Lords Sitting of 9 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 Manchester.

BARONESS FISHER OF REDNAL
Doris Mary Gertrude Fisher, wife of Joseph Fisher, Esquire, having been created Baroness Fisher of Rednal, of Rednal in the City of Birmingham, for life—Was, in her robes, introduced between the Baroness Summerskill and the Lord Peddie.
LORD DARLING OF HILLSBOROUGH
The Right Honourable George Darling, having been created Baron Darling of Hillsborough, of Crewe in Cheshire, for life—Was, in his robes, introduced between the Lord Peddie and the Lord Jacques, and made the solemn Affirmation.

ROYAL ASSENT
2.56 p.m.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR (LORD ELWYN-JONES): My Lords, I have to notify the House, in accordance with the Royal Assent Act 1967, that the Queen has signified Her Royal Assent to the following Acts and Measures:

Juries Act,

Prices Act,

Lord Chancellor (Tenure of Office and Discharge of Ecclesiastical Functions) Act,

Clerical, Medical and General Life Assurance Act,

Crude Oil Terminals (Humber) Act,

Morpeth Common Act,

University of Bristol Act,

Synodical Government (Amendment) Measure,

Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction (Amendment) Measure.

POSTAL STAMPS: COMMEMORATIVE ISSUES
LORD ORR-EWING: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name cn the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government why there has been a delay in announcing the commemorative postage stamps to be issued in 1975 and in particular the proposal, approved by the Swiss postal authorities, to have a joint stamp to mark the 50th anniversary of the first Anglo/Swiss ski race in 1925.
The MINISTER OF STATE, DEPARTMENT OF INDUSTRY (LORD BESWICK): My Lords, there has been no delay. I am advised that the Post Office aims to announce its annual stamp programme during the summer of the preceding year, but there is no specific date for the announcement. I understand that an Anglo-Swiss ski stamp is one of many proposals put to the Post Office for the 1975 stamp programme.
LORD ORR-EWING: My Lords, is the Minister aware that this matter passed through the stamp selection committee before the General Election and that the Swiss authorities are totally in favour of such an issue but are awaiting action from the United Kingdom? I wonder whether the noble Lord will agree that this matter might be speeded up, because it will be the first time that two nations have co-operated in the issue of a stamp about a subject on which they have co-operated so closely and for so many decades. May I express the hope that the Government of the day will seize this opportunity for co-operation in connection with a sport that is becoming ever more popular and which is worth commemorating?
LORD BESWICK: Yes, My Lords; the noble Lord is quite right. I understand that Switzerland has agreed to issue a special stamp if the Post Office here does likewise. But there are other claims upon the limited number of commemorative stamps that can be issued.
LORD WYNNE-JONES: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that while many of us entirely approve of the sport of

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ski-ing, we feel that stamps should sometimes be issued to commemorate distinguished scientists of this country, which has rarely been done?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, there are many claimants. Probably one reason why no statement has been made so far is that there are an exceptional number of claimants this year.
LORD SLATER: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that his observations in answering this particular Question are correct? Also, may I ask him to bear in mind what has happened about Keir Hardie and other people? While there is this huge demand for commemorative stamps, the Post Office must make a selection on this subject.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, I have no doubt that what my noble friend said is quite right.
LORD HUNT: My Lords, will the noble Lord also bear in mind, before a decision is taken about stamps in general and about commemorative stamps on the Anglo-Swiss ski race in particular, the value of the stamps in the future? May I also ask the noble Lord whether he feels able to consult with his honourable friend the Minister for Sport, Mr. Denis Howell, about the growing participation of young people in this valuable sport? Does he agree that this growing trend, particularly among secondary schools, sponsored by education authorities would be considerably encouraged and increased by the issue of such a stamp?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, there is a stamp advisory committee which considers all these matters, and of course what has been said by noble Lords, and in particular by the noble Lord, Lord Orr-Ewing, will be taken into account. But the fact still remains that the choice has to be made from among a number of claimants.
LORD BYERS: My Lords, is it not important that this should be seen as a matter of international collaboration between this country and Switzerland? Does not that give a different aspect to the whole matter?
LORD BESWICK: Yes, My Lords, it gives a very different aspect; and, in exactly the same way, every other
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claimant can also say that they have a very different aspect to their claim.
LORD BYERS: My Lords, are there any other claimants who have this international collaboration aspect?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, some claimants have a strength which arises from other factors.
LORD KINNAIRD: My Lords, is the Minister aware that, due to the gloomy wintery climate in England, a great many people are increasingly coming to Scotland? Is it not also recognised that Scottish people are always particularly welcomed abroad? For those reasons, would the Minister agree that as little delay as possible in a gesture of this kind would be welcome on both sides?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, if the noble Lord is suggesting that there should be co-operation between Scotland and England in this matter, then I would agree with him.
LORD SEGAL: My Lords, would my noble friend urge the Post Office to try to ensure that these letters reach their destination within a reasonable time of the anniversary they are supposed to commemorate?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, my noble friend has made a very witty observation such as is often made in this House, but it bears no relation to the fact that we still have one of the finest postal services in the world.
LORD ORR-EWING: My Lords, would the noble Lord the Minister agree that we all recognise that there are many claimants in this field, but this would be a philatelic "first"? It is the first time, as noble Lords from the Liberal Benches have said, that two countries have co-operated in a gesture such as this. Britain has given so much in the way of recreational tradition to the world in soccer, lawn tennis, golf and ski-ing, that surely it is worth commemorating it and reminding young people how much we have contributed.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, the noble Lord has a good point; he has made it very well and I suggest we leave it there.
LORD MAELOR: My Lords, so far as Wales is concerned, would the Minister agree not to have a special stamp, but rather to have free postage?

LAND RECLAMATION
3.4 p.m.
LORD VERNON: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will initiate research into the desirability of reclaiming for agricultural use the Maplin Sands and other suitable areas of seabed off the shores of the United Kingdom.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, some limited research into the feasibility of land reclamation is undertaken under the auspices of the Natural Environment Research Council. The available evidence indicates clearly that the cost of reclaiming the Maplin Sands and other major seabed areas is disproportionate to the value of such land for agriculture.
LORD VERNON: My Lords, while thanking the Minister for that reply, may I ask whether he appreciates that it is rather difficult to reconcile it with the Answer that I was given in a Written Reply that I received, to the effect that no information was available on this subject?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, if the noble Lord is saying that the Written Answer came from me, then I apologise. I will look again at the Question to see whether I can give him more information. As it is, I can give him quite a lot of information about the use of land and the advantages of developing marshy land, for example, as against that under sea water.
LORD VERNON: My Lords, before the Government finally make up their minds, will they consult the Government of the Netherlands who since the war have reclaimed so much land, to the great advantage of their country?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, so far as the Maplin Sands are concerned, I understand that to reclaim an area of 8,000 acres about £110 million would be required. In Holland they are dealing with an entirely different situation, with land which at one time was under cultivation, land which is not covered by deep water and land which can be reclaimed
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by the polder process which would not be possible outside of the Eastern coastline.
THE EARL OF LAUDERDALE: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that the increasing population density of many parts of the British Isles argues for a policy towards coastal land reclamation supported by such Governmental incentives as are now available for those who clear derelict land which is inland?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, I would not dispute that with the noble Earl. Something has been done; 2,000 acres have been reclaimed from the Wash. The noble Earl ought not overlook what we are doing in the matter of regeneration of grassland on hills. Since January, 1971, 567,000 acres have been treated and brought into full production. In the case of land cleared of scrub and woodland, nearly 41,000 acres have been claimed since 1971. So much is being done to bring more land into cultivation in this country, and it can be done much more effectively with greater cost/benefit than in the case of land beyond our coastline.
THE EARL OF LAUDERDALE: My Lords, in thanking the noble Lord for that reply, may I put this further question? Would the Government consider that as a general matter of policy it may be to the British advantage to set in hand a programme to encourage coastline reclamation in the same way as there is a programme to encourage clearance of derelict land in our industrial centres?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, there is a case for looking at this and, as I said, a certain amount of research is being done by the Ecological Research Station at Colney in Norfolk. But I ask the noble Earl not to overlook the fact that we are draining about a quarter of a million acres a year; that is equivalent to an area the size of Bedfordshire. Our investment is probably yielding a better return there than it would be in reclaiming land from the sea.
LORD LEATHERLAND: My Lords, if my noble friend is able to say that the Government do not intend to proceed with the Maplin Airport, will he give consideration to the following proposal: that the original acreage of sea should be reclaimed and used as land, and that that

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land should then be used either under a town development corporation or by sale of long leaseholds to private enterprise development companies, to create the most beautiful maritime garden city in the world?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, no doubt that opens up an interesting prospect, but the supplementary question would be better reserved until after the Statement which I expect will be made later this month about the Maplin project.
LORD MACKIE: My Lords, would the Minister agree that before paying for the reclamation of land it is more important to re-establish confidence among the farmers who are already farming land into which the Government may have put money, without knowing what the price of beef is going to be? Would he agree that perhaps the bottom of the market there is much more important?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, the noble Lord has a very good point. If he cares to put it down on the Order Paper as a Question I will answer it.

PEERS AND PARLIAMENTARY PENSIONS
3.9 p.m.
LORD MAELOR: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government how many Lords who previously sat in the House of Commons as M.P.s for over ten years are denied a Parliamentary pension.
THE LORD PRIVY SEAL (LORD SHEPHERD): My Lords, full information is not available, but 52 Peers who left the House of Commons after 1953 fall into this category.
LORD MAELOR: My Lords, while thanking the Minister for his reply may I ask whether he is aware that it was Plato, I believe, who said that the first purpose of politics is to secure justice? Is there any justice in my having a pension for 15 years' service when many noble Lords in this House this afternoon have 20 or over 20 years of service and are not in receipt of a pension? I heard
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recently that my noble friend Lord Brockway does not receive a pension.
A NOBLE LORD: Question!
LORD MAELOR: My Lords, if we paid Lord Brockway 10p for every Question he has asked in this House he would be a millionaire. However, I am prepared to drop the matter because I can tell the Minister that this evening this matter is to be discussed in the highest possible quarters. That will be good news for the victims of this anomaly in this House.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, my noble friend asked me a question about justice. Yes, My Lords; I am sure the House sympathises very much with regard to the anomalies that have arisen as a consequence of the grant of pensions in another place. But I think my noble friend and the House will recall that the Lawrence Committee and the Boyle Committee—the Boyle Committee in particular—reviewed this matter and reached the view that persons who did not participate in a scheme should not receive pension. This is of course in line with general pension policy right through the country, both in public and in private pension schemes.
LORD BOOTHBY: My Lords, while declaring a personal interest, may I ask the noble Lord whether he is aware that I was a Member of the House of Commons for 34 unbroken years, that I paid my contributions to the pensions fund, and that my present pension is nil?—I do not get a penny. And is not the noble Lord also aware that this scandal would not be permitted in any other known democracy in the world and ought to be brought to an end at the earliest possible moment?
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, this is not the first occasion on which the noble Lord has declared his interest in this particular matter, because I can remember this Question's being put down and previous Leaders of the House being required to answer it. But, whatever sympathy one may have here, it is a question of whether one should act. As a consequence of the two Reports I have referred to, and also of general pensions practice in public and in private pension schemes, it would seem to be wrong to

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provide out of public money for ex-Members of Parliament a service which is not available to any other individual.
LORD SHINWELL: My Lords, is my noble friend aware—I happen to know a little more about this than do some other noble Lords—that Members of your Lordships' House who retired after having served for ten years or more were qualified, but disqualified on grounds of age? They had not reached the retiring age which would entitle them to pension. In regard to Members of your Lordships' House who qualified because of length of service (as in the case of my noble friend Lord Boothby, and many others) but who retired before they reached the qualifying age, would it be possible for their service in your Lordships' House to be taken into account to qualify them for the pension?
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, I will carefully consider what my noble friend has said. I would put only one further point to the House in this respect. We are not of course a House which has any control over public funds. I should have thought that if a real sense of injustice exists, which I personally recognise, it is for another place to take account of it. Furthermore, I should have thought that if there is to be pressure on the Government on this matter steps should be taken to ensure that Ministers in another place, and the other place as a whole, are aware of the sense of injustice.
BARONESS BACON: My Lords, may I preface my question by stating that I am not one of those involved? In any discussions which take place on this matter, would not my noble friend agree that it is relevant to consider the fact that those who did not qualify for a pension and yet have given a great deal of service were Members of Parliament when the salary was extremely low, when there was no allowance for postage and when there was no allowance for secretarial help, and j that Members of Parliament in those days were working for a pittance and giving a good deal of their lives and now receive no pension whatsoever?
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, I could not disagree with my noble friend. That is history. It was in 1965 and again in 1972 that this situation was
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recognised and the House of Commons took the necessary steps.
LORD ROBBINS: My Lords, while recognising the constitutional point which the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, has made, may I ask whether the noble Lord would regard it as illegitimate for the sentiment to be ventilated in this House that this could all be put right in financial terms which would be pure "chicken feed"—
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, in your; Lordships' House I am aware of only one thing that is illegitimate. The noble Lord has put a question to me. I will consider it. But I think the fact of the matter is still that if this is to be put right i it is for the House of Commons to be so persuaded.
LORD JANNER: My Lords, while accepting my noble friend's reply, may I ask whether it is not essential that he as Leader of the House should at least put the point that Members of Parliament come to this House in consequence of the valuable service they have rendered (as did the noble Lord, Lord Boothby) in the other place? Is it not important in taking up the cause to emphasise that they might well have remained in the other place but felt it their duty to accept elevation to this House so that they could continue their duties here?
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, why a Member comes from another place to your Lordships' House is a matter for his own decision, and I would not wish to speculate on the various reasons why ex-Members of Parliament come to your Lordships' House. I still suggest that this is a matter for the House of Commons. I cannot help but reflect, in view of the pressure that is being placed upon me this afternoon, that I can look around your Lordships' House and see a number of colleagues who have served in this House for some 20-odd years without a salary and certainly with no pension to come at the end of their service.
LORD INGLEWOOD: My Lords, leaving aside the merits and demerits of this claim, would not the noble Lord agree that he was not entirely right in the way he suggested that the general principle under which public and private insurance schemes work in this country—that is to say, on the contribution record

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with benefit varying according to contributions—was ever expected to apply to this case, where one contribution entitled a Member to the full pension?
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, the case I was seeking to make is that I am not aware of any pension scheme which would apply to a person who did not participate in the scheme. That is the difficulty which is confronting us this afternoon in the case that is being made for those Members of Parliament who served in another place but who left another place before October 16, 1964. But, in the light of the pressure that is being placed upon me, and as has been the case on previous occasions with other Leaders of the House, I will ensure that the appropriate Minister has his attention drawn to the points which have been made this afternoon.
LORD BOOTHBY: My Lords, may I put one final and very brief point? May I ask the noble Lord whether he is aware that this demand is not confined to Members of this House, but applies to any man or woman who was a Member of Parliament for ten years or more, and what we claim is that they all deserve a pension?
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, again that is a point which I shall take into account.
LORD STRATHEDEN AND CAMPBELL: My Lords, as one who has been a Member of your Lordships' House for some 53 years, could I be considered a special case?

