improvements, afforestation of bare land and other things are all in the Report. That is one point of advance.
The second point is management. Here we want more and better of something we have seen little of so far, more intensive use of both land and water in the Parks for a multiplicity of purposes. Some purposes will have to be gradually phased out. I do not believe there is any part in the Parks for low flying aircraft, motor cycle scrambles, water skiing or noisy sports of that kind. But some of them are there and their reduction and removal will have to be handled sensitively. Thirdly, and as was stressed in our Report and in Lord Cobham's Report on leisure, we must go in a big way for alternative attractions elsewhere—girdles of green containing country parks around our great big cities—so that people who want a few hours out picnicking with the children do not have to trek for miles along M.6 to find it.
Fourthly—and this has not been mentioned yet, but I hope it will be mentioned by others who take part in the debate—advances on the front of education, and by that I mean not just more

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exhortation, "Shut the gate!", "Do not light fires!", and things like that, though they are needed; not just more information in the form of guides and maps, though they are needed too; not even more field studies, though they are of value, but they are confined to the academic level. What I am thinking of is the kind of teaching that begins very early on in school life and goes to the heart.
Let me end by giving an illustration of what I mean, because I think it is important. I am glad to choose an example from Wales in honour of the noble Baroness. The approach in the school that I have in mind (and I am indebted to the Schools Council for this) was to visit and collect, with the help of parents, both natural and historical objects that could be touched, seen and felt, and to encourage the children to look at them, touch them, respect them and relate them to the environment around and beyond their school. This is what the teacher in that school had to say at the end of the first project on these lines:
"The enthusiasm of the children was infectious—more and more parents asked what the children were doing. I emphasised that the results they could see arranged around the walls of the school had all resulted from the children's own local research and exploration in their own locality. All the skills of reading, writing and arithmetic had been used in completing the project. The children had in fact realised the need to be able to read, to do their research and exploration."
The teacher went on—and this is the key phrase:
"In looking back we hope that perhaps our children will, as they grow, become more aware of their heritage and do their part to preserve it by guarding the treasures around them."
Thus speaks a teacher of six to seven year olds in Elliott Town Infants School in industrial Monmouthshire, which I am sure the noble Baroness, Lady White, will know.
I believe that those directly responsible for our National Parks over the next generation, whatever else they may do in the way of providing alternative attractions, better management policies, tougher development control, will also need to look to and encourage allies like that infants' teacher.
3.55 p.m.
LORD GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, it is nice to be back on home ground for a change and to join the
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noble Baroness, Lady White, in discussing Snowdonia rather than Samarkand in this your Lordships' House. We must all be very grateful to the noble Baroness for initiating this extremely useful and timely debate and for the excellent speech with which she launched the discussion. I should like to pay special respects to the admirable speech that we have heard from the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, who was mainly responsible for this very fine Report which is the main document which sustains our discussion this afternoon. I thought that his speech was one of great discernment and balance, reminding us that the preservation and improvement of the countryside must rest upon participation by those who live in these parts with those who wish to visit these parts, and that both points of view are constantly kept in mind as we evolve a workable policy.
My Lords, it is less than three weeks since we were debating the Reports of the Select Committee on Sport and Leisure. Today we are discussing those areas of supreme landscape beauty which are to very many people synonymous with the very concepts of leisure and recreation. In one sense therefore this debate and the one we had on June 13 are complementary; for there is little point in providing recreational facilities in places which have become so tedious or unattractive that no one wants to visit them. In another way, however, this debate stands on its own. For, as my noble friend Lady White has pointed out, the increasing pressures on our National Parks and on other designated areas, and the problems which those pressures create, are enormous, and they need to be considered separately from the general question of providing leisure opportunities.
Before dealing with issues arising on the Report of the Committee appointed to review National Park policies, and dealing with particular points raised by my noble friend, I think it would be helpful to say a little about certain important changes in National Park administration, planning and finance which have come into effect since that Committee reported. As many noble Lords will know, each of our ten National Parks is now administered by a single board or committee, with a National Park officer of senior status.

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Each of these boards and Committees hag a statutory duty to prepare and publish within three years a National Park Plan, formulating its policy for the management of the Park and the exercise of its functions. Each National Park Authority will therefore need to examine its Park as a whole, consider what problems and stresses exist and decide how these can best be solved. Guidance on this has been given in joint circulars by the Department of the Environment and the Welsh Office. The most recent of these covers very useful comprehensive advice prepared by the Countryside Commission on the preparation of the National Park Plan for each Park. Although the new Park Authorities have been in office for only three months, the Government are confident that these plans, which have to be brought up to date every five years, as the noble Baroness reminded us, will go a long way towards the achievement of purposeful future planning and management of the Parks in the interests of all concerned. That is the new administrative arrangement.
To turn to financial arrangements, the noble Baroness has raised a fundamental question in her remarks about the adequacy of Exchequer aid for National Parks and how this is spent. We are aware that some doubt exists at present about the Government's views on the total of resources to be committed to this, and in particular about the contribution expected of local government, and that this is currently causing problems in the preparation of forward estimates of National Park expenditure. I am therefore glad to have this opportunity of clarifying the Government's views. As your Lordships will know, the Exchequer grants paid towards expenditure incurred on particular projects in National Parks were superseded from April 1 this year by entirely new arrangements. These new arrangements provide for a special grant, supplementary to the new rate support grant, to be paid to county councils with responsibility for National Parks. This new grant is not related to expenditure already incurred. The amount of grant for each financial year is calculated on the basis of forward estimates by National Park Authorities of expenditure in that year.
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In hard cash terms, grants under the previous arrangement amounting in total to about £400,000 annually have been replaced in 1974–75, that is the current financial year, by a grant totalling more than three times as much; namely, £1,433,000. This sum represents 75 per cent. of the expenditure considered appropriate for the purpose. So in the current financial year, £1,433,000 is paid to the authorities concerned as representing three-quarters of the total expenditure which their forward programmes for the year showed to be their figure when this matter was discussed. This increased provision is a recognition of the contribution which enjoyment of the National Parks makes to the life of the nation. It is specifically designed to allow more real resources to be devoted to securing the purposes for which the Parks have been designated without imposing an undue burden on the local ratepayer.
In the recent past, local authorities have contributed from their general resources about £800,000 of annual expenditure on the Parks. However, considerable advances in management and in the provision of facilities have to be sought in the National Parks in order to preserve their special attractions and at the same time ensure that these can be enjoyed to the fullest extent.
VISCOUNT RIDLEY: My Lords, because it is an important matter, will the noble Lord forgive me if I ask him to make quite clear what he said about this grant? Did he say that 75 per cent. of local authorities' total estimates would be paid by the Government?
LORD GORONWY-ROBERTS: Yes, my Lords. The sum of £1,433,000, which it has been decided to pay from the Exchequer to Park authorities, will represent 75 per cent. of the total expenditure on Park purposes, leaving 25 per cent. of the total expenditure projected by the authorities to be met by local authorities. If we reckon that the total forward estimate for this year as put forward by the local authorities for this purpose was some £1,900,000, £1,433,000, that is 75 per cent., represents the contribution of the Exchequer. The remainder is to be found by the local authorities—that is to say, something over £400,000, which is 25 per cent. of the whole. I hope that that helps the noble Viscount.
VISCOUNT RIDLEY: My Lords, it does not quite answer my question but I will not labour the point now.
LORD GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, if the noble Viscount still feels he does not understand how this works I shall be most willing to have another try. I hope the point is perfectly clear to his noble friends.
VISCOUNT RIDLEY: My Lords, the point was this: in the future, if the local authorities jointly make an estimate of so much, will the Government pay 75 per cent. of that estimate? I am speaking about the future and not the current financial year.
LORD GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, it will be an agreed figure. We have taken the Exchequer proportion of 75 per cent., quite rightly I think, from the figure which the previous Administration thought right. We, too, think this is right—75 per cent. from Central Government, 25 per cent. from local resources. While I could not make a firm, dogmatic prognostication, I should imagine that this is about right for future years as well as for the present financial year.
If I may proceed, local government expenditures on National Parks are, however, not immune from the restraints on the growth of local government expenditure as a whole, and indeed from time to time critical examination and pruning in this matter, as in all others, may well be found necessary. As I have explained, there has been a very generous increase for 1974–75, continuing the spirit of what the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, said was his intention. This very generous increase represents, as I have said, a sum of which 75 per cent. of the estimated expenditure considered appropriate to National Parks comes from central resources. On the assumption that county councils will meet at least the balance of that expenditure, 25 per cent., the objective of a rising level of expenditure can be regarded as met in the present year.
The noble Baroness and, I believe, the noble Lord who followed her, expressed concern lest some local authorities, at least, should regard this special grant as being in some way a subvention towards rates resources generally, and
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asked what safeguards existed against this practice. There are of course a number. Park authorities have been told very firmly that they are expected to devote these grants to park purposes and indeed to contribute at least to the extent of 25 per cent. of the whole from their own resources. In addition, we have the Countryside Commission which have a presidial authority by Statute over what happens throughout the countryside, not only in the National Parks but in the countryside generally. I have no doubt that the Countryside Commission in England and in Wales—and my noble friend Lady White is a member—and bodies such as the Council for the Protection of Rural Wales, of which she is President—
BARONESS WHITE: My Lords, if I may correct my noble friend, I am not a member of the Countryside Commission. I wish I were.
LORD GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, it is a very great pity. I am almost inclined to suggest that, even if it needed legislation, this matter should be put right. But certainly my noble friend is President of the formidable body known as C.P.R.W.—the Council for the Protection of Rural Wales. I am sure that that body, together with the Countryside Commission and the newly appointed, full-time, reasonably well paid and high-powered National Park officers, and, again, the Department of the Environment and its appropriate officers, not to say the appropriate officers of the Welsh Office, will be keeping a reasonably wary eye on how local authorities are dealing with these fairly considerable grants in aid and on policy in the National Parks. The sanctions are there. In any case, at the end of the first year we shall be looking at how this has worked. I should like to express confidence in local authorities that they will recognise that this is a special grant, designed for the special purpose of helping them to make appropriate provision for the preservation and improvement of the Parks within their care. It is a very long stop indeed to imagine that local authorities will ignore or, indeed, go against the firmly stated intentions of this special grant.
My Lords, I apologise for dealing with this matter in such detail, but as I have

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said it is a fundamental matter. I very much hope that this statement of Government views will be of help to those in county councils and National Park Authorities who are at present engaged in providing estimates of expenditure for 1975–76 on the basis of the forms of return sent out last month by the Department of the Environment.
The noble Baroness has given full recognition to the major review on National Park policies carried out by the Committee under the chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Sandford. Her Majesty's Government warmly welcome the Report of the Committee, the "Sandford Committee" as it is popularly and rightly known, which was published in April. On behalf of the Government, I should like to say how appreciative we are of the wide-ranging inquiries and detailed consideration undertaken by the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, and his Committee, of the enthusiasm with which they clearly approached their heavy task and the thoroughness with which they completed it. The decisions to be taken on the many issues that the Report has raised are of such far-reaching consequence for the future that we are concerned to give them the most careful thought and to have full consultation with those who are knowledgeable on countryside matters.
There are a number of points upon which the noble Baroness quite rightly sought assurance from the Government, and my noble friend Lord Garnsworthy who will be winding up this debate will be able to give assurances upon certain points. However, your Lordships will appreciate that the Government must put out this excellent Report for comment to the widest possible range of people and organisations, including this House. This debate is part of the consultation. Everything which is said here to-day most certainly will be scrutinised and considered with extreme care by the Government when it comes to collating the views upon various parts of the Report which reach them by the end of this month. As a first step, we have invited all the National Park Authorities and about 40 interested bodies to let us have their comments by July 31. The Government will aim to reach conclusions in the light of these comments and then, in consulta-
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tion with the Countryside Commission, as soon as possible thereafter publish their considered proposals.
As noble Lords will be aware, the main central Government agency for assisting and co-ordinating local authority and private initiative in matters of landscape conservation, the provision of facilities and securing greater public access is the Countryside Commission. Under the Local Government Act 1974 the Commission can now make grants and loans to any person, including a local authority, who is carrying out any project which is conducive to the purposes of countryside legislation. These wide powers should make it possible for the Commission to play an even more active part in helping to solve the kind of problems to which my noble friend has referred.
One of the recurring problems to which the Sandford Committee gave considerable thought is the scale of developments which should be permitted in National Parks and other sensitive areas. That is why we shall be particularly interested to see the reactions which we receive to the suggestion that there should he designated national heritage areas within each National Park where all forms of development would need the approval of Parliament. The Committee itself was not at one on this particular suggestion. As the Committee points out in its Report, that is no reason why the proposals should not be canvassed as widely as possible. Indeed, we look forward to receiving and considering a wide range of views upon this suggestion.
Of course, this problem of obtrusive development is by no means confined to the Parks. It is common to all the designated areas to which the noble Baroness refers in her Motion. The problem, which applies not only to the National Parks but to areas of outstanding natural beauty and to areas outside all designation, is that we are not dealing in the countryside with a series of "green museums" but with places where large numbers of people live and work—places rich not only in natural resources but also in human history, in recollection, in nostalgia. In many cases there are places which are close to major conurbations. Therefore there is continual trafficking between such conurbations and these beautiful areas for the purpose of daily

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work, and highway authorities must have regard to that kind of consideration.
Our aim, and it is not an easy one, must be to marry the interests of amenity and utility. That is why I welcome so much the tone and balance of the noble Lord's speech. As the noble Lord put it, it is a matter of partnership—partnership not only between local and central Government in the way which I have described, but also between the populations of these beautiful areas, populations who live in these areas by their hundreds of thousands, and the many more hundreds of thousands who visit these areas for perhaps a day or two or a week or two every year. There must be partnership between them. There must be a minimum of imposition on either side and the maximum of co-operation.
The Government arc indeed conscious of the need, by means of this partnership, to protect these areas for the contribution that they can make to our national heritage and our recreational needs. Having regard, as I have said, to the fact that very many people in many of these Parks continue to live and work there, these areas cannot, in the nature of things, as my noble friend pointed out, remain completely free from all development.
My noble friend referred specifically to problems which have arisen in two Welsh Parks—Snowdonia and the Pembrokeshire Coast. In the case of Snowdonia, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Wales accepts that there has been delay in making access agreements and over the transfer of the Vaynol Estate to the sitting tenants. I find that I taxed the then Secretary of State about this point in another place, and on what was positively my last appearance on the legitimate stage of the other place this was the theme of my contribution. I asked what progress had been made in honouring the pledge—because it is a pledge, dating back to 1967—that these holdings will be made available for purchase by those who occupy and farm them. I am glad to inform your Lordships that negotiations in respect of six of the holdings are now at an advanced stage, and that the transfers should be finalised by the end of this year. The remainder—I think, some 16—will be completed as soon as possible thereafter, probably early next year.
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My noble friend asked whether these transfers of ownership would be made conditional on the completion of proper access agreements. I can assure her that no sales will be concluded by Her Majesty's Government unless the prospective purchaser undertakes to enter into an access agreement with either the local planning authority or the Nature Conservancy Council. In fact, the six examples which I gave as being practically ready for completion before the end of this year have resulted from the fact that access agreements have been drafted successfully and accepted by both parties. This would, of course, apply to the others which remain to be completed.
BARONESS WHITE: My Lords, before my noble friend leaves Snowdonia, he will of course appreciate that one could have obtained access agreements under existing legislation without going through the process of buying the estate. Am I to understand that any other provisions are likely to be made on the management side as recommended in the Sandford Report? Although I entirely agree that access agreements are the most important matter, they could have been obtained without going through this exercise and what one would like to see is some scheme of comprehensive management for this part of Snowdonia.
LORD GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, there are two views as to how a workable and acceptable scheme of management can be imposed on Snowdonia. I think the way we are going about it is right namely to make these holdings available to these farmers, according to the pledge of 1967, like the others outside the bounds of the National Park which form part of the Vaynol estate, to give them the opportunity to purchase, and in so doing to put right the question of access. Having done that, as these holdings all lie within the boundaries of the National Park, the National Park Committee as well as the County Planning Committee and the Countryside Commission will surely have a good deal to suggest and to bring forward for agreement in regard to how this area is managed. It is always well to consider the local circumstances and the local feeling, before one drafts what may on paper be a very viable system of management. In this case I am sure,

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as one who lives in this area, that this is the way to go about it, so that we do, in fact, have a National Park in Snowdonia.
May I now turn to the Pembrokeshire coast, a couple of hundred miles to the South, with problems which are possibly less abrasive although quite as deep-seated as in Snowdonia, because the main problem here is that caused by the activities of skin divers. The Nature Conservancy Council is carrying out surveys of the seabed around the island of Skomer, which is itself a national nature reserve. These will provide data on the marine flora and fauna against which the effects of the activities of the skin divers can be assessed, and discussions are taking place on the legal problems of establishing marine nature reserves, which is another valuable point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady White. At the moment, there is no such thing. We have what one might call coastal reserves, but a marine nature reserve would involve a new dimension of conservation which we think is not covered by extant legislation. In any case, the question of whether legislation is required to protect these areas can best be considered when the information, now in process of procurement, is to hand.
The Government recognise that the establishment of nature reserves is an important way of safeguarding some of the unique areas of our national heritage, and Supplementary Estimates submitted today seek Parliamentary approval to increase the Nature Conservancy Council's grant by half a million pounds to enable it to acquire new reserves. I should also mention that a major work of reference, to be called Nature Conservation Review, is being prepared for publication early in 1976. This will identify all the land in Britain, that is of importance to nature conservation, and will bring together extensive data about the nation's wild life and habitats. We think it should be a valuable guide for all concerned with the planning and management of land.
LORD SANDFORD: My Lords, may I interrupt the noble Lord before he leaves the Nature Conservancy Council? My impression is that this is very good news, because it almost more than
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doubles the resources of the Nature Conservancy Council. Am I right in thinking that?
LORD GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, without confirming the point I would not be able to agree that it more than doubles the total resources of the Nature Conservancy Council. If the noble Lord is right, the half a million pounds adds considerably to that part' of its resources which notionally have been addressed to the securing of new reserves. In fact, the half a million pounds is deemed to be an addition to help in that part of the Council's work: namely to purchase new land. I will check on that point and no doubt my noble friend will confirm the figures. But I confirm that the increase of half a million pounds in the Council's grant will enable it to acquire new reserves.
I have so far been able to refer briefly to only a few aspects of the work of the Countryside Commission and the Nature Conservancy Council in their closely related fields of activity. The Government rely heavily on the detailed administrative and advisory work on the countryside and on nature conservation carried out by those two Government agencies. The Countryside Commission, which was originally the National Parks Commission, has been able to bring its expertise to bear on important matters of countryside conservation and enjoyment for a quarter of a century. The designation of National Parks is one of their statutory responsibilities, and they have the duty of advising on matters concerning the administration and management of the Parks. The Nature Conservancy Council, which is on a rather different footing, has been in operation in its present form only since last November, but it is already getting fully to grips with the many problems of nature conservation calling for urgent attention. I am glad to take this opportunity of paying a tribute to the devotion, energy and skill which both bodies bring to the exercise of the key responsibility entrusted to them.
My Lords, I hope I have said enough to convince your Lordships that the Government have very much at heart the needs of the sensitive areas of the country and intend, as far as lies within their power, to find remedies for the problems arising. The Government are giving the

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most careful thought to the formulation of wise policies for the future. We are very conscious that if these policies are not well devised and acceptable, beauty and amenity may be lost that can never be regained.
As far as National Parks are concerned, I have tried to explain that we shall inform ourselves fully of the views of all concerned before taking decisions on the recommendations of the Sandford Report. As I have said, the debate to-day is therefore most timely, and we must all be very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady White, for giving us this opportunity of learning the views of the House on these matters. I can assure your Lordships that my noble friend, Lord Garnsworthy, whose knowledge of local government and expertise in this sphere are well known to us all, when he winds up will endeavour to deal with any outstanding points that arise during the discussion. I can also assure your Lordships that we shall listen with the keenest interest to all the views expressed here and, indeed, those put forward throughout the country in the next few weeks, on the basis of which we shall take the decisions as a Government, in consensus with all those concerned with this great and important work, for which the noble Baroness asked in her admirable speech.
4.35 p.m.
LORD HENLEY: My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady White, made a most distinguished speech which was so knowledgeable and ranged so wide that I am not surprised that the noble Lord, Lord Goronwy-Roberts, thought that she was a member of the Countryside Commission. Out of ignorance good can come, and I hope therefore he will press the suggestion that the noble Baroness should be made a member. Personally, I can think of no better person to be so. With the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, I was a little surprised at the wording of the Motion of the noble Baroness, because I thought it meant we were not going to talk about the Sandford Report at all, so I left my own Motion about the Sandford Report on the Order Paper, where it has been since Easter. However, as we have in fact been talking about the Sandford Report, I can now take my Motion off, because it is about the Sandford Report that I propose to talk.
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The noble Baroness, Lady White, reminded us of the welcome there has been from the amenity and from conservation societies. Indeed, well there might be, because the Report endorses what a great many of us who have been working in that field have been saying for so long. I should like to say how pleased I am that the work of the Committee was done with such great care. When the Sandford Committee began, I believe they thought that they would get through the work quickly and that there might not be a great deal to do. It became apparent that a great deal needed to be done and the Committee set about the task with energy and determination, and put a great deal of thought into it. They consulted everyone in the local communities in great detail. This has gone down very well with all the people who live and work in National Parks. I am sure it has done a great deal to de-fuse what occasionally has been an explosive issue, as the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, told US.
My Lords, one might say that this Report is almost an official report in so far as sitting on the Committee were two ex-Ministers, two senior ex-civil servants, and three members of the Countryside Commission, including the Director. This membership lent the Committee a status, which leaves us in no doubt that what they say is something to which we should listen with the greatest attention. Lastly, may I pay tribute to the Secretary of this Committee. The Sandford Report is extremely readable, well-written and lucid. This does not apply to all reports, but this one was a model of its kind. Of course, the Government will consider very carefully all the opinions put forward, but I hope they will not be too long in considering them because it is important that we should try to implement as much of the Report as we can, and as soon as possible. A great deal of it can be implemented without legislation if Park Authorities have the mind to do so. A great deal of it is a change of emphasis, a change of policy, and does not require new legislation. Some of the changes do need legislation, but I will touch on that later.
With regard to what can be done at once, I am a little afraid that one of the most important things, that which falls in the area of management agreements, will

