Lords Sitting of 12 June 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 Portsmouth.
The Earl of Verulam—Sat first in Parliament after the death of his father.
Several Lords—Took the Oath.

BARONESS HORNSBY-SMITH
The Right Honourable Dame Margaret Patricia Hornsby-Smith, D.B.E., having been created Baroness Hornsby-Smith, of Chislehurst in Greater London, for life—Was, in her robes, introduced between the Baroness Northchurch and the Lord Boyd-Carpenter.

CLERK ASSISTANT OF THE PARLIAMENTS
2.45 p.m.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR (LORD ELWYN-JONES)My Lords, I beg to move the first of the two Motions standing in my name on the Order Paper.
As I explained to the Offices Committee on Monday, and the Leader ofthe House explained to the House yesterday, these two Motions are concerned with interim appointments following the resignation of the Clerk Assistant, and pending the retirement of the Clerk of the Parliaments at the beginning of the Summer Recess.
In order to deal with the situation, I am seeking the approval of the House for these two interim appointments to the Offices of Clerk Assistant and Reading Clerk respectively. I have made these appointments in the exercise of my responsibility under the Clerk of the Parliaments Act 1824, and, pursuant to that Act, I now submit them for the approval of the House. I beg to move.
Moved, That this House do approve the appointment by the Lord Chancellor, pursuant to the Clerk of the Parliaments Act 1824, of Peter Gordon Henderson, Esquire, to be Clerk Assistant of the
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House in the place of Robert Westby Perceval, Esquire, who has resigned.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question. Motion agreed to. nemine dissentiente.

READING CLERK AND CLERK OF OUTDOOR COMMITTEES
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I beg to move the second Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
Moved, That this House do approve the appointment by the Lord Chancellor, pursuant to the Clerk of the Parliaments Act 1824, of John Egerton Grey, Esquire, as Reading Clerk and Clerk of Outdoor Committeesof the House in the place of Peter Gordon Henderson, Esquire, appointed Clerk Assistant.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Motion agreed to, nemine dissentiente.

>LONDON TRANSPORT STAFF SHORTAGES
2.50 p.m.
BARONESS SEEAR: 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 Government what steps are being taken to relieve the extreme discomfort, verging on danger, suffered by commuters on London Transport due to the acute shortage of staff, what jobs are difficult to fill, what percentage of these jobs are at present held by women and what steps are being and will be taken to recruit and train women for them.
LORD GARNSWORTHY: My Lords, matters concerning London Transport are the responsibility of the Greater London Council. I understand that there are indeed serious shortages of bus drivers and conductors, of guards on the Underground, and of certain other key maintenance grades. So far as the second part of the noble Baroness's Question is concerned, London Transport now have their first woman bus driver; three others are training. There are no women guards or maintenance staff.
BARONESS SEEAR: My Lords, will the Government accept that this is a very unsatisfactory state ofaffairs; that the position of London Transport is, as I have said inthis Question, verging on the dangerous, and that the number of women being recruited to fill these posts is totally unsatisfactory? Will the Government attempt to take some action to get the matter put right?
LORD GARNSWORTHY: My Lords, the Government are aware of the situation and are very concerned about it. The Secretaries of State for Employment and the Environment have set up a joint study to investigate the present manpower needs of London's public services, and the likely future trends in the supply of, and the demand for, manpower by these services. But I have toadd that this study is expected to take some little time.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, while observing that we have one woman bus driver, I think my noble friend will agree that one swallow does not make a summer. Will he give me a rational explanation, completely divorced from prejudice, as to why women are not trained for positions on the Underground?
LORD GARNSWORTHY: My Lords, as I have said, this is a matter for London Transport. As to whetherI can give a rational explanation, I understand that it is a matter that has to be agreed between the trade unions, and the agreement of those working in the industry has to be obtained. I ought to say that there are indications that not very many women are likely to be forthcoming, anyway.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, is my noble friend not aware that if the women are not invited it is quite impossible to judge how many will be fothcoming?
LORD HAILSHAM OF SAINT MARYLEBONE: My Lords, can the noble Lord think of any reason why women should not perform any of these functions, except, of course, that theLabour Party is a wholly owned subsidiary of the trade union movement?
LORD BYERS: My Lords, if the noble Lord will not answer that question, may I ask him whether the Government can
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make urgent representations to London Transport? This is not a matter that can wait for many months or even years. Those of us who use these services are appalled at the conditions which prevails
LORD GARNSWORTHY: My Lords, I think that what I have to say may have some relevance to the pointraised by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham. In regard to recruitment for these services, pay is an important fact, but other employers in the London area are also short of staff, particularly in jobs where onerous hours and weekend work are necessary. I would refer my noble friends to what my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Employment said on May 6 in another place concerning London Transport.
LORD HALE: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that every word in the noble Baroness's Question isabsolutely true, to the knowledge of every Member of this House, andthat precisely the same remarks could be made about the suburban railway services into London, which now seem to be run for principles diametrically opposed to those we propounded when we supported nationalised transport? Is he also aware that the ultimate responsibility is upon there two Houses and Her Majesty's Government, however much we may have said that we do not want to interfere with day-to-day matters—and I opposed that when it was said.
LORD GARNSWORTHY: My Lords, I am convinced that this is largely a matter of pay and conditions and hours of work, and it is an extremely difficult matter to resolve.
LORD CLITHEROE: My Lords, will the noble Lord agree that passengers would find it even more inconvenient if they had to wear seat belts?
LORD LLOYD OF KILGERRAN: My Lords, as we understand that the Government are proposing to introduce legislation against sex discrimination, will the Minister agree that the public services should set a good example and employ more women now?
LORD GARNSWORTHY: Yes, my Lords,
LORD WINDLESHAM: My Lords, in an earlier reply to a supplementary question, the noble Lord referred to the interests of the trade unions concerned. Can he say what their policy has been in this matter?
LORD GARNSWORTHY: My Lords, I understand that the trade unions have been very forthcoming in thematter of the bus service. I cannot at the moment indicate the position with regard to the Underground service.
LORD POPPLEWELL: My Lords, will my noble friend agree that the real crux of the difficulty of staff shortages in transport as a whole is the very poor wage rates which the staff have previously enjoyed, and the very non-social conditions under which they have to work? Will my noble friend agree that this Government are prepared to assist London Transport in trying to overcome these inherent difficulties which exist in transport as a whole? Also, will my noble friend agree that although only one woman bus driver has yet been employed, there are thousands of women employed in London Transport? It is as well to get these matters in correct perspective. So far as trade unions are concerned, provided the women are qualified the jobs are open to them with no restrictions from the trade union point of view.
LORD GARNSWORTHY: Yes, my Lords.
LORD AVEBURY: My Lords, I understood the Minister to say that the trade unions have been very forthcoming in this matter. Will he say whether the ASLEF was includedin that remark, and how many women members the ASLEF now have?
LORD GARNSWORTHY: My Lords, I replied with regard to bus drivers. If the noble Lord will study the report of what I said, he will see that I restricted it to the bus service.
LORD BYERS: My Lords, if four women bus drivers represent a forthcoming attitude, what would the noble Lord regard as a really progressive one?
LORD GARNSWORTHY: My Lords, I should regard as a really satisfactory position one where we were able to recruit not merely women but men. The House
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should understand that this problem is not just a matter of attracting women; it is also a matter of attracting men.
BARONESS MACLEOD OF BORVE: My Lords, may I ask what is the difference in pay between the two?
LORD GARNSWORTHY: My Lords, I have no reason to think that there is any distinction, and if there is any distinction I think it is only a matter of a very short period of time before it will be removed. But at the moment I have no reason to think that there is any distinction at all.

PORTUGAL AND SANCTIONS ON RHODESIA
2.58 p.m.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what conclusions were reached in thediscussions with the Foreign Secretary of Portugal regarding the imposition of sanctions against the illegal administration of Rhodesia.
THE PARLIAMENTARY UNDERSECRETARY OF STATE, FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH OFFICE (LORD GORONWY-ROBERTS): My Lords, we have had useful discussions with the new Portuguese Foreign Minister, who is aware that we would welcome any measures his Government might decide on to increase the effectiveness of the sanctions on Rhodesia applied by the United Nations. We know that they have the matter under consideration and we shall continue to keep in close touch with them.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, in welcoming that statement, may I ask the Minister whether, in view of the fact that Mozambique on the East and Angola on the West are now likely to be prevented from breaching these sanctions, Her Majesty's Government will raise in the Security Council the question of the breach of sanctions through the only gap which will remain, which is South Africa.
LORD GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, the Security Council, or rather the United Nations Organisation through the

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appropriate committee, the Sanctions Committee, has this kind of matter continually under review, particularly the gaps to which the noble Lord has referred.
LORD HARVEY OF PRESTBURY: My Lords, will the noble Lord say whether he is also keeping in touch with the Governments of Japan, France and Italy with regard to the equipment they sell almost daily in those States?
LORD GORON WY-ROBERTS: My Lords, indeed we are in contact with all countries which are shown to be in contravention of United Nations decisions on this matter. As to the E.E.C. countries to which the noble Lord referred, I really could not generalise about those countries. However, I can say that my right honourable friend the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary raised the subject at the meeting of the Foreign Ministers of the Nine on June 10 and 11, and the Foreign Ministers then decided that a group of experts should be set up to examine ways in which sanctions could be made more effective.
THE EARL OF ONSLOW: My Lords, can the noble Lord inform us of the percentage of Rhodesian imports that go in through Portuguese territories in East or West Africa? In the event of the closure of this route, what would be the effect On the Rhodesian economy?
LORD GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, the noble Earl is asking for specific statistics. I regret that I cannot give them now, but I will have regard for that part of his question. As to the general import of his question, I can only repeat that this is, like other aspects of sanctions imposition, very much under consideration by the Government.
LORD SHINWELL: My Lords, may I ask my noble friend whether he would agree that, as Mr. Smith at the present time appears to be under pressure which was not previously exerted, it would be desirable to resume negotiations in order to reach a settlement?
LORD GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, we are always ready to resume negotiations provided any practical outcome is likely to come about. I think that the whole House would join with my
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noble friend in welcoming the fact that Mr. Smith and Bishop Muzorewa are now in discussion. This is a helpful and. one hopes, hopeful departure from the rigidity of the past in that country.

GIBRALTAR: MADRID TALKS
3.2 p.m.
LORD MERRIVALE: 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 make a Statement on the exploratory talks which took place in Madrid on May 30 and 31 last following the United Nations Fourth Committee Consensus on Gibraltar adopted by the General Assembly on December 14, 1973.
LORD GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, these talks, held between British and Spanish officials in Madrid on May 30 and 31, were without commitment and without prejudice to the positions of either side. No decisions were taken, but both sides put forward suggestions about how progress might be made and these suggestions will now be studied in London and Madrid.
LORD MERRIVALE: My Lords, while thanking the Minister for that reply, may I ask whether he would agree that Mr. Rovira, the Spanish Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, during a Press conference following these talks said, regarding overflying restrictions:
"The problem of the decolonisation of Gibraltar should he discussed in the aggregate and the Spanish Government is absolutely not prepared to grant facilities which would only serve to consolidate a British colonial presence on Spanish soil."
As the British representative at the United Nations rightly said in December—
THE LORD PRIVY SEAL (LORD SHEPHERD): My Lords. may I intervene? It is fair that the noble Lord should make one quotation, but when he comes to a second he would appear to be entering on a small speech. I would hope that he would pursue the habit of this House of putting a question.
LORD MERRIVALE: My Lords, I am going to put a question. I want to put it in its right perspective. The United

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Nations delegate said that the interests and wishes of the Gibraltarians remain paramount. Therefore, is it not morally indefensible for Spain to jeopardise flight safety for political purposes? What do Her Majesty's Government propose to do about that?
LORD GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, I think that there are two points here on which we can all agree. First, the basic position of Her Majesty's Government, like that of its predecessors, is founded on the 1969 Gibraltar Constitution Order. If I may quote once:
"Her Majesty's Government will never enter into arrangements under which the people of Gibraltar would pass under the sovereignty of another State against their freely and democratically expressed wishes."
That is firmly and definitely our position, and it has been reaffirmed every time we have had occasion to talk to our friends in Spain.
On the second point, we agree very much that talks should proceed on the practical means of improving communications between Gibraltar and the mainland. We see no reason at all why these should be held up or inhibited in the interests of some larger policy such as the one that the noble Lord described.
LORD CARRINGTON: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware, in the light of what he has said about the Government's position on Gibraltar, the 1969 Constitution Order, and so on, that I think the vast majority on both sides of the House would hope to see some settlement emerging from any talks that arise between Her Majesty's Government and the Spanish Government?
LORD GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, I very much welcome the noble Lord's intervention on that point. We follow faithfully on the consensus Motion in the United Nations last December, and we have loyally acted in accordance with it. We have engaged in talks with a view to reaching agreement with Spain, as the noble Lord has just indicated.
LORD SHINWELL: My Lords, as a matter of interest, could my noble friend inform me whether it is true that Gibraltar was acquired by the United Kingdom by military force, and whether that is consistent with the Government's general policy in the Middle East?
LORD GORONWY-ROBERTS: Well, my Lords, this takes us back a few years. One is aware of course that by the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713—and I stand to be corrected by my noble friend—the Rock was ceded to this country. On the whole, the inhabitants of the Rock have been perfectly satisfied with the new arrangements.
EARL COWLEY: My Lords, does the noble Lord realise that in fact the Spanish Government refuse to accede to a communications agreement because they say that there is no such provision under the Treaty of Utrecht?
LORD GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, frankly, I was not aware of that. On the other hand, more seriously, it is of great importance that agreement should be reached on these practical points relating to air safety. I do not think that this has anything to do with a very long quarrel about the ownership of the Rock. It is a matter of practical safety, and we would hope to come to some arrangement also on the membership of Spain in EuroControl, which covers a larger question of safety. I should hope that the consensus in this House is that no matter what differences there may be about sovereignty there is a practical question to be solved as between friends namely, to improve communications and relations between the Gibraltarians and their Spanish neighbours and, above all, to secure the maximum possible air safety.
LORD HARVEY OF PRESTBURY: My Lords, without wishing to oversimplify this very difficult problem, have the Government considered the possibility of sharing the airport in No-man's Land? It is done in Basle in Switzerland between the Swiss and the French and it works extremely well. It would be a face-saver for both sides. Has this possibility been looked at?
LORD GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, I should have to take that suggestion under advisement.
LORD SEGAL: My Lords, since communications between Gibraltar and Spain are constantly being maintained through Tangier what is the advantage to either Spain or Gibraltar in perpetuating this absurdity?
LORD GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, there is of course no advantage in perpetuating this absurdity.
LORD SHINWELL: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that I agree that Gibraltar should stay as it is at the present time, but would he mind giving me a definition of what is meant by "ceded"?
LORD GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, I take it that in the Treaty of 1713 the then Spanish Government handed over Gibraltar—or, as we prefer to call it, "the Rock" to the British Government. "Ceding" is to give from one to another.
BARONESS GAITSKELL: My Lords, is not the whole issue of Gibraltar a very delicate issue for us? We should not take up a rather arrogant attitude about the whole matter. I was dealing with it at the end of 1967 and 1968 when I was at the United Nations, and there is no need for us to behave as if we had a God given right to it.
LORD GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, I can assure my noble friend that we take no arrogant attitude to this question. This is a matter of what the Gibraltarians want. So far, they have said very definitely indeed that they want to stay as they are. So long as they do, it is our duty to support them.
LORD MERRIVALE: My Lords, the Minister rightly said that there are practical considerations involved. He said also that we must only act in the way the Gibraltarians want us to act; and as the Spanish want us only to discuss sovereignty, which we cannot discuss and will not discuss, will the Minister consider a further point? It is related to what I said earlier with a view to giving British Airways the flexibility they need. that is with regard to the utilisation of Trident 2 and Trident 3 aircraft, and the possible introduction of TriStar, with a view also to improving the payload at Gibraltar. Would Her Majesty's Government consider putting in hand a feasibility study the cost/benefit analysis for extending the runway, which would be a contributory factor towards alleviating the take-off and landing problems at Gibraltar?
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, I feel I must intervene. That I think goes very
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wide of the original Question and I do not think my noble friend should answer it. If the noble Lord wishes to put a Question of that sort I think he should put it on the Order Paper.

COMMISSION FOR LOCAL ADMINISTRATION MEMBERSHIP
LORD CHAMPION: 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 it is now possible to announce the names of the first members of the Commission for Local Administration in England.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, I am glad to be able to tell your Lordships that on the recommendation of my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for the Environment, Her Majesty has approved the appointment of the noble Baroness, Lady Serota, of Hampstead, Mr. Denis Harrison, and Mr. Patrick Cook, to be the first Local Commissioners for the investigation of complaints of maladministration against local authorities and water authorities in England. The noble Baroness will be the Chairman of the Commission and I know your Lordships will join me in wishing her and her colleagues every success in launching this new machinery for the redress of grievances and the strengthening of local government administration.
LORD CHAMPION: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that reply. I believe I am speaking for the whole House in welcoming the appointment of the noble Baroness, Lady Serota, as the Chairman of this Commission. Her qualities are known to us in all parts of this House. May I also congratulate the Government on securing the services of these two eminent people to serve with her as Commissioners on this important body.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, I am sure the House will concur with what my noble friend has said. This is a very important appointment or series of appointments. I have no doubt at all of the calibre of those appointed and we can only now wish them good fortune in the very heavy task which undoubtedly confronts them.

RETAIL PRICES
BARONESS LLEWELYN-DAVIES of HASTOE: My Lords, with the leave of the House my noble friend Lord Jacques will be making a Statement about retail prices at a convenient moment after 3.30.

PROCEDURE OF THE HOUSE
THE CHAIRMAN or COMMITTEES (THE EARL OF LISTOWEL): My Lords, I beg to move that this Report be now agreed to.
Moved, That the First Report from the Select Committee be agreed to.—(The Earl of Listowel.)
The Committee's Report was as follows:
1. REGISTRATION OF INTERESTS
The Procedure Committee have decided to set up a Sub-Committee of five Lords to consider:—

(1) the present practice of the House in regard to declaration of interest, as set out in the Companion;

(2) how "interest" should be defined;

(3) whether a register of interests should be established; and, if so, the form and extent of such a register;

and to advise generally.
2. SHORT DEBATES
The Committee have reviewed the rules which govern Short Debates under Standing Order 35A and recommend that the rules contained in the Appendix to this Report should be substituted for those contained in their earlier Reports.
The Committee further draw attention to the inconvenience and disappointment which may be caused to those interested in the subject for debate when Motions already on the Order Paper are withdrawn. While the right of a Peer to withdraw his Motion is recognised, the Committee deprecate the practice of withdrawing Motions for Short Debate from the Order Paper, especially when this is done without leaving proper time for notice to be given for another subject for Short Debate in place of the subject withdrawn.
3. PANEL OF DEPUTY CHAIRMEN
The Committee recommend that the names of Lords to serve on the panel of Deputy Chairmen of Committees should he proposed to the House by the Committee of Selection. In order to carry this recommendation into effect, amendments to Standing Order 61 will be required to extend the terms of reference of the Committee of Selection. The amendments are as follows:
Standing Order 61
After paragraph 2, insert the following new paragraph—
(" (2) The Committee of Selection shall select and propose to the House the names of the panel of Lords to act as Deputy Chairmen of Committees for each Session".)
In paragraph 3, line 3, after ("on") insert ("the panel of Deputy Chairmen of Committees and on").
4. SELECT COMMITTEES—RETIREMENT BY ROTATION
The Committee have considered the rules for retirement by rotation of members of Select Committees (set out in the First Report from the Procedure Committee, Session 1971/2). They consider that three Committees should for the time being be exempted from the operation of the retirement rule because of the nature of their work. These Committees are the Special Orders Committee and the Lords members of the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments which require a membership experienced in the scrutiny of delegated legislation, and the European Committees Committee, to which similar considerations apply. They recommend that after two years this exemption should be reconsidered.
5. AMENDMENTS TO PRIVATE BILLS
The Committee have been informed that amendments made by the Unopposed Bill Committee to Private Bills are to be made readily available to Peers, by the placing of a list of amendments in the Printed Paper Office after the Committee have met. The Procedure Committee recommend that an appropriate reference to this procedure should be inserted in the next edition of the Campanian.

APPENDIX
SHORT DEBATES GOVERNED BY S.O. 35A
Revised Rules
(1) In each Session until the Recess at Whitsun one day (normally a Wednesday) is set aside each month for two debates each of a maximum duration of 2½ hours.
(2) The right to propose subjects for these debates is reserved to Back Benchers and Cross Benchers.
(3) Motions for Short Debates are entered in Part II of No Day Named and any motions so entered shall qualify for selection by ballot. No Lord may have more than one motion at a time standing in his name in Part II of No Day Named.
(4) The purpose of these debates is to provide a forum for discussion rather than questions which the House may decide on a Division. Motions should not, therefore, be couched in a form to provoke a challenge.
(5) The choice of the two subjects for debate on the selected day is by ballot. This is carried out by the Clerk of the Parliaments on a day which is announced in advance three or four weeks before the debates are due to take place.
(6) It is assumed (unless notice to the contrary is given to the Clerk of the Parliaments) that any Lord who has a motion down in Part II of No Day Named on the day of the ballot is willing and able to move his motion on the day appointed.
(7) When a motion has been set down for a particular day, it may be amended in form but not in substance (i.e. a Lord who has been successful in the ballot may not substitute another subject for that originally proposed).
(8) No Lord who has already initiated one Short( Debate may enter anothet motion in Part II of No Day Named in the same Session.
(9) If the period of 2½ hours allowed for a debate is interrupted by other business, e.g. a Ministerial Statement, the time limit is extended by the time taken by the interruption. In such circumstances the new time limit is announced from the Government Front Bench at the end of the speech following the interruption.
(10) The speakers' list is prepared in the usual way after consultation through the usual channels and with the mover of the motion.
(11) At about 20 minutes before the end of the debate, whoever may be speaking is expected to give way to the Minister so that the House may hear the Government reply.
(12) Pursuant to S.O. 35A, on the expiry of the time limit, if the debate is still continuing. the Clerk at the Table rises and the Lord on the Woolsack brings the debate to an end by inquiring whether the mover of the motion wishes to withdraw his motion; or by putting the Question.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

PRISON REFORM
3.16 p.m.
THE EARL OF LONGFORDrose to call attention to the prison situation and the need for reform; and to move for Papers. The noble Earl said: My Lords, I shall try to be relatively brief as there is a distinguished list of speakers to follow, and we shall be looking forward with special pleasure to the maiden speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Sharples. I am sorry that we shall not hear from the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge, because no one has done more for prisoners and ex-prisoners in the last 10 years than he has done. No one will accuse him of having opted out of this difficult field in order to do something a bit softer. In a sense, I wish that everyone could speak, because I am also sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, who took such tremendous trouble ar Home Secretary, and the noble
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and learned Lord, Lord Stow Hill, who probably came closer in his relatively short period as Home Secretary to individual prisoners than any Home Secretary in my time, are not with us to-day. I am sorry that these and other noble Lords are not able to speak, but we have a very Good list.
Coming down to the House I was handed a telegram which said, "Bristol R.A.P." In case anybody does not know what that means, it means Radical Alternatives to Prison. It went on:
"Bristol R.A.P. urges you to follow in Wilberforce's footsteps and demand abolition of prisons, not reform "
in the Lords' debate. I should be proud and happy if I could honestly deliver that message to the House to-day. Nearly 20 years ago, I initiated the first debate ever held in this House on prisons. Since then I cannot remember any kind word I have ever said about the prison arrangements in this country. Prison, as I have said more than once—and many others would agree—is a rotten answer. But I cannot in conscience urge the Home Secretary, and the noble Lord who speaks for him, to get rid of prison totally until I and others can tell him, with our hands on our hearts, that we have something better to put in its place in all cases.
Sir Isaiah Berlin, in a famous lecture on Tolstoy, drew a distinction between the fox who knows many little things and the hedgehog who knows one big thing. I shall seek to emulate the hedgehog today, rather than the fox. Anyone who has been involved with prisons and prisoners—and that applies to many in this House—for a number of years is bound to have a great many individual cases of criticism and suggestions in his mind, and many issues that he would like to raise if time is available. By definition, life in prison contains elements of painfulness. There is something wrong with someone who actually enjoys incarceration. But prison is all too often more painful than it need be, to the frailty of those who organise it.
The great writer, Solzhenitsyn, after long experience of captivity, has announced, and I am quoting his words, "Prison was not all bad." Indeed, he actually blesses the prison. Again, these are his words, "for having been part of my life." But he hastens to add that he hears voices from the grave saying, "It is

