§ 2.45 p.m.
§ Lord WELLS-PESTELLMy Lords, I beg to move that this Report be now received.
Moved, That the Report be now received.—(Lord Wells-Pestell.)
§ On Question, Motion agreed to.
§ Clause 3 [Married Women and Widows.]:
§
Lord ABERDARE moved Amendment No. 1:
Leave out Clause 3.
§ The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg to move Amendment No. 1 and I hasten to say that I have no intention of leaving out Clause 3. It is simply in order to give the noble Lord a further opportunity to comment on the interim arrangements that are envisaged in this clause for those married women and widows who are at present opted out of paying the full contribution. The clause 1256 gives the Government powers to make regulations in this respect; and at previous stages we have pressed the noble Lord that we should like to have some Government decision before the Bill leaves this House. That is the reason why I have again put down this Amendment.
§ Lord WELLS-PESTELLMy Lords, with the leave of the House, and, I hope, with the consent of the noble Lord, I wonder whether the noble Lord would feel that it would meet the situaion if I were to inform your Lordships of a reply given yesterday in another place by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State on this matter. She said:
I have received comments from the twelve interested organisations whom I consulted on this matter. I am most grateful for their views which I have now considered. I have decided that women who have in force an option to pay contributions at the reduced rate in the last tax year of the present scheme should have the right to pay such contributions at the start of the new scheme. Thereafter, they would retain that right as long as they remained either married women or widow beneficiaries; except that it would end if they chose to pay full contributions or if they paid no contributtions for a period of at least two complete tax years. Where a woman paid contributions at the reduced rate and was a member of a contracted-out occupational pension scheme, her employer would be liable to pay the contracted-out rate of contribution instead of the full rate in respect of her and she would he provided with pension rights in the occuptional scheme in the normal way.My right honourable friend concluded her statement with these words:I shall in due course lay draft regulations designed to give effect to these proposals.I am informed that these regulations will be of the Affirmative order and so they will appear before both Houses of Parliament and your Lordships will have the opportunity of questioning those regulations in detail.
§ Lord ABERDAREMy Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for repeating that statement, which was exactly what I was asking for. We shall need to look carefully at its full import and, as he says, we shall be able to return to it when the regulations themselves are made. I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
§ Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
1257§ Clause 14 [Rate of invalidity pension for persons under pensionable age]:
§ 2.49 p.m.
§ Lord CRAWSHAW moved Amendment No. 2:
§
Page 7, line 34, at end insert—
(2) Regulations may—
§ The noble Lord said: My Lords, this Amendment is not so simple as the previous one. In fact, it had a trial canter at the Committee stage of this Bill. The debate took place immediately following a debate on the composition of the European Parliament and, understandably, nearly all noble Lords had gone to quench their thirst with something more stimulating than the Social Security Pensions Bill. Only about twelve noble Lords were present, and for that reason I felt justified in letting this Amendment run for its money again now. I cannot complain at the draw this afternoon.
§ Any observant tout who may have been in the House on that occasion will be aware that unless there is an upset of form such as would cause eyebrows to be raised and questions asked in any stewards' room, we may not entirely see eye to eye with the Government. Therefore, I may ask your Lordships to give this Amendment the same solid support as you gave to a similar Amendment, but a more demanding one, which I moved in this House in February. You then voted two to one in favour of raising the sum that an invalidity pensioner can earn without losing his entire pension from £4.50 to £13 per week and for the introduction of a sliding scale reducing the pension as earnings rise in excess of £13 weekly. I should also explain, if by any chance any noble Lords have not heard this argument before, that an invalidity pensioner is a person not of retiring age but who, by reason of some form of incapacity, is deemed incapable of work.
1258§ At some stage the question will have to be asked: what do we mean by work? We cannot any longer take it that work is a manual exercise, but includes brainwork and matters of that sort. Up to April of this year, such a man with a wife and child would have received £26.55 per week, which included invalidity allowance, and there is no complaint about that. I want to get this absolutely plain: we are not asking for an increased pension. It is a very reasonable amount already in existence and is very often made up still further at State expense by supplementary benefits. According to the figures which the Department of Health and Social Security have kindly given me, in June 1974 there were 366,000 such people in this country of whom 77 per cent. were over 50 years of age.