MENTAL ILLNESS: AFTERCARE
3.20 p.m.
LORD GAINFORD: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government how much research has been carried out to ascertain appropriate forms of care and rehabilitation of discharged patients from mental hospitals.
LORD WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, a great deal of relevant work has been carried out in the past twenty years both in this country and overseas which has made a real contribution to the under-
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standing of the problems of the mentally ill and the mentally handicapped. A number of projects supported financially bv the Government, some in progress and others completed, relate to the services needed by patients discharged from mental hospitals. In addition, the Government are sponsoring the evaluation of major mental illness developments both at Worcester and at Southampton. In the case of the mentally handicapped, an experiment in total care supervision is being developed in Sheffield.
LORD GAINFORD: My Lords, in thanking the noble Lord the Minister for that most encouraging reply which shows the concern of Her Majesty's Government, may I ask whether he is aware of the, apparently, many cases of lack of consultation between hospitals and local authorities which result in unfavourable accommodation being found for discharged patients from mental hospitals who are unable to return to live with families, relatives or friends?
LORD WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, the House will remember that in my reply of July 3 to the noble Countess, Lady Loudoun, I said that the Government were fully aware of the present deficiencies in the social services in providing for the mentally ill and the mentally handicapped. On that occasion I pointed out that there are many local authorities in the country who wish to develop educational, residential and occupational facilities. But the question is one of money and, as your Lordships know, it is necessary for local authorities to obtain loan sanction from the Department of Health and Social Security. Many local authorities have been given that loan sanction, but at the present moment the demand is far greater than the supply of money. What the noble Lord has said is perfectly true, but we are hoping that eventually we may be able to keep pace with the demand to provide these facilities.
LORD DAVIES OF LEEK: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that, despite the criticism of the social services, many of us believe that the treatment of mental patients in this country is still second to none? Would he therefore bring to the attention of the Ministry concerned the importance to discharged women patients of being sent out into the world in a dress

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that fits and with a hair-do that makes them feel like other women? So far as male patients are concerned, there ought to be expenditure on a good suit. Nothing is better for improving the morale of a man or a woman on discharge than to feel that they are wearing good clothes and look good. A hair-do or a good suit would do more for a patient than many people think.
LORD WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I take note of what my noble friend has said, but I should like to assure the House that far more is being done for the mentally ill and the mentally handicapped than perhaps many people in the community realise. The stay in mental hospitals to-day is considerably less than it was a few years ago.
LORD ST. JUST: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that although the standard of treatment of mental patients in this country may be high, we have to give the honours to those across the Border? The quality of treatment of mental patients in Scotland is probably the best in the world.

HUNTERSTON
BARONESS LLEWELYN-DAVIES OF HASTOE: My Lords, with the leave of the House at a convenient moment after 3.30 p.m. my noble friend Lord Hughes will be making a Statement on developments at Hunterston.
OLD LONDON ROAD, HYTHE, BURIAL GROUND BILL
Read 3a, with the Amendments, and passed, and returned to the Commons.
SPANISH AND PORTUGUESE JEWS (GOLDERS GREEN) BURIAL GROUND BILL
Read 3a, and passed.
FIFE COUNTY COUNCIL ORDER CONFIRMATION BILL
Read 3a, and passed.

COUNTY COURTS JURISDICTION ORDER 1974
3.28 p.m.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR THE LORD CHANCELLOR rose to move, That the Draft County Courts Jurisdiction Order 1974, laid before the House on June 25, be approved. The noble and learned Lord "aid: My Lords, the draft Order before t you has the merit of brevity and simplicity. Since 1846, when the county courts were first established, successive County Courts Acts have contained provisions defining the jurisdiction of the county courts by placing an upper limit upon the value of claims which may be brought in them. These limits have always recognised that the county courts j were designed as district courts, reasonably accessible to local communities throughout the country, where comparatively small civil claims could be pursued under a relatively simple and expeditious procedure, without incurring the expense and greater length of time involved in litigating in the High Court. The High Court was preferably reserved for the pursuit of larger and more complex claims requiring the greater judicial experience and expertise of a High Court Judge.
The steady erosicn of the value of money since the time when the county courts were first established has made it necessary progressively to raise the monetary limits of the county court jurisdiction to take account of it. In 1846 the upper limit of the county court jurisdiction in contract and tort cases was £20. This was raised to £50 in 1888, £100 in 1903, £200 in 1938, £400 in 1955 and £500 in 1966. The last time when this limit was raised was in 1970, when the jurisdiction of the county courts in contract and tort claims was brought up to its present level of £750. Since 1970, alas, the value of money has fallen by approximately one-third, and the purpose of the draft Order now before your Lordships is to reflect this fall in the value of money by raising the existing upper limit of the jurisdiction of the county courts in claims in contract and tort from £750 to £1,000.
For the same purpose, the draft Order also makes certain consequential changes to other monetary limits provided for in the County Courts Act in its present form.

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The amount which a plaintiff proceeding in the High Court must recover in order to be entitled to costs in the High Court scale is raised from £500 to £650, and the amount which such a plaintiff must recover in order to recover any costs at all is raised from £100 to £150. The draft Order also provides for the jurisdiction of county court registrars to be raised from £75 to £100, in order to keep the registrar's jurisdiction in balance with the new level of that of the judges.
The actual volume of judicial work which is likely to be transferred from the High Court to the county courts as a result of this Order is not very great. The number of writs for actions issued annually out of the Queen's Bench Division of the High Court which fall within the new proposed jurisdiction of the county courts—that is to say, those which lie in the bracket between £750 and £1,000—is approximately 18,000. Even if all these cases were transferred to the county courts, the increase in their work would not be significant in a context in which they arc already dealing with some one and a half million plaints a year. Only a small proportion of these are likely to come to trial. Of all the actions commenced in the Queen's Bench Division only about 1½ per cent, are actually tried—a very happy state of affairs, otherwise the burden upon the courts themselves would be intolerably heavy. The overwhelming majority of actions are either dealt with summarily, settled out of court, or withdrawn. As to the raising of the registrars' jurisdiction, the effect of this again will not increase the overall work-load of the registrars by a significant amount.
Your Lordships may ask why, since we may in the future possibly have to face further falls in the value of our money, we do not anticipate that unhappy prospect to some extent by raising the county court jurisdiction above the new proposed limit of £1,000, to, say, £1,250 or £1,500. There are clearly arguments in favour of that. But there is one overriding consideration which militates against it. This consideration lies in the field of costs. The upper scale of county court costs is already not far below the High Court scale, so that if the county court jurisdiction was raised significantly above £i 000 it would be necessary to fix the upper limits of the county court
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costs at levels which would invade the High Court scale, and thus require a complete upwards revision of the High Court scale; otherwise the overlapping of the two scales would mean that there would be no saving of costs by suing in the county courts.
I should, I think, refer to one last consequence of the draft Order; namely, its effect upon the present useful provisions for arbitration in the county courts. The consequence of raising the jurisdiction of registrars from £75 to £100 will be to raise by a similar amount the present limits upon a claim which a registrar may, on his own authority and without need to obtain a judge's consent, refer to himself as arbitrartor under the new arbitration procedure.
Noble Lords may wish to know that before this draft Order was laid the principal official bodies affected by it were fully consulted. Among those whose views were sought were the Bar Council, The Law Society, the Council of Circuit Judges, the Association of County Court Registrars, and the Under Sheriffs' Association—so that the ground has indeed been well traversed. I am happy to say that the principle underlying this Order; namely, that the jurisdiction of the county courts should be raised in order to reflect the fall in the value of money, has proved without exception to be acceptable to all those whose opinion was sought. I beg to move.
Moved, That the Draft County Courts Jurisdiction Order 1974, laid before the House on June 25, be approved.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
3.37 p.m.
LORD HAILSHAM OF SAINT MARYLEBONE: My Lords, I anticipate that the House will be prepared without very much discussion to give assent to what the noble and learned Lord has just proposed, and I think I can say without much hesitation that had affairs been different I should have taken the same course. The immediate proposal is of | course acceptable on the grounds that the noble and learned Lord has stated; namely, that it is really only rather tardily following in the wake of the erosion in the value of money which has been constant and increasing. Therefore, the noble and learned Lord is really only running up a moving staircase which is running

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down, and what has been done is rather less than to preserve the status quo.
There are two comments which I should like to make, one of which relates to what the noble and learned Lord has said and one of which relates to what he did not say. As regards the first, it is of course true that quite apart from the erosion in the value of money, which is the principal reason why the noble and learned Lord has progressed from £750 to £1,000, the jurisdiction of the county court has been immensely increased in area since both of us went to the Bar. On the whole, this has been a matter of great advantage, particularly to those who live in the Provinces. I myself would have seen no overriding objection to raising the county court limit higher than the noble and learned Lord has seen fit to do. It is of course true that that would have led to some overlap with High Court costs, but in simple cases there would still have been considerable advantage in suing in the county court, both on the grounds of proximity and on the grounds of convenience to parties and witnesses.
The other comment I want to make—and I think this is an appropriate moment to make it—is that my own conviction, as a result of my experiences in the office which the noble and learned Lord now holds, has been that the whole business of High Court and county court jurisdiction is really ripe for a development analogous to that which we carried out three years ago on the criminal jurisdiction of the Assizes and quarter sessions. There is, really an overwhelming case for amalgamating the two jurisdictions and assigning cases to a district court or to a central court with a suitable judge, not on the basis of the level of the claim only, but on the basis of convenience or difficulty. We have come a very long way since 1846 when the county court was started in its present form and the old £20 claim, because on any view of inflation the development in the value of money has not been of that order.
I think the time has really come when the Lord Chancellor's office ought to consider carefully whether an exercise comparable to that caried out in the Courts Act 1971 ought to be carried out in relation to our civil jurisdiction, and I hope the noble and learned Lord will consider that suggestion carefully. I believe
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that many ancillary advantages would be found, although a great deal of work would be involved, both in the preliminary inquiries and consultations, and in the difficulties which, necessarily, always accompany a structural change. I am happy to commend this Motion to the House, but I hope that the noble and learned Lord will take account of what I have said.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR. My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble and learned Lord for his acceptance and welcome of this Order. The difficulty about raising the figure of jurisdiction is its impact on costs, but it is a matter to which we gave consideration. As to the suggestion that the time may now be ripe to review the respective functions of the civil court, I will certainly take that suggestion on board and we will examine the matter. Since the Courts Act was introduced by the noble and learned Lord, there has been a very great improvement in the criminal field and it may be that there are useful lessons to be learned in the civil field as well. We are grateful for the suggestion.
LORD ROBBINS: My Lords, I have only a simple question to put to the noble and learned Lord who sits on the Woolsack. From his observations and his anticipations of a future erosion in the value of money—which I am sure none of us would wish to contradict—it follows that from now onwards, as the value of money deteriorates by, say, 15 per cent, or 20 per cent, in the next twelve months, the area covered by the present Order will be altered. Without committing myself at all to the fashionable nostrum of universal indexation I should like to inquire whether thought has been given to attaching a figure to an easily constructible index number, which would obviate the necessity for introducing a similar Order in twelve months' time.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, that is an interesting suggestion. The difficulty, as I said, is that the jurisdictional figure is linked with the costs figure, which presents certain problems. One does not want to see an unnecessary upturn in the costs side because of an increase in the jurisdictional side, but we will certainly look at the suggestion. The declining value of money presents us all with a kind of stone of Sisyphus—we

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never quite cope with the situation—but this is the best we can do at the moment without causing a substantial increase in the costs of litigation, which I am sure noble Lords would not welcome.
VISCOUNT AMORY: My Lords, with the deepest respect to the views of the noble Lord, Lord Robbins, I suggest to your Lordships that every additional thing which is subjected to indexation—which I think is the new word and which is directly related to increases in the cost of living—is just one more brick in the edifice of continuing inflation.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

HUNTERSTON: DEVELOPMENT PROPOSALS
3.44 p.m.
THE MINISTER OF STATE, SCOTTISH OFFICE (LORD HUGHES): My Lords, with the leave of the House, I should like to repeat a Statement which is being made in another place by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Scotland about his proposals for development at Hunterston. I must apologise for the length of the Statement which is as follows:
" With permission, I should like to inform the House of my proposals for Hunterston. A fuller statement of the strategy the Government will adopt, together with the conclusions I have reached on the planning applications now before me have been placed in the Library.
" My principal concern is to ensure that the limited area of flat land at Hunterston is used by industries which both require access to exceptionally deep water and will make a substantial contribution to the Scottish economy. Nothing less would justify the serious environment sacrifice which is inevitably involved. Three major industrial uses have so far emerged as candidates for the use of the site: steel, oil refineries and gravity platform construction for North Sea Oil development.
"I deal first with steel. Present plans envisage the expansion of the steel industry in Scotland by some 25 per cent, over the next 10 years. I am glad to tell the House that the British Steel Corporation has now decided to
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build a direct reduction plant at Hunterston, the first of its kind in Britain, which will produce 400,000 metric tonnes a year of iron feed for the electric arc furnaces in Scotland and elsewhere. The cost of this will be around £15 to £20 million. In addition, work has started on the construction of the iron ore terminal at Hunterston, and together these two projects amount to a commitment of £55 to £60 million in steel industry development on the peninsula. Hunterston is also one of the sites in the West of Scotland under consideration for the Corporation's new electric arc plant announced in the White Paper on the Ten Year Development Stategy for Steel, plans for which are nearing completion. Together with the developments at Ravenscraig, these new projects wll give Scotland a total stcelmaking capacity in modern plant of 4½ million metric tonnes.
" I consider it essential that sufficient land remains available at Hunterston for longer-term steel development additional to these projects. The continued growth of this industry is essential to a large part of Scotland's industrial economy, and Hunterston is without doubt one of the best sites available for future steel development in North-West Europe. Not to safeguard sufficient space for this purpose would be a serous failure to accept our responsibility for the future.
" The next category of industry is oil refineries. Following a public inquiry in 1970 my predecessor decided against zoning land for a refinery at Hunterston on the application then submitted by Chevron. I now have before me revised applications by both Chevron and ORSI. My predecessor's memorandum of May 30 last year indicated that, although a refinery on its own was unlikely to be acceptable, the case for one could be considered if it was associated with other developments which would together bring substantial benefit to the Scottish economy. In particular, it was suggested that a refinery might be associated with steel development if refinery gas were supplied on attractive terms to meet the requirements of a direct reduction plan. However, the British Steel Corporation have now told me that they no longer see any significant advantage in this form of energy

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supply as compared with the natural gas which will shortly be available from the North Sea. Furthermore, I am now advised that future steel developments, particularly an integrated basic oxygen plant and the finishing processes that might be associated with it, could need some of the land which is now the subject of the refinery applications.
" I have also had to pay special attention to the conclusions now reached by the Nuclear Safety Advisory Committee after a very lengthy and thorough study. The Committee's Report suggests that provided certain stringent safeguards on siting, design, construction and operation of the installations were strictly observed a refinery would not be incompatible with requirements to safeguard the two nuclear power stations already on the peninsula. My concern is first for life and property in the area, including any risk to a major source of electric power supply to the Scottish economy; and, secondly, to permit no development at Hunterston which could subsequently constitute an unduly inhibiting effect upon further development of land for which the site is specially suited. I have therefore concluded that I should be only justified in permitting refinery development, with all the safeguarding requirements this would entail, if there were overriding reasons for the Hunterston site being chosen for such development. I am not persuaded that such reasons exist.
" I therefore have it in mind to reject both applications, but I do so with regret, and in full recognition of the scale of the developments themselves, 'the substantial projects associated with them and of their potential for future development in the economy.
" Finally, I come to the question of oil platform sites. The rapid growth in the volume of proven North Sea oil reserves and the urgent need for the United Kingdom to reduce her dependence upon imported supplies have created a pressing demand for gravity production platforms for this new industry. Substantial benefits would be derived both for Scottish industry and employment and for the United Kingdom balance of payment from suitable construction sites. I have
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already a planning application for the construction of these platforms at Hunterston and other projects are expected to follow. This type of development is not incompatible with the long-term use of land for the steel industry and recent studies indicate that Hunterston could well provide good sites for gravity platform construction. Accordingly, I have decided that land should be available for this purpose at Hunterston, and further work is in hand to settle the detailed siting and appropriate scale of development.
" Those who get orders for platform construction must do so on their merits and not simply because they have access to a site. I intend, therefore, to ensure that the Hunterston sites will be available only to firms who obtain orders, and I propose to enter into consultations with Ayr County Council and with the Hunterston Development Company to discuss these matters.
" I have reached these conclusions on the most careful examination of all the evidence now before me. I am to meet Ayr County Council on July 26 to receive their views and to consider action before further planning decisions are taken. My Department are writing to Chevron and ORSI today informing them of my conclusions and inviting their comments prior to my finally deciding their applications."
My Lords, that is the end of the Statement.
3.52 p.m.
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON:My Lords, I should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, for repeating to this House his right honourable friend's most important and interesting Statement. I have one or two questions to ask, and the first one deals with the construction of platforms at Hunterston. I am sure all noble Lords fully appreciate the need for such constructions, but I think one must express concern lest this decision is going to inhibit the future use of this area for navigational purposes. There are other deep-sea areas around the coast of Scotland which could possibly be used' for the construction platforms. There is no suitable deep-sea area likely to be suitable for navigational purposes near such an important site, and in the