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all right for you to talk. You have survived". Most prisoners are cast in a very different mould from Solzhenitsyn, as indeed most of us are. Prisoners need much more help than the average person, and they too often fail to receive it in spite of much dedicated labour and deep concern among many members of the Prison Service. There are whole areas of discussion which if time were available I should like to raise. Perhaps some other noble Lords will touch on some of them.
To take only a few examples, I would mention first the low hours of work. At 28 hours per week they are higher than they were, but in many cases they are very much lower than that. Then there are the depressing rates of pay. There have been recent rises which I hope counteract the rise in the cost of living, but even now in men's prisons the maximum pay is little more than £2 a week. In women's prisons—as the noble Baroness, Lady Summerskill, will know, because her daughter is handling these matters—the pay is less than half that of the men. There is the inadequate scale of organisation of psychiatric facilities and other questions which are really beyond counting. I personally doubt, for example, whether women's prisons ought to continue as separate entities, and there is the not at all unimportant question of whether something should be done to recognise prisoners' organisations, such as P.R.O.P. At least the possibility should be gone into now, in view of the interesting ideas that they are bringing forward.
In The Times to-day Mr. Martin Wright, a very able Secretary of the Howard League, supplied a powerful article demanding much more information about what goes on in prison and much freer communication between prisoners and the outside world. With those sentiments, most of us here would surely agree. I can go on like this forever, but my approach to-day will be different and simpler. I wish to submit a single urgent line of argument, in the hope that the House as a whole will throw its weight behind it. This line should appeal in principle to the Home Secretary, to judge by his recent keynote speech. That speech may prove to have been the most notable made by the Home Secretary since Sir Winston Churchill's proclamations in about 1908, although Lord
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Butler's inaugural in 1957 will always be remembered with gratitude.
The line I am submitting is in general harmony with the recent Report of the Home Office Advisory Council. That Report dealt specifically with young adults between 17 and 21 but its principles, I submit, could be extended far more widely. The Howard League has just produced a powerful document called III-Founded Premises, with which I am in strong sympathy; so for once I seem to be propounding a popular or fashionable doctrine. My line of argument is simple enough. It is that there are far too many people in prison, even with the present high rate of crime, and we must never tire of trying to reduce their number. We are sending many people to prison, minor offenders in particular, and those awaiting trial who should not be there at all. And having got them there we keep them there far too long.
There is nothing novel in making such a statement. In a similar debate in 1955—the first we held here on the subject—it was forcibly stated by Lord Temple-wood, a former Home Secretary and at that time President of the Howard League as is the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner who I am so glad is speaking to-clay, that a first priority should be placed on a reduction of the number of prisoners. That was nearly 20 years ago and at that time there were about 21,000 people in prison when to-day, despite some reductions at the end of last year, there are about 35,000 prisoners. Lord Templewood said then that a great many of those men and women would be much better working outside. So in saying this I am not producing some esoteric doctrine which has hitherto escaped notice. This has been said repeatedly by every kind of penal reformer and many other well-meaning persons, high and low. But now, at last, we have a Home Secretary, Mr. Roy Jenkins, who has come out strongly in favour of this emphasis. I say respectfully, and not in any spirit of pessimism, that Home Secretaries do not last for ever. They have a way of being distracted by their other manifold duties. I submit to the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, and to the Home Secretary, that it is now ornever if this tide is to be caught at the flood.
Here, my Lords, it becomes necessary to ask why this view is so obviously

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correct. It has made such little headway. In the last 20 years, of course, there has been a large increase in crime. The proportion of those found guilty of indictable offences and sent to prison has been considerably reduced, as the Home Secretary explained in his recent speech. But, certainly since 1960, and I should imagine over the whole period, there has been a noticeable increase in the average sentence. According to Mr. Wright's article, in the Netherlands to-day 2 per cent. of prison sentences exceed one year; in England and Wales the figure is 29 per cent.. I do not think that anyone who has looked into the matter feels that the Netherlands are the losers as a result. Looking at the whole picture we are still dragging our feet.
One reason why the general public, and even the enlightened public, outside the relatively small specialised circles have not been converted to this doctrine is that too often it has been presented in purely negative terms. I agree that there is a good negative case, even apart from the case of sheer economy, but I hope we can assume that we are not trying to cut down total expenditure on penal treatment. It can fairly be said that if we can substantially reduce the number of convicted persons inside prisons, we can mitigate the overcrowding and under-staffing and generally attend more effectively to the wellbeing and moral welfare of those who remain inside. That is perfectly true and it cannot be said too often. But it is not the whole truth. There are other important aspects. After all, people are not sent to prison out of malice or by idiots; they are sent there because they have broken the law, often quite seriously, and in such instances judges and magistrates decide there is no adequate alternative to prison. I do not for a moment assume that most judges or magistrates like sending people to prison. They regard it as their duty and decide that there is nothing else to do` with offenders. In this attitude they may he reflecting public opinion which is, on the whole, backward in regard to penal matters, but which is, in the last resort, the master.
However, the case for not sending men and women to prison becomes much stronger when new constructive alternatives are acceptable. Here in 1974 we
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seem to be entering a new and welcome phase of enlightenment. Following the earlier valuable reports, to which more than one Member of this House has contributed, including the noble Baroness, Lady Wootton, a number of people who would otherwise have been sent to prison are being sentenced to perform activities in the community; that is to say, outside prisons. There are various manifestations of this, but I will deal with only one.
Last week I spent an afternoon at one of the new day training centres. Delinquents who would otherwise be sent to prison go there for three months and undertake a course of full-time training devised by probation officers, with assistance from other social workers. They work full-time during the day and go home at night. The ratio of staff to participants—I was inclined to call them "inmates", but I believe that is now a rather dirty word; "participants" is the word which I prefer—is very high. In that centre there were 14 full-time staff, plus other part-time people, as against 24 participants. Even so, the cost per head is less than that of imprisonment.
My Lords, I was very much impressed, as I think Members of the House would be, by what I saw, but the point I want to make is this. All this is still on a tiny scale. The day-training centre in Camberwell is one of four which exist at the present time, so perhaps 100 men are benefiting at the moment from this new approach. As I say, there are other methods of dealing with people outside prison, but this is one of the leading methods. I shall be told that this is an experiment, that it has only just started. The whole tragedy of penal reform, or the lack of it, in this country is illustrated in the argument if anyone brings it forward. The authorities in this country have never lacked an intellectual or, indeed, a moral concern with new ideas, but they have always been so terrified of making a false move that every innovation is always on far too small a scale and takes years to introduce. The phrase "too little and too late" might have been coined specially to describe the history of penal reform in this country. What we are requesting of the Government this afternoon (and in principle I would hope that our very enlightened Home Secretary might seem to favour it) is to remove not hundreds but thousands

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of prisoners who are now in custody, and who, we believe, are now in custody against their own interests and those of the nation. To remove a hundred or two hundred and to think we have done something rather clever would be quite unworthy of the Home Secretary, and would be trifling with the problem.
I have given only one example of a rational alternative to prison, and I am the first to agree that even this new method may change as rime goes on. Two or three years from now it may not look the same as now. There may not be 14 staff to 24, or it may not be three months; all these things may be different. But the vital thing is to push on with this and other promising expedients and to push on much faster than we are likely to if past experience is any guide. I have referred to the recent Report of the Advisory Council. The Home Secretary has already said that he "strongly welcomes the broad approach of this Report". Your Lordships will recall that that is the Report dealing with young people of 17 to 21. The basic theme, as the Home Secretary has said, is that there should be a shift in emphasis from treatment in custody to treatment in the community. Among other key points, we can single out the intention of the Council to retain a wider range of young adult offenders under supervision in the community. This would he not just on the basis of probation as we know it, but on the basis of a much closer supervision. So here again we are being presented by this very representative and strong Advisory Council with a new alternative to custodial treatment. For what my opinion is worth, I throw myself enthusiastically behind this Report of the Advisory Council, and I hope we shall have many similar expressions to-day.
Obviously, yet another role, or yet another extention of their habitual role, is being recommended for our much admired Probation Service. I hope and believe that they will respond to the challenge. Clearly their numbers must be increased even faster than has been contemplated hitherto. As the Home Secretary pointed out, they have been expanded from 1,000 in 1956 to over 4,000 at the present time during which time they have become responsible for after-care of prisoners and welfare work
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in prisons. if we mean business, as I am sure we do, this major expansion of the Probation Service, not just to the degree contemplated but to a degree hitherto not contemplated, is essential; that is, as I say, if we really mean to achieve anything at all.
I am of course aware that the cordial support of the Probation Service must be obtained for these new plans if they are to succeed, and I am sure the Government are already in close touch with them. There may be probation officers—I hope that they will not be dominant—who will tell us that the amount of supervision now called for under these new plans is contrary to the traditions of the Probation Service; it would interfere with the well-established relationship of understanding and friendship between the probation officer and his client. I cannot believe that, on reflection, that will be the opinion of the Probation Service as a whole, and from my contacts in recent times I do not believe that will be their attitude. There was a time some years ago when I myself ventured to criticise the Probation Service for a reluctance to expand themselves as rapidly as the need for their services. Those days seem to be long since past. I do not know whether the Minister will be able to tell us anything about the attitude of the Probation Service, but I hope he will be able to say something of an encouraging nature.
My Lords, I said earlier that my line of argument would be single and simple, and I now come to its simplest aspect. The prison population reached a level of about 40,000 in 1970. That was its peak—a peak of about 40,000 in 1970. By the end of last year, contrary to recent predictions, it had fallen to 35,000. I do not know whether there is anything of a more up-to-date nature for the Minister to tell us to-day. The present prison building programme is proceeding on the assumption that there will be a large rise in the number in prison in the next few years, and that by 1977 to 1978 it will be 45,000; that is, 10,000 more than at present. That is the assumption, I am assured, of the present prison building programme. It is on this assumption of a great increase in the prison population that this vast prison building programme has been drawn up and is being proceeded with.

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Now, no-one who is familiar at all with our prisons will disagree with the contention that much more up-to-date accommodation should be provided. There is obviously quite a lot that should be spent there. But once we agree (as I hope this House at least can agree, and as I hope the Government can agree) that there are many people who are in prison now who should not be there at all, once we adopt for the future new criteria as to who is to go to prison and who is to be treated outside, we are entitled to assume that the total number of prison places can be progressively reduced. If this is so, if this is to be the fundamental assumption of all reasonable men to-day, the whole idea of a programme based on the opposite assumption—that the number of prisoners is going to increase greatly—becomes a total nonsense, as Field Marshal Lord Montgomery used to say. In the words of the Howard League:
"We cannot accept the logic of building more prisons when overcrowding is largely due to the imprisonment of people for whom provision could be and should be made in the community often at lower cost".
I join the Howard League in demanding a massive shift of resources from prison building to dealing with the offenders in the community. This is not a decision which can just drift along and settle itself; it is a decision which is either taken or not taken. We either go on with the present building programme or cut it drastically; in principle, there is no middle way.
I and others, here and elsewhere, have often said that we have been trying to run our prison system on a shoestring, and the same is still more obviously true of our after-care system, about which I will not speak to-day but which is at least as close to my heart. Certainly we shall go on demanding a larger share of national resources for the treatment of offenders in prison and out of it. It is not withdrawing from that position if we point out that the drastic reduction of the building programme will, even within the existing budget, liberate significant sums of money for the alternative remedies, in which I hope we are all coming to believe.
It would be an affectation not to recognise that in the lifetime of most of us, perhaps even in the lifetime of the
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youngest of us, a considerable number of men—though I hope hardly any women—will continue to go to prison for grave offences, though I hope they will go much less often and for much shorter periods than at present. The Howard League argue that there should be a 10-year ceiling on prison sentences, except for life imprisonment. I certainly endorse their demand that there should be this limit on ordinary prison sentences. As regards prisoners serving life, with whom I have had a great deal of contact, the crucial point, a minimum requirement of humanity, is to give them some hope; anything else is in my eyes positively wicked. They must be given an assurance that eventually the question of their release will be judged not on the heinousness of their original crime but on their present merits and demerits, and they must be assured that these will be assessed by those of the authorities who know them best. The supposed attitude of the general public, often whipped up in most discreditable ways by certain elements in the Press, must not be allowed to interfere with human justice. This human justice will never approximate to the divine, but at least we should make sure that we do not allow it deliberately to fall below that standard.
There is much that I could say about parole which, in my eyes, is the greatest beneficial factor introduced into penal treatment in recent years, and for which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Stow Hill, deserves a great deal of credit. I am aware—no one who is in touch with prisoners could fail to be aware—of the many tensions created by some of the present procedures. Personally, I would say that the parole system is now sufficiently well established in public confidence, partly through the splendid work of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt. who will be speaking shortly, that we could afford to move ahead much faster. But I shall want to hear what the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, and others have to say about this aspect before coming to my own conclusions.
My Lords, I draw to a close. Twenty years ago I spent no small part of my far too long speech outlining a vision of a prison service in which the prison officers performed a function which was less custodial than that of a social service. I regret that I feel disappointed in the

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progress made in that respect since that time. The prison officers, themselves, have pleaded urgently before now to play a larger part in the reformation of prisoners and, by and large, their request has remained on the table and has been allowed to pass apparently unnoticed by succeeding Governments. I shall go on pressing for a large increase in the number of social workers in prisons that is, social workers in addition to the prison officers. But I am well aware that there are many services which can be rendered by the prison staff and by no one else. Many prisoners look back to the kindly attitude of their landings officer as the most constructive influence they came under. I hope and believe that the present Home Secretary will be able to take much more advantage than hitherto of the positive contributions that lie within the power of the Prison Service at all levels.
Finally, I come to the prisoners themselves. Some people are in prison by accident; some are there, as I have said earlier, when they should not be there at all. But on the whole they are people, whether they ought to be in prison or not, who have gone astray, and we all know from the story of the lost sheep in the Gospel that these are the people who are most in need of our help. It will always be difficult—and we must face this fact if we concern ourselves with public work, and most of all with this issue—to obtain the good will of the general public for special efforts on behalf of prisoners. They will say, "Why should the money not go to people who deserve it more?" The attitude of the elder brother in the story of the Prodigal Son is all too true, and likely to remain true, of average human nature.
However, there are encouraging signs. The latest conclusions of the social scientists, including the criminologists, suggest that enlightened self-interest can reasonably be invoked today on the same side as traditional compassion in recommending reforms to the general public. Whether we be Christians or Humanists, or refrain from giving ourselves any particular label, we can agree as a matter of observation that kindness to prisoners begets kindness; brutality increases brutality. We shall never achieve our ultimate purpose of restoring these wounded human beings by external calculation alone, however enlightened. We
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shall never really help prisoners, and through them the community, so long as we stay on our pedestals. We shall never really help them if we cannot bring ourselves in our hearts to forgive them, even while we are forced to interfere with their lives. We are not likely to forgive them very successfully if we do not bear in mind that we ourselves will one day need to be forgiven. My Lords, I beg to move for Papers.

RETAIL PRICES
3.48 p.m.
LORD JACQUES: My Lords, with the permission of the House I will repeat a Statement made by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Prices and Consumer Protection. The Statement is as follows:
"As the House is aware, I have been concerned since my appointment to take action to reduce the rate of inflation.
"To this end, I have introduced subsidies on certain foodstuffs. The cuts that have been made in retailers' gross margin reference levels (which will in practice mean considerably greater falls in their net profits) is exerting considerable pressure on prices, both of food and other household goods.
"The Prices Bill, which is currently before the House, includes powers which would enable me to regulate the prices of food and other items which are of particular significance in the household budgets of those with low incomes. It will be necessary to use these powers in some areas—in particular setting maximum retail selling prices for subsidised foods. Beyond this obvious purpose, however, I have made it clear that I would prefer not to have to make widespread use of these statutory powers, provided that my objectives could be achieved by voluntary means.
"I have explored with the Retail Consortium and other representative bodies the possibility of achieving my objectives by building on such existing trade practices as lower than average margins on frequently purchased items, and special promotions, without radical change in the conditions under which they trade. Retailers with a

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turnover of £250,000 or above who arc required to reduce their gross margin reference level by 10 per cent. will now concentrate that reduction on a list of basic items agreed between us. I am circulating this list in the OFFICIAL REPORT. I have also asked them to extend their reduction by concentrating promotional cuts as far as possible on this agreed list, and by further adjusting margins between these basic items and some other goods.
"The Retail Consortium, which represents a substantial majority of the retail trade, has agreed to recommend my proposition to its members. The voluntary groups have also put proposals to me designed to meet my objectives, and I am grateful for their initiative. The special position of the small trader was recognised in the exemption of those with a turnover of less than £250,000 from the 10 per cent. cut in the gross margin reference level, and so the scope for making reductions is less. But I have the assurance of bodies representing them that they will ask their members to make reductions on this list though they will not be able to include them all.
"It is only fair to add that it has been represented to me very strongly that the 10 per cent. cut, coupled with increasing costs, is biting very deeply into the net margins of retailers, to the extent that in some cases their net margins are already 25 per cent. below the reference level. This was the safety net for net margins which I had agreed with the Retail Consortium and which retailers are entitled to take into account in their response to the scheme. Nevertheless, it is agreed that the scheme should run until the end of March, 1975 (which is the currency of the powers in Clause 2 of the Prices Bill), subject to earlier review if special circumstances arise.
"I would like to pay tribute to the retail trade for their co-operation at a particularly difficult time. It does mean the sacrifice of some flexibility in their operations, and they understandably feel this to be commercially disadvantageous. Their response to my initiative is thus a measure of their concern to play a part in the battle against inflation. I have informed the
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retail trade that, as long as this agreement is working satisfactorily, it will not be my intention to operate the powers of Clause 2 of the Prices Bill, except in relation to subsidised foodstuffs, since the objectives of this clause will have been met by the agreement instead.
"Food manufacturers have indicated their general support for this scheme. In the case of many manufactured foodstuffs, it is the manufacturers who largely determine the level and extent of promotional activity and they have undertaken, as far as possible, to concentrate this on basic items in the household budget. I am circulating this promotional list also in the OFFICIAL REPORT. I appreciate their co-operation.
"I believe this voluntary agreement will make a low budget shopping basket of basic goods more widely available. This should help in particular pensioners and other low-income families for whom inflation is an especially severe scourge."
My Lords, that is the end of the Statement. I should like to say that, as a pioneer and past Chairman of the Retail Consortium, it gives me great pleasure that they are able to speak on behalf of the retail trade and to come to this agreement with the Secretary of State.
Following is the list referred to:

ITEMS RETAILERS WILL HAVE ON CONTINUOUS OFFER
Bread—Standard 14 oz. and 28 oz white and brown wrapped.
Cheese—A low priced hard cheese.
Butter—Blended or other low priced butter.
Baby milk—Powdered.
Flour—White self-raising and plain, all brands.
Apples—One line.
Bananas—One line.
Oranges—One line.
Potatoes (maincrop) or One basic vegetable.
Beef—One cut.
Lamb (one cut) or One weight range of chicken up to 4 lb.), or chicken portions.
Biscuits—One line of sweet, lower priced.
Electric bulbs—One standard line.
Matches—One line.
Toilet soap—One line.
Toothpaste and denture powder—Popular size, one line.

LIST OF ITEMS ON WHICH MANUFACTURERS WILL CONCENTRATE THEIR PROMOTIONAL ACTIVITY
Sausages (standard lines).
Cooking oil, cooking fat and lard.
Margarine.
Tea (cheaper lines).
Breakfast cereals (standard lines).
Fish fingers.
Frozen vegetables.
Instant coffee.
Baby infant foods (packets, tins and jars).
Baked beans.
Soups (canned).
LORD ABERDARE: My Lords, we are very grateful to the noble Lord for having repeated that long and complicated Statement. It is one which is not very easy to digest at short notice, and as we are in the middle of a very important and interesting debate I shall be very short in the comments I make upon it. May I say, first, that the Statement began by banging the old drum of food subsidies of which, as the noble Lord knows, we on this side of the House take a critical view, because such large sums of money are spent so widely and so indiscriminately, and so much of that money goes to those who are not really in need. When the financial situation is so acutely difficult as it is, it seems to us a wasteful way of using scarce resources. But this is a matter which we can discuss when we deal with the Prices Bill very soon.
Certainly, we welcome the voluntary agreement. It must be right, and we are delighted to know that it is a voluntary agreement. I am sure that in a field where there are so many different retailers and producers, especially in the retail field, varying from large multiple general stores down to the village shop, it is much more preferable to have a voluntary agreement than a statutory one. I hope that the Government will continue to make use of voluntary agreements, rather than resort to the statutory powers which they will be attempting to take in the Bill.
However, I should like to ask the noble Lord one major question, which seems to me the major point about this Statement. What effect will this voluntary agreement have on the retail price index? Certainly, retailers may well co-operate in this exercise, but will they not have to raise margins on other products if they are to reduce their margins on specific
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items of food? And will this new agreement really change the normal activities of the food manufacturers and retailers? I can see only one scale of judgment which we can really take on this Statement, and that is the question of the retail price index. Am I right in thinking that this agreement will have no effect on the retail price index?
LORD WADE: My Lords, I should like to join in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Jacques, for repeating this Statement, and I am aware of his knowledge of this subject of the retail trade. On the subsidising of foodstuffs, I can say only that in my view such subsidising may conceal inflation from some people, but it does not cure it. I would certainly agree that it is better to achieve the objectives referred to in this Statement by voluntary means, rather than by statutory powers. I note that there is to be concentration on a reduction of a list of basic items that has been agreed, and I am glad to see the co-operation of the retail trade in this regard. I wonder whether the Government are sufficiently aware of the difficulties of the small shopkeepers, because overheads are going up and nearly all the expenses of the small retailers are going up. Matters are extremely difficult, even though a distinction is made in this Statement between those with a larger turnover and those with a smaller one.
There is one other small point. I should like to know exactly what "concentrating on promotional cuts" means. Is that a fancy name for temporary loss-leaders? I presume not, but if it is I would say that temporary loss-leaders do not really help in the long run either the smaller shopkeeper or the general shopping public. I would certainly agree with the tribute which has been paid to the retail trade for their co-operation. The main point is that it would seem—and I would ask the Government whether they agree—that these proposals, however worthy, will not remove the causes of inflation. The causes go deeper than this, and these proposals will not provide a cure for inflation.
LORD JACQUES: My Lords, may first thank both noble Lords for welcoming the voluntary agreement. That, of course, is the whole basis of the Statement—that there has been a voluntary agreement. Regarding the effect upon the index, the sum total of the efforts made

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by the Secretary of State, including the subsidies, upon the price index is to reduce it by 1 per cent. to 2 per cent., and to reduce the food index by between 4 per cent. and 8 per cent. I must say that that includes the subsidies. The expenditure by consumers on the foods which are the subject of this agreement is somewhere between £400 million and £800 million per year, so it covers a substantial list of foods in terms of expenditure.
We must bear in mind that the Price Commission some time ago ordered a reduction of 10 per cent in gross margins. The effect of this agreement is to concentrate the reductions on an agreed list of basic foods, and this will therefore give greater assistance to the people with lower incomes. But attached to the Statement is a second list which includes some of the items on the first list, which covers promotional items: that is to say, as one noble Lord put it, the special lines which in practice arc largely cut by the manufacturer. Thus we have agreement first by the retailers to the prices of a certain list of goods, and in addition we have a further list which includes some of the items in the first list where the manufacturers will use their promotional endeavours to cut that list, so we have a double effect upon the prices.
The small trader is only marginally affected. If his turnover is less than a quarter of a million pounds per annum he is not affected by the order of the Price Commission to reduce his gross margins; but those who represent the small traders have said that in so far as they make reductions they will concentrate on this list. Although they will not be able to do as much as the bigger retailers in this respect. we have their full co-operation. I think I have covered the main questions which have been put to me.
LORD WADE: My Lords, with regard to "loss leaders", prices are reduced temporarily simply to attract customers, and later the prices are put up again.
LORD JACQUES: Those, my Lords, are the promotional goods. The second list is what the noble Lord referred to as "loss leaders".
LORD LEATHERLAND: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that his right
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honourable friend deserves to be warmly congratulated on adopting the scheme that I put forward in my speech on prices during the debate on the Queen's Speech? I am a modest person and I will not press that. Let us assume there are ten items, bread, butter, bacon, et cetera, on the list. Will each tradesman be required to cut or stabilise the price of each one of those ten items, or will he, for example, be allowed to cut the price of bread but not butter, while a competitor down the street does exactly the reverse? If tradesmen were granted that flexibility it would enable competition to take place between various shops and supermarkets- in the high street.
LORD JACQUES: My Lords, I can answer simply by saying that there is exactly that flexibility.

