Lords Sitting of 3 November 1975

Preamble
The House met at half past two of the clock: The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Ely.

LORD JACOBSON
Sydney Jacobson, Esquire, M.C., having been created Baron Jacobson, of St. Albans in Hertfordshire, for life—Was, in his robes, introduced between the Lord Ardwick and the Lord Cudlipp, and made the solemn Affirmation.

POST OFFICE: CHRISTMAS POST STATISTICS
2.48 p.m.
Baroness BURTON of COVENTRY: 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, as the charge of 5p for sending Christmas cards abroad does not yield a profit, the result is an actual deficit; if so, who pays the deficit and to what organisation; and what was the deficit for Christmas 1974.
Lord LOVELL-DAVIS: My Lords, because of constraints imposed by the rules of the Universal Postal Union, the overseas surface mail printed paper service, by which unsealed greetings cards may be sent for 5p, made a loss of about £4½ million in 1974–75. Compensation under the Statutory Corporations (Financial Provisions) Act 1974 is payable to the Post Office up to an amount equal to the total deficit incurred by the postal business as a whole.
Baroness BURTON of COVENTRY: My Lords, while thanking the Minister for that reply, may I ask for his help
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on another matter? Does he recall that on Thursday last—as reported at col. 607 of Hansard—I asked the noble Lord, Lord Beswick, whether he could confirm that the figures for the number of letters posted during the Christmas period 1973–74 were, respectively, 781 million and 806 million and that the noble Lord said he would check? Can the noble Lord comment on that?
Lord LOVELL-DAVIS: My Lords, my noble friend Lord Beswick intended no discourtesy in expressing the changes in terms of percentages. He was quoting from the annual report and accounts of the Post Office. These shows that in the Christmas period of 1972 the number of letters posted was 904 million. The reduction of 5 per cent. reported for 1973 implies a figure of about 859 million items, and the increase of 3 per cent. in 1974 would bring the figure to about 885 million items. On looking into the Post Office's report and accounts, I see that in referring to posts on page 23 it says
"At Christmas, letter traffic increased by 3 per cent. and parcel traffic by 21 per cent."
However, in case there is any doubt at all about this matter I will certainly look into it, and if the figures are other than those I have given I will gladly write to the noble Baroness.
Baroness BURTON of COVENTRY: My Lords, while being very appreciative of the trouble the Minister has taken, may I write to him in detail about this, for is he aware that the information given to my noble friend Lord Beswick was based not on the letter traffic for the three-week period concerned, but for letters and parcels combined? If I send the noble Lord the full details, perhaps he will let me have a reply.
Lord LOVELL-DAVIS: My Lords, I should be grateful to the noble Baroness if she would do that.
Lord HAILSHAM of SAINT MARYLEBONE: My Lords, will the Post Office be sending the noble Baroness a Christmas card this year; and, if not, will it be a Valentine?

WORLD DISARMAMENT: PROPOSED CONFERENCE
Lord BROCKWAY: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether a date has yet been fixed for the World Disarmament Conference and, if not, whether they will propose to the United Nations Security Council that a date be agreed.
The PARLIAMENTARY UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE, FOREIGN and COMMONWEALTH OFFICE (Lord Goronwy-Roberts): My Lords, this is a matter for the U.N. General Assembly. The First Committee started its disarmament discussions on 30th October, which will include consideration of the latest report of the ad hoc committee on a world disarmament conference. Noble Lords will not expect me to forecast the outcome.
Lord BROCKWAY: My Lords, while thanking the Minister for that reply, in view of the cynicism that exists everywhere may I ask whether Her Majesty's Government cannot give a positive and dynamic lead towards disarmament? Was it not 13 years ago that both the United States and the Soviet Union proposed a phased complete disarmament policy, and cannot Her Majesty's Government give a lead in that direction now?
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, before I attempt to answer that question, I should like to congratulate my noble friend and to wish him many happy returns of yesterday as well as cautiously to wish him well in his protracted attempts to substitute the inquisitive society for the acquisitive society. Indeed, we have given leads, dynamic and otherwise, in the Conference on the Committee on Disarmament. It is a continuing conference in Geneva. We have given valuable leads and have made contributions which have led to at least four substantial advances in non-proliferation, partial test ban, biological warfare and in a fourth field relating to technical disarmament. I remind my noble friend that the ad hoc committee was set up by the General Assembly to assess the views
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of countries generally as to the convening of a world disarmament conference. So far, there is no consensus about the feasibility of such a conference. It would therefore be somewhat premature for us or anybody else to propose a date for a conference about which, sadly, there is no agreement so far. However, I take note with sympathy of what my noble friend has said on this matter and I repeat that I wish him well in the future.
Lord BROCKWAY: My Lords, while thanking the Minister for his kind reference and the House for its reception, may I just say that I do not propose to celebrate my birthdays until the 90th one. May I ask whether, in view of the fact that the Disarmament Conference, with its millions of words and the SALT Conference and the Vienna Conference are bogged down, is it not desirable that there should be a world conference and a consensus of world opinion for disarmament and peace?
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: Yes, my Lords, that is eminently desirable, and it is why the General Assembly appointed an ad hoc committee, to look into ways and means of setting up such a conference.
Lord LLOYD of KILGERRAN: My Lords, is the noble Lord in a position to say whether, on the ad hoc committee to which he has referred, there has been any progress towards a unification of views of the Defence Ministers of the EEC countries?
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, as the noble Lord knows, the ad hoc committee is composed of representatives of 14 non-nuclear Powers. However, nuclear Powers such as ourselves and another from the Community participate. The views and information which we make available to the ad hoc committee would, I believe, broadly reflect the attitude and views of the Community.
Lord BRUCE of DONINGTON: My Lords, can my noble friend inform the House whether high on the agenda of this conference there will be placed the growing phenomenon of the large States in the world competing with one another at ever-increasing intensity to supply weapons of destruction to the developing countries?
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, the production and distribution of weapons of destruction by any country will, I expect, be at the top of the Agenda of any world disarmament conference when it is agreed that such a conference shall be held.
Lord JANNER: My Lords, could we not make a start by ourselves refusing, and persuading other countries to refuse, to sell arms to countries against which there could not possibly be any aggression of any kind and which have no internal problems of their own which demand the use of these arms?
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, certainly that seems unexceptionable, though it depends on the definition of "aggression". Here again, the discussion of disarmament inevitably leads one into a discussion on aggression.
Lord TREFGARNE: My Lords, referring back to the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks which the noble Lord mentioned a moment ago, could he confirm that the principal problem there is still the difficulty of persuading the Russians to agree to proper policing of any arrangements which may be agreed?
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords probably since the Baruch plan of 1946, the problem has been to devise a system of verification which is equally acceptable to East and West.

GIBRALTAR: AIR TOURS
2.57 p.m.
Lord MERRIVALE: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government (a) whether IATA Resolution 810e (which deals with Inclusive Tours) applies to Gibraltar, under the provisions of the United Kingdom Cabotage Air Passenger Tariff which states that "unless the context otherwise requires" it shall apply, and (b) whether this Resolution is referred to where it is stated under SGIT arrangements that "Normal Inclusive Tour Rules" apply.
Lord WINTERBOTTOM: My Lords, the authoritative interpretation of the terms of air service licences issued by the Civil Aviation Authority is a matter for the courts, but my honourable friend intends to draw the attention of the Chairman of the Authority to the noble Lord's Question.
Lord MERRIVALE: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for that reply. In view of the fact that the representations of the Gibraltar Government which were put forward to the Government on 10th October were to have been considered and commented on before the end of the month, can the noble Lord say what is the result of the CAA comments which were forwarded to the Government? Can I take it that a "sponsoring member" regarding an inclusive tour means the participating IATA member and that it is he who will be solely responsible for approving the tour literature and for executing the air tour certificate between the United Kingdom and Gibraltar and vice versa?
Lord WINTERBOTTOM: My Lords, any exchange between the Gibraltar Government and another organisation is in confidence and I feel sure that the noble Lord would not wish me to comment on it. As regards the noble Lord's second point, this is a highly complex matter and if the noble Lord cares to put down another Question when my honourable friend has had a chance of studying his Question, I may be able to give a satisfactory answer.
Lord LEE of NEWTON: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that, when the arrangements were made in 1956 for tours to be diverted—previously tours had been Gibraltar to Spain—the arrangement was an inclusive tour starting with three or four days in Gibraltar and going across the Straits to the North African side, so that, in that sense, it certainly was an inclusive tour?
Lord WINTERBOTTOM: My Lords, I believe my noble friend has touched on part of the nub of the matter, but this is not a simple question.
Lord THOMAS: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that IATA is mainly concerned with the scheduled services and that inclusive tour matters are a highly complicated commercial undertak

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ing which is looked after by the Civil Aviation Authority?
Lord WINTERBOTTOM: My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord and I believe we had better let the CAA deal with it.

AIRPORTS AUTHORITY BILL [H.L.]
The LORD CHANCELLOR (Lord Elwyn-Jones): My Lords, this Bill has been amended by the Joint Committee on Consolidation Bills. I understand that no further Amendments have been set down to the Bill and that no noble Lord has indicated a wish to move a manuscript Amendment or to speak in Committee. Therefore, unless any noble Lord objects, I beg to move that the Order of Recommitment be discharged.
Moved, That the Order of Recommitment be discharged.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

EMPLOYMENT PROTECTION BILL
3 p.m.
Lord JACQUES: My Lords, I beg to move that the Commons Reasons for disagreeing to certain of the Lords Amendments, Commons Amendments to certain other of the Lords Amendments and Commons consequential Amendment to the Bill be now considered.
Moved, That the Commons Reasons for disagreeing to certain of the Lords Amendments, Commons Amendments to certain other of the Lords Amendments and Commons consequential Amendment to the Bill he now considered.—(Lord Jacques.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
COMMONS REASONS FOR DISAGREEING TO CERTAIN OF THE LORDS AMENDMENTS, COMMONS AMENDMENTS TO CERTAIN OTHER OF THE LORDS AMENDMENTS AND COMMONS CONSEQUENTIAL AMENDMENT TO THE BILL
[References are to Bill (304) as first printed by the Lords. Commons Reasons and Amendments are printed in italics.]

LORDS AMENDMENTS
[Nos. 1to 6]
Clause 11, page 8, line 41, after ("union") insert ("or an employer").
Clause 12, page 9, line 17, leave out ("trade union") and insert ("party making the reference").
Clause 12, page 9, line 26, leave out ("trade union or unions") and insert ("party or parties").
Clause 12, page 9, line 28, leave out ("unions") and insert ("parties").
Clause 12, page 9, leave out lines 30 and 31 and insert ("the remaining parties to the reference may be the subject of a recommendation for recognition").
The Commons disagreed to these Amendments for the following Reason:—
Because the Amendments are unnecessary in view of the fact that employers will be free, in relation to recognition issues, to request the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service to exercise its powers under other provisions of the Bill, namely Clause 2 (Conciliation) Clause 4 (Advice) or Clause 5 (Inquiry).
Lord JACQUES: My Lords, with the leave of the House I beg to move that this House doth not insist on their Amendments Nos. 1 to 5 en bloc to which the Commons have disagreed for the Reason numbered 6. The consequence of these Amendments was to enable an employer to refer a recognition issue to the Service under Clauses 11 and 12. No doubt behind this Amendment was the belief that employers needed further protection so far as recognition was concerned, but I hope to be able to show that that belief was mistaken. Clauses 11 and 12 are designed to deal with the straightforward issue of an employer's refusal to grant recognition to a trade union or unions. It is, of course, in those circumstances for the union or unions to refer the matter to the Service. But the Bill goes out of its way to lay down the precise procedure for such a hearing, and this is very neatly described in the Explanatory Memorandum to the Bill, from which I now quote:
"Clause 12 requires the Service to seek by conciliation to settle any recognition issue referred to it, and to examine the issue, to consult all parties affected, to make enquiries and if the issue is not settled, to prepare a written report, with any recommendations, and to send a copy to every trade union and employer concerned and to other such bodies as it thinks fit."
Arising out of that one can come to two conclusions: first, that the Bill is meticulous in its efforts to ensure that all parties get a very fair hearing—that is, the employer as well as the trade union; and, secondly, that it is not arbitration; it is conciliation, and with recommendation only if need be.

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More than 90 per cent. of the recognition issues are of that kind and will be dealt with under Clauses 11 and 12. There are a few on the fringe, where the employer is happy to recognise a union but cannot do so because he feels that he will get involved in trouble with other unions. Those cases are internal conflicts within the trade union movement, and that movement has gone out of its way to set up adequate machinery for dealing with them. That machinery is working very effectively, and has prevented many a dispute. Therefore it is imperative—and I should have thought everybody would agree with this—that when machinery of that kind is working, it should be encouraged. Thus we believe that the TUC machinery should be fully used and fully encouraged.
On the other hand, we recognise that there might be circumstances when that machinery would fail. There might be circumstances when the unions concerned were not affiliated to the TUC, and accordingly there is proper provision in the Bill for dealing with that. An employer who finds himself frustrated because of an inter-union dispute—whether or not they are affiliated to the TUC—is fully entitled to seek advice from the Service under Clause 4. He can seek conciliation under Clause 2, and he can seek an inquiry under Clause 5. The elected Chamber decided by a majority of 55 that this Amendment was not necessary. I beg to move.
Moved, That this House doth not insist on their Amendments Nos. 1 to 5 to which the Commons have disagreed for their Reason No. 6.— (Lord Jacques.)
The Earl of MANSFIELD: My Lords, one wonders just how far the Government view this Bill as being anything other than a benefit for their supporters in the trade union movement. Over a matter such as this, one would have thought that the Government would be quick to see that there could be an injustice here against employers, while at the same time doing nothing for employees; and that they would strain to try to meet us so far as this Amendment is concerned. We grant that the Government recognise that there is a problem, and I know that they are determined that in problems such as this
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ACAS should be the body to deal with such difficulties, which from time to time include recognition disputes.
I grant that they are not as frequent as they may seem—certainly not as frequent as the publicity, which such difficulties enjoy in the media, suggests. Nevertheless, they exist and cause an immense amount of resentment; more especially do they cause resentment where the people at issue in a recognition procedure are small and weak, so far as their bargaining stature is concerned. It may be that they belong to a small union; sometimes they do not belong to a union at all. The Government do not seem able to accept that employers should be allowed to use the same avenue of approach to the ACAS as the trade unions. There is almost an element of apartheid about this. I appreciate that the noble Lord has said that employers may make use of Clauses 2, 4 or 5 of the Bill, and I am sure they will; and no doubt they will find them of some use. But it must be said that all three of these clauses—2, 4 or 5—give a relief which is only discretionary on the part of ACAS. The merit of Clauses 11 and 12 is that they enjoin the ACAS to take certain action when a dispute of such a nature has been submitted to it. That is my first criticism of what the noble Lord, Lord Jacques, said about these clauses.
He went on to say that the Trades Union Congress had set up adequate machinery—I think I am quoting his words correctly—which was working very efficiently. No doubt by that he was reminding us of the Bridlington Agreement. We recognise that the machinery is efficient; it has peacefully settled a large number of disputes. But by the same token we must also say that the machinery is perhaps a little antiquated now and is certainly creaking at the seams. The noble Lord has no doubt read of the case of Rothwell v. Apex and another, which was decided only last week. I must be very careful what I say about that case, because I have an interest in the employing firm. Nothing that I say now—and I do not believe that any noble Lord will take this the wrong way—is in any sense a comment upon the case at all. But it shows that the procedures which have been laid down, and which have been working for a considerable number

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of years, are not nearly so beneficial in their effects as may sometimes be thought. It is in that light that one must ask oneself whether the legislation in the Bill will achieve the purpose which the Government really wish.
My Lords, we have spent a great deal of time discussing ACAS and the disputes which will be referred to it. We are sorry that the Government, while realising the difficulties, are not prepared to meet them in the way we think is justified by the vast numbers of people who are not part of the trade union movement; indeed, by the majority of working people in this country. We feel that they and some of the weaker unions which represent them are deserving of better than this provision.
Lord LEE of NEWTON: My Lords, I thought it peculiarly inappropriate that the noble Earl should suggest on this Amendment, in particular, in his reference to employers, that the Government were seeking merely to look after their own supporters. I recall that when the noble Baroness, Lady Seear, first put down this Amendment I ventured to pose a question to her which I will now pose to the noble Earl. We are here looking at the ability of a union which is refused recognition by an employer, and the noble Earl's case is that the employer should have an equal right to make a submission. Can the noble Earl tell me of one occasion when a union has refused to recognise an employer? In other words, the issue is always the other way round. The straight issue, as we all know, is that there may be a number of unions—one or two or whatever it is—which come to an arrangement with an employer, who then recognises them for the purposes of negotiation. I have had very long experience of this problem, as indeed have many of my noble friends who I see in the House now, and I can never recall a single instance during my lifetime when a trade union refused to recognise an employer. Unless the noble Earl can quote one, he really should withdraw his remarks.
Viscount CALDECOTE: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Jacques, explained why he believed this Amendment was unnecessary, but I think he will agree that the Government have stressed very strongly that they need the wholehearted co-operation of employers and unions in
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solving the very difficult economic problems of the day. In view of that, can the noble Lord help us by explaining a little more clearly why the Government feel that this Amendment is undesirable?
Lord JACQUES: My Lords, the Government have not said that this Amendment is undesirable; they have said that it is unneccessary. The plain fact is that the kind of dispute in which a trade union is involved and is likely to wish for the assistance of the Service is quite different from that in which an employer may be involved and may require the assistance of the Service. In the one case—that of the trade union—it is a straightforward question; it has sought recognition and the employer has refused to give recognition. More than 90per cent. of the recognition issues fall into that category. Because that is the predominant issue, Clauses 11 and 12 of the Bill provide the straightforward machinery for dealing with that issue and that issue alone, and it was quite unnecessary to amend those clauses in the way in which this House did.
Quite separately from that, the Bill provides for the handling of another issue —an issue in which the employer is interested—and that is the issue of inter-union disputes, when the employer is being frustrated because of antagonism between unions and wants the matter resolved. In that case, he can seek advice under Clause 5, he can seek conciliation of the issue under Clause 2 or he can seek an inquiry under Clause 5. So the two kinds of issue are quite different, but they have both been adequately provided for in the Bill. In consequence, this Amendment is unnecessary and irrelevant so far as Clauses 11 and 12 are concerned.
Viscount CALDECOTE: My Lords, I understand that entirely, but in view of the great need for co-operation from all sides of industry—and I think the noble Lord will agree that the CBI made it very clear that it would like to have an Amendment such as this, just as the unions asked for many things and, quite rightly, had them included in the Bill—does the noble Lord not think it very sad that the Government are not prepared to accept this Amendment for that reason alone, because, in his own words, it is undesirable?
Baroness HORNSBY-SMITH: My Lords, before the noble Lord replies, may I say something on the same point? We on these Benches are concerned that there are small, highly-professional unions and staff associations which are very strong and highly successful in fighting their cases but which are not affiliated in every case to the TUC; or, indeed, if they are, are small because of their membership but, in the main, are highly-skilled unions. It really is not good enough for the noble Lord to say that this is a matter for the unions to decide when a pistol is being put to the head of the employer. If the TUC is to decide that, because of its weight of membership in a factory or an industry, this or that union will not exist any longer but is to be taken over by one of the giants, it can very easily hold the employer to ransom and say, "Either you allow us to take over this smaller membership or we call our men out on strike". It has happened before and it can happen again.
This is what we are concerned about, that this is the thin end of the wedge to eliminate, in many cases, small and often very skilled unions. We know from a debate that we have later this afternoon of the threat to the Institute of Journalists as against the NUJ; and we are concerned that many of these people in unions which fight just as toughly for their rights but which feel they have a certain professional capacity will not have a chance to continue in existence unless, under this Bill, they are given that protection which your Lordships proposed, by Amendments agreed to here, they should have.
Lord SLATER: My Lords, in view of the speech which we have just heard from the noble Baroness, perhaps I may say that it would have been as well if she had had some experience of the conciliatory machinery within the trade union movement. It is obvious that she does not understand conciliation and what it involves, or even what the Government are seeking to introduce. As an old trade unionist, I can tell her that the people who will benefit from this are the employers. Many employers in this country have been fighting for generations to find positive conciliation machinery by which employers of labour and those working for them could get together and determine their disputes more quickly.
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Many of us who belong to the trade union movement and have been in Ministerial office, looking after people's interests so far as the labour side is concerned, have had cases held over not only for 12 months but for at least two years. That could not happen under the set-up which my noble friend is seeking to introduce by this Amendment from the other place, where they have given it serious consideration. I repeat that the one who will come out on top in regard to the conciliation machinery set up under this Bill is the employer of labour.
Lord JACQUES: My Lords, this is not a Committee stage and, therefore, I speak again only with the leave of the House, but I ought to reply to one point that has been raised. I would say to the noble Baroness that the Bill has the opposite effect to that which she has stated. By Clauses 11 and 12 any union, whether or not it is affiliated to the TUC, whether or not it is small, whether or not it is professional, will have the right to go to the Service because the employer refuses to recognise it.
Lord DRUMALBYN: My Lords, supposing the employer does recognise already the smaller union, a union which may or may not be affiliated to the TUC. Supposing the larger union refers the question of recognition to the Service to eliminate the smaller union—because I think what the noble Lord in his explanation has overlooked is that this subsection says:
"In this Act recognition in relation to trade union means recognition of the union by an employer or two or more associated employers to any extent."
I repeat, "to any extent"; so that the larger union may be applying for recognition to become a closed shop. Supposing that the employer himself was able to make the application, there would be a psychological advantage here in that the application is not being made by either of the parties. This is what the noble Lord has overlooked here: that there is a slight psychological balance in favour of the person who makes the application. It is almost impossible to deny that. This would be a good reason at least to leave the latitude for the employer to apply, whether or not it would be possible for him to use other clauses to which the noble Lord has referred. It is only a facility; it could