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day of the super tanker that is the first point to put to the noble Lord.
My Lords, the next point made by the noble Lord dealt with the turning down by his right honourable friend of the refinery construction at Hunterston. I fully appreciate the cogent reasons given in the Statement for this, but I should like the noble Lord to assure the House that this is part of an overall planning matter dealing with the refinery, and not just a piecemeal decision dealing with Hunterston. Therefore, taking it as being part of a larger picture, can the noble Lord say what progress is being made on the Stewarton refinery near Hunterston? Also, what is the latest information we have on the plan by B.P. to double the output of the refinery at Grangemouth? If we had more knowledge on the plans for Stewarton and Grangemouth, we might be able to see more clearly the general picture of the action taken by the Government on this matter.
I must congratulate the Government on, and also welcome, that part of the Statement dealing with steel. The news that there is to be a direct reduction plant will be welcomed by all. I also welcome the news that the steel capacity of Scotland is to be built up to 4½ million tonnes. As noble Lords will be aware, when we were in government at the end of 1972, we promised to do this as well. I am glad that it is going to be done. While on the subject of steel, and I apologise for asking so many questions, can we be told whether there is any more news of the iron ore pelletisation plant which has recently ben mooted for Hunterston?
3.55 p.m.
LORD MACKIE OF BENSHIE: My Lords, we welcome the news that a decision has been taken to erect a steel reduction plant at Hunterston, and even more do we welcome the news that extra land will be kept for further development. This is particularly welcome. Can the noble Lord tell the House when this is likely to start? The Statement mentions that work has commenced on the iron ore terminal, but when is a start likely to be made on the plant? With reference to oil refineries, can the noble Lord tell us whether he is seeking to site these refineries elsewhere? Is all possible help being given to those companies to site the refineries in other parts of Scotland?
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With reference to platform construction, this is an excellent move which appears to be moving towards some form of central planning in platform construction, taking into account the dangers to navigation. May I ask the noble Lord how many platforms can be built in that area? Will this take off the pressure from areas of great natural beauty like Drumbuie? Would the Government be prepared to spend money on dredging and other works to enable them to site the platforms in this area, thus preventing the ruining of areas of great natural beauty? This means that a great deal of work is going on around Hunterston. Is the noble Lord satisfied that in that area, which is near Glasgow, the infrastructure will stand the increase in work? We do not want the social mess that is going on round Tain, Invergordon and elsewhere which has totally swamped the infrastructure; the large number of jobs has made for the moment a social desert of the area. Is the noble Lord satisfied that the area can take the hoped-for increase in the number of jobs?
3.58 p.m.
LORD HUGHES: My Lords, if I may follow the usual procedure and reply first to the two Front Bench spokesmen, I am grateful to them for the way in which they have received this very important Statement. I apologised for the length of the Statement, but I think that noble Lords will appreciate that to deal with three subjects of such great importance to Scotland could not have been done in a few words.
The noble Lord, Lord Mowbray and Stourton, asked questions on steel, refineries and on production platforms. If I might deal with these, first of all on the question of refineries (and to some extent this deals with the question from the noble Lord, Lord Mackie of Benshie), the Secretary of State will be making an announcement very soon on refinery capacity. This will be the occasion for answering these questions. With reference to steel, the noble Lord, Lord Mowbray and Stourton, asked about the private development which is projected. This will have to be examined in detail, but a direct reduction plant, which produces iron feed from ore, need not be in competition with the British Steel

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Corporation; so it is possible for them to live together.
On the subject of production platforms, the noble Lord, Lord Mackie of Benshie, asked how many sites there would be at Hunterston. It seems that there could be at least two sites; even more might be possible. Of course, all this must be examined in depth. So far as the effects on Drumbuie are concerned, I appreciate the tremendous interest there is in this, but I cannot possibly at this stage anticipate what the Secretary of State may decide. He has just recently received the Report of the Inquiry and is considering what is to be done there.
On the subject of navigation, which the noble Lord, Lord Mowbray and Stourton, raised, I can assure him that the development which we have in mind for the platform sites will not impede navigation in any way, and suitable warnings to shipping will be given in advance. So far as the Stewarton refinery is concerned, I may say that there are no plans for that at the present time. The final point of the noble Lord, Lord Mackie of Benshie, was on the question of infrastructure. I think I can sum it up by asking whether we are to repeat all the unsatisfactory conditions which have taken place elsewhere having regard to what the state of the land is at the present time and what it might be once the development gets under way? The best I can say is that we hope we can learn from previous mistakes and not necessarily repeat them all.
LORD GREENWOOD OF ROSSENDALE: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that many of us are disturbed by the fact that these decisions in the energy field are being taken on an ad hoc basis? Will the Government consider the possibility of establishing a standing planning inquiry commission on energy matters so that a consistent policy can be evolved?
LORD HUGHES: My Lords, I am not certain it will be done exactly in the form for which my noble friend asks, but I can assure him that in the very near future a Statement will be made which will put matters in a much better perspective than they are at the present time.
THE EARL OF GLASGOW: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord this question? We have steel and we do not have oil at Hunterston; that will leave a considerable area of the peninsular presumably not required for industry. Could the noble Lord give some assurance that that area, possibly to the South of the peninsular, could be re-zoned for agriculture at the earliest possible moment. The dislocation of the lives of the farming community of that area over the last six years has been quite appalling; they have never known whether to plant their potatoes or what to do. Some firm decision must be made on what remains of the area when the allocation has been made for the steel industry.
LORD HUGHES: My Lords, I would suggest to the noble Earl that he might wish to consult the very detailed Statement, which will be available in the Library, and after reading it he might feel that it might be of advantage to himself and to the House to put down a specified Question on the subject.
THE EARL OF LAUDERALE: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord one or two questions arising out of the Statement, which we all welcome in general. Can he tell us on what basis the site or sites considered suitable for gravity platform construction will be made available to firms that have a firm order? My second question is with regard to refinery policy; can he assure us that the desirability of welcoming to this country—in suitable places—service refineries which will export their products to the United States has not been excluded from consideration. Finally, are we to understand that the project for private enterprise pelletising plant is still, in fact, quite open?
LORD HUGHES: My Lords, the answer to the third question is, yes. Could the noble Earl remind me of his first question?
THE EARL OF LAUDERDALE: I asked about the terms on which the sites could be made available to gravity platform construction firms who have a firm order.
LORD HUGHES: My Lords, it is a little early to say. As the Statement said, the sites would be made available not to people who would hawk around

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to get orders, but to people who have got orders. It would be easy perhaps to say first come first served, but obviously one must have regard to what will be the best use of the sites. We must wait and find out exactly what will be the most advantageous method of allocating these sites, so that the best use of them can be made in Scotland's interest. The noble Earl's second question was?
THE EARL OF LAUDERDALE: My second question was about the consideration of the desirability of encouraging the establishment of service refineries in suitable parts of Britain so that products can be exported to the United States.
LORD HUGHES: My Lords, I said that there would very soon be a Statement by the Secretary of State for Energy in relation to refinery policy. I would suspect that that Statement would be repeated in your Lordships' House and I would be surprised if the noble Earl did not repeat the question then with the prospect of getting a more satisfactory answer than he can get from me just now.
THE EARL OF LAUDERDALE: My Lords, are we to understand that the Government have decided to take over the platform construction sites and lease them to constructors, or is the method of making them available still an open question?
LORD HUGHES: My Lords, the answer to the second part of the question is. Yes.
VISCOUNT MASSEREENE AND FERRARD: My Lords, as a commissioner on the Hunterston local inquiry hearing the appeals of local inhabitants, may I ask the Government whether they have really taken any account of those appeals? We made very strong recommendations, and, of course, the Inquiry was only about the actual oil terminal. Have the Government taken into consideration the recommendations we made that this oil terminal was to be screened by various means and the least disturbance caused? We now hear that we are to have oil terminals, we are to have platforms built, rigs built. I feel that the Government have been rather highhanded in this with regard to the local inhabitants. What is the point in having
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these inquiries if we make recommendations and the Government take no notice of them? There are plenty of places in the Western Highlands where there is very deep water in which the platforms can be built. My point is that I think the Government have completely dismissed the recommendations of the Inquiry and the wishes of the local inhabitants.
LORD HUGHES: My Lords, the noble Lord reminds me of the days when I was in local government and one of the most difficult problems was trying to find a site for a public convenience. Everybody recognised the necessity for it, but everybody wanted it somewhere else. The same applies to industrial development on virgin sites; everybody accepts that this is very necessary for the economy of Scotland, provided that somebody else gets all the disadvantages and they share in the advantages. I can assure the noble Viscount that the Secretary of State, as was his duty, took into account all the evidence given to Inquiries; he will not depart from that. As every Inquiry is necessary, because they start off with totally conflicting views, it must inevitably follow that when a decision is reached some people are more pleased than others.
LORD MERRIVALE: My Lords, the Minister referred to a new steel industry in Scotland. May I ask him whether Her Majesty's Government will bear in mind that in Mauretania in Africa we have a good friend—they have huge iron ore deposits—and that in the consortium there is a 19 per cent. British holding? At the moment, we are fortunate in having as a guest in this country, His Excellency, the Mauretanian Ambassador who is on an official visit from Paris. In view of these circumstances, would it be possible to consider increasing our imports of iron ore from that part of Africa?
LORD HUGHES: My Lords, the noble Lord puts forward a very interesting piece of information. It does not directly arise from this Statement, but I am certain it will be of interest to my right honourable friends if they are not already aware of it. I will certainly make sure that their attention is drawn to what was said.
THE EARL OF CROMARTIE: My Lords, may I ask the Minister—because, I as he knows, I am involved in this question of oil in Ross and Cromarty—whether he would please impress upon his honourable friends in another place to let us have a directive as soon as possible regarding the overall requirements for the siting of oil refineries.
LORD HUGHES: My Lords, this sounds another very useful question to put after the Statement on oil refinery policy is made.
THE DUKE OF ATHOLL: My Lords, can the noble Lord tell us whether the Government will publish a list of sites apart from Hunterston which they would approve for oil rig construction and, if so, when?
LORD HUGHES: Yes, My Lords, soon.
LORD STRATHCLYDE: My Lords, will the noble Lord remind us as to the area of land that is to be taken over for these various purposes? Can he further say how it is to be acquired, and who is to own it in the future?
LORD HUGHES: No, My Lords, I am afraid I do not know the answer to those questions. I am quite certain that that is ' because the noble Lord, with his usual ingenuity, has produced a supplementary for which I have not been briefed in advance. If he will put it down as a specific Question, I am quite certain that I shall be placed in the position of being able to answer correctly, rather than guess at it at the moment.
LORD STRATHCLYDE: I am grateful to the noble Lord.
LORD BALERNO: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord whether the preference by the Steel Corporation for the use of North Sea gas, rather than gas from the refinery, is due to the difference in the quality of the gas or to other reasons?
LORD HUGHES: My Lords, this was a technical decision made by the British Steel Corporation. I have no doubt that they have consulted their own best interests in this matter, which will probably be the interests of Scotland generally in that, presumably, they wish to produce the end product at the lowest possible price.
LORD HOY: My Lords, may I ask my noble friend one question about the acreage of land that is to be retained for future use by the British Steel Corporation? Can my noble friend tell me how many acres will be involved, and when it is anticipated by the British Steel Corporation that they will use this land?
LORD HUGHES: My Lords, the immediate requirements for the projects that have been indicated are of the order of 400 acres, but the total which might be required could be of the order of 1,500 acres. It may be a number of years before all of these projects can be finalised. This is why my right honourable friend considers it important that the land should not be put to use in the interval on a short-term basis which would in any way prejudice the long-term need for this land for steel purposes. The order of time during which these projects might be developed would probably be somewhere around 10 years.
THS EARL OF PERTH: My Lords, arising out of that last answer, and while welcoming the news of the steel reduction plant, may I ask the noble Lord to be a little more precise on the timetable? If the British Steel Corporation is to take 10 years or more to get down to work, will they allow others to participate in some part of the work?
LORD HUGHES: My Lords, I hope that I did not give the impression that it would be 10 years before anything started. I talked about a 10-year duration for these decisions. The decisions that have been taken will be started very soon indeed, and the construction time is of the order of three years in each case.
BARONESS ELLIOT OF HARWOOD: My Lords, while adding my congratulations that the Government have now come to this very important decision which has been pending for so many years, might I put in a small plea that the Government will not forget that there are other parts of Scotland where Hunterston steel and oil play no part, and where large industrial developments are being planned? I am thinking of my own area of Tweedbank. I hope that the noble Lord, who also lives in an area where steel and oil do not necessarily operate, will see that those of us on

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whom what is being done in Hunterston has very little effect at all, will not be forgotten in the development plans for Scotland.
LORD HUGHES: My Lords, my own desires in these matters coincide with those of the noble Baroness, and, as she is aware, I disagree with her only if it is absolutely essential that I should do so. Our interests coincide and, if possible, I will see that they are not forgotten.
LORD ABERDARE: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that there are plenty of deep sea sites in Wales? Will he not forget Wales as well?
LORD HUGHES: My Lords, as I said in reply to a question the other day from my noble friend Lord Maelor, we have enough trouble without my going to Wales looking for it.

HOUSING (SCOTLAND) BILL
4.15 p.m.
LORD HUGHES: My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now resolve itself into Committee on this Bill.
Moved, that the House do now resolve itself into Committee.—(Lord Hughes.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
[The Earl of Listowel in the Chair.]
Clauses 1 to 4 agreed to.
Clause 5 [Amount of improvement grant].
LORD HUGHES LORD HUGHES moved Amendment No. 1:
Page 5, line 10, leave out (" works of repair and replacement") and insert ("improvement works ").
The noble Lord said: Your Lordships will have noticed that there are a considerable number of Amendments to this Bill, but I assure you that all of them are drafting in character. The first of these—and Amendment No. 2 is on the same subject—is a purely drafting Amendment to correct an error made when the other place amended this rather
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD HUGHES: I beg to move Amendment No. 2.
Amendment moved—
Page 5, line 15, leave out ("works of repair and replacement") and insert ("improvement works ").—(Lord Hughes.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 5, as amended, agreed to.
Clauses 6 to 8 agreed to.
Clause 9 [Conditions to be observed with respect to houses in respect of which an improvement grant has been made, and registration thereof]:
LORD HUGHES LORD HUGHES moved Amendment No. 3:
Page 9, line 12, leave out (" housing association ") and insert ("registered housing association ").
The noble Lord said: Amendments Nos. 3, 4 and 19 all deal with the same subject. They are purely drafting Amendments. Because the provisions for the registering of housing associations are contained in the Housing Bill it was not possible, according to convention, to refer in the Scottish Bill to "registered housing associations" until the English Bill was before this House. It is now in order to do so, and therefore the Amendments are tabled. I beg to move.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD HUGHES: I beg to move Amendment No. 4.
Amendment moved—
Page 9, line 13, at end insert ("; and "registered "has the same meaning as in section 111(2) of the Housing Act 1974.").—(Lord Hughes.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 9, as amended, agreed to.
Clauses 10 to 15 agreed to.
Clause 16 [Declaration of housing action areas for improvement]:
4.19 p.m.
LORD HUGHES: Amendment No. 5 is a drafting Amendment to achieve consistency of wording. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 15, line 26, leave out ("will") and insert (" shall ").—(Lord Hughes.)
VISCOUNT SIMON: I hesitate to intervene in a Scottish Bill, and I recognise that our common language is not always