PRISON REFORM
4.4 p.m.
Debate resumed.
THE LORD BISHOP OF WAKEFIELD: My Lords, I wish to thank the noble Earl, Lord Longford, for opening this subject up for debate, and for the compassionate and imaginative manner in which he has dealt with it. I am sure that many of your Lordships will agree with me in this. I am sorry that I come between the noble Earl and the noble Baroness, Lady Sharpies, who is making her maiden speech. Perhaps she would like me to go on a long time to save the moment when she has to stand up. But I may say that last time I stood up in your Lordships' House it was my maiden speech and I can assure the noble Baroness that there is no more kindly or generous a congregation than your Lordships' House. I would infinitely prefer to address this House than a gathering of clergy.
My own experience in Wakefield prison has led me to certain conclusions. There are prisoners who need and deserve attention and from whom society should be protected. There are prisoners, many of them serving life sentences, for whom prison is wasting space, money and the time of those who have charge of them. There are prisoners who in the loneliness of their cells have come to terms with

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themselves and have found their way back from the far country; and truly for some prison has been the means of redemption.
I suppose some people tend to be sentimental about prisoners. Perhaps I may be guilty of this, but I am bound to say that I have many close friends in the ranks of those within Wakefield prison. I make a point of not knowing why a man is in prison unless he chooses to tell me; I prefer to meet him as he now is and not as he was at the time of his crime. My impression is of ordinary men who have lost their way in life, of fellow human beings who are no better or worse than I am, carrying for the rest of their lives the memory of what they have done. But the fundamental difference between us is that when I choose to leave prison I do so, whereas the prisoner does not. He is there, deprived of that which in the long term enables him to be a person —his freedom—and that is the agony of it.
I do not believe it is a sign of softness to make conditions in prison as tolerable as possible, for the real punishment is to be insidethose walls and no longer a free man. But as the noble Earl has said, our present prison population is far too large. The system is clogged by the large numbers of short-term prisoners serving sentences of a few months, so short a time that no remedial work is possible. There are drugs and drug addicts, many of them sick people. They are not criminals. There are prisoners on remand because the courts, I think sometimes for inadequate reasons, have refused bail; there are prisoners who are there because poverty has made it impossible for them to pay their fines or keep up maintenance orders. Such categories are swelling the prison population beyond the capacity of the prisons, and beyond the ability of the prison staff to cope with them without working impossibly long hours. Is it not possible to use remand hostels which would release the strain upon our prisons? The faot is that there are too many people in prison, and I would think more than there need be. In 1972 nearly 45,000 people were remanded on bail, yet 35 per cent. of these prisoners were not given custodial sentences, and 5 per cent. were acquitted. There is double punishment for some and injustice for a few.
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I should have thought it would have been possible for there to be a new imprisonable offence for absconding while on bail. This is something more serious than losing your money. Yet the lack of a new maximum security prison, as recommended by the Mountbatten Commission, means a large number of prisoners are living for long periods in conditions which inevitably bring about psychological and moral disintegration. We would all agree that to be deprived for long periods of the opportunity to make decisions must inevitably unfit a man on release to take his place usefully in society. And surely—I know this is an old one—the deprivation of sexual freedom is responsible for a great deal of unnatural vice in prisons as well as for tensions which can often result in violence and make the work of the prison officers infinitely more difficult. I scarcely dare say this because I may be misunderstood, but I wonder whether there is not a possibility of mixed prisons. Do not misunderstand me. I am not proposing sexual promiscuity in our prisons. I am simply saying that the presence of men and women in the same establishment would produce a more natural environment and remove some of the dangers of an enforced monastic situation.
Then. I wonder, would it not be possible for men and women in prison to earn a full wage for the work they do, thus making discharge grant unnecessary? Of course, it might be unwise to give them all their earnings at once, for obvious reasons; but I should have thought that what they had accumulated in this way might well be administered to them according to their needs. I should have thought it would be possible to stamp their insurance cards while they are in prison, thus improving their employment prospects and preserving their entitlement to social security.
May I now say a few words about a group of men whose point of view is too little appreciated by the public, although the noble Earl has referred to them. I refer to prison officers—not "warders", as they are sometimes referred to in the Press. The first thing I say about them is that there are far too few of them, with the result that it often happens that they have to put in an 80-hour week. The total overtime working of prison officers for the year ended August 18,

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1973, was 8,195,964 hours. Can we appreciate the effect that this has upon an officer's family life? It goes far to explain the resignations from the Service. I will not tire your Lordships with too many figures. Suffice it to say that the leakage of prison officers is 20 per cent. more than the intake. It is estimated that in 1973, 289 resigned from the Service. It has to be remembered that the basic grade officer is in contact with prisoners all the time and in a sense he is serving a sentence. These officers see their task primarily to be to keep men in detention and to prepare them for release, and to do these things according to the rules laid down by Parliament The prison officer has to bear the difficult job of passing on to prisoners unpalatable decisions made higher up, often by people who have never seen the inside of a prison. May I say that when Members of Parliament complain about treatment of prisoners, as they do from time to time, they should remember that they have been party to making the rules and the code of conduct.
There is a feeling between prison officers and those who come in to work under the Probation Service or welfare officers who are not subject to the same hours. I know many prison officers who feel it desirable that they should be more integrated in the other services. Indeed, many of them feel they are well fitted to undertake the work of welfare in the prisons. It would increase their status. They would not be, as it were, just custodial while the experts come in from outside to deal with things with which, I believe, prison officers would be well equipped to deal.
There is one matter which I do not think has been properly tackled arising from the problem of long-term prisoners now that capital punishment has been abolished. This affects a large number of prisoners. In 1957 there were 130 "lifers"; in 1973 there were 900-plus. What is to be done with such men? How are we to give them some kind of hope? The prison officers themselves have come up with a suggestion affecting long-term prisoners which seems to me to be a good one but which has not so far commended itself to the Home Office. It is that prisoners who behave themselves should earn an additional bonus of one-sixth remission. This would make the work of
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the prison officer easier; it would relieve pressure upon prisoners, and it would give the long-term prisoners some gleam of light at the end of a long, dark tunnel. I wonder, although I do not speak as an expert about this, how far the whole field of incentives has been explored in order that the well-behaved prisoner may find incentives which will enable him to reduce his sentence.
I ought to say also that many of the prison officers to whom I have spoken are not a little worried about the new regulation whereby a prisoner can apply at governor level for a restoration of his remission. This is something which will make the prison officers' work very much more difficult. I suppose it is true to say that the attitude to prisoners of the public, or certain elements in the public, is often sentimental and romantic. The Official Secrets Act makes it difficult for the problems of the prison officer to be given publicity. On the whole, he is not treated very well by the media. I wonder whether your Lordships realise that a prison officer with 17 years' service and 21 hours' overtime in a week takes home a wage of £43, which I would compare with that of a student in my diocese who is being paid £48 per week in a wool mill in Batley for a holiday job. Prison officers also have to face the possibility these clays of intimidation of their families—not unlikely in a world in which hijacking and kidnapping are becoming a regular feature of life in our society.
However, the problem remains about time of release—the problems financial, of setting himself up. A man comes out. He needs clothing. He receives his release grant of —6·50, I think it is. He needs fares. Of the 50,000 men released each year, it is estimated that 10,000 are homeless. What are they to do? Again and again they end up whence they came. I believe it should be possible to make a prisoner independent when he comes out on release. For the man who finds it hard to adjust to the kind of society he finds when he comes out after a long spell in prison, there ought to be some kind of halfway house, somewhere where he can live for a week or two until he has adjusted. Recently I saw a man on Wakefield station with tears running down his cheeks. He had just been released into a new world and the experience for

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him was shattering. They need some halfway house, and I should have thought that hostels could be developed in which they could be accommodated during this time. They might even be allowed to go back into prison, as guests if you like, for a few nights until they have come to terms with life outside. If they came out with their insurance cards stamped, what an advantage it would be to them in obtaining employment not to have to explain why their card has not been stamped for however long it may be.
The care of the discharged prisoner is given to the Probation Service and as the noble Earl, Lord Longford, has said they are terribly under-staffed. It is more than they can do to pay more than one or two visits to a discharged prisoner. Your Lordships may know that the Probation Service is now asking for volunteers who will share with them some of these problems. This is a practical matter that we who are concerned about the future of the prisoner could undertake.
My Lords, we have been very fortunate in having a series of humane and wise Home Secretaries, and I find that the prison governors whom I know, and prison officers have an enlightened and progressive attitude. They are dealing with a very difficult situation and it is all too easy for us outside the prison walls to pontificate about reforms. We must see the point of view of those who have to work the situation with inadequate resources in manpower.
4.22 p.m.
BARONESS SHARPLES: My Lords, I rise with great diffidence to address your Lordships but I am very grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Longford, for giving me this opportunity of making my maiden speech this afternoon. I have been neither a probation officer nor a prison visitor, but for a number of years I have visited the wives of men in prison. I visited them in the London area. Your Lordships are well aware of the great efforts made to rehabilitate men on their release from gaol, and many improvements have indeed been made over the years. But what seems to me, and possibly to your Lordships, more important is what effect the severance from society has on the men inside.
Many prison governors now allow fortnightly visits instead of the usual monthly
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visits. At the moment, on receipt of their visiting orders, wives on supplementary benefit have to obtain their railway warrants for themselves and families from the social security office, but they are allowed these travel warrants free for only the monthly visit. This applies also to the earning wives who get their warrants from the Probation Service. Surely, if the prison governors feel that these extra visits will help the men— and it appears from all accounts that indeed they do—then, whatever the wives' income, these two-weekly travel warrants should be given free when visiting orders are granted. Cannot these orders and warrants be sent by the governor direct to the wives? It would save a great deal of time, worry and paper-work involving so many other people who are already overworked. I should like to know what the Minister thinks about these free fortnightly visits, which I feel very strongly should be encouraged.
In order to continue the maximum contact with their families, which can only help all concerned, could not the home leave now considered for men serving two years-plus be expanded, with the responsibility for the men, when outside prison, being that of the Probation Service and not that of the governor? If these extra home visits are allowed nearer the time of release, I do not think that there will be many, if any, absconders. When I recently visited a top security prison, the suggestions which I made were confirmed by all those to whom I talked. I feel that the men serving two to five years offer us the most hopeful rehabilitation and it is in this group that these ideas, which I am sure are not new, will help to keep the men out of further trouble which must be everybody's main concern, not least that of the wives.
What struck me most when visiting the wives, always on a regular basis, was that they were very lonely and, although suspicious of officials as they call them, obviously needing help and advice to assist them through a very difficult period. Hire purchase and other debts were their main problems. A woman with two children of ten and twelve now receives an average income of £18·85 from the State. With many of their husbands now in prison and a very long way from home, the added burden of the cost of travelling to see them puts them even more in debt.

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Many immigrant families have the extra problems of a strange language and even stranger customs to overcome. I feel that perhaps consulates and embassies could do more to help. In spite of all their problems, with encouragement and sympathy, and not with financial aid so far as I was concerned, they all learned to cope in a most remarkable way. They clearly felt the vital necessity of keeping the family together and having as normal a life as it is possible for a one-parent family to have.
What I have hoped to show your Lordships is that our main concern when looking to the future is surely to make every effort to maintain and increase the family links throughout a man's imprisonment, so that on his release we may have more hope that he will keep out of further trouble. There are many welfare organisations besides the social services and probation officers who do a great deal to help in the rehabilitation of prisoners, and to all of these people we obviously owe a great deal. Between us all, if we can succeed to any degree in keeping men out of gaol in the future, our extra efforts will, I feel, have been worthwhile.
Finally, my Lords, may I thank you all for the great sympathy, consideration and courtesy which has been shown to me over the past year by your Lordships, and especially to-day.
4.28 p.m.
LORD GARDINER: My Lords, I count myself extremely fortunate to be in this position on the list of speakers because it enables me to be the first of your Lordships to congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Sharpies, on her maiden speech. It was highly informed. She spoke to us of her own experience, which is what this House always likes best. She was brief and the suggestions which she made were all practical. They were in the best traditions of a maiden speech, and I am sure that now we have heard her we shall wish to hear her again soon and often.
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Longford for having introduced this subject for discussion to-day. In the past I have, I am afraid, been highly critical of many aspects of our prison system, and I am still so to-day. If one makes these criticisms it may be thought, if only
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inferentially, that one is criticising the Home Secretary who is, after all, responsible for the administration of our prison system. Therefore I should like first to make it quite clear that I intend nothing of the kind. I am a great admirer of the Home Secretary. I thought that he was a splendid Home Secretary when he held that office for a fairly brief period of only 18 months, and I am sure that he will be so again. But nobody with knowledge of political life could expect that by this date, June 12—it was on March 12 that Her Majesty the Queen opened this Parliament—he could have had a Criminal Justice Bill ready, or that we arc likely to see one on the Statute Book before November. So I mean no criticism of him in anything that I say.
Secondly. I should perhaps say that I am President of the Howard League for Penal Reform. I do not remember a time when I was not a member of the Howard League, and I was for some years on the executive and also for some years honorary treasurer. It is a body which has been very highly regarded in Government circles ever since Margery Fry was secretary. A great many of the reforms which have taken place in this field have been due to the Howard League. This is partly because their committees have always been staffed with magistrates, probation officers, prison visitors and people who really understand the subject, and because the proposals they have made have usually been reasonable and moderate. But I want to make it plain that I am not speaking for them to-day—in this House we do not represent organisations; and naturally I do not always agree with everything they say and they do not always agree with everything I say. To-day I am merely expressing my own views.
I want to deal only with two matters which I think are probably among the worst features of our prison system. The first, and much the worst, is overcrowding, and the second is the appalling atmosphere of secrecy adopted by the Home Office to everything which happens in a prison. I will take the second point first, because that is the shorter one. I do not think it applies to probation officers because they are not appointed by the Government but by local authorities, but everybody else in the prisons —the governors, the visitors, prison

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chaplains and prison medical officers all have to sign documents subjecting them to the Official Secrets Act. This means that if a visitor or anybody finds something radically wrong in a prison he is enjoined by law from telling anybody except a Home Office official. As I understand, this rule is applied very strictly. There is another thing about the Home Office policy: they seem to have a policy that if there has been appointed, not a Royal Commission or a committee sitting in public but a private. internal Home Office Working Party, nobody else is to be allowed to discuss the subject.
Your Lordships may remember on the occasion of the last Criminal Justice Bill we all welcomed an Amendment moved by the Government to provide that no convicted criminal, however heinous his offence, should be sent to prison for the first time unrepresented. He was to be offered legal aid, and when we all said: "That is admirable, but how can you possibly justify in those circumstances having no legal aid at all for applications for bail? There you are sending to prison for the first time unrepresented people who have not even been tried, let alone convicted", the answer was that nothing could be done about that matter because the Home Office had set up a private Working Party on Bail; so that subject could not be discussed until the Working Party had reported.
A little time ago the Howard League and Justice and NACRO appointed a joint committee of which the noble Earl, Lord Jellicoe, is chairman, to consider the difficulties which undoubtedly exist about boards of visitors. On their approaching prison governors or prison officers to discuss the difficulties with them they were told: "No, there is a private Home Office Working Party on the subject of boards of visitors so you cannot discuss it with anybody at all except Home Office officials". I think there was a certain lack of tact on the part of the Committee in not clearing this with the Home Office at the start, and I believe that since Mr. Jenkins has been apprised of the position the situation has been relaxed. But surely in a democracy it cannot be right that nobody is to be allowed to discuss things simply because a Government Department has appointed an internal Working Party. It is six years now since the Fulton Committee said that there
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was far to much secrecy in our public administration; it is years now since the Franks Committee picked out prison conditions as being one of the things on which there was excessive secrecy and for which the Official Secrets Act was not necessary. Surely in a democracy we ought to be entitled to know what is going on in our prisons.
Turning to the major matter of overcrowding, the Home Office, I think rightly, usually provide as a test of overcrowding how many prisoners are sleeping more than one in a cell made for one. There are of course some who do not mind this—indeed, they rather like it; but there are others to whom it adds to their punishment. I take it we all agree to-day that people are sent to prison as a punishment and not for punishment. The punishment is the deprivation of liberty, the deprivation of family life, the deprivation of sexual life; and it is a considerable hardship to many that in addition they should have to share, sometimes with two others, a cell made for one. The figure for 1972 is the most up to date that I have, when 13,737 were living and sleeping more than one to a cell made for one. I believe the figure to-day is still over 12,000. This means that for practically one in every three prisoners there is a degree of overcrowding.
Of course it is not only a question of personal hardship. This gets in the way of all rehabilitation. I agree so much with what the right reverend Prelate said about prison officers. I have known some fine prison officers and I am always very much impressed, by them. I am quite sure that one of the difficulties of getting staff is that although they would like to get to know prisoners better and to be engaged themselves in the work of rehabilitation, they remain mere turnkeys simply because of the shortage of staff. It really poisons all relations in prisons, and where there have been riots or near riots, both here and in America, they are usually in the prisons which are the most overcrowded.
Then again, of course, this situation affects work. I am quite sure that there are many prisoners for whom it is essential that they be got into the habit and rhythm of work. Some of them have never before held down a steady job. But here the difficulty is, first, accommodation, because in many of these old

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Victorian prisons there simply is not room for another workshop; and secondly, if there is room for another workshop the prison staff could not carry out the necessary additional shift.
If it is agreed that the degree of overcrowding is the worst feature of our prisons at the present time, what are the remedies? There are about half a dozen. The first is, why not reduce crime, which in turn would reduce the number of people being sent to prison. To reduce crime all you have to do is remove the causes of crime. The answer to the question, what are the causes of crime? is a very simple one which can be expressed in four words: we do not know. Of course we all have our pet theories. It is broken homes; or it is because we have gone soft and do not punish people enough, like we used to do; or it is the decline in religious beliefs; or it is mothers going out to work instead of staying at home and looking after the children; or it is high rise flats or it is the Welfare State or, if you prefer it, the affluent society, or it is "the bomb". Everybody has his or her own pet theory, but nobody knows.
It is of course a fact that a higher proportion of criminals than should be the case come from broken homes. Then you immediately come up against what I always think is the oddest of all the criminal statistics, that there is one highly criminal group in the community from whence comes over 90 per cent. of the crime, and one group which is hardly criminal at all, and yet they come from the same homes, whether they are broken or not broken, because the only difference between these two groups is that one is called "male" and the other group "female". Of course, if only men behaved as well as women do, the whole crime problem would be solved overnight. I am grateful to the noble Baroness for her support, if this is the truth of course. In any other field where there are difficult questions of fact, we call in science. We have always treated crime on a strictly amateur basis. Science might be defined as the art of ascertaining difficult questions of fact, and if you give it enough time and enough money, science will find out almost anything. If it does not, we say, "How odd it is that they
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can find the causes of all the other illnesses but not apparently the cause of cancer".
The noble Lord, Lord Butler of Saffron Walden, was the first Home Secretary who realised the importance of research work in this field, and apart from a very small amount of money for a Home Office Research Unit, he got money from industry for the Cambridge Criminological Institute. This takes time. We have not got the answers yet. I suspect we could well do with two more similar criminological institutes in other parts of the country, but what do we do meanwhile? We had to tackle this when in office. I remember having long discussions with. Mr. Roy Jenkins about this. The one fact which is perfectly clear is that if you go into any police district and look at what the local facts are, they are all the same. What they show is that if the conviction rate—that is to say, the proportion which convictions bear to all the crimes known to the police—goes up, crime goes down. If the conviction rate goes down, crime goes up. I do not know why that should be surprising. Few people would commit a crime with a policeman watching, and when you have a young man wondering whether to join a housebreaking gang or not, subject to exceptions—because every criminal is a unique human being—by and large if he thinks he will get away with it he will do it, and if he thinks if he does the job he will he caught and punished, he does not.
Since the war there has been a disastrous fall in the conviction rate. Before the war the conviction rate for indictable offences was always over 50 per cent., so if one committed a serious crime in England the probability was that one would be caught and punished. When we took office, the situation in London was that if you committed robbery with violence it was three to one that you would not be caught and punished; if you did a housebreaking job it was six to one that you would not be caught or punished at all; and if you stole something from a stationary car, it was 12 to one that you would not be caught and punished. What do you expect to happen? What was the cause of this tragic fall in the conviction rate? It is very simple. Some crimes have increased 200 per cent., some 300 per cent., some 400 per cent. We have never increased

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the police force to deal with the increase in crime.
I remember well on the day we took office there were fewer police in the Metropolitan Police Force than when the war broke out. This was obviously the first task to be tackled, but it was very difficult to recruit. It was a vicious circle. I knew C.I.D. officers who were doing a 70-hour week. Who wants a job with a 70-hour week? The average policeman got only one weekend off in seven—it was the condition. So recruitment proved very difficult. I am mentioning this only because we tackled this before and we may have to tackle it in the same way for prison officers.
We did two things. First, we stopped the police doing everything which a policeman did not have to do. At that time, there were policemen going round collecting maintenance money; policemen acting as Market Acts inspectors and Shops Act inspectors; there were policemen carrying the mace for the mayor, policemen with halberds standing about to greet the judge of Assize, and there were policemen acting as mortuary attendants. When I was a boy in London one never knew when one might meet the local "bobby" coming round the corner—and he knew his local people. At that time, you could often search for a policeman for 20 minutes, and when you found him, he was on traffic duty. We stopped all that. I asked the Chief Justice, "Do you really want all these policemen standing about with halberds at the Assizes?" The Chief Justice said, "No, I would rather they were out catching criminals".
We employed a large number of clerical officers, because there is so much clerical work to do. I have been in a police station and seen three sergeants standing waiting to use the one typewriter which they have had to share between them, and when I looked at the typewriter, it seemed to have come from the Ark. We got them clerical officers and a large number of traffic wardens to help the police with traffic duty, and slowly, recruitment improved. The other thing we did was to give them modern equipment, walkie-talkies, Panda cars, and, I think, even gave the preliminary order for a computer for Scotland Yard which has only just arrived.
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Gradually, the conviction rate began to rise. Last year was the first time for 20 years that there has been an actual fall in crime. I put this forward quite seriously. I should like to know how far are the police up to establishment now. We did very well for a couple of years. At the time of devaluation and economic difficulties a halt was called to recruiting, and I am not clear how far it has ever picked up since.
Secondly, research work I have already mentioned, which is of great importance. Thirdly, what about reducing sentences? This is probably the quickest way of decreasing the prison population within a short time. Last year my wife and I attended a week's seminar by the Howard League on "Alternatives to Imprisonment". They invited a judge with great experience, Mr. Justice McKenna, to address us on penal policy. His main proposition was that we ought to reduce sentences. The idea about sentences being much less than they used to be is wrong. There has been an enormous increase in average sentences since the war. It has been the natural answer of the judges to a crime wave. They have increased sentences very greatly. For some reason which I do not understand, the last time I went into this and looked at the figures for sentences for crimes of violence, house-breaking and sexual offences, I found that since the war the average sentence had gone up most for sexual offences, and least for crimes of violence.
It is true to say, broadly speaking, that wherever you find three prisoners sleeping in a cell made for one, one of them would have been there before the war, the second is there because of the increase in crime, and the third is there because of the increase in sentences. The Dutch, two or three years ago, as an act of policy reduced all their sentences by half. It has not led to crime increasing. What Mr. Justice McKenna said was that we have tried everything else, we have tried increasing sentences; the only thing we have never tried is decreasing the sentences. Why not try it?
I see in this morning's issue of the Law Society Gazette a report of a speech—as a matter of fact, it was a delivery of the annual Riddell Lecture on penal policy—delivered by Lord Justice James, whom your Lordships will know as a man of great experience in this field.