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be a valuable facility. I suggest to the noble Lord that it would be a mistake to obliterate it.
Lord HANKEY: My Lords, I should like to support strongly from these Benches what is being said on this subject, notably by the noble Baroness. I think that the argument used by the Commons in their reply to our Amendment is not really a very strong one because if it is true that the employers have the right to apply to the Conciliation and Arbitration Service (which I must warmly agree with and support everything said in its favour) it is not obvious to me why the employers should not have the right to apply to it in cases covered by Articles 11 and 12. I cannot see that there can be any reasonable objection to that in view of what was said by the Commons themselves.
My Lords, also it seems to me on a much broader point very undesirable that the law should appear to be bent in the direction of one side to a whole series of disputes; as it would be if the text were changed back to what it originally was. I was shocked when I read these Articles on first receiving the text of the Bill that the law appears to be bent in this way. I do not think that the state of the trade unions in our country, where they have a most honoured position and a great deal of power, is such that the law ought to be bent in their favour. I hope that we shall insist on our Amendments.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

LORDS AMENDMENT
[Nos. 7 and 8]
Clause 17, page 15, line 24, at end insert—
("(6) Where an employer, being a company in the case of which there has, as respects the whole or any proportion of its share capital, been granted a quotation on a recognised stock exchange, is required by virtue of this section to disclose any information to trade union representatives relating to future plans of the company which could have a significant effect on the assets or profits of the company, he shall at the same time make the information available in accordance with the disclosure requirements for the time being of that stock exchange.")
The Commons disagreed to this Amendment for the following Reason:—
Because this Bill is not the proper context in which to legislate on disclosure of information in connection with the requirements of a
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stock exchange and because the amendment is unnecessary as there is nothing to prevent a stock exchange altering its own requirements as to disclosure.
Lord JACQUES: My Lords, I beg to move that this House doth not insist on their Amendment No. 7 to which the Commons have disagreed for the Reason numbered 8. The effect of this Amendment was that it required an employer to disclose according to Stock Exchange rules any information which the Bill requires him to disclose to a trade union and which could have a significant effect on the assets or profits of the company. The safeguarding of the investing public is a matter for Stock Exchange rules. If these rules require amendment or more rigorous enforcement, that is a matter for the Stock Exchange. If they require a legal backing that is a matter not for an Employment Protection Bill but for a Companies Bill. Consequently, we feel that this Amendment is irrelevant to this Bill.
I hope that nobody will tell me that there is a matter of urgency about this and that we cannot await a new Companies Bill in order to deal with it; because I would point out that employers for a very long period had been voluntarily giving information to the trade unions in the course of negotiations and, indeed, since 1971 have been doing so in accordance with the Industrial Relations Act 1971. This Bill, as far as information is concerned, is substantially the same as the1971 Act and on this issue I have a most impeccable source. The right honourable Member for Lowestoft, Mr. Prior, leading for the Opposition at the Second Reading debate on this Bill said in another place:
"I now turn to the information clauses to which we have no objection. They are the same clauses with perhaps a little elaboration as were contained in the Industrial Relations Act."—[Official Report;28/4/75; col. 54.]
I think we can say therefore that the information clauses in this Bill are no different in substance from those in the 1971 Act.
This kind of Amendment was not needed to the 1971 Act and there is no reason why we should need this Amendment to this Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Terrington, moved a similar Amendment in 1971 to the Bill, but it was unacceptable to that Administration. That Administration had an inbuilt majority in this

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House and was able to resist the Amendment which was withdrawn. On this occasion, the Government of the day did not have an inbuilt majority in this House; the Amendment was not withdrawn and it was carried against the Government.
My Lords, the information which is normally given to the trade unions is not price-sensitive and in so far as it might be price-sensitive it is too fragmented and too detailed to be of interest to the Stock Exchange. Furthermore, the Amendment is vague and uncertain as to its effects. It provides that where there will be a significant effect upon the assets or profits there shall be the communication with the Stock Exchange. Who is to determine when the effect is significant? Each company will decide that for itself. Under the Stock Exchange rules a company is allowed to discuss price-sensitive information with both its managers and advisers. Some companies will regard the shop steward who is in their service as their adviser on labour matters; others will not. There would be therefore a considerable measure of inconsistency as far as the company is concerned. Then it would be vague and uncertain whether the Stock Exchange ever received any information at all. There is no sanction in the Amendment if a company fails to give information to the Stock Exchange in accordance with the Amendment. Nothing happens; there is no sanction at all.
My Lords, finally there is the constitutional point. Is it right that Parliament should give legal backing to rules over which it has no control? It certainly has no control over the Stock Exchange rules. I would suggest that it would be entirely wrong for Parliament to give that kind of backing to rules over which it has no control. The elected Chamber resisted this Amendment by a majority of 52; I recommend to your Lordships that we should not insist on it. I beg to move.
Moved, That this House doth not insist on their Amendment No. 7 to which the Commons have disagreed for the Reason Numbered 8.—[Lord Jacques.]
Lord CULLEN of ASHBOURNE: My Lords, I doubt if you will want to hear very much more about this subject that we have now debated a great deal
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but I should like to make one or two brief points. The purpose of the Amendment was to ensure that information given to trade union representatives which was price sensitive should be given simultaneously to the public via the Stock Exchange. Despite what the noble Lord, Lord Jacques, says, the Amendment was entirely innocent of any Party political bias; it was of a purely technical nature. It in no way restricted information to be disclosed and I regret its rejection. But I am not surprised.
In spite of all that has been said on the subject, I can only think that the Government do not understand the point we have tried so hard to make. No doubt the Stock Exchange will do their utmost to try to ensure that the risk of creating insiders by the enlargement of the circle of those privy to price-sensitive information will, so far as possible, be minimised. Presumably the matter will be put right when a new Companies Bill comes before your Lordships' House. In the meantime, if and when an insider scandal occurs, the fault will not be with the City but with the Government. I would ask the Minister what steps can be taken in the event of price-sensitive information being leaked—no doubt quite involuntarily—by a trade union representative? What, if any, sanctions are there? This person may not be in the employ of the undertaking at all; he may even be employed by a rival undertaking. Is the employer to be powerless in such a case?
My Lords, finally I should like to make it clear that I and my Stock Exchange colleagues are in favour of the maximum disclosure of suitable information to all those employed in any undertaking, be they trade unionists or not; but regarding price-sensitive information, I am apprehensive of the effect of trade union representatives being placed by Statute in a privileged position vis-à-vis shareholders.
Lord WIGG: My Lords, I have not the slightest doubt that the noble Lord who has just spoken believes all he says. It is a grave reflection upon the intelligence of the Conservative Party if what he says is true, that there was no political motive behind the Amendment. When one examines the arguments which were produced on a previous occasion in this House and in the light of the case made by my noble friend Lord Jacques, there

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is obviously no case for this provision within the Bill. If the Stock Exchange are concerned about price-sensitive information being revealed, all they have to do is to deal with it within their rules. There is nothing in the world to stop them doing that. The safeguards are there.
As my noble friend Lord Jacques said, a Conservative Administration chose to proceed in exactly the same way as the Government are now doing. Why then, except for Party political purposes, should the Conservative and Liberal Parties go out of their way to combine to vote down the proposals which were put forward by the Government? Of course they were doing it for Party political purposes. They are here today for no other purpose than to embarrass the Labour Government. Those are perfectly good political tactics; but do not let us be humbugs and pretend this is not happening. They use those tactics very effectively on occasions. The noble Lord sitting on the Conservative Benches does not do himself or his Party any good by pretending that they are actuated by noble impulses. Of course they are not. The noble Lords on the other side of the House are there, and their families have been there for centuries, to protect their privilege and power; and I am here to take it away. I hope very much, as a result of some of their actions today, they are going to give me arguments to hasten the process. Let us cut out the humbug.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

LORDS AMENDMENT
[Nos. 9 and 10]
Clause 18, page 15, line 38, after ("would") insert ("be likely to").
The Commons disagreed to this Amendment for the following Reason:—
Because in order to avoid having to disclose information under the Bill the employer should have to show that the disclosure would actually cause substantial injury.
Lord JACQUES: My Lords, I beg to move that this House doth not insist on their Amendment No. 9 to which the Commons have disagreed for Reason No. 10. The effect of the Amendment was to introduce the word "likely". The Bill provides that an employer will not have to disclose information if he can show that substantial injury would be caused to his undertaking by such a disclosure. The effect of the Amendment is that the
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employer would merely have to show that disclosure was likely to cause substantial injury. There are three reasons why we cannot accept the word "likely" in that place. First, it would mean that it would weaken the right of trade union representatives to be given information for the purposes of collective bargaining. Secondly, the uncertainty which the word "likely" would cause would mean that there would be more cases for the Central Arbitration Committee and their task would be much more difficult. Thirdly, the word "likely" was not introduced in the corresponding clause in the 1871 Act, and we see no reason at all why it should be incorporated here.
Moved, That this House doth not insist on Amendment No. 9 to which the Commons have disagreed for the Reason numbered 10.—(Lord Jacques.)
The Earl of MANSFIELD: My Lords, it is nice that the noble Lord, Lord Jacques, is gradually coming round to the view of accepting the 1971 Act as Holy Writ. One hopes that as time goes on he will accept more and more of that excellent piece of legislation. It is worth trying to recollect for a moment the way in which your Lordships' House tried to improve this not very elegant piece of legislation both in Committee and on Report. So far as the legal connotation is concerned, the word "likely" is perfectly easy. What we tried to do in Committee by drafting an Amendment, which we withdrew, and by a further Amendment on Report, which we did not withdraw, was to try to ensure a fairer balance regarding information. There is nothing about price-sensitive information or anything like that in this Amendment. It is a way of trying to ensure that where an employer feels that the information would cause injury the burden on him should not be so hard as it was before the Amendment was made. The Amendment does not seek to go beyond that.
The matter was considered in a similar way during your Lordships' discussions last week on the Industry Bill. That is a matter to which I should like to return briefly because a similar point was then taken to this point although, unfortunately, your Lordships' House became rather embroiled with other considerations. The point I wish to make is this: what is the effect likely to be

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where one has disclosed information which is likely to cause serious damage to the undertaking, to people who may not be employees of that undertaking and who will have no regard, let alone loyalty, to the undertaking and thereafter make improper use of such information? The noble Lord, Lord Beswick, is not in his place, but I hope it is not unfair to say he glossed over that element of the discussions. They cannot just be dismissed. Trade union officials—and I do not seek to say anything against them—have their jobs to do as do the rest of us. Their jobs and loyalties are of course to their members; but recently we have frequently come across inter-union disputes, one of which I referred to not so long ago over the first of these Amendments before your Lordships' House today. Where is the safeguard written into this Bill, or any other provision for that matter, against this prejudicial use of the information? It is for that reason alone that we have tried to amend Clause 18(1)(e) —in other words, to try to allow the employer, with a little less of a burden, to claim that substantial injury would be likely to be caused if the information was disseminated.
What Reason are we given for the Commons disagreement to the Amendment? It is merely:
"Because in order to avoid having to disclose information under the Bill the employer should have to show that the disclosure would actually cause substantial injury."
It will be a difficult, if not impossible, task on many occasions, first because, as I said, it will be impossible for the employer to show that there has been, or is likely to be, impropriety in the dissemination of the information; and, secondly, that such impropriety will actually cause substantial injury.
Lord DRUMALBYN: My Lords this is an Amendment which I moved, and I moved it simply to gain clarification. It seems to me that one can judge only what is likely to happen. How can we possibly tell that substantial injury will be caused? How can anyone know that for certain? It is a very small point but I hope that when this clause is interpreted, it will be interpreted in that way; otherwise, it will be impossible for the employer ever to show that he is likely
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to receive substantial injury. Even when injury is 99 per cent. certain, he will still not be able to get away under this clause if it is interpreted literally. Therefore, I hope it will be interpreted liberally.
Lord HOUGHTON of SOWERBY: My Lords, this seems to me to be a lot of "word chopping". The Bill said "would" and the Amendment said "be likely to". The other place have sent the Amendment back here on the grounds that "would" means "would actually". In those circumstances, is it not best to leave it alone? Clarification does not seem to be coming from attempts at clarification.
Lord SHINWELL: My Lords, surely there is something illogical in the submissions which have been made in support of this Amendment. The noble Earl, Lord Mansfield, said it would be very difficult to prove that something would happen, and he has suggested in substitution the word "likely", but if you cannot prove "would", how do you prove "likely"?
The Earl of MANSFIELD: My Lords, with the leave of the House, you prove "likely" on the balance of probabilities.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

LORDS AMENDMENT
[Nos. 11 and 12]
Clause 23, page 20, line 10, at end insert ("or of an interruption in the supply of fuel and power which is beyond the control of the employer")
The Commons disagreed to this Amendment for the following Reason:—
Because a primary objective of the provision of guarantee payments is that workers laid off through circumstances beyond their control should receive a payment.
3.42 p.m.
Lord JACQUES: My Lords, I beg to move that this House doth not insist on their Amendment No. 11, to which the Commons have disagreed for the Reason numbered 12. The effect of the Amendment was to disqualify the right of an employee to guarantee payments where lay-offs result from a breakdown in the supply of fuel or power for reasons beyond the employer's control. In moving the Amendment, the noble Earl, Lord Gowrie, said that its purpose was to ensure that employers who, due to lack of fuel or power as a result of industrial

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action in the public sector, are unable to provide work, should not have to make guarantee payments to their workpeople.
However, quite clearly, the Amendment has much wider ramifications. It would have the effect of disqualifying the right of an employee to guarantee payments where fuel or power supplies were interrupted for reasons totally unconnected with public sector disputes; for example, those caused by floods, non-delivery of fuel supplies, voltage reductions in bad weather and, indeed, the failure of the private sector of the oil industry to distribute supplies. The Government feel that by providing for disqualification where the lay-off of an employee arises from a dispute involving other employees of his employer or of an associated employer, they have struck the right balance and do not need to go further.
There is a further reason for our disagreement with this Amendment. The guarantee payments scheme embodies an important principle which we believe is fundamental to the fair and just treatment of all workers. That principle concerns the progressive removal of disparities between groups of workers by legislating to help those who are less advantaged to enjoy some of the benefits a ready enjoyed by many of their colleagues. This Amendment was not acceptable to the other place, who disposed of it without a Division. I urge your Lordships not to insist on this Amendment.
Moved, That this House doth not insist on their Amendment No. 11 to which the Commons have disagreed for the Reason numbered 12.—(Lord Jacques.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

LORDS AMENDMENT
[Nos. 13 and 14]
Clause 36, page 29, line 13, leave out ("if he so requests")
The Commons disagreed to this Amendment for the following Reason:—
Because it is undesirable, in the interests of both employer and employee, to impose an inflexible requirement of notification in writing in all circumstances.
Lord JACQUES: My Lords, I beg to move that this House doth not insist upon their Amendment No. 13 to which the Commons have disagreed for the Reason numbered 14. The effect of the Amendment is to provide that the employee's notice that she intends to be absent from
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work because of pregnancy must be in writing in every case and not just when the employer so requires it. There are a number of reasons why we cannot accept this Amendment. First, we have made the provisions with regard to maternity as flexible as possible. This would introduce an element of inflexibility. Secondly, it would increase the unnecessary burden of paperwork. Thirdly, it could mean that a woman could be denied both maternity pay and reinstatement for the purely technical reason that she had not put the notice in writing. Indeed, an employer might be refused a rebate for the purely technical reason that he had paid without its being put in writing, and therefore was not entitled to the rebate. This was disposed of in the other Chamber without even a discussion.
Moved, That this House doth not insist upon their Amendment No. 13 to which the Commons have disagreed for the Reason numbered 14.—(Lord Jacques.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

LORDS AMENDMENT
[Nos. 15 and 16]
After Clause 39, insert the following new clause:
Maternity pay rebate
".—(1) Subject to any regulations made under this section, the Secretary of State shall pay out of the Maternity Pay Fund to every employer who makes a claim under this section and who being liable to pay, has paid, maternity pay to an employee, an amount equal to the full amount of maternity pay so paid (in this section and sections (Payments to employees out of Maternity Pay Fund), (Supplementary provisions in relation to employer's insolvency) and (Complaint and appeals to industrial tribunal) below referred to as a "rebate").
(2) The Secretary of State may if he thinks fit, and if he is satisfied that it would be just and equitable to do so having regard to all the relevant circumstances, pay such a rebate to an employer who makes a claim under this section and who has paid maternity pay to an employee in circumstances in which, by reason of the time limit provided for in section 39(2) above, a complaint by the employee has been dismissed, or would not be entertained by an industrial tribunal.
(3) For the purposes of subsections (1) and (2) above, a payment of contractual remuneration by an employer shall be treated as a payment of maternity pay to the extent that, by virtue of section 38(4) above,—

(a) it extinguishes the employer's liability to pay maternity pay; or

(b) in a case falling within subsection (2) above, it would extinguish that liability

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if a complaint by the employee were not time-barred as described in that subsection.

(4) The Secretary of State shall make provision by regulations as to the making of claims for rebates under this section and such regulations may in particular—

(a) require a claim to be made within such time limit as may be prescribed; and

(b) require a claim to be supported by such evidence as may be prescribed."

The Commons agreed to this Amendment but proposed the following Amendment thereto:—
In subsection (1) of the proposed new Clause leave out ("(Payments to employees out of Maternity Pay Fund)")
Lord JACQUES: My Lords, I beg to move that this House doth agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 16 to the Lords Amendment No. 15. This is a drafting Amednment.
Moved, That this House cloth agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 16 to the Lords Amendment No. 15.—(Lord Jacques.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

LORDS AMENDMENT
[Nos. 17 to 20]
Clause 45, page 36, line 27, leave out from ("a") to end of line 28 and insert ("specified union.
(4A) For the purposes of this section a trade union—

(a) shall be taken to be specified for the purposes of, or in relation to, a union membership agreement if it is specified in the agreement or is accepted by the parties to the agreement as being the equivalent of a union so specified; and

(b) shall also be treated as so specified if—

(i) the Service has made a recommendation for recognition of that union covering the employee in question which is operative within the meaning of section 15 above; or

(ii) subject to subsection (4B) below, the union has referred a recognition issue covering that employee to the Service under section 11 above and it has not withdrawn the reference, or from the reference, and the issue has not been settled or reported on under section 12 above.