§ Also by way of explanation, I should add that although your Lordships agreed the amount that one of these people could earn without losing their entire pension may be raised from £4.50 to £13 on the last occasion to which I have already referred, the other place rejected the Lords Amendments on grounds of financial privilege and increased cost. They have never been able to produce any figures to support their contention. The figure of £7 a week was substituted for the Lords' figure of £13 a week. Consequently, if any of these people try to get back to full-time work by taking on part-time or light work, they will lose their entire pensions if they should erringly earn more than £7 a week. In the great majority of cases they cannot afford to take that risk. Furthermore, a doctor, faced with a person who will not be able to support himself entirely for the foreseeable future, will have to judge him incapable of work just to ensure that he will have something to live on.
§ We believe that this is a crude and artificial system totally inconsistent with the facts of life and diametrically opposed to all the current efforts in the fields of education and rehabilitation. It is a supreme example of the malaise from which this country is suffering. It illustrates graphically the dexterity of the dead hand of the State which in one movement throttles any attempt of independence and initiative and, at the same time, caresses 1259 the witch of inflation by the indiscriminate and insensitive handing out of public money.
§ I fear the morale of the people of this country as a whole is rather low at the moment. You have only to ask the retired people on a fixed income or the members of the England cricket team—ask anybody! We seek inspiration and incentive, and none more so than the people we are considering this afternoon. I am thinking especially of the 85,000 people under 50 years of age, and the 35,000 people under 40 years of age, on whom the verdict "incapable of work "has been passed. Representatives of the Disabled Income Group, the Spinal Injuries Association, and others, have confirmed in the past few days that this system of enforced idleness is having a constantly depressing and inhibiting effect.
§ Your Lordships are this afternoon in a position to give some encouragement, and the mere fact that the issue is being debated at all is certainly a help and one of my main reasons for putting down the Amendment at Report stage. The Amendment before the House this afternoon is in the mildest possible terms, and merely sets out the guidelines—to use the current jargon—of the way we think this matter should be tackled. It is the embodiment of moderation. The word "may" gives the Minister the utmost flexibility; no figures are mentioned which upset the Commons financial privilege or increase public expenditure. No timescale is mentioned which could bring pressure on the Minister. The intention is purely and simply to start the ball rolling and get discussions moving which should ultimately result in the abandonment of this crude "sick or fit" system. The aim is to try to ensure we maximise everyone's earning capacity and, where needed, encourage them with a small invalidity pension which will decrease as earnings rise.
§ My Lords, I could say a lot more, but, in conclusion, I feel I should remind your Lordships of the present and comparable position of the retirement pensioners who, due to the recent relaxation in the earnings rule, can now earn £20 a week, increasing to £50 a week over the years, before their pension is affected. You can compare this with the invalidity pension of £7 a week. The question also must be asked: what happens when an invalidity 1260 pensioner reaches retirement age? Under what scale does he receive his pension? My noble friend Lady Darcy de Knayth and I drew the attention of the 12 noble Lords present at the Committee stage to the way in which car workers could work four days a week and draw unemployment benefit for the fifth day. That is nice for them, and we should like to see that happen for the invalidity pensioner.
§ The noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, says that unemployment is not comparable with the situation which we are discussing. In my view, statutorily enforced idleness is a far greater evil than ordinary unemployment. I have great sympathy with the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, who, once again, has to answer what I believe to be a very strong case, particularly because I know from his speeches of 1970 he would support my case if he were not shackled by the chains of Office. Perhaps we shall be able to agree; but, if not, I shall have to ask your Lordships to decide. Meanwhile, I beg to move the Amendment.
§ 2.58 p.m.
Viscount ST. DAVIDSMy Lords, I strongly support the Amendment of my noble friend Lord Crawshaw. I believe that the law as it stands is simply out of date. The fact is that it was composed in a day when they thought of work as something one did with a pick and shovel. I am sure nobody would expect my noble friend Lord Crawshaw to do anything with a pick and a shovel. Nevertheless, I am sure the whole House will agree with me that he is capable of a great deal of very valuable work, although not quite in pick and shovel terms. This is true of a great many people who find themselves in similar positions.