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I cannot resist quoting just two paragraphs, though he made many other excellent suggestions, too. He said:
" …however great the care taken to get the offender's sentence right in the light of the information available to the sentencer, ' subsequent events in the working out of the sentence may reveal that an error has been made and nothing can be done to correct the position '. He was far from suggesting that all those whom doctors regarded as patients ' were not offenders. It was possible to be both a sick person and a criminal. There were however proven inadequate and immature persons and those like alcoholics for whom the criminal process can do nothing but for whom the social services should be able to do much '. Provided that their offences were not of such a gravity as to require society to be protected from their possible repetition, such offenders should be excluded from the criminal process altogether.'"
Secondly, Lord Justice James said:
" The power to release young adult offenders on licence which the Advisory Council on the Penal System had recommended should he vested in those responsible for the day-to-day administration of custodial sentences should be extended to offenders of all age groups whose rehabilitation would be enhanced by release from custody and whose continued detention was not necessary for the protection of the public. This would not involve any surrender of the sentencing process' by the courts; it was of the utmost importance that that power should remain vested in the judiciary and be operated without delay, in public and by an authority independent of both the Legislature and the Executive.
The courts should also impose a minimum period—not more than a third of the sentence—during which the custodial conditions would have to be maintained. But beyond that, there was much to be gained by giving a measure of control over sentences to the Executive, i.e., the prison authorities and Home Office. Just as the courts now avoid imposing imprisonment while there is any other appropriate method of dealing with an offender, so no individual sentenced to imprisonment should be kept in custody any longer than is necessary ' in the balanced interests of society and the prisoner '."
Speakers have already referred to the categories of alcoholics and inadequates. I think all those familiar with this problem recognise that they ought to be dealt with outside and not inside prison. I remain of the view that the prison population ought in part to be reduced by providing legal aid for applications for bail. Finally, although this has already been said, the most effective thing to be done, I am sure. is to make a really big switch of resources from prison building to methods of treatment within the community. This means more hostels and
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more probation officers. I would hope it would mean, too, incidentally, more prison officers so that they can get on with their work of rehabilitation inside prisons. But to keep people out of prisons we need more methods to be used in the community. I understand that there are plans for 110 probation hostels which many of us have been told for many years ought to be in existence. I think even now there are only 12. Having asked about the figures for the establishment so far as the police are concerned, I wonder whether my noble friend Lord Harris of Greenwich could tell us the position regarding probation officers, because it is quite clear—and I think some of us said this in this House at least a year ago—that current thinking on the extension of the probation service was on far too small a scale and would need to be substantially increased.
I did not mean to take as long as I have. It will not, I hope, be deduced from what I have said that there are not other parts of our prison system of which I am highly critical. The most important single problem is this awful overcrowding. We now have a chance. I think I have read in the Commons Hansard everything that Mr. Jenkins has said in this field. I have read a number of speeches he has made outside Parliament, and I have not, if I may say so, disagreed with a single point he has made. I am hopeful that he is there long enough to see these matters right.
4.53 p.m.
LORD HUNT: My Lords, if one cannot be the first to congratulate a maiden speaker, the next best thing is to be the second, and it gives me real pleasure to congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Sharpies, on a most informed, and caring and well-delivered speech. I was to finish the remarks I have to offer to your Lordships by saying something about the voluntary work which in my observation and experience is done and has been done for a long time by volunteers, with prisoners in the inside situation, either through the Probation and Aftercare Service or by independent bodies, among prisoners wives and their dependants. The noble Baroness covered the subject, par-eloquently than I could, and with so much ticularly the latter part, so much more more direct knowledge than I possess, that I would begin, rather than finish, by say

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ing that one of the things that moved me most during the seven years I was Chairman of the Parole Board was the loyalty of prisoners' wives for their menfolk, perhaps it was in some cases misplaced, but splendid it was, and also the care that is being given to the difficulties which they face, usually through no fault of their own, by such splendid volunteers as the noble Baroness. I should like to pay my tribute, and ask her to pass on that tribute to all who are working with her.
I think I can claim to have visited nearly all the prisons in England and Wales over the course of six and a half years, perhaps more than 60 visits. I claim no credit for this; it was a necessary part of my job as Chairman of the Parole Board. I suppose that I have become familiar, almost at home, in the prison scene. But I certainly do not claim to speak with authority about the prison situation, about the problems of management and administration and containment. Still less would I presume to represent the prisoners' point of view. These aspects of what we are talking about can properly be spoken about only by Home Office Ministers, past and present, by the governors of our prisons, those splendid people, and the prisoners themselves, who have now contrived a mouthpiece, referred to by the noble Earl, Lord Longford, called PROP, and they seem to be increasingly able to publish letters in the Press.
I can be sure that some of the points that I propose to make will not be agreed to by any of those people I have spoken about. Indeed I doubt whether one is qualified to speak with knowledge of what it is like to be inside a prison if one has not served or is not serving as a prison officer, or has not served a prison sentence, or is not that rare bird, fortunately, who has had both these experiences. So far as I know, none of your Lordships have had either or both of these experiences, any more than I have. The contribution that I have to make derives at least as much from the reading of thousands of parole dossiers, and discussion of those with my colleagues. In certain respects this makes revealing reading about the effects on men and women in prison and on the work of those who have charge of them.
Perhaps for the benefit of those of your Lordships who have not been inside
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a prison I should dispel any belief that it is a grim and dreadful experience, and conversely that it bears any resemblance to a Butlin's holiday camp. Neither is true. I was frankly afraid before my first visit in 1967, and I hope I will not be misunderstood when I say that, with exceptions, I have come increasingly to enjoy those visits. In any case, the scene is one of infinite variety; from the maximum degree of liberty and opportunities that are offered in our open prisons to the maximum restrictions and limitations of the top security wings within our prisons; from a fairly high degree of purpose and responsibility given to prisoners, such as the industrial prison at Coldingley, to one of almost total containment when all but a few hours of the twenty-four hours have to be spent in prison cells, such as goes on at Wandsworth, It may surprise some of your Lordships to know that a prison containing exclusively "lifers" can he a relaxed community comprising mainly reasonable and responsible men. The right reverend Prelate made some references to this situation in connection with Wakefield. I was thinking of Kingston prison in Portsmouth, and also the fact that the grim image and repute of Dartmoor bears no resemblance to its reality, which is also one of relaxation and a certain esprit de corps. There is a kudos, a cachéattached to doing time on the Moor, which I suppose is a hangover from the past of this historic place and the type of inmate who used to be there.
I have always visited prisons and eyed the walls of prisons with a kind of sporting interest rather than a professional one. My reward came on one of my visits to Dartmoor when I was able to demonstrate an interesting route up the wall of that prison, interesting, that is, to anyone who would be so misguided as to want to get into the prison from the outside: and I was rather sorry on my next visit to find that they had sealed that rather good crack. The fact that my colleagues and I could enjoy our discussions with prisoners and our casual meetings with them on the landings and in the workshops and so on during our parole visits was precisely because, while there was usually a degree of bitterness, cynicism, and distrust in any one group, there was always absolute freedom to

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talk without inhibitions, and there was friendliness and humour, too.
No one can read the magazines produced by prisoners without catching all these nuances, especially the amount of humour that shines through. It is a great tribute to the governors and their staffs—my admiration for them is unbounded—including chaplains, medical officers, and probation and welfare officers, and to the large measure of good sense possessed by most inmates, that the ambience and atmosphere of most of our prisons is prevailingly tolerable and often good for most of the time. Nobody likes the idea of guard dogs, but guard dogs do not set the tone of a prison. In fact, they look quite amiable creatures, provided one does not take liberties with them or seek to gain one's liberty. As has already been mentioned by several speakers, by and large prison officers have long since shed the turnkey image and attitude that used to prevail. They do not like being called warders—and the right reverend Prelate mentioned this; they like still less being referred to as gaolers. As has also been said, some do quite a bit of welfare work on the side, and would like to do even more.
Of course there are exceptions to these generalities. I always found the visits to the top security wings—and particularly at Leicester prison—fairly shattering experiences, even for brief visits. These small units, prisons within prisons, insulated from the outside world where life goes on—or stands still—in a kind of aimless, listless, eerily unnatural state of suspended animation, are very unnerving. This is not necessarily to condemn the policy of segregation in small units, with a high ratio of staff to inmates, who, incidentally, share that same isolation. The objections to containing large numbers of the most dangerous criminals in a kind of Alcatraz or Devil's Island situation have always seemed to me to he much greater. The recent policy to disperse some of these top criminals among a larger population of 'A' and 'B' category men has certainly brought disturbance and caused trouble. I am thinking of what happened at Gartree Prison last year. There would seem to be no really satisfactory method of hold-
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ing such men under such conditions for long periods.
Let there be no nonsense about this; living in these wings are some dangerous and evil men. Not all of them are either or both, but there are some and society has to be protected against them. I would go on and say that the evil men are not only to be found in those conditions of top security, because not all prisoners are physically dangerous, but some of them represent a quite different but to me no less serious threat to our system. I have recently received from my noble friend. Lord Longford an article that he wrote in the Catholic Herald entitled—and I am sure that this is the sub-editor's choice of words—" Is prison on the way out?" My answer to that must be a sad, but emphatic, "No". The only societies where prisons are totally irrelevant and unnecessary are the so-called primitive societies, such as exist in countries like Nepal.
Fortunately, there are comparatively few evil people in our prisons. To say this is not to condone in any way the criminal deeds that are committed by too many people. For the most part, prisoners are not deliberately evil people despite what they have done. For the most part they include society's misfits, and some of them are identifiably products of the wrongs in our society itself. Such people seem unable to keep away from crime, to avoid criminal behaviour, without substantial support and some degree of control. It is for these that we should be mainly concerned to improve the system of treatment. There are far too many young people, albeit some of them guilty of violent and wicked crimes, for whom, except as a short, sharp shock, prison is the worst possible answer. Prison only corrupts them if they stay in for long.
Nothing like enough is being done inside to prepare men and women for release. Of course there are strict limits to what can be done inside at present. This is not to belittle what is being done. There is, of course, the downgrading process from one security category to another, which provides an avenue for increasing opportunities. Training prisons, such as Coldingley, and perhaps even more so the lower security prisons

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such as The Verne and Lewes, are very impressive places to visit. The trouble is not so much the quality of what is provided, but the amount of it. As everybody knows, and as has been mentioned, the root problem is that of large numbers, and the key to this problem is not more prisons but fewer prison sentences and shorter periods spent inside. I feel very encouraged, as do others, by recent pronouncements by the Home Secretary and the Permanent Under-Secretary, and I like very much the notion of the custody and control order for young offenders.
As regards the length of sentences, I listened with respect and interest to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner. I am among those who doubt, from observation at home and abroad, the real deterrent effect to the offender—in particular or in general—of the very long sentence. Evidence seems to point straight the other way. What is absolutely certain is that the longer a person stays inside, the greater the problems for him when he eventually comes out.
But it is obvious to all who have been involved that rehabilitation can only be really effective outside prison. This is what parole is all about. We have been paroling some 40 per cent. of those who are eligible at some point before they would normally have come out, anyway. Admittedly, some of these paroles have been for fairly short periods. I—and I can speak freely now, having handed over my duties as chairman—would like to see every prisoner serving a sentence in excess of, let us say, 12 months, subject to a period of supervision and, where necessary, support in the community. I also believe that part of the final one-third of the sentence, which is normally remitted without any strings for reasonably good behaviour, should be constructively and conditionally spent under supervision in the community.
These measures will entail a drastic overhaul of our penal system, including the parole system, but I think that is justified, timely, and indeed necessary. I was also interested, as was the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, in what Lord Justice James, a former Vice-Chairman of the Parole Board, had to say on this subject. The main burden of all this falls on the Probation and After-Care Service. As President of the National Association of Probation Officers I know that
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I am speaking out of turn, and my views are therefore strictly my own. There would have to be a massive increase in that Service and, not least important, there would have to be a massive increase in the amount of voluntary support, which the Service deserves and could receive. Holland, once again, quite apart from reducing their sentencing, has shown what can be done by creating a very large degree of help for offenders.
In terms of this debate, perhaps the most important point about all these suggestions is that they would make it possible to reorientate the prison regime and training programmes towards preparation for release on parole, which would then become a normal feature of the fixed sentence. Of one thing I am quite persuaded; that is, that it is not generally helpful, nor is it morally right, to keep all prisoners and their dependants in a state of tension and anxiety about the question of their parole, and then turn down more than half of them without giving any reasons. I recognise that it is not practicable to do so at present. But if it were established that parole were built into the fixed sentence for the majority as a normal practice, leaving the question of parole and its timing for expert assessment by a Board only for the minority, this dilemma could be avoided. With these exceptional cases the reasons could be given.
My Lords, I finish by posing a question which I think has been dealt so much better by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner. What are the keys to the problems of crime in our society? It would be pretentious and highly irrelevant if I were to start a new debate on that subject. Of course, in our kind of civilisation there must be a framework of good laws, there must be skill and vigilance in upholding and safeguarding those laws, there must be a discerning and acceptable degree of sternness and compassion and constructiveness towards the law breakers. Those keys are basic to the whole of society and its meaning. The other keys, my Lords, are I believe to be found not in the framework but in the very raw material of the community itself, in the moral climate and the social conditions in which crime may either wither or flourish. Most of all, J believe the key,

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the golden key, is that of a more caring society.
5.11 p.m.
LORD SOPER: My Lords, if most good things come in trinitarian form then let me be the third speaker to congratulate the noble Baroness on her maiden speech which was compassionate and perceptive and for which we are grateful. Let me also add my gratitude to that which has already been spoken to my noble friend Lord Longford for introducing again this topic and evoking the kind of results that already I am sure have gratified him and given great opportunities for thought, and I think a large measure of agreement, to those who have listened to what has already been said. He has been concerned with these matters of penal reform for a very long time. It was 45 years ago that I first became a visiting prison chaplain, and how much I agree with what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, said about the prevailing atmosphere of secrecy which was all the more dangerous because it was accompanied by a general sense of indifference on the part of the community at large.
I shall never forget the shock which I received in being brought face to face —though not in the more intimate way in which a prisoner has to face these matters —with what prison is all about and what are the conditions which can be perceived only from the inside, and only imperfectly perceived by those who do not go through the rigours of actual imprisonment and deprivation. One thing is clear, or has become increasingly clear to me, that over the last 45 years there has been a vast increase in awareness, not necessarily at a deep level but superficially, and a great deal more has been known about prisons. This particular publicity, which is I think both superficial and provocative, has underlined that favourite report that I always associate with matters like this and the boy who was thus described, "His handwriting is so much improved that now for the first time we are able to see how really bad his work is". I have a complete and absolute conviction now of how real and dreadful is the issue of crime, and though I would shift a good deal from a traditional point of view of culpability resting particularly and inescapably on the criminal, I am
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more and more convinced, as the noble Lord who has just sat down has said, that to treat lightly or sentimentally this blot on the society in which we live, and this very dangerous element in that society, is an exercise in escapism and has no real part in this kind of intelligent discussion.
For various reasons, the incidence of crime has increased. The noble and learned Lord said that he does not know where it comes from. Professionally, I have to tell him that it comes from sin, but I also would heartily agree with him that the way in which it expresses itself in these days is much more complex. It is for that reason that it is most dangerous for us to assume that we can pin the causes of crime upon individual idiosyncracy or behaviour patterns, whereas a great deal of it has to do with the setting in which modern society finds itself and the various stresses and strains which are brought to bear on those who are frail in moral and mental make-up.
The first thing that impressed itself on me over the years during a fairly extensive acquaintance with prison conditions is how real is the problem that still has to be faced and how much more effort and money have to be put into the facing of it. The other is that the prison system itself should be condemned and ultimately must he removed. It is not a well-found ship temporarily on the rocks to be refloated and repaired; it is an outdated junk seen upon the rocks and only fit to be salvaged in so far as we can preserve certain parts of it for the breaker's yard. That may sound somewhat obdurate and a fairly dogmatic statement, but it comes out of a certain amount of experience and I think is highlighted and corroborated by the wealth of proposition and suggestion that now is available for those who would see things in a better shape.
What the Advisory Council has propounded and indeed the Howard Reform League and others have been saying has now amounted to a very impressive edifice of suggestions and propositions. I believe they are worth considering, not in order to maintain the system of the prison but in order to provide at least some, shall we say, metal and machinery and wood that can be put into an entirely new system. But while we have this system let us make the best of it, recognis-

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ing that you cannot ultimately put new wine into old bottles but you can and must preserve the security of the community in which you live and the reformation as best you can provide it for the prisoner, even in a system which I believe sooner or later must be regarded as outdated and ultimately to be replaced.
What I have to say about the various reforms which are indicated on the Order Paper as the second subject of this particular debate has to do with a number of matters which can immediately I think be undertaken, and some of which have already been underlined and set forth in the documents to which I have referred. Let me begin with sentencing. It is no accident that in this publication III-Founded Premises there is the advocacy that no sentence in prison for more than 10 years, except for life sentences, should be imposed. I heartily agree with that; indeed I would reduce it to four years, and say that if you imprison any man under custodial conditions which are unrelieved by change and unadorned by hope then by the end of four years you are likely to have destroyed one of his moral dimensions beyond repair. That does not mean for one moment that you should then let him out, bid him goodbye and give him a hail-fellow-well-met assumption that he will be all right in the future and need not consider the past any more. It means that unless the kind of treatment wiih which you begin offers an increasing hope as it goes on then I believe that that particular kind of imprisonment is not permissible.
I am sure that, as you may see on yellow lines—and the text here is suitable for sermons addressed to relatives at funerals—"Do not enter the box until your exit is clear" is admirable in the realm of penal reform. You can deny a man liberty, you can deny him access to normal occupational enjoyment, in some circumstances (not all prisoners are married by the way) you can reduce to a minimum his opportunity of social life and sexual opportunity, but you must not take away hope from him. That is the one undeniable right to which he is entitled whatever he has done, and unless you have provided that hope—it may be at long distance and the tunnel may be indefinitely extended—I believe you have done him a permanent and irremedial injury, and you have no right to do it.
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I move on now, if I may, to those suggestions which come within the general framework of non-custodial or only semi-custodial treatment. How eagerly do I welcome the propositions in the Advisory Council's Report of the sort of hostels—and I will specify some of them—which I believe can form the basis of a semi-custodial and controlled alternative to prison or, as in some cases, can be the next stage in the redemption of a prisoner and in the protection of the society against which he has transgressed.
I start with a "commercial" about probation hostels. I offer the Minister a brand new probation hostel in Highbury which we shall finishnext week. I want to ask him whether he is prepared to allow us to use it, but not as a segregated one-sex hostel because we are convinced after many years of experience that if probation hostels are to be provided then there are greater dangers in segregating persons than in exposing them to some of the risks which necessarily will follow from multi-occupation by young men and young women.
The hostel system, as traditionally understood, is a pretty poor do, but the hostel system in which there is also flexibility, whereby a probation hostel can also include others who will not necessarily be subject to the same regulations, has ample opportunity of success. An intelligent, enterprising Government will, I hope, believe it worth trying. Therefore, I ask the Minister whether he can give me any help about that matter because time is short and our money has run out. With regard to other types of hostels, the Advisory Council surely makes sense when it indicates the need for a proliferation of hostels of various kinds. I will not beat the alcoholic drum again, for I think everybody now realises that in dealing with alcoholism it is sheer idiocy to require a fine from an alcoholic and if he cannot pay it to put him in "clink". Furthermore, the treatment of the alcoholic must go in three stages. He must first be dried out at the reception centre; he must then be rehabilitated as well as can be undertaken with comfort, care and by some medication. Then, as is highly likely, if you are to preserve his sobriety you must ensure that he has the opportunity of some kind of supported living. For he can get on all right with that, but if you expose him to the full

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rigours of the world in which he has collapsed, he is most likely to collapse again.
Hostels for the third stage of recovered alcoholics is the next priority. Hostels for girls in need of care and protection, and hostels where pregnant girls can be cared for, are also requirements. Let me make a confession. Years ago when we set up a hostel for pregnant girls I insisted that it should be a hostel in which these girls should be segregated. That was wrong; it was a failure, a mistake; and just as it is right and proper that men and women, young boys and young girls should have the opportunity of living socially together in properly disciplined hostels, so I am sure—as, by the way, this particular Advisory Council suggests—there should be an opportunity for pregnant girls also to find their way into such hostels.
We come next to the matter of hostels for young recidivists. May I again, without impertinence, give your Lordships a piece of personal experience. In the mission where I work we run two hostels and we find that there is ample need for the hostel for the serious-minded youngster who is really trying to make good but has nowhere to live and has just come out of Borstal. Then there is the hostel for the young scalliwag who does not intend, or has no strong desire, to go straight but who ought to be protected and disciplined in some way from the kind of life which will ultimately debauch him. We have had some measure of success in that.
I offer these suggestions, not out of any impious idea that we know better than the Government—of course we do not—but out of the experience which has come to us over the years. It is clear to me that the prison system based on the retributive process is a failure. It is morally objectionable to me that there should be a prison system based on the exemplary principle. I am convinced that the kind of prison and the kind of noncustodial or semi-custodial control and discipline which has as its first requirement and objective the reformation of the prisoner does not automatically palliate the crime of which he has been guilty, and does not lead to some kind of sentimental attachment to the idea that, after all, he is no better or worse than other
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people. It can be as realistic as any other intentional programme of retribution and restitution; but ultimately it is my conviction that a prison system which moves towards the reformation of the criminal as its first objective will not only have a better chance of such reformation in the life of the criminal but, ultimately, will be the best disincentive to evil behaviour on the part of the community and to less security to the social life of all.
5.25 p.m.
LORD ST. JUST: My Lords, I should like to congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Sharples, on an excellent maiden speech. She obeyed all the rules of the maiden speaker: clarity, brevity and getting clearly to the point she wished to put across. I have been a Member of this House for a number of years and, like most of your Lordships, we have various rules which we all stand by. This was one of the rules that I was taught when I joined the House: "Speak on subjects you know about, otherwise come in on any Bill on an Amendment. But if you do not have a great deal of detailed knowledge on a general debate far better to told your tongue." My Lords, I am breaking that rule to-day, if only for one reason—I happen to have a great friend who has worked within a Department of the Home Office in the 100-strong group of doctors who do the streaming of prisoners.
Not being an expert, I have possibly an added advantage because, like every other noble Lord, and the right reverend Prelate, who spoke, I can make suggestions which possibly I can get away with; for noble Lords can only say that, "He does not know much about the subject so it does not matter." The remarks I intended to make and which I spent a considerable amount of time in preparing were covered by the right reverend Prelate. Therefore my speech will be brief. I agree with everything the right reverend Prelate had to say and he left me few points that I wish to explore.
Surely, my Lords, we have reached the state now in the research into the prison service where we have experts, with the money available, who are able to stream these prisoners into the right categories where they serve sentences in an environment which is obviously limited by prison conditions. The money available

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to the Home Office is as essential for this purpose as for any form of human society. I was extremely interested in the right reverend Prelate's ideas in looking ahead to mixed prisons. That concept is probably bound to come and in many ways there is much to be said for it. But we must take into consideration, as always the concern of the general public, and such an advance must necessarily be slow. Gracious me! We hear it often enough from the Dispatch Box, whatever Government may be in power, that Parliament is Parliament and that the Government must take into consideration the public as well. But so long as advance is made, slow as it may be, it seems that is the law that really matters.
I was extremely interested in what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, said. He is quite naturally a great expert on matters concerning the hostels outside the prison system. This is obviously an area where an enormous amount not only of research but also of improvement—trial and error—has to go ahead. It has been done from the Borstal angle and a great advance has been made in the type of work that these young people can do. They are being encouraged obviously by people of high ability who have the right idea of what type of encouragement to give in any job they may undertake.
My Lords, can we not take this matter one stage further? Here I can be cast out quite happily and thrown down by the Minister of State. Would it not be possible with the slightly older group than the Borstal group, the young and tough—after all in prison these days prisoners are healthy, well fed and medically superbly looked after—to have some form of Outward Bound for these young men? Can this not be thought about? I am not asking for anything more than that it should be thought about and considered. Whether the staffing of this would come from the prison officers themselves, or whether it would need some special type of staffing is another matter. I know there are problems of security and again of streaming for the right type of young boy to go into this project. Having been in the Army I suppose it is easy for people to turn round and say to me, "It is all very well for you as an ex-Army person to talk about how good the conscription years were for a young man". But on a
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highly skilled programme these young men could be challenged to the utmost of their physical and mental ability. As we have got so far in research and streaming in the various prisons and categories could not this idea possibly be considered?
Every other possible point I could mention has been covered, so I should just like to thank the House for listening to me on this occasion on a subject about which I have been not well briefed nor have learnt a great deal before the debate and now do not consider myself any form of expert.
5.33 p.m.
BARONESS MASHAM OF ILTON: My Lords, first of all, I should like to thank the noble Earl, Lord Longford, for having initiated this debate. Secondly, I should like to give a special congratulation to the noble Baroness, Lady Sharples, for her maiden speech, because I am the only woman Peer in this debate with her. This debate is most interesting and very humane, and I should like to speak mainly this evening on the young adult offender, because that is the subject I know best. I have worked for 13 years on the board of visitors at an open Borstal, and I have also been helping to run some summer camps for under-graduates from Oxford, and also for boys from Borstal and severely disabled men. Over the years, I have found that I can create a much better and much longer lasting relationship from outside than from inside. Therefore, I like very many of the things in the Young Adult Offender's Report, some of which need looking at very thoroughly.
I should like to tell your Lordships very briefly about the result of one of our camps for boys from Borstal and very severely disabled men, some of whom could not cat, were very disfigured and could not speak. Nobody offered to take these men who live in hospital all the time for a holiday. So we arranged with volunteers from Borstal that they should do this job under canvas in the Lake District. What I am now going to say will illustrate how groups can live together and understand each other better. On going back to Borstal after 10 days together. one cocky young man from Newcastle said to me, "I used to take the mickey out of the likes of them, but after living with them for a week, I will