(4B) Subsection (4A)(b)(ii) above shall not apply where the reference is such a reference as is described in section 12(2) above on which, in accordance with that subsection, the Service declines to proceed.")
The Commons agreed to this Amendment but proposed the following Amendments thereto:—
In subsection (4A)(b)(ii) leave out ("subject to subsection (4B) below")
In subsection (4A)(b)(ii),line 3, leave out ("it") and insert (the Service has not declined to proceed on the reference under section 12 above, the union")
In subsection (4A)(b)(ii) leave out from beginning of line 6 to the end of subsection (4B) and insert ("that section")
Lord JACQUES: My Lords, I beg to move that this House doth agree with the Commons in their Amendments Nos. 18 to 20 inclusive to the Lords Amendment No. 17. These are drafting Amendments which I anticipated might be necessary during the Third Reading of the Bill in this Chamber.
Moved That this House doth agree with the Commons in their Amendments Nos. 18 to 20 inclusive to Lords Amendment No. 17.—(Lord Jacques.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

LORDS AMENDMENT
[Nos. 2 and 22]
Clause 45, page 36, line 29, leave out ("religious belief") and insert ("conscience")
The Commons disagreed to this Amendment for the following Reason:—
Because the Clause, as amended, would lead to too much uncertainty in union membership agreements.
Lord JACQUES: My Lords, I beg to move that this House doth not insist on their Amendment No. 21 to which the Commons have disagreed for the Reason numbered 22. The effect of the Amendment was to provide that employers may not compel a person to belong to a union if he objects, on grounds of conscience rather than religion, to belonging to any union. This Amendment and variations of it have been discussed on a number of occasions relating both to this Bill and to the Trade Union and Labour Relations Bill. It has now been accepted by both Houses that the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Amendment) Bill, in dealing with dismissal for non-membership of a union in a closed shop, should make a statutory exception only for the person who objects to union membership on the grounds of religious belief. Clearly it would be wrong to make a different provision in this Bill in respect of actions which are short of dismissal.
The House will not expect me to repeal the arguments in detail. They hinge on the uncertainty of how conscience may be interpreted by different individuals, employers, employees and, eventually,

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trade unions. I would remind the House again that the tribunals have had great difficulty in the context of union membership agreements in differentiating between conscience and religion. In the case of Heinz v. Spiller French the Industrial Court held:
"In our opinion grounds of conscience necessarily points to and involves religious belief or conviction based on religion in the broadest sense as contrasted with personal feeling however strongly held."
We ask that your Lordships do not insist upon this Amendment, first, because it would be inconsistent with a decision already made on the Amendment Bill, and, secondly, because it would create uncertainty both for employers and employees and for tribunals.
Moved, That this House doth not insist on their Amendment No. 21 to which the Commons have disagreed for the Reason numbered 22. —[Lord Jacques.]
3.52 p.m.
Lord GEORGE-BROWN: My Lords, there is a considerable difference between religious feelings and feelings of conscience. As a trade unionist, I will give way on this one with the greatest of reluctance. Conscience is quite distinct from religion. If one of my friends in the Transport and General Workers' Union, on conscience basis, decides that he does not want to belong, he has a perfect right. He does not have to declare a religion. I am horrified by the base on which the noble Lord, Lord Jacques, puts this issue forward. I suspect that he has already organised it with the Opposition so that they are not going to oppose. I wish to speak out for quite a lot of people who simply say: "I don't need to prove a religious objection. I just conscientiously don't want to belong."
Without developing the point at great length, thereby messing up the business this afternoon, I should like to think there are many noble Lords here who would agree with me in saying that it should be acceptable for a fellow to say, conscientiously: "Don't probe me too closely as to how I get my conscience, but conscientiously I do not want to belong to that union." We have just seen a situation between APEX and ASTMAS and some others. Most of us on this side of the House grew up as objectors. One did not have to prove a Jewish religion, a Christian religion, or any other
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religion; we were just objectors. What we mostly objected to were the fellows who were running the show.
I find it hard to accept the argument put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Jacques. I will resist simply because men who object should not have to prove a religion. As in the war, one could be a conscientious objector because one did not happen to believe. One just does not happen to believe in Jack Jones. Ernest Bevin was much nearer my liking. If you want conscientiously to object, you should be able to. I should like some of my noble colleagues and friends to go into the Lobby with me against acceptance of the Commons Amendment.
Baroness ELLES: My Lords, I would first assure the noble Lord, Lord George-Brown, that there has been no collusion or co-operation by the noble Lord, Lord Jacques, from this side of the House. Nevertheless, I must welcome what Lord George-Brown has said and go a long way with his statements. Much has been said on this item and I will not repeat the arguments; but there was a certain matter of substance which my noble and learned friend Lord Hailsham raised in Committee and which should be elaborated slightly. I recall the Queen's Speech at the beginning of this Session of Parliament, at which the Government claimed to protect, promote and respect observance of human rights. A long time has passed since those words were spoken and they seem to have been forgotten. I would therefore draw attention to the relevant provisions in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which refer to this particular situation of somebody who does not wish to join a trade union. Article XX, Clause 2, states:
"No one may be compelled to belong to an association."
Article XXIII states:
"Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment."
These words are surely clear in their meaning.
I know it was said by one noble Lord (I think it was the noble Lord, Lord Pannell): "I am afraid that the Declaration of Human Rights has no significance on the factory floor." He may well be right, but surely these people on the factory floor would be the first to demand their rights. I would also draw attention

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to the European Social Charter, which in 1965 a Labour Government ratified, and in which the Government undertook:
"… with a view to ensuring the effective exercise of the right to work, to protect effectively the right of the worker to earn his living in an occupation freely entered upon."
I should like to know how the clause as it stands is in conformity with that undertaking by a Labour Government in 1965.
I would further draw attention to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, Article VI, again ratified by a Labour Government, which states:
"The States party to the present Covenant recognise the right to work which includes the right of everyone to the opportunity to gain his living by work which he freely chooses or accepts, and will take appropriate steps to safeguard this right".
These words, again, are clear and perhaps noble Lords opposite should be reminded that this Covenant is very soon to come into force as already 35 Member-States of the United Nations have ratified it. And perhaps noble Lords opposite should be reminded that the denial of the right to exercise conscience is a step in the direction of tyranny. It must be said that denying acceptance of this basic Amendment—which many noble Lords in this House have supported—denies the right of a British Labour Government to claim to be the protector of human rights and fundamental freedoms of the citizens of this country.
3.59 p.m.
Lord HOUGHTON of SOWERBY: My Lords, I agree with almost everything that the noble Baroness has just said, but this is a very late hour at which to be debating this matter afresh. My noble friend Lord George-Brown could not have been present earlier or have read the Official Report, otherwise he would have known that many of us expressed his point of view in earlier debates. I believe that inclusion in this Bill of the words "religious belief" is an affront to those of us who have deep conscientious convictions which are not based on religion.
For this Amendment to be inserted by a crowd of agnostics in another place, I believe to be quite an outrageous thing to be done. There it is. They apparently insist that the only identification of con
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science for this purpose must be based upon religion. When there was conscientious objection against war service, we did not say that it had to be religious objection; we said that it had to be conscientious objection. Conscientious objection—the depth of it and the length of time that people had had it—could, if necessary, be investigated by a tribunal. One realises that with the possibility of industrial disputes on one's hands and with the right of appeal to a tribunal there are many difficulties in the way of settling these matters in time so as to avoid disruption of production.
The remarks of my noble friend Lord Pannell in an earlier debate have been seriously misrepresented. If I may say so on his behalf, he was not associating himself with the belief that conscientious objection had short shrift on the factory floor; he was stating what in many cases is a fact. Declarations of human rights, which have been subscribed to by most of the nations of the world, including Soviet Russia, appear to be only scraps of paper. When it comes to the crunch, the problem always is to insist upon human rights and to get others to support them when vested interest does not want to concede them. This is the situation with which we are faced today.
I have explained on many previous occasions that I come from a family of conscientious dissenters—dissension that is not based upon religion—and I am saying another word in support of that position. Therefore, I deeply object to the inclusion of religion as the only basis for conscientious objection.
Baroness GAITSKELL: My Lords, may I comment upon the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Elles. When she speaks about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights—a Declaration which includes countries that condone slavery and have no human rights at all—and compares it with a country like ours in the West, a highly sophisticated country with a long history of democratic government, and uses this very simplistic way of applying the Universal Declaration, she knows perfectly well that this is absolute nonsense.
Lord GEORGE BROWN: My Lords, am I allowed to speak twice?
Several Noble Lords: Order, order!
Lord DOUGLASS of CLEVELAND: My Lords, I have listened to the noble Baroness pleading passionately for human rights. As I did so my mind went back to my boyhood days. When I started work my wages were reduced arbitrarily by the manager from 2s. 9d. to 2s. 6d. a shift. We went on strike, but nobody bothered about us. We walked the streets for weeks. Wages at that time were not what they are now. We went along to the local trade union official who, with the power of the union behind him, said to the manager, "You have no right to reduce the wages of these boys without negotiation." All of us—about 20 at that time—joined the union. Within three months only two of us were paying our subscription to that union; the remaining 18 had obtained that trade union benefit for nothing. Something of that kind is remembered by boys as time goes by and they insist that people who obtain benefits should pay what is necessary to obtain them.
Those who sit on the Benches opposite have fought the trade unions for half a century. They have fought safety measures inside industry. We have had to fight them in order to pass legislation to obtain damages when employers have been neglectful. We have obtained those damages for men who have joined trade unions. We have also made it obligatory that men should obtain damages, whether or not they are in trade unions. If, however, they are not in trade unions they do not obtain legal benefit and very often they lose damages because they do not know how to deal with employers who will not be fair to their employees.
If we take the question of pollution, at one time the practice was to throw filth into the streets. It took Acts of Parliament and the payment of rates to stop that offence. If a man objects on conscientious, religious or other grounds to being prevented from throwing his filth into the streets and to paying the rates for refuse collection, do we say to him, "You don't need to pay your rates because you have a conscientious objection to paying them on that ground"? If we decide that we are to help people who are unfortunate enough to be unemployed and that we are not going to allow people to be unemployed without providing them with
890
some assistance and a man says, "I have an objection to paying taxes to assist somebody while he is not working," do we allow him to object to paying those taxes and not to pay them?
Where does the Bill of Rights end and where does it begin? If you are employed as a coalminer and you have to fight the employers, as one had to fight them at one time and as one has to fight them even now for decent wages, and you obtain decent wages and a man then says, "I have a conscientious objection to paying the trade union who obtained those wages for me," do you say to that man, "Do you have a conscientious objection to taking wages which have been negotiated as a consequence of paying those contributions"? I could go on for a long time in this vein because I have long experience of these matters. Let us not confuse the Bill of Rights with the determination that people who obtain benefits should carry the responsibility for those benefits.
If I may turn to religion, this country has a long-standing respect for people with religous views. Whether or not we agree with their religion does not matter. Many people of foreign religions are coming into this country. They have strange habits and strange customs. We accept all of them because of this country's practice of religious tolerance. Because we practise religious tolerance let us not confuse it with something called "conscience." I am not denigrating the Salvation Army because I have a great respect for them, but at a time when wage negotiations were being conducted a man belonging to the Salvation Army said, "I object to paying my contribution". The trade union official said, "I will accept your objection if you will accept that you should not receive the benefits that we are negotiating for you now. Let us get this on to a sensible basis". Immediately that man paid his contribution. In other words, he was using religion as a cloak. If we allow Parliament to use religion as a cloak because we tolerate all religions it will be a bad day for us. Let us talk no more nonsense about this Bill of Rights.
Lord SHINWELL: My Lords, this matter has been debated frequently in your Lordships' House and in another place. One can inject the issue of human

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rights and ignore the various interpretations. Even the term "conscience" is capable of various interpretations. The issue before your Lordships' House is a simple one, whether or not your Lordships like it. It has been referred to on a previous occasion not only by me but by other Members of your Lordships' House; namely, are we going to resist the decision of another place. My noble friend Lord George-Brown made a speech which had certain overtones of moral value: so much so that I thought he might have introduced it from the Bench below him.
Lord GEORGE-BROWN: Why not?
Lord SHINWELL: My Lords, perhaps he will come to that in due course. That is not the issue. If he sought in his speech, however eloquent, however persuasive it was, to provoke Members on the other side of your Lordships' House to resist the decision of the other place, he had better save his breath to cool his porridge. I tried it myself: it was a complete failure, despite my accepted eloquence and persuasion!
The fact is that we are dealing with a simple political issue. Despite the minimal majority of the Government in another place, despite the fact that they have been elected by only a minority of the electors in the United Kingdom, despite all the other facts that have been referred to repeatedly, Members of your Lordships' House on the Opposition Benches are not ready for the fray. It is as simple as that. Why waste time? We have heard some remarkable speeches from the noble Lord, Lord George-Brown, my noble friend Lord Douglass of Cleveland and others. They are wasting their time.
We have heard from my noble friend—I can call him a friend sometimes—the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham, of whose views of moral value, as I have said before, I approve, if not wholeheartedly, to a remarkable extent—and I mean what I say. I think we should have more of those speeches, more of the content of those speeches and be more ready to accept what those speeches mean. But he has just agreed with me that we are dealing with a pragmatic issue; we are not going to fight the other
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side—the people at the end of the corridor, those common people! Of course we are not; we are not ready for the fray and I suggest to my noble friend Lord George-Brown that he had better "try it on" on some other occasion, when it is likely to be more fruitful.
4.12 p.m.
Lord HARMAR-NICHOLLS: My Lords, it is amazing how often reasonable men say outrageous things. We had an example of this a minute or two ago. The noble Lord, Lord Douglass of Cleveland, who always sounds so reasonable and looks so dignified, said some really outrageous things when he suggested that the safety efforts and all the improvements in industry have come from one side and that this side of the House had in fact resisted them. I do not think that is a true explanation of what took place in those days, and I do not think it is helpful to have said it—it is not in keeping with the noble Lord. I think it is right that the record should be put straight as to how some Members of this House judge history.
The noble Lord, Lord George-Brown, is not able to speak again, and I suggest what he wanted to say was that it was not the case that he came today and made his points at the last minute. My recollection is that he made the same case—which is a good one, of which I heartily approve—in the earlier discussions in the passage of the Bill through the House. If it comes to a vote I shall support the point of view expressed by the noble Lord, Lord George-Brown; but whether or not it is wise to do that is a matter that we have to judge.
The LORD PRIVY SEAL (Lord Shepherd): My Lords, perhaps I may just remind your Lordships that only last week we were considering this very issue to which we have given a great deal of thought on all sides. On that occasion your Lordships' House decided—not just as a matter of being wise or, I think, from weakness—that it would be right to accept the view of another place. I am all for debate if there is a point to be debated, but it seems to me that today there are no grounds for being inconsistent, doing one thing one week and completely the opposite the following week, despite what feelings exist. There are most important issues which this House wishes to debate,

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and I wonder whether we should deal with this matter and then move to the next Amendment.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

LORDS AMENDMENTS
[Nos. 23 and 24]
Clause 55, page 45, leave out line 9.
The Commons agreed to this Amendment and made the following consequential Amendment to the Bill:—
Clause 57, page 48, line 13, after ("pay") insert ("maternity Pay").
Lord JACQUES: My Lords, I beg to move that this House doth agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 24 to Lords Amendment No. 23. This Amendment is consequential on the funding of the maternity pay.
Moved, That the House doth agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 24 consequential on the Lords Amendment No. 23.—(Lord Jacques.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
4.16 p.m.

LORDS AMENDMENT
[Nos. 25 and 26]
Clause 104, page 87, line 13, leave out from ("which") to ("remove") in line 15.
The Commons disagreed to this Amendment for the following Reason:
Because safety representatives should be appointed by recognised trade unions which are the bodies best able to undertake the responsibility.
Lord JACQUES: My Lords, I beg to move that this House doth not insist upon its Amendment No. 25 to which the Commons have disagreed for Reason No. 26. The effect of the Amendment is to retain Section 2(5) of the Health and Safety at Work Act which provides for the election of safety representatives by employees. We have sought to confine the provisions of Section 2 of the Health and Safety at Work Act to recognised trade unions, for two reasons: first, the unions are the bodies best organised to take on these responsibilities and it can be detrimental to give rights and responsibilities to those who cannot make full use of them.
Secondly, if the legislation requires an employer to undertake consultation with his employees otherwise than through the normal channels it may well lead to industrial relations difficulties. Any apparent discrimination between provisions for
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union and non-union employees is more apparent than real because there is nothing to prevent the making or continuance of voluntary arrangements between an employer and his employees. The Amendment was rejected in another place by a majority of 53, and I recommend that the House doth not insist upon this Amendment.
Moved, That the House doth not insist upon their Amendment No. 25 to which the Commons have disagreed for the Reason numbered 26.—(Lord Jacques.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

LORDS AMENDMENTS
[Nos. 27 to 32]
Clause 104, page 87, line 15, leave out ("remove the special provisions relating to health and safety at work in agriculture and")
Schedule 14, page 148, line 15, leave out paragraph 1.
Schedule 14, page 148, line 17, leave out paragraphs 2 to 7.
Page 149, line 1, leave out paragraphs 9 to 20.
Page 150, line 27, at end insert—
(". It shall be the duty of the Commission to submit to the Secretary of State and to Agriculture Ministers at such times and in such manner as may be prescribed, reports as to the operation of the Act in its application to the relevant agricultural purposes, having regard to the general purposes of Part I; and the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and the Secretary of State concerned with agriculture in Scotland shall cause any such report to be included in the next respective reports to Parliament under Section 29.")
The Commons disagreed to these Amendments for the following Reason:—
Because the Amendments affect the incidence of expenditure as between the Agriculture Ministers and the Health and Safety Commission in connection with health and safety in agriculture, and the Commons do not offer any further Reason trusting that this Reason may be deemed sufficient.
Lord JACQUES: My Lords, with the leave of the House, I beg to move that this House doth not insist upon their Amendments Nos. 27 to 31 en bloc to which the Commons have disagreed for the Reason numbered 32. The effect of these Amendments was to retain the special provision for agriculture contained in the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974. These special provisions have the effect of practically excluding the Health and Safety Commission and the Health and Safety Executive from health and safety matters relating exclusively to

895
agriculture. They single out for special treatment the agricultural industry, as though for some obscure reason persons engaged in agriculture should be deprived of the protection offered to workers in other industries.
In some fields there is a greater accident rate in agriculture than there is in our factories. For example, during the years 1972 to 1974 inclusive, fatal accidents due to a fall from a ladder or stairs, fatal accidents due to electricity, fatal accidents due to poisoning or gassing, had a higher rate of incidence in agriculture than they had in factories. The agriculture Departments have not got the specialist facilities of the Commission and the Executive, which is a specialised functional body. Since the formation of the Executive in January 1975, the specialist inspectorates which previously worked in isolation have been able to share their experience and expertise. This is proving increasingly beneficial. Concentration of effort and resources, and cross-fertilisation of information and methods, are a sure prescription for progress in this area.
My Lords, the Government are well aware of the progress made in agricultural safety and health matters since the Act was passed, including the progress stemming from the work of the Farm Safety Steering Group, and the extension in the size of the agricultural safety inspectorate. These factors will be considered in the discussions which must take place between the Commission and the agriculture Ministers in order to decide what arrangements need to be made when the overall responsibility passes to the Commission. The chairman of the Health and Safety Commission has given an assurance that he is determined to maintain the momentum created in recent months by the work of the Farm Safety Steering Group.
The Commission propose to establish a number of advisory committees for the major industries, and have suggested that one of those should cover health and safety in agriculture. The chairman has said he would want to see the Farm Safety Steering Group continue its work until such time as it
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might be carried forward for a more general arrangement acceptable to the agricultural industry.
My Lords, with those explanations, the other place rejected the Amendment. I recommend to your Lordships that this House should not insist upon this Amendment.
Moved, That this House doth not insist on their Amendments Nos. 27 to 31 to which the Commons have disagreed for the Reason numbered 32.—(Lord Jacques.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

LORDS AMENDMENT
[Nos. 33 and 34]
Schedule 11, page 141, line 11, after ("conditions") insert ("substantially less favourable than").
The Commons disagreed to this Amendment for the following Reason:—
Because the Amendment makes the meaning of the Schedule less clear and is unnecessary.
Lord JACQUES: My Lords, I beg to move that this House doth not insist on their Amendment No. 33, to which the Commons have disagreed for the Reason numbered 34.
My Lords, the Bill provides that where there are no recognised terms and conditions a claim may be reported to ACAS that an employer is observing terms and conditions less favourable than the general level of terms and conditions. The Amendment seeks to insert the word "substantially" so that the terms and conditions would have to be substantially less favourable. The majority in the other place disagreed with this Amendment on two grounds: first of all, the introduction of the word "substantially" would create uncertainty; and, secondly, Schedule 11 to the Bill is in line with the fair wages resolution. This Amendment would make the Schedule inconsistent with the fair wages resolution, and would imply that Parliament was speaking with two voices on the same issue.
Moved, That this House doth not insist on their Amendment No. 33 to which the Commons have disagreed for the Reason numbered 34—(Lord Jacques.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

LORDS AMENDMENT
[Nos. 35 to 39]
Schedule 15, page 167, line 8, at end insert—
("10A. After paragraph 6(5) of Schedule 1 (dismissal in closed shop situation), insert the following sub-paragraphs:—
"(5A) For the purposes of sub-paragraph (5) above a union shall be treated as specified for the purposes of or in relation to a union membership agreement (in a case where it would not otherwise be so treated) if—

(a) the Service has made a recommendation for recognition covering the employee in question which is operative within the meaning of section 15 of the Employment Protection Act 1975; or

(b) subject to sub-paragraph (5B) below the union has referred a recognition issue (within the meaning of that Act) covering that employee to the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service under section 11 of that Act and it has not withdrawn the reference, or from the reference, and the issue has not been settled or reported on under section 12 of that Act.