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used in exactly the same way in Scotland and in England, but it seems to me that this search for consistency results in a piece of very bad grammar. The purpose of this subsection is to state that certain things shall be done, the effect of which is that "the houses in the area" will meet the standard. That seems to me to be the ordinary English expression, not that the houses in the area shall meet the standard. That is the effect of the action taken on the first of the subsections which is quite correctly expressed as "shall" because it is the authoritative future, but the "will" is just a perfectly ordinary future saying that as a result of the action taken the houses will meet that standard. Will the noble Lord consider looking again at this point between now and Report stage?
LORD HUGHES: I hesitate to enter into a disputation with the noble Viscount on the question of which is the better grammar, either in England or in Scotland. But, on the off chance that he may be right—which I think is more likely—and rather than making this Amendment and then returning to the matter at a later stage, I shall beg leave to withdraw it with the permission of the Committee, so that we may re-examine it and decide whether the draftsman's first thoughts were more grammatically correct than his second. If it should turn out that it is desirable to follow his second line, I will re-table the Amendment at Report stage.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
LORD HUGHES LORD HUGHES moved Amendment No. 5A:
Page 15, line 29, leave out from (" area ") to the end of line 31.
The noble Lord said: I should draw your Lordships' attention to Amendment No. 6. It leaves out the words "or shall be brought up to." When I looked at my brief this morning I found that the purpose of Amendment No. 6 was to remove some superfluous words. But when I compared it with the Bill, I discovered that there were a number of other words which could be regarded as superfluous. Working on the basis that it is always desirable, to take out many unnecessary words rather than a few, I tabled the manuscript Amendment No. 5A which,
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therefore, takes the place of Amendment No. 6. I beg to move.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 16, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 17 [Declaration of housing action areas for demolition and improvement.]
LORD HUGHES: Amendment No. 7 is consequential on the previous Amendment. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 16, line 21, leave out from ("area") to the end of line 22 and insert (" shall meet that standard ").—(Lord Hughes.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 17, as amended, agreed to.
Clauses 18 to 34 agreed to.
Clause 35 [Local authority may control occupation of houses in housing action area.]:
LORD HUGHES LORD HUGHES moved Amendment No. 8:
Page 30, line 12, leave out (" any ") and insert (" that ").
The noble Lord said: Amendments Nos. 8 and 9 serve the same purpose. They are drafting Amendments, consequential on Amendments made to the clause at Report stage in another place. I beg to move Amendment No. 8.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD HUGHES: I beg to move Amendment No. 9.
Amendment moved—
Page 30, line 13, after ("house") insert (" or any other house ").—(Lord Hughes.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD HUGHES LORD HUGHES moved Amendment No. 10:
Page 30, line 31, at end insert ("in relation to any house affected by any of the following events, that is to say ")
The noble Lord said: This is a drafting Amendment intended to make clear the circumstances in which a control of Occupation Order ceases to have effect. I should perhaps read the text. As drafted, the subsection merely lists five cases in which the Order ceases to operate. The Amendment recognises that there are some cases in which the

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Order ceases to apply to individual houses and others in which it ceases to apply to all the houses in respect of which it was originally made. As the Bill stands, if the local authority, at the final resolution stage, decide that one house should be improved rather than demolished, that decision would lead to the lifting of the Control of Occupation Order from all the houses which it covered. The Amendments ensure that in those circumstances the Order would be lifted only from the house affected by the local authority's decision. I beg to move.
LORD STRATHCLYDE: Could we have the Amendment read to us, because on the paper I have the writing know what it is all about.
THE CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES: I apologise to the noble Lord. I will read out the Amendment again. Amendment proposed—
"Page 30, line 31, at end insert ("in relation to any house affected by any of the following events, that is to say").
LORD STRATHCLYDE: I thank the Lord Chairman.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 35, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 36 [Obligations of local authorities in relation to rehousing in housing action areas.]:
LORD HUGHES LORD HUGHES moved Amendment No. 11:
Page 31, line 9, leave out (" a local ") and insert (" and where a local authority are under a duty by virtue of section 36 of the Land Compensation (Scotland) Act 1973 to rehouse him, the ")
The noble Lord said: This is a drafting Amendment to tidy up the clause which was introduced at Report stage in another place in response to discussions in Standing Committee. I beg to move.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 36, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 37 [Application to sheriff for possession where house is identified in accordance with section 20(1) as read with section 18(4)(a).]
4.26 p.m.
LORD HUGHES LORD HUGHES moved Amendment No. 12:
Page 31, line 32, leave out ("two") and insert (" four ").
The noble Lord said: Amendments Nos. 12, 13 and 14 all serve the same purpose. These Amendments give a longer period of notice to tenants who have to vacate their houses either permanently or temporarily as a result of an Order granted by the sheriff under the provisions of Part III of the Bill. Amendment No. 12 substitutes for the minimum period of two weeks the minimum period of four weeks. The next Amendment increases the period to not more than six weeks instead of not more than four weeks. I beg to move.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD HUGHES: I beg to move Amendment No. 13.
Amendment moved—
Page 31, line 33, leave out ("four") and insert (" six ").—(Lord Hughes.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 37, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 38 agreed to.
Clause 39 [Application to sherifj for possession where house is identified in accordance with section 20(1) as read with section 18(4)(b)]:
LORD HUGHES: Amendment No. 14 is a drafting Amendment. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 33, line 11, leave out ("two") and insert (" four ").—(Lord Hughes.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 39, as amended, agreed to.
Remaining clauses agreed to.
Schedule 1 agreed to.
Schedule 2 [Consequences of breach of conditions under s. 9.):
LORD HUGHES: Amendments Nos. 15 and 16 are drafting Amendments intended to make clear exactly how much of the grant a local authority recovers when conditions are breached. The first Amendment, No. 15, provides that if the grant was originally paid in instalments, the interest which the local authority recovers, in addition to the grant, is calculated from

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the date on which the final instalment is paid. The second Amendment, No. 16, provides that where the local authority choose to recover the "appropriate amount" it should also recover interest on that amount calculated from the date of payment of the grant or of the final instalment of the grant, as the case may be. I beg to move Amendment No. 15.
Amendment moved—
Page 41, line 9, leave out (" the sum ") and insert (" the grant, or where the grant was paid in instalments, from the date of the final settlement of the balance ").—(Lord Hughes.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD HUGHES: I beg to move Amendment No. 16.
Amendment moved—
Page 41, line 28, after ("outstanding") insert (", together with interest thereon for the period from the date of payment of the grant or, where the grant was paid in instalments from the date of payment of the final settlement by the authority to the date of repayment of the appropriate amount to the authority ").—(Lord Hughes.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Schedule 2, as amended, agreed to.
Schedule 3 [Minor and consequential amendments]:
4.29 p.m.
LORD HUGHES: Amendments Nos. 17 and 18 are consequential on Amendments introduced at Report stage in another place to stiffen penalties for offences under Clause 35. I beg to move Amendment No. 17.
Amendment moved—
Page 43, leave out lines 25 and 26 and insert:
(" 6. In section 21, for the words from ("to a fine ") to the end of the section there shall be substituted "—

(i) to a fine not exceeding £400, and in the case of a second or subsequent conviction in respect of those premises or any other premises to a fine not exceeding £400 or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 3 months or to both such fine and such imprisonment; and

(ii) in the case of a continuing offence, to a further fine of £5 for every day or part of a day on which he so uses those premises, or permits them to be so used, after conviction ".").—(Lord Hughes.)

On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD HUGHES: I beg to move Amendment No. 18.
Amendment moved—
Page 44, leave out lines 1 and 2 and insert:
(" 12. In section 181(4), for the words from (" to a fine ") to the end of the subsection there shall be substituted "—

(a) to a fine not exceeding £400, and in the case of a second or subsequent conviction in respect of that building or house or any other building or house to a fine not exceeding £400 or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 3 months or to both such fine and such imprisonment; and

(b) in the case of a continuing offence to a further fine of £5 for every day, or part of a day, on which the occupation continues after conviction ".").—(Lord Hughes.)

On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD HUGHES LORD HUGHES: I spoke to this Amendment on Amendment No. 3. I beg to move Amendment No. 19.
Amendment moved—
Page 47, line 26, at end add—
(" (e) in subsection (8), at the end there shall be added:
' and "housing association" means a registered housing association within the meaning of the Housing Act 1974 '.").—(Lord Hughes.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Schedule 3, as amended, agreed to.
Remaining Schedules agreed to.
House resumed: Bill reported with Amendments.

PAKISTAN BILL
4.32 p.m.
THE MINISTER OF STATE, HOME OFFICE (LORD HARRIS OF GREENWICH): My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. This, My Lords, is a short Bill, and its purpose is to extend the transitional period during which voting rights, given to certain citizens of Pakistan under the Pakistan Act of last year, may be enjoyed. These voting rights depend upon applications for citizenship of the United Kingdom and Colonies being determined by the qualifying date for the 1975 electoral register; namely, October 10 this year. In the event, for administrative reasons, it has proved impossible to deal with all outstanding applications by that date, so the present Bill is needed to make sure that citizens of Pakistan who were eligible to vote as British subjects and who would regain the right to vote if registered as citizens of the United Kingdom and

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Colonies are not deprived of that right simply because, although they have applied for citizenship, the Home Office will not be able to deal with all the applications which have been received before the qualifying date for elections held in 1975.
Noble Lords will recall that under our predecessors' Bill, which became the Pakistan Act 1973, following Pakistan's withdrawal from the Commonwealth in the previous year, citizens of Pakistan who were not also citizens of another Commonwealth country ceased to be British subjects as from September 1, 1973. The Act also provided a period of grace during which the people affected, if appropriately qualified, might apply to be registered as citizens of the United Kingdom and Colonies and so to reacquire the voting rights which they had lost. Many Pakistanis had of course been here for years, and on the electoral register, but a consequence of their ceasing to be British subjects would have been their being unable to vote at Parliamentary and local elections. A transitional provision was therefore included in the 1973 Act to allow citizens of Pakistan who were already on the 1973 register to vote while that register was in force; that is, up to February 15 of this year. It was also laid down that the same would apply to those who, on the qualifying date for the 1974 register (October 10, 1973) were awaiting determination of their applications for citizenship of the United Kingdom and Colonies to be treated as British subjects for the purposes of inclusion in the 1974 electoral register.
My Lords, we are approaching the qualifying date for the 1975 register, and it is clear that, despite special arrangements which have been made in the Home Office to deal with the influx of applications for citizenship—arrangements which necessitated the recruitment and training of a substantial number of additional staff—not even a crash programme involving extra manpower could guarantee the completion of even the bulk of the operation by October 10 next, which, as I have indicated already, is the qualifying date for next year's register. The problem has been caused by the fact that the original estimates were upset by changes made during the course of the 1973 Bill. The size of the problem can be shown by the number of applications
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received. No fewer than 57,000 applications were received before October 10 last year; over 83,000 have been received to date; and by September 1 this year, which is the end of the period of grace allowed by the 1973 Act for applications for citizenship, the total is expected to be in the region of 90,000.
The processing of an application for citizenship is not by any means a straightforward matter. Although leaflets and instructions are sent out with application forms setting out the documentary evidence that must accompany them, barely 50 per cent, of applicants send in satisfactory evidence in the first instance. This of course necessitates a substantial amount of correspondence with the applicant; replies are sometimes slow to come, and frequently more than one letter is needed. All this inevitably adds to delay. So far, 31,500 applications have been finally determined, but this still leaves about two-thirds of those applying within the period of grace who, through no fault of their own, could lose the right to vote as from next February. To allow this to happen would in fact be contrary to the spirit of the 1973 Act, which envisaged that all applications would have been dealt with in time for the 1975 register. So far has the number of applications exceeded what was expected that some, I fear, may not have been determined even by October 10, 1975, the qualifying date for the 1976 register. The Government therefore thought it right to introduce legislation to extend the protection given in the 1973 Act in this respect to those who will have applied for citizenship by September 1 this year but whose applications have not yet been determined by the qualifying date for any register.
I will explain briefly how the Bill seeks to achieve this purpose. The provisions of the 1973 Act which preserve the voting rights of citizens of Pakistan awaiting determination of applications for citizenship are contained in Section 3(5) of that Act. The Bill inserts a new paragraph (c) to Section 3(5) which has the effect of extending the period during which those voting rights are preserved to cover elections held during the currency of the 1975 and subsequent registers, providing that on the qualifying date in the relevant year a person is still awaiting determination of an application for citizenship received by the Home Office before

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September 1 this year and providing that, in those cases where an application for citizenship requires a period of residence, he has been ordinarily resident in the United Kingdom throughout the period of five years ending on August 31 of this year. As I have said, we cannot at this stage foresee when all, or virtually all, applications for citizenship received by September 1 this year will have been determined, and so the Bill does not specify when these provisions should cease to apply. The Secretary of State is to do this by making an Order—a Statutory Instrument subject to Negative Resolution—and the provisions for this are contained in the new Section 3(5A) which is to be inserted in the 1973 Act.
Clause 2 of the Bill is concerned with minor amendments to the 1973 Act and repeals. Subjection (1) is made necessary by the Representation of the People Regulations 1974, which have replaced the 1969 Regulations cited in Section 3(6) of the 1973 Act, while the Regulations for Scotland and for Northern Ireland, also cited in that subsection, are still in force. Subsection (2) repeals the spent provisions of the 1973 Act, including Section 3(5)(a), which was concerned with the 1973 register.
My Lords, this is a small but, I think, worthy Bill whose object is simply to ensure that people are not deprived of voting rights because of administrative problems in the Home Office. It was given a friendly reception in another place, where it passed without amendment, and I believe that noble Lords will welcome it as a necessary complement to the 1973 Act. I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Lord Harris of Greenwich)
4.40 p.m.
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: My Lords, the noble Lord has explained this Bill very fully. That, I think, is right because, were it not for the Explanatory Memorandum, it would be totally incomprehensible, and we are therefore very grateful to him. There are three points which I should like to make, apart from the fact that I entirely recognise that the provisions are within the spirit of the legislation which we passed, which was in turn consequent upon Pakistan's leaving the Commonwealth.
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My first point relates to the figures which the noble Lord gave us. I must say that I am surprised to hear that there have already been 87,000 applications for citizenship, and that 90.000 are expected. Can the noble Lord tell us whether this figure refers to applications by heads of households and, if so, how many citizens of Pakistan origin in all we are likely to have gained as a result of the determination, supposing that they are all granted citizenship? It seems to me that under the present rules, if the father and husband applies and obtains citizenship, his wife and children will automatically gain it, too, and one application only is therefore necessary.
It would be interesting to know, in the light of some of the discussions which are taking place on the general immigration front, and on the ability of this country to assimilate yet further people from overseas, to know what has been (he effect of this action of the Republic of Pakistan, over which we had no control at all. If the noble Lord can tell us that, we should be very interested.
I wonder whether, by any chance, the noble Lord can also tell us if the citizens of Jammu and Kashmir—or, at any rate, the Pakistan part of it—are included in those figures, or are they to be dealt with by some other means? I seem to remember that they fell to be determined under the ordinary procedures, and not under the Pakistan Act itself. While the answers to those unforeseen questions are being fetched—and I apologise for having thought of them only as the noble Lord's speech was in progress—may I make my other two points? The first relates to Clause 2. When we were dealing with this subject this was, for obvious reasons, a Foreign Office Bill and my role was very much in the supporting cast. But I should just like to say to the noble Lord and to those who draft Bills that the incorporation in main legislation of direct amendments and repeals of Statutory Instruments is highly undesirable.
I remember, not very long ago, eyebrows being raised in the Consolidation Bills Committee when, for inevitable reasons of tidiness, a Statutory Instrument had to be dealt with in a Consolidation Bill. It was thought to be a very dubious process even in that rarefied Committee. But to have the matter dealt with in main

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legislation is really most unsatisfactory, for the reason that those who wish to look up the law will look up Acts of Parliament and their various repeals and amendments under Acts of Parliament, and will tend to look up Statutory Instruments and their amendments and repeals under Statutory Instruments. A person who knows his way about very well can achieve both at the same time, but this does not by any means follow for everybody and they may not have the necessary books. Therefore, I suggest that if we can avoid mixing these two forms of legislation it will add to the ease of discovering what is the law on any particular subject.
My last point is that it is evident from what the noble Lord has told us that the inhabitants of Lunar House, Croydon, who are processing these applications, have been working very hard indeed and I suspect that most members of this House who are not directly involved may be unaware of the extreme degree of skill, patience and persistence needed by the people who do this job. They are all too seldom thanked for their efforts. They work very hard, they are extremely percipient and they are up to all the tricks, and it is not surprising that, as the noble Lord said, they needed to be trained. I should like on this occasion to offer a word of thanks to them, because it is on them and their other colleagues in the Immigration Service that the whole of our control over citizenship in this very prized and difficult area depends. I believe that they are worthy of our thanks on an occasion like this. With those words, I am glad to welcome the Bill in the spirit in which the noble Lord introduced it. I certainly see no way of putting down Amendments to improve it, and indeed I doubt whether I should be able to draft any Amendments to it at all.
LORD HARRIS OF GREENWICH: My Lords, in reply to the points which the noble Viscount has just made, I am most grateful to him for having given notice of at least one of them and he will be glad to know that I can now even answer the other two. First, the figures I gave included all the numbers involved, not just heads of households, and the two territories which the noble Viscount mentioned are also included in the numbers which I have given to the House. On the third point which the noble Vis-
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count made just before he sat down, this is a difficult matter. The bridging provision in this Bill applies only to those who have made application for registration as citizens of the United Kingdom by September 1, 1974. That is the effective cut-off date, as I hope will be clear to all concerned. Secondly, I think it is only fair to say that once a provision of this kind is spent—which will be the effect of the Order of my right honourable friend the Home Secretary when he comes to the effective cut-off date—the normal practice is to repeal it formally in a miscellaneous Statute Law Revision Act. These Acts are passed fairly regularly, as your Lordships will be aware. This, I hope, will ensure that the repeal is carried through the Statute Book itself, so I trust that that will to some extent answer the point made by the noble Viscount.
I shall end by saying that I will pass on the gracious words expressed to the staff of the Home Office at Luna House. I think that the only occasions when their work is discussed in this House and another place is when they are criticised for their actions in particularly difficult cases. They have to deal with these every day and they are under the most tremendous pressure, as any of your Lordships who have had any experience at the Home Office will be aware. Also, those noble Lords who approach Home Office Ministers will be aware, I fear, that there is a delay in replying to correspondence because of the immense backlog of work at Lunar House. I very warmly thank the noble Viscount for what he has said, and I will pass on his words to the staff concerned.
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