I have often wondered what I would do in such circumstances. At various times of my life I have broken one thing or another and have been partly put out of action. I have wondered what would have happened if it had become total disability. I have always thought that in such circumstances I would turn myself into a telephone answering service. If I could not move hand or foot, I would get myself beside a telephone and make myself useful, either commercially or possibly to some charitable organisation like the Samaritans, where, if anybody telephoned and said he was miserable and felt like committing suicide, I could say, "Well, 1261 be cheered up by me; I am permanently in a wheelchair".
One can always do a useful job. There are many commercial positions in which one can be of use. After all, a computer is useful, and the human brain is not a bad computer. A computer can only say "Yes" or No ".A person can do that by wagging one little finger. I do not believe that any person is totally crippled until he or she can fail to do that. To put anybody in a position where they are considered totally crippled while they are still capable of so much thought and movement, is simply ridiculous as things now stand, and is totally contrary to all the concepts of modern medicine.
I strongly support this Amendment. The law is totally ridiculous as it stands. I do a certain amount of writing—not very successfully, but in that respect I am level with the great majority of authors—and whether I earn £7 a week or not I do not know; I am not sure that anybody, even my accountant, knows. How on earth anybody would ever discover whether or not I was earning £7 a week I do not know; certainly they would not know until years afterwards. What is supposed to happen in the interval? It seems to me that the law as it stands is out of date, absurd, and in many cases simply and plainly unworkable.
The Countess of LOUDOUNMy Lords, I, too, think it is time we had some positive action on this issue of the earnings stop. We have had assurances from successive Governments, but while the stop has been increased by £2.50 a week, disabled people are still forced to face the impossible situation of being prevented from working part-time or of working full-time at a reduced rate or for reduced earnings. These disabled people are still being penalised by a "sick or fit" social security system which does not take account of the facts of life associated with disability. We must allow disabled people the opportunity to become partially self-supporting. This Amendment allows the Government to do this without committing them to any detailed provisions which might be unacceptable in the present very difficult economic situation.
To me this seems to be an example of double standards. We allow our old age pensioners to benefit from the earnings 1262 rule. Why cannot we be equally generous to the far fewer number of severely disabled people in our society? We know this harsh earnings stop prevents some disabled people returning to full-time work through a period of part-time work and that some of them are forced to continue working when, from a medical point of view, it might be advisable for them to relax a little and work only part-time. It really is time to bring our social security system into line with the facts of disability. I therefore have no hesitation in giving my wholehearted support to this Amendment.
§ 3.3 p.m.
§ Baroness DARCY DE KNAYTHMy Lords, may I once again add my warm support for this Amendment of my noble friend. He has put forward a very strong case, as he has on a number of previous occasions, on the need to remedy this absurd situation whereby the invalidity pensioner, as soon as he earns one penny over the £7 therapeutic earnings, forfeits his entire pension at one blow. So I shall add only a couple of points regarding this question of being certified as incapable of work.
My noble friend has reminded us that when he moved this Amendment in Committee the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, said that an invalidity pension and unemployment benefit had nothing to do with each other and that they were not really comparable. He said that after my noble friend had revealed that certain car workers on a four-day week had been allowed to draw unemployment benefit for the fifth day. Yet at the Committee stage of the Social Security Benefits Bill last February, in replying to a similar Amendment moved by my noble friend, the noble Lord drew a parallel with the unemployed person and said that one could not obtain unemployment benefit if one were employed. We have seen that one can; and I would therefore suggest that equally one should be entitled to draw an invalidity pension and do some form of light work.