(5B) Sub-paragraph (5A)(b) above shall not apply where the reference is such a reference as is described in section 12(2) of that Act (reference of issue previously considered by the Service) on which, in accordance with that subsection the Service declines to proceed." ")
The Commons agreed to this Amendment but proposed the following Amendments thereto:—
In line 3, leave out ("sub-paragraphs") and insert ("sub-paragraph").
In head (b), leave out ("subject to sub-paragraph (5B) below").
In head (b), line 5, leave out ("it") and insert ("the Service has not declined to proceed on the reference under section 12 of that Act, the union").
In head (b), line 7, leave out from ("under") to the end of sub-paragraph (5B) and insert ("that section").
Lord JACQUES: My Lords, I formally move that this House doth not insist on their Amendment No. 35 to which the Commons have disagreed for the Reasons numbered 36 to 39. These are entirely drafting Amendments.
Moved, That this House doth not insist on their Amendment No. 35 to which the Commons have disagreed for the Reasons numbered 36 to 39.—(Lord Jacques.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

COMMUNITY LAND BILL
4.25 p.m.
Lord SHEPHERD: My Lords, I was anticipating a request from the other side with regard to the Community Land Bill but I will disclose now to the House that immediately on my return from sunny climes I was presented with a request by noble Lords opposite that two clauses of the Community Land Bill should be recommitted. I understand and fully appreciate the reasons why the request was made. The week before last we recommitted on Report a major new Amendment, and it was done because the Amendment was of new substance. This request is for the recommittal of clauses which have already been considered in Committee, and I am naturally very hesitant, therefore, to agree to this proposal.
However, in the light of the problems of dealing with Business at the end of this Session, it may well be that there was insufficient time for these clauses to be adequately considered, so I am agreeable to these two clauses being recommitted on two conditions: first, that the time which I believe has been allotted is agreed to; and secondly, that what is being agreed here will not be taken as a precedent for recommittal of clauses on Report when they have been considered in Committee. If we concede this, it is not a precedent, but only a recognition of the difficulties under which the House has been considering some of this legislation.
Earl ST. ALDWYN: My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Lord the Lord Privy Seal for that statement. I know it will give great satisfaction on this side of the House. I should like to assure the noble Lord that we should certainly not look upon this in any way as a precedent which should be quoted by any future Government, or the present Government, at any time. I may say that on the two clauses, although there are a number of Amendments which deal with other matters, the only two points that will be considered from this side of the House are those dealing with the charities and the Church properties—solely those two. The rest will be dealt with when we come back to Report stage a little later on. I can also assure the

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noble Lord that the timetable as agreed for the final completion of this Bill will be adhered to.
Lord SHEPHERD: My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Earl, Lord St. Aldwyn. I will make sure that this is put on the Order Paper tonight.

TRADE UNION AND LABOUR RELATIONS (AMENDMENT) BILL
4.28 p.m.
Lord ELWYN-JONES: My Lords, I beg to move that the Commons Amendment to one of the Lords Amendments be now further considered.
Moved, That the Commons Amendment to one of the Lords Amendments be now considered.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
COMMONS AMENDMENTS TO A LORDS AMENDMENT AND AMENDMENTS TO BE MOVED TO THE COMMONS AMENDMENTS
[References are to Bill (82) as first printed for the Lords. Commons Amendments are printed in italics. The Lords Amendment is printed as amended on 20th October 1975, as shown in italic.]

LORDS AMENDMENT
[Nos. 10 and 15]
After Clause 2, insert the following new clause:—
"Freedom of the press
After section 1 of the principal Act there shall be inserted the following section:—
"Charter on freedom of the press
1A.—(1) If, before the end of the period of twelve months beginning with the passing of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Amendment) Act 1975, there is agreed among parties including employers of journalists, or employers' associations representing such employers, editors or editors' organisations, and trade unions representing journalists, a charter containing practical guidance for employers, trade unions, editors and other journalists on matters relating to the freedom of the press, the Secretary of State shall lay before both Houses of Parliament a draft of that charter.
(2) For the purposes of subsection (1) above, matters relating to the freedom of the press include—

(a) the avoidance of improper pressure to distort or suppress news, comment or criticism;

(b) the application of union membership agreements to journalists including the right of journalists not to be unreasonably
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excluded or expelled from trade unions and to belong to the union of their choice and the right of editors to discharge their duties free from any obligation to join a trade union;

(c) the right of editors to commission and to publish or refuse to publish any material;

(d) the assurance (subject only to editorial discretion) of access to the press of all contributors at all times.

(3) If no such charter has been agreed as mentioned in subsection (1) above, the Secretary of State shall, after consultation with the Press Council and such of the parties referred to in that subsection, such organisations representing workers, and such organisations representing employers, as he thinks fit, prepare in draft a charter containing practical guidance on the matters specified in subsection (2) above together with such other matters as may have been agreed among the parties mentioned in subsection (1) hereof and shall lay the draft before both Houses of Parliament.
(4) If a draft laid under subsection (1) or (3) above is approved by resolution of each House of Parliament, the Secretary of State shall issue the charter in the form of the draft.
(5) A charter agreed as mentioned in sub-section (1) above, or prepared by the Secretary of State in accordance with subsection (3) above, may be revised from time to time by agreement between such parties as are referred to in subsection (1) above, and the Secretary of State shall lay a draft of the revised charter before both Houses of Parliament.
(6) If a draft laid under subsection (5) above is approved by resolution of each House of Parliament, the Secretary of State shall issue the revised charter in the form of the draft.
(7) On issuing a charter or revised charter under subsection (4) or (6) above the Secretary of State shall make by statutory instrument an order specifying the date on which the charter or revised charter is to come into effect.
(8) No criminal proceedings shall lie against any person on account of a contravention of the charter but the obligation to comply with the charter is a duty owed to any person who may be affected by a contravention of it and any breach of that duty by industrial action or otherwise is actionable accordingly subject to the defences and other incidents applying to actions for breach of statutory duty.
(9) In this section—

"article" means any matter printed or intended for printing or broadcast or intended for broadcasting by television or radio;

"industrial action" means—

(a) a concerted stoppage of work by a group of workers, whether (in the case of all or any of those workers) the stoppage is or is not in breach of their terms and

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conditions of employment and whether it is carried on during or on the termination of their employment, or

(b) any concerted course of conduct which—

(i) is carried on by a group of workers with the intention of preventing, reducing or otherwise interfering with the production of goods or the provision of services, and

(ii) in the case of some or all of them, is carried on in breach of their contracts of employment or (where they are not employees) in breach of their terms and conditions of service.")

The Commons agreed to this Amendment but proposed the following Amendments thereto:—

COMMONS AMENDMENT
At the end of subsection (3) insert—
("( ) A charter agreed as mentioned in subsection (1) above, or prepared by the Secretary of State in accordance with subsection (3) above, shall define its field of operation."
The LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, Amendment No. 15 is intended to enable the charter which is provided for in Clause 2 of the Bill to state its scope and application within the broad coverage of the Press. It is basically a technical Amendment, which is essential if we are to avoid creating considerable practical difficulties for those who are to make and draft the charter.
My Lords, the phrase, "Freedom of the Press", is an expression which can cover many different sectors—newspapers, magazines, books, and possibly even other media concerned with the dissemination of news and information. A charter drawn up by parties in the industry may not be appropriately applied to all those sectors, particularly if the sector was not represented among the parties who are to draw up the charter. The interests of daily newspapers are very different from those of specialist magazines. Therefore, the charter needs to state to what sector it applies, or possibly to state that it is making this provision for those sectors, and these Amendments enable this to be done.
Furthermore, it is by no means clear whether the term "freedom of the Press" covers broadcasting. Both the BBC and the IBA have statutory duties and
902
responsibilities which guard against improper pressures on the dissemination of news and opinion; at least, they ought to be so guarded. Anything said in the charter would be at least superflous and might also conflict with those statutory duties. The broadcasting authorities themselves are, therefore, anxious that the charter should not apply to them. The kinds of matter which it is envisaged that a code on Press freedom should cover relate principally to the rights of editors to perform an editorial function, selecting what to include in or exclude from a paper, free from improper pressures, whether from those who employ them or from those with whom they work. But translated into the context of the BBC's and the IBA's news and comment programmes, this emphasis becomes irrelevant. The BBC's and IBA's concerns are different. Their responsibility is to comply with the duties laid on them by, in the case of the BBC, its charter, and, in the case of the IBA, by Statute. The BBC's charter establishes as an object of the BBC the collection of news and information relating to current events in any part of the world and in any manner that may be thought fit. The Postmaster-General may, in addition, prescribe provisions to be observed by the BBC, and one of these prescriptions requires the BBC to refrain from expressing its own opinion on current affairs and matters of public policy. Furthermore, the BBC's policy of impartiality of reportage has been the subject of formal exchange of assurances between the BBC's Chairman and the Postmaster-General.
The policy to which the BBC is required to work is, therefore, already stated without need for a code. A code principally directed at editorial freedoms would be inappropriate. Newspapers are at liberty to editorialise on any subject they choose, whereas the broadcasting authorities are specifically prevented from doing so. No code or charter is needed to stress the BBC's duty to secure impartiality in reporting and refusal of censorship. This is already clearly established BBC policy, which is binding on the BBC.
The statutory duties of the IBA are equally clear and require no supplementation by any code. If your Lordships desire me to elaborate that proposition, I will be very happy to do

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so. We are happy to accept, in view of the requirements that fall upon the BBC and IBA, their Chairmen's own assessment that broadcasting does not need further protection against improper influence, and that is one of our reasons for concern, which will be expressed in due course, about the Amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Goodman. The provisions in Amendment No. 15, which I am moving, would enable the charter to make clear that broadcasting is not to be covered, which we think is the right course. It would also enable the extent of the application of the charter to be clarified in the light of the relevance of its provisions to particular sectors of the Press. From both of these points of view, I submit that the Amendment is valuable. I beg to move that the House doth agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 15.
Moved, That the House doth agree with the Commons in the said Amendment.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
Lord HAILSHAM of SAINT MARYLEBONE: My Lords, I do not want to speak at this stage, but I take it that the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, or someone speaking on behalf of the Government, will be moving Amendment No. 15A, and that is the stage at which I wish to address the House.
Lord GOODMAN: My Lords, might I ask the noble and learned Lord whether he could tell us by whom the field of operation is to be defined.
The LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, it will be defined by those who will be preparing the charter. They are the master of it they will control it, they will determine it.
Lord GOODMAN: My Lords, is it really being suggested that the question whether or not broadcasting comes within the ambit of the charter will be the responsibility of those people negotiating the charter within the newspaper industry? If so, it seems to me an astonishing proposition.
The LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, the charter will be prepared by both sides of the industry. I am afraid I may not be getting the point which is in the wise head of the noble Lord, and if so I apologise.
Baroness GAITSKELL: My Lords, may I ask a question to settle the confusion that I am in at the moment? Which Amendment are we dealing with? I did not realise that Commons Amendment No. 15 was the Amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, which follows on.
The LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I apologise for the fact that my speech was obviously lacking in clarity. I was moving Amendment No. 15, and if your Lordships will be good enough to look at the Marshalled List it is set out there. It provides that at the end of subsection (3), which will be seen in Amendment No. 10, there should be inserted:
"A charter agreed as mentioned in subsection (1) above, or prepared by the Secretary of State in accordance with subsection (3) above, shall define its field of operation."
Lord CARRINGTON: My Lords, I wonder whether at this juncture it might be wise to remind your Lordships that we are not in a Committee stage, and that the noble and learned Lord, though greatly provoked, has now made four speeches on this Amendment, and the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, has made two interventions. I think it would be wise if your Lordships kept to such Rules of Order as we have.
Lord SHEPHERD: My Lords, I must agree with the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, as I usually do on matters concerning the procedure of the House. I think that if my noble and learned friend will now move Amendment No. 15A we can then proceed with the general debate.

LORDS AMENDMENT
[No. 15A]
[As an Amendment to Commons Amendment numbered 15]
At end insert—
("( ) A charter agreed as mentioned in subsection (1) above, or prepared by the Secretary of State in accordance with subsection (3) above, shall provide for the constitution of a body which shall have the functions of—

(a) hearing any complaint by a person aggrieved by a failure on the part of any other person to observe any provision of the charter;

(b) issuing to the parties a declaration as to whether such a complaint is well-founded; and

(c) securing the publication of its decision.")

The LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I proceed to move Amendment No. 15A with great pleasure, and I am grateful for the happy intervention of the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, at that moment. Being cross-examined by a noble Lord in the great profession of solicitor is not something to which I look forward with any great alacrity—either past or present. Amendment No. 15A is, of course, an Amendment of very great importance, and embodies a new provision which has not hitherto been debated in either House. I regard it as a most welcome development and I hope that this will also be a view widely shared in your Lordships' House.
I am sure that many thought that the approach of the Amendment initially moved by my noble friend Lord Houghton was basically right and that legal sanctions were wholly inappropriate, but they must well have thought that a charter standing on its own, even if it could be taken into account by the courts, was insufficient. The parties to the charter might well be expected to take steps to see that some mechanism was set up which would bring influence to bear in cases where the charter was breached. But there could be no certainty that such machinery would be established, although there were reasons for hope that it would be when, for instance, the executive of the National Union of Journalists, in its statement of 8th March, said that it would support the setting up of machinery within the industry, possibly within the Press Council, to deal urgently with complaints concerned with censorship or any other contravention of their declaration of Press freedom.
Mr. Hetherington made a significant contribution in the earlier stages to the development of the concept of a charter. In the draft charter he drew up earlier this year it was said:
"We believe that it will also be beneficial if the Press Council accepts the need to investigate and report on any case where improper pressure is alleged to have been applied by a proprietor, or management representative, or trade union, or group of workers, or advertiser, or Government body, or other source of influence."
I quote this passage not in an attempt to show in detail how the body we propose to set up would work, or to suggest that the responsibility should necessarily be handed over to the Press Council, but
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to demonstrate that this proposal is based in part on suggestions made by those in journalism. But it seeks to go further by embodying the idea of a supervisory body, as this Amendment does, within a statutory framework.
This Amendment means that the charter will need to lay down means whereby complaints may be heard, questions of interpretation can be resolved, guidance given, and disputes settled by the supervisory body. It is not our purpose to set out in legislation the composition or constitution of the body which is to be charged with this task, nor do we see it as the function of this Bill even to lay down a title for it. This is not because we underestimate the importance of the matter; it is because we think that this is something which is best left to the parties themselves to settle, both sides of the industry, and especially to consider how they see such an organisation fitting in with existing organisations concerned in one way or another with the Press, and perhaps, above all, with the Press Council which, in some respects, already has functions in part of this field.
No doubt some of your Lordships will be tempted to conclude that the Government ought to be firmer on this point and lay down in law a constitution for this body. I think that that would be wrong not only for the reason I have already given but also for the reason on which much stress has already been laid in debates on this subject: it is not for the Government to regulate matters of Press freedom. We are content to provide a framework within which the newspaper industry can work, and I am sure that those in the industry can and will rise to that challenge.
Much concern has been expressed both here and in another place about the need for effective safeguards against risks to Press freedom. I should like to emphasise once more that the Government are concerned that safeguards to secure Press freedom should be effective. It is our view that a charter which can, as a result of good will in the industry, be quickly agreed and put into force and, which, as a result of this Amendment, can be the subject of adequate supervision, would be much more likely to lead to satisfactory results than procedures that have the force of law. Those procedures run the risk of untoward consequences in industrial

907
relations; consequences which themselves could be harmful to Press freedom.
We can return to some of these issues when debating the next group of Amendments which will be moved by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone, but I wish to underline that the proposal for a supervisory body set out in Amendment No. 15A has a vital role in the Government's proposal for effective action to defend Press freedom. I beg to move.