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not get far, if I understood the noble Lord, Lord Goronwy-Roberts, in his explanation of the finances. Like the noble Viscount, Lord Ridley, I cannot make out whether what the noble Lord, Lord Goronwy-Roberts, is saying pleases me or not, because I did not grasp it. I shall read his speech again and try to find out what the Government mean.
The noble Baroness, Lady White, began by telling us that this Report is about the conflict of people versus places, and how we can reconcile these two things. The noble Lord, Lord Sandford, mentioned this, too. There are limits to the number of people who can get into a room. This applies just as much to the open air as it does to four walls. One gets to the point where one has to try to prevent so many people getting on to the ground and seriously damaging it. For the first time we have a clear statement that, in the last resort, conservation must have primacy over public enjoyment and recreation. I am sure that is right. It must not be watered down in any way. It sets the tone for management of the land. If we do not manage the land with that ultimate object in view, there will be nothing for people to enjoy anyway.
What is said in the Report with regard to revising the Statute is important. The Statute must be revised to make it clear beyond all possible doubt that public enjoyment must be managed in such a way that it does not destroy what the public comes to enjoy. The conflict here is probably greatest with regard to roads and traffic. Chapter 15, which deals with this, is absolutely crucial. I am not sure whether the noble Lord said he thought it the most important matter. I think it is nearly the most important. Urgent action by the Government, by local authorities and Park Authorities is necessary if we are to overcome this problem. For a start, I think we might well look at our national roads programme to find out whether, in the light of the Sandford Report, we could not revise it. With regard to minor roads, I am certain that the key powers must be put into the hands of the Park Authorities. I am certain also that hierarchical road planning must be put into Park plans. I should like to see the Government experiment expanded and extended. The last
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attempt to do that has failed—this was in Cumberland—because of local pressure against it.
When we first started talking about pedestrian precincts, there was tremendous opposition from, among others, tradesmen in towns who thought they would be ruined. One had sympathy with this thought, but when the pedestrian precincts came about no one was ruined, everyone did very much better, and everyone was very pleased with them. However, it takes some time before a new idea like that is accepted. This is true of the system of making certain roads in National Parks usable only by certain classes of traffic. There is opposition to it at the moment, but I believe we can overcome that.
Lastly, I think that there is one point which wants looking at. Anybody doing any kind of construction work is always in difficulty about keeping their labour force together. The roadmakers are among those who find this most difficult. The pressure to keep their staff and to go on building roads is a very powerful lobby which wants looking at. All these things can be done at once and require no legislation whatsoever.
It was said also that our system of National Parks is a kind of compromise quite unlike anything that exists in any other National Parks. That compromise is under great strain. The conflict between those who make their livelihood from the land and those who come to enjoy themselves is becoming acute. I believe that the management agreement is the way in which we must look at this matter and try to put it right. I have argued this point before in your Lordships' House and I will repeat it again. In the past land has earned its living from agriculture or forestry or cognate uses.
To-day many people who live in towns, and they are 95 per cent. of us, wish to go and enjoy themselves in the country. If a large number of people go to enjoy themselves in the country obviously there cannot be agriculture (shall we say?) at full cock; to some extent it must take second place, or, at any rate, it must defer to public pressures. However, given these public pressures, the public enjoyment, like anything else (like conservation), has to be paid for, and it would be quite unreasonable that it should be paid for by the occupier of

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the land. I believe the management agreement is the first step towards making some kind of balancing rent. We have the idea already with the access agreement. If you have an access agreement you can have an arrangement whereby you are paid, the analogy I use is a sporting rent; in so far as you keep more grouse and fewer sheep the grouse help to pay for the sheep. I think public disportation must come into the field of paying something towards a balancing rent in respect of the agriculture that it diminishes.
The management agreement would help to do this in two ways. Where, for instance, you do not want too great an improvement, in inverted commas, where you do not want ploughing up of moor land, or more fencing or the more buildings that more fencing engenders, then you enter into a management agreement; the occupier agrees to farm in a certain way and, in so far as his living is diminished by that, a rent is paid out of the public purse. I am glad that this idea is meeting with increasing respect from all quarters and is mentioned in the Report. But I think it will need a great deal more money than the noble Lord, Lord Goronwy-Roberts, suggests, and I suspect that the noble Lord is not quite clear what this is all about; it is a new idea for him, as it is for a good many others.
LORD GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, I wonder whether the noble Lord has quite grasped the implications of this greatly increased grant. Perhaps I may spell it out simply to him. Last year the grant was some £400,000 from Central Government to local authorities engaged in Park purposes. This year it is £1,400,000. That £1,400,000 represents 75 per cent. of the expenditure which local authorities engaged in Park purposes have told us they will engage in this year. As to how much of this greatly increased grant may be devoted to managerial compensation purposes, such as the one the noble Lord mentioned, it is impossible to say. Many would feel that any scheme whereby management involves development which ought to be compensated should be subject to a financially separate examination from the kind of Brant which I described.
LORD HENLEY: My Lords, I accept that point, and what I said, in fact, was
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that on the lines of the grant the noble Lord has explained that I did not think we would get very far at all with the idea of management agreements. The national heritage idea, the national heritage area, is something by way of movement towards the management agreement system. It is a very good idea, but I agree with almost everybody else I have spoken to, that the name is no good. Differentials already exist in National Park planning, all the way from honeypots to S.S.I.s. I think different management is wanted here rather than different planning tiers. Now that it is necessary, as I think, for management agreements to come in to preserve and conserve, and as this will cost a great deal of money, I welcome the suggestion in the Sandford Report that this burden must be born by the State. I endorse what the noble Lord says, that, in fact, legislation for powers and money is necessary. But I also have the same kind of apprehensions about this name as I think the noble Baroness had. I think you must not have the formal accolade of designation. It will bring many people there just when you want to try to discourage them. I fear that this may happen whatever kind of low-key name you give it; whether it is a formal accolade or whether it is a low-key civil service kind of grade it will still become known that this is something special that must be visited and looked at.
That is why, although I like the idea. I want to keep it on the basis of the management agreement and the access agreement, and not talk about special areas at all. I believe it can be done perfectly well in other ways if the powers and the money are forthcoming. What could be done right away is that the Park authorities and the Countryside Commission could identify, without naming, the kind of areas we want to cope with, those of sufficient size, not tiny areas but those of such a size as are worth doing at all. Any kind of designation should he a planning designation rather than a public designation.
There were one or two controversial points which I was not sure whether I should mention. They have been mentioned and I will add to them. The noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Gryfe, who I see in his place today, knows that I belong to the school that feels that afforestation must come under planning development control. There is an area of difficulty

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here as to how far, if you have planning control over afforestation, you must also have control over the techniques and business of forestry. I believe that you need not have that at all, although I know that some of my friends in the amenity movement think that you should try to control it from top to bottom. I do not go with that. I think it is major change of land use which must come under planning control.
LORD TAYLOR OF GRYFE: My Lords, before the noble Lord leaves that point, I wonder whether he would tell us, in his enthusiasm for planning control of forestry, if the present regulation in National Parks provides for a voluntary agreement? Would he indicate any cases in which the voluntary agreement has not been fulfilled?
LORD HENLEY: My Lords, this is not a debate about the problems of the Forestry Commission. I only mentioned it, and I said that I was in some doubt as to whether to bring it up at all. I think I would bore your Lordships if I went into detail. I have discussed this matter with the noble Lord. I have written a letter to The Times; I do not know whether it will be printed. The next time we debate forestry I will try to answer the noble Lord. There is one other point about forestry that I want to make. The Forestry Commission is trying to make more amenity attractions within the forest. This is very welcome and very good. But people must not run away with the idea (that this of itself makes large scale afforestation a good thing. It does not, because the amenities would have been far more pleasant without the forest.
The average length of speech up to now has been 32 minutes which, if I may say so, is too long, and I am already running out of time, but I have been interrupted twice. I am sorry that this Report did not come before the Local Government Act 1972, because I believe that the control decisions that were to come under that Act were not the best. However, we have also debated that at length. I am sorry that the Sandford Report did not come out before some of our road decisions were reached, but I hope that there might yet be time for some of them to be reviewed.
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It is urgent to do now what we can. There are half a dozen things that I believe could be done at once in addition to what I have already mentioned. I think that the development control policy overall (not only over forestry but over everything) must be reviewed. For the benefit of the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Gryfe, I would say that I have always belonged to that school of thought (though my trade union does not) which thinks that agricultural buildings should also be under control.
As I mentioned before, there is a good deal of scope for more public transport. I think that the Countryside Commission and the National Park Authorities might now do something towards a really serious and full survey of small woodlands. When I say "small woodlands", I mean down to one acre or less. I hope that there will be money forthcoming for the warden service, and I hope that something will be done to give it a career structure. At the moment we are possibly taking too much for granted of the goodwill of people who run the service for very little. I should like to see a proper training scheme through which people could be encouraged into the service, and where they could move into other aspects of planning afterwards. I think that it is important to build up the estate maintenance teams, to repair the wear and tear to hedges, stone walls, gates, and everything that inevitably gets damaged even when the public behave as all country lovers should. This would go a long way towards making it acceptable to people living and working in the country. I think that in the National Parks the footpath functions should be taken over by the Park Authorities.
For me this has been a most interesting debate, and I am looking forward with interest to the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Castle. I hope that this debate will have been of some value to the Government and to Ministers. I hope that it will also be of value to the Park Authorities, and to the Committee of which the noble Viscount, Lord Ridley, is to be chairman. I commend to the noble Lord, Lord Garnsworthy, who is going to wind up for us, the various things that have been said—not so far from the Government Front Bench, because I am not sure that I understood what was said from the Government

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Front Bench—by the noble Baroness, Lady White, and the noble Lord, Lord Sandford; and I hope that the noble Lord will pay attention to what I have said as well.
4.53 p.m.
LORD CASTLE: My Lords, I fear that some of your Lordships may think that this is a somewhat premature and presumptive intervention, as I have been in your Lordships' House for only a few days. However, I assure you that I am impelled to make my first assay in this House because your famed tolerance and forbearance has been so apparent to me in those debates that I have sat in on, and secondly because, examining my Order Paper, I find that between now and the Recess this is perhaps the only debate on which I could be noncontroversial.
I am conscious of the fact that I speak in a Chamber full of experts and specialists upon every conceivable subject. I have only the same kind of expertise that the housewife has upon the retail price index; I am a consumer of National Parks. As the noble Baroness, Lady White, so graciously remarked, I was in with that egregious, exceptional person, Hugh Dalton, later Lord Dalton, in claiming for ourselves, the public of England, access to the beauty spots. I served, as it were, in the p.b.i. of that ragged army of eight who, after a succession of Labour conferences, blazed what is now known as the Pennine Way. One of my treasured memories is to think of Hugh Dalton's whispered confidences reverberating around the silence of the manifold and ricochetting across the rocks of Edale. With him of course at that time was my noble friend Lord Burntwood, and great people like Tom Stevenson, a man who was, you might say, born with Fell boots on his feet.
I welcome the possibility of speaking today because on the day of my Introduction we had that remarkable debate, almost a teach-in, on our stately homes and art possessions. The two subjects and the two debates are complementary to me. Last week our heroes were the Vanbrughs, the Wrens, the Inigo Jones's, the Gainsboroughs, the Lawrences, and artists of that kind; today the scenario may be the same but our heroes are
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nature itself and our rude forefathers who shaped the very countryside that we love so much.
I believe that there was some comment, perhaps not unjustified, on the absence of speeches in agreement with the noble Mover of last week's Motion from this side of the House. I think that our lack of numbers was made good by the remarkably able, convincing, and committed speech of my noble friend Lady Lee of Asheridge. I should like to take my colleagues and my noble friends on this side of the House with me when I say that there is thorough agreement from this side at what was being aimed at in the discussion last week, and no erosion of those lovely homes or art galleries will be made if I and most of my colleagues have our way. You can count on us to be with you. I hope that I shall also carry your Lordships with me when I suggest that the problem today is not quite the same as it was last week.
To-day we are not discussing the wealth tax. Fears were expressed during that debate that some Governments might think of taking those possessions away from their present owners to pay their instalment of the wealth tax. We on this side of the House do not want that to happen. It is not quite the same thing with our landscapes, fields and hills. It would be churlish of a future Chancellor of the Exchequer to refuse a few luscious fields or an odd peak or two in payment of an instalment of wealth tax. I hope that that thought does not frighten any of your Lordships because many of you are really committed to the conception of the National Trust knowing the munificent and magnificent work that it does in the public interest through its public ownership of those manors.
But of course I would wish to comment, as have earlier speakers, on that splendid Report which has so enlightened this debate, because of the thoroughness of its inquiry and the number of recommendations that it makes—what has been called the "Sandford Report." We are most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, and his Committee for having given us such a great digest of the problem facing us. If I may put it in different words from those used earlier, we are facing a new demand by the industrial

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workers of this country for some of the delights which were denied to the previous generation. They have become mobile. The much abused motor car, their education and their leisure has meant that the success of the National Parks in their 25 years has become phenomenal, and all of us should delight in that fact.
The problem, however, is that the demand for solitude has outpaced the supply. It is with that problem, it seems to me, that the Report so admirably deals in many respects. The danger is that the most seductive parts of our countryside are going to become the victims of their own beauty, a fate, if I may say so, not unknown to seductresses in both fiction and biography.
The Report advocates many remedies, or at least starts a number of hares, to many of which reference has been made. Some of the recommendations in the Report, it will be realised, do not represent unanimous approval. There is particularly the one linked to that rather sententious title, "National Heritage Areas." They are, by the definition of the Report, to be areas of the,
"Highest environmental quality, needing special care and attention."
"The more gregarious type of visitor"—the Report's words, not mine—will not be welcomed. They are going to be the inner sanctum for walkers, cyclists and horse riders. There will be no facilities for car parks, refreshments, rubbish bins and "loos". Your Lordships are warned. It is suggested that cars, except those of residents, should be banned. These are fairly wide powers for the Park Authority to exercise.
I expect most Members of the House have spent some time wrestling with yourselves as to whether these proposals are the best or whether the objections which are voiced in the following chapter are well based. This weekend I read both of those chapters twice. I had no rambling companion to discuss the matter with, but in the end I came down on the side of these areas. I thought to myself that age and infirmity do claim a tremendous amount—and rightly so—of all legislators, and of your Lordships, consideration and time. But the young and energetic, the adventurous and the enterprising, also have a claim on your attention and on the national finances.
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My Lords, I see these national heritage areas as being designed particularly for those, and if at this great age I may speak for them I should welcome the opportunity, were I younger or more energetic, of using them.
This is the first time I have had the privilege—which I treasure—of addressing your Lordships. May I conclude by encapsulating a piece of advice which might form the text of the educational system which was suggested earlier, the kind of education which is needed—let us admit it—for the person who is used only to the back streets of his town. I am told that at the entrance of an American park the advice given to visitors is:
"Take nothing but pictures; leave nothing but footprints; kill nothing but time".
I think we could very well adopt that slogan in at least the inner areas of our National Parks.
5.8 p.m.
THE EARL OF BRADFORD: My Lords, I know that your Lordships will wish me to start by offering your Lordships' congratulations to the noble Lord. Lord Castle, not only for opening his score so early in his innings but also for making such an excellent speech. It is a great pleasure to do so. The noble Lord spoke from the heart, with great feeling and from great experience. I am sure that your Lordships will wish to hear much more from him in the future. In fact, I hope it would not be too audacious of me to suggest that with further experience of your Lordships' House the noble Lord may even succeed in out-shining in oratory at least, his distinguished partner in life. I should like to join in thanking the noble Baroness, Lady White, for so felicitously opening this important debate, and also to thank my noble friend Lord Sandford for the really admirable Report which he and his excellent Committee have assembled. If I may criticise a few of the points in it, I hope that the noble Lord will realise any such criticisms are intended to be entirely constructive because I am as enthusiastic as anybody about the Countryside Commission, the National Parks and the work that they do.
In view of the importance of the Forestry Commision in the National Parks, I think it is unfortunate that we

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cannot hear more from the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Gryfe—more, that is, than the intervention that he was able to make recently—because there is probably nobody who has more experience of the work of the Forestry Commission. He has been not only an outstanding chairman of the Forestry Commission but also a really doughty champion of forestry as a whole. Under his leadership the Forestry Commission have gained so much more stature, especially with their recent changes of policy; and I know that the noble Lord realises as well as anyone that trees and forestry are not only a renewable raw material resource of vast national importance but also a vital constituent part of our environment and landscape.
Your Lordships may well wonder what qualifications I have to tend criticism and advice on this subject. The answer can only be that it is mainly my own experience over the last 28 years in allied fields, and particularly in areas of great landscape value; and also perhaps the presidency, chairmanship and membership of various organisations connected with land use, land ownership, farming, forestry and allied subjects. Not long after the last war I was fortunate enough to inherit two large agricultural properties, inevitably somewhat run-down and with the woodlands ravaged by wartime fellings; and also a mature Capability Browne landscape of open parkland and ornamental woodlands. I was convinced early on that integrated land use (even if possibly I did not call it by that name at that time) must be the key to reconstruction, and that good ecological practice should supply the guidelines. I was concerned also with the apparent conflict between commercial and amenity forestry, between conifers and broad-leaved trees, between mono-culture and mixtures.
I believed then and I believe now that, with give and take, there is no need for such conflict. Comparison is often made between mature broad-leaved trees and broad-leaved stands, and young coniferous plantations, with their inevitable uniformity. In other countries conifers have general acceptance, especially, I think, in the National Parks; and I would instance here Switzerland, the United States and Canada, where they are immensely admired
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for their grandeur and their contribution to the scene. Where our early coniferous plantations have grown up and approached maturity, they seem to have gained general acceptance. The Forestry Commission have opened scenic forest drives and scenic routes through coniferous forests, and these have become immensely popular, as have nature and forest trails, also mainly through conifer woods. On a recent tour, too, my Lords, as a member of the National Committee for England, I went through a great deal of the large Border forests in the Kielder area, where the contribution of the entirely coniferous planting to the scene is quite apparent. I understand that so much are the trees there now appreciated that there is a very real concern that they may eventually have to be felled, and in fact there is quite a tendency to form a local conifer protection society.
It was borne in on me long ago that what the great British public dislikes is change. People are conservative (with a small "c") in outlook, if not always in politics. Many tend to regard the landscape as a kind of static backcloth or a permanent, unchanging tribute to Capability Browne. But, my Lords, the landscape is a living, dynamic and ever-changing setting for our lives and activities. Even trees cannot stand for ever. I came to believe, therefore, that what people really disliked was sudden change—the impact of a large clear-felled area, with its scene of desolation and devastation, followed by its blanket replanting. I could not understand why such a system was considered de rigueur in this country, whereas on the Continent there was a long tradition of uneven-aged selection forestry. I determined to try to evolve a system which would be suited to this country, especially the hillier areas, and I carried out some early experiments in Shropshire.
Some 15 years ago I was fortunate enough to acquire a large forestry area in the Tamar and Tavy Valleys in Devon and Cornwall, largely to save it from likely destruction. This is an area of steep valley sides, with high rainfall, much risk of erosion, heavy weed growth, late spring frost danger, and so on. Most of the area has now been converted to continuous-cover, multi-storey mixed forestry, with resulting advantages, I believe, not only in production but also to the land-

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scape and to wildlife. I do not think this is the place for me to go into too much detail, but I consider that such a system could well be suitable for some National Parks. Shortly after the war I was also fortunate to acquire a property in a beautiful part of the Scottish Highlands. There all the woodlands had been cut down, not leaving a tree standing, and with a small rundown hill farm. I determined to lay out the lowland part of the estate to the best advantage for the interaction of farming, forestry and landscaping. I now have there about 1,200 acres of thriving woodlands and a farm run on organic lines with 150 breeding cows. They are beef cows, and, of course, that makes me very interested in the debate on the Unstarred Question which is shortly to follow, especially as I have another beef farm in Australia. In my view, this made a vast improvement in what was already a beautiful but bare landscape.
I have also been carrying out experiments in the last 25 years in organic and biological husbandry in Shropshire and Staffordshire; and I have always held that agricultural practice took a wrong turn in following the beckoning finger of the scientists and chemists and in abandoning long-tried traditional practices—and I believe that many farmers and agricultural practitioners now hold the same view. I now have a 1,300-acre farm run entirely on organic and biological principles; and I believe that there may possibly be some scope for that within the National Parks, too. I must apologise, my Lords, for this rather long preamble, and for so much use of the first-person singular, but I believe it is necessary to show the possibility of avoiding the visual shock of clear-felling which I believe is the main objection to much of current forestry practice, and also to show that there are alternative ways to co-operate with Nature to achieve the best results.
I would turn now to specific points that I should like to make on the Report. I shall try to be as brief as possible. I think it is perhaps a pity that so little prominence has been given in the Report to Section 37 of the Countryside Act 1968, especially in Chapter 6 because in fact it appears merely in a footnote to page 25 of the Report. This section of the Countryside Act 1968 imposes on
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Ministers, on the Countryside Commission, on the National Environment Research Council and on local authorities the duty to have due regard to the needs of agriculture and forestry and the economic and social interests of rural areas. I suggest that this section is of far greater importance than has been made apparent in that part of the Report.
There is considerable mention in the Report of ecology and ecological practice and the noble Baroness, Lady White, has referred to the dilemma of the conflicting aims of the National Parks. I suggest that possibly ecology and ecological practice might provide the main guidelines for decisions on some of these conflicts, as well as the practice of conservation. There is no reference in the Report to the economic need for afforestation and for productive woodland man agement. The need for this has increased dramatically since the Committee carried out its work and it is mainly the uplands which can supply this. There is also considerable mention of bare grazing grounds in the National Parks and I suggest here that these bare grazing grounds are of recent origin and are mainly manmade. Within recent history, a great part of these areas was covered with natural forests, mainly of birch and pine, and I believe that "England's mountains green" were in ancient times mainly forest covered. So, the so-called afforestation is in many cases just bringing back the original tree cover.
I believe, too, that there is less mention than there should be of recreation in forests. There are many advantages in recreation in a forest setting, whether the forest be hardwood or coniferous, and the Forestry Commission have given excellent examples of the possibilities and are doing very good work on these lines. I believe, too, that there is not sufficient recognition in the Report of the fact that forestry practice has moved with the times. Plantations from the early pit-prop era—if I may call it that—which was itself the result of Government policy, are so often compared with mature hardwoods. The Forestry Commission have for some time now employed a very distinguished landscape consultant and I am sure that they would be the first to agree that mistakes were made in the early years but that the opportunity is being taken in every case to make up for those mistakes.