COHABITATION RULE
4.49 p.m.
LORD GARDINER LORD GARDINER rose to ask Her Majesty's Government whether they have considered the cohabitation rule and its administration in the light of the report of the Child Poverty Action Group. The noble and learned Lord said: My Lords, when I read the report of the Child Poverty Action Group on

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the cohabitation rule, I was deeply disturbed and I wrote for information to Sir Keith Joseph, to the Council on Tribunals and to the Lord Chancellor's Advisory Committee on Legal Aid and, being fortunate enough to draw a place in the ballot for a short Wednesday debate, I put down this Question in the form of a Motion on February 20. Then came the General Election and as soon as the present Government were elected I wrote to the Minister. I of course understood why she was too busy to see me, but I was courteously received by the Minister of State, who gave me a lot of his time and who asked me not to put down a Question again until the Finer Committee had reported. He told me that the Finer Committee were dealing with the matter and that if I put down a Question all he would be able 10 say was that could not say anything until the publication of the Committee's Report.
I have never discovered why, considering that the Finer Report was presented to the preceding Government in November last year, it has taken so long to publish it, but there it is. I should like at once to pay every compliment that I can to the Finer Committee. A good many people—including myself on one occasion—have criticised the Finer Committee for taking such a long time, but the Report is a magnificent document and whatever happens it will be the leading authority in this field for many years to come. Its primary recommendation, of course—for a guaranteed maintenance allowance—is a thing that is going to cost a good deal of money, and one can understand if this Government feel unable to commit themselves to that, and in ordinary law reform experience I suppose in any case it will be about three years before that is accepted. But, as I have said, the Report is a mine of information. We now know that there are 620,000 one-parent families looking after over 1 million children. There are 430,000 lone wives who are responsible for 720,000 children whose fathers are still alive.
What is a cohabitation rule, and why do we have to have one? It depends on a very tiny piece of legislation which is subparagraph (1) of paragraph 3 of the Second Schedule to the Ministry of
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Social Security Act 1966, which says:
" Where a husband and wife are members of the same household their requirements and resources shall be aggregated and shall be treated as the husbands,"—
typical—
" and similarly, unless there are exceptional circumstances, as regards two persons cohabiting as man and wife."
And in relation to a widow's pension the National Insurance Act 1965 says much the same, except that it uses the expression in relation to a woman
" cohabiting with a man as his wife ".
It is debatable whether there ought to be such a rule at all. The justification for the rule is said to be that if it were not so an unmarried woman living with a man would be in a better position, particularly tax-wise, than a married one. I have never been sure myself whether this is a convincing answer because in every other respect the unmarried woman is in a worse financial position. Mr. Tony Lynes, in an article in New Society in December 1971, said:
" A married woman has a legal right to maintenance during her husband's life, and right of inheritance on his death. Their children are born legitimate. His national insurance contributions entitle her to a maternity grant on the birth of each of her children, a retirement pension at the age of 60 and widows' benefit if he dies before her. These are valuable and are, to most women, important rights. Cohabitation is, by comparison, an extremely insecure situation, especially in the early stages when the question of cutting off the woman's benefit is likely to arise. It is far from self-evident that a woman who has been living with a man for a short time with no intention of marriage on either side ought in equity to be regarded as his dependant, or that she ought not to receive more support from the social security system than a married woman."
But there is this quite separate reason. If an unmarried mother is receiving an adequate income from her father who can afford it, should the taxpayer have to put his hands in his pockets to provide supplementary benefits for her? Of course not. The real basis of that is that she is being maintained by a man. It may be an uncle. Whether she is having sexual relations with her uncle, was, I should have thought, completely irrelevant. Either he is providing her with an income or he is not. However, there it is.
The first difficulty is that there is no definition of what "cohabiting as man and wife" means. The Supplementary Benefits Commission in their Handbook
put it like this—this is what they inform the claimant of:
" The question that has to be decided—and this is not always understood—is whether or not an unmarried couple are in fact living together as man and wife, or in the language of the Act, cohabiting. In most cases the couple wish to be regarded as married, and there is no difficulty. But in some cases the man and woman will deny that they are cohabiting. The Commission then have a duty to decide whether they are or not."
In those last two sentences the word "cohabiting" ought to be what it is in the Act, "cohabiting as man and wife". Then they say:
" There is no simple answer. The decision has to be reached after weighing up a combination of facts, e.g. Is there a common home? Is there a pooled household fund? Do the couple have children? What are the regular sleeping arrangements? Does the woman use the man's name and are the couple acknowledged publicly as man and wife? And so on.
" The answer to any one question is not necessarily conclusive by itself. Nor need the answer to any one question be more significant, taken by itself, than the answer to another. In each case all the facts have to be regarded as a whole in reaching a decision. And it should be emphasised that the decision depends solely on whether it appears that the couple are living as man and wife in the full sense of the term, not on any moral considerations or on whether a man and woman have slept together on occasions."
I think that that puts the position fairly, but the difficulty is that the Commission have two codes. One is called the "A" code which is for their ordinary officials and the other is the "AX" code which arc their instructions to their investigating officials, the ones who are sometimes called "the snoopers". And as the booklet says on page 14:
" The approach taken in the ' AX ' code is very different. There is no question of following the official ' combination of facts ' approach and of carefully weighing up all the facts of the situation ".
These are the officials who actually have the power to decide and do, in fact, decide whether to take a woman's book away and leave her destitute. The booklet continues:
" Indeed the whole question of establishing whether cohabitation exists or not is virtually ignored. Instead, all the criteria carefully elaborated by the Commission are collapsed into the one overriding criterion of whether there is a man living in the same accommodation as the woman. There is no mention of the stipulation made by the Supplementary Benefits Commission in their official report, of the necessity of establishing that they are living
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together as man and wife. The important issue of housekeeping and financial arrangements is summarily dismissed with the instruction ' that the financial arrangements the couple come to in their relationship is not the point at issue. They may, however, be of interest in that, if there has been regular maintenance, the evidence of cohabitation will have been even further strengthened '."
My Lords, this decision places the accent on sex and not, as I should have thought it should be, on finance. I believe that I may have broken the Official Secrets Act—or may be told so by my noble friend Lord Wells-Pestell—in quoting from the "AX" code, but the Group had the courage to do that. When I asked a Starred Question, I think a comment was made by the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, and I am not sure that my noble friend followed this point when he said that there had been a leak. I think that what he meant was that a great many of us strongly take the view that if it is left to the discretion of not well paid officials to make a woman completely destitute, the way to find out how, it is being operated is to see what are the instructions of those officials and to see whether the public have a right in such a case to know the instructions which are being given to them.
What ought to be finance-orientated is at present sex-orientated. I am quite sure that my noble friend Lord Collison is a magnificent Chairman of the Commission. He has a large staff of thousands who are not well paid. In any large body there must always be some black sheep. The Child Poverty Action Group say very clearly in their Report that they do not suggest that the 50 cases which they examined in great detail was a sufficiently representative sample. One must keep a balance about this matter in fairness to the Commission, and the point has been well expressed by the Finer Committee in their Report when they say, in paragraph 5,266:
" There are few subjects in the field of social security law and administration which give rise to more heat and criticism than the cohabitation rule in supplementary benefits. We have been made conscious of this not only by the literature which abounds and the evidence we have received but also by the frank statement of the Supplementary Benefits Commission of ' this basic difficulty—the mere fact of investigation in this emotionally charged field arouses distress and resentment among claimants, social workers and others, perhaps beyond that aroused in any other area of the Commission's administration '."
They say in the next paragraph:
" It is obvious that a jurisdiction of this kind must expose the Commission to attacks which are unfounded or exaggerated, but which it is hard for them, especially having regard to the obligation of confidence, to refute. Nevertheless, the testimony of the Commission confirms the evidence from other sources, that however much effort is given to improve its administration, and to inform the endeavours in the field with the care and refinement which characterises the thinking at the centre, the cohabitation rule may involve indignities, and sometimes hardship or injustice, for people who fall under its shadow."
I felt, myself, that these women—unmarried mothers, widows, divorced and separated wives—are among the most defenceless of our population. They are always on the borderline of poverty because obviously the 720.000 children cannot be looked after if the mother goes out to work. I suppose they represent the classical example as to why supplementary benefits are necessary. They are usually not well educated and inevitably are in great fear of this official who has the sole right to take away their book. Sometimes it is taken away without their being told why, and often it depends on how much fuss is made. If you make a great fuss the book is suddenly returned to you, but you are never told why the supplementary benefits have been withdrawn.
My noble friend Lord Wells-Pestell, when I asked a question about widows, said to me: "Why do you select widows? "I frankly did so because people can, I suppose, say of an unmarried girl who has a baby:" As she has made her bed, so she must lie on it." Of a widow with young children, who had been living happily with her husband before, say, he had a sudden heart attack and died, nobody can say, "Of course, that is her fault". But this does not mean that I am not sympathetic to men. I have perhaps a reputation for being a feminist, which is quite deserved if that means that I think women are discriminated against in too many different ways. We do not always think of the men. Of course, one should be very careful of quoting a man who is dead; one should be certain that he would not mind being quoted and one must be accurate.
I remember that one day Mr. Richard Crossman (whose intellect I greatly admired) came to see me and he said this: "In the whole field of social wel-
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fare, I think the most difficult problem is that of the fatherless family. There are many different ways in which they might be helped. There must always be limited resources, and I am thinking of appointing a committee to see what is really the best way of tackling this. If I take it to the Cabinet, will you support me?"
I said, "I am sure that would be desirable, but why on earth do you want to limit it to fatherless families?" I went on to say: "You may remember that the biggest single ground for divorce, whether or not it is the real cause of the breakdown of the marriage, is adultery. Every year about half the petitions on this ground are brought by wives against adulterous husbands and the other half are brought by husbands against adulterous wives. But when a man with children aged two, four and six finds that his wife has gone off with another man, he is himself in a very difficult position. Nobody seems to realise this: everybody talks about the women. Of course, if he is in work he wants to continue at work and then he is told that he must get a woman to look after the children. If he has a mother or sister the matter is fairly easy, if they are prepared to give up many years to bringing up the children. If not, where is he to find this woman and is he to sleep in the house? I have said that whereas with women the main problem is one of finance, which a man does not have to the same extent, it is a very difficult position for the man, too, and I see from the Report now that there are about 100,000 fathers who are trying to bring up children in these circumstances."
Mr. Crossman went away saying that he would think about this, and then we heard that the Finer Committee had been appointed and were looking into one-parent families. There have been several independent inquiries, of course, about the operation, apart from this one, by the Child Poverty Action Group. There are many difficulties. One is of course that I can understand the Supplementary Benefits Commission saying to a woman: "Now you have a spare room in your house: you could let that and the State would be relieved of a certain amount of supplementary benefit." When she has a lodger, then they round on her and say, "You are cohabitating". The main way in which the rule seems to be operated is that the officials take

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away a book if there is a man living in the house, unless the woman satisfies them that she is not cohabitating with him—and of course this is not always an easy thing to do.
Another difficulty is that very often a widow with young children, and being fairly young herself, may feel that it is probably her duty to her children to re-marry. She is thus in that delicate stage of wondering whether this is the right man for a re-marriage; and he is wondering the same. This is always a difficult stage in an emotional development. When the supplementary benefits official arrives at the house he does not only charge the woman or speak to the the woman about the man's presence in the house but he rounds on the man and says, "You ought to be supporting her"—and the official sometimes calls on him at work so that the interview may take place in front of his workmates. I have observed that in about a third of the cases which have been investigated by the Child Poverty Action Group, from the figures given, the man just gets up and goes, because he does not see why he should be put in this position or to be told, "You should be supporting her and then you could get family incomes supplement." Therefore, what might have been a secure re-marriage never happens. The other thing that struck me was that in only four out of the 49 cases for which they got the most complete details was any real contribution being made by the man or any pooling of resources.
Of course, there is an appeal to a tribunal, but the decision is taken before the tribunal. The book is taken away and sometimes you may have to wait months before you can get to the tribunal. This plunges the family at once into a chronic economic position. The Finer Committee considered this and came down against the suggestion that benefit should continue to be paid until the hearing by the tribunal, but what they recommend is that where benefit is already being paid—that is to say, not merely applied for—the official concerned should present a short piece of paper giving the facts on which he thinks there is evidence of cohabitation. If she agrees with the facts she can still appeal to the tribunal on the grounds that the facts do not amount to cohabitation; but if she disputes the facts, the official should
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himself take the case to the tribunal to get this dispute of fact resolved and meanwhile the payments should continue.
Therefore, I would ask the Government whether they have considered this recommendation and, if so, whether they propose to accept it and, if not, why not?—everything, of course, having stopped except that the Commission, pending appeal (relying on the exceptional cases clause) continues the payments for the children, though not for the mother, for four weeks. The Finer Committee think that that is far too short a time. They say in 5,276:
" The other situation which has given us particular concern is where benefit is withdrawn on the grounds of cohabitation, but the cohabitee is not supporting dependent children of the claimant of whom he is not the father. Currently, the Commission are prepared to deal with such cases by making an exceptional needs payment in the nature of ' an adjusting allowing to meet those children's requirements (taking into account their share of family allowance and any maintenance payments made by their father) for a period of four weeks.
The purpose of these payments is to cushion the family against the abrupt reduction in their income, give the couple time to claim any family income supplement to which they may be entitled, and time to adapt to a situation in which the whole family must in most cases rely upon the man's income for their support.' We regard this period of four weeks as insufficient. Proper as the decision to withdraw the benefit may be, its sudden loss creates in many of the cohabitation cases a crisis within the household of the first order.
Social workers are familiar with this situation: the man who has not been giving support to the dependent children of the woman with whom he is cohabiting is often temperamentally unstable, with limited earning capacity; the loss of income from the benefit may result in the total disruption of what may already be a parlous household economy; rent may fall into arreas, other debts may accumulate and gas and electricity meters become tempting targets. As the Fisher Committee observed. ' The Commission … recognise that the rarity of payments to meet urgent need in cohabitation cases may well conceal a fair amount of genuine need that is not being met … ' We recommend that the four-week period to which we have above made reference should be extended to three months."
May I ask on that point whether the Government accept this recommendation of the Finer Committee and, if not, why not?
Then I come to the appeal tribunal. This is in every respect unsatisfactory. First of all, if a widow's pension is not enough for a woman to live on, it is topped up by supplementary benefits. If the books are taken away, she has two