LORDS AMENDMENTS
[Nos. 15B and 15C]
[As Amendments to Amendments numbered 15A]
In paragraph (b), after ("well-founded") insert—
("and if so whether the party aggrieved has suffered material or pecuniary loss by reason of such failure and in what amount, and in such case directing the party in breach to pay that amount")
At end insert the following new subsection—
("( ) Any decision by the said body shall be final and conclusive between the parties and any decision of the said body made under paragraph (b) of the foregoing subsection shall be enforceable in like manner as an award made in pursuance of an arbitration agreement by an arbitrator in accordance with the provisions of the Arbitration Act 1950.")
4.45 p.m.
Lord HAILSHAM of SAINT MARYLEBONE: My Lords, I rise to move Amendment No. 15B standing in my name and I would, with the leave of the House, also seek leave to move Amendment No. 15C with it because these two Amendments stand or fall together. I fully agree with the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack that the Government have now introduced an important new Amendment to this Bill, a fact which alone justifies the somewhat protracted proceedings which this Bill has pursued in its course through Parliament. I hope that we may have a relatively short debate because we have debated many of these issues before.
I propose first to put my remarks into context, and secondly to explain why it is that I have thought it right to put down these Amendments and what in my view they will do. May I say that I was delighted to see the name of the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, on them too. Last week on 20th October we
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decided that Press freedom, to which all of us express, and I doubt not attach, great and sincere importance, was not simply a matter for the two sides of the industry but was something in which Parliament, and more than Parliament the public and people, have a right to a say. We therefore inserted in the minimal requirements of the charter Amendments which were designed to show that we were particularly concerned about a few cardinal matters. We wished to preserve and to defend the independence of editors not to suppress or distort news, and not to have it suppressed or distorted. We wished also to preserve and defend access to the columns of the Press by outside contributors, and we also desired to preserve and defend the de facto situation under which journalists have a right to join theoretically any institutions but, in practice, either of two important institutions.
The question remains at the point where we adjourned; what is to happen if the charter is breached? At the moment, and without the noble and learned Lord's Amendment No. 15A, the answer is absolutely nothing. It is apparently true that it may be referred to, like the road code, in any proceedings in court which may take place. But unlike the road code, which is based on a system of law founded on negligence and breach of statutory duty, there is no system of law founded on negligence or breach of statutory duty on which this could hang. The result is that, so far as any practical result would obtain, nothing would happen if the code were breached.
Indeed, no one needs, in theory at any rate, ever know of the extent of the breach. That certainly did not seem good enough to noble Lords on these Benches, and I would think that this was also the view of the Liberal Benches and the Cross-Benches. The noble Lord, Lord Goodman, at that stage put forward an Amendment which still stands in his name as, I think, Amendment No. 16B—your Lordships will see it on the Order Paper—in which he invokes the principle of public policy, and says that a breach of the charter will be against public policy.
I was grateful to the noble Lord the Leader of the House for agreeing to adjourn at that stage. The Amendment

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had only just gone down. Public policy, as most of us know, is a difficult horse to ride and, speaking for myself, I wanted to consider what the effects of that Amendment might be. I did consider them. I do not want to enter into a technical discussion, but if those who are interested in technical legal matters and wish to challenge me would do so privately, I am prepared to defend what I now tell the House, to the best of my knowledge and belief, would be the effect of that Amendment.
If a member of the National Union of Journalists were to be unjustly expelled by reason of a breach of the charter, it is my opinion that under the Amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, that could be remedied in court by an ordinary action. I do not regard that as certain, but as probable by virtue of recent decisions of the courts. If an applicant to be a member of the NUJ were unjustly excluded from membership by reason of a rule or conduct in breach of the charter, I think it possible, but not likely, that he would have a remedy in court. That is the conclusion which I formed, rightly or wrongly. On the other hand, the position of outside contributors is, at least in my opinion, wholly unprotected by that Amendment, as is the position of the Institute of Journalists, in any possible conflict that might arise in any given instance between them and the NUJ—totally unprotected—and also I think the position of editors is, as such, totally unprotected under the effect of that public policy Amendment. Therefore I thought it right to table an Amendment in my own name.
I have fully accepted that the Government, in putting forward their Amendment No. 15A,were desiring to be constructive and helpful, and to improve the situation. I hope they will concede the same degree of sincerity to me in having tabled my Amendment. The Government propose a body and the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor has, perfectly candidly, admitted that he does not wish to specify what the composition or rules of procedure of that body may be. I think there are disadvantages in that course, but he has decided to take it and he has explained his reasons for doing so. The body will be charged with the function and duty of considering the complaint of any person—which, I take
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it, would include an editor or an outside contributor or a member of the Institute or of the NUJ—that the Charter has been broken. They are bound also, as I read the Amendment, to decide aye or no whether the complaint is made out, in other words whether or not the charter is or has been broken; and they are also charged with the obligation, as I understand it, to publish their findings in a way in which the fact of the breach or of the dismissal of the complaint will be made known to the public.
These are advantages. But let us suppose that somebody makes a complaint that the body, whatever they may be, decide in his favour that the complaint is made out, that the charter has been breached, but he has lost his livelihood or has suffered damage or has suffered materially in his pocket as a result of the breach of the charter of which, by now, we must all assume we are all in favour. What remedy has he if Amendment No. 15A is passed unamended? The answer is that he has no remedy whatever. I do not understand that anything the noble and learned Lord has said seeks to controvert that. He gets the benefit of a declaration and he gets the benefit of publicity, but he gets no compensation at all, nor any other remedy. Is that good enough in the field of the freedom of the Press, about whose principles at least we are now agreed and about which at any rate a majority of us think that public and people and Parliament have as much right to make pronouncements as have the two sides of industry itself? The answer I give is that it is not good enough; that where a man has been injured by a wrong we, as Parliament, should provide him with a remedy by way of compensation, and the Amendment which I propose would give him that remedy.
I have deliberately not sought to go beyond the terms of Amendment No. 15A. I do not agree with the observations hostile to and critical of the courts which have fallen from Back Benches and from the Front Bench opposite, though not—noticeably not—from the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor himself. I do not agree with them, but I have accepted the view of the Government and of the Back Benches opposite. I have said, "Very well; have your body set up by your

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own industry without any more precision than the Lord Chancellor has been good enough to give us this afternoon. Let that be the body. Let them be something therefore in which you have complete confidence; but do not deny the aggrieved party a remedy." And what I have sought to add is, I should have thought, the bare minimum. It is simply that if a party is wronged by a breach of the charter and he goes to the body constituted by the Government and the industry and they find the complaint proved, they are to say whether or not there has been material loss suffered and, if they find that material loss has been suffered, then they are to direct the erring party, the party in breach, to give compensation in that amount. I cannot see anything wrong in that, and in order to make sure that the compensation, when ordered, is paid, I have provided that it shall be treated for the purposes of enforcement in exactly the same way as the award of an arbitrator under the Arbitration Act 1950.
I have tabled that Amendment in the sincere hope of being helpful. I have sincerely tabled it not with the idea of entering into conflict with the Government or with another place, but in the belief that I am perfecting that to which they have now put their hands. I desire to put it before the House in the most conciliatory manner possible; but I beg the noble and learned Lord to accept it and so put an end to any possibility of conflict between the two parts of this Parliament, and so to put an end to the protracted and sometimes unpleasant differences of opinion that we have had over the past months. I beg him to accept it on behalf of the Government and, if he does, I assure him that the thanks which will be expressed will come from the heart. But if he does not, then I am bound to tell him—not that I would impute anything of the same sort to him personally—that I should treat it as one of the signs that those who take a stronger view about these matters in the Government and who may not be Members of this House do not intend what they do to be effective at all. I say no more. I have put down the Amendment in the hope that it may be satisfactory to all parties in the dispute. I hope it will be accepted. I beg to move.
5 p.m.
Lord GARDINER: My Lords, I sat through practically the whole of the Second Reading of this Bill, through the two days of the Committee stage, through the Report stage and the Third Reading and I did not say a word, so I hope that the House will allow me to say something now. When I first saw the Bill, I was aware that the Industrial Relations Act 1971 had not met with universal approval and I was not surprised to hear that in the Social Contract it had been agreed that the Labour Government, if elected, would repeal the Act. This they set out to do last year but, owing to Amendments in this House and something of a schemozzle in the other place, two sections were left extant. I thought that the object of the present Bill was to remedy that situation.
I was therefore surprised to read that the object of the Bill was to attack the freedom of the Press. It did not seem to be a Bill on the Press, though I noticed that, even on Saturday, a Times headline described the Bill as "The Government's Bill on the Press". I have very strong views on the freedom of the Press. Indeed, if I may say so, all my life I have always fought in every direction for as great a freedom of expression as possible. I believe that we must have an Official Secrets Act, but, even before I appeared for Miss Barbara Fell, I thought that certain sections of the Act were far too wide and that it was a sledgehammer used on ridiculous occasions, of which that was an example. I have always opposed the pre-censorship of plays and I helped to get that abolished. I successfully defended Lady Chatterley and I was, and am, of the opinion that any law making it a criminal offence for adults to read whatever they want to read in that field always has done, and always will do, more harm than good. All my life I have passionately believed that a free Press is the life-blood of democracy, so I approached the present Bill in a very prejudiced position, particularly in relation to editors.
I sat through the Second Reading. There was, of course, no dispute about the freedom of the Press as such. Nobody wanted the Press controlled. It was a clear and obviously sincere division of opinion as to whether we should, at the end of the day, get what we all wanted

913
—namely, the protection of the freedoms of the Press—by the path of consensus or by the path of force; in other words, by the force of law.
Here, again, I was not impartial because I am a lawyer. Of course I believe that everyone—and that includes trade unions—must be subject to law and that, normally, the proper place to get disputes decided is the courts. So I listened with the greatest interest to what was said. It was, in a way, a curious debate for me because, while I was very much in two minds about the whole matter, as far as I could make out everybody else in the Chamber was absolutely certain either that the best bet was the path of consensus, or that we must use force—the force of law. In the end, I voted against the Amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, and in favour of those of the noble Lord, Lord Houghton of Sowerby. The reasons were the following. First, I remembered the right reverend Prelates—who, if I may say so, we are always very glad to see here—but who are here because there was a time when the Church was so strong that the King could no longer rule the country without arriving at a consensus with the Church. That did not mean that the Church ran the country. The King ran the country, but there had to be a consensus. Then there were the Barons, as King John found at Runnymede. Then there were the big landed proprietors, so many of whom were hereditary. Then there was the new and rising middle class.
I was not at all surprised to find that, in the world's oldest and, at one time, largest industrial democracy, a time had arrived when the workers also had to be consulted. I never thought for a moment —and I said so at the time—that in these days a Government could come to Parliament and say, "We have a Bill dealing with trade unions, to control them. It has eight pillars. We have not consulted the trade unions. We refuse to consult the trade unions on any of the eight pillars and we will hear them only as to matters of detail." I did not think that the workers would stand for it and they did not.
My second reason was that I have had a great deal of experience of cases in which trade unions come before the courts. I never specialised in trade union
914
cases. I was always fortunate in having a very general practice. It is not merely that I was counsel in Rookes v. Barnard and that, in nearly forty years of practice at the Bar, I appeared in many, if not most, trade union cases and therefore have practical experience as to how it works out if you seek to apply the law to them. Before I come to that, may I deal with a point which I feel, for personal reasons, I must raise?
The noble Lord, Lord Goodman, does not usually say anything twice, but he said one thing twice in the course of these debates. He said that, in his view, any idea that the courts had acted with anything other than their usual impartiality was a myth. He asked to be told whether other noble Lords agreed. At one point, he referred to a person whom he called, "One very distinguished Member of your Lordships' House, the previous noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor" and went on to say that this person had nodded his head in assent. That was when he had said it the first time. The previous noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor was the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham. What confused me a little was that, when he said that, the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, looked at me. I do not wish to be on record as assenting to that view. I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, would not have said what he did say twice if he had not thought it relevant to the Bill, and I believe he was right and that it is relevant and I shall shortly explain why I dissent from the view in question.
The Taff Vale case was decided at the beginning of the century by Mr. Justice Farwell against the trade union. The Court of Appeal unanimously reversed his judgment in judgments which, at the time, were said to be compounded of irresistible logic. Whether or not that was right, it did not stop the House of Lords from reversing the judgments of the Court of Appeal. In 1902 came Quinn v. Leetham and an attempt to bring pressure upon an employer to agree to a closed shop; that is to say, there was an attempted boycott. It was decided, apparently, on what seemed to many a new concept in law which was there called a "civil conspiracy". There were some eminent lawyers who evidently thought that, consciously or unconsciously, the judges

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were bending the law against the trade unions. It was something of a minor election issue in 1906, and I have myself had the Osborne case which decided that a trade union could not take part in politics or operate a political fund. To remind your Lordships of what that meant, the next Election—that of 1910—saw the birth of the Labour Party, and even in 1920, when there were 89 Labour Members, 88 were sponsored by trade unions because they could not have afforded to be Members of Parliament if it had not been so. So when they got in again in 1911 they proceeded to deal with Osborne.
As soon as they came in in 1906, the Liberal Party repealed Taff Vale, but we seen a photograph of a Liberal Party Election poster—for the Liberal Party felt very strongly about this—which was a simple poster of a High Court Judge sitting on the Bench in wig and robes handing a flail to a man marked "employer" for him to administer to the workers. I suppose that that was as succinct a way of making the point as possible.
In the presence of the noble Lord, Lord Byers, I am most anxious not to misrepresent in any way the position of the Liberal Party at the time, so may I quote from the winding-up speech of the Home Secretary on the second trade union Act, that of 1912? On 30th May 1911, at column 1022 of the Official Report, the Home Secretary said that one of the two main objects of the Bill was—
"to relieve trade unions from the harassing litigation to which they have been exposed and set them free to develop and do their work without the perpetual check and uncertainty of frequent trials and without being brought constantly into contact with the courts. It is a very unseemly thing, and indeed in the House of Commons we must regard it as such, to have the spectacle we have witnessed these last few years of these workmen's guilds, trade union organisations, being enmeshed, harassed, worried and checked at every step and at every turn by all kinds of legal decisions, which came with the utmost surprise to the greatest lawyers in the country. It is not good for trade unions that they should be brought in contact with the courts, and it is not good for the courts."
The Liberal Home Secretary was, of course, Mr. Churchill.
"The courts hold justly a high and, I think, unequalled prominence in respect of the world in criminal cases, and in civil cases between man and man, no doubt, they deserve and com
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mand the respect and admiration of all classes in the community, but where class issues are involved, and where party issues are involved, it is impossible to pretend that the courts command the same degree of general confidence. On the contrary, they do not, and a very large number of our population have been led to the opinion that they are, unconsciously, no doubt, biased. [HON. MEMBERS: 'No, no' and 'Withdraw,' and interruption.]
Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER: I must ask hon. Members to allow the right hon. Gentleman to proceed.
Mr. KEBTY-FLETCHER: On a point of Order. Is the hon. Member speaking for himself or for the Government?
Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER: That is not a point of Order"—
Some things do not change very much!
"Mr. Churchill: I am sure the House will feel that that is an abuse of interruption on a point of Order [Hon. Members: 'Withdraw.'] I have not the slightest intention of withdrawing, and I repeat what I said, that it is unfortunate that these collisions occur between the courts and the great trade union bodies. [Hon. Members: 'Withdraw.'] I have only got two or three more words to say, and I am quite indifferent to the interruptions. It is for those reasons that we have sought to find in our Bill some bulwark which will stand between the trade unions and the courts. Some authority which will be able—[Hon. Members: 'Withdraw.'] We have tried to discover some authority—[An Hon. Member: 'We do not attack the judges.'] No, you do not attack them."
As a matter of interest, on the following day an application was made to Mr. Speaker on the footing that Mr. Churchill had erred by attacking the judges otherwise than on a Motion. But Mr. Speaker ruled, first, that the point ought to have been taken the day before; and, secondly, that in any case as he had said "unconsciously, no doubt, biased" that made it all right. I have drawn four conclusions from all this. The first is that, whether rightly or wrongly, the Government of the day, supported by many eminent lawyers, did think that, consciously or unconsciously, the judges had been biased against trade unions. Secondly, in my judgment such a view has no modern justification. I say that because the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, said that sometimes they decided cases in favour of trade unions. He referred to two, Sorrell and Ford. I am very familiar with the Sorrell v. Smith case; that was in 1925, I think. I think the Ford case was won in 1969.
I should make it plain that while this period lasted long enough, it started at

917
the beginning of the century, but it finished in 1913, because by that time—there having been two General Elections; two Governments which held this view; Parliament having passed trade union Acts, greatly extending the extent to which workers could combine against their masters—the judges obviously accepted this.
Thirdly, it was said by some of those behind me that the reason why the trade unions felt so strongly about not getting involved in the courts was due to the Industrial Relations Act. I accept that that had its effect, but they also have their memories of their contacts with the courts from the past. I do not think that this is helpful. When one is trying to solve a modern problem, memory is not always a help, as anybody who has had anything to do with Northern Ireland knows. But they are human beings and that is the fact.
Fourthly, I am not one of those who thinks that Mr. Churchill was always wrong. Indeed, if I may say so without giving any offence to anyone at all (because these are matters of opinion), my own three favourite Home Secretaries have always been Mr. Churchill, Mr. Butler, and Mr. Jenkins; and I think Mr. Churchill's instinct for keeping the trade unions out of the law courts was right.
Certainly, in my experience of trade union cases, one learns a few elementary things pretty quickly. The first elementary thing one learns—and it is a fact, and it is no good quarrelling with facts —is that one cannot make men work with a man whom they will not work with. They are human beings. You can fine them; you can send them to prison. That is not quite accurate; you can if you shoot them. But in a democracy you cannot do that. Secondly, there is our history of trying to stop strikes by law. It was for 94 years—a long time—illegal for employees in certain public utilities to strike. That was not a law which was ever enforced, because it could not be enforced. I am afraid that I part company from two noble Lords with whom I usually agree, the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, and my noble friend Lord Snow, both of whom seem to think that we cannot have a law which cannot be enforced; that is not so.
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This is not only in the field of trade unions. Some lawyers have been heard to say that a judge cannot make a decree of specific performance of a contract for personal services. I do not believe that that is the law. It is not that they cannot; it is simply that they do not; and as they are governed by precedent one may even say that it comes to the same thing. They have found from experience that an order of that kind cannot be enforced; and any judge is reluctant to make an order which cannot be enforced. If you seek to make him do so that does nothing whatever to uphold the rule of law; on the contrary, it is destructive of the rule of law, because every time an order which cannot be enforced is made it serves merely to bring the law itself into disrepute.
The Amendment of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone, is, I am sure it will be felt, of a minor character, in that all it does is enable a decision made by those who create the charter to be enforced by the courts. I am sure that the noble and learned Lord will tell me whether I am wrong, but that means that the proprietors, and the editors and the journalists are not to be allowed to sit around a table to think it out for themselves. I am not suggesting that if they ask for some legal backing we should give it to them; that is another question. The noble and learned Lord does not want them to sit down and consider this at all, unless the proprietor knows that if the journalist breaks the code on behalf of his union (the National Union of Journalists) and the proprietor suffers damage, he will be able to sequestrate the funds of the trade union.
Lord HAILSHAM of SAINT MARYLEBONE: My Lords, the noble and learned Lord has said that I should interrupt him if I thought he was wrong. May I say, without arguing the matter in a second speech, that I think he is entirely wrong in ascribing those views to me, because I do not hold them at all. He will also acquit me of discourtesy if I do not make a second speech in the middle of his.
Lord GARDINER: My Lords, the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack will no doubt have an opportunity to say whether he thinks I am right in my view that if the Amendment is carried it will