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I should like now to turn to the question of the voluntary agreements in the National Parks. There are now agreements in operation in all National Parks except the Yorkshire Dales and an agreement in Northumberland was signed recently. I think that this is significant in itself and shows the value which is generally attached to these voluntary agreements. I understand from the Forestry Commission—
LORD SANDFORD: My Lords, would the noble Earl allow me to interrupt him? I do not think that that is quite correct. The Lake District, the North Yorkshire Moors and the Peak District do not rely upon the voluntary agreements at all.
TILE EARL OF BRADFORD: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for that information but I think that, in the cases where a voluntary agreement proper is not in operation, there is at least something very similar in the form of consultation and voluntary arrangements of some kind. I think one can call it a very similar animal to the voluntary agreement. I understand that there is no case known to the Forestry Commission where a voluntary agreement has been broken by the forestry interests, but I think it would be true to say that many of the critics—who are inclined to be rather vociferous—seem to consider that agreements have not worked if afforestation has not been stopped completely. The object of the agreements is of course control, and I maintain that that has been attained and that there is great local pride in making the agreements work. All evidence—if not necessarily opinion—points to them working well wherever there is a will to make them work.
I should like now to turn for a few moments to what I consider the rather contentious proposal for planning control on afforestation. If, as I maintain, the voluntary agreements do work, I suggest that such control is not necessary. The recommendation seems to stem from the assumption that the pattern of upland planting in the 1950s and early 1960s is being continued into the '70s. This I do not believe to be the case and present-day forestry is ecologically based and has full regard for proper land use and landscape requirement. I am told—and I think that this is significant—that the Countryside Commission for Scotland do not support
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this recommendation for planning control and are concerned that the present level of planting should continue or even expand. The Scottish Commission are also strong supporters of the National Forest parks, which are mainly in Scotland, where there are no National Parks, and which are created against a predominantly evergreen and therefore coniferous forest background.
We British foresters have been waitine for some time for a forest policy declaration from the Government. The last Government issued a statement in October. 1973, after the main part of this Report had been written. It is referred to in a footnote on page 65. If the present Government accept the principles then enunciated, their implementation, coupled with existing legislation and consultative practice would, I believe, give a degree of control over forestry both in the National Parks and elsewhere which should be acceptable to all interests. This recommendation for planning control really appears to have been based on the pattern of planting in the uplands of 25 years ago.
Recent planting by the Forestry Commission, investment companies or private owners has full regard for the landscape and amenity considerations, whereas one would agree that in the '50s many crimes against the landscape were committed, largely because of the need to grow pit props. I believe, too, that this recommendation is largely in contradiction with the contents of Chapter 18, which provided for consultation and co-operation in every field.
There is also a minority recommendation that all silvicultural operations should be subject to planning control but this was not accepted by sufficient members of the Committee, including Lord Sandford. This would so affect forest management as to lead to direct control of silviculture under the provisions of the Countryside Act, but I believe that silviculture by committee is totally impracticable. If accepted, this recommendation would, I believe, also challenge the integrity of the Forestry Commission and of private owners of woodland in carrying out all the consultation procedures and directives concerning the amenity aspects of forestry.
Timber, my Lords, is a crop, although one which occupies the ground for a

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very long time. I think it is arguable that ploughing heather ground and reseeding is just as much of an intrusion upon the landscape. The Report refers to the good control attained under dedication, but there is very little difference between dedicated and other woodlands so far as felling and replanting are concerned. In all cases, control is exercised by the Forestry Commission, who are, after all, the acknowledged experts, and they consult the planning authorities whenever and wherever necessary. There is a section on broadleaved and small woodlands, and the suggestion that the purchase and management of a proportion of these by Park authorities should be achieved. I can only agree that this would seem to be a very good thing, and it has already been done in some Parks. It should help to demonstrate the cost of the skilled management required. The main solution for the remainder would seem to be adequate grant aid.
But the problem of growing hardwoods in the National Parks is one of ecology as well as one of finance. It is misleading to equate, as is implied in the Report, the New Forest with National Parks in the uplands where it will often be the case that conifers being suited to the site will give greater grandeur to the scene than unthrifty hardwoods. Experienced foresters could not accept the assumption which permeates this Report, as well as the thinking of some planning officers and others, that the growing of conifers is necessarily damaging to the landscape in either the uplands or the lowlands of Britain. How both conifers and hardwoods are managed is important, but the landscape benefits from the presence of trees and woods and forestry, especially of the sylviculture and management take local factors of soil, climate and topography into consideration.
The final paragraph of Chapter 10 is also to be welcomed. This envisages consultation with private owners. This is surely desirable and much more likely to be useful and productive than the possibly dead hand of planning control. Consultation and co-operation should, I believe, be the keynote. Negotiations with woodland owners regarding the conservation of the character of their woodlands in the National Parks is cer-
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tain to be a great deal more productive than control by restrictive legislation under the planning Acts.
5.32 p.m.
VISCOUNT RIDLEY: My Lords, perhaps I might presume to add my congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Castle, on his magnificent maiden speech. I am sure that all of your Lordships enjoyed it as much as I did. We can only wish that his powerful voice will still be heard as much on the empty spaces of the Pennine Way as on the empty Benches on the Government side this afternoon. As we have discussed some of the founder members of the Park movement. I should also like to say how nice it is that Mrs. Dower, widow of John Dower who was one of the founders of the National Park movement, should be able to listen to our debate today. The next thing I must do is thank the noble Baroness, Lady White, for introducing this debate and for the excellent speech which she made at the start of the proceedings. Last but not least, may I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, and his colleagues on the most excellent Report which they have produced? I think I am right in saying that it is the most readable report that the Stationery Office has ever published. The noble Lord deserves congratulations for that alone. But also he has now, for the first time, put the word, "loo" into official documents, which means that it is no longer likely to be acceptable outside official circles. I may be wrong in this, but he has broken new ground and may go down in history in some respects at least.
The most important conclusion which the Report reached is that there is a basic conflict between conservation, agriculture, and tourism. This is the conflict which has arisen as the National Parks have developed and as their use has grown. The Report makes it abundantly clear, as your Lordships all know, that conservation must take precedence in this triangular conflict and it is right that this should be so. We must not forget that we have only 10 National Parks in this country—seven in England and three in Wales—and there are 58 million people in this island, so that the number of people per Park is quite substantial. Indeed, it is no mean achievement that the National Parks as a whole, and the movement for country parks as well, have so

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far been able to absorb all the people who wanted to visit them. It is not a bad thing to be able to say that the system has worked and that people have been able to visit these Parks in such numbers and will continue, one hopes, to do so. But of course this visiting is confined to a very short season, mostly the summer months.
If your Lordships will turn to photograph No. 1 of Little Langdale on a Bank Holiday, it is perhaps indicative. I myself travelled that road in April and never saw more than one other car. That is the measure of the problem. While I am on the subject of photographs, we should perhaps congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Sandford. In the acknowledgements for the photographs at the beginning, the Report in its thoroughness informs us that a Mr. Berry charges £3 for the reproduction of these photographs. I hope that the noble Lord will let me know whether he got his £3 for allowing this excellent photograph to be reproduced.
One must next look at the eternal conflict between agriculture and conservation. It is never possible to do more than see that this conflict does not get worse. There has been a lot of talk this afternoon about the management agreements and, of course, this is an excellent concept which we must all without argument try to foster. But one must sound one note of warning. It could be a very expensive bill to the Park authorities if they were involved on any substantial scale in this management agreement on agriculture. Most people think that the bracken in autumn is a lovely colour, is part of our national landscape and therefore should be preserved because of its beauty. The same can be said of heather at other times of the year.
If we are to prevent farmers on a large scale from improving the grazing of heather or to eradicate bracken which is agriculturaly quite sterile, and which will very soon be easily possible, then we shall let ourselves in for a very big annual commitment. Every farmer will be justified in thinking, "If I do not spray this bracken for the next ten years, then the State or local authority will pay me so much per annum not to do so." This may be a big open-ended cheque. The future lies not only in looking at this matter experimentally and seeing how
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we can get something done to the more important parts of a Park, but in realising that we cannot do it on any large scale at the moment. We cannot afford it. The future presure on the Parks must be taken much more by country parks and other similar places, which are also part of the report, and I hope that this can be done.
I would venture to suggest, perhaps unkindly as our noble Scottish colleagues are no longer here today, that Scotland could take off a great deal more of the pressure from the National Parks of England and Wales. It has marvellous scenery, and I hope Scotland will not be far behind England and Wales in setting up proper National Parks on the basis that we have in England. I may be wrong, but I think I am right in thinking that Scotland is the only country in Europe without National Parks. If the noble Scottish Lords descend on me tomorrow when they come back from Edinburgh I will stand corrected on that: but I think I am right.
We have the important realisation in this Report that the existence of the demand to visit the Parks does not automatically carry with it the right that that demand should be met. If we go to the theatre and find it is full up we realise that we cannot get in. We also realise if we go to the theatre that we have to pay substantially for a ticket. But if we go to a National Park it is supposed to be free, and quite rightly so. But one must recognise that this free access to everywhere is no longer always a possibility in every Park, on every day. The experiment with the traffic-free valleys has been referred to. The noble Lord, Lord Henley, was not quite correct. There are other valleys where this has been done, because it is the motorcar which is damaging our National Parks and not so much the human being. This is the line we shall have to take for further progress.
I should now like to turn to the administration of National Parks, which has been raised more than once this afternoon. We all fought this battle in our various directions during the 1972 Local Government Act debates, and in a way I am sorry that it has to be raised again today. It seems to me that local authorities are so eminently suitable as organisers of National Parks and other

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recreational facilities, partly because of their local involvement, but also—perhaps more importantly—because of their electoral responsibilities and sensitivity to the electors who very often live in the Parks and use them. I do not see where the argument comes from. A board such as the Peak and the Lake District have is superior. But I have never seen any argument to convince me that there is a case for turning all these Parks into machines run by boards like the Lake District one. I can find only one argument that seems to hold some water; that is, that in the past these boards have spent more money than the Parks administered by county councils in other parts of the country.
Is this really a good argument? Is it right to say that if you spend more money you will get a better pat on the back? Is this not one of the better ways of getting Government and local authority expenditure out of control, which we really do not want at the moment. Is it not better to try to find out, not what authorities have spent in the past but what are the needs, and try to get finance available for the needs which we know exist? I do not feel that it is either right or proper to make a judgment of the administration of a Park merely on the historic sums of money that have been spent. Who, in any case, is to say under what criterion we should judge the amount of money being spent? Is it per visitor per day? In that case, no one knows the figures. Is it per inhabitant of the Park? If so, the Lake District spends one-sixth of the sum which Northumberland spends on its Parks. Or is the acreage to be the criterion, in which case the figures bear no relation whatsoever to one another.
The administration is now settled and I hope that anything that may be said to-day will not mean to the minds of local authorities that it might all be changed. It has just been set up and I think it is going very well. The first important point on which I would ask the Government to give their views is this. I should like to know whether or not they agree with the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, that a review of the system should be carried out in five years' time. I think that is too short a time. I believe I am right in saying that all the county councils in-
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volved feel that the time should be at least seven years. After all, we do not expect to get the National Park plans, with all the consultations which are necessary, agreed one way or another in under three years, and to give only a further two years before threatening to put the whole system back into the melting pot seems to me to be wrong. The period of at least seven years to give people time to see where they are and not be threatened with another reorganisation, is preferable.
The idea of a National Park plan is, of course, a very good one and I welcome it. I hope, in pleading our personal views of the National Parks, that a new review of boundaries will be carried out as soon as possible. Since the boundaries were set up, a great many anomalies have arisen and it would be convenient to everybody if we were able to change the boundaries in some directions, inwards or outwards. But I do not wish to waste any more of your Lordships' time on that point this afternoon.
Next is the matter of finance and, in his absence, I have already apologised for interrupting the Government spokesman on this subject. I am still not clear what will happen and I do not believe that the county authorities are quite clear yet. But I suspect it will not be too long before we are told that 75 per cent. of an approved estimate will be found by the Government. There is still ambiguity on this matter which I trust will be cleared up. It is, of course, right that 75 per cent. should be paid by central Government. It represents a contribution which urban visitors to these Parks can make, a way in which through their taxes they can contribute to solving this problem.
I do not think it is fair to say, as the noble Baroness, Lady White, said, that certain National Park authorities seem to be using their grants towards the relief of rates in general. I should like her to substantiate this allegation, because I do not think it is justified. There may have been an occasional case or two when, in the estimate stages, some Parks were not at all sure what the system would be. If necessary, the Government will have to bear responsibility. I do not think it has happened, in practice, and I am pretty sure that it will not happen in future. The County Councils Association would not

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wish to see it happen, and it is most unlikely that it ever has happened. However, perhaps the point is not worth further discussion.
I am slightly distressed, because it appears that the test of a Park's performance is likely to be the indication of what is needed, rather than some attempts being made to assess the needs of Parks as a whole or individually. If we are to have a sort of competition between the National Park authorities to see who can spend the most, so that at such annual conferences as there may be some authorities are publicly praised for spending more than their neighbours, that will not be right. We have to assess the need, try to make a realistic long-term programme of what is needed, and get it done as quickly as possible. I do not like the idea of competition on this basis. The Parks authorities must know what they are likely to get over a period, and it is no good saying that the amount of money they will have to spend might be changed next year, which will make it impossible to plan ahead.
The Government have to keep control over local authority expenditure, and never more so than to-day, in the circumstances in which the country finds itself. But they must be prepared not only to provide the 75 per cent. grant, but also to make allocations for loan sanction so that local authorities have an availability of capital funds from which to borrow in order to do these tasks. At the moment, however ambitious the plans of local authorities with regard to their Parks and boundaries, it is not possible to get locally determined finance in the capital sector; and, again, if we are to be judged on the failure to provide nonexistent resources it will be wrong. Local authorities must have the finance and resources made available to them in order to borrow the money to pay their share, as many of the projects are capital ones.
The national interest demands that we spend much more money on National Parks. I am certain that local authorities throughout England and Wales are very much aware of their responsibilities, and will do all they can to carry them out. I have no fears whatever on that score. I think the national interest also shows that local government expenditure must be drastically reduced in the coming year or two, and we must realise that it
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may not be possible for local authorities with National Parks to do all that they wish. Local authorities are getting tired of being urged to do more and more of this and that, and then being denied the resources to do it. It really is not right.
I hope that I might, rather in defence of the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, move briefly to the forestry angle which has been so ably spoken about by my noble friend, Lord Bradford. I am one who welcomed very much the proposal that planning permission be given for a fair amount of afforestation to be brought into use. This is something which in the North of England at least has been needed for a very long time, and although the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Gryfe, might say that the voluntary agreement now covers this matter I think the damage was done long before the voluntary agreement came into being. It has always seemed to me absurd that the Forestry Commission have to apply for planning permission to put up a small garage behind one of their worker's cottages and yet they did not need planning permission or any other permission to cover many thousands of acres of hillside with alien coniferous trees. This seems to me to be a nonsense which I trust the Government will very soon put right. We are not really talking about afforestation all over the country, merely in National Parks, but I suggest large scale afforestation rather than small shelter belts and so forth.
My Lords, I apologise for speaking for so long on this subject but I hope that the country realises that local authorities are most anxious to do what is needed. The new Administration needs time to be proved and to get down to work, and I trust that the points which the debate has raised will be useful to the Government in coming to a conclusion on the excellent Report which we have all so much enjoyed reading.
5.49 p.m.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, I feel it an honour to follow the noble Viscount, Lord Ridley, in this debate. I differ from much that he said, but I recognise his experience and his authority on this subject. With one item in his speech I was particularly interested, and that was when he suggested that new methods of dealing with the problems of heather and bracken on high

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lands might make a contribution to a solution of our agricultural problem. I intend to refer to that later in my speech. I do not wish to be discourteous to him, but if he can bear to listen to my earlier remarks I shall be referring later to what he said.
I should like to join with others of your Lordships in thanking my noble friend Lady White for having initiated this debate. She made a most impressive speech—not merely analysing the proceedings and recommendations of the Sandford Report, but giving informed criticism and constructive suggestions. Her speech has received from this House what it deserved—that is, serious consideration—and I hope that Her Majesty's Government will continue to look at it and at the proposals which she made. Also, I have great pleasure in paying tribute to the speech of my old friend the noble Lord, Lord Castle. It is the custom in this House, as a matter of courtesy, to pay tribute to maiden speeches. I think that on this occasion I am reflecting the opinion of all Members of your Lordships' House when I say that we have rarely heard a maiden speech of the quality which the noble Lord, Lord Castle, delivered today. We look forward to his future contributions to our debates with the certainty that they will be of great value.
Throughout this debate most of the speeches have been concerned with details of the administration of the National Parks, I do not propose to repeat them, particularly since the noble Lord, Lord Henley, expressed many of the points which I had in mind. But this fact enables me to deal with what seem to me to be the basic principles. The acceptance of the idea of National Parks means that Parliament has endorsed the right of the people to control the development of our landscape. National Parks have now been in operation for a quarter of a century, but never has this principle of the right of the community to control the land and its beauty been more important that it is at the present moment. The debate which we are now having is extraordinarily relevant, because of the great danger that the scenery of our country may be destroyed by industrial development, particularly by the exploitation of
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oil resources in the North Sea which threaten the beauty of Scotland.
The National Parks have represented a contribution towards securing a balance between the value of the beauty of our country and its economic needs. They have been supplemented by the National Trust and, indeed, by the Commissions which in Scotland are now considering what should happen to these threatened spots. I think all of us should recognise that there must be some limitation to the claims of industrial development when beauty is involved. If, for example, a flow of oil were suddenly to occur under one of our Gothic cathedrals—perhaps the supreme illustration of the ability of man to achieve beauty—none of us would say that the need for oil was greater than the beauty of that cathedral. We have recently had a bomb explosion in the neighbourhood of Westminster Hall. But, again, no one would say that if oil were found beneath its stones the claim of that oil would be greater than the beauty of that Hall, which, in my view, is the finest in the whole of Europe.
If we recognise this limitation in the case of what man has done in the embodiment of beauty, ought we not also to recognise it in the beauty of nature? My noble friends the right reverend Prelates would say that the wonders of nature are a garden of God. Even those of us who are Humanists reverence that beauty—a heritage of centuries of nature with its seas and shores, its cliffs and hills, its valleys and lakes, trees and flowers, a heritage which is ours to pass on to future generations. That heritage is now threatened by the industrial expansion which is taking place. At this moment one of the most crucial issues we have to face is the balancing of our recognition of the beauty of our land with the urgency of economic needs.
Incidentally, I do not take the view that industrial expansion necessarily means the violation of beauty. I was deeply impressed, for example, on going into a nuclear power station in Bombay in India, by its beauty—not merely by its white cleanliness, but by the outline of the new electronic developments taking place. There is a power station in this country which has similar beauty in its outline and which is no affront to the

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environment in which it exists. I have seen in Asia and Africa great irrigation dams, such as the Volta project in Ghana harmonising with great rocky cliffs and a great dam in India with water overflowing the mountains. They added to the beauty of nature. When we are considering these problems, we should bring into consultation some of the young architects and civil engineers of to-day, descendants of Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, who would contribute to a harmonising of industrial development and of natural beauty.
At present we have some Commissions which are considering the effect of the oil discoveries in the North Sea on the beauty spots in Scotland. I want to suggest to Her Majesty's Government—and I hope a note will be taken of my remarks in the absence of the Minister—that the Department of the Environment should establish a Working Committee which should have terms of reference beyond those of the present Commissions. The Working Committee should include representatives of those responsible for the administration of the National Parks and the National Trust, as well as scientific agriculturalists, architects and engineers who would be able to survey this whole problem of industrialisation and natural beauty. Its terms of reference should include consideration of whether the ugliness which results from industrial development in the production of greater energy might be avoided in other directions. If we spent as much in research on the power of energy which lies in the rays of the sun, in the movement of the tides, in water in the rivers and even in air and the winds, as we are now spending upon oil production from the North Sea, I believe we could find energy resources which would be just as powerful and which would not involve the destruction of our countryside, as our present methods do.
Secondly, in the absence of the noble Viscount, Lord Ridley, who referred to this subject, I want to emphasise the importance of the new experiments which are being made in grass culture, turning moors and hills now covered with heather and bracken into fertile land. He referred to the cost of this. I suggest that, thinking in terms of industry and nature, a deep investigation of this new experiment, which may change the whole
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production of agriculture, should be considered by the Working Committee which I have proposed. Thirdly, I suggest that the Working Committee should make a survey to designate natural reserves which may be saved from desecration by industrial ugliness.
I want to say a few words on that. My noble friend Lady White referred in her opening speech to the suggestion that Purbeck Island in Dorset should be designated a National Park. That area includes the indescribably beautiful Tyne-ham Valley which has been under Army control ever since the last War. The Nugent Commission has recommended that the Army occupation should end and I hope that recommendation will be accepted. But the problem then arises as to what will happen to the area. I am not claiming that within Purbeck Island and the Tyneham Valley we have the highest expressions of beauty in this land, but I am claiming that there is nowhere else in the United Kingdom where there is such a harmony of all the beauty that is there: that seafront, those marvellous cliffs, those flowing hills, that mystic Egdon Heath of Thomas Hardy. That heath unhappily has already been desecrated by industrial development, a clay pit a quarter of a mile in extent, 80ft. in depth. The whole area should be made a natural reserve; it should be made a National Park. It should be under the National Trust so that its beauty may be maintained for ever.
It is not only its beauty, but its ecological value which is important. On the cliffs one sees strains of sands of different colours. I have seen that before only in a very limited area on the Isle of Wight. The ecological value will be known to all geologists. There is also the archaeological value. On Thomas Hardy's Egdon Heath there are burial grounds of before the time of the Roman invasion; unfortunately, some of them have been destroyed by artillery engagement during the Army occupation. I am not asking this House to take special action about that area; many other areas in Britain deserve the same consideration. What I am asking is that, as a result of this debate about National Parks and the necessity of maintaining the beauty of our country—of Scotland. Wales and England—this England !—we should find a solution by which the loveliness of our