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appeals, one to the insurance tribunal in respect of a pension, and one to the supplementary benefits tribunal in respect of the supplementary benefits, the cohabitation rule of course applying to both. The pension tribunal is the tribunal in which two out of three members are appointed by the Minister but the chairman is a lawyer who is appointed by the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor. They follow the rules of evidence and, if they disallow an appeal, there is a right of appeal on law to a commissioner who is a judge of high standing.
The supplementary benefits appeal tribunals are the lowest form of tribunal life. They are paid much less than members of any other tribunal in the country: nominally the Minister appoints two of the three, and the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor, who is expected to appoint lawyers, appoints the chairman. In real life it is the Minister who appoints all three, for the reason that he simply cannot get lawyers who are prepared to take the chair at tribunals of this kind. Out of 224 chairmen, only 16 are lawyers and 208 are laymen. They have to deal with these delicate affairs affecting women, and the House, with its great knowledge, will not be surprised to hear that 85 per cent, of the members are men.
The appellant has no rights. In the insurance tribunal you are entitled to have a representative, whether a lawyer or not, who can ask questions of the witnesses and address the tribunal. With supplementary benefits tribunal you have no right at all. About a fortnight ago I saw the solicitor to the Child Poverty Action Group. He had come from a supplementary benefits tribunal. A member of the tribunal had said to him, "I have here a letter which proves cohabitation". The solicitor asked to see it but was not allowed to do so. He asked who had written the letter but they would not tell him. He asked what the letter said. They paid no attention to the rules of evidence and were very proud about this. They said it was all discreticn and there was no law in it. They accept as evidence anonymous telephone conversations, anonymous letters, and so forth. There is no appeal at all from this tribunal.
With a pensions tribunal the decisions of the commissioners are binding on the tribunal. They are published; the tribunals have to follow them; there is a doctrine of precedence. As there is no appeal in the supplementary benefits tribunals, this does not apply. In one case the regional officer (who is apparently a very high official) turned up to hear the case, which I suppose he is entitled to do. When the tribunal retired he retired with them. Look at the difficulty of persuading these women that this is an independent tribunal when the Ministry appoints all three members of a tribunal, and when the clerk to the tribunal conies from the Ministry and is going back when he finishes being clerk. Even a regional officer is allowed to be with the tribunal when they consider their decision. I know of at least one case where a widow's pension and supplementary benefits were withdrawn, and she appealed on both. They were heard by the two tribunals. The evidence was exactly the same. The National Insurance tribunal found that there was no cohabitation, and the supplementary benefits tribunal found that there was.
I suggest this needs a complete overhaul and re-thinking. It is almost impossible to get before a judge. I read in The Times of a case which went before a judge. The supplementary benefits tribunal had withdrawn benefits on the ground of cohabitation and the woman appealed. She lost her appeal and, as so often happens, was prosecuted for fraud on the grounds that she ought to have told the Commission that there was a man in the house and she should not have gone on drawing benefits meanwhile. This enabled her to get to a judge because she appealed on the magistrates' decision. It came before the divisional court and, if my recollection is right, the Lord Chief Justice was sitting. With great respect to my noble friend Lord Coliison, this is why I do not think it can be all discretionary. Where you are operating a Statute the construction of the Statute must be a matter of law.
The case was quashed on two grounds: first, the man was not living in the house in the ordinary sense of the word. This woman was separated from her husband. They had discussed a reconciliation and it was agreed that for a trial period the

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husband would stay in the house at weekends. The court quashed the case on the ground that that was not what was ordinarily understood as cohabiting. The whole point was to see whether or not they would do that in the future. Secondly, as she had not thought herself under any obligation to tell the Commission that her husband had come to the house, she could not have been convicted properly of fraud, because "fraud" means a fraudulent mind, which she had not got.
There is no legal aid. I know of the difficulties of the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor, regarding legal aid. In the 50 cases carefully examined by the group, not one single appeal succeeded where the woman was not represented. Where she was represented, not necessarily by a lawyer but by a social worker or somebody who read the Act and knew what cohabiting meant, somebody who expressed the woman's point of view—which very often the woman was incapable of doing—60 per cent, of the appeals succeeded. That makes a strong case why legal aid should be allowed.
Some of the cases seem so extraordinary from the point of view of cohabitation. I was talking to a woman at mid-day to-day who had been convicted of cohabiting at the age of 71. She was divorced from her husband 25 years ago and had to find somewhere to live. There was a young man, 25 years younger than she was, who was an old friend of the family. He had a spare room and it was decided that she should have the spare room. She would not pay any rent but would cook his meals and keep the house clean. She had a job and went on working. This went on for a quarter of a century, or whatever it was, and then three years ago the lady developed acute arthritis. She had gone on working until she was 69 and then could not work any more. She would have been entitled to a supplementary pension but she did not apply for that because she did not think it right to live on charity and she had her life savings of £150. For the next two years she lived on her life savings, and then she applied for supplementary benefit, only to be told she was disoualified because she was cohabiting with this man. As there had never
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been any kind of sexual relationship between them the shock of anybody thinking that she would have sexual relations with a man 25 years younger than herself naturally appalled her.
There was another case of a woman of 59 with an epileptic son. An old friend of her husband used to visit the house and sometimes say the night, because he was the one person with whom this epileptic son, who had frequent fits, got on very well. She had a book taken away from her on the ground that she was cohabiting with this man. Since this has been done she feels she dare not ask this man to the house again (which is a great loss to the epileptic son) in case the same unpleasantness arises again.
I have read the Minister's Statement made in the Commons about this recommendation for the Finer Committee. She says:
" I can also say that the Supplementary Benefits Commission have already in hand a major re-examination of the administration of the cohabitation provisions to assist them to review their policies and will certainly give the most careful consideration to what the Finer Committee have said. I have also asked the Commission to include in their consideration the question whether any amendment of the Supplementary Benefit Act is desirable and to report to me on their findings."
On this point, may I respectfully ask my noble friend Lord Wells-Pestcll how long has this inquiry been going on? Secondly, how long is it likely to go on? Is it an entirely internal inquiry or will it be possible for other people to give evidence before it? This has now gone on for a long time. It is always rather distressing when one is told one must wait for something else. We have now waited months and months for Finer. We are grateful to all the members of the Finer Committee. We now look to the Government.
I have seen a letter which the Minister of State has written to the Secretary of the National Association of Widows dealing with all these points on a very non-possumus basis. I trust that that will not be persisted in. I was somewhat upset to notice that this letter, which set out his own personal views on all these matters, was in places, including the whole of the last paragraph, word for word, line for line, exactly the same as a letter which Sir Keith Joseph wrote to me when he was Minister. Of course, it is quite possible

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for Ministers of different Parties to have the same views. We all know that where there is a strong Civil Service there can be a very strong Departmental view, and I regret it was a case of the voice being the voice of Jacob and the hands being the hands of Esau. I am primarily concerned for these million children. Knowing her, I cannot myself believe that the Minister can be happy about this situation. I am deeply sympathetic to her great difficulties with the reorganised National Health Service (in terms other than those we should have liked), the reorganisation of local government, the Pensions Bill, nurses' strikes and so on. However, if she has time to look into this matter herself I cannot believe, knowing her, that she will allow the administration of the cohabitation rule to continue as it is at present.
5.24 p.m.
LORD BEAUMONT OF WHITLEY: My Lords, when I first heard that the noble and learned Lord was to ask this Question to-night I felt that I must put my name down to speak for one main purpose, which was to identify myself and my noble friends with the case I was sure he was to deploy. However, I was not foolish enough to think that I should have much to add to what he said in deploying the case as forcefully and as well as he has. And so events have turned out. Therefore, I do not wish to go over any of the ground which the noble and learned Lord has himself gone over so well. The only reason why I am staying on my feet for a few minutes longer is that it would be a great pity if this subject was debated and discussed without its being suggested that there was, in tact, a deeper element of injustice and a deeper element of wrong legislation behind even the points which the noble and learned Lord has produced.
He has questioned whether there should be a cohabitation rule at all, in view of the disbenefits, the disadvantages, from which people who are cohabiting, particularly women, suffer. That is a very fair point. I would go behind that even further. He quoted the cohabitation rule as being, of course, a means of bringing the law into line with what is the law for those who are married. I suggest there is something wrong in the rule as it stands, even as it affects marriages; that
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is, the provision that for social security purposes the income of two people who are married, or two people who are cohabiting, should be lumped together. All this stems from the tradition which we inherit from the economic life of the last century, that the main economic unit with which we must treat is that of the wage-earner and his or her family.
I am very much in favour of the family. I belong to a family. I have a family and I am very fond of them. However, we have gone along the wrong lines in our legislation, and in our social welfare legislation, in trying to think in terms of the wage-earner and his or her dependents, instead of thinking in terms of individuals and the fact that it is their affair whether they marry or live together or anything else. Any economic situation which takes as its unit the wage-earner and his or her dependents will be unjust, in anything except an ideal world, to the dependents. One of the reasons why this bears hardly on women is that in a situation and a society where the job of bringing up the children is, I suppose, regarded as a private contract between a wage-earner and his wife, the majority of the dependents are women. But what I am saying applies to all dependents whether they are women or men. It seemed to me a bad basic fault in the Beveridge Report and the whole welfare system that this has been allowed to continue.
From it have stemmed a great many injustices. When one starts trying to apply the rules such as the cohabitation rule one comes across all these hard cases and it is difficult to see how to do away with them. It is exactly the same kind of thinking, and the same kind of wrong placing of the economic unit, which have made the trouble with the immigration rules and the hardship that they have given to some dependents with injustice to women—an injustice which I am delighted to know (and I pay tribute to this) has to a certain extent been abolished recently. Surely, if we were starting again from scratch to-day with the social security system we would start with a system whereby we would guarantee the safety net, so to speak, of basic living money—the basic ability to live and not to starve—not for the unit of a family but for men, women and children. Indeed, we are moving along those lines already. The whole idea of a

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children's allowance is moving in that direction. The idea that the children's allowance should be extended to the first child, which my Party has stood for some time and which many people, again, are moving towards, is another step in this direction.
My Lords, T think that there should be no lessening of social security benefits for anybody just because they happen to share a house with somebody, whether or not they are married. I should like the pension to be a unit pension for men or women and exactly the same for each, and it should not be lessened because they happen to be living together or to be in a household together. There might be a statutory lessening in so far as part of the pension is deemed to be for housing and a saving results from the sharing of a house. Basically, however, we should be producing a safety net for individuals and if we introduced it we should be escaping from these injustices. It would be expensive to produce a social security system like this. It would cost a great deal more than we pay for it at the moment, but that we have to move in that direction and that we shall move in that direction I have little doubt.
My Lords, there is one way in which in the long run it would not be expensive and inflationary, because as well as making sense of the social security system it would import a certain amount of common sense into the wages and incomes system of this country. As your Lordships know, at the moment we have a situation (although it does not always work out like this) in which the basic wage is meant to be calculated as what is necessary to support a man with a wife and some children. This is grossly inflationary, because one pays the same basic wage to an unmarried man who has none of those responsibilities. If one had a sensible social security system, either by negative income tax or by tax credit with a claw-back from the taxation system, one would be able to import a great deal more sense into the whole of one's incomes and wages policy.
My Lords, I apologise for digressing a little from the main subject of the debate, but at least your Lordships will agree that I have not kept your Lordships' House long. I think it is right that when we have problems which raise many individual injustices we should look
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back and back again to see whether there is something which is fundamentally wrong with the system which we are administering that we should try to cure in future social security Bills. What I have said may not be directly pertinent to what the Minister has to say to-day in reply to the Question raised by the noble and learned Lord, but I think that it is something which Government and political Parties should think about when they pass further legislation in the social security field—as, indeed, will happen in the future.
5.32 p.m.
BARONESS PHILLIPS: My Lords, we are deeply grateful to the noble and learned Lord who has asked this Question. In his usual splendid way he has covered the whole of the matter which we are discussing. We know about his great compassionate beliefs in many fields, and women in particular are deeply grateful to him for raising this Question.
My Lords, I shall give one straightforward and simple story which illustrates the question that has been put. It is a case which came to the surgery of a Member of another place a couple of weeks ago. At five o'clock on a Saturday afternoon the last case to ask for advice was a young woman with a small child who came in, sat down quietly, was very still and said suddenly to the Member, "I am going to kill myself". The Member said, "What is the trouble?" The woman then told her that she was a widow with five children, that she had been accused of cohabiting with a man who was living in her house and that her pension book had been taken away.
I think it is perhaps difficult for some Members of your Lordships' House to appreciate what it must be like for a woman with five small children to be left totally without money at five o'clock on a Saturday afternoon. The Member offered to help her with some money. The woman refused the money; she did not want it; she wept. Then she explained the terrible trauma she had experienced. The Member returned to London and on Sunday telephoned the emergency service of the Department of Health and Social Security. There is a telephone number for this purpose. All that she got was a recorded answer which informed her that the duty officer was not available. Therefore it

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was Monday, after more telephoning locally, before she was able to obtain any kind of help for this woman. Then the local officer said, "Of course, the woman could have had some help if she had filled in the right forms". That is the kind of system under which we live. I remember G. K. Chesterton's famous words. He spoke of the "Lords of the Dead Eyes and their fumbling papers".
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, has described how the cohabitation rule works. As he pointed out, it is important to remember that there is no definition of "cohabitation". And, indeed, ¡the administration of the system is different according to the benefits which are collected. The four or five vital questions which were put by the noble and learned Lord are those which are used now as the criteria to decide whether people are cohabiting. Does the woman use the man's name and do they represent themselves as man and wife? That is simple, Is the partnership a stable one and for how long has it lasted? Again that is not difficult. Is there a common home in the sense of shared accommodation? I suggest, My Lords, that this is not so easy a question to answer. Have the couple had children and do they share the same bedroom? Reading the cases, it seems to me that the crux of the matter is whether they share the same bedroom. It is the question to which they return again and again. Finally, does the man support the woman financially?
I will give your Lordships two cases. They might be hypothetical but in fact they are not. I chose a widow of over 60 years of age, thinking that she could not be held to be cohabiting, but now we hear that even when you are 71 you are not immune from the charge. I notice that if you claim your retirement pension there is no cohabitation rule, so perhaps the lady of 71 is holding the wrong pension book. The first case is the widow of over 60 who has two lodgers. Each lodger pays her about £8 a week for lodging, food and shared accommodation, and if she makes any profit from letting this accommodation she makes a return to Her Majesty's Inspector of Taxes. However, she is still allowed to receive her widow's pension, although she is receiving money over and above that which the State provides for her. Yet if we take
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the case of the widowed mother, at 33 years of age she has one lodger but because somebody suggests that she sleeps with him she is not allowed to have money from the State since he should be supporting her.
My Lords, whichever way you examine it, this is totally illogical. I have not yet read my copy, but whatever the Finer Report says I am going to ask for the abolition of this rule. I believe that it is cruel and I believe that it is expensive to operate, just as is that other crazy rule which, with other Members of your Lordships' House, I have tried to abolish. It is particularly degrading both to the woman who is being investigated and to those people who have to investigate. I expect I shall be told that it is going to be too costly, but I say to the Government quite seriously that there is no evidence to suggest that if you abolish this rule each of the 556 widows will rush out to-morrow and set up cohabitation with a man. Would it be unfair to a married couple? As the noble and learned Lord has already pointed out, the married woman has the kind of security which a woman who lives as a common law wife could never have at any stage. I agree with the noble Lord who has just spoken. In the long term, we shall have to look much more carefully at the status of women—at the status of the home maker who at the moment has no status within the law.
From this stem many other injustices, such as the difficulty for the disabled housewife in getting anything. If we cannot have the abolition of the rule, I would ask the Government quite seriously to take into consideration some other points which are absolutely vital to the operation of this system. First, I would say that benefits—and not just for children—must not be withdrawn until a case has been heard by an independent tribunal. What right have we to find people guilty before they have even gone through the process of investigation? The onus of proof must be placed on the authority making the decision that a person is cohabiting, and it must be made clear to the woman that she can appeal. It is perfectly obvious to me, as the secretary to a women's organisation—because I see practically every kind of difficulty that women have to contend with—that nobody had explained that one

