Lords Sitting of 23 May 1974

Preamble
The House met at eleven of the clock: The CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES on the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Saint Edmundsbury and Ipswich.

MERCHANT SHIPPING ACT PENALTIES
LORD SHINWELL: My Lords, as I put down this Question several weeks ago not anticipating the debate which took place last week, and as my noble friend gave me a satisfactory answer then, I do not press the matter.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what amendments in the regulations concerned with the Merchant Shipping Act are intended to modify penalties for violations of discipline.
THE MINISTER OF STATE, DEPARTMENT OF INDUSTRY (LORD BESWICK): My Lords, for the Record, I will give the Answer. The Merchant Shipping Bill, as I explained on the Second Reading this week, proposes changes to Sections 27 to 31 and Section 34 of the Merchant Shipping Act 1970 which are concerned with discipline on board United Kingdom registered ships. The maximum fine which may be imposed for an offence under Section 27, concerned with serious misconduct, is to be increased from £200 to £400. Sections 29 and 31 are to be repealed and Section 30 amended. The maximum fine which may be specified in Regulations made under Section 34 is to be increased from £10 to £20; it is the intention to use this power to increase the maximum fine which may be imposed by the master for offences relating to smoking in tankers, from £10 to £20. In view of what my noble friend has said, may I thank him again for the contribution he made to the Second Reading of the Merchant Shipping Bill.
LORD SHINWELL: My Lords, I am very grateful to my noble friend and I
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hope that I have not caused him any inconvenience.

NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE REORGANISATION
11.8 a.m.
LORD REIGATE: 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 promote an Inquiry into the causes of dissatisfaction in the administrative grades of the National Health Service, on the lines of the Wider Issues Review initiated by the Civil Service Department in the case of the Civil Service.
LORD WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, the Government believe that their reservations when in Opposition on the Reorganisation of the National Health Service have been largely justified by events. However, the vital issue now is to let the Health Service settle down in its new form. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Social Services does not therefore consider that the present time would be suitable for such an Inquiry as the noble Lord suggests.
LORD REIGATE: My Lords, while finding that Answer somewhat contradictory in itself, may I ask the noble Lord whether the Government would look at the possibility of setting up within the Department a section which should be designed to ensure that those working in the Health Service find good career prospects? Before the noble Lord replies to that question, may I point out to him that that admirable suggestion was put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Garns-worthy, in a debate we had on the Whitley machinery on October 21, 1971.
LORD WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, the noble Lord will know, as will all Members of your Lordships' House, that there are certain difficulties as a result of the time scale. The Bill received the Royal Assent in July of last year and became effective on April 1 this year. That was a very short period. There are difficulties. My right honourable friend is fully aware of them and intends to see that the various matters which cause

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concern at the present moment are looked into.
LORD ABERDARE: My Lords, is it not a fact that the personnel administration side of the National Health Service has been very much strengthened as a result of the reorganisation, both in the Department itself and in the Regional and Area Health Authorities?
LORD WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, that is perfectly true and, as the noble Lord will know, there have been a fair number of appointments in that field. Much of the difficulty which we are experiencing at the present moment I think will be successfully resolved when the new personnel system gets into operation and is able to deal with these various matters.
BARONESS WOOTTON OF ABINGER: My Lords, would the Minister agree that rather than saying that the administration has been strengthened, it is a fact that possibly it has been overloaded?
LORD WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, with very great respect to my noble friend, only time will tell whether that is so or not.
LORD REIGATE: My Lords, with even greater respect to the noble Lord, is he not aware that anybody with any knowledge of the Health Services realises that at the moment the dissatisfaction in the administrative grades is absolutely endemic? Will the noble Lord accept that many people will discover what I am afraid is the very unfortunate complacency if you wish, of both Front Benches on this matter, which augers ill for the future settling down of the Service?
LORD WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, with the very greatest respect I do not think that the allegation of complacency can be levelled at this Government. This Government are aware of the difficulties, and, as the noble Lord knows probably better than anybody in your Lordships' House, there have been some 1,700 appointments made in relation to the reorganisation scheme and there have been only 56 complaints. It is unfortunate that
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there are 56, but it is a comparatively small number having regard to the number of new appointments that have been made.
LORD ABERDARE: My Lords, with rather less respect, is the noble Lord aware that the last Government were not complacent at all in this matter either?
LORD WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I did not even make that allegation.
LORD AUCKLAND: My Lords, would the noble Lord agree that while the new organisation must be given an opportunity to settle down, there is widespread concern that appointments to the community health councils have not all yet been made, and may not be made for another two months or so? Bearing in mind the extreme value of the voluntary help given to the National Health Service, would not the noble Lord think that this gives rise to very great concern throughout all grades of the Health Service?
LORD WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I have acknowledged the difficulties with which the Government are faced. What the noble Lord says is perfectly true; but these matters are being dealt with and many people in your Lordships' House realise that the time factor was not sufficient to do what should have been done before April 1. The Government are proceeding apace, and I think we owe a debt of gratitude to the Staff Commission for the way in which they have handled the situation.
LORD SEGAL: My Lords, would it not be rather unfortunate to scrutinise the roots of the new Health Service before this young plant has been given the chance to grow?
LORD WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, sometimes one has to accept the roots and to give them some sort of added incentive to develop.
BARONESS GAITSKELL: My Lords, would not the Minister agree that if we have any more requests for Inquiries, Commissions or reviews, Parliament had better shut up shop and let them get on with it?

CLEAN AIR ACT: ENFORCEMENT OF PROVISIONS
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they are satisfied that the Alkali and Clean Air Inspectorate are enforcing the provisions of the Clean Air Act to the full extent of their powers.
LORD GARNSWORTHY: My Lords, Her Majesty's Alkali and Clean Air Inspectorate have clone excellent work in reducing emissions into the atmosphere from premises registered under the Alkali Act. The noble Lord will appreciate that the Inspectorate is not responsible for enforcing the Clean Air Acts. This is the responsibility of local authorities. The Government recognise that there is real public anxiety about the control of air pollution and for this reason my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for the Environment intends to invite the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution to undertake a thorough review of the methods of controlling air pollution. This review will cover the air pollution responsibilities of both the Alkali Inspectorate and the local authorities.
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: My Lords, while thanking the noble Lord for his full Answer, may I ask him whether he is aware that it has been a fairly open secret that the Alkali Inspectorate, whose duty I think it is to draw the attention of local authorities to any non-observance of the Clean Air Act, have been markedly reluctant in dealing with such bodies as the Central Electricity Generating Board? Of course, I should emphasise that I am now talking about the past.
LORD GARNSWORTHY: My Lords, I am quite certain that the review to which I have referred will cover the point raised by the noble Lord.
LORD WYNNE-JONES: My Lords, will my noble friend confirm that the present Government will take a considerable interest in pollution caused by lead
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in the air, in contrast to what was done by the previous Government?
LORD GARNSWORTHY: Yes, my Lords.

THE CASE OF DOLOURS AND MARION PRICE
11.16 a.m.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, I beg leave to ask Her Majesty's Government the Question of which I have given Private Notice, namely:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what treatment is being given to Dolours and Marion Price, who are on hunger strike in Brixton prison.
THE MINISTER OF STATE, HOME OFFICE (LORD HARRIS OF GREENWICH): My Lords, I understand that honourable Members in another place are seeking information about this matter. I am not in a position at the moment to make a Statement, but I undertake to repeat in your Lordships' House any response which my right honourable friend the Home Secretary may make in another place.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, while thanking the Minister for that Answer, in view of the fact that it is not certain that there will be a Statement in another place, may I ask him whether he is aware that these girls are on hunger strike, not to end their sentences, but to be transferred to a prison in Ireland where visits can be made more readily? Also, is it not the case that such permission has repeatedly been given to prisoners to transfer from one gaol to another in this country? May I further ask whether, when the Government consider this matter, as I know they will, they will bear this point in mind?
LORD HARRIS OF GREENWICH: My Lords, I am aware of the considerations which the noble Lord has raised and will certainly pass on to my right honourable friend the general spirit of what he has said. I am sure that my noble friend will appreciate that at this stage I cannot go further than I have indicated.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, may I ask this question? While disagreeing profoundly with what these girls have done—and I have told him that—and

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while regarding hunger strikes as a form of "spiritual blackmail", do we not have to be pragmatic in this matter and realise that if anything happens to these girls the bad situation in Northern Ireland may be intensified? Further, may I ask whether the Government would even consider something which I agree is very disagreeable—the "cat and mouse treatment" which was given to suffragettes when they were on hunger strike?
LORD WINDLESHAM: My Lords, before the noble Lord replies, are we not in danger of entering into a debate on this matter? We understand the strength of the noble Lord's feelings, but I am not sure whether or not this is a Private Notice Question which has been answered. I would hope that the noble Lord, the Acting Leader of the House, may perhaps be able to give us some guidance on this.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, there is strength in what the noble Lord says, and I would suggest to your Lordships that we leave the matter as it is for the time being.

RABIES BILL
Read 3a, and passed.
INDEPENDENT BROADCASTING AUTHORITY BILL
Read 3a, and passed.

LAND TENURE REFORM (SCOTLAND) BILL [H.L.]
11.20 a.m.
THE MINISTER OF STATE, SCOTTISH OFFICE (LORD HUGHES): My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now resolve itself into Committee on this Bill.
Moved, That the House do now resolve itself into Committee.—(Lord Hughes.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
[The EARL OF LISTOWEL in the Chair.]
Clauses 1 to 3 agreed to.
Clause 4 [Right to redeem feuduty, ground annual, etc. on a term day]:
LORD HUGHES LORD HUGHES moved Amendment No. 1:
Page 3, line 2, leave out from ("shall") to ("pay") in line 9 and insert (", not later than the term of redemption,

(a) give to the superior or his agent a notice of redemption in or as nearly as may be in the form contained in Form 1 of Schedule 1 to this Act, and

(b)")

The noble Lord said: I must apologise to the Committee for the fact that there are so many Amendments put down to this Bill. But at least I have the satisfaction to be able to say that most of these are of a minor nature, almost a drafting nature, and are intended to simplify the proceedings. The first of these Amendments, and there are a number but at the moment I do not have a note of the ones which are consequential to it, is quite simple. The Bill as it stands says that the notice for redemption of a feuduty is, I think, a period of one month before. The effect of the Amendment is to permit the notice to take effect from the actual date rather than a month before. As your Lordships know, the intention is that redemption may take place only at two periods in the year: Whitsuntide or Martinmas. It may be that the owner of a feu will be reminded he wishes to do so only when he gets the notice to pay his feuduty again for the current period. In many cases that notice will come out only three weeks before the date upon which the payment is due, and if it has slipped the mind of the man that he wants to exercise his right this time he will in fact have missed the opportunity for a period of six months. The change in the law to give the opportunity for redemption is one which is generally agreed and it has been felt, on consideration, that it is desirable it should be made as simple as possible for this to be done. The Amendment therefore, and Amendment No. 19 which goes with it, makes it possible for it to be done. I beg to move.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD HUGHES LORD HUGHES moved Amendment No. 2:
Page 3, line 17, at end insert (", and any interest or other payment exigible in respect of the feuduty last mentioned.")
The noble Lord said: With Amendment No. 2 I would wish to associate Amendments Nos. 7, 8, 9 and 10, and thus save speaking time later. As at present drafted, Clause 4 provides that the proprietor of a feu who chooses at his option to redeem his feuduty at Whit-sun or Martinmas must pay to his superior the appropriate amount of redemption money that is calculated according to the formula in subsection (4), and also any amount of feuduty unpaid in respect of the feu liability which has accrued. The purpose of the Amendment is to make it clear that he must also pay any interest or any other payment exigible in respect of the feuduty. This is clearly an equitable provision. If the proprietor has been in arrears with his feuduty payments, he should obviously remain liable not only for the arrears, but for any interest which might have accrued on those arrears. The interest payable on arrears of feuduties is usually laid down in the feudal itself, and it is commonly of the order of 5 per cent. Under existing circumstances that is a very modest rate of interest. Occasionally however, a feudal writ, instead of providing for payment of interest on any arrears of feuduty, provides for some other form of additional payments. The words "or other payment" are included to cover this type of case.
The Amendment at Clause 5, page 5, line 21, makes a corresponding addition to subsection (6) of the clause which deals with the effect of giving to the superior a note of compulsory redemption of feuduty on a sale of property. After such notice has been given, the land in question is to cease to be burdened, inter alia, by any unpaid feuduty, and, if this Amendment is accepted, by any interest or other payment exigible in respect of the feuduty. The remaining Amendments are purely consequential. I beg to move.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD HUGHES LORD HUGHES moved Amendment No. 3:
Page 3, leave out from beginning of line 28 to ("shall") in line 30 and insert—
("(7) The redemption of feuduty in terms of this section")
The noble Lord said: As at present drafted, subsection (7) of Clause 4 provides that on the granting by the superior
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of the prescribed receipt for redemption money paid by a proprietor who exercises his right to redeem his feuduty, the redemption will be binding on all persons having an interest—for example, the superior and any over-superior. The purpose of the Amendment is to ensure that the redemption of feuduty is binding irrespective of whether or not the receipt has been granted. Although subsection (6) states there is an absolute requirement on the superior to grant the prescribed redemption receipt, it may happen that the receipt is not given, perhaps through an oversight.
It would however be clearly inequitable if this failure on the part of the superior were to jeopardise the proprietor by preventing the redemption from being binding. In any event, subsection (5) provides that the pre-requisites of redemption are simply the giving of notice of redemption and the payment of the redemption money. The Amendment, by moving the reference to the granting of a receipt follows on logically from this by making it clear that without further ado the redemption becomes automatically binding on third parties with an interest in the land. I beg to move.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 4, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 5 [Redemption by law of feuduty, ground annual, etc. on transfer of land for valuable consideration]:
LORD HUGHES LORD HUGHES moved Amendment No. 4:
Page 4, line 17, leave out ("one month before the date")
The noble Lord said: In moving Amendment No. 4, I would also advise your Lordships that Amendments Nos. 20 and 21 are associated with it. As at present drafted, Clause 5 provides for the compulsory redemption when a transfer of land takes place for valuable consideration of the feuduty as exigible at the date one month before the date of redemption. The purpose of the Amendment is to simplify the provision by leaving out the words, "one month before the date". The effect would be that the feuduty to be redeemed would be the feuduty exigible as at the date of the redemption. I beg to move.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
11.30 a.m.
LORD HUGHES LORD HUGHES moved Amendment No. 5:
Page 4, line 22, leave out subsection (2) and insert—
"(2) Where the date (whether before or after the commencement of this Act) when entry is taken, as specified in subsection (1) above, is earlier than the date of the obligation there specified or (where there was no such obligation) the execution of the deed there specified, the date of redemption shall he the date of the said obligation or execution as the case may be."
The noble Lord said: I beg to move Amendment No. 5. The purpose of this Amendment is to clarify the meaning of subsection (2) of Clause 5. Subsection (1) of that clause provides that, in the normal case, the date of redemption for purposes of the compulsory redemption of feuduty on the sale of property is to be the date when entry is taken to that property, either under an obligation to grant a conveyance of the feu, or under the actual date containing the conveyance. This is appropriate because under existing law and practice the date of entry is the date on which the new proprietor becomes liable to relieve the former proprietor of liability for current feuduty.
Subsection (2), however, deals with two variations of the normal procedure in a land transaction. One is a case where a conveyance has been granted but entry took place before the date of that conveyance. The other is the case where the parties have agreed to a back-dated date of entry which is earlier than the date of the obligation to grant a conveyance; for example, where the relationship has started as one of landlord and tenant, after a period during which the tenant was in possession as such, the relationship has been changed to that of seller and purchaser.
In these types of case subsection (2) provides that the date of redemption is not to be the date when entry is taken, but is to be the date of the obligation to grant a conveyance, or the date of the execution of the deed containing the conveyance, as the case may be. The only people who will have any knowledge of whether or not back-dating of the date of entry is genuine will be the parties themselves. Such back-dating could, however, provide a method whereby unscrupulous parties might combine to
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defraud the superior by quoting a date of entry unfavourable to him as the date by reference to which the redemption money is to be calculated. It is in order to prevent the risk of this happening, and to avoid problems about the liability for feuduty already demanded or paid after the back-dated date of entry, that subsection (2) provides that where the date of entry precedes the date of obligation of a conveyance to which it relates the date of the obligation or the conveyance, as the case may be, is to be the date of redemption of feuduty. I beg to move.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD HUGHES LORD HUGHES moved Amendment No. 6:
Page 5, leave out from the beginning of line 16 to second ("the") in line 17 and insert ("after the date of redemption, whichever is later,").
The noble Lord said: In moving Amendment No. 6, I should advise your Lordships that Amendments Nos. 11 and 13 are consequential. Under subsection (6) of Clause 5 in the Bill as drafted if the proprietor of a feu gives the superior a notice of compulsory redemption of a feuduty by law on a sale, the land subject to a feu will cease to be burdened by the redemption money, any interest thereon, and any unpaid feuduty two months after giving of the notice or one month after the redemption date, whichever is later. The purpose of the Amendment at Clause 5, page 5, line 15, is to provide that the feu will continue to be security for these monies for two months after the notice or two months after the redemption date, whichever is the later. This slight adjustment will mean that in every case the superior has a minimum of two months in which to obtain payment of the redemption money from the seller instead of, in some cases, having two months and in other cases only having one month. This is a slight alteration in favour of the superior. I beg to move.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD HUGHES: This Amendment is consequential. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 5, line 21, after ("redemption") insert (", and any interest or other payment exigible in respect of that feuduty,").—(Lord Hughes.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD HUGHES: I have already spoken to this Amendment. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 5, line 23, leave out ("such money, interest or feuduty") and insert ("any sum specified in this subsection,").—(Lord Hughes.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD HUGHES: I beg to move Amendment No. 9.
Amendment moved—
Page 5, line 25, leave out ("and the said interest") and insert ("or interest thereon").—(Lord Hughes.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD HUGHES: I beg to move Amendment No. 10.
Amendment moved—
Page 5, line 30, after ("feuduty") insert ("or interest or other payment relative thereto,").—(Lord Hughes.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD HUGHES: I have already spoken to this Amendment, No. 11. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 5, line 33, leave out from second ("the") to ("specified") in line 34 and insert ("relevant period of two months").—(Lord Hughes.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD HUGHES LORD HUGHES moved Amendment No. 12:
Page 6, line 10, leave out ("Inhibitions and Adjudications") and insert ("Sasines").
The noble Lord said: This is a technical Amendment. The Bill as drafted provides that a court order obtained under subsection (7) of Clause 5 for the continuation of security for the redemption money over the land from which the feuduty was exigible will be effective only if an extract of the order has been duly recorded in the Register of Inhibitions and Adjudications. The purpose of the Amendment is to substitute, for the reference to that Register, a reference to the Register of Sasines. I think the simplest way of referring to this is to point out that the difference in the two Registers is generally referred to by lawyers in the case of the Register of Inhibitions and Adjudications as the personal register, and the Register of Sasines as the property register. In this case it has been
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felt that it is more appropriate that the entry should be in the property register. This is brought about by the Amendment which I now beg to move.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD HUGHES: I have spoken to Amendment No. 13 already. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 6, line 10, leave out from second ("the") to ("referred") in line 11 and insert ("relevant period of two months").—(Lord Hughes.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
11.39 a.m.
LORD HUGHES LORD HUGHES moved Amendment No. 14:
Page 6, line 31, at end insert ("; but in this section "feu" does not include any part of a feu which is subject to a cumulo feuduty, no portion of which has been allocated on that part.")
The noble Lord said: Amendment No. 14 refers to the system where there may be a number of feuduties which have not been allocated. It very often happens that one person with an unallocated feuduty is responsible for payment and collects from the other people who are liable for payment of feuduty. If there is agreement among all of those in the cumulo feuduty that they want to redeem, then, of course, it is perfectly appropriate that one person might act on behalf of all of them because he knows perfectly well that he will be collecting the money from the others because they are willing. What this Amendment safeguards against is the case of a compulsory redemption or the sale of one house in a tenement property. If the compulsory provisions were to take effect that tenant might in fact be required to redeem for the whole property, and then find that the others were unwilling to put up the money. So it is necessary to safeguard against this position arising, and that is the purpose of this Amendment. I beg to move.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 5, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 6 agreed to.
Clause 7 [Property let under future long lease etc. not to be used as private dwelling-house]:
On Question, Whether Clause 7 shall stand part of the Bill?
11.41 a.m.
LORD STRATHCLYDE: I must apologise for the width of my Amendment—" leave out Clause 7". Had I had at my disposal a skilled Parliamentary draftsman he might well have been able to deal with my objections with a few short and simple Amendments, but without such help it appeared to be necessary to cover the entire field. My trouble principally arises from this Part of the Bill dealing with what appears to me to be two quite separate matters, two different types of property—or should I say land? "Residential property" to most people means a dwelling-house. In the Bill it also means land to be used for the purpose of building dwelling-houses.
The noble Lord, Lord Hughes, in his Second Reading speech I thought pointed out that difference, for while he started almost immediately by speaking of long residential leases, he then quoted from the Labour Government White Paper of July, 1969, which was known by the title of Land Tenure in Scotland: A Plan for Reform. He quoted words which he said were included as one of his Government's cardinal points. The quotation was:
"The leasing of land for purposes of building dwelling-houses will only be allowed in special circumstances and subject to the most stringent safeguards."
It would have been simpler, at least to the layman, to have had a lease of building land being described as a "building lease" and to use the words "residential lease" as relating to a dwelling-house. Be that as it may, my contention is that they are markedly dissimilar and that legislation dealing with the one may not be appropriate for the other.
I am not going to argue against the need for the most stringent safeguards being necessary in relation to leases of land for the purpose of building dwelling-houses. In that connection, both Governments are at one and are on common ground. But stringent safeguards seem to be uncalled for and unnecessary where leases of dwelling-houses are concerned. In that connection I find the case put up in the Green Paper, and also in the Second Reading speeches of the Ministers on both occasions, to be somewhat unconvincing. In this House, for instance, we have not been given any facts in support of the contention in the Green Paper that a long lease of a dwelling-house is
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socially objectionable. But in another place and in this House we have had related to us the possibility that a tenant under a long lease may come to believe that he owns the house, and of his dismay when he finds that he does not. I am indeed grateful to the noble Lord that he did not repeat that suggestion to us in his Second Reading speech.
I wonder whether the noble Lord would tell us when he comes to reply whether he sees any real social objection to a long lease of a dwelling-house. For myself, I cannot see that it causes hardship, or that it is offensive to the public, or is harmful to the State. That apart, there must be many cases where the limitation of 20 years in regard to the long lease of a dwelling-house will not apply. Where, for instance, the rateable value of the leased house is under £200 a year, and the rent is in excess of two-thirds of the rateable value, then it seems that at the termination of the lease the tenant becomes a statutory tenant and has security of tenure under the Rent Acts, and consequently of course he can remain there for as long as he likes.
Then the noble Lord also told us in his Second Reading speech that ordinary local authority letting would not be in any way affected; and there of course, subject to good behaviour, it seems that the tenant is there for life or, again, for as long as he wishes. Perhaps the noble Lord will be able to confirm that the great majority of tenants in privately owned dwelling-houses will not be in any way affected, either. It therefore seems to me that it comes down to this, that the only case where the 20 years' limitation will really bite is that of the dwelling-house where the rateable value is in excess of £200 a year. There are possibly not very many cases so far as Scotland is concerned.
That brings me to the object of Part II of this Bill—to present leaseholds being used as a substitute for the feudal system. Why it should be used, I do not know. What advantages are gained by using it we have not been told. The similarity between the two systems occurs of course where the lease is granted in respect of a capital payment and also an annual rent. That, I agree, produces a situation not very different from that of the lease of a feu, except of course that the feuduty continues for the whole length of the life

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of the house, or other building, while the payment of rent under a lease ceases normally when the lease comes to an end. If that similarity between the two systems is the main reason and justification for the restriction on leases of dwelling-houses imposed by this Bill, where is the difficulty of ending it? There is not a provision in this Bill prohibiting any capital payment in relation to such a lease. End the similarity—and thus avoid the complications which will arise, some of which are dealt with in the two following clauses. I have always thought that the noble Lord's Party sought by every means to secure for tenants security of tenure. Under this Bill there is no such security except for those who may come under the protection of the Rent Acts. As I feel sure the noble Lord well knows, there must be cases where such security makes all the difference in the closing years of many people's lives.
In relation to leasehold, there have been references to the disadvantages of the long leasehold system existing in England. An example was given of a district where all the property was under one ownership and all the leases were for the same duration. With the approach of the end of the lease repairs were neglected, and that resulted in a large area being in a state of acute dilapidation when the lease came to an end; and it was claimed that in other circumstances that would not have occurred. There is, however, another side to that situation. I remember having heard something many years ago, probably in the early years of the present century. It was when there was a large redevelopment in the West End of London—it may indeed have been connected with Regent Street. The area was under one control. All the leases were for 99 years and they all fell out together, and this enabled the redevelopment to be carried out as a single operation. The comment on that at that time was: "What a splendid system the English leasehold system is."
To rid ourselves of the feudal system and to deal at this stage effectively with feuduties does not, in my opinion, necessarily call for the limitation of the duration of leases as is proposed in the Bill, and no arguments, satisfactory and supported by facts, have been advanced which prove that it is absolutely necessary. The
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limit of course is to be 20 years. But many people to-day in all walks of life retire at 60 and many live to well over 80. I would stress again that it is in the closing years of people's lives that security of tenure means so much. As the noble Duke, the Duke of Atholl, pointed out, where a house requires to be modernised a lease of 20 years is not sufficient to warrant the great expenditure involved to-day. In that connection he quoted his own case. He also quoted others, particularly in the Highlands, where, because the house needed modernisation, or because of the time required to build up the potentialities of an estate, 20 years was too short. And we still want people in the Highlands. Aspects of this Part of the Bill, in my opinion, call for reconsideration. Accordingly I wish to move the Amendment to which I have spoken.
Before I conclude, I wish to say to the noble Lord that I appreciate the trouble he took to answer what I had to say on Second Reading at great length and in great detail. I am much obliged to him but I do not think that these answers really cover the points I have made today. I beg to move.
LORD HUGHES: If the Motion of the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, were agreed to—and it would follow that the succeeding two clauses, Clauses 8 and 9, would also be taken out of the Bill—it would have the effect of wrecking the primary purpose of the Bill because it would enable the long leasehold to be substituted in land transactions for the present feudal system. All that this Bill is dealing with at the present time is not land conditions as such, but the payment of feuduty and the circumstances under which it can be brought to an end. The reason, therefore, for having Part II and for limiting the leases to 20 years is, in fact, to make certain that the primary purpose of the Bill cannot be frustrated. There are two main reasons for limiting long residential leases in the manner proposed. First, the long residential lease could easily be used as a way round the prohibition of the feuduties contained in Part I of the Bill. Secondly, a long residential lease may in itself give rise to certain undesirable social features.
If I may deal first with the first of these points, if long leases were possible it is very likely that a builder would grant a 60- or a 99-year lease on terms