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countryside may be saved from destruction by the ugliness of industrial development.
6.10 p.m.
LORD GISBOROUGH: My Lords, I should like to welcome this Report of the National Park Committee and offer my congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, and to the members of the Committee for the great trouble they took to obtain all the views of the people who are interested, because the result is that there is a great deal of good sense in the Report. Use by the public of the Parks must be either regardless of, or else in sympathy with, those who live there: and only the second provides a foundation of success. Therefore, perhaps the most important factor is that of agreements. The Report does well to suggest that voluntary agreements—and they must be totally voluntary—should be reached with landlords in the Park for providing access, footpaths and other amenities. However, the Authority must be prepared to tailor their agreements to fit the requirements of any individual and his particular circumstance, such as sheep farming, sporting, nesting seasons; and, by meeting the individual owners and their livelihoods, agreements are that much more likely to be reached. It is however counter-productive to talk about compulsorily purchasing land, as did the noble Baroness who opened the debate, as this just makes occupiers fearful of giving any access in case it is the thin end of the wedge. On the other hand, I would support her view that authorities should be provided with adequate funds so that they can buy on the open market any land which may be up for sale for making into access areas.
Planning control is suggested for forestry on bare land. Surely, there is a great difference between the plantation of 50 or fewer acres, planted for some good reason, and the area of 10,000 acres which covers hill and dale continuously and which might be a matter for planning control. Let it be fully realised that, while the 10,000 acres may get many objectors to planting, once it has grown up and provided a well-known landscape for visitors there will be an equal, if not a greater, outcry when it comes to cutting it down. A good example of that is sited near Scarborough
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where the Forestry Commission have enormous acreages of timber, and they attract far more visitors and provide a far more satisfactory day out than does the surrounding open bare land. Therefore, there is little point in the first place in making it subject to planning control. It is certainly wrong to insist on control of the felling of blocks, as forestry must continue its cycle of grow and fell in order for the area to look alive, and for the investment, management and employment to be justified and maintained. As there is much prejudice for and against softwood plantations, it is inappropriate to give the decision of forestry to a planning committee rather than to the owner who lives on the land. It would be useless for a planning committee to insist on the status quo or, having admired the beeches on the Cotswolds, to insist on beeches on the moorland sites, as certainly would tend to happen.
Trees are essentially a crop, as was recognised by the various members of the review committee, and to regard them otherwise would be a temptation to try to produce an unnatural scene. Only certain species are suitable for certain land. Landscapes, like architecture, must progress. No one wants to see everlasting copies of "Ye Oldie architecture ", nor, for that matter, even of Georgian architecture. Buildings must change and modernise and the eye becomes accustomed to new shapes. So must land change to meet modern needs. We see similarly the fight against the removal of hedgerows. Yet only a hundred years ago, or perhaps two hundred, there was an outcry when they were all planted. The compromise would be for the Forestry Commission to control forestry in the Parks, and for the Forestry Commission to have regard in doing so to visual amenity. But even this would be unnecessary bureaucracy and just cause much paper-work and wasted time for no good result. After all, almost all foresters are very alive to the appearance and amenity value of their forests, and private forestry. A good example of this is in Dumfriesshire, where the Economic Forestry Group of Private Owners have planted large acreages having great regard to wildlife and amenity, and the whole scene is vastly improved and more interesting without any compulsory planning at all.

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I should like to support the excellent references to footpaths in Chapter 16, where the rationalisation includes the formation of new footpaths and the closure of old ones which often create great annoyance to the land users and give little or no benefit to the visiting public. The new plastic footpath signs now nailed to gateposts are excellent. They are clearly visible, and are cheap and easily set up. Often these marked paths continue and cross over other paths which are not public and there are no signs to say that they are not public paths, so the walker strays on to a private path. If the Authority set the public off along a public path, they must also set up, "No footpath" signs to keep the walkers to the public way. They must also be prepared to pay for the cost of the maintenance of stiles and bridges and to compensate for loss of value through use by the public; for example, where a field cannot be used for a Buckler herd with a bull for fear of damage to the public by the bull. Also, there is the question of damage by neglect or carelessness or downright vandalism in the case of moors and forests being set on fire by the public and buildings being vandalised and gates left open. As it is impossible to catch the culprit, whether the act is by mistake or malice, the Authority must be prepared to compensate the owner for damage by the public on a public footpath and, if necessary, take out insurance policies to cover claims.
One of the reasons why the public are not welcome on private footpaths is that time and use may then make a footpath public. Therefore, there is need for a new category of paths, clearly marked to indicate that this is a private path, one may walk along it by permission of the owner of the land but without any right to be there, and if one's dog chases sheep or the owner wants to put a bull in the field for a year or two then he may close it for as long as he wishes. If this category were to be introduced, I believe that many new paths would soon be opened and made available to the public.
One matter not mentioned in the Report is low flying Royal Air Force aeroplanes. One recognises, as one must, the necessity of training in low-flying, and the uplands is probably the best place for this. But where these 'planes continue on and fly low over adjacent vil-
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lages, as they do, it become an intolerable nuisance and a severe danger to riders and drivers of cars taken by surprise. If one complains, one is told that one should take the number of the aircraft, but this is slightly impracticable if one cannot run fast enough to catch up to note the number. One is told that they could come from Germany or any other station, and so responsibility is denied. If the R.A.F. do not know which of their aircraft flew low at a certain time over a certain place, how do they know it was not a Russian aeroplane on a spy mission? It is necessary that where a complaint is lodged, with time and place, the R.A.F. should be able to find out who is the offender, and should be able to ensure that, if the complaint is justified, it does not happen again—and again—and again—as it does. On the other hand, it would be a great pity to deny use of the hills to Defence, because we must have a strong defence, and it would be a great pity to drive them off completely.
It would also be a great pity to drive off the water-skiers and the motor-cyclists as was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Sandford. Both are an awful nuisance, but there is a great demand and one must provide areas where people may carry on these noxious sports and then one can reasonably keep them off the rest of the Parks.
LORD SANDFORD: My Lords, I hope I did not say—and if I did I should like to correct it—that they must not be provided for. Of course they must. What I am saying is they should not be provided for in National Parks.
LORD GISBOROUGH: My Lords, the future of the North Yorkshire Moors National Park depends on the survival of sheep farming. It is only if the sheep survive that farmers will continue to burn the heather, and it is only this which produces the moors as we know them with that sheet of colour stretching to the horizons from young heather in August. There is no central record of the losses of sheep and lambs killed on moorland roads, but one association alone in North Yorkshire moors has recorded among its members the death of 500 sheep in 1973. This is an intolerable number and many farmers cannot bear losses of this nature. On Danby West Side in 1962 there were nine flocks. This year there is one. There

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were six flocks on Danby End in 1962; now there are four. There were 22 flocks at Goathland in 1962: now there are 15. There were five flocks at Westerdale in 1962; now there are two. This pattern is repeated throughout the moorland.
There is no need to stress the devastating social consequence which will follow if moors can no longer carry sheep. Not only will the ecology change beyond recognition so that the moors cease to be the place that we know and love, but the social pattern in the Upland Dales will alter, with the farms amalgamated into units large enough to survive on inland farming. It is essential, therefore, that the authorities should provide and pay for the fencing-off of the sheep from the main roads.
My Lords, I have already welcomed the Report and I hope that much of it will be implemented. If as much care is taken in its implementation to take into account the views of the interested parties as was taken in the preparation of the Report, I think that we may look forward to a period when the occupiers of the Park will be pleased and the public that much more welcomed and accommodated.
6.22 p.m.
LORD INGLEWOOD: My Lords, at this late stage in the debate I shall try to be very short. If any excuse is necessary for intervening at all, my claim is that I am one of the few survivors of the Select Committee in another place which considered the 1949 Bill and that I have had a continuing interest ever since.
I want to refer principally to one problem, forestry and tourism where weight and numbers are of concern. In fact, these are two problems but I want to bracket them together and claim that the first can help the second. In this country there is a continuing prejudice against forestry, especially against conifers. There is also a rather curious mystique about broad-leaved trees which is frequently not justified and, strange to say, there is all too little interest and appreciation of the beauty of mixed woods in the English countryside and of their value in absorbing tourists.
When we consider this problem, it is relevant to look at Germany—not just their national parks, which are somewhat
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different from ours, but their countryside generally—and to see how they have coped. The twin of my county of Cumberland in Germany is an area just to the East of the Ruhr, the Rhein Bergischer Kreis, which shows a number of very interesting features It is only one-third the size of Cumberland but it has the same population. Its great difference is that 37 per cent. of its surface area is covered with forest, mostly mixed woods. Much new development is absorbed without any criticism of any kind.
I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, is no longer in his place, because he was talking of the threat of industrial development. In this area, development of various kinds takes place and attracts far less criticism than similar work in this country. Vast numbers of visitors are absorbed every weekend and they are most inconspicuous. They follow the paths otherwise, they rarely penetrate more than 200 yards from the roads. There are ample parking places and arrangements are made for them on the edge of these very large woods.
I am not advocating planting up all our open areas, but I am claiming that there is scope for more planting in many districts, not just for timber production but also in order to absorb visitors happily. Having said that, I would ask the House to beware of the too facile claims for extending planning control which are echoed in this Report. Planning authorities and officials are not unlike many others; they like extending their empires. Admittedly, that is a field which has to be reviewed from time to time, but a lack of forestry knowledge at this present time among planning authorities is something which is frightening. I see that the noble Earl, Lord Bradford, is nodding and that confirms that what I have said is true.
Finally, and sadly, I am going to say that we must judge the Department of the Environment not just by its words and its reports, but by its deeds. Admittedly, this Department is often under heavy pressure. The noble Baroness, Lady White, has already referred to an inquiry into proposals for building a certain road through the Lake District which was highly controversial. In explanation, may I say that I never objected to improving this road and that I thought the line was

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the right line. However, like many others, I was horrified at the scale of works proposed, and not least the Keswick by-pass with its very high viaduct which is now being built.
In the inquiry the Department of the Environment carried the guns. The Countryside Commission, the Lakes Planning Board and the amenity societies lost this day, as they would undoubtedly lose similar battles. But if the will is there, which I doubt, it is still not too late to amend the details of this scheme. The principle is accepted, but I would say that the details ought to be amended in order to mitigate the damage which is being done. Again, I have little doubt that in similar circumstances and under the same pressures the Department of the Environment would win again and something of great beauty to us could be lost each time. This seems to be the very opposite of the purposes for which our National Parks have been set up. Therefore, it is not only industry but the Departments of central Government which must be watched and judged by their deeds.
6.28 p.m.
THE EARL OF SWINTON: My Lords, this takes me back to my cricketing days when I was batting at No. 11, which seemed to me to be my usual place. Like two No. 11 batsmen, I shall have a fairly brief and, I hope, interesting innings knocking a few halls over the boundary before being caught at deep square leg.
May I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady White, for instigating this most interesting debate and also for the quality of her speech and the interest which she has shown. Also may I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, for his speech. If I may comment on one point, he mentioned the question of educating people about National Parks. I think that he was referring to the next 20 years. A purely practical and sensible way to deal with this is to educate future teachers. It is not so much a question of going round the schools but rather going to the teacher training colleges and universities and teaching those who are coming into teaching themselves about the National Parks so that they in turn will be able to teach children.
May I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Castle, on his maiden spech. When he came in I made the score 116 for
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four—four speakers down and 116 minutes covered—which is not a good position to make your maiden "batting performance". I have great sympathy for the noble Lord. I am sure that he is referred to as "Mrs. Castle's husband". I am "a male chauvinist pig" and I object always to being called "Lady Masham's husband". Therefore, I sympathise with him upon that. I am glad to see the noble Lord in your Lordships' House. May I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, upon his Report. I was one of those who gave evidence in front of him, and I should like to thank him for the sympathetic way in which he listened to the evidence. It must have been a most tiring procedure. I am certain that he heard the same arguments over and over again throughout the country, yet he listened with tact and understanding. I am not saying this to him just because he gave me lunch afterwards, but because I know how much the people in my part of the country appreciated the kindness with which he and the Committee listened to people and heard their grumbles and complaints.
Your Lordships are lucky to have the Sandford Report. I speak as a member of the Yorkshire Dales National Park. I was a member of the old North Riding Yorkshire Dales National Parks Committee for 13 years and was on the joint committee which took place with the West Riding. I am now on the new North Yorkshire Dales Committee. I understand from our planning officer that members of our committee have not been able to obtain the Sandford Report. I do not know whether that is because it is out of print, or because all copies have been sold, or perhaps because there have been troubles with the Post Office, but I know that they are worried. A few members who attended the recent National Parks planning conference managed to obtain copies of the Report there, but the bulk of members of our committee have not received it.
I understood from the chairman of our committee that he had received a letter from the Department of the Environment asking him to report back the Committee's observations on this Report by July 20, but the noble Lord, Lord Goronwy-Roberts, said in his speech in fact the date is July 31. I am not sure which is the correct date, but whichever

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it is I wonder whether I could put in a plea for an extension. I do not know whether other National Park Committees are in the same difficulty as we are but this is such an important and vital matter that we should like to ask for time to consider it and I hope it will not be long before we get enough copies of the Report to go round. After all, so much depends on the Sandford Report and it is so full of meat that it is something all of us should consider.
As noble Lords have said, there are numerous things which could be done without legislation and there are various things which need new legislation. Like many noble Lords I welcome the emphasis on conservation and enhancement. We have problems in our National Park with large limestone mines making an awful mess of the Park and we are also having trouble with campers and caravans, and I am sure we should welcome legislation to make our job easier so far as these things are concerned.
The noble Viscount, Lord Ridley, said, "Give us time": I would echo that. In our National Park—and again I cannot speak for others—we have had immense difficulties over local government reorganisation. We still have not got our chief officers housed in accommodation that we consider desirable for them. Staffing in the Yorkshire Dales and the North Yorkshire Moors is at the moment at 50 per cent. There are not enough planners to go round and we have had immense difficulty in getting suitable planners. We have to submit our plan by April 1, 1977, and because of the difficulties in regard to staff and office accommodation we missed out on this summer. We were hoping to do surveys, make census reports, and that sort of thing. The noble Lord, Lord Goronwy-Roberts, expressed confidence in local authorities to do the job; I am sure we shall be able to do it, but do give us time and help us. We have had our difficulties. Many of us are new in these Committees and when we get things like the Sandford Report to study there is a lot on our plate.
I have been very brief; I am aware of the time, and also as a batsman I have a chance of a second innings because I am speaking on the Unstarred Question
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on the financial situation concerning cattle breeders. Not much has been said about farming in this debate but I am afraid that I take strong exception to what the noble Lord, Lord Henley, said, that farming must take second place in the National Parks.
LORD HENLEY: My Lords, may I interrupt the noble Earl for a moment? I think he has probably misunderstood what I was trying to say. Sometimes there are areas where the pressure of the public is so great that farming will have to take second place, and what I said was that that must be paid for out of the public purse because it would be quite unreasonable if the profitability of farming had to be diminished by access agreement or management agreement. I am most anxious that such payment should not fall upon the occupier.
THE EARL OF SWINTON: My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Lord for saying that. I am sure he will agree that it is farming which has made the National Parks largely what they are—a history of excellent farming over generations—and I hope the Government will help towards the breeding of livestock and will also help the sheep farmers, as we heard from my noble friend Lord Gisborough in his excellent speech which was very much to the point. So I hope that farming policy will be considered very strongly when it comes to dealing with the National Parks.
6.34 p.m.
LORD GARNSWORTHY: My Lords, at the outset may I express apologies on behalf of my noble friend Lord Goronwy-Roberts. He had intended to be here throughout this debate and certainly at its conclusion, but he has been called upon at short notice to fly to the Argentine this evening to represent Her Majesty's Government at the funeral of the late Head of State of that country.
Everyone who has spoken this afternoon has expressed gratitude to my noble friend Lady White, and I certainly join in the expressions of gratitude to her for giving us this opportunity to discuss the problems of our National Parks and other designated areas. The timing is most opportune. When she began, she expressed regret that if the day had been other than to-day there might have been other speakers. I have a feeling that we have

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lost nothing in quality and I think the shorter list of speakers has perhaps encouraged one or two people to speak for rather longer than they might otherwise have done. I said that the timing was opportune because we have before us the excellent Report of the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, and his Committee, on which the Government are seeking the views of all interested organisations by July 31.
Before I go further, may I say in reply to the noble Earl, Lord Swinton, that I have taken note of the difficulties that have been experienced in Yorkshire and I will see whether anything can be done about them. Certainly urgent attention will he given to the difficulty he has experienced in securing copies of the Report. I do not know whether it will be possible to extend the date, but clearly if this difficulty has arisen on any scale at all it is a situation that will certainly have to be looked at. But I can assure the House that when the views that we receive from all the organisations are collated, the views which have been expressed in this debate will also be taken fully into account. I am sure that everyone who has spoken, or indeed listened to this debate will appreciate that it is impossible for decisions to be taken on that Report until we have received the views of those whom we are consulting.
As we have heard already, the new National Park Authorities have just taken office and the new grant arrangements have just come into force. Although I do not wish to prejudge the decisions that we shall be taking on the Sandford Report, I have considerable sympathy with the view expressed by the noble Viscount, Lord Ridley, that there should be no automatic review of the administrative arrangements in the National Parks every five years. I think he mentioned that seven years might be a better period. The system now in force was the result of a firm agreement between the Countryside Commission and the County Councils Association and it is certainly my own personal view that five years is too short a period for it to prove its worth.
I was glad to see that the Sandford Committee had stressed the importance of recognising the needs and aspirations of those who live and work in the National Parks. If I may say so, this
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has always been my view of these beautiful areas of countryside. By all means let us provide the facilities for those who wish to enjoy the beauty, for they are indeed a national asset, but at the same time let us also remember that they are areas with their own individual character and history which is reflected in what we see to-day; and their character will surely be better preserved by thriving local communities than by actions which set no store on the life of the area and end by destroying it.
A number of points have been raised and I will do my best, as quickly as I can, to deal with as many as possible. First, may I say that the House obviously greatly enjoyed the maiden speech of my noble friend Lord Castle. I, too, congratulate him on a thoughtful, interesting and informed speech. I personally appreciated his reference to Hugh Dalton for I also recall Dr. Dalton's leadership at Labour Party conferences in regard to the appreciation of our national heritage of natural beauty. He did much to stimulate a great many people to join in the task of preserving what was best, and what still remains best, in that national heritage, and in securing its opening up for the enrichment of the lives of our people.
My noble friend Lady White has asked whether the ending of specific grants for countryside projects is likely to have a serious effect on the progress in establishing country parks. We are most anxious that this progress shall be maintained and accelerated. To this end, the Countryside Commission have this year been allocated nearly £500,000 for making grants and loans as a transitional arrangement. My noble friend Lord Goronwy-Roberts touched on this. The Countryside Commission have recently issued a Memorandum of Guidance, setting out the broad lines of policy they will follow in providing financial assistance to local authorities and other public bodies. This Memorandum states that high priority will be given to assisting the provision of country parks in Green Belts and in buffer areas between centres of population and National Parks. The Commission have observed no decline in the number of proposals coming forward.
My Lords, my noble friend Lady White suggested in quite strong terms in her opening speech that the salary of