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could appeal, nor indeed would people understand how to set about it. We must have the whole set-up looked at carefully.
The National Association of Widows has been doing some splendid work in representing the widows at the tribunal, but few women will win their case if they have to go alone. I am a magistrate, and I know only too well the necessity to have an expert who understands the procedure of how to question witnesses. One can imagine a woman coming before the tribunal and having to challenge the evidence given by a skilled officer. In my view, there is a very strange overtone in this, that the State must never at any stage be seen to be supporting what is called "immorality". I was in court the other day listening to the case of a man who was living on immoral earnings. This was no Messina-like character; he was a rather delicate young man who was living with a rather jolly lady 20 years his senior. But I felt that had she been working at the local supermarket nobody would have questioned the fact that she was supporting him. We always have an overtone that one must never appear to be condoning this conduct. To those who say that somebody will cheat, I would say, as a Christian, "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone." I think that cheating the State has become some kind of game. We all know people who will tell us how they were clever at cheating the Customs, or how they found a way to get around the income tax. This is a cruel and unjust rule and I ask this Government, in their compassion, to seek its abolition.
5.44 p.m.
BARONESS MACLEOD OF BORVE: My Lords, I, too, am grateful to the noble and learned Lord for asking this Question, which has pin-pointed the difficulties of so many women in this country. Those of us in this House who are widows are most grateful to him for bringing this matter out into the open, and perhaps for having the light of the Press shed upon it, because as there are no copies of Hansard being printed that is about the only way in which we can get this known.
From the vast amount of material available, it is obvious that the subject of cohabitation is an unusually difficult and delicate one. Needless to say, each writer and all who give evidence think
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that their version of the word "cohabiting" is the correct one. But the Ministry of Social Security Act 1966 referred to "cohabiting as man and wife", while the National Insurance Act refers to "cohabiting with a man as his wife". Whichever wording one prefers, the fact remains that there is a rule and if a woman breaks that rule by taking unto herself a common law husband she shall forfeit the right to the widow's pension and her book is withdrawn.
Those of us who are interested in this debate today will all have heard of women who have been suspected of breaking the rules, and who have been made acutely unhappy because of the suggestion that they might be cohabiting. There are 3 million widows in this country today, and in 1972 only 1,146 had their books withdrawn. Of these, after further investigation, 40 had their books returned to them. One wonders how many of the other 1,100 were actually breaking the rules and how many did not know the rules. The insurance inspectors on the staff of the local N.H.S.S. offices are authorised by the Central Pensions Branch at Newcastle to carry out investigations. He, or she, establishes the facts according to the rules laid down and to the best of their ability.
If the inspector is satisfied that cohabitation exists in the home, he reports to his office and the woman's book is forthwith withdrawn. But no one is perfect and there is evidence to show that on some occasions the officer is wrong. The book, which may represent all her finances, is withdrawn. The woman can protest her innocence, but I fear that few women know of their rights of appeal. They can appeal to a tribunal—and, having heard what the noble and learned Lord has said, I hope that in future tribunals will always have a woman as one of their number—which, unfortunately, is likely to take some time to hear the case: meanwhile no book, no money. I should like to see two changes: First, that the woman should retain her book until the appeal is heard; and, secondly, that she should be legally represented. I also think that the investigating officer should given the woman a detailed written report of what he has found and the reasons for his decision. I also feel that within a short time of the woman being widowed a representative of the N.H.S.S. should

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call on her and tell her of the provisions which are made for her benefit.
The newly formed National Association of Widows, of which I am very proud to be a patron, is giving a superb service in helping those widows who need guidance and help with their problems. I should like to pay my tribute in this House today to their first and present chairman, Mrs. Hamer, for all that she does to help the widows. This Association is against the abolition of the cohabitation rule, realising as we do that if there were no rule unmarried couples living together would be treated more favourably than married ones. This is not Utopia, and although the previous Government reduced the age at which a widow may receive benefit to 35, in my opinion it is still not low enough. If we were in Utopia, I should like to see some help for a widower who is left with children. I sometimes feel that his load is more difficult than ours. As we all know, laws and rules are made but widows, in particular, have to rely on the sympathy and understanding of those who implement them.
5.49 p.m.
LADY KINLOSS: My Lords, I am happy to join with other noble Lords in expressing my gratitude to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, for having asked this Question. I myself have been in touch with Miss Ruth Lister, whose As Man and Wife seems to me to be a model of clarity and good sense; and also with the Chairman and Secretary of the Child Action Poverty Group branch in York, Mr. Jonathan Bradshaw and Miss Teresa Gilbert, who have kindly given me far more information about what is a very difficult subject than I can possibly use in what I hope will be a very short speech. Indeed, the time for speaking at greater length will be when we come to debate the Finer Report, which was published only on July 2. I cannot say that I have been able to read it; there are 910 pages and there is a very great deal in it to think about and to consider with care. All the same, in view of some of the very painful revelations that the report has made—and by" revelations "I mean revelations which are giving pain to a very large number of women and children—I hope that a full debate upon it will not be long
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delayed. Indeed, I venture to hope that, whatever Government may be in office when we assemble again in the autumn, we may have an early opportunity of debating it then. There are no less than 620,000 families involved, and more than one million children—10 per cent, of all the families in Britain. Surely such a substantial number has an early claim upon our attention.
My Lords, this Question is concerned with the cohabitation rule and I must not stray wide of the Question—if I have not done so already. I cannot speak, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, does, as one learned in the law. But it is generally understood that everyone is presumed to know the law; though it is quite another question whether everyone does. But it seems to me as a very ordinary person that the cohabitation rule is not law at all; it is non-law because it seems to defy definition. If there is a real definition I shall be glad to be told of it; it will put a great many women—I am happily not one of those affected—out of what, at the moment, is a state of uncertainty and misery. This non-law, My Lords, appears to me as a simple laywoman to contradict what I have been taught to regard to be a fundamental of English law; that persons are to be presumed innocent until they have been proved guilty.
It is shameful, My Lords, that under this non-law—this non-law which has proved incapable of definition—a woman and children can be deprived of benefit and left destitute by the instant removal of her benefit book before she can even draw breath to appeal against the summary action of an investigating officer. This state of non-law goes even further than I have said: if the woman who has had her benefit book withdrawn does appeal, she appeals to a tribunal upon which there is not necessarily a single legally qualified person. Yet to these appeal tribunals has been entrusted the definition of the cohabitation rule and the consequence which may flow from it.
My Lords, I appreciate that there are serious difficulties in defining what "cohabitation" means. Like many noble Lords, I live in a village. Of course everyone knows that in a village there is a great deal of gossip; and everyone knows, too, that it is nonsense to rely too much upon it. In the past seven years

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I have been told six times that our house is for sale, because of advertisements which have appeared in the local newspaper. In fact, it has not been advertised once. It is surely quite scandalous that many investigations seem to have relied upon anonymous letters and anonymous telephone calls. Of course the investigators may reasonably plead that they are "acting upon information received", in the way the police do. But real cohabitation as man and wife, cohabitation not merely in the sense of sexual congress but in the sense of a more permanent quasi-marital unity, needs to be proved in formal terms. The question, as it appears to me, with which the Ministry is faced, is: what is to be regarded as a quasi-marital union?
There seems to be a solution in Miss Lister's Report. Her recommendation, which I fully support, is that for a quasi-marital relationship to be regarded as stable it should be necessary for the investigation to show that there had been a six-month period of cohabitation, and that women—who, with children, have been the principal sufferers—should not be penalised for what are casual or transitory relationships. Such a change—and I hope that the noble Lord who is to reply will consider it with sympathy—for the women and children who are suffering, could be brought about at once, quite simply, by administrative action.
I am speaking, My Lords, as a mother, and there are quite a few noble Ladies in the House who are mothers and who will know what I mean. I am quite sure that noble Lords will not misunderstand me. Under the present haphazard, random administration of the cohabitation rule, not just mothers but also children suffer. They see mother struggling; they see mother downcast and worried. Generally, mother is the only parent they know. Sometimes they are sent into care. I have been told of children who live in fear of being sent into care again, of being separated from mother. Will the noble Lord who is to reply think especially about the children upon whom there can be a lasting disturbing effect?
5.56 p.m.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, I should like to thank my noble and learned friend Lord Gardiner for
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initiating this debate and for opening with such an excellent exposition, so comprehensive that one feels that anything more is redundant. I was very impressed by the fact that he has apparently digested both volumes of Finer. I must confess that I have only dipped into it, but undoubtedly one should combine the reading of this little booklet, As Man and Wife, with the reading of the Finer Report. Of the 600,000 single-handed parents who have between them one million children, the woman charged with breaking the cohabitation rule is too often a mother desperately trying to find accommodation and a degree of security. One has to think of her motive.
It is probably a fact that those who are cohabiting have sexual intercourse. But I know enough about women, and about women whom I have seen in my consulting room, to know that in their minds this is a secondary consideration. What such a woman is looking for is a male substitute for her husband, because she is wise enough to know, if she has a family, that a man in the house will help her to control her children. This, also, is combined with the problem of accommodation, which in these days is extremely difficult to find for highly respectable married couples, and therefore this woman with children has only a limited choice. The pressures on her are tremendous and, finally, she accepts a man who has the available accommodation and who, at the time, she feels she can trust.
It should be remembered that one-parent families suffer severe poverty. As I have just said, they are often last in the queue for housing and they suffer social isolation. The woman has no friend to whom she can go to ask for advice and help. She is isolated in every way. Therefore, I believe that this is a question which calls for the utmost compassion, and in this little book, As Man and Wife, I find the description of officials trying to persuade women into admitting cohabitation extremely distasteful. The most common adjectives used to describe the officer's manner were, "arrogant", "uncivil" and "insulting". My Lords, it could be said that these women, having their most private affairs investigated and probed, would want to retaliate, so I cannot attach too much importance to this.

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However, I should like to know how many investigating officers are women. This seems to me to be essentially a woman's job, because a woman can put herself in the place of this desperate woman. Surely this delicate operation is not always conducted by men, although I have heard people talking in a way which suggests that the investigator is invariably male. The whole object, apparently, is to save money, but this seems to me to be a most expensive service. In 1971, the cost of the investigations were £400,000 which represents 45 per cent, of the benefit estimated to be saved. It is a pity that there is no way of estimating the cost in human misery of these painful investigations, better known by the victims as "snooping". However worthy the official may be, he may well regard a mother bringing up children alone as,
" a little cluster of deviants from the marital norm ",
if I may quote Finer, and therefore vulnerable to offers of accommodation made by any man.
In a permissive society, are these women to be wholly condemned because they respond to the sexual urge, an instinct second only in strength to that of self-preservation? As I have already said, in my opinion that sexual urge is a secondary matter. What these women want is protection for their children. Nevertheless, it has been decreed that the price of State aid is chastity. A woman must be condemned to abject poverty in her own right if, in her loneliness and homelessness, she decides to share accommodation with a man prepared to offer her and her children shelter without marriage. I stress "in her own right" because she has none of the protection afforded to married women. She has no moral claim to an adequate housekeeping allowance, although it is suggested she may be benefiting financially, or to rights under the Matrimonial Homes Act. Both 1964. Worse still, she has no security under the matrimonial Homes Act. Both of these Acts I rejoiced in getting on the Statute Book myself. So one cannot equate her with a married woman. She is there with this man on sufferance, and any day he can say, "This is the end, go".
My Lords, under these circumstances she must privately consider the arrange ments
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as being on trial. I cannot believe any woman, knowing how precarious is her situation, would believe, once she moves in, that this was a permanent arrangement. She may hope so, but she will privately regard it as being on trial. For this reason I regard the withdrawal of widow's pensions and supplementary benefit on suspicion of cohabitation, even before an appeal, as heartless and shortsighted. My noble and learned friend has described just what the condition can be of a woman left at the week-end with five children, and her book taken away. She may well have decided to leave the man after a trial period, but stopping the only money which she might call her own is tantamount to removing her lifeline by denying her a chance to save and escape. Even if she has saved, there she is, denied any little money she might use without the man she is living with knowing what she is about to do. I presume the reason for this action is that otherwise the State would be subsidising immorality. Personally, I have always regarded the deliberate deprivation of hungry and homeless children as more reprehensible than sexual immorality.
My Lords, if the Government insist on the cohabitation rule continuing I ask them to allow the woman to retain her benefit for at least the first six months of cohabitation. I believe Finer says three months. Three months is not enough to adjust oneself in such a way that one is prepared to go out into a really cruel and cold world. I think the woman should retain her benefit for at least six months in order to give her a chance of forming a stable union. The desirable thing in all these circumstances is that, if possible, the woman and children should establish a stable union.
If the cohabitation rule were abolished, save in common law marriages it would give the woman a degree of independence and prevent the children ultimately going into care at much greater cost to the community. I do not think the authorities have recognised this. A woman may have been cohabiting; she may have to leave; she may even cohabit with another man. The time comes when she finds life unbearable, and decides to let the children go into care. Children who go into care, deserted by the community, must inevitably develop in a way which is harmful to themselves and, of course,

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they form a risk to the whole community. The alternative is to adopt the second proposal of "as man and wife", and, having established the relationship as relatively stable, reduce the woman's benefit by the amount that represents the man's material support, if this could be done tidily as an alternative. But I have to agree, when considering both the suggestions put forward, that the only practical one is abolition.
This is a social problem which should not be regarded in isolation. Children denied the right of even an inadequate home with a substitute father may well become the delinquents of tomorrow.
6.5 p.m.
LORD ABERDARE: My Lords, I, too, would like to thank the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, for having put down this Question and giving us an opportunity to discuss the cohabitation rule. This is a matter which arouses deep emotions on all sides of the House. It has done so to-day. I have some sympathy with the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, who is to reply to a debate that has been extremely well-informed and highly critical of this rule. I do not know to what extent he will find me on his side or not, but as the noble and learned Lord has had identical letters from Ministers in both our Governments, it may be I have some sympathy with what will be his point of view.
When we were in Government, we certainly were well aware of the feelings of many people and, indeed, some organisations which represented to us some of the circumstances that cause a great deal of worry and distress about the rule. We were equally concerned with the other side of the coin. We were concerned with abuses that took place within the social security system. Noble Lords will recall that my right honourable friend Sir Keith Joseph set up a Committee on the abuse of social security benefits, under the chairmanship of Sir Henry Fisher. This Committee reported in March 1973. I think it is worth recalling what that Committee had to say on the subject of the cohabitation rule. I will not do more than quote a very brief passage from it. In paragraph 325, it says:
" We accept that in this sensitive area of human relations it is particularly important that the measures employed by the Department
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of Health and Social Security to contain an abuse should be no more intrusive than the extent of the abuse requires, and should involve as little offence to the feelings of the beneficiaries as is consistent with efficiency. We are, however, equally satisfied that if abuse occurs, as it does, it would be wrong for the Department to turn a blind eye to it because the people committing abuse arc in a situation which attracts sympathy ",
That is what the Committee said on the principle of the cohabitation rule.
They went on to make their recommendations on the way in which investigations were conducted. Again, I quote from paragraph 335:
" Subject to the comments we have made about the difficulties involved in enforcing cohabitation rules and the particular criticism which wo make below, we have no criticism of the Commission's principles. They combine realism with humanity, and where they arc followed we do not consider that there is any legitimate ground for complaint."
That is what one would expect of a Supplementary Benefits Commission led by a chairman whom we respect in this House. They went on to make various recommendations as to how the conduct of investigations into abuse could be improved. I should certainly be interested to hear from the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, what action has been taken on the recommendations of the Fisher Report. That is one highly authoritative Report which stood by the principle of the cohabitation rule, but made suggestions to improve its application.
We now have another Report, referred to by various noble Lords who have spoken to-day; the Report of the Finer Committee on one-parent families, of which my noble friend Lady Macleod, who made such an excellent speech today, was for a time a member until she resigned. I am afraid that I, too, have not had the opportunity of reading the 500-odd pages of this Report, but I have read the portion that deals with the cohabitation rule. The noble and learned Lord praised this Report very warmly as an excellent document. He quoted certain of the recommendations, but I think it is very relevant also to quote what the Finer Committee said about the general principle of the rule. I quote from Part 5, paragraphs 268/9, where they discuss the way the rule works. They said:
"… the cohabitation rule may involve indignities, and sometimes hardship or injustice, for people who fall under its shadow