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very similar to those he would have granted if he could have given a feu with payment of feuduty. The amounts which might be payable under a long lease might not vary from the amount which would be payable under a feu charter; but at least with a feu charter, which is the present system, the owner knows that so long as he pays his feuduty he and his successors remain in permanent possession of the land and it cannot, under any circumstances, be taken from him by the superior or by his successor as the superior.
If we substitute this system, we might find ourselves in the position that in a particular area the only builder or group of builders available get together and might decide that they were not going to build any houses for sale and that they were only going to build houses on long lease, which would mean that at some time in the future the land would cease to be in the possession of the person who had leased both the land and the house. This is not a fanciful position because it has been the experience this side of the Border. It is because of these objectionable features that we do not wish to take away the feudal system and its payment of feuduty and substitute for it something which would be infinitely worse. On the second point—
LORD STRATHCLYDE: I am sorry to interrupt my noble friend in the course of his speech, but what is the advantage which is gained by the builder in following this course? I do not quite understand what the advantage is.
LORD HUGHES: Because the experience over many years is that land continues to grow in value year by year, and there would be a decided advantage in ensuring that at some time in the future the land would come back into the possession of the builder. Many builders who are making considerable sums of money at the present time out of land transactions are doing so because they bought the land a long time ago in anticipation of future needs, and it could be reasonable for a builder also to ensure that he would have back the land that he is presently disposing of in 40, 50, or 60 years' time. It is not, therefore, a fanciful prediction by any means. It could mean that the builder, or his son or grandson, could take the profit all over again in due course.
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On the second point, the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, thanked me for not repeating the argument about people not knowing that they do not own the house and, as they reach the end of their lease, being astonished to find that it is not their house. I did not omit to do it because I thought that it was unrealistic. It was simply because it had been said so often that I did not think it was necessary to say it again. The fact, however, is that it was demonstrated quite clearly in England and Wales that many people were under the impression that they owned their house. They had gone into it and had lived in it. It would be wrong to say that they did not know, but it was not a fact with which they were living, day in and day out, that in 10, 15 or 20 years' time the house would cease to be theirs and that they could only continue in occupation of it by making some arrangement for a new lease. In fact, this did take place and it could take place. If somebody takes a piece of land on a 60- or 99-years' lease and a house is built upon it, the sons and the grandsons may be living in it when the father or grandfather dies. The first thing that they do is not to say, "Let us look at the Title of the house and find out whether we own or lease this house". The first indication that they may have is towards the end of the lease. It is not, therefore, a fanciful proposition.
LORD STRATHCLYDE: Again may I apologise to the noble Lord, but is he not referring to a situation which arose in South Wales in regard to miners' houses? The conditions under which they occupied them were extraordinary and quite uncommon. In that case, it is true that they did not realise that that was due to conditions which probably would not occur again. Other than that one case, surely it is not a general feature that appears in England.
LORD HUGHES: I do not think that the noble Lord is right. Certainly that was a bad case, but there were many other cases the length and breadth of England where the leasehold system gave rise to very serious private problems for families and caused great hardship and, in some cases, tragedy. The long leasehold system is not at present common in Scotland. It seems to the Government, and it seemed to the previous Govern-

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ment also, that it was desirable to avoid its proliferation in Scotland, with its attendant problems, and as I have said this applied not only to Wales but to England also. Against this background, therefore, it seems to us clearly right to take steps in this Bill to prevent, once and for all, future long residential leases on lines, as the noble Lord has indicated, which were not only foreshadowed previously in the Government's White Paper but which are, in fact, identical with those proposed by the present Opposition in the last Parliament. I think the noble Lord has accepted that what I said during the Second Reading debate relating to the family case has been taken care of, and that that particular aspect will not be struck at by what is in Part II of the Bill. For these reasons, therefore, I cannot advise your Lordships that it would be desirable to take these clauses out of the Bill, and I hope you will agree that the Bill should stand as printed.
LORD STRATHCLYDE: I wonder whether the noble Lord will comment on the suggestion which I made, that we should entirely alter the situation and do away with the necessity for limiting the length of long leases merely by removing the payment of a capital sum when the lease was negotiated. That would take away the similarity between the long leases and the feudal system.
LORD OGMORE: As the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, mentioned the Welsh experience, may I say that I support the Minister in this matter. We had an awful job to get rid of this long leasehold system in Wales, which was a wonderful money-maker for the great landlords who benefited from it, and eventually of course the matter came to a head when it was found that large numbers of the miners' cottages in the mining valleys were going away from the occupiers into the hands of the great landlords. When the great landlords found that things were not so good they sold these leaseholds to property companies, so that in the final result the people who did not have any great benefit from them were the occupiers. I quite understand the wish in Scotland to get away from the feudal system, but I suggest that if they go back to the system we had in Wales they will only be going from the frying pan into the fire.
Clause 7 agreed to.
Clause 8 agreed to.
Clause 9 [Modification of s.8 where lease subject to sub-lease or heritable security]:
On Question, Whether Clause 9 shall stand part of the Bill?
LORD STRATHCLYDE: I wonder whether the noble Lord can reply to the point I put to him on an earlier clause?
LORD HUGHES: I am sorry, but I do not think anything along those lines would be helpful. The difficulty of this situation is that if we open the door to this element in any way, we cannot make certain that it opens only a chink. It can, in fact, be wide open. We were speaking about long leases and the misunderstanding that would arise, whereby people would not know that a house was not theirs. I referred generally to the situation in England and Wales, and I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Ogmore, for his statement about the Welsh position. But, in fact, I am informed that we had a case even earlier this year in Perthshire, when an elderly lady discovered that the home which she thought she owned was on a lease with only five years to run; and there was correspondence between the Member of Parliament for the constituency and the Lord Advocate during this year on that very point. So it is not a far-fetched situation; it is the length of time which makes it so likely that this situation can arise.
Clause 9 agreed to.
Clauses 10 to 12 agreed to.
12.5 p.m.
LORD HUGHES LORD HUGHES moved Amendment No. 15:
After Clause 12 insert the following new clause:
Amendment of section 17 of Crofters (Scotland) Act 1955
" . In section 17 of the Crofters (Scotland) Act 1955 (absentee crofters) (as amended by the Crofters (Scotland) Act 1961) the following amendments shall be made—

(a) in subsection (4) (right of absentee crofter, after order terminating his tenancy, to conveyance in feu of dwelling-house), for the word "feuduty", in both places where it occurs, there shall be substituted the words "the consideration";

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(b) in subsection (7) (rights of creditor in heritable security over house), for the words from "in addition" to "following subsection" there shall be substituted the words "as consideration under this section";

(c) in subsection (8) (consideration for assistance given by landlord in respect of house), for the words "be, in addition to any feuduty thereby exigible," there shall be substituted the word "include"."

The noble Lord said: This Amendment would insert a new clause into the Bill. The purpose of the proposed new clause is to effect certain consequential adjustments in Section 17 of the Crofters (Scotland) Act 1955 to take account of the fact that under Clause 1 of the Bill it will no longer be lawful to impose feuduty. Section 17 of the 1955 Act, as amended by the Crofters (Scotland) Act 1961, provides that in the case of an absentee crofter the Crofters Commission may make an order terminating the tenancy of the crofter and under subsection (4) of Section 17 where such an order has been made the crofter is, in certain circumstances, entitled to obtain a conveyance in feu of the dwelling-house on such terms as to feuduty as may be agreed by the crofter and the landlord; or, failing agreement, as may be determined to be reasonable in the case of feuduty by the land court.
After the Bill becomes law, it will no longer be possible for the conveyance of the croft to provide for a feuduty. It is arguable, therefore, that if no amendment were made to subsection (4) of Section 17 of the 1955 Act, no consideration at all could be charged to the conveyance of the croft. This would clearly be inequitable and the purpose of paragraph (a) in the proposed new clause is to substitute, for references to "feuduty", references to the "consideration". The effect will be that in the circumstances described the crofter will be entitled to a feu of the dwellinghouse on such terms as to the consideration as may be agreed, or as may be determined to be reasonable in the case of the consideration by the land court. Thus this part of the Amendment makes no change of substance in the procedure under Section 17 of the 1955 Act; and, in particular, it preserves the role of the land court in a disputed case. All that is in point is the necessary replacement of the references to "feuduty", which will become inept on the coming into operation of this Bill.
Subsection (7) of Section 17 of the 1955 Act provides for a case where the subjects conveyed under the section are burdened by a heritable security for payment by the landlord to the creditors of any sum paid to them in addition to feuduty as a consideration. The purpose of paragraph (b) of the proposed new clause is to substitute a reference to any sum paid to him as consideration. This, again, is purely consequential on the prohibition of new feuduties. Subsection (8) of Section 17 of the 1955 Act deals with the consideration to be paid by the crofter in respect of the conveyance to him of the dwellinghouse, in the exceptional case where the landlord had contributed towards its provision. That consideration is to be in addition to any feuduty thereby exigible, such sum as may be agreed or determined by the land court to be the value of any assistance or consideration given by the landlord in respect of the dwellinghouse. Here, again, the reference to feuduty will become inept and the purpose of paragraph (c) in the proposed new clause is simply to remove this reference.
Boiled down, it simply means that the conditions are applicable to the landlord and the crofters and remain unchanged. The only thing that is changed is the wording of the law. I beg to move.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 13 [Limitation of right of irritancy for non-payment of feuduty]:
LORD HUGHES: This is a drafting Amendment, again to remove some unnecessary words. I beg to move Amendment No. 16.
Amendment moved—
Page 13, line 43, leave out from ("superior") to ("for") in line 44.—(Lord Hughes.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 13, as amended, agreed.
Clauses 14, 15 and 16 agreed to.
LORD STRATHCLYDE LORD STRATHCLYDE moved Amendment No. 17:
After Clause 16 insert the following new clause:
Variation and discharge of land obligations
" . Section 1 of the Conveyancing and Feudal Reform (Scotland) Act 1970 shall be read and have effect as if in place of subsection

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(4) thereof there were substituted the following subsection—

"(4)(a) An order varying or discharging a land obligation under this section may direct the applicant to pay, to any person who in relation to that obligation is a benefited proprietor, such sums as the Lands Tribunal may think it just to award but the Tribunal may refuse to vary or discharge a land obligation on the ground specified in subsection (3)(c) of this section if they are of the opinion that, due to exceptional circumstances related to amenity or otherwise, money would not be an adequate compensation for any loss or disadvantage which a benefited proprietor would suffer from the variation or discharge.

(b) In assessing the sum to be paid to a benefited proprietor under this subsection the Lands Tribunal shall award such sum as a willing burden proprietor would pay to a willing benefited proprietor for the acquisition of the interest in land that the burdened proprietor will acquire as a consequence of the variation or discharge of the land obligation."."

The noble Lord said: In the unavoidable absence of the noble Earl, Lord Selkirk, I have been asked to move these two Amendments which are in his name. These two are alternative Amendments. Both would amend Section 1(4) of the 1970 Act and would substitute (4)(a) and (4)(b). The purpose of the Amendments is to correct the present inequality of compensation to the superior when a land condition to a feu is varied or discharged by the Lands Tribunal. In practice, what has happened since the 1970 Act is that under Section 1(4)(a) payment of compensation has been based on the estimated difference at the time the condition was imposed. The Amendments seek for compensation to be based on current market values, as is the basis of all land compensation Acts. I beg to move.
LORD HUGHES: As the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, has said, Amendments Nos. 17 and 18 are alternative ways of dealing with this business, so I think it would be the wish of your Lordships that I should speak to the effect of both Amendments, and as briefly as possible give the House the reasons why the Government want neither.
The first of the Amendments seeks to substitute for the existing two heads of compensation such sum as a willing burdened proprietor would pay to a willing benefited proprietor for the acquisition of the interest in land that the burdened proprietor will acquire as a consequence of the variation or discharge
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of the land obligation. The second of the proposed new clauses would alternately substitute such sum as, in the opinion of the Lands Tribunal, represents the increase in the value of the interest in land of which the applicant is the proprietor in consequence of the variation or discharge. Both new clauses retain the provision whereby the Tribunal may refuse to vary or discharge a land obligation.
Subsection (4) of Section 1 of the 1970 Act was carefully drafted to ensure that compensation is granted only where real loss is suffered as a result of the order of the Tribunal for the variation or discharge of a land obligation. Under Head 1 only loss as a benefited proprietor, for example, the superior, is to be compensated. This is intended to eliminate compensation awarded on the basis of some commercial loss, for example to a superior running a rival enterprise to the type of enterprise which the burdened proprietor wants to set up.
The kind of standard case to which one refers is the position in a small Highland community where the superior owns and operates the only public house in the area. He wants to ensure that all the benefits from the ownership and operation of this public house remain with him. Therefore, he imposes a condition in the fens which he has granted, that they will only be used for residential purposes, the primary reason being perhaps to ensure that a second pub is not opened. But, of course, it hits at everything else other than the residential purposes. It is the benefited proprietor's loss and not the burdened proprietor's gain which is relevant. This strikes at the argument, for example, that a superior should receive compensation simply because in some way a right to what superiors sometimes call reserve development value has been given to the proprietor. The provision also ensures that a superior cannot base his estimates of loss on the sums he has been able to exact in the past in similar circumstances for minutes of waiver. This would not be a loss in consequence of the variation of discharge.
Under Head 2, the fact that the amount of compensation is to be related to the effect which the obligation produced at the time when it was imposed prevents superiors, for example, from claiming compensation based on current market

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price for the land, which would take account of developments in the area for which the superior is in no way responsible. In brief, under the existing subsection (4), compensation is to be awarded only where the benefited proprietor can prove actual loss of disadvantage as a result of a condition being varied or discharged, or where the benefited proprietor proves that he or his predecessor could have received more for the land at the time when the condition was imposed if it had not been imposed.
Let me try to simplify this matter. A feu has been granted, say in 1890, and the only purpose for which the land can be used was for residential purposes, and a feuduty was fixed at £2 a year, and the application is to depart from that condition so that the house may be used as an office; if the Tribunal decides the application should be granted, all that they can take into account is not the difference between the value of the land for residential purposes to-day and the value of the land for office purposes to-day, but what the feu might have been if it had been for office purposes originally. It might have been that instead of getting a feuduty of £2 a year, he might have got £5, £6 or £10 a year if he had been feuing it for office purposes. Therefore, the compensation payable, if the court decided to waive the land condition, would be the capital value of the difference between what the two original feuduties might have been. In terms of the 1970 Act, one cannot relate to the difference between what the residential value was in 1890 and what the commercial value was in 1970. The whole provision is that people are to be compensated for loss, not that they are in fact to get a share in the feuer's potential gain. The effect of either of these Amendments is to change completely the basis of compensation. For these reasons I cannot advise your Lordships to accept either this Amendment or the alternative one. I think I ought also to simplify what I have said about the effect of the two alternative new clauses.
On the first clause, which is the wider one, it would in fact mean that the basis of compensation would be what might be agreed between the two parties. One could have circumstances in which the feuer might be prepared to pay a sum which
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was considerably in excess of the market value, because the value of his development was much greater than any alternative competitor for the land. The second clause, and therefore the less harmful to the user of the land, means that it would be related to market value and not to any special interest he might have in it, and which might be greater than any other Tom, Dick or Harry who might be persuaded to bid for the land. But either way—the first going the whole hog or the second one going part of the way—it is such a fundamental departure from the position that presently exists that I could not advise your Lordships to accept it, and I hope therefore that the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, will not feel obliged to pursue the matter on behalf of his absent friend.
LORD STRATHCLYDE: If I may interrupt for just a moment, I may say I have been pushed into this position at about two minutes' notice. It happened that I did know something about it—indeed, exactly what the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, has said—that if the superior, when he granted the feu charter, had known that the purpose was as it is now altered to be, he would have endeavoured to get a good deal more money.
The other point that was brought to my notice was that the vassal who obtained the feu charter and who now wishes to change the purpose for which the feu was to be used only does that because he knows he personally is going to make a good deal more money out of it. So in fairness it is felt that there should be compensation paid to the original superior, to the actual superior at the moment, because if he had known he would have charged more. The noble Lord said that himself. The point is that it is felt to be unjust. I understand that a good many cases have been before the Lands Tribunal and in every single one of them they have had to refuse compensation to the landlord. It is, I understand, said that the drafting of the 1970 Act makes it impossible for them to grant compensation, and indeed after the last case, which was that of Kenny, Miller, Devlin and Another v. Guthrie and Another, reported fully in the Scottish Law Times, the Tribunal, in refusing compensation, said that it might be that they would in practice consider it unjust

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and decline to make awards under Section 1(4)(ii) of the Act of 1970 unless the original seller still remained as the beneficial proprietor.
I make these remarks because I am perfectly certain that no one wants to be unjust to people. If in fact it is some slip-up in the drafting of the section to which I have referred, then it would be unfortunate if that were to create injustice which no one wants. I make these remarks accordingly. If the noble Lord wishes to say a word or two on that I will sit down, but if he does not I will continue for one moment to make my remarks.
LORD HUGHES: I have nothing to add.
LORD STRATHCLYDE: The only further remark I would make is to beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clauses 17 to 21 agreed to.
Schedule 1 [Forms prescribed under Section 4]:
12.24 p.m.
LORD HUGHES: I have spoken to Amendment No. 19 already. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 17, line 12, leave out ("intend") and insert ("wish").—(Lord Hughes.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Schedule 1, as amended, agreed to.
Schedule 2 [Form prescribed under Section 5]:
LORD HUGHES: I beg to move Amendment No. 20.
Amendment moved—
Page 18, line 13, leave out ("date one month before").—(Lord Hughes.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD HUGHES: I beg to move Amendment No. 21.
Amendment moved—
Page18, line 15, leave out ("[give date of redemption]") and insert ("that date").—(Lord Hughes.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD HUGHES LORD HUGHES moved Amendment No. 22:
Page 18, line 19, leave out ("obligor(s)") and insert ("obligant(s)").
The noble Lord said: This is a drafting Amendment, and I must confess that I did not find out how to pronounce these words. It is a very simple Amendment. It leaves out the word "o-b-l-i-g-o-r", whichever way you wish to say it, and inserts the word "o-b-l-i-g-a-n-t", whichever way you wish to say that. This is simply because the first one is open to misconstruction, and the second one is the term normally used in Scots Law. I beg to move.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Schedule 2, as amended, agreed to.
Schedule 3 agreed to.
Schedule 4 [Form of notice prescribed under Section 8]:
LORD HUGHES LORD HUGHES moved Amendment No. 23:
Page 19, line 14, leave out ("[Give a sufficient description") and insert ("[give sufficient identification").
The noble Lord said: Amendment No. 23 and Amendment No. 24 deal with the same subject. I beg to move Amendment No. 23. As at present drafted, the form of notice requires the landlord to "give a sufficient description" of the property. The word, "description", however, is a conveyor's term of art which implies something more than a simple reference to the name or address of a property. In a conveyance the description specifies the area of the property conveyed, and frequently it details the boundaries of the property minutely by reference to measurements, compass points and adjoining properties. Such details will not, of course, normally be needed in notices under Clause 8. In order, therefore, to avoid any risk that a notice which does not contain the full conveyancing description might be held to be invalid, the Amendment to Schedule 4, at page 19, line 14, replaces the reference to giving a "sufficient description" by a reference to giving "sufficient identification". This will make it clear that the notice need do no more than indicate satisfactorily the property to which it relates, for example by reference to its postal address. The following Amendment is consequential. I beg to move.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD HUGHES: I beg to move Amendment No. 24.
Page19, line 17, leave out first ("description") and insert ("identification").—(Lord Hughes.)
Amendment moved—
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Schedule 4, as amended, agreed to.
Remaining Schedules agreed to.
House resumed: Bill reported with the Amendments.

ROAD TRAFFIC BILL [H.L.]
12.30 p.m.
LORD HARRIS OF GREENWICH: My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. I must begin with an apology. I realise that it is not so long since a fairly similar Bill was exhaustively—and no doubt some of your Lordships take the view exhaustingly—debated in this House. Unfortunately, the Bill had not concluded its passage in another place at the time of the General Election. As a result, I fear that we once again have to apply ourselves to this particular measure.
The aims of this Bill are not easily summarised. It touches on very many facets of traffic and road transport. But it is broadly concerned with strengthening and up-dating the law in the interests of road safety and the environment. There are provisions to restore the effect of the law on parking in cities, measures for road safety and consumer protection, and proposals which take account of developments in Central Government, of local government reorganisation, and of trends in penal policy. It is the kind of revision of the law which Parliament should find time for every few years, between major consolidations.
I will start by mentioning the main changes from the previous Administration's Bill. With the exception of some omissions to which I shall come in a moment, these are few. Clause 6, which deals with traffic surveys, is new. Clause 16, which will give an opportunity to conduct experiments into the effectiveness of road humps in slowing traffic, is also new. There are some minor Amendments in Schedule 6. We have revised and clarified the clause on scat-belt wearing, and that on parking on pavements.
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There are five significant omissions. First, the previous Bill contained a number of proposals on the important question of bus licensing, with an eye to improving passenger transport in rural areas. These proposals were criticised by both sides of the industry. My right honourable friend the Minister for Transport, when he spoke on the Bill in another place, said that he thought it would have been better to get broad agreement before presenting a licensing measure. He is now going to have discussions with both sides of the industry about rural transport problems before deciding about the merits of the proposals in the last Bill.
Second, the power to ban the stopping of vehicles at urban junctions has been dropped. This was intended to reduce the number of accidents which occur at junctions when pedestrians are hidden by parked vehicles. But my right honourable friend has come to the conclusion that the ban would have given rise to the most serious practical problems. Third, there were provisions for young people under 21 to be trained for driving heavy goods vehicles. My right honourable friend is still reviewing this proposal, and the parallel provision for a public service vehicle scheme, which is also omitted. Finally, the provision for use of tachograph records needs to be considered in the wider context of the review of our E.E.C. commitments, which the Government have in hand, and it was not appropriate to include it in this Bill.
I will now turn to the provisions of the Bill. The first five clauses are in essence the same as the corresponding clauses in the previous Administration's Bill. As your Lordships will recall, there were criticisms, when the Bill last came before this House, that Clauses 1 and 2 were intensely complicated. We have therefore tried to improve them by recasting them slightly. These clauses, together with Schedule 1, provide for the registered owner of a vehicle to be liable, in addition to the driver, for certain minor stationary road traffic offences when fixed penalties or excess charges are not paid. As your Lordships will know, the effectiveness of the fixed penalty system has been increasingly undermined in recent years because more and more people simply do not pay, and then persistently evade police inquiries. This

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places a considerable and growing burden of work on police and traffic wardens, particularly in London (where the problem is perhaps more serious than it is in any other part of the country), in trying to trace the drivers through the owners of the vehicles. Many cases now go by default because drivers, many of whom are themselves the owners, cannot be identified. Similar difficulties arise where excess parking charges have not been paid.
The position is now little short of a scandal. In 1972, when about 2½ million fixed penalty notices were issued in England and Wales, payment was made in only two-thirds of the cases and then only after police inquiries, and sometimes quite substantial inquiries, had taken place. In the Metropolitan police district alone, about 340,000 cases could not be prosecuted within the six months the law allows.
Last year, just over 3½ million fixed penalty notices were issued in England and Wales and, if past experience is any guide, this will mean that over 1 million offenders will escape payment altogether. This situation clearly cannot go on, and that is why the Government are accepting the proposals of their predecessors in this regard, and taking action along these lines.
Clause 1 limits the arrangements to certain fixed penalty offences alleged in respect of stationary vehicles. These are parking and waiting offences, lighting offences, and the offence of failing to display a valid vehicle excise licence. The clause applies only where a fixed penalty notice has been issued and has not been paid. The police may then serve a notice on the owner requiring him to furnish a statutory statement of ownership within a prescribed period, unless within that period he pays or secures the payment of the fixed penalty, in which case no further action or liability arises. But failure to furnish a statement, if payment is not made, is an offence on the part of the owner. Clause 2 provides the same procedure in the case of excess charges.
In both cases, however, where an owner was not the driver, he can also furnish another statement, called a statutory statement of facts, giving the current
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name and address and signature of the driver. The joint statement will be admissible as evidence against the driver, and will therefore enable the police to prosecute the driver. The previous Bill included both these statements in one because there was then a requirement on the owner, if he was not the driver, either to furnish a signed driver's statement, or simply to state the name and address of the driver if he was unable to get his signature. But if an owner was enabled simply to name the driver without getting his signature, there would not only be no admissible evidence against the driver: the owner could well lay a false trail (and unfortunately, an increasing number of anti-social drivers do precisely this) and hence cause delay, because the police would be under pressure to follow up all such unsigned driver nominations. This Bill does not offer an owner such an opportunity and I commend this arrangement to your Lordships as a better scheme for restoring the effectiveness of the fixed penalty system.
My Lords, I am sure I do not need to enlarge further on these provisions on owner liability. It has already commended itself to your Lordships' House and was accepted in principle by another place only four months ago. The Government believe that the introduction of this scheme is essential if we are to arrest the decline in enforcement of the fixed penalty system.
A second group of clauses has among its principal objects to promote road safety and reduce casualties. With over 7,000 deaths and 90,000 injuries on the roads every year, a vigorous road safety programme is clearly essential. Many measures have been taken over the years to improve road safety. The British accident rates are now low by international standards and it will take sustained effort to bring about further improvements. We believe that the most striking casualty reduction would come if everyone wore the seat belt in his car: this, it is estimated, could save 1,000 lives and 10,000 serious injuries every year.
In Australia and a growing number of other countries laws have been introduced to make the wearing of seat belts compulsory; and experience in Victoria and New South Wales—the pioneer States—is very encouraging. Casualties there