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never do it again." He understood that these severely disabled men were people just like himself. There is a tremendous amount we must do to educate the public, though progress has been made in the last few years. A scheme which is now working is the Community Service Pilot Scheme, and I hope it will be extended. Some of the young men who took part in it have stayed on a voluntary basis and that is very encouraging.
I should also like to say from my experience that I am waiting hopefully for the Rehabilitation Bill of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, because sometimes young men whom I am interviewing in Borstal look at me and ask, "How long do we have to have these records tagged on to us?" I should like to say to them, "If you do well and stay out of trouble the records will be destroyed."
I now come to hostels. This subject has been covered very thoroughly by the noble Lord, Lord Soper, but I should like to quote from the Report of the Young Adult Offenders:
"The Prison Department should continue to seek sites in or near urban areas for establishments for young adult offenders; and planning authorities should recognise and give proper priority to the obligation of the community to make provision for the treatment of young adult offenders in the places where it is most likely to be effective."
The Report stresses the need for hostels for homeless young offenders. It is essential that these homeless young people have help and support in a community, otherwise they will fail. My Lords, what will the Government do about getting planning permission for these hostels? The open Borstal to which I am attached has been trying to get planning permission for a hostel for the last three years. Now that we have a successful Home Secretary, perhaps he can do something about organising planning permission without delay. Our staff at Borstal are disillusioned and sickened by the attitudes of the community. We live in a very mercenary-minded community; it is perfectly all right having a hostel so long as it is not in my town and in my street.
Also, there is difficulty in implementing the Children and Young Persons Act. I do not think adequate resources have been made available to implement this Act. Children's homes cannot hold the con
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tinual absconder and the violent and aggressive child. Therefore, there is a great increase in 15 and 16 year-old boys in Borstals—and these are generally closed Borstals—or even in adult prisons. Can something be done about this matter?
The Young Adult Offenders' Report states:
"Where it is necessary to remand a young adult in custody he should be remanded to the nearest remand centre, provided this is within a reasonable distance or, if it is not, to a local prison."
I cannot agree to the last part, except in exceptional cases such as for murder and mugging. I have sat in Durham Prison and in Strangeways, and watched these young boys standing on the landings waiting for their lunch. I do not think this can be good for them. The experience may leave a lasting scar which marks them for life as members of the criminal class.
If allocation centres are to go, there must be enough efficient remand and assessment centres. These will not succeed unless there is proper leadership for treatment in the community. This is excellent but there needs to be an adequate team. I do not feel that a large number of young men, some of whom are very sophisticated. can all be put in the Probation Service. There is a need for a strong team and for continual treatment with social workers, doctors, psychologists and remedial teachers in the Probation Service. I should like to stress the need for remedial teachers. I have a son aged seven who is in need of remedial teaching, and there are not enough remedial teachers in the community for non-custodial people. I sometimes think that within the Borstal system there is better teaching than in the community generally.
Another question to be asked is: are there adequate sports and cultural facilities in the areas where these people become delinquent and where they are to be treated? Serious thought needs to be given to alternatives to drinking. So many of the boys I have seen would never be in Borstal but for the influence of drink. I should like to congratulate NACRO on its conferences and on the work it is doing in spreading education within the community in different parts of the country. The Bristol New Careers Project is of particular interest to me. It

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concerns young offenders, ex-offenders who are trained as ancillaries to the Probation Service, and they become part of the rehabilitation team. As a spinal injury person, I can fully understand that someone who has had a similar experience will be far more acceptable when giving advice, than someone who has not experienced the real immediate situation. I welcome this.
We have lost some very good people from the Prison Service to the United State of America. One of these was a very good friend of mine—actually, an assistant governor at a closed borstal. It is because he was not allowed to put his ideas into practice and was not given enough scope that he went to America, where he is now working with young people in the community. I think a great deal of further research is needed, and I should like to ask the Minister, if it has not already been done, whether he might do something about this. There is a high illiteracy rate in the prison population, particularly among the young offenders. I should like to see figures given on how many of these are suffering from dyslexia or similar problems.
I used to take a discussion group at Northallerton, in a prison for young prisoners. One very lasting impression which was left with me was of the need for more productive work. The one thing that frustrated these young men more than anything else was that when they took the trouble to make something it had to be broken up, because of lack of material. I feel that they could be doing—and in some prisons and borstals they are doing—some excellent, work for the community, and this should he extended. I also think there should be good career prospects for staff who want to work with young people in the community. Many of the staff who now work in borstals, especially assistant governors, would give valuable service to the development of new community alternatives to custody. There needs to be greater flexibility. So much stress is put on whether you are a Governor 3 or a Governor 1 or an A.G. 3 or an A.G. 1. I think that there should be much more flexibility, and that these people should be able to go in and out. This would also help to bridge the gap.
Also, the 72-hour detention power which could be given to probation offi
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cers needs very very careful scrutiny. It could be that the one to one relationship between a probation officer and an offender would be lost if he had this power. Our large computerised monster prisons are worrying. Let us at least keep our young people out. There needs to he a major educational campaign and encouragement of new relationships with the public. I am certain in my own mind that, in the long run, it is kindness and firm understanding which breaks through the barrier which the offender has put up against society, rather than an impersonal hard line. Without good leadership, my Lords, progress cannot be made.
5.46 p.m.
LORD MELCHETT: My Lords, may I start by adding my congratulations to the many others which have been extended to the noble Baroness, Lady Sharpies, by saying how much I admired her really excellent maiden speech. I also greatly admire her courage in tackling such a difficult subject in a debate which was bound to be well-attended. I made my own maiden speech not very long ago on a rather quieter afternoon, when your Lordships were discussing the imprisonment of animals rather than of people. That was during the debate on the Control of Zoological Gardens Bill. I am glad that more interest tends to be taken in the imprisonment of people than of animals. I think that the people, on the whole, have the better of it, although very few zoos to-day house, in old and dilapidated cages, two or three times the numbers that the cages were originally designed to hold. However, most of the people will eventually be released, whereas all too few animals in zoos "do" anything other than "life"—literally. Of course there are some people who are imprisoned for extremely long periods, and at least once a judge has said that a "life" sentence should mean just that.
It is about these very long prison sentences that I want to say a few words this afternoon. Here I shall really be expanding on one of the points made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, and on what seems to have become one of the themes running through the debate this afternoon. The length of prison sentences passed by the courts has increased dramatically in recent years. In 1970, prisons contained

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225 men serving sentences of exactly ten years; 218 men serving over ten years; and 159 men serving "life". The number of years a lifer "actually serves is also increasing. In 1968 there were 47 life sentence prisoners in prison who had served over nine years. By the end of 1971 there were 85 lifers who had served nine year and were still in prison, and 16 of those men had served over 13 years. The numbers may seem very small in relation to the total prison population, but the impact of long-sentence men on the total prison population is considerable.
For example in 1967. although men serving sentences of over three years made up only 2 per cent. to 3 per cent. of the annual receptions to prison, they made up no less than one-fifth of the population of men in prison at the end of 1967. I apologise for the fact that these figures are rather out of date. I think I can safely say that the passage of time will have seen at least as rampant an inflation of these figures as has been seen in the financial world. Indeed, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Wakefield said, by 1973 there were no less than 900 "lifers" in prison.
The problems which these long-term prisoners pose for the prison system. the Parole Board, the Home Office and so on, have received quite a lot of attention. In the past, security seems to have been the major preoccupation. I must say I feel it is extremely unfortunate, to say the least, that over the years the Home Office appears to have been influenced far more by the hysterical concern that the media, and possibly some of the general public have shown over prison security, than by the work of penologists, criminologists and penal reformers.
A telling illustration of this came after the Mountbatten Report on prison security. Prisons that had been crying out for redecorating and repairs for years suddenly had thousands of pounds spent on them. But it was the perimeter walls that were redecorated, with white paint, and it was the perimeter walls and gates that were repaired or rebuilt. So I think that problems of security, internal as well as external, have received considerable attention in the past. What I feel has received less publicity and far less public concern, and possibly less
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official consideration, is what exactly society is doing to the people who are given these very long sentences.
Here I should like to quote what a couple of prisoners themselves feel. One wrote in a letter to the Guardian last year:
A hangman's noose did at least terminate life. The present system warps and destroys the man; it is slow death and a terrible torture upon the mind and personality. These men live not as human beings; in the majority, they are reduced to vegetables."
Another long-term prisoner described his own feelings:
"My intellect has not faltered; but it has grown dim. I have never resigned myself; but resignation has entered me, has bent me down to the ground and told me: ' Rest '. To tell the truth. I'm not sure it didn't tell me: ' Die slowly'."
Of course, it has long been known that very long terms of imprisonment. especially when there is no certainty of any release date, have this sort of effect.
In one of the classic pieces of prison research. Pauline and Terence Morris found that their two years in Pentonville Prison were sufficient for them to:
"‡observe several prisoners on the downhill path, men who made fewer and fewer jokes, whose appearance became increasingly untidy and who became progressively uninterested in everything around them".
This withdrawal from the outside world is particularly likely, maybe inevitable, where prisoners are serving very long sentences in maximum security conditions. As two criminologists, who did some research on the prospects for (as they called it) the psychological survival of these types of prisoners, wrote:
"In a situation where friends are particularly needed there are special difficulties placed in the way of making or maintaining them…. Links with outside intimates become tenuous because of difficulties over visits and letters, changes in the personality and sensibility of the inmates, and because of the impossible prospect of twenty years' physical separation."
These authors conclude that, inevitably, most long-term prisoners will eventually lose touch with their previous life situation, friends and families, and that they will turn in to the closed and meaningless life of the prison. As the noble Baroness, Lady Sharples, said, visits to prisoners are vital, but unfortunately all too often long-term prisoners find visits and contacts just too painful for them

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to be able to endure them and these visits and contacts inevitably in the end tail off.
What then, my Lords, should be done about all this? Certainly, one possibility is for society to decide that, even if sentencing a man to serve ten, fifteen or twenty years in prison is to condemn him to a slow, lingering, living death, that is what we actually want to do. Society may feel that, having got rid of the unpleasant and messy suddenness and finality of the death sentence itself, we are content to let people die slowly but surely in prison—so long, I suspect, as we are not too often reminded of what is actually going on. I hope that that will not be society's answer, just as I hope that society will not decide that if long sentences are bad the reintroduction of capital punishment is the way to avoid them. What we need to do, in my view, is to rethink the purposes that these long sentences are supposed to serve, particularly as research tends to show very little difference in reconviction rates after long or short periods of imprisonment, or indeed after non-custodial sentences.
Three categories at least of those receiving long prison sentences should be identified. First, there are those people who are felt to be so bad that they must be locked up until they are old and senile and incapable of performing whatever were the deeds that they did to get them into prison in the first place. I suspect that very few prisoners really fall into this group. Secondly, there are those people who have "something wrong with them": some aberration or "disease of the mind" so awful that they must be locked away until they are "cured". Again, not many prisoners in ordinary prisons fall into this category as most of this group will be held in special hospitals under sections of the Mental Health Act, and they will not have been sentenced in the ordinary way by a court. Lastly, we have the bulk; those prisoners who are sentenced to punish them, to deter them from doing it again, to deter others or to mark the public's abhorrence of their crime, and for various other reasons. Here, if nowhere else, we simply must reduce the length of sentences.
The bulk of prison sentences in this country are far too long, as has been said
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by nearly every noble Lord who has spoken this afternoon. Experience in other countries has shown that there is nothing magical about long sentences. They could be dramatically reduced over the whole range of prison sentences without having a disastrous effect, or indeed probably without having any effect at all on society as a whole. In saying that I refer to society outside prison; it would of course have a dramatic effect on people in prison.
Before I finish, I should like to give your Lordships an example of what I mean about prison sentences that are being passed that are too long. I should like to refer to a specific case, because I have a feeling that constant harping on length of sentence without reference to the crime committed might make some people think that I was ignoring the horrifying things that some people do to receive long sentences. The case I shall mention also illustrates two points about sentencing which I have not yet touched on. First, once we have started, as we have. on the slippery slope of ever longer and longer prison sentences, there seems to be little that judges can do except pass yet longer prison sentences. Secondly, the case brings up the question of indeterminate sentences. This is something which has not been referred to in detail this afternoon. I think the danger when was pass new penal measures that are supposed to be much more liberal than the existing situation is that we slip unwittingly into a trap of one kind or another. This is certainly the experience in California where indeterminate sentences were hailed as a great progressive measure. and one ends up with somebody who steals a bicycle being shot in prison while he is serving a life sentence, having never left prison since he was originally incarcerated.
The case I would mention is of three young people, aged 16, 15 and 15, who attacked and robbed a man. They beat him to the ground and dragged him to some nearby waste ground where they stole 30p, some keys and five cigarettes. Two hours later they returned to the same place and, finding the man still there, they attacked him again. Again they left the scene, and again they later returned and attacked him for a third time. Later one of the boys rested the man's head on a pillow and two of them called an ambulance, and it was as a result of that action

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that they were eventually caught and arrested. The eldest boy pleaded guilty to attempted murder and robbery and was sentenced to be detained for up to 20 years under the provisions of Section 53 of the Children and Young Persons Act. The two 15-year-olds each received ten years' detention.
I have described the offence in some detail because I did not want to be accused of glossing over what was done. I think these sentences were excessive, and while the sentences were passed for two reasons that were acknowledged by the judge who passed sentence, I think myself there was another reason that was not acknowledged. There was no apparent motive for this attack and this, in the Lord Chief Justice's words, made it obvious that there was a danger that these boys could do such acts with equal lack of excuse again. Secondly, the Lord Chief Justice said that a sentence such as this was imposed by judges on the footing that there was no limit to the time at which consideration for release by the Home Office might be ordered. I hope that my noble friend Lord Harris of Greenwich might be able to say whether this really is the case—that a sentence of this kind is kept constantly under review, and that release on licence might be considered at any time during the sentence.
Lastly, there is the factor which was not mentioned by the judge when he passed sentence but which I feel must have influenced his decision. This case was tried at the height of the "mugging" scare of last year. I was slightly sorry to hear the noble Baroness who spoke before me mention the word "mugging", as I had hoped it was dropping out of vogue altogether. The case was seized upon by the media as the mugging to end all muggings. Sentences passed for so-called "muggings" have already increased dramatically since the invention of the offence by the Press a few months before. If this case was an extremely serious offence, as undoubtedly it was, the appropriate sentence had to be increased in proportion.
The recommendations of the Advisory Council's excellent Report would not have affected this case. The ever more frequently expressed good intentions about keeping people out of prison would not have affected it either. What
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we need, as others have said, is a radical reduction across the board in the length of prison sentences imposed by the courts, coupled with the many measures that have been mentioned this afternoon, which would help to keep people from going to prison in the first place. I would have certainly gone along with the 10-year maximum mentioned by the noble Earl, Lord Longford, and supported by the Howard League. But I prefer the Dutch solution mentioned by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, of halving all prison sentences. Then the noble Lord, Lord Soper, suggested a four-year maximum. This seems better still. I was tempted to go lower, but I think I will stick to that for the time being.
6.1 p.m.
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: My Lords, may I first apologise to the first four and a half noble Lords (if I may so put it) who have spoken and whose speeches I missed, not because of any wish to do so, but because I have been dealing with a non-criminal matter in another forum elsewhere, and I could only be in my place by 5 o'clock. Fortunately, I have had the advantage of a very full note of what was said by those who have spoken, and I hope therefore I am apprised of it and may properly comment upon it. I very much agree with my noble friend Lord St. Just that one should try to speak on things that one knows about—I am not criticising him because I thought he made a very helpful contribution in his speech. I am also well aware, having for two years been in charge of the day-to-day running of the Prison Service, with the very substantial amount of detail that this involves—the prodigious number of letters that have to be answered and the small queries dealt with day by day—that perhaps I may be rather too much imbued with the good points, or what are thought to be the good points, of the system as it exists to be able to see through them to the way in which the system ought to develop. I hope that I have not taken this cul-de-sac in thought, but if I have then I stand to be criticised for it.
What seems to me to arise from the little experience that I had was that whereas one may have occasionally a fairly dramatic step forward, such as the

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introduction of parole and, indeed, its remarkably adroit use under the Parole Board run by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, for so many valuable years, the main progress, as indeed my noble friend Lord St. Just said, in this field is slow, steady and to many people perhaps almost imperceptible. I am very much afraid that this will continue to be the case in this field. What one must not give up and despair about is if, in a period of about two years, one looks back and finds that one has not radically changed the whole matter. To have made some improvements is perhaps as much as anyone can do in that time—at any rate, that was the view that I took. I do not know whether or not the noble Lord, Lord Soper—he might have been perhaps a right reverend Prelate had the two Churches come together, but I think I can continue to refer to him as the "noble Lord"—was merely expressing a millennial view when he spoke in terms of prisons one day withering away. But I agree with him that for the moment we have to accept them as part of the system and see what we are to do about them.
I say this because certainly when the Tory Party was in power—and I doubt whether anybody would disagree—my right honourable friend the then Home Secretary said that his attitude towards prison was that it must be there to accept and contain people who had to be taken out of circulation for the protection of the public. So the description of prisoners which the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, mentioned in his speech as including some very evil and dangerous men among, I agree with him, a large number of much less dangerous misfits of one sort or another, is a fundamental point that has to be taken into account when we are discussing this matter.
I also think, and would suggest to the House, that when contemplating this matter it must be borne in mind that if you are to contain very dangerous and evil people, then you must face up to this fact and not try and run away from it. There are two things which it seems to me have emerged in recent years and may not have been sufficiently taken into account: first of all, I wonder whether those who think about these matters have really followed through what is involved in the abolition of the death penalty,
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because it is undoubtedly the case— and figures for life sentences have been quoted this afternoon—that we have in the system, and will continue to have in increasing numbers in the system, people who have committed dreadful murders. There is no getting away from that. In the days of the death penalty those people would have been hanged. Now they are not, yet they are people who will probably have to be kept in prison for a long time. Incidentally, by their side, for all the criticism there may be of long sentences, fhere are also people in the system and. I regret coming forward from time to time, who have committed crimes of such a daring and sophisticated nature, and carrying with them such enormous acquisitions of "booty", as would never have been contemplated by criminals even a short time ago. For them too I believe there must be containment because the public have to be protected from such people. Moreover, anyone who chooses to follow in their footsteps—and I am afraid there is an element of deterrence in this—must realise what is involved as they get caught, as caught I hope they will always be.
That is the first element. The other one is this: I would be prepared, from a very non-professional and perhaps not well-informed point of view, to take issue with the noble Lord, Lord Melchett, about what I thought in his speech seemed to he a clear distinction between cases which are dealt with under the Mental Health Act, and cases which are dealt with by other custodial means in the prison system. It is not entirely a matter of chance by any means, but it is, after all, an artificial dividing line whereby the conduct of one person and the state of his mind is considered by two doctors to be sufficient for him to be treated as a patient under the Mental Health Act, whereas another person who, on account of a different diagnosis or set of circumstances, falls to be dealt with under the prison system. I believe that the boundary between these two approaches is much too rigid at the moment. Surely it is this that the Committee under the noble Lord, Lord Butler of Saffron Walden, is at the present moment inquiring into.
If the noble Lord, Lord Melchett. thinks that the prisons have in them very few psychopaths or people with psychopathic tendencies, or, indeed, with schizo-

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phrenic tendencies, then he is sadly mistaken because there are a large number of them indeed, and they are exceedingly difficult to deal with. Certainly on the analogy of what happens to such people if they are bad enough to be dealt with under the Mental Health Act, certainly in the case of psychopaths, they may have to stay in hospital custody for a longish period of time until they mature out of that illness. Therefore, I would hope that the House will realise that there are those two elements in the prison population which should not be taken lightly or dismissed as being of no account, because they are people who will have to be contained somehow, somewhere—I do not know whether it will be in prisons or, in some cases, in mental hospitals. Certainly they will not be able to be contained in the present mental hospitals, because they are desperately overcrowded.
LORD MELCHETT: My Lords, will the noble Viscount forgive me for interrupting him? I wonder whether he would like to guess at what sort of percentage of the present prison population the psychopaths and schizoids that he mentioned actually represent.
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: No, my Lords; I think I. should be far better not to try to put percentages on this, because it is not so much people who are diagnosed as suffering from a recognisable and bad set of symptoms of this sort; it includes people who have these sort of tendencies. The noble Lord may make a face, but if he had to see what they do and what they have done in the past, and compare their behaviour with that of those who are recognised as psychopaths, I think he would understand the sort of parallel that I am drawing. Of course I am not saying for one moment that everybody in prison by any means comes into this category: I am just pointing out an element in this which may sometimes be overlooked.
My Lords, if, then, we have to contain, let us make certain that the containment is secure. Again, those who criticise the degree of security that is provided are, I think, overlooking one very important corollary of it, one which was of the essence of the Mountbatten Report, and that is that if you provide a secure peri-
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meter, then inside that perimeter there is room for a great deal more freedom. I should think that the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Wakefield knows very well what that means in the prison with which he is so familiar, and anyone who goes there will recognise at once the quite important degree of freedom that the population of that prison have enjoyed within the prison walls. So it is not by any means a waste of money, nor does it lead to anything but, I should have thought, an amelioration of the prisoners' life. So if they are to be contained securely, then worthwhile activities and the best possible way of life must be provided for them.
My Lords, that is a problem on which I entirely agree with the right reverend Prelate that it is not softness in any way to try to provide all sorts of extra facilities for people to work and people to learn. This is not softness at all: it is good common sense—because, like him. I know from what I have learnt from reading and talking to many people that it is the loss of freedom itself which is the real penalty. That is the thing which is really hated and disliked, and that is the penalty which imprisonment involves.
My Lords, surely the dilemma that this debate throws up is that if we have a limited amount of money, how can we at the same time improve the prison system itself and provide a really successful and effective alternative along the sort of lines that the noble Earl, Lord Longford, and others have been talking about? We need new prison buildings. It is no use supposing that the remand centres, for instance, for young people are adequate. We need Glen Parva in the Midlands; we need North Weald to the North-East of London. These need to be built. We desperately need to replace dreadful old prisons like Armley, Leeds and many others, although Armley, I think, was the first one to be chosen. But, my Lords, how right the Howard League are to say that these, or at any rate many of them, should be in central sites, because of course it is correct that there are many people who wish to come to visit the prison, whether it be the relations of the prisoners or whether it be probation officers or any of the countless other people from outside who have to come and go.