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the Brecon Beacons National Park officer was too low. I do not know that I ought to take up too much time on this point, but I should say right away that the post of National Park officer for the Brecon Beacons was originally advertised at a higher salary, subject to Pay Board approval. But in the event, the Pay Board found the level of salary proposed unacceptably high, and the salary range finally agreed was equivalent to 75 per cent. of the salary received by the Chief Executive of the Powys County Council. I cannot this evening comment on the findings of the Pay Board, but I would say that 60 per cent. of the area of the Park is in Powys, and the National Park officer is a direct employee of the county council. I gather that eight persons were short-listed for the job and six were interviewed. The person appointed has considerable experience of management and conservation in the Brecon Beacons National Park, and in the Welsh countryside generally. I think the House will be reassured to know that the Countryside Commission, who were consulted in accordance with the statutory obligation laid down in the Local Government Act 1972, have no criticism to make of the appointment.
BARONESS WHITE: My Lords, I am so sorry to take time over this matter, but it is important in Wales. Of course I have the highest regard for the gentleman ultimately appointed. The fact that he is paid less than any other National Park officer in the country concerns me, but I tried to make it plain in my speech that it is because the general level of salaries in Powys is so low that one cannot pay him a decent salary.
LORD GARNSWORTHY: My Lords, I cannot do anything about the general level of salaries. I understand this young man is very able and I should think he is also probably very ambitious. I should not be at all surprised if he does not feel the call to move on to other areas.
BARONESS WHITE: Exactly.
LORD GARNSWORTHY: My Lords, it seems to me that it is up to the people locally to do something about that situation. The noble Earl, Lord Bradford, pressed the view that there should be no planning control over afforestation. The arguments he used did not relate to
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National Parks. The Government are well aware how strongly these opinions are held in the Forestry Service. I can assure the noble Earl that these opinions have been fully taken into account in the discussions that have taken place on forestry policy, and the Government announcement will be made very shortly. I was very touched when the noble Earl spoke of the lovely Tamar and Teign valleys. They are beautiful areas in the West Country, and the noble Earl must be feeling very proud that he has played a part, not only in the preservation but also the improvement of those very delightful spots.
My Lords, may I touch on one or two other financial matters which have been raised by a number of your Lordships. The question of local authority contributions was touched on by the noble Baroness, Lady White, and the noble Viscount, Lord Ridley. This matter was partly dealt within the speech already made by my noble friend Lord Goronwy-Roberts. The answer is that local authorities cannot be forced to spend local resources on National Parks. I am replying here to a point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Sandford. Local authorities have been told quite firmly that if they do not spend, this will be taken into account when grants for future years are determined. The noble Lord, Lord Sandford, inquired as to how the additional grant of £500,000 was to be made available to the Nature Conservancy Council, compared with the sum already allocated to that Council. I have the feeling that he was probably being a little over generous in his assessment as to what the figure of £500,000 means. The original grant to the Council for 1974–75 was £2·7 million, but it was recognised that this included nothing for the acquisition of land. The additional £500,000 will be used essentially for the acquisition of land for new reserves.
In his speech at the beginning of the the debate, my noble friend Lord Goronwy-Roberts dealt with the immediate problem of the concern as it has been expressed this afternoon. The share of local government in meeting National Park expenditure in the current financial year is, for economic reasons, as the noble Viscount, Lord Ridley, said, the restraint in the growth of local authority expenditure. It may be helpful if I touched on future expectations that is to say, when

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the restraint no longer applies. As my noble friend said, considerable advances in management and the provision of facilities in the National Parks are of vital importance both to preserve their special character and to enable them to be enjoyed to the full. I would underline what my noble friend said at the beginning and also the point I have just made. This obviously implies a readiness on the part of the local authorities concerned to increase their own contribution in conformity with the grants paid by Central Government. Before leaving this point, I understand that the Association of County Councils is in direct touch with the Department of the Environment. Correspondence is going on between them. I understand that a further letter will be sent to them tomorrow. If they are not satisfied, and if the noble Lord is not satisfied, perhaps they will let us know and we will pursue the matter to the point where there is no possibility of misunderstanding.
VISCOUNT RIDLEY: My Lords, I am sure the Association of County Councils will be glad to hear that.
LORD GARNSWORTHY: My Lords, I felt the House itself would be assured to know that that contact exists. The Department is glad to have this contact, and we hope we shall be able at least to reach complete understanding. I was extremely interested to hear the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, who speaks on this subject from a position of such authority. He is entitled to all the tributes which have been paid this afternoon to him and to his Committee. I have a feeling that the work he did as Chairman of this Committee is something of which he will always be proud, as the Sandford Report itself will be quoted for many years, if not decades, to come.
My noble friend Lord Castle touched on his friendship with Hugh Dalton and the influence of Hugh Dalton. I hope noble Lords will not feel that I am wanting to make a purely Party political point, but I would just say that I recall that it was a Labour Government in 1929 which set up the first Committee of Inquiry into National Parks. I personally have been proud that again in 1945 it was a Government that I supported which passed the National Parks Act, and I was proud that in 1968 it was again a
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Labour Government which enacted the Countryside Act. I am aware of the tremendous support that has been given by the Party opposite in putting these Acts into operation. I fully appreciate the enthusiasm with which the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, spoke of the part they have played. I think I have probably said as much as I can on the financial situation this afternoon.
I come now to the noble Lord, Lord Henley. He will not expect me to announce decisions as to what the Government have decided; clearly the moment is premature for that. But I would say that listening to him I felt myself in agreement with much that he said, and many of the ideas that he advanced we shall be very pleased indeed to study. I thought his was a very constructive, worth while and very helpful speech indeed.
My noble friend Lord Brockway waxed lyrical, in a way that I envy, about our national heritage. His colourful and imaginative language conjured up pictures of the loveliness of which so much has been said in the debate this afternoon. At the conclusion of his remarks he made a number of suggestions. Each of the suggestions that he has made will be studied very carefully indeed. The noble Lord, Lord Gisborough, drew attention to the reactions of the public to the changing scene of planned forestry and agricultural development. I thought he made his point extremely well, and it is one that we have to take into account. He touched on the question of hedgerows. All of us at one point were expressing appreciation of the beauty of our hedgerows. There are parts of the country now where they grow so high that it is impossible to see the scenery. I recall taking some of my family down to the West Country and I was telling them about the beautiful views they would be seeing as we were riding along, some of them over Exmoor. At one point my brother-in-law said: "I do not know about the beautiful views. We are seeing a lot of beautful hedges, but I cannot see through them." There is a point, I think, where some notice needs to be taken of the way these hedges are being allowed to run away and to cause what I can only regard as tree tunnels. It may be that something ought to be done about this.

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I was extremely interested in what the noble Lord had to say about the Yorkshire Moors. I cannot touch on the question of providing fences, but there is a point clearly at which the public need to be educated to an understanding that if they are going to enjoy the beauty that is there, if they are going to enjoy the relative wildness that is there, they need to be extremely careful. I find great attraction in sheep running across the roadway, but of course that is where the danger lies. I think we should lose a very great deal if the sheep were not free as I think on Dartmoor and Exmoor we should lose a very great deal if the animals were fenced in. I put that aspect forward although clearly there is another side to the coin.
The noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, spoke with commendable brevity. What he had to say will lose nothing in point and will be studied no less seriously than what any other Member has said in this Chamber this afternoon. He spoke with feeling, with clarity and with point. If my noble friend Lord Brockway was temporarily absent, and there were one or two references to noble Lords being absent, I think those of us who have sat here the whole afternoon—
LORD INGLEWOOD: My Lords, I was not being critical; I was simply a little disappointed.
LORD GARNSWORTHY: My Lords, I was simply making the point, because I wanted to reply to criticisms made elsewhere, that those of us who have sat here all afternoon appreciate that when there is a chance to get out for a couple of minutes it is understandable that some Members do so. But I am quite sure that my noble friend Lord Brockway, having learned that he was referred to, if he did not hear what the noble Lord had to say, will read it when Hansard is published.
I think I have taken up the point made by the noble Earl, Lord Swinton, in regard to difficulties in getting the Report. I found what he had to say very lively and quite stimulating. I have spoken for longer than I intended to do. I have tried to meet the main points, as I have seen them, that have been made here this afternoon. I would say, in conclusion, that I feel we are making steady progress. There is much to do and the
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challenge has been clearly presented here this afternoon. The challenge has been presented indeed in the Report which the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, and his Committee have presented for consideration, by the nation.
My noble friend Lady White ought to be feeling very pleased that the subject of debate this afternoon has drawn from your Lordships contributions of considerable merit. I am positive that the House will return again and again to the subject matter of the debate, and that what has been placed on Record here to-day will serve as something of a yardstick for measuring progress. If there is any point that I have not covered and that any noble Lord would like me to follow up, I shall indeed he glad to do so by way of correspondence.
6.58 p.m.
BARONESS WHITE: My Lords, as I was one of those guilty of making a rather long speech, I shall have to resist the temptation to reply to the debate, much as I should love to do so. There are so many points to which I should like to refer; but I recognise that it would be quite inappropriate since I have some sympathy for the breeders and fatteners of beef cattle who have been waiting patiently for quite some time. I should only like to reiterate the very sincere congratulations offered from all parts of the House to the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, and his colleagues and the appreciative remarks that have been made about the Countryside Commission and the Nature Conservancy Council, who are the chief instruments of policy in this matter in partnership with the Parks Authorities and the local authorities. I was especially glad that my noble friends on the Government Front Bench were able to refer to the additional half a million pound grant for country parks, and the other half a million pounds to the Nature Conservancy Council for the acquisition of new nature reserves. I think both indicate the interest of Her Majesty's Government, even in a time of stringency, in these matters of the countryside.
I echo the very warm congratulations which have already been offered to my noble friend Lord Castle on his most stimulating maiden speech. I cannot refer to all the other speeches that have been made. If I mention the speech of the

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noble Earl, Lord Bradford, which I particularly enjoyed, it is partly because I have never had the pleasure of hearing him before and I was delighted to do so.
I should like to thank most warmly every noble Lord who has taken part in this debate. I think that it has been a very good debate. I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, will feel that his labours have been rewarded by the intense interest taken in the Report, and in the subject. I apologise to him, and more particularly to the noble Lord, Lord Henley, for the wording of my Motion. The trouble was that the noble Lord, Lord Henley, had pre-empted the Motion, but I got the day so I felt that it was important that we should have a chance of discussing this matter. I repeat my very sincere thanks to all noble Lords who have taken part in the debate, and beg leave to withdraw the Motion.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

PAKISTAN BILL
Brought from the Commons read la, and to be printed.
WORKINGTON HARBOUR BILL
Brought from the Commons; read la, and referred to the Examiners.

NORTHERN IRELAND (YOUNG PERSONS) BILL [H.L.]
House in Committee: Clauses agreed to.
House resumed: Bill reported without amendment; Report received.
Then, Standing Order No. 44 having been suspended (pursuant to Resolution), Bill read 3a, and passed, and sent to the Commons.
7.04 p.m.

BEEF PRODUCERS' FINANCES
THE EARL OF DUNDONALD THE EARL OF DUNDONALD rose to ask Her Majesty's Government what further measures they propose to take to rectify the increasingly acute financial
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situation affecting the breeders and fatteners of beef cattle in England, Scotland and Wales and Northern Ireland. The noble Earl said: My Lords, since I put down this Unstarred Question the position of the beef breeder and fattener has deteriorated further and is now critical, particularly in the hill farming areas of Scotland, Northern Ireland, the Principality of Wales, and the West Country. The subject matter has repeatedly been given national Press coverage, and every television programme concerning agriculture has stressed the predicament of the breeder. In fact, the Government are well aware of the position.
I listened very carefully to the Minister last Wednesday during the debate on agriculture in another place. I have since read the report of his speech and that of the Secretary of State for Scotland in winding-up the debate. I really do not feel that either of those speeches gave substantial confidence to the industry. The words of the Minister on June 26 at column 1585 of the OFFICIAL REPORT were:
… we are determined to do everything that is necessary to restore confidence to the industry and to regain the momentum of expansion that was lost last winter."
Later in the debate at column 1590 the Minister said:
"I come to the beef situation, the area where our immediate difficulties are greatest. It is, of course, the beef situation which is at the root of most of the current problems. The tone of the beef market sets the pattern for the meat market generally."
I entirely agree with that last statement. The Minister came forward with only one major proposal, which was to give the producers the assurance over a period that their returns would not drop below £18 per live hundredweight for clean cattle. I have already to-day had a word with the Minister and I should be grateful if, in his reply, he could clarify that that figure is, in fact, £18, and not about £18.
The Minister in another place went on to say that it would be necessary to arrange for a countrywide certification of cattle in living and deadweight centres. This would take time but he hoped to have arrangements completed in about a month. I personally, as a breeder in a small way—and I declare an interest—am not fully conversant

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with the slaughtering end, and I hope that some noble Lords who will kindly be speaking after me will speak with particular reference to this end of the cycle. I have, however, been advised from England in the last two or three days that the economic figure is between £22 and £23 per live hundredweight, and that recent slaughterings have fallen as low as £12 per live hundredweight. Therefore, the Minister's proposals in another place would be partially plugging a leaking hole. When I was in Wales last week on a family matter, which unfortunately prevented me from speaking on the Motion of the noble Viscount, Lord Thurso, on Scottish Transport. I had confirmation from very reliable sources that certain hill farmers in Wales have gone bankrupt.
I do not intend to speak in a repetitive manner on points which have already been made in the past, except where I feel that they need re-stating, and I shall try to keep my figures and calculations to a minimum. As a backdrop to my, remarks, I should like to remind your Lordships of the television excerpts shown both before and after Easter, where cattle, including cows in calf, in the West Country were slaughtered because the farmers could not afford to feed them. It is a very sad position, which is hound to affect our future breeding stocks. To make matters worse, the slaughtered animals were in such poor condition as to make them unfit for human consumption. This position has persisted and deteriorated.
As a breeder, I should now like to set out the position as I and some other breeders see it. Farming, as a whole, is by far the largest industry in this country and, as was mentioned by the noble Lord. Lord Walston, during the debate on his Motion on agriculture earlier in the year—and the noble Lord has informed me with regret that he is not able to speak on my Question this evening—the total farming output of livestock and livestock products this year is calculated to be in excess of £2,500 million, which is three-and-ahalf times the value of farm crops. However, the products of all farmers are inter-related and if one or more links in the chain become weak or break the consequences can, be severe, not only to the farmer but also to our
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balance of payments and, naturally, to the housewife.
I should now like to set out some facts and suggestions under certain simple headings. First, there is energy. The present price of fuel is without question a formidable cost incurred by all farmers. I believe that from 1973 the cost of diesel fuel has risen by 250 per cent. and, as all motorists know, the cost of petrol has risen to 50p a gallon plus V.A.T. in the urban areas. In the rural areas it is higher, because of the increased transport costs. Here I wish to emphasise a matter of significance to the farmer. The motorist—and I have no grudge against the weekend motorist—can well say. "With the present price of petrol we will not take the car out this weekend." The farmer cannot do that. Diesel fuel is his lifeblood, for his tractors and for all diesel driven machinery. He cannot cut down on his ploughing, haymaking and harvesting. As the present Government have seen fit to subsidise the price of cheese, milk and other foodstuffs to the housewife, would it be beyond the bounds of possibility for the Government to consider subsidising the farmer for a small part of his diesel fuel consumption?
In the Business of your Lordships' House on Wednesday, June 19, I do not think that my noble friend Lord Massereene and Ferrard was given a comprehensive answer to his Question about freight charges to and from the Isle of Mull, as they affect the farmers. Surely a directive could be given to MacBraynes to level out the position so that a tourist with a car and caravan, occupying the same space on a boat as a cattle float, pays equal fares. At the moment, the differential is approximately 12 to 1. Following that in the debate on the Motion of the noble Viscount. Lord Thurso, my noble friend Lord Glenkinglas drew attention to the high ratio of cars to people in Orkney. This subject may not be appreciated by the urban dweller, but in the Highlands and the remoter areas of Wales and the West Country, and I believe to some extent in Northern Ireland, where distances are great and in many cases farms are remote, a car is a necessity. The cost of transporting fuel to these remote areas further increases the prices which are paid

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by the motorists in or near the urban areas.
Again, as was pointed out by the same speaker, the cost of lorry transport in particular has increased immensely in the remoter areas. I was glad, however, to note during the same debate that the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, said:
"The policy now being followed is to pay a subsidy for services to small and remote places where revenue cannot be expected to meet operating costs."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 19/6/74; col. 934.]
I hope that transport to the Highlands in Scotland and to the remoter areas will fall under this heading so far as farmers are concerned.
I shall now deal with farm machinery. To my personal knowledge, during the last 12 months the cost of new machinery, spares and all akin matters, has risen by between 15 and 20 per cent. These costs have to be borne by the farmer if he is to keep up-to-date and stay in business. Fertilisers have risen immensely. I am advised that by next year they will have risen again by a further 50 per cent. Electricity costs, as we all know, have increased and, although marginal savings can be made by farmers, crushers and dryers have to be driven and I cannot see a method by which these costs can be alleviated.
I now wish to turn to the sore subject of cattle feedstuffs and prices. Until the mechanical cow is perfected, as mentioned in an earlier debate, we cannot do without feedstuffs in the winter. The cost of hay, for those who could not make enough of their own, rose in the Western Highlands from about £20 per ton in the autumn of 1972 to £50 per ton, both delivered, during the autumn and winter of 1973. The total cost of cattle cake, of feeding a cow, increased by £40 per cow last winter. The latest figures I have from the West Country yesterday are that hay, bailed, can be bought now—provided you can afford to pay for it—at £40 a ton. That is an appalling figure for any farmer who has to make such a purchase.
In the Western Highlands, if I may revert to Scotland for a moment, we cannot afford to carry through the winter all our weaned calves. We rely on fair to good prices in the autumn sales. During the autumn sales of 1973 we obtained good prices after a fair two
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years and a poor three years. Prices for good weaned calves were about £90 to £100, then the bottom fell completely out of the market due to partially increased costs but largely due to the soaring costs of feedingstuffs which the purchasers of the store cattle just could not afford to pay. This spring, for those who sold weaned calves, the lucky ones got between £30 to £40 and the grass was just starting to grow. The fatteners could still not afford to pay and the bottom is still right out of the market. In fact, I have heard figures from England which are even worse than those I have mentioned to-day.
My Lords, to digress from costs and foodstuffs for a moment, as breeders we are naturally grateful for the additional subsidy of £10 per calf which we are to receive this year, as confirmed by the noble Lord, Lord Beswick, on May 1. In another place last week the Minister talked of £10 a head. I should be grateful, because some of us are not clear about this, to know whether the £10 a head mentioned by the Minister of Agriculture last week is an additional £10 or whether it is the same £10 which we had confirmed on May 1? Returning to the subject of feedstuffs I have read carefully the speeches made on the Unstarred Question of my noble friend Lord Onslow and I cannot find encouragement from any source that the prices will fall this year.
Later, I will mention briefly the E.E.C., although I find it a thoroughly confusing subject so far as agriculture is concerned. But irrespective of what the Council of Ministers say, or do not say, in Brussels, I see no alternative but for the Government to increase the figure of £18 per live cwt. to something between £22 to £23 per live cwt. There must be a further cash injection; and on that point I shall be very glad to hear the views of other noble Lords who are following me in this debate.
Now a word about subsidies. Generally speaking, and particularly in the remoter areas—in the Principality of Wales; in the West Country, where beef is bred; and in the Highlands of Scotland—we cannot change the use of our land. We cannot grow wheat and barley; we cannot change rocks. Our climate, with its heavier rainfall and with soil of a more acid nature, is suitable only for beef, sheep and, to a limited extent,

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dairy herds. Two of the few ways in which we can improve our land is by drainage and by slagging and liming. The matter of the lime subsidy was raised by my noble friend Lord Sandys in the debate on May 1; and I am very glad to learn, as stated by the Minister in the other place last week, that the lime subsidy, which I understand costs a total of £5 million a year, is going to be continued.
Now the E.E.C. I have here a document, emanating from Brussels, dated January 23, 1964, entitled Council Directive on Mountain and Hill Fanning and Farming in Less Favoured Areas. It has innumerable references; and I was advised that, by the time it had been processed by the linguists and lawyers, it was available in this country some considerable time later. The language is very flowery. I do not intend to quote from it other than to say, in plain English, that individual Governments can help the hill farmer. There is one rather entertaining annexure which converts bovine, ovine and capri-animals into livestock units. Goats, incidentally, are 0.15 of a livestock unit.
Reverting now to beef, in May the N.F.U. made the position very clear to the Government and, in particular, to Members of the other place who represent urban areas, so that they are acquainted with the acute position and with the Government policy then pertaining to the E.E.C. The British taxpayer is still providing finance to provide a fair return to farmers elsewhere in the Community, whose costs are more or less the same as ours, and those farmers are in turn dumping their beef on the United Kingdom market. The quality of the dumped beef, recently from Germany, in the main, is poorer, and the butchers do not want it. But when beef of a poorer quality is dumped at the bottom end of the scale, it also has an aggravating effect on the top end of the scale. My Lords, what further help are the Government going to give us?
7.23 p.m.
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, I think my noble friend Lord Dundonald has done a very great service in introducing this subject to-night by way of an Unstarred Question. He has explained
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the plight in which beef farmers and cattle breeders find themselves; and he has explained how, in some cases, the bottom has fallen right out of the market. I believe this to be a vitally important subject, and the Question is quite simple: what further measures do the Government intend to take
to rectify the increasingly acute financial situation affecting the breeders and fatteners of beef cattle … "?
Those words are well chosen because they are factual The Question is pertinent, and I suggest that the premise upon which it is based is entirely correct. The facts are that beef cattle farmers are losing money As my noble friend has said, their costs have risen, they are still rising, and they will continue to rise at an unprecedented rate. The returns for their product are wholly inadequate. They have got lower, and they have been getting lower; and, my Lords, confidence in the future, both short and long term, has been shattered.
The question is simply: what are the Government going to do about it? The industry is in a mess; and the farming community look to the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, for some kind of help and encouragement in his reply this evening. Because he is the spokesman for the Ministry of Agriculture I do not underestimate the value of the noble Lord's speech this evening. When things go wrong, one tends to find any peg upon which to hang one's hat. One blames the Minister, one blames the Government, one blames the European Community: one blames anyone, of course, other than oneself. Those who have in fact suffered most are those who bought their store cattle when prices were high some 18 months ago; but, of course, if you are in the game of fattening then you have to have the bulls with which to play irrespective, relatively, of what price the bulls are. But I wish to be entirely fair over this. I do not blame the Government for all this mess. Nor do I blame the previous Government. I certainly have criticisms of the Government on the way in which they have reacted to this mess: and I have also expectations of the Government, which I shall explain.
My Lords, what we are seeing now in the beef cattle markets is not peculiar to us nor is it peculiar to the E.E.C. It is a world-wide phenomenon, and it