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have been reduced and many serious head and spine injuries have been eliminated. The Australian experience has also shown that the law is complied with to a considerable extent. According to opinion polls, an overwhelming majority of the car-using population in this country have been convinced by the publicity on the value of seat belts, and would comply with an obligation to wear them. But I fear that it is equally clear that publicity by itself will not significantly raise the number who habitually wear seat belts.
A clause enabling the Secretary of State to make compulsory wearing regulations was added to the previous Bill at the initiative of the noble Lords, Lord Montagu of Beaulieu, Lord Davies of Leek and Lord Avebury, and accepted in this House without a Division. A similar clause appears in this Bill, and if it is accepted by Parliament the Government intend to go ahead with consultations about the necessary exemptions and other aspects with a view to implementing the provision by the end of 1975. As I have said, the Government are convinced that this is right and we are grateful to the noble Lords, to whom I have referred, for focusing attention on this issue. A third group of provisions is perhaps primarily concerned with the interests of the public as consumers and as the recipients—or perhaps one should say sufferers—of the many environmental consequences of motor vehicles.
During the passage of the former Bill, your Lordships accepted a clause moved by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London to ban parking on footways and verges. I think we would all accept that this practice is a nuisance which should be controlled, and, indeed, parking of lorries on pavements is already an offence under the Heavy Commercial Vehicles (Controls and Regulations) Act 1973. But there is an almost infinite variety of circumstances and road layouts, and we have to recognise that in some cases parking off the carriageway is the lesser of two evils. I understand that the sponsors of the former clause are ready to accept the lines of the provision now in the Bill, which confines the ban to urban roads, and allows local discretion for exemptions where these are necessary as well as for emergencies and other special cases.
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My Lords, I should like to mention one other matter. When the Bill reaches the Committee stage the Government propose to table an Amendment which would ban the sale and fitting of defective components. This is a problem which received some publicity last year in connection with the sale of tyres which were not suitable for use at high speeds without sufficient warning to purchasers. Action will now be taken to stop this practice.
Finally, I come to the penalty provisions of the Bill, which are in Clause 19 and Schedule 5. I do not need to say a lot about them now, because they were discussed at length, both here and in another place, when they formed part of the previous Bill. My right honourable friend the Home Secretary has given the question of penalties the most careful personal consideration, and the Government are satisfied that the penalty provisions in the Bill are in the best interests of penal policy as a whole. I know that their principal effect—the removal of imprisonment on summary conviction for all road traffic offences except driving while disqualified—is not welcomed in all quarters, and especially not by the Magistrates' Association and the Justices' Clerks' Society. I realise that we shall hear more of this as the debate progresses, not least, I suspect, from my noble friend Lord Janner.
We have a high respect for the magistrates and for their clerks, and we value their opinion on matters of this sort. That is why we consulted them before returning this measure to Parliament in this form. My honourable friend the joint Minister of State at the Home Office recently received a deputation representing both bodies to discuss this clause of the Bill. But we do not feel able on this occasion to accept the advice of these two bodies.
I commend this Bill to your Lordships as a collection of valuable improvements and additions to road traffic law. I look forward to hearing noble Lords' views on it, and to the opportunity we shall have of examining it in more detail in Committee. I have explained the Government's reasons for presenting a Bill which follows closely, apart from the omissions which I have detailed, that which was lost at the time of dissolution. I hope that it will be welcomed in all parts of the House.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Lord Harris of Greenwich.)
12.45 p.m.
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: My Lords, we are all grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, for the succinct and brief way in which he has introduced the Bill—pleasantly brief, because he said he would require half-an-hour, so I am pleasantly surprised. With one or two reservations, we on this side basically welcome the Bill—and so we should, because much of it was fostered by us. I am sure that we welcome again the owner liability clauses and, as the noble Lord the Minister has said, we certainly welcome the seat belts clause, on which my noble friend Lord Montagu of Beaulieu and the other noble Lords he mentioned did so much; and, of course, the potential powers which this gives the Secretary of State will be of great importance later.
Our Clause 7, on parking on pavements, in the last Bill has been polished up very considerably by the Parliamentary draftsmen. I regard the new Clause 8 in the Bill as an improvement on our one, and I congratulate the noble Lord on that. I am sure that the right reverend Prelate, the Bishop of London, and all the other noble Lords who struggled to get this provision on the Statute Book, will be equally pleased with me to see that this has been polished up so nicely. I notice, incidentally, that the maximum penalty for this offence has inflated from £50 to £100. Clause 9 is also one which this House welcomes, with its replacing of local authority powers in road safety matters by a statutory duty. I expect that the technical points about vehicle lighting and vehicle type approval will also not need much further discussion.
The sale of unroadworthy vehicles dealt with in Clause 11, was also a point much discussed and agreed. Clause 13, giving adult drivers their licence to the age of 70 instead of the three-yearly application period, will save much clerical work and the accompanying safeguards putting the onus on licence holders to disclose their relevant physical condition was obviously a necessary corollary. The weighing of vehicles clause and the operator's licensing clause will also, I suspect, not detain us in this House very
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long. Clause 19 basically unaltered concerning the variation of penalties, on which the noble Lords, Lord Janner, Lord Hacking, and others will no doubt talk at great length—I was going to say interminably, but that sounds rude—is beyond me and I will leave it to go back to the transport side.
Many noble Lords on all sides of the House, and, most especially, those from countryside areas, will welcome the addition to the Road Traffic Act 1972, dealing with damage to roadside property, which is now made in paragraph 9 of Schedule 6. I expect that the noble Lords, Lord Henley and Lord Foot, and my noble friend Lord Middleton, in par-Ocular, will welcome this, and we are all most grateful that the Home Office and the Department of the Environment have had conversations with the police authorities over this matter, which have been carried out with commendable promptitude. When we were last dealing with this subject in the House, I believe that noble Lords felt slightly upset that the police conversations had not been held and I must congratulate the Minister on expediting this activity so quickly to enable him to get this into the new Bill.
Another interesting new clause is Clause 16, empowering the Secretary of State to experiment with humps, "sleeping policemen" as they are often called, for the purpose of making drivers reduce speed. My Lords, although I. appreciate that paragraph 5 does give powers, which I am sure would always have to be used to erect adequate signs relating to these humps, I feel there may well be a danger here. In icy or snowy weather, with signs sometimes obscured, motor cyclists in Particular will be at risk. The other point I would draw attention to is that public service vehicles, such as fire engines and ambulances, going at speed about their duties, would also be at risk. I therefore trust that the experimental nature of the clause will always be clearly remembered until it has proved itself acceptable or otherwise.
Now, my Lords, having dealt so far in sugary phrases with this Bill I come to three or four questions which I should like to put to the noble Lord, Lord Garnsworthy, the Minister who will be replying. Firstly and most importantly may I ask why the Government has not kept the

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four Clauses 18 to 21 of our old Bill, dealing with the relaxing of the old bus licensing system? Everyone in this House must be well aware of the need to do something about the acute problem of the ever-diminishing number of buses, especially in country areas. Our pilot studies, when we were in Office, showed us clearly that where demand was not sufficient to warrant a full bus service there was still a need for road transport for many, and to this end we had proposed removing licence restrictions from vehicles seating less than nine passengers and privately-operated mini-buses. I think this flexibility in the licensing system is still needed, and we shall be putting down Amendments on these points to try to persuade the Government to restore it to the Bill, unless, of course the Government's conversations, about which the noble Lord, Lord Harris, has told us, bear rapid fruit.
The second question is: why has the prohibition on vehicles stopping at urban junctions not been included in this Bill? We were told that it was not considered practicable, but we should bear in mind that our Bill gave the local authorities and the Secretary of State, working together, the option of up to a maximum of 15 yards but down to a minimum of five yards, and at many junctions five yards is not a very great distance. We also have to bear in mind that some 60 per cent. of road casualties in towns occur near road junctions. Clause 6 of our Bill was a first-rate safety measure, and after much discussion, as your Lordships will remember, we accepted Amendments to that clause in which the word "reasonable" played a very major part. As your Lordships will all remember, we had many debates on the word "reasonable" and on stopping thus to avoid accidents. I think we probably got it right. I must confess that I am not really satisfied with the noble Lord's explanation of this omission, and, again, I think we shall be raising this point in Committee.
My third question relates to the dropping of the old Clauses 16 and 17, which dealt with the minimum age for driving heavy goods vehicles and would have allowed persons of 18 to 21 to do so subject to definite conditions as to training and employment. These proposals were known as "the driver apprenticeship scheme", and in the views of the Freight
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Transport Association and the Road Haulage Association would have established for the first time a genuine career structure for drivers which, in their view, is essential to attract school-leavers into the industry by providing prospects and opportunities for them to obtain the highest class of heavy goods vehicle licences soon after reaching the age of 21. If there is going to be, as is likely, a shortage of these drivers, it will also be a matter of great detriment to the nation. The Department of the Environment, the unions and the road haulage industry had all agreed this scheme, and we, when in Government, approved it. The industry concerned feels that the dropping of these proposals will be a disaster. Unless the noble Lord, Lord Garnsworthy, has a very convincing answer as to why this scheme has been dropped, we shall be putting down Amendments on this point.
My fourth query is: why has the old Clause 23 been left out of the Bill? This clause dealt with the tachograph. I made a speech about this in this House on December 4, when it was then in Clause 21. My arguments are as valid now as they were then, and I will not weary your Lordships by repeating them except to remind your Lordships that conversations have been continuously held with the unions on this matter, and I do not really believe they are as much against the tachograph as so many people would have us believe. They know perfectly well that it has a lot of good points, which are useful, and which ought not to be disregarded lightly. Lastly on this point of the tachograph, we have to remember the E.E.C. implications of this now omitted clause, which will bear harder and sooner on our heavy lorries going to Europe than otherwise they would have done.
My Lords, I think I have got most of the points off my chest. There are one or two other points, but these can be left to later stages.
12.55 p.m.
LORD PLATT: My Lords, owing to a breakdown in the sound warning of our public address system, I am afraid I had not realised the sudden termination of land tenure in Scotland and came in a few minutes late for the Minister's initial address. This I greatly regret because I have one or two small interests in this

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Bill which I hope now to put before your Lordships. I shall make no general comment. On the whole, the Bill seems an extremely good Bill. Very largely it follows the previous Bill which was going through Parliament. Again, I have no comment to make on that.
My first comment is on this question of parking on pedestrian footways. I remember that it was the view of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London, who was very keen that this should be prohibited. In fact I spoke against prohibition, for two reasons. One was that I felt that many small streets where houses are rather crowded together—houses either semi-detached or terraced, which were built at a time when the people who lived in such streets would never have been able to afford a motor car—are now lined with motor cars and I think there are some streets in which it would be a very serious deprivation if people could not park on the pedestrian footway. I see that there is a sort of escape clause and that the local authority may exempt some places from this general rule of not parking on the footway. I should like a little reassurance from the noble Lord who is going to reply that this is so and that this will not seriously interfere with, shall we say, the little man who has his motor car and who lives in a house where no provision of any kind has been made for putting it either in a sort of car port or in a garage.
My other reason for speaking against the right reverend Prelate was that I think that on the faster roads where there is a breakdown it is so much safer, if your car is obviously failing, to drive it on to the footway and take it right off the carriageway. I realise—at least I think I am right here, but I find this Bill extremely difficult to interpret because it relies so much on reference to other Acts—that there are two sorts of escape to this. One is that it is now confined to urban highways, and most of the fast roads that I am thinking of, where if you have a breakdown it is so much safer to get on to the footway, are not of course urban highways. But there are a good many urban highways where there is a speed limit of, say, 40 m.p.h. The approach roads to the big towns of England are very often of this type. It is quite dangerous if a car breaks down and you suddenly come across it and stand on the brake and the
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van behind you runs into the back of your car. This has in fact happened to me. I should like to know whether there is some kind of escape clause in this case.
The other escape, of course, is that in cases of great emergency you can park on the footway. But as I understand it, this provision is written in such a way that it is only if the car is catching fire that you can avoid trouble under that clause. I should like clarification of that point, so that I need not put down any Amendment in the Committee stage.
My other point is on Clause 13, which deals with the licensing of drivers and relies largely on Schedule 3. I am worried about this. This clause proposes that under ordinary circumstances a driving licence will continue until the age of 70. Why 70, and not 80 or 90? I suppose that there must be some arbitrary end to it, but it is very difficult to be sure that a driver is not disabled in some way. As things are at present, we have to declare every five years that we are still sound in limb, if not in mind. If a licence is to be given at the age of 18 or 20 to last until the age of 70, there obviously has to be some provision for informing the Secretary of State if one is no longer fit to drive.
This seems to me to create a number of great difficulties, and I would ask Her Majesty's Government whether they think it is worth while. Will it save so much work if people get licences to the age of 70 instead of every five years? Will it make such a difference that it is worth while? It will make it very much more difficult to be sure that a person really is fit to drive. He will be inclined to let his disability drift on and on, knowing full well that he has his licence in his pocket which lasts until the age of 70. I doubt whether a driver will write a letter or fill in a form to inform the Secretary of State. It is much more likely that he will have an accident, and in retrospect it will be discovered that he was not fit to drive.
There is the question of prospective disability; I do not like that at all. It leaves it to the judgment of the person holding the licence and to the judgment of his doctor. Even assuming that the doctor's judgment is good, ought the doctor to be charged with this responsibility? It is adding one more thing to the jobs which doctors have to do which are not

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directly concerned with the investigation and treatment of their patients. It is putting a new responsibility on doctors which I should have thought would be rather unwelcome to my profession. Although I do not always agree with everyone in my profession, in this instance I do.
Furthermore, there is some penalty on the doctor if he does not inform. I am also worried about sub-paragraph (3)(b) of Schedule 3 on page 34, which reads:
"shall authorise any registered medical practitioner who may at any time have given medical advice or attention to the applicant or licence holder concerned to release to the Secretary of State any information which he may have, or which may be available to him, with respect to the question whether, and if so to what extent, the applicant or licence holder concerned may be suffering, or may at any time have suffered, from a relevant or prospective disability."
I do not like that at all. Is the doctor then bound to disclose the nature of the patients' illness? Have Her Majesty's Government realised, as the previous Government realised in conversation with the profession, that the doctor-patient relationship is such that, quite apart from disclosing information which has been given to us privately—which we do not want to do—we do not always want to disclose information to the patient. We do not want to say to the Secretary of State, "Look, this chap does not think he is very ill at the moment, but, my God, he is going to be disabled in two or three years' time." That is not the kind of statement a doctor would like to put out.
I should like as many assurances as I can get on the general lines of what this prospective disability will mean to the relationship between the doctor and his patient. I am told by members of the medical profession that there can be some appeal, if a person has been denied a licence on account of his disability, and this appeal will be made to the magistrates' court. I can find no trace of this in the Bill, nor can I find it in the previous Act. I suppose it is in some other Act and is probably referred to as "Section 18 of Schedule 19(a), (b) or (c)". If, in fact, the appeal is to the magistrates' court, I think, again, that the medical profession would like to resist this strongly and would rather suggest, as I know they
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suggested to the previous Government, the kind of appeals procedure which we have under the Industrial Injuries Act, where two doctors sit with a lawyer and consider the medical evidence. I hope your Lordships will not think these points are too detailed and should be raised in Committee stage, but I do not want to move Amendments if we can have assurances on them and, if possible, some rethinking.
1.9 p.m.
LORD JANNER: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Harris, thought that some of us, including myself, might be speaking on points which we have endeavoured to bring forward previously but have not succeeded in doing. We still have hopes that good sense will prevail and that what we are proposing will be considered between now and the Committee stage, and perhaps the Government will be good enough to put down Amendments themselves. First of all, let me say that there is much in this Bill with which everybody in the House agrees. But before reaching the main point on which I wish to speak, I should like to mention one or two matters that are disturbing various people.
The question of seat belts has been referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Harris. I hope the point will be proved, and that it will be accepted as necessary to have a regulation without further delay. There has been a great deal of delay in regard to the introduction of the regulation, which is causing considerable disquiet among those who are concerned about the proper provisions of seat belts, and of course, manufacturers are being prevented from providing the necessary belts because they do not know the kind of regulation the Government will want to enforce. I am glad to hear that this matter is being considered. There is one other important matter which is not of small significance in the minds of a very considerable number of people throughout the country, particularly the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals that is, that in the definition of "animals" in the Act, which provides for a compulsory report to be given in respect of the killing of animals by a motorist cats are left out. Many people are very concerned about that and it is something which the Government should consider putting right between now and the Committee stage.

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I come now to a matter of which I hope the Government will take note. A very large number of people in this country are deeply concerned about the increase in crime, particularly juvenile crime. Anything that is done that could possibly prevent the kind of crimes which are increasing should be very carefully considered before the Bill is put into effect. The Magistrates' Association of this country feels that the type of provisions which are being brought in by this Bill, or which are intended to be brought in by any Government—and I am talking about this Government as well as about the Opposition—will not enable those who have been asked to serve in a voluntary capacity, and who have served so well for many years, to carry out their duties. It is as simple as that. I must say that I become worried when I find both sides of the Front Bench agreeing on something, and I begin to wonder what is happening, when it is something of a controversial nature. But in this matter I do not see where a controversy should exist, although it is being treated as a matter of controversy.
I do not know whether your Lordships realise that the system in this country, in so far as the magistrates' courts are concerned, is unique and is treated with the highest regard in practically every country in the world. That is a fact. Let us take the juvenile side. For example, highly paid juvenile court judges in America have commented upon the remarkable manner in which courts are successfully carried out in this country by people who are prepared to give a fair portion of their lives and their interest in order to help bring just results when cases are brought before them. It is unbelievable and incomprehensible to me, when the Association of these experienced people is so persistent in opposing certain proposals in this Bill—as it was in respect of the same proposals in the Bill which preceded it—that its opinion should not be regarded as of sufficient importance to be taken into proper account. That applies not only to them but to the justices' clerks as well. Both of them are the actual people in the field. They have no personal advantage to gain. They are anxious that justice should be meted out properly and that crime should be prevented. They have had a pretty tough
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time of it (particularly with regard to juvenile delinquents) since the Children and Young Persons Act was brought into effect in 1969.
What do they say? Incidentally, I speak with some little knowledge of this matter. Happily, I happen to have lived with a magistrate of long experience for many years, and we sometimes had different views on some matters. But we never, so far as I remember, disagreed on matters pertaining to the magistrates' courts, although I have been practising from the other benches and watching what has been going on, and have sometimes not agreed with what the magistrates have decided. Taking it by and large, everybody respects their views and their decisions. It is true that we want to keep as many people out of prison as possible. The magistrates themselves have demonstrated this fact by committing only a very tiny proportion of defendants to prison on motoring offences. So there can be no suggestion here that there is a lust for power or a desire to be vindictive in any way. Perhaps I am using language which ought not to be used in this connotation, but it is obvious that it is absurd for anyone to think that their motives are different from the right ones. For example, I am of the strong opinion that people who drive while they have a high proportion of alcohol in their blood, who drive dangerously, or who fail to stop after a serious accident are dangerous to the public and are in the same category as people who are sent to prison for the protection of the public in respect of other crimes.
Therefore, I would urge that the measures containing power for the magistrates' courts to send for a short prison sentence persons who are guilty—perhaps on more than one occasion—of the offences which I have mentioned, as well as some others, should remain. As with the previous Bill, by withdrawing from the magistrates' courts the power of imprisonment, this Bill will prevent other deterrents from being used. These have been spoken about a great deal and I do not want to delay the House with unnecessary repetition. But it is clear that we must repeat some of these arguments, because we have not yet convinced the powers-that-be to accept what we have been saying. The rehabilitation centres which exist at present should obviously remain. In the

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adult courts, community service orders, detention centre orders and attendance centre orders will also go if the Bill is passed as it stands. In the juvenile court, detention centre orders and attendance centre orders will disappear and it will be impossible to make a care order. I believe it is important for noble Lords to know this.
In these courts, persistent motoring offenders will be able to get away with anything and will be liable only to pay a fine, which in fact, their parents will pay, or to supervision by their local authority, which, with the greatest respect, means practically nothing. They know about this—and I am sure my right honourable friend the Home Secretary (for whom I have a very high regard) will find on going into this matter further that what I am saying is correct. I am certain that the magistrates will be happy to supply as much information as may be required for this purpose. There will remain no effective deterrent for madcap juvenile drivers, many of whom do not have a licence and are not insured.
To revert to the adult courts, there are two senior attendance centres, one in London and one in Manchester. These are important in dealing with motoring offences as well as with football hooliganism. Everyone is talking about this. How are you to deal with it, unless you have some sanction of this kind? The convicted defendants have to give up Saturday afternoons to go to the centre, where they receive some lectures in civics and a little training in car maintenance, as well as some physical education. It is interesting to note that the Report on young adult offenders, which was published by the Advisory Council on the Penal System on Tuesday last, in referring to senior attendance centres said in recommendation No. 23:
"The two existing senior attendance centres should be discontinued. There should, however, be an experimental attendance centre, properly equipped for the purpose, specially for the training of traffic offenders".
I underline those words "traffic offenders"; and I hope that when the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, comes to reply, he may be able to touch on this point. This Committee was set up by the Home Office, and that is what they said. Is it not ludicrous that, at the
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very time when an official Committee recommends a special attendance centre for traffic offenders, this Bill removes the possibility of sending anyone to such a centre?
Again, when a request was made for more senior atendance centres, the Government said that as the community service orders had just been brought in they wanted to try this experiment before opening any further centres. It would seem from the early years of community service orders that they are proving useful. Again, the Report to which I have referred strongly urges training for young people in the community—and at the same time that this high-powered Committee has been sitting the Bill is again brought before us, which prevents the courts from using community service orders. Even if the Government will not make concessions on the major point of sending people to prison for serious and dangerous motoring offences, it should surely be possible to amend this Bill so that the magistrates' courts could make community service orders and detention service orders; and, in particular, that the juvenile courts could use detention and attendance centres and make care orders.
The effect of taking away deterrents from the magistrates' courts has been highlighted by the results of the Children and Young Persons Act 1969. It is startling to note that in comparing crime in that year with the year 1973, the number of arrests of juveniles for indictable offences rose by 40 per cent., while in the same year the number of adult arrests for indictable offences rose by only 10 per cent. The whole position is bad enough. Heaven knows!—but the contrast in respect of juvenile offenders as against adults is made perfectly obvious. In circumstances such as those, who on earth can reasonably find it in his mind—and I am sorry to have to put it so strongly—to take away deterrents of the only kinds that could possibly prove of any use? The Government turn round and say, "We are going to apply a maximum fine of £400." Who is going to pay the £400—anybody? Wealthy people, perhaps, to whom that sum is nothing (or almost nothing) will pay the £400.

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But what will the court do? They will—as they have properly done hitherto—take into consideration the financial circumstances of an individual. In order to use a deterrent they do not apply a ridiculous fine which a person can never pay, but they impose a fine which they think a person will be able to meet. If the fine is rot paid, what happens? A person cannot be sent to prison—he really cannot. I realise that this is a personal view and there may perhaps be some difference on it, but I am prepared to argue that this is the case; in practice, it means that they would get away with it altogether.
We are told that the prosecutor will decide whether to send a case to a higher court. Why should the court not decide? Surely a court with experience is capable of deciding. If the prosecutor wants the case to go, he will explain why; but he should be in a position to say to the court, "I think this should go to a higher court for such and such a reason" and let the court decide. They are experienced enough to decide whether the person concerned should be allowed to go to a higher court. If he is not allowed to go to a higher court and the provisions of this Bill are passed, we shall undermine very considerably the whole of the present magisterial set-up.
There is one other matter I wish to raise—and I believe that some of your Lordships are very keen on this, too. We have a jury system. Why introduce into a Bill a measure which prevents an individual from being tried by a jury, if that is what he wants, in cases where he is entitled to do that at present? In the case of a person coming before a court and believing himself to be innocent (and he may very well be innocent, I know that magistrates can pretty well weigh up whether or not a person is innocent) why should that person not have the benefit, or perhaps the ultimate disadvantage, if you like, of going before a jury?
Have we really come to the conclusion that the jury system is no longer one which ought to continue? It has existed for very many years and, in my opinion, it has not proved to be a failure. I never fail to try to convince people that a minor crime is a major crime to many accused people, particularly those who
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have never been in a court before. You have only to inquire to realise that some people are deeply hurt about being charged on a minor offence. They are as concerned about that as if it had been a major offence with which a hardened criminal has perhaps been charged. It is not really a question of the gravity of the offence, as we would look at it, but of how the individual accused looks at it. Does he want to live the rest of his life with a possible stain on his character? At least, the man or woman must have an opportunity of choosing whether he or she wants to be tried by a jury. We shall soon have the James Report, and why not wait for that? There could be an appropriate Bill, if necessary, after we have heard the result of the inquiry.
I do not want to detain your Lordships any longer, and I will finish by saying that I cannot understand why this Government, or the previous one, have not been able to appreciate that what has gone on effectively for so many years should not be allowed to become ineffective, and merely machinery which would serve no useful purpose. That is how we feel about it; that is how the magistrates feel about it; The noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, who is a very keen supporter of efforts to stop imprisonment so far as possible commented similarly on it. Perhaps the Government will now think twice—perhaps thrice—about this matter, and will at least give us the opportunity of discussing an Amendment which they themselves would put down, and leave the subject open to a free vote.
1.34 p.m.
BARONESS MACLEOD OF BORVE: My Lords, I will not delay the House for long but as a keen motorist Clause 16 of the Bill is one that causes me some anxiety. The idea of humps—for want of a better word—in the roads to deter speeding vehicles is of course not a new one. I have met these humps in the grounds of hospitals and on a few private roads on the coast. In both cases their position in the road is controlled by private residents or hospital authorities, not by local authorities. These humps of course deter speed; but I should like to draw the attention of the House, and of the noble Lord who moved the Second Reading of the Bill, to the expense of putting humps in the road—not only in building them,

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but in the expense caused to the ratepayers who have to pay for them. There is a great difficulty in putting humps in the road; and once you have put them in they are rarely taken away again.
The Bill says that the hump must not be more than five inches high, or two inches below the road. I wonder whether I could suggest also that there should be a definition as to the width of the hump because that is important. If it is to be agreed that there should be a set width, I should like to suggest it be two feet. These humps can be very dangerous, as everybody will be aware, mostly to bicyclists and also motor-cyclists. The other day I was driving slowly along a street in London and in front of me was a motorcyclist with a pillion passenger. The pillion passenger fell off the motor-cycle. I think the motor-cycle had gone into a pot hole which was probably about one and a half inches deep. Luckily, I was able to stop in time. That is the type of hazard a motor-cyclist would have to negotiate and I think it would be particularly dangerous. Obviously the danger to the undercarriage of a car is very great because on some cars the sump is only three and a half inches off the road surface. I also feel that although it would be expensive it would be absolutely vital that these stretches of road should be very well lit and clearly sign-posted. I should also like to suggest that the hump itself should be painted.
I now turn to the subject that I used to talk about when we spent many hours in this House on the previous Road Traffic Act. Once again I am delighted to be able to follow rather than precede the noble Lord, Lord Janner, because he has said far more eloquently than I could a great many of the things about which I feel equally very strongly concerning the abolition of prison sentences for certain contraventions of the traffic laws. I have been a magistrate for 20 years and I have had a certain amount of experience, but if we, as magistrates, are not allowed in future the possibility—and I repeat "possibility"—of sending to prison someone who is a frequent offender against the same traffic laws—for driving dangerously or failing to stop, or for taking excess alcohol—then it is very difficult, as the noble Lord, Lord Janner, has said, to know what we are going to do with these people.
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I had never sent anybody to prison until the other day. About three weeks ago I had to send somebody to prison. He has been in this country for about 12 years; he was originally Italian. He had committed an enormous number of road traffic offences and he went to prison for three months. In 20 years, that is the first time I have ever sent a person to prison. Sitting once a week, that means I have heard a great number of cases. As magistrates we do not send people to prison for such offences unless they are very serious indeed. I personally want this punishment for certain offences to be kept as a deterrent in the Bill. I am certain that the deterrent effect is far more effective than anything else. I hope—I think it is rather a hopeless hope !—that the Government will think once again. The noble Lord, Lord Janner, and I, and others, when it was not a Thursday morning, expressed ourselves fairly volubly when a previous Road Traffic Bill was taken through this House.
My Lords, I do not think I want to say anything more except to draw your Lordships' attention to the fact that a previous Lord Chancellor, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, was with us all the way on this matter, and I feel that if he says it is right, with his wisdom and experience, then it is very difficult for us to say otherwise. I would conclude by saying of this part of the Bill, like the Children and Young Persons Bill, that I wish those who framed the Bill also had to implement it.
1.41 p.m.
LORD HACKING: My Lords, it would be churlish not to give the return of this Bill some welcome. It contains important new measures; for example, safety belts, and the new facilities for traffic surveys; and it is shorter and, in parts, less burdened by complexity than its predecessor. On this point I was gladdened to hear from the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, that parts of Clauses 1 to 5 have been made simpler; although I am afraid the greater simplicity has certainly escaped my own discovery. I must remind myself too that I must welcome this Bill because I have every intention of using the Bill again, or attempting to use this Bill again, for my own purposes. But none the less my welcome to this