919
be open to the court, if an award is made which is not carried out in the payment of money, to sequestrate the funds of the trade union. I must say that it seems to me that this is all the wrong atmosphere. If we are right in thinking that at the end of the day the best plan which has been put forward for maintaining the freedom of the Press is to leave it to the Press themselves—proprietors, editors and journalists sitting round a table—I suggest we ought not first to provide for enforcement. We ought to leave it to them; and, of course, if they think they need some legal backing, then they can say so.
Finally, I would have said one word to the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, if he had been here, but as he is not I will address it to those on the Front Bench opposite. In so doing I am wearing another hat, and that is my hat as the former Chairman of the All-Party Committee on House of Lords Reform. It concerns the constitutional issue involved. Whatever view we take, I think everybody in this House will agree that the Government moved a long way to try to meet the anxieties which had been expressed, and, because of that, I have respectfully to suggest to the House that this is not at all a suitable issue for a constitutional crisis. I may remind the House that the day afterwards, The Times, in a leading article headed,
"We must guard our freedom",
said this:
"Mr. Foot has made useful concessions. It is doubtful if much would be gained by the Lords pressing it to the point of denying the Government its Bill this Session. The first and best safeguard against that sort of threat is in the hands of those who work in the industry, managers, editors, journalists, and if they possess the clear sightedness and will to guard the essential freedom entrusted to them, they have the power to do so."
On the same day the Guardian inquired,
"whether it is the sort of issue that should precipitate the worst crisis since the war between Britain's two Parliamentary Chambers. A thoughtful charter may be a greater defence than Lord Goodman's amended battlements. Some constitutional confrontations have compromise written all over them. As they ponder the issues and the possibilities the Lords may well conclude that this should be one."
Presumably both The Times and the Guardian have seen the Amendment moved by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham, and have not departed
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from that position. I was interested to notice, too, that whatever the Press may originally have felt there has, I think, been a very noticeable change. Indeed, yesterday neither the Sunday Times nor the Observer had a word to say about it at all.
For those reasons I very much hope that your Lordships will agree that we should now leave it to the profession itself, or parts of it, and not at this stage seek any legal consequences from what may be done. On any view, whatever view we may take about this, this would be a most unsuitable case for a constitutional clash between the two Houses when the difference between us now is so small and when everybody, I think, accepts that it is an honest difference of view as to the best way of safeguarding what we all want—the freedom of the Press.
5.24 p.m.
Lord WIGODER: My Lords, my noble friends on these Benches would want me at once to convey our deepest gratitude to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, for his extremely effective reminder to your Lordships that the Liberal Party has always championed the cause of the oppressed. At the turn of the century the trade unions were the oppressed, and I see nothing inconsistent in the views which were expressed then on behalf of the Liberal Party and the views which are expressed today by those of us who feel that perhaps the balance has now somewhat tilted and that now, perhaps, the danger is that it may be the individual who is being oppressed and that the trade unions as bodies have indeed established for themselves a secure and firm base in our society.
My Lords, I was sorry to hear the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, add that it may be that even today, after the many (if I may say so respectfully) wholly admirable judicial appointments which he made when he was the Lord Chancellor, he still has doubt as to whether the trade unions would get a fair hearing in our courts.
Lord GARDINER: My Lords, if the noble Lord will forgive my interrupting. I said the precise opposite. I said that nobody could hold such an opinion in modern times. This was a period which ended in 1913. I thought I was perfectly clear about that.
Lord WIGODER: My Lords, if I misunderstood the noble and learned Lord I apologise at once. I hope I did not misunderstand him when I heard him go on to talk about a constitutional crisis and clash. This is a highly premature stage at which to talk in those terms. What is happening at the moment is surely that there is a sensible, informed discussion going on between two bodies of people, one in the other place and one in your Lordships' House, each determined to secure as best they can the freedom of the Press, and each taking part in a civilised exchange by way of Amendment and counter-Amendment. What your Lordships are considering today is, therefore, an Amendment to a further Amendment proposed in the other place.
It would be a great mistake to underestimate the degree of agreement that has already been reached as a result of this interchange. When this Bill first came to your Lordships' House there was no protection whatsoever for the freedom of the Press. We have now agreed on all sides that a charter is desirable. We have reached the stage where there is substantial consensus as to what the contents of the charter should be: not a consensus yet as to the final detail, but a substantial consensus as to the nature of the matters it should cover. What now remains for your Lordships' House is the final stage: whether that charter can he made effective. One can understand those who believe that there will be a spontaneous explosion of bonhomie in the newspaper industry over the next few years which will render any form of supervision unnecessary and which will mean that all parties can be relied upon safely and explicitly to observe the charter. We on these Benches certainly hope that that will be the situation. But there have been isolated instances in the past few years—happily isolated ones—as a result of which it appears to us possible that the charter may be breached in a dangerous way; in a way which will imperil the freedom of the Press, and in circumstances in which it is therefore desirable, if possible, to find some way to ensure that those breaches are remedied should they occur.
The original suggestion in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, was a simple and effective one. It was to make any breach of the charter a breach of
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statutory duty. One can well understand, if I may say so, why, in the other place, that was not accepted and why it is now clear, I think, that your Lordships would not wish to proceed along that path. We can all understand that, in the aftermath of the Industrial Relations Act, an atmosphere has been created in which it is for many people not possible to use the words "law" and trade union "in the same sentence, although if I may say so I sometimes think that perhaps there are politicians who revel in that situation very much more than the average member of the average trade union; and that there are a great many trade unionists who recognise of course that over the next few years we shall have to come back to a situation in which the trade unions, like any other powerful body in the country, are subject to the law of the land.
But accepting, as we do, that that is not practical politics, the question now arises: what are the alternatives? We have one move, again towards this agreement, from the Government with the Amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd. That is Amendment 15A, which sets up a body with these various functions and powers and, if I may say so, with an indication that those powers may have to exceed being merely persuasive. As your Lordships will see, the body is to have the function, among other matters, of securing the publication of its own decision. If one envisages a situation in which there has been an unwarranted censorship imposed on the contents of a newspaper, one might venture to ask how this body is to secure the publication of the decision which rules that the censorship was unjustified. Is it to be suggested that there are to be continual door-to-door distributions of political pamphlets on behalf of the Government? Or is it not recognised that, in fact, some means will be necessary of ensuring that the Press do, in one way or another, accept the decision of this body?
We should want to accept the Amendment moved in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, and to take the matter a little further. There is no great dividing gulf here. We want to take it a little further; to take the matter to the extent that where the body does find that pecuniary loss has been caused it can make an order for the payment of the

923
amount suffered. That would give some protection to the journalist who is wrongly excluded from membership and therefore deprived of his livelihood and some protection for the freelance writer, the outside contributor, who might find his contributions are unable to be published.
My Lords, I would add only this. I do not want to anticipate any later discussion; but I do not believe there is anything inconsistent between the Amendments in the names of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone, and myself and the subsequent Amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Goodman. They are two schemes that can operate side by side that will give some limited protection in the very, very occasional case in which the charter is being defied and in which freedom of the Press is thereby endangered. My Lords, in those circumstances no one will pretend that this is a particularly neat scheme. The noble and learned Lord who sits on the Woolsack can no doubt point to many legal anomalies that will result if these Amendments are adopted; but they are, I venture to suggest, the best that we can do in these circumstances. They are an effective step forward towards protecting the freedom of the Press and towards protecting the individual who otherwise might find himself oppressed.
Lord HOUGHTON of SOWERBY: My Lords, when the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, says that Amendments Nos. 15B and 15C take only a little further the Amendment proposed by my noble friend Lord Shepherd, he fails to understand, if I may say so, how much further these Amendments go. What is proposed in these Amendments is to introduce the pecuniary penalty for the breach of the code of practical guidance with all the dangers that can flow from trying to impose those penalties upon trade unions. The original code of conduct imposed in the earlier part of the Industrial Relations Act 1971, contained no such provision for reference of breaches of that code to an independent tribunal; still less did it propose that financial penalties could be imposed for breaches that might incur losses to the parties concerned. Nothing of that appears in the 1971 Act.
In the principal Act, to which this present Bill is an Amendment, the idea of a
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general code for the conduct of industrial relations was re-embodied in the law with a code approved by Parliament for general application. At no stage was the Press separated from the rest of the trade union movement in provisions for a code of practical guidance. It was non-discriminatory in its original concept; it was non-discriminatory in its renewal to the Act of last year. Now, in this Amendment we get a proposal to discriminate against trade unions particularly in one section of industry. The Government's Amendment carries the matter further: a step proposed to meet the fears and anxieties that have been expressed in this House and elsewhere many times about the freedom of the Press.
My Lords, the Government have gone a long way to meet those fears by providing for a tribunal that could consider alleged breaches of the code and pronounce publicly their findings upon the allegations made. Public opinion can be a salutory influence on misconduct or upon activities which are regarded as contrary to the public interest. When once the financial penalties are introduced, how are they to be recovered? First, these penalties can be imposed by a body which is not a court of law. In Amendment No. 15C this tribunal is to be clothed in the authority of a body set up under the Arbitration Act 1950;but recovery, presumably, must be through the process of law, that process prescribed by the law for the recovery of penalties imposed by a statutory body.
Are we to be put back to the situation which is still so vivid in the memories of many, when attempts were made to recover from a trade union, when strikes took place and when benefactors, presumably still anonymous, came to the rescue of the trade union, heavy fines imposed on it which the union refused to pay? Are we to invite a return of those conditions? Have noble Lords on the Front Bench opposite not learned from the experience which was so bitter and electorally so disastrous following the 1971 Act? The mistakes they made then were prodigious and grievous; and. politically, I think the Conservative Party suffered more from the follies of that Act than perhaps from any other part of their policies during their period in Office.

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My Lords, I think there are great dangers in carrying proposals for a tribunal to the point of authority to award pecuniary damages. I am surprised that any noble Lord should think that the Amendment proposed by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham, carries the matter only a little further. It carries it into fresh and dangerous territory which we can judge from our own recent experience. I sincerely hope that this House will not embark on this course. It is, I know, an easy phrase to use, as did the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham, that when damage is done then there should be a remedy by way of compensation. We know the problems of that and we have had experience of them.
My Lords, in conclusion, I must repeat that I think it is asking the trade union movement as a whole too much to accept discrimination against trade unions in the newspaper industry which are not imposed upon any other section of the trade union movement. We know that the freedom of the Press is fundamental, but it has to be shown that it will be seriously threatened if the proposals of the Government are put into operation with the safeguards that are now available in a code of practical guidance, and in reference to a tribunal in the event of alleged breaches. Public opinion can be brought to bear. The Press are in a special position to give publicity to the outcome of proceedings before a tribunal of this kind. It need not be hidden through lack of space or lack of inclination on the part of the editors to give public notice to what may have transpired at a hearing of a tribunal. All that can be known to the public, and public opinion can be brought to bear. There are some matters for which no financial penalty is either appropriate or satisfactory. If there were serious breaches of the code, I suggest that fresh notice would have to be taken of its operation, and the award of money damages would not be the answer to any serious breaches which might occur. I beg your Lordships to reject Amendments Nos. 15B and 15C and to adopt the Government's Amendment No. 15A which goes a long way to meet some of the objections which have been raised in earlier debates. I am sure that in the other way lies disaster, and the repetition
926
of events which I for one would not like to see occur again.
Lord GOODMAN: My Lords, I had intended to make one speech which dealt with all the Amendments. As some speakers limited themselves to this Amendment, it may be wrong to regard this as a general debate without indicating that that was intended.
Lord HAILSHAM of SAINT MARYLEBONE: My Lords, I made inquiries of the noble and learned Lord earlier in the day. His view was definite, that we should confine ourselves to these Amendments and the noble Lord's Amendment should be dealt with separately. That was why I adopted that course. I hope that the House, that course having been adopted, will follow it.
Lord GOODMAN: My Lords, I can be extremely brief. It may be helpful to the House if I give an indication of my intention in relation to the developments that might ensue. If the Government should indicate a willingness to accept the Amendment from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone, I would of course be satisfied with that and would give serious consideration to withdrawing my own Amendment, although, as I shall indicate, I have a natural preference of authorship for that over the Amendment of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham. But I regard his as satisfying the principle involved in this matter; and hence I would be prepared to withdraw my own Amendment.
If the Government are not prepared to accept his Amendment, I will support his Amendment. If the Government, in the course of this debate, indicate a preparedness to accept my Amendment, I will not support his Amendment. I think a situation as clear cut as that should be made plain during the course of the day. The only point I should like to make about the noble and learned Lord's Amendment and my own Amendment is that we may reasonably he reproached—and I think that the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, dealt with the matter—with the fact that we have not produced masterpieces of jurisprudential drafting. The answer to this is that the first Amendment I put down was, as the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder,

927
was kind enough to say, clear cut and simple. We then observed that there was to be considerable resistance to any suggestion that there should be a clear cut and simple assertion of a legal remedy.
What we have tried to do is produce what we want with the least possible affront to the Government Benches. That is not an entirely simple matter. It has led to the ambiguities and difficulties in which we find ourselves. I make no apology for them. If we can avoid the so-called constitutional confrontation by a little ambiguity and obscurity in drafting, I am all for it. If we can make it clear that we are concerned not to encourage litigation, but to discourage it, to leave it as the last resort for the man who has no other means of redressing his injury—which is all we want—then, indeed, we shall be entirely satisfied, even if the draftsmanship may be criticised in the years to come. That is the simple position, and that is all I wish to say on this Amendment.
5.44 p.m.
The LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I should like to assure the noble Lord that I did not feel in the least affronted. Whether he will be affronted by what I am about to say, I know not. It is that neither the Amendment of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham, nor the Amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, is acceptable to the Government. I do not expect that announcement comes with any surprise to anyone in the Chamber. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham, began his speech by recognising the importance and significance of Amendment No. 15A, of the creation of the new supervisory body which the Amendment, if it is passed, will achieve. It is a crucial step. It will be a body set up by and within the industry itself to perform and overlook the terms of the charter, the application of the charter and how it is lived with in the industry. It will also have a conciliatory role, and that role would come into sharp contradiction and conflict with the role which the noble and learned Lord seeks to give it; namely, the role of imposing awards of compensation to be enforceable through the machinery of the courts. That is not consistent with the kind of super
928
body that the Government and Amendment No. 15A have in mind.
I turn at once to the consequences in law which the proposal of the noble and learned Lord involve. He proposes that its awards of compensation should be enforceable in the same way as arbitral awards are enforceable. The effect of that would mean that the complainant would go to the court and seek the assistance of the court, at the last resort at any rate, to processes of recovery which could, as has been said both by my noble and learned friend Lord Gardiner, and the noble Lord, Lord Houghton of Sowerby, result in the sequestration of funds of a union, if it was a union that was complained of, or bankruptcy of an individual if he had no resources. We would be enmeshed once again in the misery which led to the kind of situation, as has been said by the noble Lord, Lord Houghton, in the ConMec Case. It is because of that possibility taking place, which would wreck relations within the industry, wreck the running of Fleet Street, and would damage the freedom of the Press by its implications and consequences, that we reject the imposition of the bringing in of the courts for enforcement proceedings in that way.
That is the Government's objection in principle to this Amendment; but it is not the only one. In practical terms, the consequences of providing for compensation to be payable to any aggrieved party could be enormous. The noble and learned Lord's Amendment No. 15B is not confined to making compensation available to individuals, say an editor expelled from a union, or an occasional contributor who was not allowed to contribute an article. The aggrieved party could be a newspaper proprietor claiming enormous sums for the loss of an issue, or loss of sales because an article was not printed. The financial implications of this Amendment, whether for unions and their individual members, or for an individual editor whose action may have breached the charter and thus, for example, occasioned substantial loss to an advertiser, are deeply disturbing.
We do not think, for the reasons I have indicated, that the idea of compensation is an appropriate one to introduce. We also fear, as I have said, that it would transform the proposed supervisory body

929
into something wholly different from what we have in mind. To impose this as part of the machinery for setting up the charter and the supervisory body would, in our view, from the very outset, pejudice discussion of the charter and the chances of arriving at sensible agreed policies within the industy. In our view, it would poison the whole thing from the beginning. That would in turn increase that which is provided for but which we hope will not have to take place; namely, the possibility that the Secretary of State will have to produce a charter. Everybody seems to think that would be very much a desperate last-resort measure. It is much better that the parties in the industry should produce it.
Accordingly, we take the view that a supervisory body of the type we have suggested to fulfill the objects which we have suggested goes a long way to meeting the fears of those who consider that the existence of a charter agreed within the industry does not of itself guarantee Press freedom. We remain convinced that Press freedom, as was said by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, in his remarkable speech, is best safeguarded by those within the industry on the basis of understanding and agreement. I beg your Lordships that these new provisions we are submitting for a charter within the industry, upheld by co-operation within the industry and sustained by the existence of this supervisory body, should be given a chance.
We, as a Government, are firmly on record as having given the promise to take whatever action is necessary, including legislation if that seems to be the best way of proceeding, to safeguard Press freedom if what is proposed in the Bill should prove ineffective. Weal so await, as does everyone, the report of the Royal Commission on the Press, which will have the opportunity to study all the factors affecting Press freedom which we are so anxiously discussing, far more fully than has been possible in the context of this Bill. The Government have undertaken to give careful consideration to the recommendations of the Royal Commission on the Press, but until we know what those recommendations are it seems sensible to us to see how the new machinery in the industry, for which we are providing, works, without intro
930
ducing legal sanctions and remedies which may well prejudice its success from the very outset. I therefore invite the House to agree that we should accept the Commons Amendment No. 15, as amended by Amendment No. 15A, and that we should not make the further additions of Amendments Nos. 15B and 15C.
5.55 p.m.
Lord SNOW: My Lords, my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor mentioned my name and although I am not especially anxious to speak, I feel obliged to say a word or two. Nobody in this House on either side likes quarrelling with his old friends, disagreeing with them on an important matter and changing for one night the political habits of a lifetime. I felt obliged to do that on the last vote we had on this matter and I still feel obliged to do it, almost for the opposite reason from that which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, attributed to me. It is not that I think legal sanctions are likely to work very well: it is much more that I fear the total absence of any kind of indication of the attitude of comparatively sensible men may get us on a slide so slippery and on a slope so steep that we shall see the whole thing disappear before our eyes. I was horrified to hear my noble friend Lord Houghton talking about the impossibility of distinguishing between this trade union and any other. It is very different from other trade unions. We talk of the newspaper industry. It is an industry, but it has other responsibilities and values which are totally different from the normal industry. It is rather like talking about the entire medical profession and its ancillaries as an industry. I am afraid I was speculating darkly on the speech of my noble friend Lord Houghton as to whether he would make a similar speech about the entire medical profession, if that chose to take on a trade union role —and it may do.
I think I am one of the very few Members of your Lordships' House who are comparatively familiar with Eastern Europe, and familiar not in a purely disapproving sense. I know some of their virtues as well as their vices. They have an energy and purpose which I should like to see in my own country; but they have certain constraints, to put it

931
mildly. My fear is that we may slide, with the best will in the world and with all the talk of consensus, into a state where we do not have their energy and purpose but do have their constraints. I suspect that is not impossible. I can quite easily imagine this country becoming similar to an Eastern European society—on the whole not so efficient and not so forceful, but with the Press gone already. However, if Parliament—and I mean both Houses—does not show any awareness of this danger, then I would guess that within 10 years those of us who are still alive would think that we had betrayed a most important value. This may happen; life is uncertain.
When I last spoke on this matter—and I have spoken only twice with great reluctance—I said that every ordinary creative writer in England would agree with what I had said. I said that completely without authority, but I knew I was right; and without any prompting from me 50 of the most eminent writers of England wrote a letter to the Times Literary Supplement, entirely unprovoked, his got a very inadequate reply. They still view this entire proposition with horror. The printed word is too important to be regarded purely as a matter of industrial dispute and I am afraid I shall have to vote, with deep and bitter regret, for Amendments Nos. 15B and 15C; otherwise I would feel that I had betrayed part of my life which is valuable to me.
5.59 p.m.
Lord HAILSHAM of SAINT MARYLEBONE: My Lords, I think it is possible that the House may be ready to dispose of this matter, not the less effectively because the debate has been a short one. I do not propose to exercise at any great length the right of reply, but I should like to say one or two things to those who have taken part in the debate. In the first place, I was grateful for the courteous way in which the noble and learned Lord dealt with my Amendment. I thought that some of his language was a trifle exaggerated. He always sounds so reasonable, but when he says that we should wreck the whole running of Fleet Street, I really feel he was stating what will not turn out to be the case, whatever the fate of this Amendment.
932
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, gave us in the first 20 minutes of his speech a history of the very well-known decisions of the courts between 1895, I think, and 1913. They are now irrelevant, as he himself pointed out, and wholly irrelevant to my Amendment, because the whole object of this Amendment is to take the decisions of the arbitral tribunal set up by Amendment No. 15A and not the effect of the judges' decisions.
The noble Lord, Lord Houghton, was under a considerable disadvantage because he misunderstood the effect of this Amendment. He kept on talking about a pecuniary penalty. No penalties are suggested by this Amendment; simply that if a man has suffered a wrong, he should have compensation if the wrong takes the form of pecuniary disadvantage. That is not a penalty. Nor is it a penalty imposed by a statutory body, because the body by which it will be imposed is the body set up by the industry itself under Amendment No. 15A. Nor is there any discrimination against trade unions, because of course the penalty, if it were a penalty —the order for compensation—might apply to proprietors or editors no less than to trade unions, and might be to their advantage. So there is no uneven justice in this case.
I quite agree, of course, that an arbitration award can be enforced in the courts. But the courts have no power if the arbitrators have behaved properly, which they would do in this case, to go behind it; they have to enforce it. I can see absolutely nothing in the suggestion of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, that one wants the people concerned in the industry to sit down every time they discuss it, thinking: First of all, if we don't agree we must go to arbitration; and secondly, if we go to arbitration and one side loses there must be a summons before the court." I leave absolutely no doubt that, if the body set up by the industry itself came to the conclusion that an injustice had been done and ought to be compensated for, and acted in the moderate way which such a body could be expected to do, whoever it was who was adjudged to pay the compensation would do so without any recourse to the courts. It must be pointed out to the noble and learned Lord the

933
Lord Chancellor that they do not have an opportunity to do so if Amendment No. 15A stood alone, because that makes no provision for an award of compensation, enforceable or unenforceable.
We are therefore faced with a perfectly straightforward issue. We are all agreed that there should be a charter. We are all agreed that it should protect the freedom of the Press. We are all agreed that there should be a body to investigate complaints of breaches of the charter. The simple issue is whether or not, if a wrong is done to one side or the other resulting in material damages, there should be a right of compensation. For that matter, I maintain that there should. I say so without passion. I say so without the desire to poison anybody's relations with anybody else. But I say so with
complete conviction, and I shall ask the House to divide upon my Amendment.
The LORD CHANCELLOR: The original Question was, That Amendment 15A to the Commons Amendment No. 10 be agreed to?—since when Amendments Nos. 15B and 15C have been moved by the Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone. The Question I therefore now have to put is, That Amendments Nos. 15B and 15C be agreed to?
6.4 p.m.
On Question, Whether the said Amendments (Nos. 15B and 15C) shall be agreed to?
Their Lordships divided: Contents, 162; Not-Contents, 73.