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The noble Baroness, Lady Masham, was right, and put her finger on it: how on earth do you get planning permission or the agreement of the local inhabitants that you should ever site one of these things in the centre of any built-up area? Wakefield is a remarkable case in point, where a top security prison is in the middle of the city, and has been for many years, and so far as I know the citizens of Wakefield live with it without any undue worry. But if you try to suggest putting something of that sort in a town where there has not previously been a prison you will have a major demonstration on your hands.
I agree with the noble Baroness that this is a large problem, and it is one which I think must be overcome in a number of different ways, one of which I will come to in a moment. So there is this question of buildings. But it is not only the bricks and mortar which have to be considered; it is also the regime, and on this a good deal of money can, with advantage, be spent as well. I wonder whether the noble Lord, Lord Harris, can tell me how the staff recruiting is going because. without an adequate and well-trained staff with a high morale. the prison system is never going to get anywhere; and with the desperate shortages into which we were coming towards the end of the time when I was in charge, this was becoming a very serious problem indeed.
The work of education and the provision of employment for prisoners—two of the most important aspects of prison life—are dependent upon proper buildings inside the prisons, inside the existing establishments. Money is needed for these. I entirely agree with the noble Baroness about the importance of the remedial education that goes on. Wetherby is a very good case in point. and so is Rochester, for instance, and many other borstals. I strongly suspect that the Prison Service has the finest body of remedial education knowledge in the country, because the lamentable fact is that a very large percentage of the inmates or the trainees, I think up to about 15 per cent. in some establishments, if not more, need remedial education—and a sad reflection it is upon our school system. But this has got to be done with up-to-date equipment and in up-to-date buildings.
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I mentioned the provision of employment. That must be done in workshops with decent working conditions. It is no use trying to get prisoners to work in dreadful old sheds with no ventilation and bad lighting—buildings which would never, I should think, have complied with the Factories Acts if they had not been put right. All this requires money. What the Treasury would say to those well-tried runners for those who espouse the prisoners' cause, higher pay and the stamping of their National Insurance cards while they are in prison, I really do not know, but the cost and indeed the other problems—accounting problems in some cases, when you are dealing with National Insurance cards—are very large indeed.
As for visits (and I wish I had heard the speech of my noble friend Lady Sharpies), again this is a very important point. But even then, there is an element of money in it, because many of the families of prisoners are reliant upon grants from the Department of Health and Social Security for the fares to take them and their children to visit their husbands, their sons or whoever it is in prison; and there is a good deal of administrative detail and staffing in the D.H.S.S. which is involved in this. I, like her, would wish to see progress being made, but again I am aware of the financial and the staff constraints upon it.
My Lords, under the heading of "régime" we have also to consider whether there is anything that can be done, as I think one noble Lord mentioned, about incentives. The last Government carried out a very thorough exercise on what we called the rewards and punishment Working Party to try to see whether there was any room for further incentives, and indeed different forms of penalties as well, to be brought in. Although we tried very hard, the net result now appears in the amendment to the prison rules which I think have recently been laid before the House and are subject to the Negative Resolution procedure. They have not, I think, been debated here, but there was some suggestion that they should be in another place.
Finally on the question of regime, I believe that a number of noble Lords—the noble Baroness, Lady Masham, and my noble friend Lord St. Just—have made a very important point about what

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can be done by way of contact with the community outside. It is much easier in an open establishment. Then one is faced with the problem of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt. When he was in charge of the Parole Board he used to let out on parole all the people who were suitable for open establishments. There was, therefore, a shortage of people who were suitably allocated as category "D" prisoners. But there are young offender establishments which are open, and if one looks at what is being done in some of them I think that my noble friend Lord St. Just might be rather encouraged, because the noble Baroness mentioned the various things that go on at Wetherby. That is by no means the only place that does it. I have seen a good deal of community involvement from a detention centre like North Sea Camp. It was the boys from Hewell Grange who finished digging out the Stratford-upon-Avon canal which was opened only the other day. Incidentally, why was it that neither they nor anybody from Gloucester was allowed to go to the opening? I know that the boys from Hewell Grange had set their heart on that project. On the back of every dormitory door there was a map of how the work was progressing. It was one of the main talking points and one of the main enterprises in that establishment and I wish they had been allowed to go and take part in the opening.
The debate has also rightly covered the question of alternatives to imprisonment. On this the Conservative Party have a reasonably good record in the Criminal Justice Act 1972. We have at least shown that we are prepared to act upon it and I put it in as the other side of progress. The dilemma is how to split the financial cake. However, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, pointed out—and this was very much the subject of the noble Earl's speech—there are a number of things which we have to consider in this respect. I will not go into the analysis that the noble and learned Lord spoke about because, unfortunately, I did not hear it all, but from the notes I have seen it seems to have been a most acute speech upon this subject.
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One thing, however, which we must be sure about before we go too far ahead with alternatives is that the Probation Service upon whom it practically always turns out to depend are ready for it. This applies very much to the new Report from the Advisory Committee on Young Adult Offenders. I would not expect the Government to say very much about it this afternoon because it has only recently been published and it will need a good deal of thought and probably, I suspect, another debate in this House. If, however, as I believe to be the case, the noble Earl said that in this field we have experimented too much and too long without getting on with it, I would not altogether agree with him, because experiment in this field is essential if one is going to get two things: one is proof for oneself that it is a scheme that is worth while; the second is proof to convince the public that here is a piece of useful armoury which the courts may properly use to deal with people instead of sending them to prison. It is no use introducing these things without being able to carry public opinion with you that you have got something which is a genuine and a proper alternative to imprisonment, otherwise it will carry no respect. And it will not be respected in the end, either, by the people who are sentenced to it.
If your Lordships want an example of something in the way of change which was not thought out, may I respectfully once again chide the Socialist Party for a very premature introduction of part of the Children and Young Persons Act whereby the approved schools were abolished. Any magistrates in this House who have had to try to deal with young offenders in areas where there is no secure local authority accommodation will have had their fill of disappointment that there has not been adequate provision. I hope that the liaison between the Department of Health and Social Security and the Department of the Environment to get the local authorities to provide these homes is going ahead hard.
My Lords, I would therefore be very much inclined to support experiment in these fields and, of course, any other suggestions that can be brought forward. I do not think that we need legislation for hostels. The noble Lord, Lord Soper, spoke of one example that he is putting forward. I know that it is by

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no means the only hostel which his church runs, and the more variety that we can have through NACRO, through hostel schemes, through methods of this sort which require no legislation, the better, because all these are experiments in their turn. All these keep people out of prison. All these get rid of overcrowding which is particularly the bane of the local prison. I come back therefore, my Lords, to this position: that I entirely welcome a constructive debate like this whereby people put forward, from a wealth of experience and knowledge, a number of suggestions for further advances in non-custodial treatment. The Government will have to examine them to see whether they are feasible and how much they will cost, but the more suggestions that there are in this field the better.
On the Motion itself, on the prison side I hope that it is not a sign of sterility on my part but what I really wanted to do, so far as I was able, was to tackle rather unspectacular things like the diversification of work; the provision of trade certificates; union recognition of schemes whereby people could get jobs when they went out, which involves contacts with trade unions and employers' associations. I wanted very much to go on with the improvement of education and the provision of Open University courses which are wanted in more and more establishments, and also I wanted very much to improve the morale and training of the staff and, indeed, their numbers, because upon all this the whole matter depends.
Finally, I do not believe that we shall ever get a sensible approach to the prison system with the degree of ignorance that prevails about it—not in this House, but in the country at large. That is the reason why the noble Baroness and her colleagues at Wetherby are finding it so difficult to get the hostels in one of the West Yorkshire towns. It is because the public do not know about borstal boys. The public do not know about prisoners. The public have dreadfully misconcieved ideas. That is why the Howard League is crying for the moon when it talks at this juncture about setting up new prisons in central sites unless the Home Office are prepared to override all expressions of public opinion and to put it down there in defiance of the local authority and everybody else.
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I very much doubt, however, whether the Home Office wish to do that.
My Lords, let me therefore make one last constructive suggestion of my own. It is nothing new, but let us, if we have anything to do with any particular prison, see how the public can be involved; again that is one of the things which I attempted to do. It is quite possible to have open days in most establishments. It is even possible to take the Press into part of Wakefield Prison, because we did it. It is only too possible to bring in individual members of the public to take small, informal groups and teach them hobbies, teach them music. The boards of visitors are all members of the public and they can encourage other people to take an interest in the establishment locally. There are many channels which are open. People can go into the prison. In some cases the prisoners or the trainees can go out. What we have got to do is to encourage a good deal more openness. I do not think it would be resented on the Prison Service side at all if there were a good deal more accessibility so that people understand what this problem is about and can get a very much better perspective of a prisoner and prison life. I think that they may then become a good deal less hostile to some of the schemes that are put forward.
My Lords, that may not be a very dramatic solution, but I believe that it is the gentle way forward by which we shall be able to ameliorate the conditions for those who have to be in prison, even if it is for a very long time indeed. At the same time, I most heartily endorse all the suggestions about sensible alternatives which have been put forward this afternoon.
THE MINISTER OF STATE, HOME OFFICE (LORD HARRIS OF GREENWICH): My Lords, if I may, I will begin on a personal note. I am sure that I express the thoughts and views of all your Lordships when I thank my noble friend Lord Longford for having initiated this debate. In my very limited period in this House this is by far the most interesting debate I have had the pleasure of listening to, and I think it will be a great benefit to my right honourable friend the Home Secretary, who at the moment has the range of issues we have discussed here to-day at the forefront of his mind.

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Secondly, I think we would all wish to associate ourselves with my noble and learned friend Lord Gardiner in what he said about the maiden speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Sharples. It was a most distinguished speech from which we all derived great pleasure, and I am sure we all look forward to hearing from her on a subsequent occasion. Thirdly, I should like to say something on behalf of another noble friend, Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge. I know that he is one of the more frustrated Members of your Lordships' House because, owing to his present Ministerial responsibilities, he cannot participate in this debate. But he followed the early stages of the debate with keen attention and I know how much he regretted not being able to take a leading part in it.
Before coming to the subject that is the main element of my speech I should perhaps say that I think it will be impossible for me to answer all the detailed points which have been raised in this debate. I apologise in particular to my noble friend Lord Melchett who gave me notice of the issue he was to raise. Frankly it is a highly complex question and I should like to write to him about it because otherwise I shall have to devote a substantial amount of time to explaining the circumstances of this particular case. I think he stated it with great fairness: it was a brutal assault, but the case raises complicated questions and if I may I will write to him and explain how this matter is in fact to be handled.
I think it is some time since this House has had the opportunity of such a wide-ranging debate on this particular issue. This debate comes at a particularly fitting moment because it is probably true that we are at the moment at something of a watershed in the development of penal policy. Currently there is a much more cautious view—and this is perhaps something of an English understatement—of the reformative capabilities of custodial regimes. There is a growing feeling that fewer people need to be sent to prison. There is considerable doubt, which has been reflected in this debate to-day, as to whether it is right to devote to the custodial system the kind of resources that would be needed to provide adequately for an ever-expanding prison population.
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My right honourable friend the Home Secretary shares many of these views. They have also been reflected in the recent Report on young adult offenders by the Advisory Council on the Penal System. My right honourable friend has already made it plain that he welcomes the broad changes of direction suggested in this Report. This Report proposes a shift in the emphasis for young adult offenders from treatment in custody to treatment in the community. There is no reason why thesame principle should not apply to people over 21; although obviously exactly the same methods would not necessarily be appropriate. In parole, about which the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, spoke earlier, we have a flexible instrument already available to enable us to combine custodial and non-custodial treatments in a sentence. Moreover, we are building up experience of new measures, such as community service and day training centres. If I may, I want to devote some time to these, as the noble Lord was responsible for prisons when he was at the Home Office and I have some personal involvement in the Department in regard to these particular activities.
I should like to make one point where I disagree with my noble friend Lord Longford. I think he rather chided the present Government and their predecessors over a certain degree of caution in this matter, but I think to be frank one has to he cautious because in the development of projects such as day training centres, and the development of community service orders there are first substantial public expenditure implications which must be taken extremely seriously at a time when the Government are reviewing the overall level of public expenditure. Secondly, they are labour-intensive in terms of trained manpower. These are two crucial questions which have to be faced up to.
THE EARL OF LONGFORD: My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt the noble Lord, but I should like to say that I did not chide the Government for any over-caution they have displayed so far because I do not think they have had time to display over-caution. I said that if past experience was any guide they would be over-cautious, but I hope I shall be proved wrong.
LORD HARRIS OF GREENWICH: My Lords, I think I took what the noble Earl said rather more personally because I recall that the word to which he took exception was the word "experimental", and after he had objected to the word "experimental" I began to cross it out on the several occasions where it appeared in the notes of my speech this afternoon. The question of day training centres was raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Masham of Ilton. Within the last few weeks I have had the opportunity of visiting three—if the noble Earl will forgive me for using the word—experimental areas where these schemes are in operation—in Kent, in Inner London and in Nottinghamshire.
I must tell the House that all the probation officers to whom I have spoken in these areas have agreed on the basis of their own experience that the initial stages of these schemes were exceedingly difficult. In a few cases, obviously, mistakes were made. This was quite inevitable. But I must tell the House that I was deeply impressed by the enthusiasm among all those working in these three schemes, and I was also deeply impressed by the exceptionally high calibre of the probation officers who were involved in them.
The importance of community service orders cannot be over-stated. These orders are made both by Crown Courts and magistrates courts in the six areas, including the three that I have already mentioned. In the overwhelming majority of cases these orders are made against men and women who would otherwise have been sent to prison, some of them for quite substantial periods of time. The court can make a community service order ranging from 40 to 240 hours, although I should add that almost everyone I spoke to agreed that in the majority of cases 240 hour sentences were far too long. The order has to be completed within 12 months, and of course the offender has to give up a substantial amount of his spare time both in the evenings and at weekends in order to discharge the task allocated to him by the probation officer.
I should like to give a few examples of what these offenders do during the course of working out their orders. Some work in the gardens of old people who cannot do the jobs themselves. In Inner London, which is one of the areas I
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visited, there is an old church hall which is being converted into a community centre for the disabled and elderly and for a pre-school play group. Several groups of offenders are helping to construct adventure playgrounds. The examples are endless, but I think what I have said already indicates two things: first, there is a need when introducing these schemes to analyse with care the problems and aptitudes of the individual offender. Some have heavy family commitments and these have to be taken into account when deciding where and when they shall discharge their tasks. On the other hand in the case of others it is desirable that they should form part, for instance, of a supervised group.
Secondly, it is essential for a great deal of effort to be expended to gain the co-operation of voluntary organisations so as to create an adequate supply of work opportunities for offenders in community service. Thirdly, it is vital that the schemes are introduced with care and sensitivity. These schemes are wholly dependent on public good will. It is necessary to carry the local communities along with these schemes, and it is even more necessary to ensure that a good relationship is created both with the local magistrates and with the local Crown Courts. Otherwise, the orders will not be made and a number of people will go to prison, when the entire objective of this policy is to avoid sending them to prison at all.
My Lords, as I have said, it would be foolish to pretend, that some mistakes have not been made in the experimental areas where these schemes have been introduced. It would be remarkable if there had not been, because we have had no previous experience of orders of this character. But, overall, I am convinced that they are an outstanding success, for which the right honourable gentleman who was then Home Secretary should have a very considerable personal degree of credit. Indeed, I think the initial experience has been so promising that my right honourable friend the Home Secretary has now decided to consult with the representative organisations of the Probation Service about the possibility of extending the schemes to other parts of the country.
I turn now to day training centres. Again, these have been introduced on an

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experimental basis in a few probation areas. My noble friend Lord Longford told us of his visit to the new day training centre in Camberwell. Indeed, as he probably knows, I preceded him to the centre by a few days. So far as Camberwell is concerned, their first group of offenders, or call them what you will, are just about to leave; indeed, they have already left, having discharged the order. As a result, it would be absurdly premature even to make a preliminary judgment about the success or failure of the scheme. However, it was extremely encouraging to meet the admirable staff gathered for the centre by Mr. Pearce, the chief probation officer for Inner London, and previously one of the colleagues of my noble friend Lord Hunt on the Parole Board. In the fairly long discussion I had with them, the staff recognised the very real difficulties which will confront this scheme. While I am dealing with this point, one of the difficulties raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Masham of Ilton, was the question of planning permission, but I will come back to that in a moment. The noble Baroness mentioned to me earlier that she intended to raise this point. This was a problem associated with the Camberwell scheme, as it has been in the case of many of the others.
So far as Camberwell is concerned, not least of the problems will be the problem of a man who has, perhaps for the first time in his life, formed some good personal relationships while at the centre, largely due to the intensive care he has received there. Of course, he then faces the problem that after this period of intensive care he has to leave. This is a very difficult problem, and I know it is one which occupies the attention of the very devoted group of probation officers now working at Camberwell. I think they are right, because I am bound to say that it is was one of the problems which was very much at the forefront of my mind. I know they have taken steps to deal with it as best they can, and I hope—as, I am sure, will your Lordships—that they succeed.
I turn next to probation hostels. We hope to provide 1,700 hostel places over the next three years. So far—and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, raised this point—around 500 places have
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been provided, or will shortly come into use. This brings me to another problem. The noble Baroness, Lady Masham of Mon, raised the question of planning permission. This is exactly the sort of problem that the Home Office is having to face every day. In the case of many of these schemes, there is the most passionate opposition from local interests. One must take these complaints very seriously. It is of crucial importance to carry local communities with one. I am totally opposed to central Government simply imposing things on people when there is substantial local feeling, as there is. We must try to explain that many of the fears held in the local communities are unreasonable. We must try to bring local residents on to the committees of these hostels, or whatever they may be—day training centres in the case of Camberwell—so that local residents can see the kind of work done by these schemes. This, I think, will go some way to lessening the degree of local opposition. But this is a difficulty.
Undoubtedly, we would be proceeding more rapidly, as would our predecessors have done, if it were not for the fact that in a number of cases there have had to be long planning inquiries with the most tenacious opposition being expressed by many of the local communities. Government must take this seriously. We should take positive action. We should not use this as an excuse for slow progress. We should try to explain to the people in the areas—
BARONESS MASHAM OF ILTON: My Lords, may I ask a question? Is there some way of assuring the residents that the value of their houses will not go down, because I think that is what is behind quite a lot of the problems?
LORD HARRIS OF GREENWICH: My Lords, I am sure that is probably right. I do not think there is any simple solution to this problem. I do not think there is one overall answer, but that is probably one answer. We shall have to do what we can to remove this fear which is probably at the forefront of the minds of a number of the objectors.
My Lords, that brings me to a point raised by my noble friend Lord Soper and touched on, although in a rather different context, by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Wakefield. My noble friend told us of his interest in the

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Katherine Price Hughes hostel. I know he will be pleased to hear that we have to-day decided there is no objection to the hostel taking men as well as women. That is a matter for the organising committee. I say this in the presence of the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham. I think I shall be answering a Question by him on the slowness with which the Home Office tends to respond to questions, letters and so on. I think that was his implication. I am sure he will be impressed by the fact —I must admit I am myself—that the noble Lord, Lord Soper, raised this matter with me only last night, but fortunately the answer was on its way through the Home Office machine to me. As a result of the fact that he raised this matter with me last evening, we were able to process it this morning. I welcome this, because it is an excellent idea. As my noble friend indicated, in the case of hostels of this sort, where the committee or management or whoever it may be, wish to do this, they should be encouraged. I welcome it and hope it goes exceedingly well, as I am sure it will.
May I now turn to the overall prison situation? The prison population has remained on something of a plateau for the past year or more. The present figure of approximately 37,000 is much the same as it was a year ago. I need hardly emphasise the great benefits that will flow if we can prevent the prison population rising steeply again or, better still, if we can achieve our object of a significant reduction. There is no simple and straightforward way in which the Government can control or determine in advance the size of the prison population. We do not determine how many people should be convicted by the courts, or prescribe the sentence to be imposed. On the other hand, it is now widely accepted that governments have to give a lead to public opinion in order to demonstrate their belief that many of those now in custody could and should be dealt with by other means. My right honourable friend the Home Secretary is determined to give this type of leadership.
My Lords, the courts are making less use of custodial sentences. For example, in 1953 of men over 21 years of age, 440 out of every 1,000 convicted of indictable offences were given custodial sentences. By 1972, the number had dropped to 197.
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Unfortunately, the problem is that in that period there was in fact a substantial increase in the amount of crime, a point touched on by my noble friend; and as a result of this it did not have a particular impact on the size of the prison population itself. My noble friend asked me in passing the general situation so far as the establishments in police forces are concerned. I fear the figures are not particularly satisfactory. In the Metropolitan Police area there is still a deficiency of 20 per cent. on the authorised establishment of 26,000, and in England and Wales generally there is a deficiency of around 11 per cent. The figures indicate, of course, that in the more agreeable areas such as Dorset, the police are totally up to establishment; but in the large cities, where carrying out the job of being a policeman can on many occasions be highly unpleasant and disagreeable, there is, and has been for many years, a substantial shortfall; we are doing everything we can in terms of stimulating recruitment to deal with this matter.
What we can say, however, returning to the general prison situation and the situation confronting the courts, is that the current stability in the conviction figures, coupled with increasing recognition of the alternatives to custody, give us an opportunity to relieve the pressures that have built up on the Prison Service. We are, for example, given the opportunity to make some inroads into overcrowding, another point made by my noble and learned friend; to deal with the substantial problem of overcrowding which still affects a large number of our antiquated Victorian prisons. There are still 17,000 prisoners being held in prisons built before the end of the 19th century.
Some people think that the simple solution is to redevelop the old prisons on their present sites. Certainly something can be, and indeed is being, done to refurbish them and to make a number of improvements. But in fact the city prisons are for the most part on comparatively cramped sites, as the noble Lord, from his own experience, will know. If they are going to be redeveloped to provide modern accommodation and facilities for staff as well as for prisoners, demolition, or partial demolition will have to precede this, and in the meantime the prisoners, or at least a good proportion

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of them, will have to be accommodated somewhere else. If only for that reason, the prison system must have certain amount of new accommodation. I think in fact one can over simplify this problem of the prison building programme. The problem is still a major and continuing anxiety to all Home Office Ministers in this Administration, as I am sure it was for their predecessors.
It is in fact easy to distinguish some categories of people whom we all want to be kept out of prison—the vagrants, the habitual drunken offenders and so forth. Also, at the other end of the spectrum, it is not too difficult to distinguish those kind of offenders who are an obvious danger to the community and must be removed. The real question is to what extent prisoners in this middle band can be dealt with in a non-custodial way, and how quickly public confidence can be gained for a radical change in emphasis in dealing with offenders in this category. This is in fact why, when speaking about the non-custodial forms of treatment we are at the moment involved in, I come back to this question of public confidence. It is crucially important to be able to persuade people that in fact this is a meaningful and successful alternative and a much more constructive alternative to prison. If we can do that, I am sure we can for the first time start making major inroads into this general problem of getting people who can benefit far more greatly from a life outside prison out doing far more useful and constructive work for the community as a whole.
I think, however, we have to face another difficulty, and it is this. One of the consequences of keeping more minor offenders out of custody will be that proportionately the prison population will be made up of more difficult and intransigent people. This is already becoming evident. And the fuller prison régimes become the more difficult these problems also become. More recreational association for prisoners, more education classes, more visits, more contacts with the outside community, which we all agree are urgent and desirable, bring with them the added problems of supervision, particularly if in the general prison population there is a larger proportion of intransigent people. This will raise diffi
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cult questions of control and management.
The prison population is likely to contain a bigger proportion of more difficult people as time goes on. The Prison Service has acquired a great deal of expertise in dealing with the problems of medium and long sentence prisoners. Régimes have been developed in a number of closed prisons—at Wakefield, which the right reverend Prelate referred to earlier, Wormwood Scrubs and Portsmouth, and in the open prison at Leyhill—all of which have achieved some success in the difficult task of maintaining people through long sentences. This is a particularly difficult problem confronting the Prison Service, and it is one which I think so far has been coped with, and is being coped with at the moment with some degree of reasonable expectation of success.
However, this brings me to another problem. It is one which has been touched on by a number of noble Lords, and it is the general question of research. I think this question has been preoccupying Ministers of both Governments for a very substantial period of time. We all want more research. For one thing, we want to see that the operational problems in the prison system can be identified, and include within it a research programme that is action-related. We have been making a certain degree of progress in this matter. A good deal of research is now being undertaken: for instance, on the general question which the noble Viscount who preceded me touched on, that of life sentence imprisonment. It is predictable that the number of life sentence prisoners will increase considerably in the next few years, as it has in the recent past, and for some of the reasons which the noble Viscount identified in his speech.
At present, there are approximately 1,000 life sentence prisoners, and it is likely that the number will have increased to around 1,400 by the end of this decade. This represents a formidable problem. To meet it we are taking two steps. One is to establish special centres in two particular prisons where the case of each life sentence prisoner can be looked at in depth over a fairly long initial period after the sentence has been imposed. These centres will have expert staff, particularly medical staff. Their job will be

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to sustain the prisoner during the particularly difficult period after sentence has been imposed and to plan a career for him within the prison system.
The other step is to reorganise that system so that more prisons are capable of dealing with life sentence prisoners. I readily agree that the preparation of discharged prisoners whether long-term or not, must be improved, and this indeed was the point which the noble Baroness, Lady Sharples, made in her maiden speech. The particular point she raised is largely a matter for my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Social Services. There are inter-Departmental discussions now taking place on this matter. It would be foolish, indeed reckless, of me were I to say that I can give a firm assurance that action will be taken, but I am sure that everyone is conscious of the urgency of this particular problem and we will certainly do our best to resolve it in the context of the wider economic problems the country is facing at the moment.
I think the key to the prospective changes I have so far been discussing is the general question of the availability of resources, in this as in other matters. In some respects it is a matter of redeployment of existing resources, which will be helped as and if the Prison Service can be relieved of some of its present burdens. But we must recognise the fact that there is still a very great deal to be done—and the noble Viscount will be even more aware of this than I am, because of his knowledge of the system—to bring the organisation and management of the Prison Service up to date. A review has already taken place which has led to the reorganisation of the Prison Department headquarters and the establishment of regions. The review is continuing with the organisation and management of Prison Department establishments.
Over the last two decades, specialist services have been introduced to a wide range of prisons, but there has been little change in the basic hierarchical patterns of management, which date from the time when the task of prisons was seen to be virtually exclusively custodial. The more complex task of prisons to-day calls not only for changes in organisation and structure, but also in management style and in the pattern of internal com-
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munication. But it is not just a question of organisation, deployment, or indeed even of management of staff. Experience has shown that if all staff are not involved in the management of the prison, with effective communication and consultation, any attempts to engage prisoners in consultative processes within the prison are almost certainly doomed to a high likelihood of failure. We are anxious to deal with this problem now, and changes have already been made in staff training with the objective of doing something in this area.
As was inevitable, this debate has covered—as indeed has my speech—a very wide area. Nevertheless, I am sure that it has been extremely valuable. I can assure the House that my right honourable friend the Home Secretary is determined to make the creation of a more rational and a more civilised penal system one of the central objectives of his policy. I am sure that, as I have done, he will find to-day's debate of the greatest assistance to him in fashioning that policy.
7.2 p.m.
THE EARL OF LONGFORD: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, has already proved himself a real addition to this House in the short time that he has been with us. To-day he has made another excellent speech, and I am sure that there will be many other excellent speeches from him to follow. I hope that I shall be forgiven by the other speakers if I do not single them out by name. They were all so good and so eminent, that once I began mentioning three or four I should feel very bad about the others and would mention everybody. If I may, I shall simply mention the noble Baroness, Lady Sharpies, whose maiden speech has won an acceptance that, in my now all too long experience, I can hardly recall. I should like to thank everybody for their participation.
If anybody asks me, which they have not, whether I go away encouraged or discouraged, I shall recall the words of one of P. G. Wodehouse's characters who said that he was not disgruntled, but he was not exactly "gruntled" either. I suppose that roughly points to my condition. I was already very much encouraged when I came here, knowing the ideals of the Home Secretary which have been restated today. I should need to read the speech of the noble Lord,

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Lord Harris, very carefully to be sure whether he has taken us further or whether, as I think Lenin said, it is "One step forward and two steps back", or was it "Two steps forward and one step back". It was a little bit forward here, and a little bit back there, and therefore I shall not go into that in detail. I shall not even get involved in that question of experiment. I worked for three years, as the House may know, with the late Lord Beveridge. Certainly, any great social reforms in this country and, if you like, those introduced by the late Aneurin Bevan were not based on years of experiment. If we had waited for years of experiment in social reform in this country, we should not have had much social reform. While I favour experiment, I do not want to wait too long.
Looking to the future, we all seem to agree in theory that there are a lot of people—we talk of a lot of people, and we must mean some thousands—who ought not to be in prison but who are now in prison. The question is: what is to be done about these people, not in years hence but in the next few years during the period of the Home Secretary's stewardship? Either we leave them in prison, or turn them lose without any particular attention being paid to them, or place them in the way of a new and alternative remedy. If we are to do that, we cannot wait for years for the so-called experiment. That is my point of view. I am happy with Lord Harris's speech, happy with all the speeches, and yet I wonder at the end whether we are further forward than when we started to-day. My Lords, I beg leave to withdraw my Motion.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

ARMS SALES POLICY
7.6 p.m.
LORD FRASER OF LONSDALE LORD FRASER OF LONSDALE rose to ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will make a Statement on—

(1) their discrimination against certain countries such as Chile and the Republic of South Africa on the sale of arms;

(2) their plans for the surveillance and defence of the Cape Route if they
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discourage a friendly relationship with the Republic of South Africa by arbitrarily breaking contracts and refusing orders;

(3) the estimated value in the trade lost and unemployment caused in the next year or two if their discriminatory policy is pursued; and

(4) the available evidence that trade with "Africa as a whole" will necessarily be lost if trade with the Republic of South Africa is encouraged in view of the statement by Lord Shepherd on May 21 that "today our trade with Africa as a whole has as much importance as our trade with South Africa".