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Bill must, alas, be muted. The Bill is still burdened with too much complexity. This is, I believe, the great and largely unnecessary defect of modern statutory law which makes it so difficult for the user of Parliamentary legislation, whether that user be a lawyer or a policeman, a civil servant or a judge. It is interesting, for example, to note that the Amendment of the right reverend Prelate the Lord Bishop of London, which covered, I think, only about one-third of a page on the Marshalled List, is now stretching over one-and-a-half pages of the printer's copy of the Bill before us.
Secondly, my Lords, this Bill again introduces new and ghastly (if I may use that expression) phrases into our statutory law. The expression "exposure for sale" occurs in Clause 12. It is true that the draftsman of this Bill has spared us from another ghastly phrase used by the judges in a case about 20 years ago, namely, "invitation to treat". The case was that of the Pharmaceutical Society v. Boots Chemists, in 1952. But that, my Lords is where the gratitude must end. Of course we know the problem. We know that cars can be exhibited by car dealers and car salesmen as being apparently for sale; but when they are before the courts they describe them as not being actually for sale. But does this new phraseology "exposure for sale" solve the problem? Will not the new defence before the courts (and I hope I am not asked to put it before a court) be, "Well, it was just exposure for display"?
The Bill too is to be brought into force by Statutory Instrument. This only adds to the difficulty of the practitioner, who has neither the time nor the money to stack his cellar full of Statutory Instruments just because the Statutes themselves omit to state the date of enactment. Finally, in criticism, the Bill follows the unhappy, and the increasing practice of legislation by expediency. I refer to Clause 19 about which the noble Lord, Lord Janner, has just spoken at such length and with such passion. Indeed as the noble Lord, Lord Janner, has told us, this clause, as well as restricting the powers of justices in imposing imprisonment, also has the effect of removing to the magistrates' court all but one of the traffic offences now triable before the Crown Court.
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Of course we are familiar with the problem, although Governments are not very candid about it, that the Crown Courts carry a very heavy burden of cases, particularly an excessive burden of traffic offence cases and, dare I add, breathalyser law offences. So, this Bill says, "Let us transfer these cases back to the justices", as if the justices did not have enough to do already. The trouble is that the drafters of the Bill—and I do not refer to the Parliamentary draftsmen, I refer to the Departments of State—have failed to ask the basic question as to why the Crown Courts have so many traffic cases. The answer is this: much road traffic law is so badly drafted that the wrongdoer knows that if he goes to the Crown Court he stands a good chance of aquittal before the judicially qualified judges of the Crown Court. Yet, when a noble Lord, as he indeed did, comes forward and says, "Let us get to the foot of the problem of the breathalyser law, let us redraft these provisions in simpler and more sensible terms", that noble Lord is told by the then-spokesman for the Government, "It is all fine. Fresh legislation is not needed".
My Lords, the proposals contained in Clause 19 to which again the noble Lord, Lord Janner, referred, have a more serious feature in that they interfere with the terms of a Government Committee set up only last September. I refer, as did the noble Lord, Lord Janner, to the James Committee. My Lords, let us look at the terms of reference given to the James Committee by the then Home Secretary and by the then Lord Chancellor. They are these:
"To consider within the framework of the existing court structure what should be the distribution of criminal business between the Crown Court and magistrates' courts; and what changes in law and practice are desirable to that end."
I should also inform the House, because I have certain personal knowledge of this, that this Committee under Lord Justice James has put into its work a lot of hard endeavour. It has received a number of memoranda and publications, from Justice, for example, and, to give another example, the Criminal Bar Association. What do the Government do? The answer is that without waiting for the Report, without considering the problem as a whole, they bounce into legislation—removing wholesale a large portion of

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work from the Crown Court to the magistrates' court—thus, reading the reference the former Government gave to this Committee, directly interfering with the work of this Committee.
This is not a new point. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, raised it in Committee; the noble Lord, Lord Janner, stoically fought against these provisions at every stage of the Bill when it went through last time; but, somehow, the Government or the Department of State have not the ear to hear.
This brings me, my Lords, to the heart of the current difficulty in statutory law. Governments, Ministers, and Departments of State are too interested in bringing in new legislation and are not sufficiently concerned whether the current legislation is working well or not. I suppose, that of all the offences that we as motorists, are closest to, other than speeding offences, are those concerning careless driving or perhaps dangerous driving. The distinction between these offences have now been reduced to the point of being quite artificial. This is an interesting and an important point. Let me, if I may, refer to the Act itself and read to your Lordships Section 2, dealing with dangerous driving stripped down to the essential material. It reads as follows:
"If a person drives a motor vehicle on a road in a manner which is dangerous to the public having regard to all the circumstances of the case, including the nature, condition and use of the road and the amount of traffic which is actually at the time or which might reasonably be expected to be on the road, he shall be guilty of an offence."
My Lords, what does that amount to? I turn to a text book which expresses it in better terms than I. I refer to Wilkinson's Road Traffic Offences. I read as follows:
"on a charge of dangerous driving a motorist is guilty if he adopted a manner of driving which was dangerous to other road users and it matters not whether he was deliberately reckless, careless, momentarily inattentive, or even doing his incompetent best."
A NOBLE LORD: Don't we all?
LORD HACKING: A noble Lord says, "Don't we all?" Let us now contain the offence of dangerous driving even further. It comes to this: there must be fault and there must be arising directly out of that fault danger actual or poten-
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tial. What offence of careless driving does not contain those two ingredients? Noble Lords will not therefore be surprised to learn that charges are now being brought, not so much upon the quality of driving but upon the consequences of bad driving—a minor scrape: a charge of careless driving; a serious collision: a charge of dangerous driving; serious collision with a death: a charge of causing death by dangerous driving. Yet there is no attempt in this or in any other Bill to put right this state of affairs, which can hardly be described as satisfactory. On the contrary, in the removing of the power of justices to imprison, this Bill helps to compound the difficulty.
It is the universal practice on pleas of guilty for driving offences for them to be dealt with by the justices. So let us then take the example of Accused "A". If Accused "A" seriously injures passengers in another car, but through the skill of doctors all of those passengers survive, and he pleads guilty before the justices, he will face, if this Bill is passed in its present form, a maximum penalty of £400. Now let us take another driver, Accused "B". Accused "B" less seriously injures passengers. Let us say the passengers are in his own motor-car. But one of those passengers, as sometimes happens out of traumatic injuries, gets, directly from the injuries, a pulmonary thrombosis and dies. Accused "B" desires to plead guilty. First, whether he likes it or not, he will find himself in the Crown Court; and secondly, Accused "B" will find himself facing a maximum penalty, not of a fine of £400 but of five years' imprisonment. Is this a satisfactory state of affairs?—for it is the direct consequence, first, of the failure to attend to current legislation and, secondly, of the provisions of this Bill.
I am not going to argue the case now for breathalyser reform. The tutorial (if I may put it that way) to the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, can come later, and the refresher course to the noble Lord, Lord Mowbray and Stourton, can also come later. But let me tell your Lordships just this, and let me tell it particularly to those noble Lords who are now in Government: I have continued my discussions upon my Amendments with those directly concerned in their enforcement and I have received widespread support, although with differing views, from

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judges, from members of the Bar, particularly members of the Criminal Bar Association, from the police and from magistrates' courts' clerks.
Let me secondly remind noble Lords who are now in Government that when they were unencumbered by instructions from the Department of the Environment and when they voted without a Whip on the merits of the argument, they voted for these Amendments. I can see in your Lordships' House two Members of the Government sitting on the Front Bench who voted for my Amendments when they came before your Lordships on the last occasion. I refer to the noble Lord, Lord Garnsworthy, and the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell. Therefore, my Lords, all I ask of the Government is this. When I move these breathalyser amendment provisions again will they, unlike their predecessors in Office, give me a free vote—a vote on the merits of the argument, not on instructions from a Department of State? This, on non-political matters, is surely what Parliament is, or should be, all about.
1.54 p.m.
LORD LUCAS OF CHILWORTH: My Lords, I did not think I had much in common with the noble Lord who has just sat down, but I find that his description of some of the terminology of the Bill is somewhat sympathetic to my own feeling when I read it. At times I find it difficult to understand exactly what the Parliamentary draftsman is getting at. If one takes, for example, the last paragraph on page 20, one sees that from line 44 it reads:
"and the regulations may make different provision in relation to vehicles of different classes, in relation to different types of weighbridges and other machines and in relation to different circumstances."
It all seems frightfully "different" to me—so different that I think it will be difficult to understand when we get there.
If this Bill has faults, I think it has rather worse faults than its predecessor, which in my view suffered largely from omissions. This Bill suffers even more greatly by having even more omissions. The noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, in introducing it said that it was a Bill to strengthen and up-date the law, particularly in relation to safety. This may well be, but on the last occasion
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in October when we had the previous Bill before us, we were going to take care of some other rather important matters. The noble Lord, Lord Harris, said that perhaps there are two major omissions. One is provisions dealing with the training of young people. My noble friend Lord Mowbray and Stourton referred to this point and said that at the time both the employers and the unions were in agreement with these provisions. He described it as dealing with "career opportunity for young people" and so on. I quite agree. This is exactly the kind of career opportunity a young person needs. The work is well-paid; it is exciting; it is in the right environment, and there are many applicants. It also contributes to satisfying a need of the industry for more drivers.
I wonder, in all truth, whether the removal of these provisions is not, as the noble Lord suggested, so that a full review can be undertaken; I wonder whether the unions were quite so agreeable last time because they had to protect those people already in the industry. I would suggest that in the present climate their agreement has somewhat waned. I hope that during the course of his review the Minister's right honourable friend will find that the need of the industry perhaps comes second to the need of a career opportunity for young people. The noble Lord also referred to the removal of provisions in regard to the tachograph. I can understand some of the reasons for this. But let me say that it is quite unfair to have subjected an industry five months ago to an agreed programme, by the introduction of legislation which will involve it in quite a lot of expense, which will bring the industry by 1976 nearer to E.E.C. requirements, for which a number of people engaged in it have made their plans and committed some expenditure, only for that industry to find that the matter is to be withdrawn and made the subject of further review
On the provisions regarding the weighing of vehicles, my noble friend Lord Mowbray and Stourton suggested that these provisions might not take very long to deal with. I much regret to say that they might take your Lordships a little longer than my noble friend suggested. I spoke about this matter on stages of the previous Bill, and my researches since that time indicate to me that, although

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trade unions may very well be in favour of the introduction of weighing devices on motor vehicles, of the five that have been introduced over the last four years, three have been withdrawn as completely unsatisfactory and two are held to be satisfactory insofar as the unions are concerned. But in so far as operators are concerned, they have proved extremely unreliable in practical service, particularly in the case of tipping vehicles which are, in the main, the worst offenders in overloading.
On the question of overweight vehicles, we may also have to examine exactly whose responsibility the overweight may be. The introduction of containers has removed from the haulier almost any authority for the weight. It is conceivable—in fact, I have been told this by a very reputable haulier from Southampton Docks—that you can get an overseas container which has all the right stampings on its outside, and all the right documentation in so far as dimension, weight and so on are concerned, but where on a trial the weighbridge indicates that the container, loaded as it is and bonded as it is, will provide for the vehicle going overweight on one or other axle.
What is the haulier to do? It is not his responsibility. He did not load it. Does he take it back to the dock? Does he take it back to the chargehand stevedore and say, "Sorry, my dear fellow. You must take this container off my wagon, because I am going overweight?" My Lords, I leave it to your imagination what reply he gets. If, indeed, he ignored the reply and left the container there in the dockyard, our dockyards would then become congested with containers over which no hauliers had any authority whatsoever. It seems to me that perhaps we ought to introduce some kind of consignor's responsibility in the matter of overweight, or, far more practicably as I suggested last time, that we really ought to have a "due diligence" clause inserted. I think that this would be quite realistic. One must keep the wheels of commerce turning, rather than impose a law which makes drivers afraid for their jobs; otherwise, the interminable business of weighing vehicles will continue.
My Lords, I also deeply regret the fact that this Government have not found much worth in the suggestions which I
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made last time with regard to heavy goods vehicle driving instructors. Last time I felt that I had shown to your Lordships, without any shadow of doubt, that there is no approved heavy goods vehicle driver instructor in this country. Looking across the Floor this afternoon, I see a noble Lord who on that earlier occasion nodded his head in agreement, and I felt that we might have got somewhere with this point. Next year, heavy goods vehicle driver training comes out of the responsibility of the Training Boards and falls into the responsibility of the Central Training Agency. At that time, many hauliers will come out of the scope of the I.T.B.; in other words, they will not pay a levy and they will not be able to get a grant. Because the demand for heavy goods vehicle drivers is so critical, they will therefore turn to the commercial schools which have no approval whatsoever from anybody, for anything. Any person with a heavy goods vehicle licence for Classes 1, 2 or 3 can go and instruct.
We talk in this House about heavy goods vehicles and how their drivers used to be the knights of the road, and some noble Lords have expressed the opinion that they are not so any more. Why? Is it, perhaps, because they are not trained properly? Is it, perhaps, that a haulier is quite prepared to spend the minimum amount of money with any agency that can get his man through the driving test and then send the driver off to Milan, Glasgow or wherever you like with 30 or 40 tons, to earn him money? If that is so, as I think some of your Lordships may argue, then I say that it is the responsibility of Her Majesty's Government to take the very first opportunity to put right this defect in the law, as they did years ago in so far as motor car driving instructors were concerned. I shall return to this matter with as much energy and as much gusto as possible at the appropriate time.
My Lords, I turn again to the clauses relating to operators' licences. The last time I raised a number of points the noble Viscount, Lord Colville, replied and he suggested that my points were a little complex. Perhaps I could remind your Lordships, quite briefly, that I was talking at that time about the granting of operators' licences and the regulations surrounding the suspension and revocation of those licences. In particular, I was talking about prohibition orders and the

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like. My Lords, I wonder whether the Minister will remind himself of the discussions that we had then in order that at Committee stage we can deal with the whole business of operators' licences—not only how they start in business, but how they may be allowed to continue in business fairly; because I shall seek at the appropriate stage to make changes in so far as this is concerned.
In the moment left to me, I would make only one comment about Clause 16—the road humps. I should think that this would give a tremendous fillip to the manufacturers of shock absorbers. No doubt the Minister is very well aware of the recent tests which have been carried out, and, in the event of any kind of road control of this nature, we should look very carefully at the statutory obligation of a testing station. This takes me naturally to the Ministry testing regulations and prompts me to ask when we are likely to have the Minister's views as to the changes that we all know are vitally necessary, and necessary very quickly, in the area of the annual M.o.T, test of motor vehicles.
2.11 p.m.
LORD GARNSWORTHY: My Lords, we have had a very helpful debate which has, I think, covered just about every possible aspect of the Bill. Like its stillborn predecessor, I think I can claim that this Bill has had a general welcome on its own terms, although I have noted the reservations that have been expressed, particularly by the noble Lord, Lord Hacking. I take it as a considerable warning of his intention to be active at Committee stage.
The welcome to the Bill has been not as a major measure on a single theme but rather as a collection of measures, all of them useful and some of them rather urgent, designed to bring many parts of the road traffic law up to date. The noble Lord, Lord Mowbray and Stourton, asked a number of questions at the beginning of the debate and I shall try to answer them as I go along because I was asked similar questions by a number of other noble Lords—or at least they touched on the same items—but I assure the noble Lord right away that if I overlook any, thing I will certainly write to him. I notice that he gave clear warning, and I thought it was a warning to the effect that it did not matter what we said to-day,
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he would still pursue those matters during the Committee stage. That is fair enough.
Many questions have been asked and it would not be reasonable if I were to take up time even to try to answer all of them. However I will do my best with regard to those questions where I feel that a number of your Lordships have raised points for consideration. Most of the complaints that have been made about the Bill concern matters which are not contained in it, and in particular attention has been drawn to urban junction parking bans, lorry driver training schemes, bus licensing and tachographs, on which provisions appeared in the Bill presented by the previous Administration. The noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, explained in his opening remarks the circumstances in which the Government decided against proceeding with those provisions. I am not sure that I am going to be able to add much that will be persuasive beyond what the noble Lord had to say, but everything that has been said during this Second Reading will be studied very closely.
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: My Lords, if the noble Lord will give way, I am not quite clear about—and I do not think the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, explained—the provisions with regard to the change from 21 to 18 and the apprentice drivers' scheme.
LORD GARNSWORTHY: My Lords, if I do not cover that matter I promise the noble Lord that I will write to him about it. It will depend partly upon the time that it is reasonable to take up, because we have a lengthy debate following this.
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: Yes, my Lords, but the point I am making is that the road haulage industry has said that this will prove disastrous.
LORD GARNSWORTHY: My Lords, I take the point raised by the noble Lord, but I think if he is going to interrupt me too much at this early stage I shall not be able to make a helpful speech. I should like to take matters in sequence, as I have sought to do in my preparation for this reply. I think I have made the point, but if I have not I should now like to emphasise that, with regard to the questions to which I have referred as having been excluded, the Government do not have a closed mind and I will draw

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the attention of my right honourable friend the Minister for Transport to the views that have been expressed here to-day.
With regard to the law on drinking and driving, the Government have noted the arguments put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Hacking, during the passage of the previous Bill and they will study the further points that he made to-day, and also any points made by any other noble Lord on that particular matter. My right honourable friend the Minister for Transport has stated that he is considering whether there should be an inquiry into the operation of this law, and this consideration must take into accounts aspects of the law with which his colleagues are also concerned. My right honourable friend hopes to be in a position to make a Statement while this Bill is before Parliament.
The noble Lord raised a number of other matters and perhaps again he will allow me to write to him on those, but he drew attention to the fact that my noble friend Lord Wells-Pestell and I myself voted with him. Again to-day he adduced his detailed arguments with eloquence and with force and I am not surprised that I found myself in the same Lobby with him. I have since listened to other people who have also argued with strength, with conviction and with eloquence, but we shall return to these matters at the Committee stage. I should like to say at this point that I am no lawyer and I am sure it will need a lawyer to deal with him when we come to the Committee stage. I am rather pleased to think that it is the Section of the Bill which I hope I shall not be charged with handling in Committee.
Perhaps I may deal briefly with some of the points that have been raised on the provisions of the Bill. Again I hope that there will be ample opportunity during the Committee stage to go into these points more fully. Indeed the noble Lord, Lord Lucas of Chilworth, has warned us that he will ensure that there is adequate time for them. I think it would be helpful to the whole House if I were to make available some notes on various clauses and a list of the differences from the previous Bill that are being made to all those who are likely to take part in the Committee stage, and if we miss anybody I hope they will ask
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and I will certainly see that a copy of the list is sent to them. I hope that those who played a prominent part last time and who have taken part in this Second Reading debate will receive copies within the next few days.
The noble Lord, Lord Lucas of Chilworth, and the noble Lord, Lord Mowbray and Stourton, raised several points in connection with heavy goods vehicles. On the question of providing for the introduction of a scheme to train young drivers I am really in no position to say anything useful to-day since my right honourable friend the Minister for Transport has only just received further representations, which he is urgently considering. The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, also argued for statutory control of the qualifications of those who instruct the drivers of heavy goods vehicles. Recent changes in the courses run by the Road Transport Industry Training Board may well have reduced the need for intervention, but my right honourable friend will study very closely the arguments that have been advanced here this afternoon.
Finally, the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, raised a number of detailed points in connection with clauses covering matters which are rather too technical to be discussed on Second Reading. Therefore I wonder whether I may write to him as soon as my right honourable friend has had a chance to consider all the matters mentioned by the noble Lord, and in any event before we take the Bill in Committee. If the noble Lord would like to come to the Department and discuss these matters before we reach Committee stage I should be happy that he should do so. If he cares to take the initiative, or if he wants me to take it, perhaps at the end of this debate he will let me know, but certainly I should be glad to come in during the Recess to meet him and to discuss with officials the many matters that he has raised and on which his advice could be most useful.
I note continuing concern of the noble Lord for a measure of control over the training and qualification of those who instruct trainee drivers of heavy lorries. The situation has, however, changed since he raised the matter during debates on the previous Road Traffic Bill. The Road Transport Industry Training Board

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has now introduced the revised system of assessment of candidates attending courses for these instructors. Instructors will now have to pass the course before they can claim to be qualified. This is a significant step which will no doubt help to relieve the concern of the noble Lord.
My right honourable friend the Minister for Transport will, of course, study the arguments of the noble Lord, but he has not so far been persuaded that he ought to do more than keep in touch with the progress of the arrangements of the Training Board. But here again, I think we could have a very useful discussion. There is one point I should like to make which is that I am sure between the noble Lord and the Government there is a common desire to ensure that matters go in the right direction. We may have different ideas as to speed and as to how it may be done, but I would assure the House that the Government shares with me the desire to get to the right place, and to do it as quickly as we think it can reasonably be done.
The noble Lord, Lord Mowbray and Stourton, raised questions about bus licences. I would say to him that having studied the proposals, my right honourable friend has decided to consult both sides of the industry before he proposes legislation in regard to that matter. The noble Lord raised a question about tachographs, as did the noble Lord, Lord Lucas of Chilworth. We are not proceeding with this proposal pending the outcome of a review to be undertaken with regard to our E.E.C. commitments. That is the brief answer that I am able to give on that matter. The noble Lord, Lord Platt, asked me a number of questions, first with regard to pavement parking. I have no doubt that a number of other noble Lords are interested in this subject.
The noble Lord mentioned the matter of narrow residential streets and emergencies such as fires, and so on. I think it will be worth while if the noble Lord studied the small print of the clause, because it is intended in fact to deal with that situation. I would say here and now there is provision for the police to permit a driver to move a broken-down car on to the pavement to prevent an obstruction. The noble Lord raised questions about changes in the licensing system. We take note of what he has had to say, but
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are thinking much on the lines of the previous Bill. We think the approach being made is generally a correct one.
I think I should say, as I am advised, that we have made our decision after consulting medical bodies. Like the previous Administration, we feel the proposals that are being made are acceptable on safety grounds. On the question of prospective disabilities, of course we always listen with the greatest interest to the noble Lord who speaks with so much wisdom and experience. We have in mind that doctors will advise patients to notify the licensing authority. There is no question of forcing doctors to disclose information about the patients concerned to the Secretary of State. I hope that that will be of some assurance to the noble Lord.
The noble Lord, Lord Janner, raised a question about cats, and as I know a number of your Lordships are interested in cats, perhaps I could just say this about the matter. The reference is to Section 25 of the 1972 Act, and the list of animals therein is indeed quaint. While dogs, horses and some other animals are included, the omission of cats can be justified because they are so much more difficult to control, and all too often their owners are much more difficult to trace. The noble Baroness, Lady Macleod of Borve, and the noble Lord, Lord Lucas of Chilworth, raised a question about humps. The experiment is intended to assess the costs and benefits. I cannot answer off-the-cuff the question the noble Baroness addressed to me about width, or deal with the suggestion she made, but I will write to her. Certainly we will study the points the noble Baroness was making. The humps will be carefully designed by the Transport and Road Research Laboratory, so that we hope there will be no risk of damage at the right speed. I think that is something of an answer to the noble Lord, Lord Lucas of Chilworth. The noble Lord also asked about lighting. The humps will be in residential areas with street lighting.
My Lords, I have taken what is I think a reasonable amount of time. I am acutely aware of the fact that there are other questions, but as I promised I will write to noble Lords where it is felt that they ought to have information before we reach Committee stage. I believe this is a good

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Bill. I like to think we can look forward to co-operation with regard to the proposals that we are putting forward, and that they are common with those contained in the Bill previously before the House. With regard to the additional matters, I think we have a good case for them. With reference to the omissions, we shall do our best to explain to the House—
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: My Lords, I hope the noble Lord will forgive me for interrupting him. I did not interrupt him again because he asked me not to, but as he is nearing the end of his speech, perhaps he will allow me to say something. In referring to the driver apprentice scheme for heavy vehicles, the noble Lord said that the Government have only just received representations. But the last Government—and I said it in my speech—had knowledge of the fact that the unions, the industry and the Department of the Environment were in total agreement with the scheme. So I find it rather surprising to be told that the new Government have only recently received representations. I still do not understand why that was left out.
LORD GARNSWORTHY: My Lords, I will read again what the noble Lord, Lord Mowbray and Stourton, said. I will check what I myself had to say, and I will write to him. Before I sit down, I did take note of the strong plea made by my noble friend Lord Janner, on the subject of penalties, and if the House will bear with me a moment I think it proper that something should be said regarding that matter, because not only my noble friend Lord Janner, but a number of other Members referred to the penalties issue. Like my noble friend the Minister of State, I do not want to dwell on it at any length. There will be opportunities for noble Lords to put forward suggestions and criticisms in greater detail than the scope of a Second Reading debate permits, but I would say that my noble friend took advantage of the opportunity this afternoon to make a considerable number of detailed points. We will study everything he has had to say.
As a magistrate, I recognise the sincerity of the arguments advanced against this clause of the Bill, but in my experience on the bench it is rarely that a
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motoring offender has needed to be sent to prison. The statistics suggest that most magistrates would agree. I believe it is best to leave to the Crown Court those few cases where imprisonment is necessary, as the powers of the Crown Court in respect of hybrid offences are undiminished by the Bill. It is the policy of this Government—and my right honourable friend the Home Secretary made this point on Tuesday in a speech to the Central Council of Probation and Aftercare Committees—to shift the emphasis within the penal system in the direction of non-custodial treatment wherever possible, leaving prison for the small proportion of cases where it is necessary in the interests of public safety. This Bill provides an opportunity of making a significant step in that direction and at the same time protecting the Crown Court from the burden of straightforward road traffic cases which currently come before it as a consequence of the defendant's right to elect jury trial where the maximum summary penalty exceeds three months.
I noted what my noble friend Lord Janner had to say on this. I think there is an answer, and if I had the time I would indeed like to attempt something of an answer to some of the arguments he produced. It has been pointed out that what is proposed will leave the magistrates with no custodial sentence to impose on young offenders for the offences covered by the Bill. But it would surely be inequitable to expose this age group from 17 to 21 to the possibility of custody when an adult runs no such risk for the same offence. My right honourable friend the Home Secretary, in the speech earlier this week to which I have already referred, welcomed in principle the Report of the Advisory Council on the Penal System which has just been published, and which recommends an increased use of non-custodial treatment for offenders aged 17 and under 21. There will, of course, be appropriate consultation with the various bodies concerned before there can be any question of action on the detailed proposals involved. I mention the Report as an illustration of the current thinking about the use of custody and what might be termed non-custody in the treatment of offenders. It will be for the House to decide when we come to Committee stage. I hope the House will give this Bill the Second Reading it deserves.