Another argument has been over the difficulty of getting round the term "total incapacity to work". The noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, said at the Committee stage of this Bill that the Government had already acknowledged the existence of this problem. He quoted on the 3rd 1263 July my reference on the 27th February to a Commons Paper published last September, which said that there was a need for discussion, information and consultation about the problems of the disabled worker. We could go round in circles like this ad infinitum. The noble Lord says that the problem is to get round the term "total incapacity." I would suggest that paragraph (a) of my noble friend's Amendment effectively solves this problem. It says that Regulations may:
(a)provide for an invalidity pension to be payable to a pensioner who, whilst continuing to be incapacitated for normal full-time work, becomes capable of undertaking light work in circumstances which satisfy prescribed conditions;".Having shown the Government the way out of their dilemma, the Amendment then allows them the maximum flexibility for considering how best they might carry out the scheme. I hope that your Lordships will give this Amendment your fullest support.
§ Lady KINLOSSMy Lords, I understand that for a disabled person to receive an invalidity pension he or she must be certified as incapable of work. If he does work, he is unable to earn more than £7. To do so would mean his forfeiting his invalidity pension. Surely there are many people who are disabled but who are capable of working part-time, if not full-time. I should have thought that psychologically it would be a great encouragement for people to feel that they could at least help their country and society by contributing financially through their earnings and requiring less financial help. Therefore I should like to support this Amendment.
§ Lord BANKSMy Lords, may I briefly repeat a point which I made at an earlier stage, that in passing this Amendment I do not think the House would be in any way contravening the principle of the invalidity pension. The Government tell us that the invalidity pension is payable only to those who are incapable of work, but in a sense they breach that principle by saying that nevertheless they may earn up to £7 a week, if this is certified by a doctor as being of therapeutic value. I see no reason why, while that principle of certification should not be continued, the level should not be 1264 raised or put on to a sliding scale, which is what this Amendment asks for. That is an alteration of degree, but not of principle. The Amendment does not say when this should happen; nor does it say exactly what the figure should be when it does happen. It merely makes provision for it to happen; and it seems to me that a change of degree to this extent is not something which ought to be resisted. In view of the way in which the matter is left open to be applied as and when it is thought appropriate, it seems to me that your Lordships' House would be well advised to approve this Amendment.
§ Baroness HORNSBY-SMITHMy Lords, I think the policy of the Health Service has been to get as many people as possible back in their own home. The earnings stop is a very real deterrent to those who would be prepared to have seriously handicapped people at home, because the limit at which they could earn is obviously most inadequate for housekeeping when perhaps they have much higher heating and fuel bills, and have to pay for other services. I know of a person who has lost the use of spine and legs but who still has mobility in her hands and is a quite superb knitter. It is within her competence to contribute to household expenses, and the members of the household indeed went out of their way to get her back home as soon as possible. She could reasonably contribute to a household where her claims for attendance, extra fuel and so on, are greater than those of other members of the family who are able to earn outside, if there was not this terrific embargo in regard to the limit of £7. I hope the noble Lord will feel able to look at this again so that we might be able to help families who in turn are anxious and willing to help their disabled members but where the burden of additional daily assistance, additional fuel and so on, make this limit far too rigid to encourage to work people who would otherwise feel it necessary to stay in a home—which probably costs the rest of us between £40 and £50 per week per patient.
§ 3.10 p.m.
§ Lord ABERDAREMy Lords, may I say a word before the Minister intervenes because, although we are traversing well-worn ground, I think there is rather more in the case that has been made 1265 today than has been put into the arguments on previous occasions. As I said on the Committee stage, it is our hope eventually to introduce a scheme of special payments according to the degree of disability, rather on the lines of the industrial injuries scheme. However, this would be a major undertaking and one for future legislation.
We have always supported the concept of the invalidity benefit as being a payment made to people who are incapable of work. At the same time we have never disguised our sympathy with the underlying case that has been so eloquently put today by the noble Lord, Lord Crawshaw, and the noble Baroness, Lady Darcy De Knayth. In view of the fact that, as they have explained, it does not place any immediate obligation on the Government, I hope that the noble Lord will be able to look at it sympathetically. It only involves a power to make regulations, and within those regulations there are powers to prescribe various conditions under which light work may be undertaken, the amount that may be earned and the effect that any earnings additional to the amount would have on the pensioners' entitlement. Therefore there is considerable scope within the proposed new subsection, and so far as I can see no immediate expenses fall on public expenditure. In view of the support which has been given to the noble Lord who proposed the Amendment, I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, will look on it as sympathetically as he can.