CONTENTS

Aberdare, L.

Effingham, E.

Lonsdale, E.

Adeane, L.

Ellenborough, L.

Lothian, M.

Airedale, L.

Elles, B.

Lucas of Chilworth, L.

Allerton, L.

Elliot of Harwood, B.

Lyell, L.

Amherst, E.

Elton, L.

Macpherson of Drumochter, L

Amherst of Hackney, L.

Emmet of Amberley, B.

Malmesbury, E.

Amory, V.

Exeter, M.

Mancroft, L.

Amulree, L.

Falkland, V.

Mansfield, E.

Arran, E.

Ferrers, E.

Merrivale, L.

Atholl, D.

Feversham, L.

Mersey, V.

Balerno, L.

Fraser of Kilmorack, L.

Meston, L.

Balfour, E.

Gage, V.

Monck, V.

Balfour of Inchrye, L.

Gainford, L.

Monk Bretton, L.

Banks, L.

Garner, L.

Mowbray and Stourton, L [Teller.]

Barrington, V.

George-Brown, L.

Beaumont of Whitley, L.

Gibson, L.

Netherthorpe, L.

Belstead, L.

Goodman, L.

Newall, L.

Berkeley, B.

Gore-Booth, L.

Northchurch, B.

Boothby, L.

Gowrie, E.

Nugent of Guildford, L.

Bourne, L.

Grantchester, L.

Ogmore, L.

Brock, L.

Greenway, L.

O'Hagan, L.

Brougham and Vaux, L.

Grenfell, L.

Onslow, E.

Byers, L.

Gridley, L.

Orr-Ewing, L.

Caldecote, V.

Grimston of Westbury, L.

Pender, L.

Camrose, V.

Hailsham of Saint Marylebone, L.

Penrhyn, L.

Carrington, L.

Perth, E.

Cathcart, E.

Hankey, L.

Piercy, L.

Chelwood, L.

Harmar-Nicholls, L.

Porritt, L.

Clwyd, L.

Harvey of Tasburgh, L.

Rankeillour, L.

Cole, L.

Hawke, L.

Rathcreedan, L.

Colville of Culross, V.

Henley, L.

Reading, M.

Cork and Orrery, E.

Hood, V.

Redesdale, L.

Cottesloe, L.

Hornsby-Smith, B.

Reigate, L.

Craigavon, V.

Howe, E.

Robbins, L.

Crawshaw, L.

Hunt of Fawley, L.

Roberthall, L.

Croft, L.

Hylton, L.

Robertson of Oakridge, L.

Daventry, V.

Hylton-Foster, B.

Robson of Kiddington,, B.

Davidson, V.

Iliffe, L.

Rochester, Bp.

de Clifford, L.

Inchyra, L.

Rothermere, V.

de Freyne, L.

Inglewood, L.

Ruthven of Freeland, Ly.

Denham, L. [Teller.]

Kemsley, V.

St. Aldwyn, E.

Drogheda, E.

Kinnaird, L.

St. Davids, V.

Drumalbyn, L.

Kinnoull, E.

St. Helens, L.

Duncan-Sandys, L.

Lauderdale, E.

Saint Oswald, L.

Dundee, E.

Lindsey and Abingdon, E.

Sandford, L.

Ebbisham, L.

Lloyd of Kilgerran, L.

Sandys, L.

Eccles, V.

Long, V.

Savile, L.

Sempill, Ly.

Tanlaw, L.

Ward of North Tyneside, B.

Sharples, B.

Tenby, V.

Ward of Witley, V.

Snow, L.

Teviot, L.

Watkinson, V.

Somers, L.

Thomas, L.

Wigoder, L.

Stamp, L.

Thorneycroft, L.

Windlesham, L.

Strathspey, L.

Tweedsmuir, L.

Wolverton, L.

Sudeley, L.

Vickers, B.

Young, B.

Swaythling, L.

Vivian, L.

NOT-CONTENTS

Ardwick, L.

Fulton, L.

Melchett, L.

Bacon, B.

Gaitskell, B.

Milner of Leeds, L.

Bernstein, L.

Gardiner, L.

Morris of Grasmere, L.

Birk, B.

Goronwy-Roberts, L.

Noel-Buxton, L.

Blyton, L.

Greene of Harrow Weald, L.

Paget of Northampton, L.

Brockway, L.

Greenwood of Rossendale, L.

Pannell, L.

Brown, L.

Hale, L.

Peddie, L.

Bruce of Donington, L.

Hall, V.

Phillips, B.

Burton of Coventry, B.

Hanworth, V.

Platt, L.

Champion, L.

Harris of Greenwich, L.

Popplewell, L.

Collison, L.

Houghton of Sowerby, L.

Sainsbury, L.

Cooper of Stockton Heath, L.

Jacques, L.

Shepherd, L. (L. Privy Seal)

Crook, L.

Kissin, L.

Shinwell, L.

Crowther-Hunt, L.

Leatherland, L.

Slater, L.

Cudlipp, L.

Lee of Newton, L.

Soper, L.

Darling of Hillsborough, L.

Llewelyn-Davies, L.

Stedman, B.

Delacourt-Smith of Alteryn, B.

Llewelyn-Davies of Hastoe, B. [Teller.]

Stewart of Alvechurch, B.

Donaldson of Kingsbridge, L.

Stow Hill, L.

Douglas of Barloch, L.

Lloyd of Hampstead, L.

Strabolgi, L. [Teller.]

Douglass of Cleveland, L.

Lovell-Davis, L.

Taylor of Gryfe, L.

Elwyn-Jones, L. (L. Chancellor.)

Lyons of Brighton, L.

Taylor of Mansfield, L.

McLeavy, L.

Wallace of Coslany, L.

Evans of Hungershall, L.

Maelor, L.

Wigg, L.

Fisher of Camden, L.

Mais, L.

Winterbottom, L.

Fisher of Rednal, B.

Maybray-King, L.

Wynne-Jones, L.

On Question, Commons Amendment No. 15, as amended, to the Lords Amendment No. 10, agreed to.

Resolved in the affirmative, and Amendments agreed to accordingly.
6.15 p.m.

COMMONS AMENDMENT
[No. 16]
Leave out .subsections (8) and (9) and insert—
('( ) A failure on the part of any person to observe any provision of a charter which is for the time being in force under this section shall not of itself render him liable to any proceedings, but in any proceedings—

(a) any such charter shall he admissible in evidence, and

(b) any provision of such a charter which appears to the court or tribunal to be relevant to any question arising in those proceedings shall be taken into account by the court or tribunal in determining that question.")

6.16 p.m.
The LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I beg to move that this House doth agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 16. This Amendment deals
936
with the fundamental question of what status the charter on Press freedom should have. In substance, Commons Amendment No. 16 proposes that it should have the same status as was originally suggested by my noble friend Lord Houghton of Sowerby at the Committee stage of the proceedings on this Bill in your Lordships' House. There is, however, one difference. The provision of my noble friend Lord Houghton of Sowerby gave the charter a standing in proceedings for breach of contract between a journalist and his employer, or between a member of a trade union representing journalists and their trade union, or in proceedings before an industrial tribunal for unfair dismissal under Schedule 1 to the Trade Union and Labour Relations Act 1974. However, in another place the Government accepted an Amendment which provides that the charter shall be admissible and must be taken into account in any proceedings before a court or tribunal in which its provisions may be relevant to the question at issue.
This Amendment, therefore, is broader than the approach of my noble friend Lord Houghton of Sowerby. It differs from the approach adopted by the noble

937
Lord, Lord Goodman, in his Amendments Nos. 16A, 16B and 16E to which we shall shortly be turning, in that it does not provide for breaches of the charter to constitute new grounds for legal action. In other words, the provisions of the charter are not to be enforceable as such. This is, of course, a quite fundamental difference. We do not think introducing the possibility of court cases based on the charter is in any way likely to help the achievement of Press freedom, for the reasons we canvassed in the last debate. Indeed, we think that it is likely to prove disruptive in industrial relations terms and, as I ventured to submit to the House in the last debate, to be potentially dangerous for the maintenance of Press freedom.
What is proposed in this Commons Amendment is that although breach of a provision of the charter should not give rise to a cause of action in the courts, where a right of action already exists—for example, for breach of contract or on complaints to an industrial tribunal—the charter's provisions must be taken into account by a court or tribunal in any proceedings founded on these existing rights of action in which the charter may be of relevance. In other words, the charter will help to strengthen the existing case, but will not provide new grounds for a fresh cause of action. If Amendment No. 16 which I am now moving is accepted, the charter will have a status comparable to that of the Code of Industrial Relations Practice which has already proved helpful in guiding industrial tribunals. My Lords, I beg to move.
Moved, That this House doth agree with the Commons in the said Amendment.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
Lord SHEPHERD: My Lords, I wonder whether it would be convenient to the House if the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, were to move his Amendments now and we then had a general debate. If we do not adopt that procedure we may be here for some time.
[Amendments to Commons Amendment No. 16]
[Nos. 16E, A, B and F]
Line 2, at beginning insert—
("Subject to the terms of paragraphs (c) and (d) hereof").
At the end of paragraph (a) leave out ("and").
After paragraph (b) insert—
("(c) any rule, agreement, act or conduct which is contrary to the provisions of the charter shall be deemed to be contrary to public policy,
(d) nothing in the charter shall be taken to restrict or abridge any right existing by statute or common law.").
At end insert—
("( ) In this section—
"editor" includes any deputy of such editor;
"material" includes any matter printed or intended for printing or broadcast or intended for broadcasting by television or radio.").
6.20 p.m.
Lord GOODMAN: My Lords, with the leave of the House I beg to move en bloc Amendments Nos. 16E, 16A, 16B and 16F to Commons Amendment No. 16. I respectfully agree that it would be more convenient if, in view of the hour, I said what I have to say and were as brief as possible and a general debate then ensued. May I begin by saying that since we last debated this matter very strenuous efforts have been made to see whether the difference between us, which is narrow but incredibly important, could be resolved and bridged. Unhappily, at this moment it still remains unbridged, although I do, not believe that it is unbridgable. With resolute determination I think that we shall find a way out of the dilemma that will reassure those people on my side that some effective remedy exists against injustice, which is really what this is all about.
I should like to pay a special tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Houghton of Sowerby, with whom I have had discussions and who I know has made the most strenuous efforts to think of ways of dealing with the matter. I have also had the very considerable assistance of discussions with the noble Lord. Lord Douglass of Cleveland, who has tried to guide me along the ways of trade unionism. Sometimes I think he slightly despaired of my intransigence in understanding—not out of any reluctance to do so, I may say. However, he has been extremely helpful to me and I think we had almost alighted on a solution, at least to one of the points still outstanding, but not to this legal point. I wish to say

939
that we have had these discussions and I hope they will continue. I should like also to make it clear that I shall press this Amendment to a Division, because I believe most firmly that unless a proper legal remedy is provided as a very last resort in these circumstances there will be no security for a number of people who are entitled to it.
I should like to ask the noble and learned Lord, the Lord Chancellor, who I do not think can be enjoying his participation in these proceedings, in what other areas of social, commercial, industrial and domestic activity he now thinks the law should be abrogated. He has decided that it should be totally abrogated in relation to trade unionists. If it is the case that the law is inadequate in relation to such great institutions as trade unions, it cannot be just and fair that an inadequate system of law should be maintained for the rest of us in other directions, and its urgent reform and reconstitution is apparently called for.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, made the point that up to 1913 there were serious grounds for doubting the impartiality of His Majesty's judges (as they then were), but he made it clear—and I think he was in something of a dilemma—that having had the responsibility of appointing them for about six or seven years there could be no doubt at all about their present impartiality, and certainly not the impartiality of his own nominees. I could not understand the immediate relevance of the lack of partiality of judges before 1913. It is indeed the case—
Lord GARDINER: My Lords, the noble Lord will appreciate that I did not introduce this question. He himself raised it, presumably thinking it very relevant, on two occasions.
Lord GOODMAN: My Lords, I never at any time raised the question of the impartiality, partiality, probity or otherwise of judges before 1913, which appears to be a matter of history for historians. I was concerned with the adequacy of the courts at the present day. It may well be that Judge Jeffreys would be open to serious reproach, but I certainly do not regard him as a menace to the freedom of the Press at this moment of time.
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I regarded a great deal of the extraordinarily interesting, persuasive and eloquent speech of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, as having very little to do with our discussion. The fact that he heroically maintained the innocence and purity of Lady Chatterley's Lover (with which I entirely agree) had nothing to do with this matter. What has to do with this matter is that if the late D. H. Lawrence was here and wanted to write for the Press the chances are that he might be prevented under this Bill. That, if I may say so, is the relevance of the matter so far as we are concerned.
The noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor referred to the fact that there is sitting a Press Commission. This is indeed the case. He asked why we did not wait to see what they reported, and then we could arrive at a conclusion. Well, why do we not wait to see what they report and then arrive at a conclusion? Why do we wish to pre-empt the decision by this piece of legislation in relation to the Press? I happen to know, because I was telephoned to by a member of the Press Commission who told me that I had his wholehearted support in this matter. He went further, but I think it would be wrong for me to say any more than that and I would venture to ask Her Majesty's Government to inquire of the Press Commission whether they would make an interim and urgent decision on this matter—a conclusion which could be arrived at within days. After all, we here are reaching a decision on this matter on the basis of a debate in an afternoon. They could reach a decision on this matter on the basis of an investigation within a week. It may well be that the decision would be that the Government's determination that there should be no law in these matters, that nobody should enjoy an effective means of protection, would be endorsed by that Commission. I doubt it; I doubt it very much, but why do the Government not find out?
The suggestion that there should be no law is, if I may venture to say so to the noble and learned Lord, the Lord Chancellor—for whom I entertain the greatest respect and considerable sympathy in this matter—a piece of manifest hypocrisy. The law is being introduced into this matter in the most brutal and the most crude fashion. If your Lordships

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will look at Section 5 of the 1974 Act (his own Act) you will find that the remedies were carefully prescribed. There was stated in the very first subsection of Section 5 of that Act the protection that should be given to a man who was expelled from a union, excluded from membership, expelled from a branch or a section of a trade union by way of arbitrary or unreasonable discrimination.
As one would have expected in a civilised, humane country, provision was made for this situation. That is all being swept away by the law. It is not being swept away by a private meeting in which gentlemen are saying: "It is a matter of individual choice between ourselves without any coercion of the law. We have abandoned these rights." This is a legal provision that is taking away the rights; and when we want to put back into the Bill some suggestion that there should be some slight legal redress, we are then told that this is an appalling use of the law which is unacceptable to the trade unions.
May I say one word to the trade unions. I venture to say that throughout my life I have been a great supporter, a friend and admirer of trade unions. In the areas in which I have worked I have had a great deal to do with trade unions. I have never regarded this matter as having anything to do with trade union law or industry; it is a question of whether a man who can write is permitted to write. That is what the question is about. It is not a question of industrial discipline; it is not a question of trade union organisation. It is a question of whether a small union of 20,000 members, who supposedly redeem their reputations for intolerance and capriciousness by a vote which comprised one-third of their membership and in respect of which there was a majority of something like one thousand in favour of those resolutions which could be regarded as progressive, that is to say 5 per cent. of the membership, are alleged to have redeemed the membership from any prospect of behaving in the wrong way in the future.
I invite the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor to examine the voting; to ask whether we are entitled to rely on that sort of vote and the decisions of that sort of union (for which I have the greatest respect) as placing in jeopardy the right of a man to a creative activity and occupation. That is what it is about.
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That, if I may say so, as the noble Lord, Lord Snow, said, is the crux of the matter. It is not an industrial dispute; it is not a question of affronting trade unions by once again confronting them with legal situations that they do not like. It is a question of protecting people who want to pursue a talent and a craft in circumstances where that craft is placed in jeopardy.
I venture to ask the Government what conceivable objection there is to adopting the very moderate and minimal protections for which we have sought. What right have we to jeopardise and endanger the entitlement of a man to pursue his talent in any circumstances whatsoever because we are told it is unacceptable to the trade unions? The trade unions have acquired great rights and great powers of recent years, and I certainly do not challenge them. Nothing in any observation I have made or any proposal I have put forward suggests that any writer or any journalist should not be a member of a trade union. There are people who may hold a contrary view and their views may be open to respect, but nothing in the world that I have said relates to any such suggestion. All I have said is that nobody should be arbitrarily excluded from pursuing his craft in circumstances where he has not a redress that means something.
I do not think I take quite so slender a view of the benefits of the Amendment numbered 15. I think it may well be that they will have a considerable moral effect. I believe in an honourable industry. If honourable men get together to make a declaration that a man has been affronted, while something may come of it, it just is not good enough. We are not entitled to rely on it. It would be pure self-indulgence on our part to seek to evade this problem by saying that all men will behave well. There never was a time in the history of this country when the rule of law was in greater need. If at this moment we could say, "Everyone is flocking back to the churches and you will find on Sundays they are packed to the doors. Behaviour is changing towards morality in an absolutely unprecedented way; crime is descending at a tremendous rate", that might be a moment for saying, "All right, let us give up the protection of the law". But for Her Majesty's Lord High Chancellor now to