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It may be that before it leaves Committee stage some improvements can be effected. It may be that we shall be able to reach greater understanding than perhaps seems possible this afternoon.
LORD JANNER: My Lords, before my noble friend sits down, would he bring to the notice of his right honourable friend the fact that the Association to which I referred, to which the noble Baroness belongs, were called into consultation only after the Bill had been drafted, only a few days ago. Would it not be advisable—or perhaps the right honourable gentleman might consider it advisable—that they might be brought into consultation again between now and Committee stage?
LORD GARNSWORTHY: My Lords, I will certainly draw the attention of my right honourable friend to that suggestion. I cannot help feeling that if there is any advantage in that being done he will not need overmuch persuasion.
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

GOVERNMENT STATEMENTS
BARONESS LLEWELLYN-DAVIES OF HASTOE: My Lords, with the leave of the House, my noble friend Lord Harris of Greenwich will be making the Statement he promised on the Price sisters at a convenient moment after 3.30.
May I also inform the House that my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland will be making a Statement in another place. It is a long and technical Statement, and it has been agreed through the usual channels that, with the leave of the House, I shall arrange for it to be circulated in the OFFICIAL REPORT.

THE OPEN UNIVERSITY
2.34 p.m.
BARONESS LEE OF ASHERIDGE BARONESS LEE OF ASHERIDGE rose to ask Her Majesty's Government whether they have any proposals on the future work and progress of the Open University. The noble Baroness said: My Lords, I am grateful for this opportunity to bring to your Lordships' notice the progress that has been made by the Open University, but perhaps more important, I am grateful that I have the privilege of discussing with your Lordships my very strong fears at the present moment because of some of the difficulties that now beset it. Of course, it is common knowledge that this University had a difficult birth, but that was only to be expected. There were all kinds of misconceptions to be got out of the way. Then there are always those who are blindly conservative, who dread any form of innovation—and I am using the word "conservative" at the moment with a small "c", because in the other place I found myself surrounded by those of little faith from every point of the compass.
But, fortunately for me, I had also some exceedingly good friends. Earlier to-day I was reminding Lord Robbins of an occasion at Covent Garden away in the grey dawn when we met there together. The Open University was mentioned in a derisory way from some source or other. He came up to me and said, "Do not let them break your spirit". I treasured those words at that point of time, because I was almost despairing of finding any top civil servant who would give me really friendly counselling. Then at that moment, who comes along to Belgrave Square, where we had raised our flag of independence, but Sir William Armstrong. It is always helpful to have the boss on your side. So there I was. There was a great deal of doubt. One can forget about the superficial kind of doubts, but an entirely different matter was the perfectly proper intellectual criticisms and scepticisms of those who treasured the quality of universities, who feared that some gimmick might be imposed on them, presuming to use the name "university" without through its scholarship justifying that term. It was very encouraging when doubts were of that serious nature. I do not think Saint Paul or any of the

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other saints ever struggled harder than I did to convert the doubters into supporters; and that was done with considerable success.
So we got going, and my great advantage was that the Prime Minister gave me total delegated responsibility. Following that, our planning committee was set up, and I knew when Sir Peter Venables agreed to preside over the original planning committee that I was in very safe hands. He kept it on the straight and narrow path and would not allow any deviation. He said: "The Prime Minister has asked us to establish an independent university and that is what we are going to do".
But we have at the moment reached an extraordinary situation. In a letter to The Times the other day, I put the core of some of the present difficulty. It seems almost incredible that for the year 1975 only 3,000 new students are going to be accepted and over 30,000 applicants turned away. There will be the 3,000 new students. There will be another 11,000 students who were turned away last year, making a total of 14,000. But how extravagant can we be? This country has a genius for throwing away its assets. We established with great difficulty an Open University. We are now finding that it is meeting a very real need, and when applicants come along we are actually saying to over 30,000, "We cannot take you on".
I want to ask noble Lords what kind of madness they think this is. I am not to-day going to deal at any length with any specific points, because I am too conscious that later in the debate very great experts will take part—indeed, that I shall be followed by the noble Lord who is the Chancellor of the Open University and, incidentally, also a student of the Open University. It was a great grief to us when we lost our first Chancellor, Lord Crowther. We could not have had a better or more able friend. He was worldly wise, he knew the ways of the City, he knew the academic world. Therefore, we are doubly fortunate in that when losing Lord Crowther, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, was gallant enough, not to say reckless enough, to be willing to take on this very serious assignment.
I shall say very little about what was crucial in the early days, which was to
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establish the right contacts between the B.B.C. and the academics who were working at Walton Hall. At the B.B.C.'s end, there was Sir Hugh Greene. We had attracted to us some of the most distinguished academics in their respective fields, and it was understandable that they looked a bit askance when they were asked to work on equal terms with educational and television experts at the B.B.C. But again, fortunately for us, Sir Hugh Greene understood perfectly what we were seeking to do and with the help of the noble Lord, Lord Goodman—who was acting, as usual, as an inspired middleman—we overcame a great many of the early difficulties, and made it quite clear that we were having no truck with those who wanted us to have a kind of "dawn patrol", with the idea that the time that no one else wanted on radio or television was good enough for a great university. We got rid of that idea.
The noble Lord, Lord Hill of Luton, is in his place, and I am glad to see that he will speak later. He will not mind my saying that I had a certain apprehension when Sir Hugh—not the devil we knew, but the saint we knew—vanished, and in his place, came the noble Lord, Lord Hill. But I am bound to say that very soon we all found that we again had an absolutely staunch and invaluable friend, so there was no problem at all that we were going to be let down. We now know that we need a great deal more radio and television space. I hope that one day we shall have a fourth channel; not the whole of it, but I hope that in the main it will be used for educational purposes.
I do not want to linger, because I know that there are others who will take part in this debate who can enlarge on those aspects with greater authority than I can. But I do want to say that the very virtues of the Open University can become a disadvantage. By that I mean that, first of all, we have to establish its academic status; there can be no compromise whatsoever on that. I even had friends of mine in my own Party who seemed to think that what was more essential was to go ahead with a kind of reach-me-down pair of old trousers to patch up some of the more naked parts of adult education. I explained at the time that you would never up-grade adult

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education in that most conservative of Departments, the Department of Education and Science, unless you could do it from the top downwards, and you should not try to go up the other way. I now believe that those working in this difficult and invaluable field of adult education, struggling with people who left school at 14 or 15, and all the rest of it, now realise that the Open University is their most valuable ally.
First, we had to establish the fact that those who were prepared to accept the disciplines of study—and maybe greater and harsher disciplines than at a residential university—were not going to be discouraged, indeed insulted, by being offered a second class degree. Please let me say that the Open University is not a kind of educational ghetto for the poor. It is not a poor man's university, a rich man's university, a white man's or black man's university, and it is not specially for the able or the disabled. I want to stress that. I hope that we will get rid of all this nonsense about there being something sadly wrong because in the first year its graduates were mainly teachers, instead of miners, engineers or dustmen. That was exactly how we planned it, and it is what we wished. To-day we are often asking teachers in this country to teach subjects that they themselves were never taught. We are asking teachers to-day to teach subjects about which they desperately need their knowledge brought up-to-date. Of course the teachers were first off the mark, and they had financial and other inducements and advantages in taking their degrees, but that was precisely one of the purposes for which this university was established.
I repeat again that from strength we can provide all kinds of ancillary services. We can help the physically handicapped. May I say that I hope that the newly appointed Minister for the Disabled in the other House will observe that the Open University can do more for the physically disabled than all our other universities put together. It is already doing that, and it will do a great deal more in the future. In saying that, I am not denigrating the work of the older universities, but in the nature of things the Open University is better able to do this work.
When I look back on my own undergraduate days. I remember two professors to whom I listened eagerly and whom I have loved and respected for the rest of my life, but we did not waste our time on the others. Most of us here who have had university education know that in the closed shop of a residential university there can be some rather dark corners. I am glad to see the noble Lord, Lord Robbins, being perhaps rather indiscreet and nodding his head in, I think, agreement. But you cannot have dark corners in an open university. Instead of a loading scholar being confined to a narrow group of students in his physical presence, we can have the leading scholars of the world—and we can draw them from all over the world—instead of being confined in a room projected on radio and television. There is no limit to the numbers that they can reach. No one is forced to listen, but the whole idea was that we should bring the best in higher education within the reach of all those who could be advantaged by it.
I mentioned those who are physically disabled, and the work that the Open University is beginning to do for the blind, the deaf, and those who are paralysed. But we really must behave ourselves. We cannot expect this University to carry out all the normal duties of bringing forward both undergraduates and post-graduate students, then load on to its back as well a whole world of students with special difficulties, and carrying special expenses that other universities cannot be expected to take. What I am hoping for to-day from your Lordships' House is that those of your Lordships who are concerned for students in general, and those who have a particular concern for the disabled and others, will make it clear to the Government of the day that we are not irresponsible people, that we are not doing shallow special pleading, that we know all the difficulties, but all the same more money must be forthcoming.
Originally, we said that the minimum intake was 25,000 students a year if we were to keep the advantages of scale. What is the sense in throwing away those advantages? I see the noble Baroness, Lady Summerskill, who, I hope, is taking part later. I do not think I need be very

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wise to anticipate that she will say something in favour of women who might otherwise be unable to be advantaged by higher education. We all know of the young women, and the older women as well, who for certain years are tied to the kitchen sink. They are looking after their children. They love their homes, their children and husbands, but they often feel intellectually starved. Again, this University has a claim on all of us, because it can also go right into the home. It can look after the daughter who is perhaps tending sick parents or sick relatives, and the mother who is looking after young children. It can do all that.
But there is another aspect of this which worries me greatly, possibly more than anything else. At the beginning when we decided that only the highest academic standards would be acceptable a number of distinguished men and women took their academic life in their hands and went out to the muddy wilderness of Walton Hall. They had to put on their gumboots to reach their rooms and faced all kinds of physical disabilities which they did not mind, but when we employed them we stated that they would have the same terms of employment as at other universities. In other words, they would have opportunities for research as well as for teaching and preparing programmes. Frankly we are not keeping our word to some of those people and we have no right to expect them to continue in our service unless we make it quite clear that we admire the courage which they show, that we respect their scholarship and that we will not go on exploiting them to the extent we are doing.
My Lords, there is so much ground to cover. We have in Dr. Walter Perry a distinguished Vice-Chancellor—I say that not because he comes from my own university—and I am sure that he has put before the Government a compelling case for more financial help if we really want this university to carry out all those various commitments. However, I would make one word of criticism of Dr. Walter. I think he is too modest; I think he may be in danger of being battered under by the Department of Education and Science and the Treasury and I would just say that there would have been no Open University if, in the early days, we had not fought so hard for what we believed
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was the absolute minimum of financial support to give credibility and possibility to this scheme.
At the present moment the university is bombarded with requests for courses in all kinds of subjects, including occupational courses. It will willingly do that extra work. I was in India in October and I found there that the Minister of Education had been at Walton Hall thinking of an Open University for India, which is nonsense if you take it literally, but they were adapting parts that would be suitable in the sub-Continent of India. I was in tiny Mauritius where I found again great excitement about the Open University. But you do not have to go to the poorer parts of the world. I have here the shortened version of the work of the Open University for circulation in America. The Open University has its offices in New York, because there are so many demands for advice, consultations and adaptations. We must consider the problems of the disabled. There are also many women who have never had opportunities owing to domestic circumstances and there is the whole wide world outside these shores where there is faith in British scholarship and where countless people want to know about us.
In conclusion, because I am conscious of the speakers who will follow me and who will talk with great expertise, which I cannot equal, I say: can we not do one thing properly? Must we start something so often and then denigrate it? Cannot we maintain the standards of academic excellence, give the extra laboratories, libraries and other facilities the university requires? Let this concept spread its wings throughout the world and remember that in doing so it is not only sustaining its own prestige, but is also doing a great deal for the teaching of the English language throughout the world and for respect of this country's scholarship.
2.57 p.m.
LORD BEAUMONT OF WHITLEY: My Lords, in joining the noble Baroness, Lady Lee of Asheridge, in asking this question I know I am expressing, on behalf of all your Lordships, our gratitude to her for raising this important subject this afternoon. It is a matter of policy which should demand the highest priority within the field of higher education. The experiment of the Open University is of

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tremendous value. But it is no longer an experiment; it is a proved success. In any terms you care to name, whether it be of human beings or cost effectiveness, the Open University comes out tops. I think we can say that this is one of the achievements which will most be put down to the credit of the last Labour Government, which introduced the concept, and we all know how much is owed to the noble Baroness herself. Like her I will not attempt to move over the wide number of subjects which one could raise in this connection at the moment. Many of us hope, as does she, Mat with the coming of a fourth television channel we will be able to augment seriously the work of the Open University. It is possible that there are many ancillary services which the Open University can give in the whole field of adult education, but if I interpret the noble Baroness's feelings rightly these services must come second and after the proper use of the Open University for the undergraduates and now for the further degrees for which people are studying.
It is, of course, a university which I hope will get a great deal of sympathy from the Secretary of State of the Department of Education and Science. For he has gone on record as saying that he is against selection at 11, 12, 16, 18 or any other age. Many indignant people have written letters to The Times and other newspapers saying, "How can you have such an absurd thing as a comprehensive university?" My Lords, we have a comprehensive university: it is the Open University, a university where, in a way, the students select themselves. Unfortunately, owing to lack of space, which is really lack of money, there are not as many as we should like, but they are selected on order of application. No one is turned down because he or she has not the entry qualifications, although of course some people are given the advice that they probably are not yet capable of taking advantage of it. But we have a comprehensive university and I hope therefore that the Secretary of State will back his words with his actions and his actions with money. I think attention should be paid to the experiment which the last Government brought in, to my mind unadvisedly, of bringing in some people at 18. Now, I know this is an
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experiment and there may be a considerable case for continuing it for quite a long time until a judgment is made. But in my view it is a great pity if people are excluded from the Open University, as indeed they are, because some of their places are taken by this second-thought experiment of what you can do with 18 year olds who for some reason or another do not go to the ordinary universities. We know already that in fact there is not a great demand for these places and that the drop-out rate is extremely high and this is possibly something which the Government should re-examine.
But there is one major point which I wish to make to-day, along with one major series of questions I wish to ask the Minister of which I hope by rather informal means that I have given him some notice. One of the most important ideas of the Open University is that it should be a university of the second chance; that it would give people who did not have the possibility of going to an ordinary university a chance to get a university degree, and to earn one. I think there is still something lacking with regard to some of the least well-off of the people who might be the best students of the Open University. It has been calculated that the real costs to someone taking an Open University course is something in the neighbourhood of £500 over the whole period of the course—an amount which is almost certainly going up; my figures may be well out of date. These costs are covered to some extent by grants, but these grants are not mandatory grants, they are discretionary; and there is a wide difference in the various ways that different education authorities make these grants. I think this should be corrected. I really think that if we are to deal with the Open University and to give it a fair crack of the whip, these grants should be made mandatory and should cover nearly the full costs.
This is particularly so because some of the people who could most benefit from the Open University are the worst-off. There are women who are divorced, possibly, or widowed, or even deserted, who have children to look after, who are living on the edge of the poverty line and who cannot afford these extra costs. There are disabled people who are in the same situation; and there are people who

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are unemployed who are in the same situation. The sum of £500 over a period of four or five years may not sound a great deal, but to these people it is a lot. Furthermore, it falls unevenly in its impact on many of them because, for instance, the real costs may depend on how far they live from one or the teaching centres; and if they are going regularly to attend a teaching centre then, even with the best will in the world, the very wide distribution of teaching centres is such that they may incur very real costs.
These people may be (indeed, one knows that they very often are) deterred from trying to get this degree, which would be not only something which we would all want them to have for its own sake but something which might enable them to give back something to the community afterwards, for the costs involved—the costs which, in theory, are not really meant to be there. I know that if there is real hardship then there is a hardship fund, but as we all know that is not the right answer. The machinery should be there from the beginning, to make certain that no one cannot afford to go to the Open University. This is the situation at the moment, that some of the people who could most benefit from it cannot afford it. I hope that the Government will really look at this problem and establish a blanket scheme so that everyone who could benefit from it will be able to take advantage of it.
3.4 p.m.
LORD GARDINER: My Lords, I am particularly grateful to my noble friend Lady Lee of Asheridge for asking this Question and for so enabling this House, for the first time, I think, to consider this unique institution; and, of course, as all your Lordships know, if the fact of the Open University is due to any one person it is due to my noble friend Lady Lee. May I say at the outset that I agree with her in what she has always maintained about the Open University; namely, that what matters most is its academic standards. She has always fought for this. There was a danger that it might either be, or be thought to be, a "soft" way to get a degree, but I think that at the time at which we are speaking one can say that the whole British educational world now recognizes
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that it is in fact more difficult to get a degree at the Open University than at a conventional university.
My Lords, it has seemd to me that perhaps the best help I can give to your Lordships' House in this field is to explain how the Open University works, which of course a great many people do not know at all. This is not a surprise, because it is unique. One of the difficulties is the time taken by the academic and administrative staff at Milton Keynes to deal with the vast numbers of educationists who come there from all over the world to find out how it works. The British Council has laid on a course which takes a fortnight, as they reckon that it is not possible to understand how it works in less than a fortnight. I am bound to say that when the Senate did me the honour to elect me Chancellor, and I naturally wanted to find out how it worked, I found it extremely difficult. I read stacks of the minutes of the Council and the minutes of the Senate and the innumerable other committees which all universities, apparently, need to have, and I came to the conclusion that I should never really understand how it worked unless I saw it on the ground. It was really for that reason that I became a student until, at long last, I know how it works.
In the first place, it is open. My distinguished predecessor used to say, "It is open as to people, open as to places, open as to methods and open as to ideas". You require, of course, no academic qualification to become a student. If you left school at 14 and have not studied anything for years, you may be advised to go to a college to take one of the short courses on how to study, but that is up to you. Then, my Lords, it is multidisciplinary, so you can engage yourself at work in one faculty the first year and another faculty the next year. It works on a basis of credits, which is of course quite common in America and elsewhere, though not here, except, I think, in Scotland. You need six credits for a pass degree and eight credits for an honours degree. Most of the courses gain you only one credit. There are exemptions for existing academic qualifications, the maximum exemptions being three credits. Most people—the large majority—find that they can do only one course a year. One or two of the foundation courses

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rate two credits; most of them are one-credit courses, although there are also half-credit courses. So, of course, you can take your time. The quickest you can possibly be if you do two courses a year, which is the maximum you can do, and if you have the maximum exemptions because you already have a university degree, is two years. That is very exceptional. If you have no existing academic qualifications you may, and probably will, do one course a year for six years to acquire your six credits.
Once a month you receive your course materials which are written by the academic team. It is usual, I think, to judge the academic standards at a university by seeing what is the percentage of doctorates among the academics. Judged by that standard, the Open University comes next after Oxford and Cambridge and before any other university; and the course materials are extraordinarily good. They are usually in four units, so one is part of a week's work. I say "part of" because, of course, there are the set books to be read, there is a radio programme and a television programme every week, and once a week you can go to your local tutorial centre to see your counsellor and your tutor. These centres are all over the country, usually held in some form of educational establishment in the evenings. We operate by the calendar year. Every course starts in January, and for many courses a compulsory week's residential summer school is required; and it closes in November with examinations. You are in fact marked all the way through. Every month you have a computer-marked assignment and a tutor-marked assignment. You are additionally marked for your work at summer school, and the concluding examinations are marked by outside examiners.
The biggest group so far is comprised, as has been said, of teachers. I cannot help thinking this is for the good of the education of the country. Many teachers have nothing but their teacher training certificate, and here is a teacher teaching, say, science in a secondary school who is really only one move in front of the form. Now he will be a fully qualified science teacher. I should have thought that would do a great deal to raise standards generally.
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The second largest group are housewives. The teachers, of course, have something materially to gain because they get additional remuneration for their additional qualification. Many students have nothing to gain at all, and that applies I think to most of the housewives. In my own tutorial group there are in fact twice as many women as men; the teachers as a proportion are declining; the women students are increasing and they are doing it for a love of learning. One of my fellow students in my group told me that she became an Open University student simply because her children were studying particular subjects and she wanted to be able to understand their work so that they could all discuss it together. We have, of course, a certain number of husband and wife teams who are both students of the same subject. Indeed, we have many groups. I do not think my noble friend Lord Harris is here now, but I should like to say how very sympathetic and co-operative the Home Office has been in relation to long-term prisoners, of whom we have now I think some 200 students of the university.
My Lords, many comparisons can be made between this unique system and the conventional university. For my part I am naturally glad to know that we are the last university in the country which is likely to have a riot on the campus, because we do not have any students on the campus—or only occasionally. But if you do go to Milton Keynes on the day when for some reason or other there are present students as well as staff you can be pretty sure that all the serious looking men and women in their thirties and forties, and men with short hair, are students, and any bearded or long-haired young men will almost certainly be staff. There is a similar difference on degree days. We did get everybody into Alexandra Palace last year; that can never happen again. This year I have so far conferred degrees in Edinburgh and Cardiff, London and Manchester, and am about to do so in Belfast and in Birmingham. At a conventional university on degree days one sees a proud father or mother photographing their son or daughter in cap and gown. With us, of course, it is the proud children photographing mum or dad.

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The family is enormously important. Nobody ought to dream of becoming a university student unless he has the active support of the family, otherwise it is hopeless. It is no good pretending it does not interrupt life as a whole because it does. There is absolutely no comparison at all with the amount of time which I am having to devote, even part time, as an Open University student and the amount of work that I had to do at Oxford to get a degree in law 50 years ago. One needs a great deal of determination to see it through.
The course fees and summer school fees, and the cost of the set books, amount to about £100 a year; so if you are going to take four years the cost would be about £400. Most local education authorities are prepared to consider a grant in needy cases, if only for the summer school fees. But, of course, the course affects life as a whole. The children have to accept the fact that between certain hours on certain days dad or mum will be studying in some bedroom and cannot be interrupted. My wife always knows that on Thursdays, which is my tutorial night, I shall not be in for dinner until 9.15. Great staying powers are required to see this through.
Finally, if I may say something on the subject of money, it seems extraordinary that for the Open University, so highly regarded and going so well, the last Government should have cut the grant to the extent that they did. There is a demand for continuing education which we can hardly meet. We have a certain number of what we call post-experience courses, but we are at present under call from doctors, dentists, nurses, physiotherapists, public health inspectors, chartered accountants, bankers, architects, and even the Lord Chancellor has asked for help in courses for the retraining of magistrates. We cannot at the moment touch any of these. The basic figures are the ones to which he has referred; that is to say, we know now, although the list of applicants for 1975 is not finalised, there will be about 44,000. We must, of course, give precedence to the existing students who have already started reading for a degree. If you allow for them that leaves only 14,000 places, and as we always operated on the first-come, first-served basis we have to take next the 11,000 who had to be turned down last
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year. That means that we are left with only 3,000 new places and shall have to turn away 30,000 students. As my noble friend has said, this means that we shall lose our economies of scale.
The capital cost of an Open University student is about 6 per cent. of the capital cost of a conventional university student—that is, if you disregard any living accommodation which a conventional university may have to provide. If you include that, the Open University student cost is about 3 per cent, of that of a conventional university. The conventional university has to provide lecture halls which are used for only 32 weeks in the year. The staff/student ratio is quite different. The average conventional university ratio is one academic to eight students; in the Open University it is one academic for 180 students. All this cost-effectiveness is going to be minimised unless the Government restore the university's grant to what it used to be. It costs about £4,000 to make a 24-minute television programme. That cost is exactly the same whether 10 students or 10,000 students are looking at it, so that the cost of additional students is comparatively small.
My Lords, I think I can say that the university has made a splendid start against the most enormous difficulties. How my noble friend ever got it through administratively, I do not know. How the Vice-Chancellor and his colleagues got it started in the time they did, I do not know. It is, as I have said, a unique contribution to a method of education, parts of which—correspondence schools and so on—have been found before but never combined as they are in the Open University. I hope very much therefore that my noble friend Lord Garnsworthy may be able to tell us that the Government are seriously considering their part in relation to the future of this unique organisation.
3.19 p.m.
VISCOUNT SAMUEL: My Lords, I should like to express my own wholehearted support for the Open University and, like previous speakers, to pay my tribute to my noble friend Lady Lee of Asheridge. Without her skill in piloting it through, it might never have come into existence. I think part of her success was due to getting the top people on to the planning committee. One of