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That has been very much the tenor of this debate. They went on:
" For this reason we had the strong disposition to recommend the abolition of the rule, which potentially affects all claimants who find themselves in the one-parent family situation, and we would have been glad to make such a recommendation had we been able to discover a reasonable and viable basis for doing so. We spent much time in this endeavour, but failed. It is proper to concentrate on the weaknesses in the rule and the hardships it can sometimes produce, so long as this is not permitted to hide or confuse the overwhelming argument in its favour. This is that it cannot be right to treat unmarried women who have the support of a partner both as if they had no such support and better than if they were married ".
That, coming from the Finer Committee, is to me pretty convincing evidence.
BARONESS PHILLIPS: My Lords, I wonder if the noble Lord will forgive me for interrupting. He said "unmarried women", but surely they are not referring to widows.
LORD ABERDARE: My Lords, they are referring to all single parents. This was a Committee on one-parent families and, certainly, widows are included in one-parent families.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, will the noble Lord allow me to intervene—I am sure he will, as he is a very kind man—on these subjects? The Finer Committee said also, as I have already quoted,
"… Acts which protect married women which will not protect these ".
How can he say that the single woman will be treated better than the married woman?
LORD ABERDARE: My Lords, at the moment I am only quoting what the Finer Committee said. They went into the matter very carefully. As the noble and learned Lord said, it is a very fine Report, and I am being guided by what it said. Of course, I recognise that this does not apply to the argument of the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont of Whitley, who wishes to see the married woman treated differently and in her own right. That is another question, and, as he said, a very extensive one.
The Finer Committee went on to say, having convinced themselves of the necessity for the rule: —
" Granted the necessity for the rule, the task must be to improve its administration so
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as to minimise the dangers to which everyone agrees it gives rise. We are more than satisfied that the Commission are alive to these dangers and use their best endeavours, although not always with the success they would wish, to eliminate them."
The noble and learned Lord mentioned both their recommendations for improvements in the system of administration, and one of them looks as if it was inspired by my noble friend Lady Macleod. This is the proposal that in those situations where the claimant has been regularly in receipt of benefit and disputes the alleged facts, before withdrawing benefits the appropriate officer of the Commission should give the claimant a written statement of the facts. If the claimant denies any of the facts in the statement, the Commission themselves would refer the case to the tribunal and, pending determination of that reference, the benefit would continue in payment; which is another point put by various noble Lords from different parts of the House. They also made another seemingly very useful suggestion. When the Commission are making exceptional needs payments in the nature of an adjusting allowance to meet children's requirements, they do it now for a period of four weeks, and the Committee recommended that it should be extended to three months.
I have great sympathy with these two recommendations made in the Finer Report, and I should like to ask the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, what is the Government's attitude to those two recommendations in the Finer Report. My feeling on the matter, having had two investigations into this rule, the Reports of the Fisher Committee and of the Finer Committee, and both of those Committees having come down in favour of the principle of the rule but making suggestions for its detailed application, is that this is very strong evidence that, in principle, we should stick by the rule. In fact, the Finer Committee, interestingly enough, which produced the admirable suggestion for a guaranteed maintenance allowance, went further. In making this suggestion for a guaranteed maintenance allowance, they argeed that a cohabitation rule in conjunction with the allowance would be unavoidable. This is in paragraph 164 of Part 5. This is the evidence to which I think your Lordships should pay heed. We should be concentrating on an improvement of the administration of the rule.
6.18 p.m.
LORD WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, it is appropriate that we should be discussing this matter at this time, in view of the publication of the Finer Report. The whole question of what has come to be known as the cohabitation rule is one to which the Government and the Supplementary Benefits Commission have given, and are giving, some considerable thought. I think one has to recognise the fact that this is an extraordinary sensitive area in the administration of both supplementary benefits and widows' benefits.
The noble and learned Lord asked me what is being done at the present moment to consider the matters which he raised in a Starred Question, and has raised to-day in an Unstarred Question. The Supplementary Benefits Commission have started an inquiry which began earlier this year. It is being conducted by the Commission and, while it is not in any sense a public inquiry, it will be taking into account not only what has been said in the Fisher Committee's Report—and, in fact, it acted upon some of the recommendations of the Fisher Committee—but what has been said in the Finer Committee's Report and, I think I can say, what has been said in the Report of the Child Poverty Action Group.
I think many of us realise that this is a serious attempt on the part of the authoress to make a specifie contribution in this field. I have no doubt in my own mind that the Commission would be prepared to consider representations made to them, but I do not know whether the Commission would be prepared to hear evidence in person. However, I can see no reason at all why anyone should not write to them if they have something to contribute to the kind of inquiry that the Commission is undertaking at the present moment, and which may have come out of the debate we have had to-day. It must rest with the Commission to decide whether they would wish to consider evidence being given before them in any form. I must confess that this has not arisen, but there is no reason at all why the Commission should not consider whether it will receive evidence in writing as well as evidence in person. I do not think, if the noble and learned Lord will forgive
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me, that I can go farther than that at the present moment.
The noble and learned Lord, and my noble friend Lady Phillips, raised the question of the definition of the word "cohabitation". I was somewhat surprised to hear the noble and learned Lord say that there had been no definition on this. I am not in a position to argue with him because his knowledge of these matters is superior to that of many of us in your Lordships' House, but my attention was drawn some days ago to a judgment in the Queen's Bench Division of April 11 last year when the Lord Chief Justice said:
" We have been invited to give some guidance upon the phrase ' cohabiting as man and wife ' but, for my part, it is so well known that nothing I could say about it could possibly assist in its interpretation hereafter.'
I think that every magistrates' court throughout the country, at some stage or other in its domestic proceedings, has to deal with this very matter. I would go so far as to say that there can be very few lay magistrates, as well as stipendiaries, who do not have a clear conception in their minds as to what "cohabitation" means.
I believe "cohabitation" means—and this has always been my interpretation of the term—the state of two people living together. It does net depend on there being a sexual relationship between them. On many occasions in desertion cases where husbands and wives have lived in separate parts of the house, have had no communication at all and have not lived together sexually but the wife has done shopping for the husband and done a certain amount of washing for him, as the noble and learned Lord will know better than I, the courts have held that they are, in fact, still living together. It is the state of living together rather than, the presence of the sexual act. I do not think that I can take it any further than that, but I should have thought that there is a reasonably clear and understandable definition of "cohabitation".
The noble and learned Lord, and also my noble friend Lady Phillips, asked about benefit pending an appeal. We have to bear in mind—it may be wrong—-that we are dealing with a fairly substantial amount of public money. It may be that we ought to change the rule; it may be that we ought to go a long way towards it if we do not abolish it

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altogether, but in the last analysis we have to keep in the forefront of our minds that this is the State spending public money, and the public must be satisfied that the money is being spent in the right way. To continue paying benefit—and I would ask your Lordships to consider this point—pending an appeal may encourage every person to appeal when their supplementary benefit has stopped. A large number of persons who have their benefit stopped, who have their book withdrawn, accept the situation and do not appeal. Your Lordships may not know, but after special investigation they are given notice in writing that their book is to be withdrawn and that they can appeal. As the noble and '.earned Lord says, it may well be that some of them do not know what steps to take, but they are told in writing that they can appeal. Only a small number appeal, and it may well be that if one continues paying benefit pending appeal in every case, however obvious it might be that the couples were cohabiting, it might encourage every person to appeal when, in the majority of instances, perhaps they would otherwise not do so.
I hope that I have answered the noble Baroness, Lady Summerskill, on the question of the sexual aspect, because an occasional sexual relationship by somebody having a supplementary benefit is not, in itself, considered by the Commission as living in a state of cohabitation. Therefore, one cannot say that the decision is tied up completely with any kind of sexual relationship. The noble Baroness also raised the question of the number of investigators. I must say that I am nervous about telling the House what the situation is. I understand that there are something like 320 investigators, but that less than half their time is concerned with cases of cohabitation. So far as I understand the situation, none of them are women. I say this with some apprehension. I would point out that the Commission's Report makes it clear that this can be, and often is, a job in which the officer is involved not only in embarrassment—and that aspect does not worry me at all—but one has to be aware of the fact that at worst there can be a risk of physical violence. It does not necessarily follow that because that element is present there should not be women investigators. I
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am sure that the point that the noble Baroness has made will be taken up by the Department because I know that considerable importance is being attached to this debate.
In considering this matter—I think I can say "controversial matter" having regard to what has been said to-day—it is important that we should not lose sight of what has been the fundamental purpose of the rule. I ought to explain what the situation is, and has been for some considerable time. It must be seen in the context of social policy as a whole and not simply as a rule of particular social security schemes. The law and custom of this country is to treat the family—and by "family" I mean the man, wife and dependent children living with them—as a financial unit. This has always been the case. The cohabitation rule is simply a consequence of all the other arrangements that give effect to this principle. The principle itself reflects the importance of the stable family as the basic unit in our social structure. The supplementary benefit scale rates are based on the recognition of a family unit. The legislation provides that the requirements and resources of a couple cohabiting as man and wife are to be aggregated in the same way as those of a married couple living together.
It has been the view of successive Governments that equality of treatment as between married couples and cohabiting couples is both necessary and right. Not to treat them alike would—and I know that this is not accepted by many noble Lords—put the cohabiting couple in a more advantageous position, because the woman could continue to receive supplementary benefit while her partner is working. This seems to be grossly unfair. We are, therefore, denying it to the woman who is married. It would constitute considerable unrest in the community if there was a pattern of family life in which the husband, responsible for his wife and children, was in full-term employment earning a normal wage and, therefore, not eligible for family incomes supplement and not working a sufficiently reduced number of hours a week to qualify him for supplementary benefit, but who was doing a normal job in a normal working week for a normal income and having to keep a wife and family on that. Whereas, if you had a woman who is in receipt of

537
supplementary benefit who decided to team up, with a view to establishing a kind of marriage relationship, but who is not married, in which the husband is working and doing a normal job with a normal income while she is continuing to receive supplementary benefit for herself and any children which she may have had in a former marriage, or as a result of former liaisons, that situation, surely, cannot be either reasonable or right.
BARONESS PHILLIPS: If the Minister will forgive me, he keeps saying "supplementary benefit". The case I mentioned was of a woman who had a widow's pension withdrawn. That is not supplementary benefit.
LORD WELLS-PESTELL: No, I can see that it is not, but the widow's pension is not given to the widow in her own right. It is given to her to meet certain needs as the result of the loss of her husband who himself has paid benefit insurance over a fair number of years. She gets this as the result of what her deceased husband has contributed. So, while it is not a supplementary benefit, it is a payment by the State arising from his insurance, given to her to meet a situation now that he has died. In that sense it is not a supplementary benefit; it stems from National Insurance benefit, but it is not something for which she herself has paid in and received as a right. Therefore, I think it is perfectly reasonable that the yardstick which is applied to people receiving supplementary benefit should apply to the widow.
LORD BEAUMONT OF WHITLEY: My Lords, is not the Minister, with every one of his last few words, admitting the logic of the case that I was deploying?
LORD WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I listened carefully to what the noble Lord said. What I wanted to say—perhaps I may say it now because I made a note of it at the time—is that I found his comments interesting and in some respects stimulating. I wanted to read his speech at leisure in Hansard before making any comment on it. That is what I had written down to say to the noble Lord at a later stage.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: May I make this point to the noble Lord. I feel strongly about this matter, that there is an argument, which the noble Lord has
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repeated, that we must not make it appear that the single woman is being treated better than a wife. But she does not have any security. With marriage the wife has security. I spelled it all out in my speech. The wife has the security of the home and she can stay there whatever the husband does. But we are talking about a woman who has no security whatsoever and who can be put out of the house in two minutes.
BARONESS PHILLIPS: My Lords, may I follow this point up to show how totally illogical it is? If the woman is 65 and claims retirement pension there is no cohabitation rule applied. Yet she is still receiving money from the State when she might be living with a man who is supporting her.
LORD WELLS-PESTELL: Yes, because she is receiving retirement pension in her own right, which is something entirely different. If I may reply to my noble friend Lady Summerskill, there is nothing to prevent the woman, whether or not she has children, if the relationship that she has entered into with a man breaks down, going back to the Supplementary Benefits Commission and asking for supplementary benefit.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: Of course, she would have to.
LORD WELLS-PESTELL: Precisely. I can see that she does not have the same protection as a married woman, but if she enters into a relationship of the kind that we have been discussing, and, for any reason at all, it breaks down, then she is back in the situation that she was in before she entered into the relationship. It seems to me to be perfectly right and proper that she should then be able to ask for the supplementary benefit to be restored.
The noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, referred to the Finer Committee. As I think he said, the Report makes clear that the Committee was fully conscious of the disadvantages of the cohabitation rule and that it would have liked to recommend its abolition if a reasonable and viable basis for doing so could have been found. Here you have a Committee, which has been sitting for a considerable time, giving a considerable amount of thought to this matter, bringing to it a good deal of competence and ability, yet

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it has been unable to find an alternative to the problem. In the end the Committee concluded that a cohabitation rule should be retained because of what it gave as the overwhelming argument in its favour; namely—and I come back to what I have just said—that it cannot be right to treat unmarried women, who have the support of a partner, both as if they had no support and better than if they were married. This is the Report of the Finer Committee which the Government are proposing to take into account and which the Supplementary Benefits Commission, who are considering the matter, will be looking at as well.
The report of the Child Poverty Action Group, I may say to my noble and learned friend Lord Gardiner, I have read with some considerable interest, because those of us who have worked in the professional social work field cannot but acknowledge the tremendous contribution that that organisation has made over a number of years in this area. I would not want to say anything that would in any way lessen one's own respect for what it has done in this field. The report was based on information obtained from a number of particular cases. These are mainly cases in which the woman felt sufficiently aggrieved to consult somebody associated with the Child Poverty Action Group, and it is to be expected that they would include a high proportion of hard cases. But I think it would be wrong to assume, because it is possible, as it will always be possible, to produce a number of hard cases in which there are a number of unsatisfactory factors, that this disquieting picture represents the situation in every case.
It has always been acknowledged that cohabitation is a difficult field where marginal cases are bound to arise, and it has never been claimed that the administration of the rule can be proof against mistakes occurring. In their 1971 Report on the administration of the rule, the Supplementary Benefits Commission themselves were, I would say, almost brutally frank. They went on to say:
" … it must be apparent that mistakes and errors of judgment sometimes occur, in a service totalling some 18,000 staff, many of them reflecting the values of the local community in which they live, and all of them subject to the tensions inherent in the changing
540
society of which they are a representative cross-section."
In admitting that mistakes are sometimes made and complaints received, the Commission must not be taken as undervaluing the care and thought characteristic of the service which is given in the vast majority of cases, for which the community has, I think, reason to be grateful. Indeed, in view of the emotional problems involved I think they undertake a very difficult job well; and I think that this would be an appropriate moment to say that, knowing that there are complaints, knowing that there are criticisms, knowing that people have quite properly complained about the way they have been treated, I think we ought not to get the thing out of perspective. I think we ought to acknowledge that the investigating officers, who are seeing a large number of people over a year, by and large do a very good job.
I have attempted to explain briefly that there has always been a cohabitation rule, and I have said to your Lordships that the Supplementary Benefits Commission have under review the operation of the rule as it applies to supplementary benefits and that the Secretary of State has asked them to include in their consideration the question whether any change is desirable in the relevant provisions of the Supplementary Benefit Act, and to report to her on their findings. I think the Government acknowledge that people are not very happy about it, but the question arises as to what one can do in the light of the responsibilities that a Government Department must have in the expenditure of public money—and this, in the last analysis, is something that I think we have to take into account. But I know that both the Secretary of State and the Supplementary Benefits Commission are proposing to consider very carefully what has been said this afternoon in your Lordships' House. They are going to take into account not only the document published by the Child Poverty Action Group but also the Finer Report, and I hope that the outcome will be that perhaps some formula can be found which will be more acceptable to a large number of your Lordships.
LORD GARDINER: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, could he saying anything about the two specific Finer recommendations; namely, first,

541
the continued benefit pending appeal where there is a dispute of fact, and, secondly, that the money for children should go on for three months instead of four weeks? Because are not both these questions of policy for the Government to decide, and not for the Commission?
LORD WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, all I can say to the noble and learned Lord is that these two matters, along with several others, are being referred to the Supplementary Benefits Commission. I take his point about the responsibility being with the Government and not with the Commission, and perhaps he will allow me to draw the attention of the Secretary of State to what he has said.
LORD ABERDARE: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down for the second time, could he say what has happened to the recommendations in the Fisher Report? Are these also being reviewed at the same time?
LORD WELLS-PESTELL: Yes, My Lords. My recollection is that some of the recommendations of the Fisher Committee have already been put into effect. I cannot remember offhand what they are, but I think there are two recommendations of the Fisher Committee which have been put into effect. Their recommendations, too, will be referred to the Supplementary Benefits Commission, because as the Commission started a review earlier this year it seems to me only sensible that they should look at the matter from every angle, and every angle must include the Reports in question.
BARONESS MACLEOD OF BORVE: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down for the third time, may I remind him that I asked whether he could undertake to see that there would be a woman on all the tribunals. I wonder whether he would undertake to give that some thought.
LORD WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I will certainly give the noble Baroness an undertaking that I will pass this view on to the Secretary of State. The noble Baroness will appreciate that I cannot do more than that at this stage,
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but it is a very valid point and I shall be very happy to act upon it.

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

STATUTORY INSTRUMENTS
Thirteenth Report from the Select Committee made on certain Statutory Instruments and the following Instruments which require Affirmative Resolution:
Hop Gardens (Replanting and Restructuring) Scheme 1974;
Draft Calf Subsidies (United Kingdom) (Variation) (No. 2) Scheme 1974;
Draft Northern Ireland (Emergency Provisions) Act 1974 (Continuance) Order 1974;
Draft Regional Employment (Continuation of Payment) (Winsford) Amendment Order 1974; the said Report to be printed.