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is shared by other countries, whether they be inside the E.E.C or outside it. It is also shared by America. It may be slightly encouraging to think we are not alone in this, but the fact that we are not alone is itself rather frightening. What it means is not that the Government are powerless to do anything but that the Government should do something. But, of course, the trouble is that, being a world-wide phenomenon, what action the Government take will possibly have less of an effect than it would otherwise have had if the problem had been one peculiar to us. All over the world the price of feedingstuffs has gone through the roof. This is really the nub of the problem. In fact, if you get down to the absolute basics of it, it is inflation. This is what has caused the problem from the point of view of feedingstuffs, from the point of view of prices going roaring up and then inflation in all commodities has been such that people have just found that they have not got the money to pay the correct price, and so we have had consumer resistance.
It seems almost unbelievable that only seventeen months ago the price of beef cattle was so high that everyone foreshadowed a permanent shortage of beef in the world, and that the previous Minister of Agriculture actually had to set up a Commission to find out why beef prices were so high and whether there was any undue profiteering on the way. Now we find, frankly, disaster. Prices of fat cattle and of store cattle have plummeted from a high of about £22 down to the figure which my noble friend quoted—and it is a chance figure—of £12. They have gone from £22 to £12 per hundredweight.
My Lords, this is not peculiar to us. Exactly two weeks ago I was in the United States, in Washington, and was trying to find out a little about the American agricultural problems. I arrived at a time when there was an almighty row going on—a political row and an agricultural row. This was simply because beef cattle farmers there were losing money hand over fist. Fifteen months ago their problem was the same as ours. They were then making money, and now they are losing money. I had the privilege to meet Senator Talmadge, who is the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry, and also Congressman Poage, who is the Chair-
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man of the Congressional Committee on Agriculture. What these two gentlemen and others said in relation to beef cattle producers in the States might well have been said by any Member of Parliament or any Member of your Lordships' House with regard to cattle affairs in this country.
If I may, I should like to quote some of the remarks which Senator Talmadge made to the United States Senate on this very problem, because I believe them to be so vivid and because they so wholly reflect the situation here that, although his speech was delivered to a different audience in a different country, the message to us is vital. What he said on the day before I saw him was:
"I rise with a sense of urgency to-day to say it is not an impending crisis—it is an economic disaster. It must be quickly alleviated or the impact will spread throughout the economy. It is not just a question of farm profits or cows or pigs or chickens, but rather this is a human disaster. Already, we know of at least one man who committed suicide when he saw his life's work disappearing before him. Another man who called a Senator's office began crying when he related that his nine-year-old daughter couldn't understand why they had to sell their farm and home. These are occurrences that remind us that human beings are behind the monthly statistics. They are also fearfully reminiscent of the Depression. The spreading peril is evident in the closing of several small rural banks as their borrowers—livestock producers—failed. This signals the beginning of the total breakdown of the community. The demise of livestock producers is not entirely of their own making. Business failure is a normal risk in our free enterprise economy, but the harsh realities of the market has been made more savage by ill-advised governmental intervention and institutional relationships that have prevented normal adjustment while permitting ever-widening farm-retail price spreads.
… Producers borrowed increasing amounts of money but at ever higher rates of interest. They passed up high slaughter prices in retaining heifers to assure the expanded future supply our Nation's people wanted and deserved. Their efforts, however, only met with repeated market disruptions in 1973, sky-rocketing feed costs—due to subsidised exports—and, finally, market imperfections that have prevented movement of meat to consumers at a price reflective of the farm price. Last week fed cattle prices were 25 per cent. below a year ago. This has broken the feeder calf market, where prices have plummeted in the past five months. Hog prices had fallen to half what they were a year ago. Egg and broiler prices were down about 25 per cent…. Consumers want and deserve stable supplies of meat at fair and reasonable prices. Producers want to supply it, but unless they can maintain economic viability neither objective can be achieved."

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So, my Lords, that is what happens in America and, in a curious way, it is very reflective of what happens here. When I was there, the situation was so bad that a Congressional Hearing on beef cattle was called by Congressman Poage to hear and discuss the plight of beef cattle farmers and, so important was it, that even the Speaker of the House of Representatives was called to give evidence. This is a most unusual occurrence and I was privileged to hear it. What he said was:
"The final factor to consider in this disruption of our agricultural economy is the cash situation of our producers and feeders. Cattle feeders require large amounts of capital to operate. Through normal banking channels, cattlemen obtain mortgages on their cattle, their land and everything else they own. If cash is not available then the whole system grinds to a halt. One manager of a federal land bank in Oklahoma reported to me that of 1,100 loans he has outstanding. 200 are in immediate jeopardy of default. Our small town banks, dependent upon loans to farmers, are faced with unknown numbers of defaulting borrowers, all to the detriment of our rural areas. What is the effect of this? In the narrowest sense, as costs continue to increase and prices continue to fall, the farmer's cash flow is disrupted. As his cash sapply dries up, debts begin to accumulate. He must refinance his loans. Having neither cash nor equity, the farmer is faced with bankruptcy or liquidation."
He then goes on to say,
"You cannot divorce the cattlemen from the rest of the economy. It is like a row of falling dominoes. First one segment falls, then another, and another, ad infinitum. This domino effect reaches to the outer limit of the economy. Our small town business man is hurt because the farmer's income is reduced, the bank is hurt because of defaults, agriculture-related industries are hurt because the farmer, no longer in business, does not purchase products. As the dominoes fall, one by one, an additional segment of the economy is devastated. Finally, we reach the same result as before—bankruptcy or financial liquidation for many segments of agriculture in the entire economy."
My Lords, that was what the Speaker of the House of Representatives had to say. Your Lordships may feel that has nothing to do with what is happening here. I believe that it has. I believe that it is indicative of what is happening and what may well happen here. I ventured to quote those words not only to show what is happening in another country, but also to show that we are not alone in this problem, and that is the more frightening because we are not alone. I wished to show what is the case
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there and what may well be the case here. I hope that the Government will realise that this could well have far more far-reaching effects than merely upon the price of cattle.
At a time when agriculture requires—as it will require this year—an extra 30 per cent. of capital to finance its own organisation in order to stand still, and at a time when upon that increase of capital farmers will have to pay 15 per cent. interest rates, it is difficult to see how we are to achieve the expansion which the Minister of Agriculture quite rightly wants. I recognise the problem to be very real and not to be easy of solution. My worry is that possibly the Minister is not sufficiently aware how serious this is and how very far-reaching it could be and I do ask the noble Lord to take this matter most seriously.
My Lords, I have said that I do not criticise the Minister for this situation, but I am bound to criticise him for the way in which he has reacted to it. I believe that he should be criticised for wholly removing the intervention system in March. We all know its limitations and its drawbacks, and I am as one with the Minister when he says that beef is for eating and not for freezing. Of course, he is quite right, but I believe it to have been irresponsible and highly damaging to have removed at the wave of a hand the support system which beef farmers had and to have replaced it with nothing at all. One cannot simply say (as the Minister did, and he repeated it the other day on television), "I do not like intervention," then proceed to remove a support system for an industry in toto and then be surprised when everything goes down the plughole—prices, confidence and all. I remember as a schoolboy getting a certain churlish pleasure out of seeing people stand on carpets whereupon one bent down and pulled the carpet quickly enough and the person as sure as night follows day fell on his hack, much to the applause of everybody. Of course one sees exactly the same thing happening in agriculture.
If one removes the support system upon which an industry depends all of a sudden and overnight, it is not surprising that the industry collapses. Not only did the Minister remove the principle of intervention but in March when the E.E.C. put up its guide price by 12 per

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cent. the Minister raised our guide price by only 6·3 per cent., while the intervention price is 7 per cent. below the guide price. I could understand him doing that if he intended to use intervention but did not want the guide price to be so high so that intervention would not bite so early; however, I cannot understand why he did that if he had no intention of using intervention, because it merely made larger the difference between the United Kingdom guide price and the European Community guide price, and it is this difference upon which the Transitional Compensatory Amounts are based. The Transitional Compensatory Amounts are the subsidies which are paid by F.E.O.G.A. to Common Market countries to enable their food to come into this country at competitive prices, so, when the difference between these two figures was raised by the Ministers' action in March from £3·80 to £5·16, the Common Market farmers automatically received a bigger subsidy on food which they sent to this country. He has therefore willingly permitted Continental beef to come in with an increased subsidy on it—a subsidy from F.E.O.G.A. to which, of course, we as a country contribute 25 per cent. of the funds. Mercifully he has now realised his mistake by putting up the guide price to £1925 and so lowering the subsidy by 3p per lb. But the point is that this kind of thing has knocked hard at confidence.
When one looks at what has happened in Northern Ireland one also feels concern, because, in March, Eire took the increase in the European guide price of 12 per cent. which it was allowed, and also the transitional step of 5 per cent., so that their guide prices were increased by 17 per cent. That is in Southern Ireland. But under our Minister's agreement Northern Ireland allowed only the United Kingdom increase of 6·3 per cent. In order, therefore, to stop steers from being shipped across the Border, the Minister announced an extra £1·76 extra cash for fat steers which were sold in Northern Ireland. For a 10 cwt. animal this would amount to something like £18 per beast. The rest of the United Kingdom had an additional calf subsidy of £l0—only about half as much.
But as from yesterday the Minister has removed the £1·76 from fat cattle in Northern Ireland and replaced it with
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an additional £10 calf subsidy. Why has this been done? The subsidy amounts to less than half what it replaces. The subsidy does not go on the end to the fat cattle seller; it goes to the calf owner. It therefore goes to a different person. That has yet further shattered an already depressed market. I ask the noble Lord why the Government did this and how they intend to restore confidence. At the moment, Eire is buying its beef into intervention. My understanding is that all the cold stores in Eire are full. My understanding is also that Northern Ireland has said that it will not provide cold storage for intervention beef from Southern Ireland. I ask the noble Lord this question: is the Intervention Board permitting beef bought into intervention in Southern Ireland to be stored in cold stores in the United Kingdom?
In all this beef problem confidence is vital. I do not blame the Minister for the general conditions, which I acknowledge are extremely difficult, but I criticise him for some of the things which he has done and for some which he has not done. Confidence is vital, because if there is no confidence there will be real cause for concern in two years' time, because there will be no beef cattle for sale. If the noble Lord thinks I am unfair about the Minister's actions causing a lack of confidence, let me also tell him that they can create confidence, too.
I was surprised, when talking to an auctioneer in Norwich on Saturday morning, to be told that he expected prices to be up for fat cattle on Saturday. In fact, he proved to be quite right and prices for various grades of steer increased between £1·30 per cwt. and £1·90 per cwt. Why was this? Of course there were a number of reasons, but one was the increase in the guide price which the Minister recently announced, and the announcement last week of a base price of £18. That created a little confidence. But if that created confidence, so also can confidence be destroyed.
I am surprised that what the Minister said last week created as much confidence as it did, and I hope that the noble Lord will be able to explain and amplify what the Minister said at column 1593, which was:
"I have instructed my officials to be in a state of readiness to undertake the necessary

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certification procedures for whatever arrangements arc decided upon. I know this is what my friends in the union want. We need to be in a position to give producers the assurance over a period that their returns will not drop below about f18 per live cwt for clean quality cattle. That is the right way to deal with the problem of short-term oversupply."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Commons,26/6/74.]
He did not say that there would be a base price of £18 per cwt. He said that there would be a base of "about" £18. That could mean £17·50. But this was to he a base only over a period, so that for a period it might go up to £18·50 and then might drop to £16·50. I hope very much that the noble Lord will be able to clarify this point, because people have taken the Minister's Statement as meaning that there will be a base of £18 for fat cattle. That is not what the Minister has said. If it is what he intends, then I very much hope that the noble Lord will be able to clarify it.
My Lords, can the noble Lord tell us why, if this is to be done, it is not possible to do it almost straight away? As I understand, and I may be wrong about this, there are already people who can carry out certification at abattoirs. There are meat inspection officers who carry out the inspection of meat to certify that it is fit for human consumption, and my understanding is that it is those people who have been used for certifying the beef for payment in the past. Is this so? If those people are there, can they not be used for certification? And how will the rate of £18 be achieved? Will it be £18 or "about" £18? Will it he done by a fiat-rate slaughter premium, or by a variable slaughter premium, or by both, or by a deficiency payment? How will this base rate be achieved? Will this be done with the agreement of the E.E.C., or even without it? And if it is the Minister's intention to achieve it without the agreement of the E.E.C.—if that is not available—then what is to stop him from doing it now? I also ask the noble Lord when he thinks that this base rate will be started.
These are vital questions, my Lords, and I believe that the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi could help the beef industry this evening by giving some amplification. I ask him these questions because I believe them to be important. I know that if he could help to support the beef industry
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which is in a mess, he would wish to take the opportunity to do so. I make one final remark; that is, that the despair of the beef industry can be exemplified by the fact that in the area of Norfolk in which I live there are some fairly low-lying grasslands which are called marshes. Two years ago these used to be let for grazing for £10 to £15 an acre. This year they have let for £35 to £40 an acre, simply because farmers have not dared to sell their cattle and are prepared to pay anything for grass in order to hang on to them in the hope that conditions will get better. This is a serious state, and I very much hope that the noble Lord will be able to throw some light upon it this evening.
7.49 p.m.
VISCOUNT BROOKEBOROUGH: My Lords, may I begin by thanking the noble Earl, Lord Dundonald, for allowing me to attach to his original Question the words, "and Northern Ireland" because when the Question was originally placed on the Order Paper it referred only to the rest of Great Britain. It is unfortunate that we in Northern Ireland have our Parliament suspended, and so far as I am concerned this is the forum from which I must spell out the case for Northern Ireland. If I speak with special reference to that area, I feel justified in that other noble Lords are equally speaking with great knowledge about their own particular areas. I am a very small beef producer, especially small compared with the large-scale farmers in the rest of the United Kingdom. I speak for a constituency which is represented in another place which has a great many farmers, and an enormous proportion of the 40,000 farmers who are in Northern Ireland are directly involved in beef production.
My noble friend Lord Ferrers said that there were two matters which were important: first, the question of confidence; secondly, what are the Government going to do to establish confidence. I look forward very much to hearing the reply from the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, which I hope will be as definite as he can possibly make it, because the confidence that was established by the announcement last week, which I very much welcomed, is a transitional confidence if it cannot be followed up by hard facts which clearly spell out what the future for the beef producer

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is going to be. I feel that there exists a great deal of uncertainty—certainly in my part of the country. We feel that the removal of the £1·76 subsidy, which was given on slaughtered animals in meat plants, is a breach of confidence. We were given to understand when it was put on early this year that it was likely to continue for 12 months. This is a further matter which gives rise to lack of confidence.
When the Minister says that the premium to be paid will be "about £18", every farmer translates that according to his own personal wish and experience. My noble friend Lord Ferrers asked how this is going to be operated. Is it going to vary between £16 and £25? If it is indeed a flat rate of £18—the figure given by the Meat and Livestock Commission of Great Britain which has been accepted as factual—then the correct price for beef produced in 1974 at about 9½ cwt. is £22·47 per cwt. If the Government are going to take a flat rate of £18 they are in fact saying that someone down the line, producing beef from birth to finish, is going to have a guaranteed loss of £20.
We in Northern Ireland have a land frontier which presents different problems from those existing anywhere else, and I sometimes feel that this is not taken sufficiently into consideration. When there is a surplus in any part of Great Britain the differential in the price which we get on the periphery, on the outside of the market, widens. When there is a shortage of meat the price we get is closely equivalent to the price in the rest of the United Kingdom. To-day, when I checked it up, the price in the market here is over £18 per cwt.; in Northern Ireland it is £16·50. We always suffer because we are on the outside of the market, with transport between us. The question which I should like to ask the Minister is: when we went into the E.E.C. it was accepted that Northern Ireland should have a separate calculation to arrive at a guide price and an intervention price. It is very important indeed that this £18 (if that is the figure) should be operated on a separate calculation just as the intervention price and the guide price are operated, otherwise we will be getting £16·50 while the rest of the United Kingdom is getting £18.
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The next problem is this: with the land frontier in the South and the Southern Irish intervention price operating, our animals will in fact be sold into the factories in the South and our factories will go on short time or will close altogether because the intervention price is still above the £18 which operates. If the £18 is not a fluctuating rate according to summer or winter, there is no hope of preventing cattle from the North of Ireland going into the South. There can be times when the intervention price in the South of Ireland will be higher than the seasonal price, and that again will have to be a calculated position. If we take past experience of a fluctuating price running up to, say, £24 per cwt. in the winter and coming down to £18 per cwt. in the summer, then the intervention price which exists in Southern Ireland will draw cattle into the South.
These are problems which I believe are created by the abolition of the use of intervention. I believe that the failure to continue to use intervention buying as a floor price has created problems which are going to be very hard to overcome, and the point is whether in trying to overcome them we create more problems. The Northern Ireland calculation for the intervention price is made on dead meat in the factory and the Great Britain price is based on the auction price. I should like to have an assurance from the Minister that we will be separately calculated in Northern Ireland.
The next question raised by my noble friend concerned the fact that at present 75 per cent. of the meat being sold in the Republic is going into intervention. Where is this going? When you are in a surplus position in the United Kingdom even a small amount of not such good beef, or a small amount of extra beef coming into the area, has a magnifying effect on the price of beef in this country. While I know that the Government are committed to supplying meat to the consumer as cheaply as possible, in the end it is the farmers who have to produce that meat, and unless they have confidence in the future the future for the consumer will be black.
The next question concerns the immediate implementation of this scheme. The actual amount of £18—whether it is

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a fluctuating amount or whether it is graduated during the year—does not matter provided the certification is put into effect at once. I do not know the details of the position in the rest of Great Britain, but I can speak with authority in saying that because in Northern Ireland we have headage payments for sheep and cattle, the officers who apply certification throughout the whole trade exist, so there is no possible excuse for not applying certification to-day even if the rate to be applied to those cattle is not decided until after the meeting of Ministers in the E.E.C. If this is not done what will happen? Farmers will hold back cattle, factories will close, there will be unemployment and there will be a further increase in the surplus; there will be further buying of intervention in the Irish Republic. Therefore, whatever the premium may be, the announcement of certification must be made at once.
I do not want to keen noble Lords any longer but I should like to mention one other matter. My noble friend Lord Ferrers mentioned monetary compensation. The United Kingdom Government are providing 33 per cent. for subsidising beef and other foodstuffs to come into this country. This is a problem. It worries me to read about the "green pound", which means that the compensatory amount may be increased in the next few weeks by about 15 per cent. In point of fact we might get a further distortion of our market with the subsidising of our European partners by another 15 per cent. to induce them to send beef here. We might get to the point when, because of the devaluation of the pound, we are not only paying the Members of the Common Market but countries outside the Common Market, to come in and take our money from us and take our markets.
We are in a position of surplus. It may be that because of the oil crisis and other crises the consumer has changed the amount of money he spends on food as opposed to petrol, but the facts of the matter are that we appear to be in a world crisis and farmers are entitled to know what the Government intend to do in the long run. There is a surplus and it is not an easy job for the E.E.C. or the Government to say that we will ship
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the surpluses out for these four areas which are in intervention. Where do we ship them to? Because there is a surplus, who has enough money to buy them even at the lowest possible price? I would ask the Government to say quite straightforwardly what can be done to help. We were encouraged by all Parties to produce more beef, so we must ask: have the farmers overdone it? If so, where does the future lie? I feel very strongly that the future of the consumer cannot be bought at the expense of the farmer, because if it is the consumer will suffer in the end: in two years there will be no beef.
8.1 p.m.
LORD LLOYD or KILGERRAN: My Lords, I should like to join other noble Lords in congratulating the noble Earl, Lord Dundonald, for having introduced this most important subject on the plight of cattle breeders in the United Kingdom. Before the debate started, I had the privilege of speaking to the noble Earl. I have listened to the figures which he so lucidly set out in his introduction, and should like to endorse them. In the light of the circumstances, I hope to be brief, simple and perhaps not too blunt in speaking about the desperate plight of Welsh farmers and cattle breeders at the present time.
The Welsh cattle breeding industry is facing its worst financial crisis since the war. Hundreds of small farmers are facing bankruptcy. Hundreds of them who bought cattle in the autumn and kept them during the winter when the grass came rather late so that they had to introduce expensive feedingstuffs, are losing somewhere between £30 and £40 per head for cattle—if they can sell them. These are small farmers, family farmers. They arc not Texan farmers: these farmers in Wales have no large capital resources. They now have crippling liquidity problems and, what is worse, they have little confidence in the future of their industry.
A bank manager in Cercdigion told me ten days ago about his customers who were facing bankruptcy and of the farmers who wanted to sell up their farms and get out while they could. A solicitor in the same area told me that last year his firm was engaged in selling, or trying to sell, eight farms, whereas now the