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them we shall hear to-day, the noble Lord, Lord Fulton. Some Members of the Party opposite were doubtful whether the whole thing was worth while, and not all Labour leaders were persuaded to give their support. The late Mr. Iain Macleod dubbed it as "nonsense". But with the personal support of Harold Wilson when Prime Minister on a previous occasion, as the noble Baroness has said, the University came into existence four years ago.
Teaching began in 1971, and some students have already graduated and have their B.A.s. The noble Baroness, Lady Lee of Asheridge, complained about the limitation on numbers. There are two kinds of people: those who say, "my cup is half empty", and those who say, "my cup is still half full". I am not alarmed at the slow growth of the University. It has to grow by stages, and the fact that it has no less than 42,000 students spread all over the United Kingdom to my mind is a tremendous achievement, and if more money is available through the years it will play a leading part.
My noble and learned friend Lord Gardiner called the Open University "open" because it was open to all, and he has stressed that there are no entrance examinations. I should like to elaborate on that a little. Many school leavers do not go on to any university because at that time they cannot afford the time or the money; some do not see the need of a university education; some are not able to pass the entrance examinations required of all other universities; and many do not have the persistence to start and to carry on to the end. Later in life many realise the number of occupations that are closed to them, and many teachers who thought that a Teachers' Training College Diploma was enough find later that they need something more.
One can enter the Open University at any time in one's life as soon as one has decided, and as the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont of Whitley, has said, it is the university of the second chance. It is true that lots of hard work is involved, as my noble and learned friend Lord Gardiner has explained. There are six courses, less exemptions if you have professional qualifications. I understand
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that each course involves about 350 hours of work, which works out at two hours a day throughout the year for six years on top of earning a living. Some give up, but most persist in spite of the greatest difficulties. I should like to commend to your Lordships' attention a book that has just come out called The Open University Opens, edited by Jeremy Tunstall. It is a book by 30 contributors and to my mind it is a model of what such a book should be. Ten students there relate some of their experiences, but the most important chapter of the book is the first which is, "An Interim History" by Brian MacArthur, the editor of The Times Higher Education Supplement.
As Lord Gardiner has said, this idea of an Open University has already been widely copied. Several are planned for the United States, and even Israel, which is ready to try anything, has begun to plan for one. But here I should like to utter a word of warning. There cannot be short cuts. Certain novelties in the Open University at Milton Keynes are not really essential. You do not have to have the United States credit system; and you do not have to have a university year that runs from January to November. Those are conveniences but they are not essential. But there are four things in my opinion that are absolutely vital. You cannot have any kind of entrance examination; you must have correspondence courses and tutors whom the students can meet; you must have specially devised television and radio programmes with your own text books; and you must give a degree that is accepted by all other universities as a basis for post-graduate study.
The United Kingdom network of part-time tutors is spread all over the country and their numbers run into several thousands. Summer schools are given in empty university buildings. Tutors meet students, unlike other correspondence courses. The number of headquarters staff is very considerable—1,500. Even so, as Lord Gardiner has explained, the cost is much less than that at an ordinary university. There are no student classrooms; you do not have to have student libraries because the students can use their own local libraries; and for science there are no expensive laboratories required because science students are sent

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their own equipment to use at home. Incidentally, this is so ingenious, so cheap and boxed so carefully that it is being bought by many African and Asian Governments for use in their own schools. Even the specially prepared radio and television text books are getting a wide sale outside the university.
I will end by saying that I think the University is a brilliant idea. It has already proved itself. I am not too unhappy at its slow growth; it still has to work itself in. But, together with the National Health Service, I should like to suggest that the Open University is one of the biggest contributions made by Britain in the second half of the 20th century.
3.28 p.m.
THE LORD BISHOP OF SAINT EDMUNDSBURY AND IPSWICH: My Lords, I feel brash at making any contribution to this debate when people of such experience and knowledge of the Open University are speaking. I was persuaded that I should take part by conversations I have had with two graduates in the first batch of graduates of the Open University and one of the tutors. Those two first graduates expressed to me the sense of personal enrichment and fulfilment which had come to them through the courses they had taken. This seems to me very much a dimension of life in which I am concerned, both personally and professionally. I believe that to a large number of people in this country the Open University is giving an opportunity of enrichment and maturity which, for one reason or another, they were denied when they were young. I think also it is of value to the nation in that it is reducing, even if perhaps to only a small extent, the educational disparities to be found in the population. It is giving to people who did not have it earlier the opportunity to receive higher education.
I understand that in 1973 the Government requested the Open University to experiment with the admission of school-leavers at the age of 18 instead of 21, and this has already been referred to during our debate. I do not know the reason for this request—perhaps I ought to have tried to discover it before speaking—but my immediate reaction, and that of other
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people who are concerned with these matters to whom I have spoken, is one of some perplexity, because there are educational facilities, not only in the universities but in polytechnics and other places, available for those school-leavers who are competent which would give them the kind of higher education they desire. These opportunities, until the Open University was established, were largely denied to older people who in the course of their lives had come to realise gaps in their intellectual equipment of which they had not been conscious when they were leaving school.
We have been told several times in this debate of the insufficient resources which are available for the Open University to enable it to meet all the demands upon it from people who desire to continue their education in this way. I share with, I believe, the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont, some dismay in case the use of the resources available for the 500 18-year-olds who started this year leads to the diversion of opportunity from those people who were the primary target, so to speak—in other words, those for whom the Open University was primarily designed to help.
The noble Baroness, Lady Lee, referred to the services offered by the Open University to particular kinds of people as "ancillary services", and she mentioned people who were disabled in various ways. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, mentioned long-term prisoners, and it seems to me that if some advantage is given to people in those categories, this would be a most important service on the human level. I wonder whether the authorities might consider that some weighting of this kind could be given to applicants from the areas which the Plowden Report in 1967 called "educationally deprived areas"—those areas where educational facilities are not so freely available as in some other areas.
My Lords, I could really sum up this whole debate by a piece of what might perhaps be considered ecclesiastical jargon, and simply say, "Amen" to everything that has been said in praise and gratitude for the work which has been started.

THE CASE OF DOLOURES AND MARION PRICE
3.33 p.m.
LORD HARRIS OF GREENWICH: My Lords, I agologise to my noble friend Lady Summerskill for intervening at this point, but I am now in a position to answer in more detail the Question which was asked by my noble friend Lord Brockway this morning. My right honourable friend the Home Secretary, in answer to a Private Notice Question in another place concerning the Price sisters, has just made the following Statement:
"As the House will be aware, the Price sisters were sentenced to life imprisonment and to concurrent sentences of 20 years' imprisonment in November, 1973, for their role in the bomb outrages at the Old Bailey and elsewhere. They have been on hunger strike in Brixton prison since December last. This action has been a matter of grave concern not only to the medical and other staff at the prison but, I believe, to Members on both sides of the House. But the view has long been taken that a prison medical officer would be neglecting the duty laid on him by Parliament if he let the health of a prisoner in his charge on hunger strike be endangered without attempting to help. Accordingly, the decision to feed a prisoner compulsorily has always been regarded as a medical matter for the judgment of the responsible doctor. It is on this basis of medical judgment that artificial feeding of the Price sisters began on December 3, 1973, and continued until Saturday, May 18. Although the procedure is commonly described as forcible feeding, it depends in practice on a certain minimal degree of co-operation from the subjects. The medical officers have decided that the degree of non-co-operation the sisters have displayed in the previous few days made it dangerous to continue with the feeding at present. The sisters remain under close medical supervision and will continue to receive all possible care and attention."
My Lords, that ends the Statement.
3.35 p.m.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, may I express appreciation for that Statement
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and say that I sympathise deeply with the Home Secretary in this dilemma, and also sympathise with the doctors at Brixton Prison who have this acute problem. As I indicated earlier, I have seen these two girls, and when I saw them I made clear—and the Home Office took notes of our conversation and will be able to confirm this—my deep disagreement with the methods that they had employed, though I am in favour of a united Ireland and a Socialist Ireland, which was their objective. They surprised me by how reasonable and sensitive they were. I had expected two women "toughs". They were not that in any way at all.
May I say, arising out of the Statement which has been made, that my understanding about the position of artificial feeding is that when I met the Price sisters they were not physically resisting it. That is to say, when the doctors required them to lie down to receive the food they did so. All they did in resistance was, after they had the food, to seek to vomit it. It is now reported that in the past few days they have changed their attitude, and that they have physically resisted the operation of artificial feeding. May I ask whether it is a decision of the doctors that if there is physical resistance the artificial feeding should not continue? I ask because I remember the suffragette days when artificial feeding was maintained even when there was physical resistance. The result of the action of the doctors is that these girls have had no food for six days except for the water that they are taking. I have received reports from a Catholic priest who has visited them that they are in the most dire physical condition. I should like to suggest to Her Majesty's Government in this situation that they must consider the effect if anything happens to these girls in worsening the terrible situation which already exists in Northern Ireland.
THE LORD PRIVY SEAL (LORD SHEPHERD): My Lords, I am sorry to intervene; I fully understand my noble friend's feelings in this matter. But I think we have an understanding here that we can make a short statement with the purpose of asking questions. I have a feeling my noble friend, because of his feelings in this matter, is perhaps now going into more of a speech than what

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we regard as an intervention on a Statement. If my noble friend has a further question to put to my noble friend Lord Harris of Greenwich, I should be grateful if he would do so.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, I would only remark that in this House when Statements are made, statements are made by the Leaders of the Opposition Parties in reply which are not merely in the form of questions. In this House we are all equals, and a Back-Bencher has just as much right as the Leader of a Party to make a statement when a Statement is made of this character.
LORD HAILSHAM OF SAINT MARYLEBONE: My Lords, surely this was an Answer to a Private Notice Question, not a Statement. I submit that it is not appropriate—I say this in support of what the Leader of the House has said—that a debate should take place in this House on what was originated in another place, and what, in another place, took the form of a Question.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, the Private Notice Question originated in this House, certainly so far as I am concerned. I was aware of it at about half-past nine this morning when I made the decision that it was a matter that came within our rules. I would only say to my noble friend that it is true one can make a statement, we are very generous here; but I have a feeling that the noble Lord is taking a little too long. If he has another question I hope that he will put it, or if he wishes, he may leave it to my noble friend to reply to what he has said already. If he then has a further supplementary question perhaps he will put it.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, I will not continue this argument, though I think I am right in my interpretation of it. I will ask whether the Minister is aware that I will be visiting these two girls this evening, and that I will then urge upon them to end their hunger strike because it is much more desirable that they should live for the Ireland they want than die for it. After I have seen them I shall be very glad, since I have recently been in contact with the Home Office, to discuss the matter.
LORD HARRIS OF GREENWICH: My Lords, I am grateful for what my noble friend said earlier, and in particular for what he has just said. May I also confirm, in answer to a question which he specifically asked, that so far as we are concerned this is entirely a medical matter for the medical staff at Brixton. While I say that, let me agree with my noble friend in his implied tribute to the medical staff at Brixton, who are only doing their best to handle this very painful and troublesome matter. I think we are all grateful to them for the work they are trying to carry out in this respect.
LORD HAILSHAM OF SAINT MARYLEBONE: My Lords, I apologise to the House for not being here when the question was originally asked; I am afraid I was taken by surprise. May I ask the noble Lord whether he is aware that, while we on this side of the House are of course deeply sympathetic with the embarrassment which this situation must be causing both the prison authorities and the Home Office, and indeed the medical authorities at the prison, many of us feel very strongly that this was an abominable crime for which they were sent to prison, and that they have no right, by threatening to commit suicide, to choose the place of their imprisonment?
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, may I say to my noble friend how pleased I am to hear that they are regarding this as a medical matter. This is the only sane way to approach it. We have had emotional speeches, such as we have just heard from the Dispatch Box opposite, but that does not help at all at this moment. What we are all concerned with, I hope, is that these girls should continue to live. I feel certain that we can leave it in the hands of the doctors who are now in charge to see that that will be so.
LORD HARRIS OF GREENWICH: My Lords, may I just say this in answer particularly to what the noble and learned Viscount said and what my noble friend has just added. I would remind the House of what my right honourable friend the Home Secretary said when he wrote to my noble friend on, I think, March 20, specifically on the question of the Price sisters. He pointed out that

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they were being kept in Brixton, which is a man's remand prison, and he said,:
"Their presence there can only be temporary. In the course of the next few months a move will, in any event, be necessary. When the time for that move comes, I am perfectly willing to consider, taking into account both compassionate and security considerations, whether it would be right to transfer them to Northern Ireland. But I am sure you will agree that such a decision should not be taken in response to demonstrations or other pressure. The weighing of compassionate and other circumstances in relation to the location of particular prisoners should not be a function of the amount of notice they attract."
LORD HAILSHAM OF SAINT MARYLEBONE: My Lords, will the noble Lord convey to his noble friend that there was nothing whatever emotional in the question that I put? There is on this side a strong desire to see that the rule of law is maintained. We are very grateful for the stand which has so far been taken. Will he also accept from us that we fully recognise that this is a medical matter and should be in the hands of professional people?

NORTHERN IRELAND: SUNNINGDALE AGREEMENT
Following is the Statement referred to earlier:
"I will, with permission, make a Statement. I must express regret for its length but it deals with matters arising from, or connected with, the Sunningdale agreement which, as the House will know, left a number of matters for later resolution. I am sure that I should inform the House fully of the developing situation regarding the Council of Ireland, policing, detention and the report of the Law Enforcement Commission.
"The House will be aware that the Northern Ireland Executive issued last night a statement on the basis upon which it is prepared to proceed in relation to a Council of Ireland. The proposals that they put forward have emerged from lengthy discussions which have taken place over a period of many weeks within the Northern Ireland Administration. I am making arrangements to have this statement placed in the Library of the House.
"I have, on behalf of Her Majestys Government, welcomed this statement which provides a realistic and sensible basis on which the North and South of Ireland can work together. The proposals now put forward carefully protect the interests of both communities and are consistent with the over-riding requirement in the Constitution Act that there can be no change in the status of Northern Ireland without the consent of the majority of the people in Northern Ireland. It is good
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sense that there should be institutions in Ireland as a whole so that the people there work together in co-operation with one another, in the interest of all.
"The Sunningdale agreement also provided for a limited, and carefully defined, role for a Council of Ministers in relation to policing. In particular, Her Majesty's Government undertook that appointments to the Northern Ireland police authority would be made after consultation with the Northern Ireland Executive, which would consult with the Council of Ministers. I propose to lay before the House immediately after the Recess an Order reconstituting the police authority. In addition, steps have been taken to set up an all-Party Committee from the Assembly to examine how best to introduce effective policing throughout Northern Ireland with particular reference to the need to achieve public identification with the police. That committee will meet shortly.
"At Sunningdale, Her Majesty's Government gave a firm commitment to bring detention to an end in Northern Ireland for all sections of the community as soon as the security situation permits. That remains Her Majesty's Government's policy and, alongside this, urgent thought is being given to the best way in which persons released from detention can be helped to re-establish themselves in their local communities.
"The problem of fugitive offenders was left unresolved at Sunningdale and, following the conference, Her Majesty's Government and the Irish Government jointly set up a Commission to advise them on the most effective means, from a legal point of view, of bringing to justice fugitive political offenders in Ireland. The Commission completed their work and presented their report to both Governments on April 25. I have today laid the report before the House, and copies are available in the Vote Office.
"I should like, first of all, to place on record my gratitude, and the gratitude of the House, to the members of the Commission, for the care, skill and speed with which they performed their complex task.
"Her Majesty's Government and the Irish Government re-affirm the view expressed by all parties at Sunningdale that persons committing crimes of violence, however motivated, in any part of Ireland should be brought to trial irrespective of the part of Ireland in which they are located. Agreement has been reached by both Governments on the action to be taken on the Commission's report and a statement in similar terms is also being made to the Dail this afternoon by the Irish Minister for Justice.
"The Commission considered, but rejected, the establishment of mixed courts comprising judges from Northern Ireland and the Republic and also, as not offering a practicable immediate solution, the setting up of an all-Ireland court. The Commission agreed that it would be legally feasible to confer power on the courts in both parts of Ireland so that the courts in each part would be able to try certain specified crimes wherever in Ireland they were committed. All the members recommended this as a method which could be introduced quickly. The United Kingdom members

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made it clear that they would have preferred the extradition solution, but the members from the Republic could not advise that an agreement or legislation purporting to extradite fugitive political offenders would be valid under the Irish Constitution.
"Her Majesty's Government and the Irish Government have accepted the agreed recommendation contained in the report and, whilst retaining existing extradition arrangements, will introduce reciprocal legislation so that the courts in each part of Ireland will have jurisdiction to try under their own domestic law certain offences wherever committed in Ireland. It is a matter of regret to Her Majesty's Government that the Commission disagreed about the legality of amending the Irish extradition law, but it is clear from the report that all the members of the Commission are confident that the extension of jurisdiction is not open to any valid objecion in law.
"The effect of this proposed legislation will be that in future those suspected of having committed certain specified terrorist offences in Northern Ireland but who have escaped to the Republic can be tried in the Republic, and those similarly suspected of such crimes in the Republic who have escaped to the North can be tried in Northern Ireland. The existence of the legislation should in itself deter those who commit such crimes in one part of Ireland from seeking refuge in the other part. It will remain open to both Governments to continue to seek extradition whenever they consider it appropriate as a means of dealing with fugitive offenders and, where extradition is sought but not achieved and sufficient evidence is available, prosecution will be undertaken by the authorities of the part of Ireland in which the alleged offender is.
"The two Governments have agreed that there will be the closest co-operation between the police forces in the investigation of offences.
"My right honourable and learned friend and the Irish Attorney General have agreed that there will need to be the closest cooperation between the two Attorney Generals and their staff in conducting prosecutions based primarily or wholly on evidence obtained in the other jurisdiction and that this presents no difficulties which cannot and will not be overcome.
"The two Governments have also agreed to accept the proposals in the report that special security arrangements should be made to encourage witnesses to travel into the other jurisdiction to give evidence; and to include in their respective legislation provisions to enable, in cases where witnesses are unwilling to travel, evidence to be taken on commission in the presence of the court, and of the accused if he wishes, in the way in which the Commission recommended.
"I am confident that the agreement I have announced today will be an important contribution towards bringing to trial those responsible for terrorism in Ireland. Equally important, however, is the prevention of acts of terrorism and the apprehension of those
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who are responsible. Both Governments believe that there is scope for improving Border security to deter terrorists from exploiting the Border and to increase the prospects of catching those who do, and I shall very shortly be meeting Mr. Cooney, the Irish Minister for Justice, to discuss what can be done to improve further the existing co-operation between the security forces on both sides of the Border.
"The tragic strike, which affects the life and welfare of every ordinary man and woman in Northern Ireland, must be in the forefront of all our minds. But this must not deter us from proceeding with measures which offer the best hope for the future of Northern Ireland and to which I have referred in the Statement."

ROYAL ASSENT
3.44 p.m.
THE DEPUTY SPEAKER (VISCOUNT HOOD): My Lords, I have to notify the House, in accordance with the Royal Assent Act 1967, that the Queen has signified her Royal Assent to the following Acts:

Consolidated Fund (No. 3) Act,

Independent Broadcasting Authority Act,

Rabies Act,

Contingencies Fund Act,

Barclays Bank International Act,

United Kingdom Temperance and General Provident Institution Act.

THE OPEN UNIVERSITY
3.45 p.m.
Debate resumed.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, I have been interrupted on one or two occasions, but I was in the process of saying something to the right reverend Prelate who has been discussing the Open University and the fact that it provided education for both sexes. I was impressed by the fact that at the end he said: "Amen to all that!" I hope, in view of the fact that I am going to discuss the position of women in the Open University, that whether he happens to remain or goes he will say, "Amen to all that!"—because we rarely have from those Benches a right reverend Prelate who says that after we have discussed the position of women. In fact, the attitude of those on those Benches to women in their own institution reveals that they

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are, to put it mildly, slightly bigoted on this subject.
I do not claim to be an authority on education, but it must be a very stupid person who can fail to have formed some opinion about the Open University, considering the fact that it is brought into the homes of all of us. I take it that every noble Lord in this House at some time sits and watches the television. I recall that it was about four years ago when I and my husband decided to, "polish up our maths." on the programme of the old Open University. Ah! how easy it is to say this! My noble and learned friend Lord Gardiner is toiling through a course—I think it is an Arts course. I shall not wish him to toil through a mathematics course, because he will say, "I must give this up." After our one viewing of the mathematics programme, we learned not only of our appalling ignorance but also something very refreshing; that was that the Open University had the latest methods of teaching. The Open University has a new method of teaching in this generation. I then began to understand why the "fall-out" in mathematics in the first year is 50 per cent.
That fact should not, however, depress anybody, because the "fall-out" in the other courses is much smaller; and I am told that the "fall-out" in evening courses is much higher. This is my first point, because I am looking at the whole question of education rather broadly. It seems to me that, without a thorough grounding in mathematics and science at school, a student must be handicapped in the choice of a course in the Open University. Therefore, it is not surprising that the majority of students opt for Arts and Sciences and the Social Sciences. I should like to know what is being done to provide an adequate supply of teachers, particularly to girls' schools, to ensure that girls are equipped for a scientific and technical career? When it comes to the Open University a young woman or a young man says, "Here is the chance I have lost". One reason why it is found difficult to take a science course or a mathematics course is that teaching of these subjects in girls' schools is of an abysmally low standard, and a very limited number of teachers are coming forward to teach girls.
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It seems to me that in its initial stages the Open University offered a great attraction to some of the finest men and women in the country. I must confess that I know only the men personally; it simply happens that the women have not yet come my way. These are people with academic knowledge combined with a social sense. I am hoping that this social sense will help to compensate some of them for any economic disadvantage.
I want to ask whether we are sure that after the first fine, careless rapture these dedicated individuals can be replaced. They came forward to help. They were inspired, indeed. But they will have to be replaced and I should like to know just how we are throwing our net in order that we shall find the right people to come into it. I should like to hear that the source of supply is assured. If not, how is it to be refreshed? I feel that we must not allow the momentum of this very fine fillip to the education of the country to slacken for the lack of means. When we see a new movement surging forward we all know that if something happens which might slacken enthusiasm there is the awful chance that it may deteriorate.
My Lords, I want to thank my noble friend Lord Gardiner for his excellent outline of the activities of the university and its administration. I understand that there are 4,000 tutors and councillors from all kinds of institutions of further education each giving five to ten hours per week. Many of them do three times as much work as they are paid for, out of enthusiasm and the stimulation they get from their students. There is no question at all of these people sitting back and saying, "We will do the number of hours that we undertook to do". They are prepared to go on overtime, which is a very refreshing attitude these days.
The Open University course materials provide a very refreshing experience for many of them. I think it should be recognised that through them Open University ideas diffuse into the work of the other institutions, and some of their ideas diffuse back. In fact, all of our educational institutions in this country have benefited from the Open University and its new approach to learning. By creating a university which has had to rethink all its teaching material, the Government

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have given the country a valuable and much-needed shake-up in many of its academic ideas.
My noble friend Baroness Lee talked about those professors in the universities who stimulated students and of others who left them cold. I can recall a physics lecturer who should never have been allowed to address students. He was impossible and, of course, what happened was that the students cut his lectures. The result was that our physics suffered. Finally it is the student who suffers. Here, though, a remarkable thing has happened. A new institution has been created. As my noble friend has said, whereas in the beginning it was derided by those people who sit back in their universities and feel confident that nobody can touch them in scholarship, we find that a small revolution is taking place, because the new men and women who have come along are diffusing their ideas with the older universities.
It has been said, and it is a fact, that other countries regard this innovation of ours as one of great success. I think that it could make a most important contribution to the Third World. Therefore I think it should be regarded by the Chancellor of the Exchequer as a very worthwhile investment providing intellectual dividends of incalculable value. This is a university which can be easily exported. Knowledge, which so many of the countries in the Third World are longing for, could be conveyed in this way. Therefore we must not think just in terms of getting an extra amount of money for certain aspects of the university; we must think in wider terms how this university, if it is made more successful, can make a contribution to the Third World.
The disabled have been mentioned. I am pleased to think that a special contribution is made to the disabled through this university. On Sunday a very important man who works in the university field came to tea and he was simply talking to me without pose, without trying to impress, about how he taught certain deaf students. I think that any highly intelligent man or woman, almost at the end of an academic career, who sits down and teaches students in an elementary manner is making a wonderful contribution to humanity.
The occupational analysis of the applications for entry provides an interesting
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study. The most striking increase this year is the 14·6 per cent. increase in the category classified as "housewives". This includes women in unpaid domestic duties or working in paid employment for less than 20 hours per week. As has been mentioned before, of course the figures could be higher if there were more places. I understand that for the total of 15,000 places there were 45,000 applicants. No country can afford to ignore untapped intellectual resources, and there is a vast potential in the home which is denied full expression. Girls whose emotions have led them to early marriages and subsequent child-bearing, often experience a sense of frustration and sometimes even trouble with their husbands owing to the dawning knowledge that they are intellectually unfulfilled. The Open University is their salvation. But there is one aspect of this that disturbs me. I am told on very good authority that the housewives who apply can only be described as middle-class. I want to know what can be done for the working-class woman who cannot, in the first place, afford the £30 tuition fee. I understand that some local authorities will pay for a week at a summer school, but even that is not universal.
On May 17 a Question was asked another place. The Secretary of State for Education and Science was asked whether he approved of a system of grants for students attending courses at the Open University, and, if not, whether he would state the reason for that situation. Mr. George Fowler replied
"Local education authorities have discretion to make grants to Open University students. My right honourable friend's approval is not required."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Commons; 17/5/74, col. 548]
I should like to know precisely what that means. What is the extent of this discretion, and how is it exercised? How much is given; what is the maximum that is given, and to whom, and what aspect of the tuition does it cover? Of course women come to my mind when I am asking these questions, because I know the prejudice that can be found in the most unlikely places, and I am a little apprehensive lest sex discrimination should rear its ugly head if discretion alone determines a grant. In my opinion this is the most important question that can be asked during this debate, because it asks how the poorest, who potentially

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have very able minds and have only been able to show their abilities in the simplest way, and sometimes only in a domestic form, can be helped.
My Lords, I come to my final point about this, because it should be said now. The special needs of a woman student at the Open University focuses attention on the need for day nurseries and nursery schools, which successive Governments have promised. I believe that the local authorities feel secure in the knowledge that mothers are unlikely to be militant, and therefore continue to show a callous indifference to their needs. I should like to know whether the Government would consider giving scholarships to the category of student who, while serving society as mothers, find themselves denied any financial help, except that which they might prevail upon a husband to give. If they are unfortunate enough to be married to a mean or selfish man, they are denied the education which in their case can be both satisfying and productive. I am sure I have no need to remind the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Garnsworthy, that if we educate a mother, we are educating the whole family.
4.0 p.m.
LORD HILL OF LUTON: My Lords, if I may, I shall make a few brief remarks from the point of view of broadcasting. But before doing so may I add mine to the customary expressions of thanks to a noble Lord or a noble Baroness who makes it possible to discuss an important subject. I give the warmest congratulations to the noble Baroness, Lady Lee of Asheridge, for the part she played—unconventional, determined sometimes brutal, but in the end successful—in those early difficult days when criticism, mixed with derision, surrounded much of the controversy when the idea was first put forward.
As for broadcasting, it is a self-evident proposition that it is the medium through which the vast majority of the people of this country can be reached. It is the medium through which the first-class teacher can gain a vast audience. But if there were any doubt about the broadcasting element, from the point of view of the students, the facts are revealed by certain viewing and listening figures. At
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least three-quarters of the number of students on any Open University course watch or listen to the broadcast material; in fact, the proportion on some courses rises to 95 per cent. But the transmission costs are relatively small; they represent some 10 per cent. of the entire broadcasting costs. Of course, the main problem is the hours available for the broadcasts. All noble Lords know them—television between the hours of 6.40 a.m. and 7.30 a.m., and between 5.25 p.m. and 7.30 p.m. on B.B.C. 2 plus Saturday and Sunday mornings. Listening times on the radio are roughly similar, except in Scotland.
There is an urgent need for better timing. Yet the B.B.C. would be roughly assaulted if it injected a great deal of this didactic teaching material into the peak viewing times. It is in a very real difficulty. For my part I reached the conclusion, after some hesitation, that the position will not be satisfactory until there is a service devoted substantially to education. I say "substantially", for there are other claimants, such as regional broadcasting. But the position will never be wholly satisfactory unless broadcast teaching is available at what I may call the normal evening hours, and without too much of an early morning strain on some of the students.
There is another problem. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, approached it just marginally. It is the problem of the student within the family of non-students or those less enthusiastic. This is no time to refer, I suppose, to the policy of a somewhat extensive development, but I can see no ultimate solution to this problem until a second set is provided. We think of television sets as very expensive, but it is conceivable that sets for an educational channel may in the future be supplied at a relatively low cost. After all, in our external service broadcasting it was in the early days discovered that there were too few radio receiving sets, particularly in parts of Africa, and there was soon devised what was known as the "saucepan set", a very cheap set that was widely distributed. I hope that we are going to have the opportunity—I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Phillips, is hoping to get an opportunity for such a discussion—to discuss the disposition of the fourth channel. Suffice it to say now that for my part I am relieved that the early decision which