§ Lord WELLS-PESTELLMy Lords, may I first say that I understand the position of the noble Lord and the noble Baroness who have moved this kind of Amendment, though not in exactly the same words, on a number of occasions, and I am aware of my own inability to explain to your Lordships what it is all about. I propose to try again today. Let me say at the beginning that I am not shackled by the chains of office. I do not find office so attractive as to be shackled by it, and the moment I feel so I shall resign. Nothing will shackle me, certainly not being in office. I have much more sympathy than perhaps your Lordships realise. There was a period in my life when I was more disabled than anybody in your Lordships' House. I was totally 1266 paralysed; I could not move any part of my body. I mention that not to get your sympathy—because you are too hard-headed, if I may say so, for me to hope to achieve that—but to let you know that I have a great deal of sympathy for the disabled.
The noble Lord said that he intends to divide the House. I cannot stop him and I do not mind if he does so. But will your Lordships bear in mind that we are considering at the present moment—whatever we may want in the future—total incapacity. We are talking about men and women who have been medically examined and assessed, and medical opinion says that they are so totally incapacitated that they cannot work. We cannot get away from that. If we say, "All right, we will allow them to earn money, but not more than £7 a week", it is not a question of giving them permission to work. The £7 a week is a therapeutic allowance, when a medical expert is of the opinion that it would be psychologically advantageous to that person to struggle to do something, as I struggled to do something for a very long period. It was psychologically important that one had this kind of therapy.
If we divide, let us remember that an invalidity pension is an incapacity benefit, the longer term counterpart of sickness benefit. It is payable both to those who are incapable of work for short periods following a long period of incapacity, and to those who are chronically incapacitated and never likely to recover. When we think in terms of the ability of such people to work, may I point out that the average age of invalidity pensioners is high. The typical invalidity pensioner is a person of late middle life with a chronic incapacitating condition.
The basic condition of entitlement at present is complete incapacity for any work, full-time or part-time, for which an employer would be prepared to pay money. Regulations on the lines envisaged in the Amendment would be totally inconsistent with the statutory base of the benefit. The sort of disabled person most of us would have in mind when talking about light work is not somebody who is now receiving invalidity benefit and looking for the opportunity to earn a little money in addition. We mean the disabled worker who is currently not entitled to 1267 invalidity benefit at all, and for whom invalidity benefit was never designed. These are the sort of people to whom the noble Lord, Lord Crawshaw, must be referring. In short, we have moved from talking about total incapacity for work, to talking about the 13,000 to 14,000 people in sheltered employment—which is an entirely different thing—the 40,000 or so unemployed registered disabled people and a proportion, at least, of the million or so disabled people in open employment.
The claims made for the Amendment have been studiously moderate, but I am afraid they have been a little unrealistic. Light work or part-time work are circumstances which have been established to be inconsistent with the basic statutory definition of incapacity, whereas, as I said a moment ago, therapeutic work at medical request is not, because then we are concerned with medically supervised or medically approved work which is limited in scope and is in no sense a full-blown commercial arrangement. One might say it is part of the rehabilitation of the individual by medical personnel. The person who does a substantial amount of work is likely to be disqualified for invalidity pension, even if he has no earnings. The therapeutic earnings limit is only one test, and by no means necessarily the most important.
Perhaps I may give examples. We know that, within the definition of therapeutic work and the limit of therapeutic earnings, there are people such as a severely disabled textile worker teaching craftwork for a few hours a week in the occupational therapy department of the hospital where she is treated; and, more typically, there are the many physically or mentally disabled people earning a little money in local authority centres. It really will not do—and I say this as kindly as possible—to offer over-simplified answers to very difficult and complex questions. The noble Lord gave the example of the allowance given to somebody who is totally incapacitated, with one child. At present, a man with a wife and four children receives up to £39 a week, tax free, because he is totally incapacitated. The suggestion is now that he should be able to earn money and that it should not be knocked off 1268 his pension. If I may give the figure for a man with a wife and two children—as the average English family has 2.2 children—it is £30.70 a week.