The noble Lord said: My Lords, my first duty is to declare an interest. Noble Lords know that I have an interest in South Africa, but I formally declare it. I wish to say that two uncles of mine and my father went to South Africa almost exactly 100 years ago. They were not wicked, bad men, as of course I am, being a South African. They were very good Scots who went out to earn a living and succeeded. They were not in the Colonial Service, but like many of our Colonial servants they did a splendid job in South Africa, and so have their issue since. We are very proud of what we have been able to do in South Africa, and I am very proud of what the Colonial Office has done.
I do not raise this issue for the purpose of grinding my axe, or the axe of those who have interests similar to mine in South Africa. I genuinely raise it in the hope of changing some minds, even if only a little, on the principle that water dripping on the stone, if it goes on long enough, must have some little effect at some time. I will see to it that Ministers and members of the Shadow Cabinet receive a copy of Hansard, and I hope that they will read it. I think that there is a case for British people—and perhaps particularly, the members of the Left, in its broadest sense—and Government Ministers to change their minds about South Africa. I shall start, therefore, by talking about apartheid.
There are various aspects of apartheid: one is job reservation. That, of course, is very similar to the attitude of mind of the Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen. In the railway

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system here in Britain, they are superior men of superior talent and superior pay, and if anyone tries to raise the pay of the men below them—that is to say, 90 per cent. of the railwaymen—they do not like it unless, of course, the differential is maintained. They live alone in this sense, and have their own separate union. They practise a kind of apartheid. It is not confined to South Africa. It is found in very many parts of the world—in Ireland, in the Middle East, in Israel—in all these various places, and certainly in Hong Kong, there are differences in ways of living amongst the people. These are kinds of apartheid.
Job reservation in South Africa means that some better-class jobs are reserved for the white men and less good jobs are reserved for the black men, or the coloured men or the Indians, and of course there is less pay attached to the latter. I do not think that this can be changed within the Constitution of South Africa because the votes in South Africa—and I shall be speaking about votes later—are confined to the white men. No Party can go to the country in an election and say, "We will abolish job reservation" because they would not be returned, and therefore it would be quite useless to do it, any more than you could go to ASLEF annual conference and say, "We will abolish your superior position". They would not hear of it and would not reelect the secretary. Let us remember these parallels because there is something in them, my Lords.
I have been wondering to what extent the adverse view of Leftish people about South Africa is due to what they might call a moral attitude. I ask myself what is morality? Some would think that the Christian ethic was morality. The majority of mankind would not adhere to that view; the majority of mankind are not Christians. I have an idea that the kind of morality that I understand is that of recognising what is good behaviour in your own country and trying to live up to that good behaviour; perhaps also to do good, or at any rate to do better. We know that people belonging to other religions or other States may have four wives, or even forty, and it is quite moral to have four wives or forty if you are in a country where that is the prevailing custom. Not so in Britain. I do not know that it means that we are any better
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or any worse than these other people, but we are different. Then perhaps Members opposite will say—and Government Ministers have said this to me before now—that the United Nations have passed resolutions indicating that we ought to ban contact with South Africans, that we ought to impose trade restrictions upon them, as the Americans have done over Cuba, or as all of us have tried, and failed to do with Rhodesia.
May I examine for a very few minutes the morality of some of the resolutions of the United Nations. First of all, many international lawyers, some of great repute, take the view that UNO has no right whatever to interfere in the internal affairs of its members. That matter has been before the court in The Hague and there is a real difference of opinion among international lawyers as to whether the very constitution of UNO does not forbid it from interfering in the internal affairs of its Member States. That is very understandable. I do not suppose that UNO, or the old League of Nations either would ever have come into existence if the Member States had not all agreed not to interfere with each other's internal affairs. It is written into the Charter.
Secondly, let us remember that the members who go to UNO are, in the majority, biased men, many still living in an age in which they looked upon colonialism, as they call it, and imperialism, as they call it, as the besetting sins of the more sophisticated countries, particularly of the British. I am proud of the colonial system; I do not need to make apologies for it. Over hundreds of years many men have gone out and have developed a British colonial system of which we can all be proud. They have brought trade and education, culture and understanding and law to millions of people who had no contact whatever with the outside world until they came. It is not surprising, therefore, that the United Nations should pass resolutions enjoining conduct upon us and others which none of them really carry out in their own countries. I do not think we need to be greatly influenced by this and I really do not think that members opposite and Government Ministers can rely upon United Nations resolutions as sanction for some of the crazy things they do in this field. My Lords, the "holier than thou" attitude of some on the opposite side,

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and one or two on this side of this House and another place, makes me feel quite sick. I think it is utterly shocking and a great humbug.
There is also another view taken by Whitehall, that Whitehall always knows best. I regret that it is true of a great many people in Britain, especially Leftish people who think they know best. It is really not true that they know best. They may know something but they do not know best, certainly not what is best for Africa. Many of them have never been there. May I remind your Lordships that over the last 10 or 20 years our country, Britain, has given so-called independence (still very strongly supported with gifts and donations) to every ex-colony in Africa. It was generous, it was far-seeing (or supposed to be), it was warmhearted. They were given votes for all and a little Parliament with a Government on one side, and an Opposition on the other and a Speaker and all the trappings of the Westminster system. There is not one of these African ex-colonies which has not abandoned the Westminster system—not one, great or small. They have all turned to dictatorship, semi-dictatorship or a single-Party State. Why is this? It is because we really do not know what is best for them, and they probably do know what is best for themselves and they like the system which they understand. We must not therefore be too arrogant.
I come now to my questions. First, why does Her Majesty's Government discriminate—that is a word they love on the other side of the House when they throw it at us—against some countries in this matter of the supply of arms? Chile and South Africa are examples. But there are others. Why do they discriminate? I would go so far to say that it would be right and proper to provide police arms wherever they are required. A policeman is far more effective if, in certain circumstances, he can have recourse to arms—not always, and not in all countries all the time, but in certain circumstances. He can often maintain law and order better if armed, or thought to be armed, from time to time, especially if he is sent out to meet men who are known to be armed. So we say that we cannot supply them with
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police arms. For some moral reason? Because we are against law and order, or because we think they will use these arms for some wrong purpose? We might as well say that we will not arm the troops or the police in Northern Ireland in case by some error they shoot the wrong man, which they often do. It always happens in wars or in warlike operations. I should have thought it ridiculous not to sell arms for police purposes the world over. It makes the police more effective. If you do not sell arms to them they can either make them themselves or buy from somebody else. So nothing moral that I can think of is gained.
My Lords, another aspect of apartheid is the question of living separately. By and large, white men and black men like living separately. They do not like mixed marriages or miscegenation. There is a law in South Africa against mixed marriages or against sexual intercourse between different coloureds. I am one of those who think that that law is not very good. It does not have much effect. Without it there would be just as much miscegenation or just as little; in fact very little. I would rather this matter be dealt with by public opinion or custom, as it is in many other countries, than by law. The trouble about making a law for coloureds is that you have to define colour, and that is when you get into trouble, because in South Africa there is a great fusion of colours among many elements in the populations, as there is in many other parts of the world. Occasionally you come across hardship where you define colour to the disadvantage of the individual who is to be discriminated against on that account.
That is one aspect of apartheid, but not a very serious one and it does not affect many people; neither does living separately in different parts of the same town. An example of that is to be seen in the system that has been set up by the South African Government called Bantustans or the Homelands, the idea being that the different races—and there are many nations in South Africa, Zulus, Xhosas and those who talk Sesuto but nevertheless do not live in Lesotho but in the mainland—these various ethnic and native groups and nations shall live

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separately in states or realms of their own which will ultimately become independent.
I doubt very much whether they will really become independent because it would be far too dangerous to allow them to do so. It is all very well to have Lesotho independent, an enclave in the middle of South Africa; but in my view one could not very well have independent the whole of the Transkei down that long coastline. It would need to be subject to some kind of general foreign affairs and defence control. Be that as it may, it is an attempt on the part of the South African Government to take account of one aspect of apartheid, namely, this living separately. Do not be under any misapprehension about this word "apartheid" or the system. It is not new. The word was invented 20 or 30 years ago by a political Party who used it for electioneering purposes, and it has come to be well understood and greatly liked among certain old-fashioned sections and greatly disliked by many other people, while much suspected by many in this country and in the United States. But it is not so bad as we try to make it out to be. Living separately is really not at all a bad idea, and only very slowly as decades pass will this change. It cannot be changed by law or even by undoing laws.
My Lords, I come to the question of voting, another aspect of apartheid. White men vote and the coloureds and blacks do not. Ought not everyone to have a vote? It is easy to say, "Yes", but I have already pointed out that every country to which we gave a vote for all has given it up because they do not like votes. It has been said that you have "one-man, one-vote" once and that is how you create a dictatorship. That is the way it is and it is no use our pretending that we can live in a world that we like to live in. We have to live in this world—warts and all.
I am sure, my Lords, that if everybody in Rhodesia or in South Africa had a vote to-morrow, you would at the next Election, or probably in the space of two Elections, have a completely black, native or Bantu Government. All the Ministers and sub-Ministers would be Bantu ar of the African race. The people would not be better off, either in their freedom, trade
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or in the confidence which such a new Government would create, or from the investment which would come to them from overseas. It would be a long time before the new Government, composed of peopie who had not been accustomed to it in the past, could match up to the skill, the ingenuity, the courage and the experience of Mr. Smith in Rhodesia, and which Mr. Vorster and his predecessors have in South Africa. They are good and fair Governments, and it is by no means true that the black African States in other parts of Africa are any better. They are not any better, and in many respects some are not so good. Do not let us imagine that by talking about votes for all, or a sentimental idea of this kind, we will be doing our friends, the blacks and the coloureds and the Indians, any good. On the contrary, we should be landing them in a packet of trouble and nobody would be any richer or better off.
If your Lordships look at my first question you will see I ask, "Why discriminate?" I should like the Government to give my question a genuine and serious answer. Why discriminate? What has South Africa or Chile done wrong by comparison with any other country? Is it because we do not like parts of their policy? Do we like all parts of the policy of Russia, Greece or Spain? Do we supply arms to them? Or is the answer merely that since they have not asked us so to do we have not had that awkward question to answer? I do not know, but I should like to know. I have a feeling there is real discrimination against South Africa, and it is not based on good grounds, moral or otherwise.
Let us remember that the Cape route, the 1,000 or 2,000 miles of coastline from around Durban in the Red Sea to the Cape in the South Atlantic, is now watched over by the South Africans. Their Air Force watches 90 per cent. of it. Our little bit of Navy does a bit, but not much and the Labour Party would draw them away if it could. They harass them and prevent them from going in to meet people. They have stopped ships from going to Simonstown. That was done only the other day. Is that either polite or sensible? I have noticed that Ministers—and this comment applies to Ministers on both sides of the House—have from time to time been very rude

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about South Africa, but the South African Ministers are not rude about us. They are almost as polite as we are to each other in this old House.
Certainly, Mr. Vorster is far more polite in his replies to Mr. Wilson than is Mr. Wilson or that other little chap—what the hell is his name?—Wedgwood Benn, the right honourable the Minister of something or other. He is very rude about South Africa, and yet he gets a polite reply from these wicked men in the Cape. Wedgwood Benn, the right honourable gentleman in the other place, not only says that we cannot supply arms because we would be supporting apartheid—and, by the way, that is rather nonsense. It is supporting apartheid to supply them with arms but of course it is not supporting apartheid to buy their fruit and eat it. I recommend the wife of every Peer in the realm and every Peer in the House to buy South African fruit and eat it during the winter months in England. It is the best fruit, and millions of pounds worth of canned fruit comes here. Labour men might like to remember that in every Coop shop (I believe there is an affinity between the Labour Party and the Coop; at least I have heard so) they will find South African canned fruit and the women buy it. Why? It is because it is the best fruit at the best price.
Our Government and unfriendly to South Africa. They make unfriendly speeches and comments and refuse to allow contracts to be kept. They make an enemy where there ought to be a friend. Our system of defence is NATO. I believe that the "NA" means North Atlantic. South Africa is not a member of that Organisation. Perhaps they cannot be a member under the rules, but there ought to be the utmost co-operation between the British Navy, the NATO Navies and the South African Navy. There has been the utmost co-operation hitherto, but now this Government are doing their very best to stop that.
The words used by the right honourable Wedgwood Benn are that we cannot sell arms to these people, because it would lead to repression. You do not repress a bunch of black men who are having a spree, or a night out, or who have got drunk, or whose escapade has
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developed into a near riot, with submarines. You do not suppress them with long-range aircraft which cost £1 million, £2 million, £3 million or £4 million apiece. They are not the right weapons and they are not in the right place. So while there could be some reason—though I do not recognise it—for not supplying certain kinds of arms, there can be no reason for denying the Cape route of what might be called the arms required for its surveillance and possibly for its defence, and incidentally, for the surveillance of the Indian Ocean.
I wonder how many noble Lords in this House realise the extent of the infusion—is that the word?—or the extent to which Russia and China are getting a foothold in the continent of Africa. The general poverty throughout Africa may well encourage the belief that here is a country in which Communism might thrive. We do not want that. We are not afraid of "Commies" being under the bed, but we must be aware of what is happening in the world and we cannot be without a friend in the Southern Seas. There is a friend there who has been our friend in the past and who wants to be our friend again.
There is one ray of hope in what the Government have said to me lately in this House; that the whole Defence system of Britain is under consideration. I think it was the noble Lord, Lord Goronwy-Roberts, who said that, or certainly another Minister from the opposite Bench. There is a general review—and he will probably say this to-night—of our Defence system in Britain. If that means anything, it must mean that the Southern Seas are taken into account because they are part of this Earth. You cannot ignore them. I must ask him how, if we are not going to be friendly with South Africa in a minimal way by supplying arms for coastal defence—and that is all I am asking now—we can be friends with them and expect trade with them to increase? How, incidentally, are we going to watch 2,000 miles of coastline and the Indian Ocean? Where are we to base our aeroplanes if we are to watch it at all? Or are we to stop watching it, because of the economies which the Government wish to make, as well as because of this policy? Here is an opportunity where you can make an economy by encouraging South Africa, because

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South Africa is not only willing to do it at their expense but are doing it at their expense.
How then—I ask the noble Lord who is to answer—are you to watch the Cape route, the coast? Do your Lordships know that a third of our trade comes around there? Not only would we lose greatly if the route was ever inaccessible to us; we would starve. Food, oil, our standard of living would fall away and so would the standard of living of the whole of Europe. How are we to do this if we are not to use the good offices of South Africa, which is willing to do it, and if we are to quarrel with them by refusing arbitrarily and discriminatorily to supply the necessary arms?
Another question I am asking, which is on the Order Paper is: how do the Government assess the loss of money and the loss of amenities in Britain due to the increased unemployment which will arise if we do not supply these arms that have been asked for? I have been told that some £500 million-worth of coastal arms could be provided in the next five years if it were not for this Government's ban on them. My Question is clearly set out on the Order Paper: what assessment do the Government make? They must have made an assessment of the loss in both money and unemployment to which we will be subject.
If Britain is to do good in the world, it must do it by example; by meeting people and trading with them; talking with them; visiting and it cannot do it by sanctions, by refusing this and that, and by refusing to be friends. If we have anything worth while in our heritage to show to other people, we can show it only by meeting with them and talking with them—and talking means trade. So I disagree entirely with the policy of shutting off this or shutting off that. It does not effect what is wanted; it does not even help those whom you want to help; namely, the dependent peoples in South Africa. What would help them is more trade, not less trade.
The noble Lord the Leader of the House told me the other day that I ought to know better than most—these were his words—that British trade with the rest of Africa was so considerable that it might easily lose us more than we
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would gain by being friendly with South Africa. That is what the noble Lord said. I think I have the figures here, and if I am wrong the noble Lord who is going to reply will correct me. I believe that total British exports to Africa are about £600 million per year and our total exports to South Africa are £400 million a year. What evidence is there that if we lose the one or depreciate it£that is, the trade with South Africa£we shall gain anything from the rest of Africa? Or, vice versa, if we are not rude to the South Africans but if we are polite to them and supply them with some of the things they need, what evidence is there that we are going to lose much of the £600 million?
The old doctrine of laissez-faire or letting the market decide the price (this part of my speech is specially designed for the Liberals; I do not suppose there is anybody still on those Benches, but anyone who cares to do so will be able to read these remarks), had a good deal of sense in it. You sell at the highest price you can get and you buy at the lowest price you have got to: that is good sense. That is the only test which is used by every nation, and especially the black nations. I do not believe for one moment that we shall lose trade all over Africa if we supply necessary arms for the defence of South Africa. I do not believe it. I cannot really believe that the Government do either, but they have got caught up in this and do not know how to get out of it.
May I make one other remark about trade: if Britain has anything good to export in the way of example, heritage or history and if we have any sense whatever (and I am not sure that we have), we can only do good in the rest of the world if we have some money. You cannot do any good without money, and I think even the Labour Government will find this out in a year or two. You cannot have money unless you trade, and this Island can only survive and be prosperous if it is a worldwide trader; that is its role. We are not self-supporting; we have to trade. So there seems to me to be really a good many genuine arguments about this.
Now I come to the last one. In two wars, South Africa fought with us. We may very well need the South Africans again if ever there was a third war£

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which God forbid! We may very well need these friends again. Why are we so foolish and short-sighted as to be rude to them whenever we can and to avoid trading with them and avoid meeting them whenever we can? When I say "we", I mean principally noble Lords opposite and in particular Labour Ministers, who go out of their way to be as rude and shocking as they can be. Why?—when these friends at the bottom end of that Continent are the best possible friends we could have to help us to control, to watch over and to look after the Southern seas.
7.45 p.m.
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: My Lords, I hope the noble Lord, Lord Fraser of Lonsdale, will forgive me if I do not follow him on the subject of South Africa. I myself support the view of my noble Leader that the question of supplying arms to South Africa is very different in its nature from that of supplying arms to Chile, which we have not yet discussed and which I personally wish to discuss. The problems of supplying arms to South Africa are much wider than those involved in a simple arms deal. I shall not argue the case that the noble Lord, Lord Fraser, has argued, but before launching into my speech (which I hope will be brief) I should like to apologise to my noble friend who is to reply if I give him little comfort. He has been very kind to me in the past and I hope that what I have to say to him will not be too unpalatable.
Why must we have a policy for trading in arms? One proposition to which everyone in this House, whether they are present at the moment or not, would agree, is that this nation of ours is worth defending. That is a simple proposition. If it is to be defended, it needs a Defence industry. That again is obvious. But the problem these days is that the cost of weapons and weapons systems is becoming so astronomically high that it becomes almost impossible to supply equipment unless the costs of research and development are spread over a much wider cost of production than is required for this country. For this reason, we have to export: hence we have the Defence Sales Section within the Arms Procurement Executive. We must trade in arms if we are to have a Defence industry. I seem
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to remember closing a Defence debate in your Lordships' House with the remark that, in my view, sentimentality can be as dangerous as brutality, and I regret that trading in arms is not suited to sentimental people. Anybody who works in this business can only be ruled by hardheaded national interest. The only question that we can ask is whether the delivery of arms to a certain country is in the national interest? We must never forget that if we sell arms we must also be prepared to sell the ammunition and the spares for them, otherwise we might as well go out of business.
Again, as your Lordships may agree, there are many groupings of the Left of various shades of red. There are the revolutionary groups, within every member of which there is a Ché Guevara struggling to get out; and then they are the sentimentalists who, as the noble Lord, Lord Fraser of Lonsdale, has said, are always preaching the doctrine of "holier than thou" (or me) or "more Socialist than thou" (or me). I find this as distasteful as did the great Ernest Bevin, who complained about sentimentalists "hawking their consciences about". I do not like the hawking of consciences: I find it offensive.
Therefore I find the whole myth that has been built up around the Allende regime offensive—partly because it is sentimental but mainly because it is untrue. The Left of whatever shade has built up this extraordinary myth about this man and his period of Office, and it is then basing its policy towards the Defence sales to Chile upon the basis of that myth and not upon reality. The myth is, of course, that a Marxist gained the Presidency of Chile by way of the ballot box and then in due course, because he was trying to carry through reforms against the will of the Chilean people. was opposed by reactionary forces and finally destroyed by them, mainly by the Armed Forces of Chile.
Of course, my Lords, reality is very different. At the beginning the Armed Forces of Chile did their best to make the Allende Government and system work, and when they ultimately found that it was not working and that Allende was being used as a stalking horse by organisations of the Left, and the extreme Left, then they and the middle classes, the artisans and the housewives, turned