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number is 80. What is more, in rural parts of Wales there is a growing view that perhaps the Labour Party is adopting a deliberate and heartless policy of squeezing the Welsh family farmer from the industry. I hope this view is not true and that we shall get a repudiation of it this evening, because I am sure that noble Lords opposite will agree with me that to stimulate the family life of the Welsh farmer is what is required, rather than to attempt, either through a deliberate policy or through inaction, to eradicate it.
When an industry is in this desperate plight, every bit of help is welcomed. Therefore I should like to congratulate the right honourable gentleman the Minister of Agriculture on the stand he has recently taken in E.E.C. negotiations on the Common Agricultural Policy. We on these Benches agree generally with the long-term package deal proposed to the E.E.C. by the Government, but this will not operate until at least next April. Therefore, above all we want the Government to act quickly now in relation to the Welsh industry and to deal with it sympathetically so that confidence may be restored to the small Welsh farmer.
I should like, if I may, to mention a few figures in order to place the Welsh industry in perspective in relation to the United Kingdom industry. I do not propose at this late hour to bandy figures, but I think it is necessary to understand the position of the Welsh industry in relation to that of the United Kingdom. Wales produces 36 per cent. by value of the total milk production of the United Kingdom. Wales produces 50 per cent. by value of the total likestock production of the United Kingdom. As the industry deteriorates, Wales will suffer to a greater extent than other parts of the United Kingdom. Agriculture is a major employer in rural Wales and nearly 60,000 people derive at least part of their livelihood from this industry.
THE EARL OF ONSLOW: My Lords, I wonder whether I may interrupt the noble Lord?
LORD LLOYD OF KILGERRAN: My Lords, I will gladly stand down.
TIIE EARL OF ONSLOW: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord to clarify the statement that 50 per cent. of livestock
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is produced in Wales because, with the greatest respect, I think that figure must be challengeable.
LORD LLOYD OF KILGERRAN: My Lords, I was just going on to say that I extracted those figures from a debate on agriculture in another place. My noble friend Lord Onslow will find those figures quoted in Hansard and I understand that so far they have not been challenged in another place, although they have been challenged here tonight. I am glad to disclose some of the sources of my information. The figures are from reports by the Farmers' Union of Wales on the state of the farming industry. Another source is the Department of Agricultural Economics in the University college of Wales in Aberystwyth, which is an independent and objective source of information. I will gladly give the noble Earl those figures at any time in order to substantiate what I have quoted.
The position in Wales can be rectified fairly simply by the Government. It is a matter, as the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, said, largely of restoring confidence so that there can be a fairly quick return to profitability in the near future—or a hope promoted among these Welsh farmers that there will be a return to profitability in the near future. In my view, the most important factor in restoring confidence would be for the Government to introduce firmer guarantees of prices than those which exist at present in relation to fat-stock of all kinds, perhaps with the level of prices linked to feedingstuff prices. This would stimulate demand in store stock which Wales produces, and would indirectly benefit both livestock rearers and milk producers.
In conclusion, may I make three positive suggestions to the Government so far as Wales is concerned. In the first place, the confidence of the Welsh farmer could be restored if the Government were to bring in a temporary guaranteed price for beef, with a deficiency payment to be paid by the State so that the housewife would have the full benefit of the cheaper price of beef at the present time. Secondly—and this may seem to your Lordships to be a small matter, but it is an important one to the small Welsh farmer—the Government should advance the payment of the hill cow subsidy, the beef subsidy and the calf and sheep subsidies so as to alleviate to some extent

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the desperate cash-flow problems now facing many hundreds of Welsh livestock farmers. Lastly—and this is a matter to which the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, referred—they should increase the present rate of calf subsidies. I should be glad to hear from the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, of the present position in relation to calf subsidies, which was a matter also raised by the noble Earl, Lord Dundonald, earlier.
These are three simple suggestions. If adopted, they would bring vital confidence to the Welsh family farmer. And, if I may be politically controversial once again, there is the impression in Wales that this Government will give anything to the industrial unions but very little to the farming community. But in my opinion the Government could rectify the position by introducing this temporary guarantee which would replace the intervention price of the Common Market. The Welsh cattle breeder industry is capable of immediate improvement by a sympathetic Government, which can dispel uncertainty and introduce more confidence to the Welsh farmer by the three suggestions that I have presumed to put forward.
LORD RAGLAN: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down may I, as a matter of elucidation, ask him whether he is suggesting these remedies for Welsh farmers only, or for farmers throughout the United Kingdom?
LORD LLOYD OF KILGERRAN: My Lords, I would not presume to talk about anything but Welsh farming, about which I know something. I know very little about United Kingdom farming, apart from that in Wales, and therefore I would leave matters relating to territories outside Wales to those more experienced than I am.
8.11 p.m.
THE EARL OF SWINTON: My Lords, may I also add my thanks to the noble Earl, Lord Dundonald, for asking this Unstarred Question and giving us all a chance to speak on this matter, which is dear to all of us. When I first went into farming, I was told that there were three ways to go "broke"—you could take up women, which was the pleasantest way; you could take up drink, which was the quickest way; or you could go into beef
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cattle which was the easiest way. Unfortunately, I did not heed that advice. I went into both breeding and fattening beef cattle, so I must declare an interest on both points. But this is not a laughing matter; it is affecting everyone in the beef industry. I must take up a point which the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, raised, when he said that he could not attach any blame to this Government or the last one. My goodness! my Lords, successive Governments have been encouraging us to go into beef. Some Government somewhere must take some of the blame for the present situation.
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, may I clarify that point? I did not say one could not attribute any blame. I said I did not attribute blame to the Government for this mess.
LORD LLOYD OF KILGERRAN: My Lords, may I make it clear from these Benches that we blame the Conservative Government and the Labour Government.
LORD HOY: You would blame anybody but yourselves.
THE EARL OF SWINTON: My Lords, I have been encouraged by subsidies over the years to go into beef cattle, and a lot of other people have, too. The fattener gets hit very hard, not only because of the feedingstuffs, and the high capital cost of his buildings and plant. There is also the question of wages—which nobody has yet touched on—and the most iniquitous factor of all, the threshold agreement. You have to pay this out to your farm men if they are getting the basic agricultural wage, if they are getting £30, £35 or £40 a week. If you do not pay it to all of them, you do not—as I think the famous expression goes—"preserve the differential". On the whole, farmers do not tend to grumble about what they pay their men. I have never grumbled and most of my friends have not. They thoroughly appreciate the work that the agricultural workers do, and are very glad to see them. This is the first time that I have heard farmers grumbling and grudging the men what they are getting.
The wretched employer has just as much to pay for the steep rise in the cost of living as does the employee, and he also has to do it when he is losing money

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hand over foot. This, as we say in Yorkshire, is "Plain bloody daft ". Not only does the wretched fatstock farmer have to do this, but also from August 5 the graduated insurance contribution is going up, as also are the costs of National Health insurance stamps for the employer; whereas the employee, who by then will be even better off than he is now, is going to pay less. All I can say is, "Lucky employee!" These are the problems which hit the fattener.
The breeders do not have the same problems; they do not tend to be such high employers of labour. But they tend, like the hill farmers of Wales, to be living on something of a shoestring. I can speak about the northern hill farmers whom I consider to be the salt of the earth. I certainly do not intend any discourtesy to those from Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland. The older man who has been in the business for a long time is not hit so badly. He has had his troubles before, and no doubt has some reserves to fall back on in hard times, and perhaps he will be able to get through. This is really worrying the younger man. He often has a young family with a more expensive living to keep up, and has probably had to borrow money from the bank to get him into agriculture. He is having really hard times; he has nothing to fall back on. Surely this is the person whom we want to encourage in the agricultural industry—the keen young man who wants to get on in farming—and this is the person who is being hit most. I do not know what is to happen to him over the coming winter. The noble Earl, Lord Dundonald, mentioned hay at £40 a ton. In our part of the world last week before the rain came, it was about £35 a ton collected from the field. Even at that price he will find it hard to get through the coming winter.
We have heard much this evening about the guaranteed price of £18 per ton. I was very grateful to the noble Viscount, Lord Brookeborough—
VISCOUNT BROOKEBOROUGH: £8 a cwt!
THE EARL OF SWINTON: £18 a cwt.! I am more grateful still to the noble Viscount, Lord Brookeborough, for correcting me. People last year were selling beef at £20 a cwt. and were still losing
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money on that. The sum of £18 does not seem very much. The noble Viscount said that something over £22 a cwt. is now the cost. At £18 they will be even more out of pocket. It is not only the short-term position hitting the farmers which worries me; it is also the long-term. Several noble Lords have said that there will not be much beef in two or three years' time. Even worse is the effect that it is having on the land generally. If farmers do not have the money they are held back and the land does not get the treatment it needs. It takes a lot of caring for and needs a lot put back into it. If it gets into a bad state, it can be many years before it gets back to the condition it should be in. My Lords, what will Her Majesty's Government do about the situation?
8.17 p.m.
THE EARL OF ONSLOW: My Lords, I must certainly thank the noble Earl. Lord Dundonald, for allowing us to discuss yet again the problems of farming and the beef industry, in particular. I say, "yet again" because we have discussed it frequently in the past month or two, both here and in another place. But it seems to me to be so desperately serious, as practically every noble Lord who has spoken has said, that it is worth discussing yet again.
As the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, said we have to realise that there is a worldwide glut of beef. In the beef States of the United States, as the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, said the position is very similar to ours. Japan's imports have fallen as a result of her deteriorating balance of payments situation and, consequently, there is a drying up of one source of the market for beef. In Argentina their competence has increased compared with the chronic state that they have been in in recent years. We all know that there is a beef glut in Europe. The reason why I am venturing to repeat this fact is that it has not yet been brought out that agricultural prices react extremely sharply to very small movements in demand. We have had a fairly large increase in the production of beef, encouraged by everybody. The demand seems to have slackened off for one reason or another and, consequently, the price reaction has been much worse.
We ought to say, certainly from these Benches, that the agricultural community

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was not 100 per cent. happy before the last General Election. This was brought out very well by my noble friend Lord Monckton of Brenchley in an Unstarred Question on the dairy industry last December. There were rumblings of discontent, and this is not just a one Party issue. One must also say that Mr. Peart has far from improved the situation. I say this knowing he has the interests of the agricultural community at heart. But one has the impression that he is not capable of getting the message through to his Cabinet colleagues. The cost of food has been covered both to-day and earlier and, again, all I should like to do is emphasise it.
I should like to ask the Minister to underline again what the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, said, whether this £18 per live cwt. will be a flat premium. When is it to start? If it is not to be a flat premium, will this be the January/February—in other words, high—part of the curve price, thus producing a summer price of about £16·50 per cwt., or will it be a summer price producing possibly £20 per cwt.? These are vital questions. What happens if the European Economic Commission turns down Mr. Peart's proposals and requests? Does he act unilaterally and so badly hinder the Government's renegotiation proceedings in Brussels'? These are questions I sincerely hope the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, can answer for us.
We must think very hard about not only the privileged farmers—and privileged farmers must include myself, the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, and the noble Earl, Lord Dundonald; we have access to your Lordships' House and we can see Ministers. As the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran, said, the farmers we must worry about more are the small farmers. These people do not have grain harvests to cushion them against a falling beef market. These people in the hill areas and the underdeveloped areas take up a much bigger percentage of the population than do the barley and wheat farmers of the southern and eastern counties. They play a far more important part in the social life of those counties, and keep the countryside of some of our most beautiful parts of the world in good order. These people must be worried about.
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Moreover, as the noble Earl, Lord Swinton, said, we must worry about the agricultural labourer. The agricultural labourer cannot be paid the wage he deserves, and in my view he deserves a very high wage. We must attract into the industry people of the best kind, and appropriate wages cannot be paid unless we are making decent profits. By "decent profits" I do not mean "Centre Point" profits; I mean profits which provide a reasonable standard of living for ourselves and our children, and good money, good housing and good conditions for our employees. I would illustrates what I mean by "a good agricultural employee". He is the kind of man who has an evening party to attend on a Sunday. He is in his bath when his employer rings up and says that 50 head of cattle have escaped. This does happen, my Lords, frequently, unfortunately. The employee gets out of his bath. He is late for his social engagement and he keeps his wife waiting, but he goes willingly to help and put those cattle back. He is furthermore a good mechanic and also the kind of man who has constructive, useful and intelligent ideas. A man of that kind is somebody we have to pay well, out of reasonable profits. Will a lack of confidence in the industry stop us from making reasonable profits and make us unable to attract men of that kind? This to me is very worrying.
The noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, has raised practically every single point I wanted to raise myself, and I have almost had to start again from scratch. Admittedly he had the help of an American Senator, which I did not. But I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, can answer the questions raised by your Lordships in this debate, and that he can get through to his Cabinet superiors and his Ministerial colleagues that, in the long run, the interest of the consumer and the interest of the farmer are completely identical.
8.25 p.m.
LORD WISE: My Lords, I also must thank the noble Earl, Lord Dundonald, for raising this Question this evening, for it is a question of the utmost importance to the whole of the agricultural community and not only to the beef breeding section. That is so, although undoubtedly the beef breeding section is one in which our greatest difficulties are foreseeable because

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it has the highest capital outlay. As we have heard this evening, heavy losses are being sustained. May I relate just one instance of a neighbour of mine, a small farmer, who had some cattle which he had to sell because he needed the money? To break even he needed to sell them at about £120 each, but in fact he sold them at £75. It is losses of that kind which have been occurring constantly. Probably he paid too much money for these cattle, and the unhappy position which the industry is in now is aggravated by the high cost of calves and store cattle last autumn. As the noble Earl, Lord Swinton, said, the need for expansion is constantly, or has been constantly, impressed upon us, and the beef herds over the past year or so have been rapidly expanding. It was reasonable to expect that the market would remain firm.
Farmers arc gamblers; they are gamblers always, and the odds generally seem stacked against them. However, we cannot grope continually and blindly from one crisis to the next. I think that the Government's intention of dealing with this matter and raising the calf subsidy a further £10—and I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, will clarify this matter this evening—must undoubtedly he welcomed, for this will help dairy farmers as well as beef producers, for they derive a considerable income from the sale of calves apart from the sale of milk. It will also, I am sure, help to diminish the heavy number of calf slaughterings which are taking place now—and if this is allowed to continue it must inevitably seriously jeopardise future beef supplies.
The Minister's assurance that the return for beef cattle will not fall below £18, as we hope, is also most welcome—this is the price per live cwt. for quality and clean cattle. Again, I hope the noble Lord will be able to clarify the position as to when it is to he implemented. However, a base (if one might call it that) of £18 is surely not enough with the ever-escalating costs with which we have to contend. The figure of £18 per live cwt. cannot possibly show a profitable return on investment. Nevertheless, as I say, it gives us a base upon which to work. Over the past month or so I have been in various markets watching fat cattle sold. It seemed to me that the auctioneers were taking their commission and probably
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making a small profit; they were covering overheads and were quite happy, although, of course, if prices had been higher they would have been doing better. Wholesalers were buying these cattle. They were taking them away and they were being slaughtered. They were being kept for perhaps a week and sold to the butchers. Again, overheads were being covered and a profit was being made. Butchers were buying them, taking them back to their shops and selling to the consumer, again making a profit.
In all those transactions the only person who was not making a profit was the farmer who had kept the animal for anything up to 18 months or two years and who had had all the worry, anxiety and cost of keeping it. He was the only person who was losing money. It seems to me that there must be something wrong with a system which allows this to happen. Of course, it is not always so. As your Lordships know, farmers have not always lost money on beef cattle, but we cannot continue with high returns and low returns. It is impossible to live to-day on yesterday's profits because they have gone; they have been used up in the working of the farm. If it is impossible to do that, it is even more impossible to live tomorrow on to-day's losses. I am sure that production can be sustained only by the assurance of continuity of a reasonable return.
When the noble Lord, Lord Walston, spoke in the agricultural debate in your Lordships' House a couple of months ago, he urged the Government to consider the setting up of an overall meat marketing board. I endorse wholeheartedly his suggestion. It could put some semblance of order into the question of marketing and some stability into the regulation of supplies. The industry can provide the beef which we need, but only if the return is commensurate with the costs involved. It cannot operate on a cost-minus basis. I hope that the Government will be able to set up a committee to study in depth the possibility of a meat marketing board. The noble Lord, Lord Walston, would probably make an admirable chairman. Something must be done to restore long-term confidence. As the noble Lord said, it is not an insuperable administrative problem and I believe that it could bring some order into meat marketing.
8.32 p.m.
LORD STANLEY OF ALDERLEY: My Lords, I am not sure whether I want to thank the noble Earl, Lord Dundonald, for raising this subject. Maybe I would have been happier—I am sure that noble Lords on the Benches opposite would have been happier—if I had remained at home and worked out the losses which I am making on my beef cattle. There I must declare an interest, in that I have been beef farming for 20 years. Indeed, it is for this reason that I am here to-night, because I want to try to explain to your Lordships how my fellow farmers and I feel and react to the present crisis. I hope that your Lordships will realise that the questions which I shall ask are ones that I ask as a beef farmer. I want to know the answers to these questions; preferably I wanted to know them by yesterday because time has run out. I hope to put the questions to the noble Lord without bias or spite and if I get worked up I apologise to your Lordships; it will be because I believe that agriculture is the most important industry. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, will not mind my having written to warn him of some of the questions which I might raise to-night. Fortunately, a lot of those questions have been raised already by noble Lords. Therefore I shall cut them out, because I am sure that the noble Lord will answer them.
One point which I want to raise is that last Friday, June 28, after the Statement made by the Minister of Agriculture, the butchers' trade was still trying to talk the price down. They were suggesting that the Minister did not mean £18 a cwt. to apply as soon as possible. When the noble Lord replies, can he please give a strong recommendation to beef producers not to sell below this price, or not to sell very much below this price, despite the slight ambiguity of the Statement made by the Minister of Agriculture on Wednesday? I was offered only 27p a lb. on Friday for prime quality 9 and 10 cwt. bullocks. That is 17p, give or take a bit accordingly to how they kill out. I know that the Minister of Agriculture has told your Lordships already—he has told me, too—not to talk the trade down. But I wonder whether he would be prepared to take the advice of a former Minister of Agriculture who once said that if you want to get anything over
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to farmers you must tell them that you are going to tell them, tell them, and tell them that you have told them. It was the noble Viscount, Lord Amory, who made that remark. It is quite an important point and sometimes it takes a long time to get through to us.
One other point which I should like to put to the noble Lord is that there is a feeling that the Government are not entirely in touch with farmers. I believe that Banbury is the largest market in Europe. It is only an hour or so away and it is even closer to the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell. I know that the directors and farmers of that market would more than welcome Ministers and noble Lords on the Front Bench opposite going there to see for themselves what is the position. Indeed, I think that they may instil some confidence in the trade and in farmers. I personally should be more than happy to supply a gang of large, beef-eating farmers to act as escorts if they feel frightened about coming to Banbury alone.
LORD STRABOLGI: My Lords, I hope that the noble Lord will forgive my interruption, but as I am the Captain of the Yeomen of the Guard that would be very suitable!
LORD STANLEY OF ALDERLEY: My Lords, that will be all right, then! To come to a more serious aspect, we are all waiting for the Government to make a decision on the O'Brien Report. I do not know whether the noble Lord can say when that decision is likely to be made. I am still at a loss to know whether calf slaughtering has fallen since the £10 increase in subsidy which was announced the other day. I accept entirely the remarks of the Minister of Agriculture regarding the business decisions taken by beef farmers last autumn—that is, that we bought too high. I agree that I bought too high and that a lot of us bought too high. We are to blame. So is my own Party to blame and so is the Party opposite. I think that we are a nice, happy gang together! I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Hoy, will not haul me over the coals for having said that we are all in it together.
There is one other point which I feel I may be tackled about by the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi. It is a little bedside reading which I am always asking

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the noble Lord, Lord Beswick, to do. Last Saturday I read in The Economist the statement that we are going to make a lot of money out of beef. All I can say is that I think their figures are about as accurate as the statement made in The Economist about three months ago, that the average 100 acre, poorly equipped farmer was making £10,000 a year profit. Therefore, I hope that the noble Lord will not commend that bit of reading to me.
Although it is a difficult question, if it is possible I should like to know what is the average gross mark-up between the farm gate price of beef and the housewife. I accept that yesterday the butchers lowered their prices. In particular, I noticed that Dewhurst had brought their prices down quite considerably—which, of course, we welcome. Will the noble Lord confirm whether I am right—it may be that I am wrong—that a 10 cwt. beast in the United Kingdom makes about £170 to £180, whereas a similar beast in France or Germany makes over £300 and can be imported into this country? Indeed I have been told that this week prime quality, fresh Charolais beef was imported into England at between 23p and 27p a lb.
My Lords, I apologise for mixing up the hundred weights and the pounds, but I am sure that the noble Lord will be able to translate that as easily as I cannot. This is due basically to compensatory payments and export restitutions. We should like this to be made quite clear because people often think that we are inefficient. But I do not think that we are so inefficient. Another question which I should like to ask the noble Lord is how it is that the Minister of Agriculture can state that we have a surplus of beef? In a written reply to the noble Lord, Lord O'Hagan, on June 13, I read that last year we imported about £190 million worth of beef. My Lords, I am sure that this beef could be produced by this country. Have we forgotten about the balance of payments—or has the balance of payments got so had, like my overdraft, that one does not open the letters when they come? Another point which I should like to raise is that the Meat and Livestock Commission have a scheme for meat promotion which has the blessing of the National Farmers' Union, and I should like to know whether the Government will give it their blessing
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because we should like to see it pushed ahead. Will the Government consider—I am sure they will not—in these days of inflation some form of threshold agreement for livestock end prices? I must now bring in my perennial. Will the Government consider reintroducing the fencing grant, which is of vital importance to beef producers? It now costs something like £70 an acre to fence a field, even if the fields are 20 or 30 acres, and I feel that a grant might also solve the problem of the noble Earl, Lord Onslow, in regard to his employee's party, because the cattle would not get out.
I shall now conclude, my Lords, and I hope that the noble Lord will be able to give satisfactory answers to the questions that I and other noble Lords have asked. I feel that it would be uncharitable of me not to say that I welcome the Statement made by the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food on June 26, regarding the minimum price and the lime subsidy. I hope the noble Lord will not accuse me of looking a gift horse in the mouth, when I say that early announcement of the retention of the lime subsidy would have prevented over-liming which can cause severe nutritional disorders such as hypermagnesaemia.
Also, the position of the stock rearer is grim. For my hay I was offered £50 a ton the other day. To keep a beast through the winter will cost somewhere around £75. If the end price of a 9 cwt. bullock is £180, all that the farmer will be able to offer in the autumn will be £105. You cannot rear a 9 cwt. bullock for £105, let alone a 5 cwt. suckle calf. They come off the Welsh hills for considerably less. I think their position is very severe, and I am a suckle calf rearer although I fatten my stock in Wales. Despite what the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran, said about the calf subsidy and the fattening—and I also farm in Wales—I am afraid I do not agree with him in this regard. It would be better to put an end price which would cause less disruption over the whole beef cycle of selling from rearer to fattener. The position of a beef farmer, despite the recent efforts of the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, is still very serious. We need better end prices and we need stability of prices, not just today and next year but for quite a long time to come. I wish the Minister the