What we are considering is the question that people who are in receipt of a pension which is designed to meet their needs while totally incapacitated should be permitted to work and earn money. I do not think that any useful purpose will be served if I address your Lordships at great length. Noble Lords must be a little tired of hearing me on the subject. But in all fairness and in all sense we cannot relate this matter to the retirement pensioner who is working and therefore has an earnings stop if he works between the ages of 65 and 70 when he is drawing a retirement pension. One must bear in mind that the retirement pensioner has paid in contributions over a period of 35 or 40 or perhaps 45 years in the expectation that he will retire at 65. If he later decides to take a part-time job, society, rightly or wrongly, says: "If you are not going to retire completely and make way for somebody else, then you must be subject to some sort of stop." As your Lordships know, there is a stop.
I shall serve no useful purpose in dealing with the unemployed person. It has been the view of successive Governments that people who are able to work should be enabled to do so. I can only repeat what I said on the last occasion. If society cannot find a man a full week's work, it is not unreasonable, since he pays for unemployment benefit and so on, to compensate him for one or two days' unemployment. I do not think the matter we are discussing is comparable. We are dealing with a pension which is given for total incapacity. Everybody in receipt of it has been certified by a competent medical person to be totally unable to work because he or she is incapable of work. So the question of having an earnings allowance cannot apply. If the noble Lord, Lord Crawshaw, says, "Yes, but many of them are not totally incapacitated", then the medical certificate and the medical judgment are wrong. It may be that we shall have to face up to the question of doing away with a total incapacity pension and devise some other benefit, but that is not the point we are dealing with this afternoon.
§ Lord MAYBRAY-KINGMy Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, may I 1269 ask him a question as someone who appreciates what he has done personally in this field for himself? We are speaking about totally incapacitated persons. It is just possible that someone who has been ruled as totally incapacitated may have before him the goal of doing a little work, apart from therapeutic work about which the noble Lord has spoken. Why deprive him of the incentive of doing a little work and retaining some of his pension and the money that he earns according to the formula in this Amendment?
§ Lord WELLS-PESTELLMy Lords, with the greatest respect, I do not think that would be the way to deal with the situation. A person in that position takes himself—as many people do—out of the total incapacity benefit scheme; he does what work he can and then applies for some form of supplementary benefit. That course, I understand, is open to anybody who is adjudged to be totally incapacitated. If at any time someone feels he is not totally incapacitated, there is nothing to prevent him from doing a part-time job from which he derives some financial benefit and seeking some kind of supplementary benefit to enable him to live. However, that is a slightly different point.
§ Lord SEGALMy Lords, while fully accepting that the figure of £7 might have been fixed on the basis of its therapeutic effect to a person who is totally incapacitated, may I ask whether this figure is necessarily a rigid figure which
§ must be adhered to, and does it take into account the recent rise in the rate of wages?
§ Lord WELLS-PESTELLMy Lords, I think I ought to say that, except with the leave of the House, I have no right to speak a second time or subsequently on Report stage. I ask the House to accept what I have said and to make its decision accordingly. I do not think it would be fair to your Lordships, in view of the business before the House, for me to keep on popping up and down.
§ Lord CRAWSHAWMy Lords, first I should like to apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, if I in any way gave offence when I mentioned the chains of Office. I hope he will accept that that was a figure of speech. I was trying to say that I realise there are certain constraints on Ministers to which the rest of us are not subjected. I am grateful to the noble Lord for his reply and to the many noble Lords who have supported this Amendment, both today and in the past. It looks as though we cannot at the moment bridge the gap with the Government. I feel that the Amendment is couched in the most moderate terms and I would therefore ask your Lordships for your opinion.
§ 3.28 p.m.
§ On Question, Whether the said Amendment (No. 2) shall be agreed to?
§ Their Lordships divided: Contents, 96; Not-Contents, 57.