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was at one time threatened does not now seem likely to be made, and I hope that this problem will be gathered up for fuller and further study by the Annan Commission which is to look at broadcasting as a whole.
I think the central point, the one that emerged most strongly from that persuasive speech of the noble Baroness who opened this debate, is that for 1975 applications for admissions are at least four times the number that the university can accept on its present budget. That really is a lamentable state of affairs; it is no good disguising it, and for this situation to continue would be a very sorry state of affairs indeed. The cost-effectiveness of broadcasting can easily be increased, for its costs are the same whether there are 40,000 or 80,000 students. Indeed, to satisfy the experts, the cost per student will fall as the numbers rise, and the B.B.C. would not require any direct share of any increase.
May I say just one word on colour. About one-fifth of the Open University programmes are made in colour, so the majority of students see their programmes in black and white. I suspect that as the years pass black and white will look more and more old-fashioned and may supply a deterrent to watching programmes, and in any case overseas purchasers will expect the educational programmes they purchase from the Open University to be in colour.
I have just two final points to make. By the way, the relationships between the Open University and the B.B.C. are excellent. Naturally enough, there have been some uneasy phases, but I understand now that the relationships are good. It should be said in simple terms that the Open University has been an immense success. It is worth saying, because there was not only derision in the early days; there was genuine doubt. There was overemphasis on the broadcasting aspect of it at the outset; the use of the original phrase, the "University of the Air" of itself led to some doubts. I suppose that my doubts were those of my generation: was there any substitute for taking notes, even if the act of taking notes only fastened one's attention? Was it not also true that for most people watching a television programme may have been enjoyable, but the next morning they had not the faintest idea of what had been
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said, they had merely an overall general impression? The founders of the Open University have been wise enough to use broadcasting in the best possible way, but not to regard it as the only element in the teaching process. By the study groups, the written work, and by the summer schools and the rest, it seems to me that they have achieved a satisfactory system and a high intellectual level.
Lastly, do not let us forget, when we are speaking about students who register and the costs that are incurred in respect of students, those who have not the slightest intention of ever becoming a student and sitting for a degree but who enjoy tremendously this kind of serious teaching. Nearly fifty years ago I saw something of this as a university tutorial lecturer. It was astonishing the way in which people would come for the sheer delight of a serious, intellectual exercise, and, having stuck at a three-year course in biology, they then went and did a three-year course in philosophy. It was an important part of their lives.
Just as the school's programmes are listened to, eavesdropped upon, by a large number of people who feel that it keeps their minds alive to watch such programmes; just as the educational programmes of the B.B.C. are often listened to or viewed because of inertia, leaving the set on, which very often leads people to listen to a programme of a quality and character that they would not have positively selected, so with the Open University courses, whatever the number may be. If it is 50,000 it is trivial in broadcasting terms, but not trivial in human terms. Do not let us forget those who will eavesdrop upon such programmes, even tough programmes, but who have not any desire ever to sit another examination, or any examination, and certainly have no intention of seeking a degree.
It surprises me to learn, if it be so, that the Open University has not been discussed in the first four years, but I can say for myself, as one who approached it rather sceptically, that I have come to appreciate that a university of this open kind does not necessarily mean a lowering of intellectual standards. Indeed, the intellectual standards of the university are high. I can only say what I said in the course of my observations, that as matters stand for next year only, the

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applications are four times the number of places. That is not an acceptable situation. It is a situation that can be redeemed by an amount of money that is trivial in relation to the country's expenditure as a whole.
4.15 p.m.
LORD WYNNE-JONES: My Lords, over a period of approximately 150 years we in this country have been slowly developing a higher educational system. Let us remember that at the beginning of the last century England was probably the most backward country in higher education in the whole world. There were two universities in the whole of England, because at that time Durham University had not yet come into existence. At that time, Scotland already had four universities and other countries had more. Even then, the United States of America had many more institutions of higher education than did England. About 150 years ago, we started on the path of higher education. It started partly with colleges like Birkbeck College here in London, which was begun as a Working men's college—with places where people who had no hope of getting into Oxford or Cambridge could go, because even if they had the resources and qualifications they still had to be members of the Church of England and they could not get in. Throughout England, we therefore had a growth of colleges which have now become universities. Among those colleges was one which the grandfather of the past Lord Chancellor, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham, founded—the Regent Polytechnic.
Now we have started in this country something new, this Open University which is as important and revolutionary as all those technical colleges which were set up in the last century. It is something which is attempting, as has been said two or three times this afternoon in your Lordships' House, to give people a second chance of entering a university. For many people it is also a first chance, a place where they can go and where they can begin to sample something of the ravishing experience of learning; that is what they get in the Open University. We in this country should be proud of having started something which
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has not been done anywhere else in the world.
About four years ago, I was in America and, as a result of certain personal circumstances, I had to remain there for a few months. I used my time to visit the whole educational system in New York State. I saw the Chancellor and others of the New York State University. I saw the Rockefeller Foundation and the Ford Foundation. I spent much time investigating what they were doing. When I talked to them about the Open University—because I had just been asked to be a member of the Universities academic advisory committee—and was able to tell them about it, not from any very profound knowledge but from the little I had learned, they were amazed. They said they had nothing like it in America. They said, "Let us know more about it", and I told them to get in touch with Dr. Walter Perry at Milton Keynes and they would then learn all about it.
We must realise, my Lords, that we have done something in this country—not for the first time in our history—which is unique. We have created something of immense potential. We have a higher educational system. In the past this system depended upon universities. We then created the polytechnics, and now we have the Open University. I should like to suggest to your Lordships that in this country we have created a nicely-varied system of higher education, and that the variety in this system is all-important. I believe that it would be a mistake to try to convert them all into exactly the same institution. I think that would be utterly wrong. I believe that the universities have a part to play. I think—not all will agree with me—that this part is primarily concerned with the advancement of knowledge. I believe that the polytechnics have an immense part to play—probably, numerically, a far greater part than the universities—because they must be concerned with giving all the varieties of education which are required by a whole lot of different people in the country.
Of course, my Lords, higher education is something diverse, it is something complex. It should be general, diverse and complex. I do not like the word "comprehensive" when you talk about higher education. "Comprehensive" is all right when you are talking about

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school education, because that is what it ought to be; it is what traditionally it has been, although we have not always recognised it. Every public school in the country has been, for its own class, a comprehensive school. But when you come to higher education you are then talking about what the individual wants to do with his future life. You are talking about those things which he wants to understand and learn; and we must have a variety in it. I believe that the Open University, the university of the second choice, plays an extremely important part in providing this variety.
I am not one of those who thinks that education always has to come one way. I remember learning this when I was about 17 years old. I was then a student at the University of Wales at Aberystwyth. I was one of those people who went to the university at the age of 16, so I was already in my second year when this happened. Aberystwyth being not only a university town but also a seaside resort, we used to get miners coming up from South Wales, and they would happily enjoy themselves on the pleasant beaches there. I remember talking to one of the miners. I was, I thought, a pretty bright student; one does think that of oneself. I thought I was beginning to know something about science; and, although my subjects were chemistry, physics and mathematics, I assumed I also knew something about geology and other things, although all I had done was to pick it up in discussion with other people. I found, talking to this miner, that he knew a darned sight more about geology than I did. This man had spent his working life in the mines. He had left school at the age of 13 or 14, and had worked in the mines ever since, but he had thought seriously about geology; and I then began to realise (and, fortunately for me, I realised it early in my life) that you do not need to have gone through an elaborate form of education in order to become educated.
I suppose that in this country there would be very few people who would call themselves educated if they had had to go through a lengthy, elaborate system of education. But, my Lords, it is an advantage to be able to have access to it if you want it, if you need it. It does help you enormously to be able to do the studies—and the Open University
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affords this chance. And the cost, my Lords, compared with other educational costs, is extremely low. I think it is of the order of about £320 per student per annum. The figure for a normal university or polytechnic is, at the lowest, two and a half times larger, and often considerably more. Furthermore, the students going to the Open University do not receive a residential grant. There is no maintenance grant for them; they are doing this on their own. I would support what the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont of Whitley, said earlier in this debate, that surely the Government ought to give very careful attention to paying the fees of students at the Open University on a mandatory basis. It should be something accepted as a charge just as when you get acceptance to any other institution of higher education. Why should there be this discrimination against these students? Perhaps we can get away with it, but I do not see why we should continue to do so.
My Lords, while the cost is low, I think we have to remember that upon the people concerned in the Open University the cost can be high. I have been struck by the fact that the staff of the Open University have been putting an enormous amount of time and effort into composing the courses. I need not tell the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, about this, but I have with me one single booklet of the foundation course in mathematics. In one year 36 such booklets are issued and sent to the students. Each one of these is an original. They are not ones which have been made from taking a whole lot of other books and concocting something out of them. It took approximately two years to do this. The total staff in mathematics is ten and this is what they do. When they have composed these booklets they are then immediately faced with the fact that this is only a foundation course. They now have to start composing the second year course; and when they have done that they have to compose a third year course; but before that has happened they have to come back and revise the original course. In any institution of higher education anywhere in the world people get time for research, time off, sabbatical years to do this, that and the other. How much time can you give when you have only ten people altogether to compose these things? In my opinion

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—and I have been able to watch it carefully sitting on their academic advisory committee—the members of the staff of the Open University have been giving their time freely, giving their time with enthusiasm, but they are being burnt out in the process.
BARONESS LEE OF ASHERIDGE: Hear, hear!
LORD WYNNE-JONES: It is not right that people should be exploited in that way. Sooner or later the young men will leave because they will get jobs elsewhere, and one will find it more and more difficult to recruit staff. So I urge upon my noble friend that the Department should give very careful consideration to this matter and should realise that they must provide some latitude, that they have to provide sufficient resources to enable at least a percentage of the present staff to take some time off in order to refresh themselves. Unless you refill these wells there is nothing left for you to give out.
There are two other points that I should like to make. One point was partially raised by my noble friend Lady Summerskill; namely, the question of educating teachers. People say, "Yes, an enormous number of them are teachers". So they are. I have the figures here, and one looks through and finds something like 28 per cent. of students have taken teachers' certificates but no degrees before they registered. There are a large number of teachers involved; but that is inevitable because our whole system of training teachers has been so backward in this country, and most of them have been turned out without a university degree. Some of them are seizing this opportunity to take one.
There is another point, one I have mentioned before in your Lordships' House; namely, that on the whole, we in this country must be unique in turning out our teachers with no education at all in science. I think that only 10 per cent. of the teachers of this country are exposed to science in any way. I am not suggesting that everybody should be a science teacher, but it is deplorable that in a modern society our teachers should not have a background of science,
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and I should hope that we would use the Open University in this direction.
My final point is one which I have become conscious of over the last couple of years. We have a large number of people immured in prisons in this country. We keep them there for reasons which are perfectly understandable, but we should ask ourselves whether we do enough to ensure that these prisoners are getting the opportunity or the encouragement to change and to educate themselves. The Open University affords an opportunity for that. I admit that this is education at the higher level and one wants much more at levels below this. But it is a very grave matter if a prisoner who wishes to study while he is inside prison finds that he is denied the opportunity. I suggest to Her Majesty's Government therefore that the Home Office ought to pay particular attention to this matter to see how far they can go. I should like to see them go very far indeed in the way of making available educational facilities at all levels to those in prison, encouraging them in every way. Who are we to say that a man cannot be recovered? From what I have seen when a prisoner is given the opportunity I can only say that there is a high probability that he will take it.
So, my Lords, I urge Her Majesty's Government, first of all, to make available to the Open University sufficient resources to take in those students who are clamouring to get in; secondly, to give the Open University sufficient leeway to enable their staff to have time off to do their job more effectively; and, thirdly, to look at the possibility of extending the work of the Open University, especially towards prisoners.
4.35 p.m.
LORD FULTON: My Lords, my first introduction to the idea of the Open University took place when I listened to the noble Baroness, Lady Lee of Asheridge, at the summer banquet of the Lord Mayor of London when she suggested, and not only to me as I know from evidence from others, that she had a vision which would elevate the quality of life of the whole of our society in this country. That would not justify my speaking, except to testify to the debt that I and so many others owe to the noble Baroness, not only for the beginnings but

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for the pertinacity and skill with which she steered this great enterprise.
I suppose partly as a consequence of that I was made a member of the Planning Committee, and at the last meeting which I attended before the Charter set up a new body under the chairmanship of Sir Peter Venables, I remember the remarks which were made by the Vice-Chancellor about the problem of attracting from universities which were well-endowed with facilities and opportunities for research those whom he hoped would become teachers in his University. He sought, and won, authority for giving them the promise that as soon as possible they would be provided with the opportunities, the time and the materials for conducting original inquiries into their subjects. I am afraid the fact is that the burdens of teaching and the shortfall in resources have not so far permitted that pledge to be honoured.
Your Lordships will know that universities can be in full health and vigour only when their twin responsibilities for teaching and research are in equilibrium, not to say harmony; and your Lordships will also be well aware of the many pressures which are bearing on universities in these times. Our modern society needs an increasing number of its members who will pursue their education through to university level, and this adds to teaching pressures. But they are needed because of the demands and the growing complications of our environment, whether one regards it as being of the model or the natural order. Not so long ago, in a simpler world which members of my generation well remember, it was perhaps easier to hold the balance between the claims of teaching and the discovery of new knowledge. We are now at greater risk, and I have listened to this debate with a great deal of interest, because I think that the noble Baroness, Lady Lee of Asheridge, is right when she discounts exaggerated claims of what has already been accomplished and points to the great tasks that still lie ahead.
Education is a precarious affair, and some of our recent experiences have underlined the precariousness of what we have tried to do. I do not share the apologies of the noble Lord, Lord Wynne-Jones, for higher education in this country. It is true that it may have started late and may have had a restricted
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social compass. It is true that it may have had other faults, but the fact remains that teaching the young from 18 to 22 was better done in this country by a higher university system than it has ever been done before in the history of the world. It may be there is a claimant from Athens, but the fact remains that we have had pilgrims coming from all over the world to share this experience in our universities. It does not matter whether you are talking about the universities of the collegiate system of Oxbridge, or the Scottish mediaeval universities or the civic universities. They all rested on a basic understanding and knowledge on the part of the teachers, of the character, nature, possibilities, hopes, fears and ambitions of the young whom they were teaching.
LORD WYNNE-JONES: My Lords, will the noble Lord forgive me for intervening on this point? What percentage of the young of this country received this excellent education?
LORD FULTON: My Lords, I conceded straight away that it was narrow. But I am not concerned with the numbers. That is why I welcome the debate that we are now having on this subject. I am saying it was true that the success of our system of higher education depended, as it must do, not only on the great men who knew their stuff, not only on their having a good idea of how to teach, but on the knowledge that those people had of characters and possibilities, and of the way to treat young people between the ages of 18 and 22, which was their main preoccupation.
I say that it is precarious, because we have had to widen the scope. It is not now enough to teach people at university between 18 and 22; it has had to be extended to between 18 and 25, because post-graduate education has now taken its important part in the higher educational system. It still remains true that if you are going to do it, and do it well, you must understand whom you are teaching and how to get them to respond. The noble Baroness, Lady Lee of Asheridge, will know from her own experience in youth how the distinguished professors in Scotland lit the lamp in the first year of the young man's career at university, coming as he did from a home that was very poor, but rich in the possession of a respect for learning and the knowledge

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he gained from reading the Bible and Pilgrim's Progress. The teacher was able to say, "If I do this, by the time he is 30"—not 22, for there is no specific objective for this kind of teaching—"he will have realised his potential". The great teacher produces out of nothing, as it were, something which he has seized with the eye of faith, and which he can create and make real.
What is exciting to me about this project and this debate, what is breathtaking and, in some ways, sobering and staggering as a thought, is that by our own confession we are taking on a vastly wider task. But I do not believe it will achieve all that one hopes of it, unless it also rests, not upon statistical knowledge, not upon the knowledge in tables showing how many people are doing this or that job, but upon understanding the nature of their need, and the way in which it can be best satisfied. This is what is placed upon the shoulders of those people. No wonder people say that they have hard work to do; that is true. If they are going to remain fresh and ready for the task, I reinforce the plea made by the noble Lord, Lord Wynne-Jones, that they ought to have the resources which they will need to replenish their energies and to give them a new life to face the tasks that they have undertaken to do.
Finally, it is not only a kind of social faith that one is professing in this way. If you look at the great extensions such as the one we are discussing, the coming of the Franciscans to Oxford in the Middle Ages, the birth of adult education in the first decade of this century, the educational dividends of these inventions, the new concepts of education, the new customers for education, the new methods of education—they were the beginnings of enormously rich new mines of discovery. From teaching miners, Tawney learned some of the things that made his books great. This was not only true of his generation. Richard Crossman, whose death we now mourn, was another who wrote what he wrote only because he had gone out and sought fresh experiences in new ways of educating people. I think we have a vast responsibility, a vast burden which must be alleviated by all the help we can get. But not only shall we have benefits in the quality of our people's lives; we shall also be confer-
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ring a great advantage upon the studies which these dedicated people in the Open University are undertaking.
4.47 p.m.
LORD GOODMAN: My Lords, I am very pleased indeed that, by Olympic prodigies of a neck-breaking character, I have arrived in time to pay what is, to my mind, a small tribute to the noble Baroness who has asked this Question. I should like to associate myself with noble Lords who have no doubt pressed on the Government their anxieties, and who want to know what the Government have in mind in relation to this most remarkable educational institution.
I regard the Open University as a second limb of the remarkable achievement of the noble Baroness while she was in office. In both of the two activities in which she was principally concerned she showed the same philosophical approach of immense social importance, which I hope will be closely copied by those who are following in her footsteps. There are slightly disquieting aspects in current utterances, but they may not be so closely followed as they ought to be. In both activities, in fostering the Arts and in relation to the Open University, she had a very important social precept in her mind, which was to render available to large numbers of people, to whom they were hitherto not available, important social benefits from which she believed they could gain advantage. She did it in a way that was of supreme importance, and which was not to injure the institutions in their existing form. She was not a popularist in artistic terms, in the sense she believed that you could drive great swarms of people into an opera house or a concert hall and that they would immediately respond. That was a philistine proposition of great absurdity that has been often aired by people who should know better.
She believed that if education and training were made available to the population at a sufficiently early age, a great many people who would otherwise have been written off would turn out to be fully responsive and with much enlarged and enriched lives, as a result of her exertions. Exactly the same principle prevailed in her views towards the Open University. It was believed 150 years ago that the population of this country which was capable of literacy was something like 10 per

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cent. It was believed by a great many people who should have known better that this was a percentage ordained by the Almighty. Because there were in those days people like the noble Baroness, it emerged that it was not in fact a truism; there were many more people who could benefit. The Open University is a furtherance of that belief.
Here I might perhaps take slight issue with the noble Lord, Lord Fulton, in whose speech I thought I sensed the belief that on the whole you had prescribed for you a university population of supreme excellence and it was of the greatest importance that they should receive an education of supreme excellence. May I say that I wholly accept that view, but the noble Baroness went beyond it. She believed it was possible to dig and to extract from the minds of the human population great numbers of people capable of benefiting from higher education if it was provided for them. The Open University is, in a word, her presentation of a machinery for furthering this splendid social concept. And what a pleasure it has been of recent years to have a university conception to consider that is not dolorous, that is not connected with revolt, that is not connected with criticism, but where the population who are anxious to avail themselves of the commodity do so with delight and rejoicing! If we had nothing else for which to thank the noble Baroness, it would be for that simple fact.
May I, as many noble Lords have, utter an autobiographical note. It gives me a certain satisfaction to say that I believe that the Open University may well have survived on its growth to fruition because of a massive arithmetical error on my own part, I say this without any special pride, but historians perhaps may one day in a small way wish to record the fact. I do not think it is generally known, and it is not a fact of great historical significance. But before the University started I was asked to do a one man report as to its feasibility, viability and cost. That document brings me little satisfaction except that it said this: I thought the University was viable, I thought it was feasible, I thought it could be contained within a modest cost. When I see the figure I mentioned and the figure it is now costing I ought to blush with shame. But I am happy to tell your
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Lordships that I do not, because the fact that it is costing several hundred times more than I envisaged leaves me completely unmoved, since it has been established and might not have been established except for my foolish miscalculation.
However, in connection with that report I should like to pay tribute to one or two others. The man who had most to do with it, next to the noble Baroness, and next to her colleagues, particularly the Prime Minister who gave her unstinted and unqualified support, was the then Director General of the B.B.C., Sir Hugh Greene. He was the first person I saw on my way to report. No one could have responded more enthusiastically and with a greater recognition of the social benefits of this conception than he did. He indicated at once that the time could be made available within the B.B.C. schedules, although this obviously was a matter of considerable difficulty. He indicated that the cost might be less than one had in mind; and, indeed, had the conception proceeded along the lines we were then thinking of, it would have been much less costly, but much less efficacious. No one was more forthcoming, no one was more practical in help, no one gave more practical advice and assistance to the scheme than he did at that time. I duly presented my report. What happened to it I have not the least idea. But I do know that if in future someone asks what was the basic reason why the Open University was decided upon with alacrity by the Government of the day, I might reasonably suggest that it was Goodman's error. This is one of the few errors for which I shall feel no compunction and no shame.
The Open University exists to-day as what one might call the "second chance" university—and it is on this note I should like to conclude. It is unique in having provided a social institution that allays the social misgivings and the social anxieties that are causing despair and trouble in our society to-day. What causes trouble in our society to-day is a sense that someone possesses something more than the person who is troubled and anxious. Maybe it will be said this is an approach of envy; that everyone should accept the station to which he is born and should not resent the fact that others are better provided for. Unfortunately, in the society

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ordered by the Almighty He did not arrange for that particular philosophical attitude of life.
The Open University, to a very real extent, rectifies the injustice that exists in our society in relation to the provision of education at all levels. More than anything else, it rectifies the notion that you are deprived of the advantage of university education because at a given moment of time you failed to pass a scholarship, or your parents had inadequate resources, or you yourself felt unable or unwilling, for medical reasons, for health reasons or for psychological reasons to embark on a course. It provides the knowledge that this can be rectified later, at your own choice and within your own time, and this is an enormously important advantage in assuaging social anxieties that exist at the moment.
Hence, I would again urge upon the Government that they should give the utmost assistance to the University. The noble Lord, Lord Fulton, and many people much better qualified than myself as educationalists have, I am sure, spoken of the detail of the matter, but I believe that as a social conception there can have been few novelties in this country to equal it in range and in importance. For that we owe an immense debt of gratitude to the noble Lady.
4.55 p.m.
LORD ANNAN: My Lords, I apologise to the House for not being here to speak in the order in which my name appeared on the list of speakers, and I am particularly sorry that I missed my noble friend's speech because it would have been very dear to my heart to have heard her, particularly since I am sure that she urged that the Government should give more generous support to the Open University in its present state of development.
I feel that perhaps it is my duty to try to put this matter of the Open University into the perspective of the universities as a whole. Particularly in recent months I have noticed that in your Lordships' House we urge very often the expenditure of large sums of money but that we never suggest that there should be any reductions in any other field. I am sure that this is as it should be. We are here to try to urge the excellence of certain causes, and it is in another place where,
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presumably, the priorities have to be sorted out. However, I think that it is worth trying to give your Lordships just an outline of what, in fact, has been happening in higher education in the last six months. As is well known, in December and January massive cuts were made in higher education by the previous Government. One of the ways in which this was done was by saying that there would be no supplementary grants for the year 1974–75 to take account of inflation. It was probably expected that this would remove something like £14 million from the university budget. At any rate, that is what the Vice-Chancellors Committee believes. In fact, £21½ million have been taken out of the universities and they are in very great difficulties at the moment.
I talk about money because it is practically the only thing that I do talk about now. I am quite incapable any longer of talking about education; I am incapable of talking about priorities; I am incapable of talking about an intelligent and rational plan, because no rational plan can be made in any university in the country at the moment. It cannot be made because the whole basis upon which university finance works, which is a five-year basis, has now been turned topsy-turvy; and, as we do not know what will happen about supplementary grants to take account of inflation, for subsequent years in the quinquennium we cannot plan anything more than one year ahead.
The effect of these cuts has been massive. I would guess that the University of Edinburgh and the University of Manchester are probably facing a deficit of £1 million next year. Certainly every university in the country is facing a massive deficit in the year, and whether they will be able to pick this up in the last two years of the quinquennium is highly doubtful. It is bound to cut back the number of students coming to the universities. The picture is not unlike that at the universities and the polytechnics, and this is the picture which we are observing now in higher education as a whole.
I think that whatever Government had been in power there would have to have been cuts in the educational programme. The question was, where should those cuts come? I myself think that in this hard decision the previous Government