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best of success in Brussels in the negotiations this month to achieve that stability.
But although beef production is one of the main cornerstones of British farming there is, to my mind, one more serious aspect of this problem. Farmers, are moderate, law-abiding people led by moderate, law-abiding men. I think we are possibly led by the best people in the National Farmers' Union. If the Government do not listen to our leaders in the Union, those leaders will in turn have difficulty with their rank and file members, and I am sorry to say that they are having such difficulty. Therefore we shall move to further cases of extremism by individual groups of farmers. One can see that in the Press to-day. I am glad to say that the Government are beginning to listen to our leaders, but if we do not see this happening farmers will move further either to Right or Left, and I mind not which. I am sorry to say that we have lost faith in Government—and I do not lay the blame for this entirely on the Benches opposite I think I must blame my Party, too—and it will take a lot to get our confidence back. You have done too little, too late, and you will now have to work very hard to get back our confidence.
8.45 p.m.
LORD HOY: My Lords, I am sorry that I did not put my name down for this debate but I have only just come back to London, having been in Scotland for some time. I liked the last speech. I want to say to the noble Lord, Lord Stanley of Alderley, that I enjoyed his speech, right up to his concluding sentences. Indeed, I never think one makes very much of a case by threatening action of an extreme character. I find it a little difficult to understand that apparently it is all right if the farming community does it, but it is quite wrong if any other industry does it. All I will say to the noble Lord is just to be a little careful about this because I do not think it brings any respect to any industry, whether it be the farming industry or any other, to adopt these extra-mural tactics.
LORD STANLEY OF ALDERLEY: My Lords, I thank the noble Lorl for giving way. I am sorry if the noble Lord took my final remarks in that manner. I hoped to put them as quietly
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as I could. There is a danger. I entirely agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Hoy, has said, but I think he has misinterpreted my remarks.
LORD HOY: My Lords, I will not reproach the noble Lord on that point, except to say that there is a danger because when one thinks of it this Government have been in office for about three months and in that time we have had demonstrations in Whitehall and cattle have been paraded in the streets. I wonder who is arranging these demonstrations. I think I do not need to say that I have always had a very warm side for the agricultural industry. Indeed, for six years I served it to the best of my ability, and I agree with the argument that if we are to have an agricultural industry it must, like any other industry, have assurances, but it must be economic. Sometimes one thinks in terms of criticism of Government. I do not say that of this Government because obviously in three months they cannot have done all the desperate things of which noble Lords opposite have been accusing them to-night. Indeed I would say to them that we must find a reason for it. I heard the noble Earl, Lord Swinton, say that one of the great on costs of this industry and one thing that was causing difficulty was the threshold agreement. I say to the noble Earl with due respect that that cannot be pinned on the door of this Government: it was their predecessor which in fact produced the agreement.
THE EARL OF SWINTON: My Lords, I never for a moment pinned it on the Government opposite. It was a damned stupid thing to do, and I think all Governments can be damned stupid a lot of the time—and, my God! they are too.
LORD HOY: My Lords, the noble Earl may try to get out of it in that way, but all I am saying is that he did not make it clear which Government were responsible. I am reminding the House that that agreement was introduced by our predecessors and we have to accept it. I do not want to argue this all night, but when I hear a plea for fencing (with which I agree) I can remember that debate a few months ago when the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, announced certain cuts in the fencing grants. I raised the matter and I did not find a single supporter among the Members who were then

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occupying the Benches on this side of the House—not a single one. So while I agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Stanley of Alderly, was saying to-night, I can only wish that he had said it when the Statement was being made by the Government of that day.
In agriculture we have to consider the situation that confronts us. There is no doubt at all that we are in great difficulty, not only in this country but all over the world. Indeed, consider Europe, where they are not only producing meat but are then putting it into cold storage so that the consumer cannot purchase it. This is one of the problems we are up against. I raised the matter many months ago in another respect because we were then faced with the awful problem of butter production inside the agricultural industry. Then we were producing so much butter that they had more in stock in the cold storages of Europe than we had coal in Britain. Consequently, we had to get rid of it at very cheap prices and sell it to Russia and other countries. This is the position we have got into, and this is the position we have got to get out of.
I want to say to the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran, that I think one can talk this industry down. I have had a fairly long connection with the Welsh farming industry. The noble Lord said that the one thing he did not want to do was to introduce figures to bamboozle people, but he did produce figures. Apparently he was out for a walk one day when he met a banker and the next day he met a solicitor, and one was going bankrupt and the other was selling farms. The noble Lord said that eight were then up for sale, but that the next week the number had gone up to 80. What he did not tell us was how many were sold. Farms can be bought only if someone wants to sell.
LORD LLOYD OF KILGERRAN: My Lords, if the noble Lord, Lord Hoy, would like to have privately the names and addresses of the two persons I spoke to, I will give them to him. But I said that the solicitor to whom I spoke last year in Ceredigion, in the High Street of a little town called Lampeter, had eight farms for sale at that time on his books. At the present time his firm has 80 farms for sale. So far I understood the solicitor to whom I spoke, there
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was no question of any of those farms having been sold at the present time.
LORD HOY: My Lords, all I wanted was the figures. All I wanted to know was how many farms had been sold.
LORD LLOYD OF KILGERRAN: My Lords, the position is this. The noble Lord has again misunderstood me. A year ago there were eight farms for sale, and now nearly 80 farms are for sale, so the question of whether they have been sold did not arise when I was speaking in the High Street of Lampeter to this solicitor.
LORD HOY: My Lords, I did not misunderstand the noble Lord one bit. All I am saying is that when he produced figures of the farms for sale, he is entitled to say how many were sold, because this is an economic argument. He does not do the agricultural industry any good by producing figures of this kind. One of our troubles today in connection with prices is a very simple one. I was glad that two Members of your Lordships' House admitted it, the noble Lords, Lord Stanley of Alderley, and Lord Wise, who said that during a sale some time ago they were paying prices that were much too high. Both noble Lords admitted that they were paying prices that were much too high. They were paying them because they thought that at the end of the day the end price would he considerably more than it was so there was a misjudgment in their business management. Many people do it, in either the agricultural or in any other industry. It can be done. But in the debate this evening there was a breath of honesty from those two noble Lords. All these things bring difficulties.
My Lords, I thought that the noble Earl, Lord Dundonald, was reticent, in introducing the debate, in really acknowledging what the Minister said last week, because here was a Minister attempting to take steps to correct a position, not that he had created, but a position into which the agricultural industry had got because of decisions made before he arrived. This is what we are thinking about. I do not want to bandy it about in a political way—
SEVERAL NOBLE LORDS Oh!
LORD HOY: No, my Lords, nothing of the kind. The noble Lord, Lord Lloyd

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of Kilgerran, never uttered a single word in praise of what the Minister of Agriculture did last week.
LORD LLOYD OF KILGERRAN: My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt, but I did praise the right honourable gentleman the Minister of Agriculture for the steps he had taken on June 18 in standing up against the other E.E.C. Ministers in relation to Common Agricultural Policy. I praised him for that act.
LORD HOY: My Lords, yes, but I am talking about the debate tonight, and about prices. It is difficult for me to agree with the noble Lord on this, because if there is one Party which wanted to be in the E.E.C., despite the C.A.P., it was the Party he represents. So what the present Minister has to do is to meet this new situation. All I hope is that, as a result of this debate, the agricultural industry and my noble friend will understand it all the better. The industry is in difficulties, of course; no one pretends it is not. We must find solutions to these problems. We do not get it done by criticising one side or another. One can go on doing this endlessly. We must consider the problem that confronts the agricultural industry tonight. I have tried to point out who created these problems. It is unfair to blame my right honourable friend for them when he had no responsibility for them, but he has inherited these problems.
THE EARL OF ONSLOW: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Hoy, has made the best speech for getting interruptions. Would he admit that his right honourable friend Mr. Peart did withdraw the bottom from the market? I think many of us on this side of the House made the point that we were not 100 per cent. happy with our own side when in Government. When Mr. Peart did this he hit confidence very hard indeed.
LORD HOY: My Lords, this argument can always be made politically. All I am saying is, and the noble Earl and I are good friends, that the Minister has, at least, given the industry a basis, a guarantee, that it has not had for a considerable time. No one will deny that.
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Hoy, said that he did not want to be Party political, but he is not having a bad go at it! What is the guarantee which he says his right honourable friend has given the beef industry and which it has not had before?
LORD HOY: My Lords, I do not know why the noble Earl should ask me. I do not sit on the Front Bench. He does. The noble Earl, Lord Dundonald, had better hold his argument for a while, because about six noble Lords asked my noble friend what the guarantee is. He is the Minister, and it will not matter what my opinion is. If they are really interested, they will want to know what the opinion of the Government is. All I am saying is that they had better wait a little. I will not keep them for many more seconds, except to say that all of us want Britain to have a successful agricultural industry. We saw the difficulties even at the time of entry into the E.E.C. In three months, this Government have had to face up to a considerable number of difficulties. They have produced a Statement which was made last week and which, indeed, has been welcomed by the noble Lord, Lord Stanley of Alderley, and I think by the noble Lord, Lord Wise, as well. These noble Lords have gone out of their way to welcome it. They do not claim it as a solution, but they do say it is a considerable step in the right direction. As a consequence, they have asked my noble friend the answer to certain questions appertaining to the Statement made last week. All I am saying to my noble friend is that like noble Lords in all parts of the House, I hope he can provide the answers. Let us all understand what the Government are doing, what steps they have taken, and what they think the consequences will be for the agricultural industry.
8.58 p.m.
LORD STRABOLGI: My Lords, we must be grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Dundonald, for raising this matter. It is an important matter and, as every noble Lord who has spoken has said, there are no grounds for complacency. As my noble friend Lord Hoy said, I hope that during my speech I may do something to reassure your Lordships There is one thing I should like to say

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at the outset, which is to deny (as, indeed, I was invited to deny) the allegation of the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran, that the Labour Party is engaged in some kind of Machiavellian plot to squeeze the small Welsh farmer out of existence. I do not really believe that the noble Lord meant that at all, but I thought I would get it out of the way at the beginning.
LORD LLOYD OF KILGERRAN: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for that.
LORD STRABOLGI: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Hoy, said that this Government had been in Office for a few months only, but my right honourable friend the Minister has already taken some considerable action, which I shall describe in more detail in a moment. It is right to say, as noble Lords have said during the debate, that the problems facing beef producers have been highlighted by the falling market prices over the past two or three weeks, and they do give cause for concern; there is no doubt about that, both because of the importance of the industry itself and because of the reactions which a weak beef market can cause in livestock markets generally.
There are a number of reasons for the present difficulties, but there can be no doubt that the rapid expansion of production coupled with increased production costs are the main causes. As my noble friend said, each of these factors had its roots in a period many months before the present Government took Office. We can all understand 'why the industry was tempted by the very high prices early last year to build up their herds, even though this meant paying very expensively for young animals; but in retrospect it can be seen how unfortunate it was that production should have been built up in this way in a period of rapid and substantial rises in production costs, particularly of winter feeds. Producers expected market prices to rise this year, but this of course did not happen and losses have. I regret to say, undoubtedly taken place. Now we have a situation in which consumers cannot or are not prepared to pay the sort of prices needed to offset producers' costs in the context of a beef market which has weakened because of exanding supplies, a somewhat Gilbertian situation.
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This, then, was our inheritance in March. Nothing had been done to guard against the foreseeable effects. I am not trying to make a Party point here, because I know the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, was not making Party points in his speech—it is really too important a matter for that—but the previous Government took away from beef producers the safety net of the Fatstock Guarantee Scheme on the grounds that they could rely on an E.E.C. regime based on the maintenance of prices through intervention purchasing. As your Lordships will know, the new Government took two important policy decisions in their first weeks of Office. The first was to maintain and exercise an option not to apply permanent intervention. The second was to inject about £35 million into the industry, at the point where it was required at that time to prevent a level of calf slaughterings which could have endangered our future food supplies. This was done by increasing the calf subsidy by £10 a head.
The noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, criticised us for our inaction since we came into Office. The decision not to apply permanent intervention in the United Kingdom was taken very soon after this Government were elected. There were complaints from the industry that this took from them any price guarantee. To the extent that this was so, it was because the previous Administration had removed the protection of the Fatstock Guarantee Scheme which had worked so successfully for many years. But it was wrong to say that the market had no protection. It was still supported by the E.E.C. régime on import duties and levies against unduly low priced supplies from third countries, and it remained linked to the Irish and Continental beef markets so that our prices would follow any increase in price in other Member States. In fact, the market prices in the United Kingdom were subsequently well above the price at which intervention would have operated, and fell to the notional intervention level only during the past two or three weeks. There can, therefore, be no complaint that my right honourable friend did not take immediate steps when that situation arose. I have been asked about the size of the calf subsidy. This is an extra calf subsidy of £10 a head which was announced by my right honourable friend on April 11

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to conic into effect on July 1. Therefore, the total subsidy is now £18·50 a head on steers and £16·50 a head on heifers born after October 31, 1973.
Returning again to the Community, despite the misgivings which we have heard over the last few months, recent experience elsewhere in the Community has provided full justification for the view we took that the intervention system is inefficient as well as undesirable. I agree very much with what my noble friend Lord Hoy said about this matter, how beef is something to eat and not to put into cold storage. I wonder very much what some future Gibbon would think about a world which stores its beef deteriorating in stores which are now not even large enough to hold it, while the price is too high for even the Western European housewife and the product does not reach the millions of people who are starving in other parts of the world.
More recently the decision was taken to bring forward to July 1 the increase in the United Kingdom guide price to £19·25 a live cwt. This will help to sustain the market in the present difficult situation by affording producers greater protection against imports and providing a closer link with the beef markets elsewhere in the Community. Your Lordships will be aware that my right honourable friend the Minister of Agriculture has announced in another place the changes that he hopes to see made to the Community's beef regime. In the Council of Ministers meeting on June 17 and 18 last he laid stress on the need for arrangements by which permanent intervention would be replaced by a system of variable subsidies and production grants. This would undoubtedly help both our producers and consumers. He recognised that such a new system could not be introduced before next April.
Some more immediate action is clearly needed, and last Wednesday the Minister announced his intention to press immediately for direct interim action to be taken in recognition of the need to assure producers that their returns will not drop below about £18 per live cwt. for clean quality cattle. I was asked about this figure, whether £18 could mean that or something slightly less. I regret that I cannot give more than this interim figure,
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as the final sum will depend on negotiations. We are in the Common Market now. The previous Government put us in. But it depends on negotiations. You cannot blame the present Government for this. It is our firm intention that we should reach agreement on this figure in the future. In view of this, the Minister has instructed his officials to be ready to undertake the necessary certification procedures for whatever arrangements are decided upon.
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, nay I ask the noble Lord one question with regard to that? Does one understand from him that the operation of this base figure will be subject to the agreement of the European Community, and that if that agreement is not forthcoming then the Minister will not be able to do it?
LORD STRABOLGI: Yes, my Lords; it is subject to agreement. I think that it has been proved in the past, since this Government came into office, that we are rather tough and realistic negotiators, and the figure of £18 is the one we are going for. As a result of this, I am glad to see that market prices have this week improved considerably following the Minister's Statement, and the indications are that we may get back to about £18, which I think is fairly reassuring in view of some of the speeches we have had. The figure had been falling; I accept that. For example, on June 17 it was £17·11, then it went down on June 24 to £17·08, but I believe now—and I was told that this afternoon by the Department—there is every hope that it will be back at £18.
The noble Viscount, Lord Brooke-borough, mentioned Northern Ireland. The Government recognise that they face particular difficulty in the current depressed state of the market, in that their returns are usually substantially lower than in the United Kingdom generally. The recent increase of the United Kingdom guide price will have had the indirect effect of reducing somewhat their level of returns by substituting on July 1—that is yesterday—a calf subsidy increase of £10 a head for the beef marketing scheme payment of £1·76 a live hundredweight paid on slaughter. This payment had been made since April 1 to bring Northern Ireland into line with the higher guide price in the Irish Republic. It is, however, fair to point out that the beef marketing

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scheme represented an additional return to Northern Ireland producers that was not available to farmers in Great Britain, and that they also receive certain other special producer grants.
We are confident that the steps announced by my right honourable friend on June 26 last, should help to strengthen the beef market throughout the United Kingdom, and indeed the movement of this week's prices, as I have indicated, shows that this is already happening. I trust, therefore, that this will result in a considerable easing of Northern Ireland's problems.
I was asked various questions by noble Lords, some of which I shall try to answer to the best of my ability, and on others I shall write to noble Lords, if I may. The noble Lord, Lord Wise, asked me about the Beef Marketing Board. The Verdon-Smith Report of 1964 came out against the idea of the statutory marketing board, and their alternative proposals led to the establishment of the Meat and Livestock Commission. The practical difficulties seen by the Verdon-Smith Commission at that time against setting up a Marketing Board apply, in our view, equally to-day. I was also asked by the noble Earl, Lord Onslow—and I am grateful to him for giving me notice of this—whether we were satisfied that the sum of £18 per live hundredweight, as a base price, is really adequate. An assurance to producers of a return of about that level would represent a more secure basis of guarantee than protection based on intervention, as I said earlier. Moreover, the present national intervention price for clean cattle would be, in the range of about £1826 to £18·62 a live hundredweight. With the benefit of direct producer aids, such as the calf subsidy, itself now worth on average about £17·50 a head, the total returns to beef producers would be well above the intervention level. In these circumstances, I do not think that it can be argued that £18 is an unreasonable figure.
The noble Lord, Lord Stanley of Alderley, asked me a great many questions. Here again I am grateful to him for writing to me about them in advance. It was most courteous of him. He asked how and when the beef slaughter premium will apply. I think the noble Earl, Lord Onslow, also asked me this question. On June 26 in another place my right
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honourable friend stated that he will press the Community to take action at once so that producers may be given the assurance I referred to earlier. At this stage, I cannot say what detailed arrangements may be agreed. However, it is our intention that they should apply as soon as possible, athough it will probably take about a month to make the necessary arrangements. The noble Lord, Lord Stanley of Alderley, also asked me about the O'Brien Report. The Government will announce their decision on that Report as soon as possible after their consultations with interested parties have been completed.
I was also asked about calf slaughterings. The average weekly level of calf slaughterings, since my right honourable friend made his announcement on March 25 of the proposal to increase the subsidy by £10, declined to a figure of about 5,400. The average for the month before that date was 6,600. Of course, my Lords, I admit that slaughter of cows and calves has increased from the unusually low level of the last two years, but the national herd is much larger. More calves are being produced and there are many older cows in the herd which were retained last year for breeding instead of being culled. Therefore we do not think that the present level of slaughter is unduly high. I am glad to confirm that it is declining still further.
We accept that many producers will be hard pressed to achieve even an economic return on sales at recent low prices, but good profits were made last year. I submit that profitability in the beef industry cannot be judged over a short time. It is, I am sure noble Lords will agree, a longterm business. Nor is it possible to generalise about the economics of an industry which has such a wide range of production systems and conditions.
The noble Lord, Lord Stanley of Alderley, asked me about the mark-up between the farm gate and the housewife. My Lords, I do not think one can talk about mark-ups in the meat industry in the same way one talks about bars of soap. There are a great many factors, as noble Lords know, affecting the retail price of a cut of meat in relation to the cost of the whole animal. But the Government have no reason to consider that butchers' returns are excessive.

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I was also asked about the comparison of fat cattle prices in the United Kingdom compared with France and Germany. For most of this year the average market prices for clean cattle in the United Kingdom have been in the range of £18·30 to £19 per live hundredweight and after two very low weeks prices are this week expected to return towards that level. The noble Lord quoted a distinctly low representative price. In general, average cattle prices in France and Germany appear to be about 40 to 50 per cent. above the United Kingdom in terms of their own currencies. There are many other factors which make it difficult to make a valid direct comparison in price terms.
There was also a question about the imports of cheap beef from the Continent, which was referred to by several noble Lords. I can neither confirm nor deny the matter of these particular consignments of beef, particularly the Charolais type referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Stanley of Alderley. However, I would be surprised if significant quantities of first quality beef were being imported at the prices quoted. Most of the recently increased supplies from Community countries have been of lower quality meat destined for manufacture which has to some extent been replacing much smaller recent imports of frozen beef from other countries. The increase in the United Kingdom guide price, which took effect yesterday, will in any case have the effect of reducing the compensatory amounts on both types of imports and so give our producers greater protection.
The noble Lord also asked me about the Meat and Livestock Commission Promotion Scheme. I think the scheme that he has in mind is that which was the subject of a memorandum sent to the Minister by the President of the National Farmers' Union recently which had been prepared in consultation with a number of other organisations. I hope the noble Lord will allow me to say that it would be wrong for me to indicate in advance anything that the Minister may decide, but I know that this is being carefully considered.
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The noble Lord also asked me about fencing grants. The decision to end the provision for fencing in the Farm Capital Grants Scheme was taken in 1972 after a comprehensive review of the scheme and a fresh evaluation of priorities. Fencing was one of several items which were thought to have less claim on the sums available than other kinds of work and facilities.
My Lords, I hope I have answered most of the questions asked by noble Lords, and that what I have said will assure the industry that the Government have their problems very much in mind; that what we have done already is a first step and that what we hope to do further, after continued negotiations with the Community, will improve the situation even further so that confidence will return to this great industry.

OLD LONDON ROAD, HYTHE, BURIAL GROUND BILL
Reported with Amendments.
CLERICAL, MEDICAL AND GENERAL LIFE ASSURANCE BILL [H.L.]
Returned from the Commons, agreed to with Amendments; the said Amendments considered and agreed to.

STATUTORY INSTRUMENTS
Twelfth Report from the Joint Committee made on certain Statutory Instruments and the following Instruments which require Affirmative Resolution:
County Courts Jurisdiction Order 1974,
Draft Agricultural Lime Scheme (Extension of Period) Order 1974,
Draft National Radiological Protection Board (Extension of Functions) Order 1974;
the said Report to be printed.
House adjourned at twenty-two minutes past nine o'clock.