1271| CONTENTS | ||
| Airedale, L. | de Freyne, L. | Kemsley, V. |
| Alexander of Tunis, E. | Dudley, B. | Killearn, L. |
| Allerton, L. | Dundee, E. | Kimberley, E. |
| Alport, L. | Effingham, E. | Kindersley, L. |
| Amulrec, L. | Elliot of Harwood, B. | Kinloss, Ly. |
| Arran, E. | Emmet of Amberley, B. | Kinnaird, L. |
| Ashbourne, L. | Erskine of Rerrick, L. | Lauderdale, E. |
| Balerno, L. | Evans of Hungershall, L. | Leathers, V. |
| Balfour, E. | Falkland, V. | Lindsey and Abingdon, E. |
| Balfour of Inchrye, L. | Garner, L. | Lloyd of Kilgerran, L. |
| Banks, L. | Gladwyn, L. | Longford, E. |
| Barn by, L. | Greenway, L. | Loudoun, C. |
| Beaumont of Whitley, L. | Grey of Naunton, L. | Mackie of Benshie, L. |
| Bledisloe, V. | Gridley, L. | Malmesbury, E. |
| Boothby, L. | Grimston of Westbury, L. | Maybray-King, L. [Teller.] |
| Byers, L. | Hampton, L. | Monck, V. |
| Cathcart, E. | Hankey, L. | Mowbray and Stourton, L. |
| Chorley, L. | Hanworth, V. | Northchurch, B. |
| Clancarty, E. | Harmar-Nicholls, L. | Nugent of Guildford, L. |
| Crathorne, L. | Hinton of Bankside, L. | Ogmore, L. |
| Crawshaw, L. | Home of the Hirsel, L. | Platt, L. |
| Cromartie, E. | Hornsby-Smith, B. | Porritt, L. |
| Darcy (de Knayth), B. | Jessel, L. | Rankeillour, L. |
| Daventry, V. | Hylton-Foster, B. | Reay, L. |
| Roberthall, L. | Sharpies, B. | Tenby, V. |
| Rochester, Bp. | Silsoe, L. | Thurso, V. |
| Rochester, L. | Southwell, Bp. | Vernon, L. |
| Sackville, L. | Stamp, L. | Verulam, E. |
| St. Davids, V. [Teller.] | Stradbroke, E. | Vickers, B. |
| St. Just, L. | Strathcarron, L. | Vivian, L. |
| Seear, B. | Sufneld, L. | Wade, L. |
| Shannon, E. | Templemore, L. | Ward of North Tyneside, B. |
| NOT-CONTENTS | ||
| Arwyn, L. | Gaitskell, B. | Peddie, L. |
| Aylestone, L. | Gordon-Walker, L. | Popplewell, L. |
| Bernstein, L. | Hale, L. | Raglan, L. |
| Beswick, L. | Helsby, L. | Segal, L. |
| Blyton, L. | Henderson, L. | Shepherd, L. (L. Privy Seal.) |
| Bourne, L. | Houghton of Sowerby, L. | Shinwell, L. |
| Breadalbane, E. | Hoy, L. | Slater, L. |
| Brockway, L. | Jacques, L. | Soper, L. |
| Burntwood, L. | Janner, L. | Stewart of Alvechurch, B. |
| Burton of Coventry, B. | Leatherland, L. | Stow Hill, L. |
| Castle, L. | Lee of Asheridge, B. | Strabolgi, L. [Teller.] |
| Champion, L. | Lee of Newton, L. | Strang, L. |
| Crook, L. | Llewelyn-Davies of Hastoe, B. | Summerskill, B. |
| Delacourt-Smith of Alteryn, B. | Lovell-Davis, L. | Taylor of Mansfield, L. |
| Donaldson of Kingsbridge, L. | McLeavy, L. | Wallace of Coslany, L. |
| Douglas of Barloch, L. | Maelor, L. | Wells-Pestell, L. |
| Douglass of Cleveland, L. | Melchett, L. | Wilson of Radcliffe, L. |
| Elwyn-Jones, L. (L. Chancellor.) | Onslow, E. | Winterbottom, L. [Teller.] |
| Pargiter, L. | Wynne-Jones, L. | |
| Fisher of Rednal, B. |
On Question, Amendments agreed to.
§ Resolved in the affirmative, and Amendment agreed to accordingly.