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were entirely right in their sense of priorities, and I believe that Her Majesty's Govenment to-day will certainly follow the same pattern of thinking, that school education and, indeed, the nursery programme are probably more important at this moment than the sustaining and expanding of the university programme. I do not mean that there is no expansion going on; there still is expansion. The universities will not go back on any promise that they have made to any student who has been given a place; whether or not they can find the money to teach him, he will be admitted without question. Nevertheless, the whole long-term expansion of the universities is now very much in question and the White Paper which the former Secretary of State, Mrs. Thatcher, put before Parliament contains figures which are bound to have substantial revision.
I say that this is right because I think there are signs that if we have to choose and make these harsh judgments in terms of priorities, it is right that probably the axe should fall on that age group of the people between the ages of 18 and 21. I say that because of the figures which are coming through on the U.C.C.A. computers; mainly that there is now the first signs of a falling off in the demand from that particular age group. Of course we expect the demand to increase in terms of numbers in the next few years because there will occur one of the periodic bulges in the birth rate and if we have to make a cut it may well be that it should be made there. At any rate, we cannot go on at the rate of expansion that we have planned.
It may be said: why, then, should any sector of higher education receive any additional sums of money? Why should not the whole of it be pruned? I think it is here that one has to consider again certain questions. First, the question of the good, in absolutely crude terms of technical efficiency, of the country; and secondly, one has to think in terms of the cultural good of the country. In that technical efficiency there is one particular area which I will single out in the universities system; namely, management studies. That is something which we desperately need to support; it is something which we ought to do our best to increase and sustain, but this is a very small part of the total in the higher educational system.
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I then pass to the second part—the cultural side—and this is where I think the real case for the Open University should be made because, as no doubt has been said by previous speakers, we have here motivated people; we have the "second chance" route; we have an area which is deeply concerned with people who are wanting to find out about certain fields of learning. This is adult education at its very best.
There is another thing I should like to say which is very important in regard to the Open University. Highly structured courses are given in the Open University and much written work is demanded, and indeed such written work leads eventually to the examinations in which the degree is given. That written work used to be one of the great essential props of the adult education system. When I used to lecture for the W.E.A., it was always made perfectly plain to me that I could obtain a position as a W.E.A. lecturer only if I got the classes to do the written work. I think there has been some back sliding in the W.E.A. on that particular principle in recent years, but the business of actually compelling your pupils to commit themselves to paper is the essence of higher education. Higher education is not simply a business of sitting and talking things out; it is indeed a business of talking things out and thinking things out, but ultimately it is concerned with committing yourself to a view, a judgment and an assessment of evidence. It is precisely because the Open University is not trying to cut corners; it is precisely because it has in fact insisted on standards, that it is of such importance. So that is again a reason why I think it deserves support.
There is one further reason why I think the Open University deserves support over and above the rest of the university system at this moment, and that is for one simple reason; namely, that it is an innovation. An innovation of any kind always requires pump-priming in the early stages. One cannot expect people to have ideas, to have a vision, and then expect them suddenly to see the thing fading overnight because of lack of funds. Anything which is started with such an imaginative vision must be sustained to a certain point. We all know that beyond that point every institution has to

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settle for a certain level. The new universities undoubtedly have not expanded as much, or are not going to expand as much, as no doubt the noble Lord, Lord Fulton, hoped they would when he was the founding Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sussex. Nevertheless, they have all got off the ground. They have not been nipped in the very first years of their development, although I think our new universities are suffering from the cuts more than any of the others in the university system.
The Open University is still in its initial stages—and it is precisely because it is still in its initial stages that we need support to take it beyond that. When we have got an equilibrium in the staff, when we have got the courses running—some of which are still germinating in the minds of those giving them—no doubt then is the time to begin to assess where we have got to and how far we can go. But just at this moment I think it does require financial support of a quite extraordinary kind.
My Lords, in saying these things, no doubt I shall get into terrible trouble with my colleagues on the Committee of Vice-Chancellors. We are all desperately pressed; we are all spending our time, as we were in the war, recounting bomb stories. But when I think of it, I do not know that they would really be very critical of me. We asked Dr. Perry to join our number. We well recognise that the Open University is one of the most remarkable experiments in the whole of the educational system of this country. Go, as I do, to Germany and to France to discuss these matters with the French presidents and the German rectors; go as I do to America, a land where one would think there was no room left for further experiment in higher education, and one finds they are entranced and fascinated by the way in which it is done in the Open University in this country. For here is something unique, here is something which has been invented, of which we can be justly proud.
When I say it is something of which we can be justly proud, I should like to finish by adding my tribute to all those which the noble Baroness, Lady Lee of Asheridge, has received. Hers has been, a very formidable achievement. When I
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think of the achievements of a certain married couple, that one of them has the National Health Service as his memorial and the other the Open University, I venture to doubt whether any other husband and wife have a record which could equal that.
5.5 p.m.
LORD MAYBRAY-KING: My Lords, I think nobody could have more adequately expressed our congratulations to the noble Baroness, Lady Lee of Asheridge, than the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, has done. In all the great work of the noble Baroness, in two cultural fields—that of the Arts and the Open University—she has had no more ardent, more able and active supporter than the noble Lord, Lord Goodman.
I speak, after so many eminent orators, with diffidence and very briefly. I said earlier that the Open University is no new conception. The noble Lord, Lord Annan, has referred to the W.E.A. and its great work. There are the extra-mural courses provided by almost every university in the country. Nearly 60 years ago, when I was 15 or 16 and when any idea of going to university seemed an impossible dream, I heard of what were then called the university extension lectures. In various provincial towns eminent scholars in all walks of life gave talks on literature, on science, on philosophy; and I still remember after all these long years a speech by Lord Haldane on the fixation of nitrogen, something which had just happened then and something which eventually, many years later, was to produce the great I.C.I. complex. Visiting these university extension lectures gave a new dimension to my life, helped to shape it, helped me eventually to have the good fortune to go to a university.
It is with that deep experience in my mind and my life that I want to pay an understanding tribute to the Open University, to the Prime Minister, who played a great part in its inception, to Lady Lee, who has devoted not only ability but also passion to the furtherance of all the causes she supports, to its steady development, to its two great Chancellors. Lord Crowther and now Lord Gardiner, to all the faculty who serve it in what is a new medium, who had to master quite a new medium, quite a new process of teaching, to the B.B.C. for its spendid

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help; without the B.B.C. and without its positive support as well as ordinary support the Open University would not have got off the ground. Above all, I would congratulate the students, those adults who having done a day's work go in for a university education, earning their living and then study hard and achieve a university degree.
The great secret, I think, of the Open University, as distinct from the W.E.A. and all the other things I have mentioned, is that there is a degree at the end of the course, that the standards are proper university standards, and that all the resources of modern technology are bringing this new form of university education into places and to people for whom university education would never otherwise have existed. I am one of those who believe, with Lord Goodman, that we still have a lot of untapped talent. To create the economically prosperous Britain that we want, to create the good Britain we want, will depend on our finding ability wherever it exists, in whatever walk of society, in whatever age of society, and on training and educating it to the full. As an old schoolmaster, I knew what the late developer was, the boy who did not emerge at 11-plus. As an old man now, I know the late developers who emerge at 50 and 60 in life, those to whom the spark comes very late in life. The Open University is one of the keys to unlock that untapped talent, and I am very proud to be able to pay tribute to it this afternoon.
5.16 p.m.
LORD SANDFORD: My Lords, we are all deeply in the debt of the noble Baroness, Lady Lee of Asheridge, for this opportunity to debate the Open University. I want to start by expressing the admiration of all of us for her sustained advocacy of this fine institution. She could have safely assumed general support for what is now an undoubted success. For my part, I would have been ready to hear from her rather more specific details and guidelines as to how she would now like to see the Open University advancing. We were all fascinated by the first-hand account of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, the Chancellor, of what an open university course is like, and to get a feel from him of what is involved. I certainly was grateful for that. I perceive that the noble Lord, Lord Garnsworthy, is under
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some pressure from his noble friends. I sympathise with him for that but I am glad to join in applying it and to further the cause of the Open University.
We have heard of the many and varied advantages of the Open University, and they have rightly been warmly acclaimed and thoroughly rehearsed. The fact that I do not add my version of them does not mean that I do not share them. As other noble Lords have said more fully, it is a practical second chance to get a degree. Offering degrees to all corners, but concentrating the teaching upon those students who really want to learn, is a major social advance. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, has said, it is quite clear that no one who does not really want to learn would ever stay the course. It also provides a course on which the student can embark with certainty that his studies will not be interrupted and messed about by rows on the campus, which is more than you can say for any other institute of higher education in this country at the present time.
I was heartened by hearing from noble Lords opposite their approach to education. I should like to congratulate them on their encouragement of an institution which widens opportunities, as it does, extends choice and adds variety, a point about which the noble Lord, Lord Wynne-Jones, was so eloquent. My hope is that that admirable attitude will percolate down through their Party, and begin to influence the quite antediluvian attitude among their colleagues on secondary education, where they are all hell-bent on reducing variety and eliminating choice.
I should like to endorse my support and that of my Party for the Open University, and to illustrate that it is not just verbal encouragement by referring to the Tory record of support of the Open University over the past few years in terms of the grant in aid for current expenditure. In 1970 it was about £2·2 million; in 1971, £6·1 million; in 1972, £7·9 million; 1973, £9·6 million—that is from £2·2 million three years before; now for 1974 it is £12·7 million. Although that last figure of £12·7 million belongs to the Government of the noble Lord opposite, having been inherited by him from his predecessor, it is stretching language rather far for the Chancellor of the University to describe as a cut

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what is in fact an increase of over £3 million—although I dare say that £3½ million, or £4 million, might at one time have been hoped for and expected.
LORD GARNSWORTHY: My Lords, will the noble Lord tell me where he gets the figure of £12 million? I agree with his figure of £9·5 million, but I do not follow that there was the substantial increase that he mentioned.
LORD SANDFORD: It would delay the debate somewhat if I rippled through these papers behind me, but I will certainly give it to the noble Lord, Lord Garnsworthy. I should like to stress, with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, and the noble Lord, Lord Hill, and others, that there are enormous economic advantages in the Open University. I know there are many others but I want to concentrate on these because they are of such immense value in days of financial stringency, such as those we are in now. The cost per place with the Open University compared with the campus university is, according to my figures—and I hope the noble Lord, Lord Garnsworthy, will correct me if I am wrong—£300 per student on average compared with £1,300, something between a four and five to one advantage.
As the noble Lady, Baroness Lee of Asheridge, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, said, the staff/student ratio is excellent and ought to shame some of our other higher education institutions and courses. Another advantage which I do not think any other noble Lord has mentioned is that a much higher proportion of the costs involved are recovered from the students, I think higher probably than any other higher education establishment, £100 in fees roughly on a cost per student head of £300. It seems to me to be important, particularly at this moment, to hold on to these advantages and to exploit them. To do this we have to remember that in the Open University there is a high cost, higher than in an ordinary university, in course development, often running into six figures per course; and we have also to remember that some subjects are far more suitable for Open University courses than for others.
Therefore, I would say two things to the Open University and two things to
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Her Majesty's Government. I would hope that the noble Lord, Lord Garnsworthy, would be able to comment on the latter. I would hope too that before the Open University thinks in terms of expanding further it is quite clear about the lines on which to advance, and that it will not advance on all fronts. I would agree with the noble Lord, Lord Samuel, that after take-off—and that is the phase we are in now—it is not just a question of opening the throttle. It is now time for a cool look at the Open University, after this rapid and splendid expansion, in order to decide on how best to set the whole system of the Open University within the whole system of higher education. It is time to do two things: first, to develop courses where the demand is strongest and where the potential number of students for this particular type of course is largest; secondly, to concentrate on courses when the Open University has decisive advantages over the campus university.
My Lords, there has been an analysis made—it would be tedious to go into it now—which shows on which courses the break-even figure, when the campus and the Open University are compared, is fairly quickly reached in terms of numbers of students, and other courses where, because of the high cost of development and the difficulty of studying a particular subject like physics or biology at home, the numbers actually studying at the Open University are still a long way below the figure at which they would have to be if the cost were comparable with the campus university. So I would say expand by all means, but on those lines where the Open University has decisive advantages over the campus university. That is the broad and general way forward, but I would be the first to agree that economic factors are not the only factors, that they ought not always to be decisive, and that there are other considerations which would justify exceptions from that view.
I now come to the two points which I should like to put to Her Majesty's Government. I believe that the success of the Open University and the stage which it has now reached means that the time has come for other higher education institutions to adjust to the existence of the Open University. There was one brief moment in the speech of the noble

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Lord, Lord Annan, when I thought he was going to offer a donation from University College to the Open University, but he shied away from that and went on to other points. But I think that the moment has come when the rest of higher education has to adjust to the existence of the Open University; and, particularly, to offer, or to think about offering, part-time courses to adult students, and to provide such courses for them as will supplement those which they have done or are doing in the Open University.
This is a point to which my noble friend Lord Boyle has been giving some attention and on which he has been urging some action. I hope that we shall hear from the noble Lord, Lord Garnsworthy, what the Government think about that, though I appreciate that it is not for them to dictate to the other universities what action they are to take. It seems to me that the part-time courses in other institutions of higher education should cover those areas which are not particularly suited to study at home, and therefore not particularly suited to Open University work, and where the other institutions at present have under-used capacity—and there are plenty of those.
The second point which I should like to put to the noble Lord, Lord Garnsworthy, has to do with grants. I think the time has come to have another look at the various financial support systems for students in higher education, not in relation to the general grants for students, but in relation to what can be done with grants or loans for those studying at the Open University. I do not agree with the noble Lords, Lord Wynne-Jones and Lord Beaumont of Whitley, who think that the solution lies in applying mandatory grants to the Open University. Mandatory grants are for people on full-time courses and, whatever else Open University courses are, they are not full-time. But we need to recognise and correct the present situation, which is very strongly biased—too strongly biased, in my view—in favour of support of the traditional way, which is also the most expensive way, of getting a degree; and I hope it will be possible to make some progress in that way.
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But I should not like to end on these technical points. I think that the most important things that the Open University should do, and can do, in charting their course forward is to read, mark, learn and inwardly digest the kind of things which the noble Lord, Lord Fulton, has been saying to them in this debate. Finally, I should like to conclude by once more expressing my gratitude, and that of those behind me, to the noble Baroness, Lady Lee of Asheridge, for giving us this opportunity to debate the Open University and for having the vision to create it and bring it to birth.
5.29 p.m.
LORD GARNSWORTHY: My Lords, we have been debating since 2.55, I think we have already had some thirteen speakers, and I am the fourteenth. This debate is on an Unstarred Question and this is the last day before we rise for the Spring Holiday Recess. I have a feeling that it must set something of a record for a debate on an Unstarred Question at such a time. Indeed, the number of speakers who have taken part would indicate that the subject could quite well have been suitable for one of our general Wednesday debates. But it also shows how keen is the interest in the subject of the Question. I doubt whether any good cause has ever been better represented in this House than has the subject of this Question this afternoon.
We have had notable speeches throughout the debate, and as I listened to the noble Lords, Lord Goodman and Lord Annan, and my noble friend Lord Maybray-King, I felt that they were as good in the closing stages as others were in the early stages of the debate. I wonder whether I shall be forgiven for what may seem a little ungallant. Speaking this afternoon, the noble Baroness, Lady Lee of Asheridge, took me back to a rally in the Albert Hall many years ago, when I think the Labour Party had won five by-elections in a row, on the first occasion that I had seen or heard her. She spoke today with the same passion, the same depth of feeling, which is quite remarkable having regard to all the service that she has given in so many fields, particularly that of education.
The noble Lord, Lord Sandford, began by offering me his sympathy, and then went on to qualify it. I was hoping that he was going to offer it without any limit,

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because I feel that before I have finished I may need all the sympathy without any kind of restraint that he or anybody else has to offer. I should just like to say to him that I noted he tried to get in a couple of points about my Party's attitude to the reorganisation of secondary education. Without taking too long about it, I want to say quite clearly that, as I understood him, he does not begin to conceive what it is we are seeking in a secondary system which is known as a comprehensive one.
Far from wanting to limit, we want reorganisation on a comprehensive basis in order to widen opportunities for all children. That has been our concern throughout, and it remains our concern to-day. So long as we have privileged sections, so long as we have privileged schools, there can be no question of equality of opportunity or equal provision of resources for children according to their needs. I thought I ought to reply to that point, lest the noble Lord feels that he can easily get away with that kind of intervention on a subject such as that we are discussing.
My Lords, I think it has been said by everybody who has spoken that we are all grateful to the noble Baroness for giving us the opportunity this afternoon of discussing the Open University. She has every claim to be called the leading architect of this great institution. She, more than anyone, has helped to plan and shape it, and it is very fitting that the new library of the University is to bear her name. Her anxiety, that the Open University is not prevented by lack of resources from playing a full part in the future development of higher education, is one that is widely shared outside this House as well as inside it, as has been clearly demonstrated. What the noble Baroness has had to say has been supported by the present Chancellor of the Open University, by my noble friend Lord Wynne-Jones and by the noble Lord, Lord Fulton, who themselves have played or are playing such a valuable role in its support.
At the outset I would stress that the work and progress of the Open University, to which the Question refers, are, and very properly so, as determined by the institution itself. Her Majesty's Government, as is well known, through the Department of Education and Science,
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pay grant-in-aid to the Open University and the level of grant is settled after consideration has been given to the University's own assessment of its needs for future development. So indeed many of the questions that have been asked this afternoon come down to the issue of finance.
As I think the House is now aware, the grant for the years 1974–1976 was settled by the previous Government in July, 1973. While I agree with the figure given by the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, of £9·5 million for 1973, I ought to put on record the figures, as I understand them, and I should like to say that since he mentioned his figures I have taken the precaution of having mine checked. The figure that was agreed for 1974 was £10·6 million. For 1975 it was £11·2 million and for 1976 it was £11·8 million. That is to say, for the three years 1974, 1975 and 1976 it is a total of £33·6 million.
LORD SANDFORD: My Lords, will the noble Lord allow me to interrupt him? I do not know exactly where the discrepancies come, but the figure I was using was that from the Supply Estimates for 1974–75 issued on March 14 and the Open University grant for current expenditure is £12·716 million. I expect that can be reconciled.
LORD GARNSWORTHY: My Lords, as I say, I agree with Lord Sandford's figure of £9·5 million. I think there is an explanation for the figure he is using, but for purposes of comparison the one I have given the House I think is the correct one. As my noble friend is aware, the Open University has recently asked my right honourable friend to raise the grant for 1975 and 1976 to allow more students to be admitted and to provide for the expansion of post-experience courses. He has undertaken to consider this request, but he has had to make it clear that he will do so, as he feels he is compelled to do, in the light of other educational priorities and in the context of Government expenditure generally, having regard to the present financial situation.
I appreciate that at the heart of the Open University's case is the high rate of applications for undergraduate courses. Applications for 1975, as has already been stated, have now surpassed the previous record of 43,000 in the University's first year of operation that is to say, 1971.

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And the period for applications does not close until July 3. The University could not hope, whatever we may wish, to admit all these potential students, even with a massive infusion of extra resources. I am advised that the system could not be adapted in time, and I ought to say that nobody this afternoon has asked for that. The University wishes to admit 20,000 new students in 1975. I make that point to emphasise that whatever is done a significant number of applicants will inevitably be turned away.
It was natural for many to regard the high number of applicants for the Open University in 1971, its first year of teaching, as to some extent an expression of pent-up demand. And applications certainly fell slightly in the second and third years. But now they are climbing back and the problem is that this is occurring when students show—I am delighted to say—a high success rate, and are staying on to take the next stages of their degree course. As I think will be appreciated in this sort of situation, an overall limit to student places has to be set, or the long-term development of the institution cannot be properly planned. The limit set by the last Government was 42,000 student places by 1976. The university has asked my right honourable friend to reconsider this figure. That he will do, but I have to add that it must be done in relation to other calls on education expenditure.
The proposals which the Open University has put to my right honourable friend include an increase in the number of post-experience courses. Here the university could make a great contribution in this field by providing refresher and vocational courses for a variety of professions. But every new course of this kind makes heavy demands on the teaching and the financial resources of the university. New programmes mean extra cost for research and development.
My right honourable friend fully recognises that the university is worried about the supplementation of its recurrent grant to compensate for increases in cost. With the exception of academic salaries and local authority rates, no compensation at all is to be given to other universities in the academic year 1974–75 on account of cost increases during 1973. But my right honourable friend recognises that
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the break-down of the Open University's expenditure is significantly different from that of other universities. He has therefore undertaken to consider the Open University's representations on this paint, although no decision has yet been reached.
Her Majesty's Government share the noble Baroness's high regard for the Open University—both its achievements and potential. But my right honourable friend has a responsibility for education as a whole. The university is asking for additional resources at a time of economic difficulty and when other institutions of higher education are facing cuts. The noble Baroness will understand that my right honourable friend has to examine the university's case not just on its merits but in the wider context of educational spending. Nevertheless, granted not least the presence in the Department of the Minister of State (himself until recently a professor in the Open University), it is most unlikely that its case will go by default. The Labour Party's dedication to the principles of the Open University remains unshaken. And if I may say this to the noble Lord, Lord Sandford: let us never forget that the Open University was intended to provide, as has been stressed again and again this afternoon, a second chance. That must colour very significantly the suggestion that the noble Lord made with regard to how it fitted in. I will come back to that point presently, but one or two other points were raised and here perhaps it is appropriate that we should be reminded of the achievements of the Open University, and I am grateful to the noble Baroness for providing the occasion for doing so.
In a comparatively short period of time the Open University has won acclaim at home and abroad, and my noble and learned friend Lord Gardiner referred to this fact, as did the noble Lords, Lord Annan and Lord Goodman; and my noble friend Lord Wynne-Jones also referred to the interest abroad. When I was in Toronto some time ago I found this deep interest. At the time I was sorry that I was unable to answer many of the questions put to me. I did not think of the simple answer that the noble Lord, Lord Wynne-Jones, did, which was, "Get in touch with the principal and he will tell you all about it".

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We have good reason to be proud as a nation that the Open University has made such a mark and created so much interest, and we can feel that we are leading the world in this matter. The first courses were only offered in 1971, and already the high quality of its teaching has meant that people in other lands are seeking to be provided with the material that the University is using. We have to-day already over 4,000 graduates, and we are resolved to build on the experience and the success of the Open University, and keep faith with the ideal of providing an institution which offers that second chance to which I have referred, particularly for the disadvantaged. Our hope is that as our policy develops in the years ahead we can build upon its achievements, extending provision for those who have left full-time education without fully developing their educational potential.
The noble Lord, Lord Beaumont of Whitley, asked one or two questions, and the points he made have also been raised by other speakers. He raised the question about the kind of awards received by students at the Open University. The present position is that local education authorities have the power to make awards to Open University students at the rate, the terms and the conditions they consider appropriate. The attention of the authorities was drawn to their powers in this respect in a circular issued in 1971. I am aware of the criticism that the noble Lord voiced regarding the attitude of some of the less progressive authorities. The local authority associations themselves have recommended their members to make an award of £25 to students for each one week residential summer school attended, together with the necessary travelling expenses, and without the application of a means test. I ought to say that, if they wish, local education authorities can cover the whole cost; it is discretionary. Assistance can also be given with post-foundation courses where students' means were held to justify it. Sympathetic consideration might also be given to applications for assistance towards the cost incurred on set books and travel to attend tutorial classes, in order to prevent financial hardship to individual students.
Open University students are of course part-time, not full-time, students. I have to say that there is at present no pos-
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sibility of bringing part-time students within the scope of mandatory awards. Nevertheless, there is, as I have indicated, provision for discretionary awards, and we look to local authorities to exercise it wisely. I think the points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont of Whitley, were pertinent ones, and they have been underlined, as I have said, by one or two other speakers.
I would not for one moment wish to mislead the House on this question of mandatory grants because the question was raised in another place on May 14, when my right honourable friend the Minister, in reply to a Question as to whether the Secretary of State would consider the extension of mandatory grants to approved students in the Open University, replied:
"No. Open University students are part-time not full-time students and I see no present possibility of bringing part-time students within the scope of mandatory awards."
I am sure your Lordships are all aware of the restrictions under which I speak; the degree of latitude which I enjoy will be well known in its limitation. I have thought it proper to be frank to the point almost of being brutal in indicating the possibilities of the grants being made mandatory.
I have been asked a number of other questions. If I possibly can I will deal with most of them, because I think your Lordships are very keenly interested in this subject indeed. The noble Lord, Lord Beaumont, raised the question of the eighteen to twenty-one year-old students, and reference has been made by other people to these. I think the noble Lord suggested that they were being financed by money from the Open University that would have been otherwise available. As I understand the position, the University is running a pilot experiment to admit a number of eighteen to twenty-one year-old students. I think the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, referred to this. It was planned in the first place for 500. I think it is regrettable that only 343 have been enrolled for 1974. But it was an experiment.
I wonder whether your Lordships who have criticised it would like to reflect on the fact that this is possibly the only chance that a married, 19-year-old woman with a couple of children at home could have of taking the kind of course the

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Open University offers. There is no long-term commitment, as I understand it, on this one. It is a pilot scheme. I think I am correct in saying there has been a special grant of £40,000 a year to finance this. It has been monitored again, and I think the cost of monitoring is being met by the Department of Education and Science. It seems to me that it is worth seeing whether it will do something worthwhile for these young people, many of them with no opportunity of going out at all. I want to emphasise that there is no long-term commitment. One appreciates the criticisms that have been voiced not only here this afternoon but that were voiced when it began.
My Lords, my noble friend Lady Summerskill has gone. In the circumstances, I think perhaps I had better write to her. If I have missed anything of significance, then I will write to your Lordships who have raised points. My Lords, the Open University is undoubtedly one of the education success stories of our time, one with which the noble Baroness, and all who worked with her, will always be proud to be associated. In its achievements to-day I think it is something of which the Party on this side of the House will always be proud.
I would inform the House that the Secretary of State is extremely interested in the project, and has undertaken to visit the University in the very near future. I am quite sure he will read with the closest interest all that has been said, and all that has been so powerfully stated here this afternoon. I should like to take a little time to think over what the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, had to say about grants, and to have another look at support grants, and will write to him.
The House has been very kind and I have taken longer to reply than I had intended.
My Lords, the Government are resolved that we shall do whatever is possible to continue the success of a development where we have led the world. It seems to me that the very success of the Open University fully justifies the concern that has been expressed here this afternoon. The concern that has been shown for its future is indeed a challenge to all of us
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and we must do whatever we can to meet it. It seems to me that the debate has succeeded at least in some measure, and I hope that the noble Baroness will so feel. It has put on record the structure of the University, the methods it uses, and the striking support for it in terms of students and applicants; and not least the speeches of noble Lords in this debate this afternoon. Its needs for the future have been demonstrated. They will be studied and decisions will be made as soon as they may be. Long may the University flourish!

RENT BILL [H.L.]
LORD STRABOLGI: My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend Lord Shepherd, I beg to introduce a Bill to amend the Rent Act 1968 and the Rent (Scotland) Act 1971, and for connected purposes. My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 1a.—(Lord Strabolgi).
On Question, Bill read 1a, and to be printed.

ECCLESIASTICAL COMMITTEE
The LORD CHANCELLOR acquainted the House that by virtue of the power vested in him by Section 2 of the Church of England Assembly (Powers) Act 1919 he had nominated the following fifteen Lords to be members of the Ecclesiastical Committee established under that Act, and to serve for the duration of the present Parliament:

V. Brentford.

V. Gage.

Baroness Brooke of Ystradfellte.

L. Clitheroe.

L. Crook.

L. Cross of Chelsea.

L. Fletcher.

L. Greenwood of Rossendale.

L. Grenfell.

L. Hawke.

L. Hodson.

L. Luke.

L. Meston.

L. Somers.

L. Teviot.