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against the régime and brought it to its undignified end. With your Lordships' permission, even at this late hour I should like to quote a paragraph from The Economist which I think illuminates the picture and destroys the myth. I do not know whether one should really base one's views upon The Economist, but they have been consistent in their opposition to Allende ever since his experiment started to turn sour, and they are, I think, one of the few voices of reason in an increasingly unreasonable world. What they said about this myth is this:
"‡the easiest way to deal with those who maintain that Allende was a democrat is to ask them to translate his actions into British terms. The nearest analogy is to imagine that a prime minister of Britain formed a private bodyguard out of members of the Angry Brigade and the Workers' Revolutionary Party; that he allowed other would-be guerrillas, organised by KGB and Palestinian instructors, to turn parts of the Clydeside and Liverpool slums into armed camps; that he allowed private property, often quite small farms, to be confiscated at gunpoint; that inflation running at an annual rate of 350 per cent. was used to wipe out the savings of the middle class; and that, in the end, he ignored a vote of censure in the House of Commons and tried to organise a coup to perpetuate his power. If that happened, would anyone to the right of Mr. Mick McGahey describe him as a democrat?"
My Lords, I think that is a picture much closer to the truth than the myth which has been spread about that man and his régime.
Quite frankly, this nonsense is spotted by sensible men in industry. I think the best comment upon the whole nonsense about the supply of arms to Chile, and particularly in this case submarines, was made by a worker in the Lower Clyde shipyards, who remarked that if the submarines being built there were to be used to put the workers down, "then they must have bloody big sewers in Chile". I think that is the definitive comment on the subject. Why should British workers be denied work because of a revolutionary splinter group preventing the Government and a Government establishment from, shall we say, reconditioning Rolls-Royce engines for Chile? Or why should they be denied work because of someone's bleeding soul? There are two big arms contracts going in South America at the moment. One is about £100 million worth of naval
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equipment for Argentina, and there is another £100 million for Brazil. What do we think of Peron? Is Peron a good thing or a bad thing? Is our conscience so tender that we cannot sell him £100 million worth of ships which he will never use against us? I just do not understand the position. Of course, it is not only just this particular issue but the attitude which is spread throughout the whole world where we are trying to sell arms which will enable us to finance our own Defence budget. There are a great many sane people—sane officials, sane Governments—who are very doubtful about placing orders for equipment in this country because they are afraid that spares, ammunition and so on may be denied them because of an emotional spasm here.
I am afraid, my Lords, that the nonsense goes even wider, and I am now going to raise a point which I warned my noble friend I was going to raise. Again I quote The Economist. On the 8th of this month they wrote as follows:
"The Secretary of State for Trade, Mr. Peter Shore, has decided to try to cut down on British trade with right-wing governments. He asked the Export Credits Guarantee Department to provide a list of all its pending export deals involving British companies and Spain, Chile, Greece and South Africa. Later, he returned the list and told the E.C.G.D. to pull out of all the deals he had marked as objectionable."
This has been denied. I do not know by whom, but this assertion by The Economist has been denied. But I would rather believe The Economist than whoever issued the démenti.
LORD GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, would my noble friend allow me to interrupt him? It was flatly denied in another place on June 10 by the Secretary of State for Trade.
LORD WINTER BOTTOM: In that case, my Lords, I am very glad, because the doubts still remain. I would very much have preferred it if the statement had been denied by the Chancellor of the Exchequer or the Foreign Secretary, since the issues raised by a statement of this type in a paper which I personally trust (and which, of course, is nowadays my only source of information) are so dangerous to our trade in the world as a whole that the position really must be made perfectly clear.
LORD GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, I am very sorry, but I really must intervene once more. The truth or otherwise of this allegation should clearly be settled by the Minister who is in charge of E.C.G.D., and that is the Secretary of State for Trade.
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: My Lords, I hope my noble friend will see that this is given the very widest publicity, because we as a nation are told that export-led growth is the only way by which we can reach the Promised Land. If this is true, is this, in either of these cases, the way to achieve it?
7.56 p.m.
EARL COWLEY: My Lords, the sale of armaments to foreign countries has always raised strong emotions in both political Parties, but possibly more so among those on the Left of the political spectrum. Fortunately for this country, there are few people who think that British armaments should be sold without any restrictions of any kind or, on the other side, who believe that Britain should cease all exports of Defence equipment. The arms industry of this country plays a vital part in providing much-needed foreign exchange and employment for Britain. It was estimated in the last Defence White Paper that the value of arms exports in 1973–74 would rise to £405 million, going mostly to the Middle East. The policy of the Conservative Party when it was in Government was to sell Defence equipment to countries with which we have friendly relations subject to strategic, political, economic and security considerations. This is still our policy. So far as Portugal and South Africa were concerned, we took up the last Labour Government's distinction, which is sometimes difficult to draw, between weapons suitable only for external purposes and those which can be used for civil repression. In short, there was no material difference between the policy of the two Governments on arms sales, and both permitted the supply of arms to virtually the same countries.
The last Labour Government continued to sell Defence equipment to Brazil, Argentina and Peru after their democratically-elected presidents had been overthrown in military coups: President Goulart of Brazil in 1964, President
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Illia of Argentina in 1966, and President Belaunde of Peru in 1968. The Labour Government of the day made no attempt to cut off or reduce the supply of arms to these countries on the basis that they had become politically and morally unacceptable to those on the Left of the Labour Party. Furthermore, the last Labour Government, although at times equivocally, honoured Britain's obligations under the Simonstown Agreement. When the Conservatives took over in 1970, this general policy was followed.
The present Government have drastically changed the criterion by which this country sells arms abroad into a a concept that is both unrealistic and extremly damaging to this country. If a sovereign State wishes to buy Defence equipment from Britain, they have to pass a democratic fitness test, irrespective of the economic, strategic, political or security considerations that may apply. When one takes into account the time gap between negotiations, the signing of the contract and delivery, one sees one of the dangers and the fallacy of the present Government's policy. Governments come and go very quickly, especially in developing countries. Armaments can be ordered by a military Government and delivered subsequently to a democracy, as one can see in Argentina.
I am not saying that moral issues should be ignored—far from it. Many of us on this side of the House totally abhor the concept of apartheid and recognise the untold damage that it does in the African Continent. The denial of human rights in Chile at the present time, or wherever it takes place, should be condemned by all sides of the House; but where we differ from the Labour Government is on the grounds of reality and practicality. The chief fault of the Left Wing of the Labour Party, which seems to be making the running within the Government on this topic, lies not so much in its inability to admit that there are always two sides to a case. One has only to read the speeches by the noble Lord's honourable friends during the debate on Chile in another place last November 28, or to study the incredible myth that they have created around the late President Allende, to see that point.
Objectivity is not their strong point. No—the chief fault lies in the Left Wing

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of the Labour Party's total obsession, which has infected the Government, with making moral gestures without pausing to weigh their likely effectiveness against their cost. It seems that the Government—a minority one, at that—are determined, come hell or high water, to dictate to friendly sovereign States how they should run their own internal affairs, at the same time dragging the majority of the electorate, which did not vote for a Labour Government, along a path that the Government have not convinced us they wish to follow.
The cancellation of the export licence for the Westland Wasp helicopter involves not only a blatant breach of contract, but also a breach of the Simonstown Agreement. Will the Government say whether this is the first hint of the Government's plan to end the Agreement and, if this is so what provisions are they making to replace the facilities and vital intelligence, that this country receives under the Simonstown Agreement? While the cancellation of the export licence can only be described as a hollow gesture to appease the Left Wing, the repercussions will probably be substantial. Already it seems that the South African Government are considering making reprisals, most likely in the area of trade. There should be no need for me to remind the noble Lord, Lord Goronwy-Roberts, of what is written on page 112 of Labour's Programme 1973 and I quote:
"We are not interested in empty gestures or actions which would inflict severe damage on the British economy and the level of employment without changing the situation in Southern Africa."
What could be more empty or more damaging to Britain's interests than the present Government's action, and where is the change in the situation in Southern Africa caused by the cancellation? I cannot see the South African Government's being persuaded to become more amenable to the idea of relaxing their apartheid policies by the Labour Government's action.
LORD LLOYD OF KILGERRAN: My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt the noble Earl in reading his delightful essay on this matter, but he did, as I understood him, say that the South African Government were contemplating reprisals in respect of certain matters. Could he give noble Lords further details of the
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reprisals which the South African Government are proposing to make, and could he give noble Lords in this House the source of his information in making that general statement without any further details?
EARL COWLEY: My Lords, in answer to the noble Lord I am afraid that I have to decline. I cannot give the source of my information.
LORD LLOYD OF KILGERRAN: My Lords, I am so sorry to interrupt the noble Earl again, but he said that the South African Government were contemplating making reprisals. Either he withdraws that statement or substantiates it.
EARL COWLEY: In that case, my Lords, since I cannot give the source of my information, I will certainly withdraw the statement. But I still do not think it makes very much difference to the argument I am putting forward.
As I was saying, the action taken by the Government has only infuriated the South African Government. Could the noble Lord, Lord Goronwy-Roberts, tell the House whether this is just the thin end of the wedge, or whether they intend to extend this policy to trade in general? For I am certain many companies and individuals in this country would like to know the answer. Then there is the immorality of breaking a contract which has been freely entered into by both parties. This can only damage the reputation of this country as a reliable trading partner and so affect the economic viability of this country. The only conclusion that I can draw is that the Government cannot consider the morality of honouring contracts very high.
So far as Chile is concerned, I accept that none of the contracts was technically broken on the Government's instructions. With the delivery of the two frigates and two submarines, there remained only the contracts for supplying of spare parts for, and the servicing of, the Chilean Air Force's Rolls-Royce engines, both of which are to be ended by implementing the three months' break clause in respect of servicing and by giving a reasonable period of denunciation in respect of the spares. However, for how long will the Government continue to supply spares for the warships? The action taken by the Government is rather similar to a garage

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from which one has purchased a car and which is then told by the manufacturers not to continue to service the car after 6,000 miles. Although there is no breach of contract, one expects one's car to be serviced and the spare parts to be provided by the manufacturers—something on which I gather Rolls-Royce prides itself. If I were the customer I should be as annoyed as are the Chilean Government.
The Chilean Minister of Mining said last month:
"All the countries which have an unfriendly attitude towards Chile will be paid back in the same coin."
In respect of Britain, Chile is intending to revise its copper supply policies. I have no need to remind the noble Lord that 20 per cent. of Britain's copper needs come from Chile. A copper embargo by Chile, coupled with the setting up of a copper cartel by the CIPEC member States, could have dire consequences on industry in this country. What stand are the Government going to take in the light of all these factors at the bilateral talks between Britain and Chile over the latter's foreign debt of £140 million owed to this country, especially since half of it was created by the purchasing of the four warships?
It would be impossible to quantify in monetary terms the economic loss of future arms orders and the increase in unemployment because of the Government's policy. Governments never give all their reasons for ordering arms from one country rather than another. However, an indication of the policy's effect might be gained when the Argentine Navy orders its six new destroyers which, as the noble Lord opposite has said, is worth £100 million. British companies are bidding, strongly for the order since the Argentine Navy has lone-standing links with British shipyards. However, while the Argentine Government do not greet General Pinochet of Chile with open arms, the Argentine Navy has close contacts with its Chilean counterparts. In fact, the Armed Forces of most Latin American States liaise with each other.
The Conservative Party fully recognises the importance of our trade with the independent countries of black Africa, but we believe in trying to maintain good relations with all countries in Africa,
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black as well as white, and to encourage the growth of trade between this country and the African Continent. I readily admit that this has not always been successful, but we did not sacrifice the interests of this country for the sake of what might be called the moral unacceptability of the Governments of some of the African States, whether they be black or white. We are watching and studying events in Africa very carefully, especially since April 25.
My Lords, while I personally fully understand and even sympathise with the moral stands being taken by certain of the noble Lord's colleagues in the Government towards the Governments of certain countries, this is only as individuals. I can have no respect for the Government's policy on arms sales and its inconsistent application. It is nothing but the product of a collective and emotive obsession which takes no account of reality or of the interests of this country, and if it is extended to other fields of trade I fear for our position in the world.
8.10 p.m.
LORD BARNBY: My Lords, I seek to support the Unstarred Question of my noble friend Lord Fraser of Lonsdale. He sought information in an exceptionally informative and yet temperate speech. He covered a great deal of ground and said things which needed saying. I am in entire agreement with the whole of what he said. My noble friend's Unstarred Question is in a manner which is rather unusual; it is divided up into four sections. Doubtless when the Government spokesman comes to reply he will deal with it in four sections.
But it prompts me, with the indulgence of the House. to raise a procedural question regarding a change in practice as set out in the procedural rules of the House. It is not usual for a speaker to follow the Minister in his reply. It is not disallowed, but it is regarded with disapproval. I am prompted to submit to the Leader of the House the possibility of considering the propriety of a review of that procedure. I am prompted by the obvious search for information from the Government which has been visible to a marked degree recently, particularly in the past two days, in the number of supplementary questions to Starred

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Questions. In this case, my noble friend's Unstarred Question comes within the confines of other customary procedures.
This thirst for information, which under the present procedure is not easy to extract, is prompted by recent experiences. Discussions have gone on over many years as to whether there should or should not be a revision of procedure. A precedent has been set with the two short debates held on some Wednesdays, and possibly this precedent should be extended by allowing each speaker a strict limit of "x" minutes to raise a supplementary question following the Government spoke-man's reply but without requiring the Government spokesman then to answer. While the spokesman would then know the questions that Members of the House wished to raise on his speech, he would not be faced with the embarrassment of an unprepared reply.
To return to the Unstarred Question of my noble friend, I propose to make a few general remarks under four headings: first, Chile. Much has been said about this. I feel that the discrimination which has been used with regard to the recent discussions on arms for Chile is very stupid. Chile has always been friendly to England. I remember on my first visit to Chile, some fifty years ago, one frequently found Chileans with English or Scottish names who could speak nothing but Spanish. A large part of the industrial and commercial trade of Chile was carried out by English firms. There was a great affection for England. What a stupid thing now, when those conditions still exist, that we should seek to discriminate against them! But a still more foolish thing is that what we do to Chile will have a profound effect upon all other States in South America! As my noble friend Lord Cowley has just said, the potential of orders from South America as a whole is very great.
Secondly, South Africa. Discrimination has been dealt with so effectively by my noble friend Lord Fraser that there is little point in adding to it; but I cannot refrain from making two or three points. First of all, South Africa's sophisticated development of industry, and its high degree of technology, enables it to make all arms except those of the most highly sophisticated kind. Those arms would be used, as my noble friend Lord Fraser has explained, in defence
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of our trade. That makes it so stupid to refuse to supply arms to South Africa when, if we do not do it in the most sophisticated way, it will be done by other countries. From certain sources, either from the Socialist Benches or associated with the Socialist Benches, it has been said that there ought to be opposition to foreign investment in South Africa and opposition to emigration to South Africa. How stupid! As my noble friend Lord Fraser explained, there is a tremendous Bantu population in South Africa. How can they get employment unless it is by foreign investment, and the supply of technological higher grade craftsmen to guide that employment? Such a common sense examination of the position seems widely disregarded.
Thirdly, employment. What a vicious disregard of employment by the Socialist Government in trying to limit the possibility of orders coming to this country! The amount of unemployment which might be caused here has been emphasised. How can it be any part of common sense to interfere with work that could come to us? I call that ideological bigotry of the most regrettable kind. It is of a character similar to the absurdity of opposing private enterprise and wanting to increase the amount of nationalisation of industry. It is disregard of the profit motive without which you are not going to get further investment. Again there is the stupidity of condemning the profits which are made by banks. Banks are the custodians of the deposits of "small" people all over the country, of the pension funds of public bodies, of unit trust holders. If they do make profits, 50 per cent. of those profits go to the Government in any case, and what is left will increase the security of all those people whom I have just enumerated.
My last point relates to the Communist influence. Lord Fraser emphasised the dismaying spread of Chinese and Russian influence in Central Africa. Beyond that there is the danger to the Cape Route. Surely our interests are sufficiently great that we should do nothing which would in any way imperil our trade through the Indian Ocean and round the Cape. Even disregard of collaboration on Simonstown would be a matter of great regret. There is a need for a great arms industry in the country. It can bring an enormous amount of employment to this country.

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Unless we have foreign business, how are we to sustain for our attenuated domestic requirements a really efficient arms industry? My noble friend Lord Fraser put this question and it is a timely one. Those who follow this question at the moment disagree with discrimination which is condemned by the Socialist Party in most other forms of social activity and is now quite a menace to employment.
8.23 p.m.
LORD GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, this has been an extremely interesting debate. I have been buffeted for the past hour or so by a variety of moral philosophers, and a Liberal humanitarian kindly came to my aid on one occasion. I will say only this about morality in politics and foreign affairs. We do our best. The noble Lord, Lord Fraser, said that this country is in a position to give an example to other countries, and I warmly agree. It has done so in the past and it must do so in the future. However, I do not think that example should consist of intolerance, racial discrimination and the unspeakable abomination of apartheid. This country is capable of finer and higher examples than that, and it is upon that basis that, human and fallible as we are, we endeavour—
LORD FRASER OF LONSDALE: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord whether he has been there to see this unspeakable abomination; and, if so, whether he will tell us what it is, because I believe that the noble Lord is making it up.
LORD GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, I should be detaining the House unduly if I went into detail about this subject. I believe that the majority of the people of this country, and the vast majority of the people of the world, agree with what I have said. Much as I respect and admire the noble Lord for his fine record, many of the things which he said in his opening speech fortify my feelings of repugnance towards the policy which is now being conducted, and in some ways intensified, in some parts of South Africa.
I turn now to my noble friend Lord Winterbottom, who has accepted what I said about the Statement made by the Secretary of State. I hope that he will
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have time to look up the Official Record of the discussion in the other place. He will find that the Secretary of State made it absolutely clear that this article in The Economist was incorrect. My noble friend also talked about morality, as he is entitled to do, and decried sentimentality. I hope that we shall never shed a capacity for sentiment, even in the hard conduct of international relations. He said also that we should not be sentimental about Allende's Chile. I have to say to him that the policy of Her Majesty's Government has nothing to do with sentimentality; it is based on facts, among them the violent deaths of a democratically elected President.
I think it was the noble Earl who mentioned other countries in Latin America where there have been coups, but I put it to him that on reflection he will admit that there is a great difference between those practically bloodless coups and what has happened in Chile. Secondly, as regards Chile, it is a fact. It is not a question of sentiment; a large number were slaughtered during and after the coup. I am sorry to say that there is no evidence of a letting up on this policy of killing one's opponents. The third point about Chile is that thousands of people have been detained and are still detained as political prisoners without trial. Then we have the vile treatment of the political opponents of the Junta and the massive exodus of refugees. These are not points of sentiment; they are points of practical argument. As the noble Lord quite rightly said, the Chilean people—
EARL COWLEY: My Lords, the noble Lord made mention of the fact that he did not consider that the coups which have taken place in Argentina, Brazil and Peru were as bloody as they were in Chile. I would ask him to look at what happened in Brazil in 1964 and then reconsider what he said.
LORD BARNBY: My Lords, before the noble Lord resumes, with regard to his statement about political prisoners in Chile, may I ask whether he is suggesting that they are greater in number than the political prisoners in Russia with whom we trade?
LORD GORONWY-ROBERTS: No, my Lords, I am not, and we have made it perfectly clear to Russia and any other

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country which engages in policies of oppression and the denial of human rights what we feel about this. As I said on another occasion in this House, we take what steps are open to us, case by case, country by country, to indicate as effectively as we can our abhorrence of these policies, and we provide encouragement for better policies to be followed.
I was asked four points in the Question tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Fraser of Lonsdale, to which he spoke in a most interesting speech, with 99·99 per cent. of which I wholly disagreed. First, he asked the Government about what he calls their "discrimination" against certain countries such as Chile and the Republic of South Africa on the sale of arms. In regard to Chile the position is this—and I will not detain the House because this has been explained in another place as well as in this House: No further arms exports will be allowed; the warships now under construction or refit in the United Kingdom will be delivered and spares and equipment for them will be allowed. In regard to spares for Chilean air force aircraft Rolls-Royce, at the request of the Government, will seek to terminate their contract as soon as possible and have already given the necessary three months' notice of the termination of their contract to overhaul aero engines. As I have said, the decision to stop further arms sales to Chile was taken as part of our general review of our policy towards Chile as a result of the violent overthrow of President Allende's Government and the repressive measures taken against his supporters by the Junta.
I join with the noble Lord, Lord Barnby, who stressed the longstanding friendship between the British and the Chilean peoples. Some of us in this House can join him in making specific familial references to this. We hope very much that this will continue and indeed will be restored by the Chilean Government. If the Chilean Government will retrace its steps and stop its repressive practices, reintroduce democracy and respect for human rights, then of course the Chilean nation will, as always, be as friendly as ever in the eyes of the people of this country.
I now pass to the second point in the first part of the Question. In regard to our attitude to South Africa, we have
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already made it clear that we shall continue to follow the policy which we pursued in our previous Administration of embargo-ing the sale of arms to South Africa. The detailed implication of the arms embargo is now under review and I will not elaborate further at this stage. Our policy is in accord with a series of United Nations resolutions calling on all member States to place an embargo on the sale of arms to South Africa. Our predecessors conformed with the United Nations resolution to a very large extent. The amount of arms which they made available to South Africa was not all that large. They deferred—and rightly so—to the resolution of the United Nations. We have decided that we should defer totally to that resolution.
EARL COWLEY: My Lords, if the noble Lord will give way for a moment, may I ask him what will happen to the Simonstown Agreement?
LORD GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, I will come to that in relation to my reference to the third point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Fraser. We are deferring to the United Nations resolution, particularly the June 1971 resolution, I think totally. As members of UNO and anxious that there should be an international morality and an international practicality about these things, we are doing our best so far as we can to defer to those decisions.
The second point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Fraser, concerned the plans of Her Majesty's Government for the surveillance and defence of the Cape routes. The current Defence review is a fundamental and very serious one covering the whole of the Defence programme of this country, our capabilities and our commitments during the whole of the forward period up to 1983-84. The noble Lord said that this was one glimmer of light in the darkness of Socialist Government. I think I can give him a little more than a glimmer. It is, of course, a fact that in this wide-ranging Defence review we are considering very carefully what is necessary for the security of this country and its trade in all its aspects. The noble Lord and your Lordships can therefore take it that this review will fully take into account the points which have been raised during this debate in relation to the future of our dispositions for our own security; and this covers the

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Simonstown point. The Simonstown Agreement will, of course, form part of the consideration of the Defence review. Moreover, assurances have been given by the Secretary of State for Defence that our allies will be fully consulted before any final decisions are reached, and this consultation will extend in the normal way to South Africa.
On the third point raised by the noble Lord—namely, the point about the estimated value of the trade lost and unemployment caused in the next year or two if the present policy is pursued—I think it was the noble Lord, Lord Barnby, who quite rightly complained about the inadequacy of some Ministerial Answers to Questions. I share his concern because I have long experience of asking Questions as well as of trying to answer them. This is a Question which I do not think anyone could answer. It is simply not possible to give any quantifiable figure in reply to this Question, but this I can say. I have seen no evidence that any trade will be lost or any unemployment caused as a result of our decision to suspend further sales of arms to Chile and South Africa, and if such loss and such increased unemployment is caused it will be insignificant. Our policy in this matter has been consistent and has been made clear on several occasions, both when we were in Opposition and since we were returned to power. It is based on upholding principles and international obligations, so far as we can, and our national interests.
That brings me to the final point in the noble Lord's Question. He asked for evidence that trade with Africa as a whole will necessarily be lost if trade with the Republic of South Africa is encouraged, in view of the Statement made by the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, on May 21, that to-day our trade with Africa as a whole has as much importance as our trade with South Africa. On this point I detect something of a non sequitur here, if I may say so to my noble friend Lord Fraser. What the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd said, was of course a matter of fact; that our trade with Africa as a whole—and I think he understated it, careful and fair debater as he is—has as much importance as our trade with South Africa. In fact, this is something we can quantify and I shall do so in a moment.
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In 1973 our total trade with South Africa, imports and exports, amounted to £774 million. I think the figure that my noble friend Lord Fraser of Lonsdale gave related to exports only, so the total trade of £744 million is in no way derogatory of the figure he gave. Our trade with the rest of Africa was slightly more than double, at £1,578 million, so that when my noble friend Lord Shepherd said that our trade with the whole of Africa has at least as much importance as our trade with South Africa, he was deliberately understating a very strong case.
This is the case. It is not that we are in fear of losing trade in the rest of Africa if we somehow unduly encourage trade with South Africa. We should show the black population of Africa, and show effectively, that we really do abominate apartheid, as they do. It is not a question of losing trade but it is a question of a continent going up in flames. The considerations are very wide-ranging. No man can foretell the effect of a mistake in this area, of not taking into full account the deep feelings which agitate the population of Africa and, indeed, of many other parts of the world, on this question of colour. It is the height of wisdom that we should tread warily; that at least we should not supply arms, especially when the international community has decided against it; that we should not be the one people to do so and thus indicate to the rest of Africa that we care nothing for their feelings on something which is fundamental to them.
My Lords, at the same time, although we withhold arms from South Africa, we want to see normal trade proceeding with that country. I have no doubt that it will, as it will with Chile and other countries with which we have differences of opinion which we show in appropriate ways. It is not our experience, where we have had to withhold arms in order to indicate our disagreement with policy, that in the long run (indeed, in the medium run) trade has suffered. I do not believe this will happen in the case of Chile or of South Africa. I believe and hope very much that in South Africa the forces inside that great country which are now working slowly towards a more liberal, tolerant, and democratic system (and there are such forces; they are Afrikaner—and English—speaking

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people working for progress) will understand that progress must be made, and its pace must be accelerated if we are to save the whole of Africa from greater difficulty and danger. The same is true of Chile. I am confident that we will see a return to democracy in that country, and further developments in the warm feelings between the two peoples. These have not been interrupted, even by a dictatorship.
My Lords, at the close of this short and valuable debate, I am sure your Lordships would join me in hoping that above all there should be in the next few years a new birth of tolerance and respect for nations and people, whatever their language, creed or colour.

EUROPEAN COMMUNITIES
Second Report from the Select Committee, made and to be printed.
INSURANCE COMPANIES BILL [H.L.]
Reported from the Joint Committee on Consolidation Bills with Amendments, and recommitted to a Committee of the Whole House; Bill to be printed as amended.
BRITISH TRANSPORT DOCKS BILL
Brought from the Commons, read la, and referred to the Examiners.