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say that the law is not available in an immensely important field of human activity, when we need it more desperately than ever is, I think, an abdication of responsibility, which I find very regrettable. I do not believe that, left to themselves, the two very distinguished Lord Chancellors who have spoken in this matter in previous years would have uttered a word of the type they have this afternoon. They do it out of loyalty; they do it because they have come to believe that confrontations are more dangerous even than the abrogation of the rule of law.
My Lords, I venture to suggest to them that in this situation there is no danger of confrontation. The few aggrieved journalists will not march through the streets. We are not to have a situation where anyone is to be asked to dictate trade union policy. I venture to recommend—and it is an impertinence for me to recommend anything to do with trade unionism—a very interesting book recently published, which has been prepared by a Working Party of Warwick University. The book is called Industrial Relations and the Limit of the Law, written by four young research students. It is a very interesting book, and demonstrates quite clearly that the law has a very limited application today in relation to trade union matters. But it also demonstrates quite clearly, I venture to suggest, the arguments I have put forward for a validity in trade union matters far in excess of anything that seems to have penetrated the Government Benches at this moment.
It is of first importance that we recognise what this discussion is about. It is not an attack on trade unionism; it is not a move by the proprietors of newspapers—and I am happy to say that I have now resigned from being Chairman of the Newspaper Publishers Association so it cannot be suggested I am doing this on their behalf; I leave that onerous office on 31st December of this year and trust that I shall be bothered no more with their innumerable problems. They have my enormous sympathy on this matter, but I say that we ought to consider whether we are going to invite a constitutional confrontation on a matter about which people feel so fiercely on matters of principle.
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Should there be a raid against trade unions, against the entire authorship and editorship, and all creative thought in the country? Is it right that the unions should provoke that sort of situation? Is it wrong that trade unions, who have always been on the side of thought, have always given support to the Arts? I remember when I was Chairman of the Arts Council, the assistance I received from creative unions, if I may call them that—Equity, and the musicians union and the like. They were the first and foremost in supporting the Arts. Is it right that now the word should go about that in order to create some industrial regimen that should relate to everybody they should cause people to believe that their right to write is imperilled? It is no use saying that that belief is fanciful. It may be in the event, but it is validly and firmly held by people who genuinely believe that this Bill will endanger their right to write, and nothing will shake that belief.
My Lords, I received a resolution from 42 editors of the IPC group. The noble Lord, Lord Cudlipp, made his maiden speech the other day, which I did not think was quite worthy of his distinguished career, in which he said that I would go down in history as the man who failed to save the Press but who destroyed the House of Lords. There will be worse epitaphs. If a man does that, I can think of a worse way to be remembered in history. That does not fill me with shame or ignominy, but with a belief that those who cause the destruction of the House of Lords on account of this issue will be the people really responsible for the situation.
My Lords, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham, if I may say so, made an unwontedly conciliatory speech. I am anxious to do the same. I hope everybody will make conciliatory speeches. Every word I have said is a conciliatory word, because every word is a word of truth. It is often painful to hear the truth. It is often painful to find that the truth runs counter to one's ingrained prejudice and beliefs. I assert that a way should be found over this difficulty, and there should not be a refusal of the small Amendment I have sought.
May I deal briefly with the Amendment dealt with by the noble and learned

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Lord, Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone? It is simply this: that we reassert Common Law rights such as they exist. Their nature, to some extent, is nebulous and uncertain. There was a very good article in the Financial Times, written by Mr. David Watt, which some noble Lords may have read. The article analysed the nature of the remedies which would exist if my Amendments were passed and achieved. Noble Lords will see that Mr. Watt gives a good prospect of remedy in most of the cases with which I am concerned. I ask no more than that. I am not asking for certainty of remedy, but that there shall be injected into the Common Law a shot in the arm to enable the Common Law to develop in a contemporary fashion and a fashion which is consistent with the growth of trade unionism and the enormous increase in worker power, which we recognise, welcome, and which we have all brought about. That is all we ask. We are not asking for any statutory provisions or for legislation that affronts anyone or asserts a new course of action. We are simply saying that if am an is expelled wrongly from his trade union, if he is unable to join a trade union because of circumstances of prejudice, if in circumstances which he cannot control he finds himself unable to work, the Common Law should be entitled to develop that particular theme of law.
My Lords, my position is quite simple. I am satisfied with my Amendment, and would be satisfied with the Amendment of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham. I believe it likely that my Amendment would be more acceptable than his, because I assert no new right, I do not refer to damages, but merely indicate that if the Common Law right exists, it is revivified and fertilised by a declaration that the charter shall be a matter of public policy. It is little to ask. If this is acceptable, I go no further with any other Amendment. If both Amendments go back to the Commons in the event of my being successful in the Division, I still say to Her Majesty's Government that I shall be satisfied if, on reflection, they decide to accept my Amendment, and not to accept the other one, or vice versa. Neither are inflammatary Amendments. Mine can be fully and easily explained to reasonable men of any position, in any Party.
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All I say now is that we have had a long debate. We are divided by a matter of principle. I do not believe we can rely on society being organised as a kind of coconut island. We cannot have everyone sitting around in a circle distributing coconuts to the baboons, on the footing that if a small baboon fails to get a coconut, a generous large baboon will give him one. The day may come when this will happen, and we shall then have achieved the millenium; then we shall be living in a happy and contented situation. Until that happens, we need to protect the small baboon. We need to ensure that the large baboon has one coconut taken away from him, and is left with all the rest. I do not believe that it is anything but fanciful to regard the organisation of society as possible on this footing. Because I do not believe that the weak are secure against the strong, I do not believe that the poor are secure against the rich, and that without the intervention of a system of law it is possible to protect them; so I am persuaded we ought to accept my Amendment.
My Lords, may I say a last word to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner. For seven years he was a very distinguished and brilliant Lord Chancellor who heartened us all. In that time he and I had certain differences about the organisation of the legal profession, the appointment of the Judiciary, and a number of other things where I continue to believe that if he had followed my precepts, we might not have these difficulties today. We might have had a Judiciary which would not cause such terror and alarm in the hearts of the trade unions. We might have had a Judiciary that was not so formally associated with any particular class structure, drawn—perish the thought—from 25,000 assembled solicitors and barristers instead of 2,500 barristers. We might have had a Judiciary, in short, acceptable to the people as a whole. This is a most delicate moment to deal with the matter. Feelings are inflamed, injuries are not repaired, wounds are not yet healed. Everything must be dealt with with the utmost caution and as slowly as possible. To expel the law at any moment is in my opinion total madness. Let us reform the Judiciary, and let us have a Judiciary in which the trade unions can have confidence. But let us recognise that

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without a Judiciary we have no security. We have anarchy and no security.
The LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, the original Question was that the House doth agree with Commons Amendments No. 16 to Amendment No. 10, since when Amendments 16E, 16A, 16B and 16F have been moved by the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, in the terms set out in the printed list. The Question is, therefore, that Amendments Nos. 16E, 16A, 16B and 16F be agreed to.
Lord DOUGLASS of CLEVELAND: My Lords, I have listened with some consternation to the whole argument this afternoon, because I feel that the code of practice is being slowly strangled by statutory obligations. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham, now appears to accept the fact that a man should not have the right to join the union of his choice. He says that this is theory; that in practice he will have the right to choose between two unions. I must say that that is the strangest argument I have ever heard from a lawyer who claims to be precise; but at least we have got that point over. I am bound to reciprocate what the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, said about our conversations; I have learned a lot from them about the law, about which I do not profess to know very much—only some of its effects.
But the Amendment says, "the provisions of the charter shall be deemed to be contrary to public policy". On the TUC, we argued for many years about what is in the public interest, and what is in the public interest depends upon who is deciding what is in the public interest; and at the end of the day that is something which is not clearly definable. Some judges make judgments which are decisions as men. I give one example in the last few days, in respect of the TUC Disputes Committee. I greatly regret that the judge interfered with the Disputes Committee of the TUC. A decision had been given by that Committee that one union had poached the members of another, and the judge decided that the TUC Disputes Committee was wrong, because where a staff association merged with another union that was not poaching. I suggest that that is a matter of individual opinion, and not something which the judge decided upon case law
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or any other sort of law. This is what we on these Benches are afraid of.
The whole history of the trade union movement, to which my noble and learned friend Lord Gardiner referred, is extremely relevant to this case, because this is the atmosphere in which the case is argued from these Benches. The case which is argued from the Opposition Benches is argued from the atmosphere of the law courts; they are going to make all decisions by law. I want to say here very definitely that if ever we get to the state where we believe that the law is a substitute for leadership, that will be a sad day for this country.
Lord GEORGE-BROWN: My Lords, may I intervene?
Lord DOUGLASS of CLEVELAND: No, my Lords.
Lord GEORGE-BROWN: My Lords, it is all right for the noble Lord to say "No" …
Several Noble Lords: Order, order!
Lord DOUGLASS of CLEVELAND: My Lords, there are times when I argue better with my noble friend Lord George-Brown by silence than I do by argument.
Lord GEORGE-BROWN: The noble Lord is quite right about that.
Several Noble Lords: Order, order!
Lord SHEPHERD: My Lords, there can be only one noble Lord on his feet at one time. I suggest that my noble friend should now be allowed to proceed, and then, of course, we are open to debate.
Lord DOUGLASS of CLEVELAND: My Lords, I will not give way, because of what was said earlier in the debate. I do not want a repetition of the argument, when I am trying to be serious about a very serious subject. When the code of practice was introduced—I am not sure whether it was introduced or continued—in the 1971 Industrial Relations Act, when the Conservatives were in power, they impressed me with its value. I did not believe it when we started to argue it, but as time went along I learned its value, because the code of practice meant that the two sides in industry were getting together

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and agreeing about how they would proceed to avoid strikes. Today, as a consequence of that, we have leaders of employers, leaders of trade unions, writing in our national Press with one end in view, and that is the good of this country and the destruction of inflation. That is a consequence of the code of practice being allowed to go unfettered by law. I wanted to see more of this.
Nobody wants freedom of the Press more than I do; nor the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, nor indeed, I believe, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham. It is the approach to the subject which matters. It is the leadership which we are now giving in this country that matters. If that leadership breaks down at this very moment when we are trying to conquer inflation, it will be the worst day's work ever done in either House of Parliament. If I was making a speech in this House today which I would regard as the most important speech of my life, it would be to ask the Opposition to stop strangling this code of practice with their puny attempts to wind the strings, the manacles, of legal action around the voluntary agreement which is undoubtedly taking place in this country today. I could almost have gone with the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, except for the fact that he is ahead of his time. We have not decided what is the public interest. We have not decided what is the best public policy, and to put it into a document with legal enforcement would be fatal at the present time. It is about the only rock on which we are divided in our long discussion. I plead with your Lordships to accept the Commons Amendment and not follow on to the tyranny which can arise if we are not very careful with regard to these other Amendments.
6.47 p.m.
Lord WIGG: My Lords, I should like to support Lord Douglass in what he says; that is, in suggesting to Lord Goodman that he has second thoughts. The noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor made a case when he argued—indeed he went further than arguing; he gave a pledge on behalf of the Government—that if the charter that was envisaged was worked out and found to be defective, if it did not do the job the Government
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thought should be done, the Government would come to Parliament to seek further powers. Having a specific pledge of that kind of the willingness of the Government to act promptly should the necessity arise, I must now ask Lord Goodman this question: does he not think that the prerequisite of the rule of law is respect for the law, that it is impossible to imagine that the mere putting of measures on the Statute Book is in itself the rule of law. I did not think he was very fair to my noble and learned friend Lord Gardiner, because one of Lord Gardiner's principal points was that you bred disrespect for the law if measures were enacted which were then disregarded. It seems to me that is a very important point.
If I may say so, Lord Goodman was not up to his usual form. That is probably because of close association with Lord Hailsham. Be it noted that Lord Goodman did draw attention to how out of character Lord Hailsham was acting. I first struck Lord Hailsham such a long time ago in the by-election in Oxford when the great patriotic young Quintin Hogg was extolling the virtues of appeasement. I watched Lord Hailsham on that occasion and again I had a chance of seeing him in action in the 1945 Elections; then, again, subsequently, when I came to this House, and he sat on these Benches and I sat over there. The key to the character of Lord Hailsham is never conciliation, never reasonableness. If, therefore, he was reasonable today, it was because he had a little political flypaper, and I am afraid one of those he has caught is Lord Goodman. He really ought to know better than to believe that today Lord Hailsham was taking this great phalanx of conscience-stricken Tories and a few would-be Tories into that Lobby in the interests of the freedom of the Press.
The opportunity to free the Press in this country from its thralldom has existed for a long time. Our Press is a long way short of being free. It is a long way short of anything that we can be proud if. We need a free Press. I certainly join with the noble Lord, Lord Goodman—I have joined with him as an ally on many occasions—in arguing and fighting in individual cases for the principle of the upholding of the rule of law and the establishment of the rule of law. What I

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can never do is to play a game in which the rules are altered by the other side when it suits them. In other words, if we are playing cricket, play cricket, but if, on the other hand, somebody picks up the "dry scrubber" I shall blame myself if I do not get there before him.
I want to examine the position of your Lordships on the maintenance of the historic principles of revision and delay. I have supported a second Chamber, and support a second Chamber, because I served over 20 years in the other place and see the necessity for it. I have quoted previously in this House the occasion on which noble Lords on that Bench pleaded for delay and revision, until we came to the Common Market, and then it was an issue here which the Conservative Party wanted at all price. If ever there was an issue on which there should have been delay, and the country should have been consulted, it was that one. If men forget principle when it suits them, and pop up today as sweet conciliators, do not ask me to accept their good intentions, because I do not.
This is an issue in a very delicate area. I am surprised that the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, does not see the delicacy of it. I believe that the measure which has today gone through the House, the Employment Protection Bill, will be seen to be revolutionary in character. Not revolutionary in terms of bloodshed, but revolutionary in terms of giving men the opportunity to exercise their freedom and wisdom for our common good. If that does not work, unless we can get ACAS to operate intelligently, then indeed we shall be in a sorry plight. For it to work there must be acceptance on all sides: employers, trade unions, and the like. Each must accept the good intentions of the other, and very slowly indeed build a bridge.
It may be regrettable, but the facts are that there are millions of people in this country who do not know as much about the law as the noble Lord, Lord Goodman and I certainly do not know very much about it—but who do not accept what the noble Lord is arguing; this is, that you must have the sanction of the Common Law to ensure a right. I think that, in the long run, the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, may in the event
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prove to be right; but if he is right he has got the pledge of the Lord Chancellor in the bank on which to draw if what he wants is necessary, and then that necessity will be met. Until then it surely would be wiser to rely upon good will, and common sense, and accept the Government's pledge and not try to hasten this.
The noble Lord, Lord Goodman, does himself no credit. He draws on a very heavy political overdraft when he associates himself with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham, and the Tories, because their purpose today, as I said earlier this afternoon, is one purpose, and one purpose only; that is, to damage the Labour Government. For the moment they are willing to wound, but they have not got the guts to strike. So, they are waiting for the day, and this is an occasion on which they think they can discredit the Government.
Remember the simple words of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham; no noble gesture, no appeal to the conscience, the kind of conscience of the noble Lord, Lord Snow. He said that the simple issue before us is that if an individual suffers a wrong and that wrong can be put right by an award of damages, what they are seeking to do is to give that individual this right. There is no question of conscience, no question of great moral issue; it is the simple issue of the Conservative Party going into the Lobby to damage the Government, and I am very sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, has fallen for that nonsense.
6.56 p.m.
The Earl of DROGHEDA: My Lords, I want to say only a few words as seconder on his Amendment to my noble friend Lord Goodman. I thought that the noble Lord, Lord Wigg, was rather unfair. It was certainly not the case that the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, has associated himself with the Conservative Party. The noble Lord, Lord Wigg, might just as well have rebuked him for associating himself with the Liberal Party, or the majority of the Cross-Bench Peers, or indeed certain Labour Peers who have had the courage to get up and say that they see a threat. The noble Lord, Lord Wigg, is a man who is very articulate and expresses himself clearly and forcefully and is a most intimidating character,

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and for me to dare to cross swords with him at all is probably to stick my neck out a long way. In any event, in this regard I think he was unfair to my noble friend Lord Goodman.
My position is what it has been from the beginning. There is an enormous amount of fear on the part of the newspaper industry of the actual and potential threats to the freedom of the Press. It is true that prior to 1971 it was theoretically possible for closed shops to be imposed, for outside contributions to newspapers to be excluded, and so on, but nobody took the threat remotely seriously at that time. It is only because of the tremendous increase in the amount of union activity, and the very clear signs of militancy among the National Union of Journalists, that we have felt that we should seek this protection not for our industry particularly but for the country.
My own attitude, to a considerable extent, would be influenced if one could be given some indication by the Government as to whether on not the words printed in italics in the Lords Amendment No. 10 are going to be accepted by Her Majesty's Government. They spell out clearly some of the specific protections which we seek to assure. All we know is that the Government voted strongly against these Amendments at the time. I should like to feel that this form of words as shown here will be accepted. I hope that we shall not end up with a constitutional clash. I felt that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, could have made his speech about a constitutional clash many months ago, and he stayed silent at the time. To bring it out now is a tremendous pity.
This is an enormously important matter. My noble friend Lord Goodman is a most accommodating man. As your Lordships all know—noble Lords laugh, but this is a true statement—he is sometimes too accommodating. He bends over backwards to reach solutions. Therefore, I have been honoured to have my name associated with him throughout these days of debate. I hope that our Amendment will be carried or that an alternative form of words can still he evolved so that the freedom of the Press can be assured.
7.0 p.m.
Lord LLOYD of HAMPSTEAD: My Lords. I draw your Lordships' attention
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back to the words of the Amendment. of which sight has perhaps been lost. I have not previously spoken in any of the debates on this Bill. I voted against the Hailsham-Wigoder Amendment because it seemed to be open to considerable objection, but I ask the House to consider whether the Amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, is deserving of much more careful consideration, particularly from the Government's point of view, because it seems to have great merit and, moreover, provides a basis on which a reasonable compromise could be arrived at, something which would avoid all this talk—in my view, irrelevant talk—of constitutional crisis.
The merits of the Amendment are simple; it introduces no new statutory cause of action and no new statutory right of any kind. It simply seeks to make a resounding declaration in favour of certain developments that the Common Law has been undergoing in the last 20 years or so, and gives the courts some encouragement to pursue that line. The background of the Common Law in this matter has been fully recognised by Mr. Michael Foot, because not long ago in the House of Commons he said that he had no desire to interfere with the processes of the Common Law; and, as we know, the role of the Common Law in this matter was strongly supported by the Donovan Report, something of which we must not lost sight.
The Common Law has not been standing still in the last 25 years. To venture a personal note, as long ago as 1956 I delivered a public lecture of total unimportance which I called "The right to work" and which was subsequently published. It sought to indicate the sort of developments that were going on, rather quietly, in the processes of the Common Law. It is fair to say that in the course of the subsequent 20 years there have been very substantial developments in our courts. They are still uncertain in scope, but they have to a large degree relied on the concept of public policy. It has been said by some noble Lords this afternoon that public policy is a vague idea which might mean anything to anybody, but the whole point of this Amendment is that it tells the courts specifically that in this area Parliament is saying that public policy is involved. Thereby, it clears up this uncertainty and

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makes it easier for the courts to accept the fact that the issue of public policy arises, and that they can give effect to Common Law remedies in a number of situations, some of which have already arisen and been the subject of decisions.
I entirely agree with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, that the Judiciary had a rather unhappy record in trade union matters before the 1914 war, but as he recognised—and one would be surprised if he did not—the record of the Judiciary in the last 25 years in trade union matters has been not only very good but very successful. They have intervened in actions brought before them in a variety of matters and, so far as I am aware, their decisions have never aroused any particular resentment or difficulty; they have been accepted by trade unionists as fair decisions. One can perhaps make an exception in the Rookes v. Barnard case in 1964, and I agree that that was a bit of an aberration, but apart from that one case their record has been good.
Therefore, I suggest that here we have an Amendment which is of a most conciliatory kind. I do not know how anybody who knows the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, could describe him as other than conciliatory. Even in the numerous accounts one has of him he is always described as the "master conciliator", and I think everybody knows him in that capacity. He has made enormous efforts to try to produce an acceptable solution which is not open to the sort of objections that, for example, the Amendment in the name of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone, is open to; namely, that it reopens this whole area of special statutory causes of action which could lead to the same hostility as we had under the 1971 Act.
Therefore, I strongly urge the Government, with all the earnestness I can command, that this is an area where they should think very carefully as to whether the Amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, is a platform on which a reasonable solution could be arrived at, which would reconcile without bloodshed the difficulties between our respective Houses, and which could avoid what would be a rather puerile exercise in constitutional brinkmanship, if it were carried to that length.
Lord GEORGE-BROWN: My Lords, I do not know how loudly one has to shout to be heard; I have risen three times in an attempt to speak. It seems that the lawyers in this House think they have a prescriptive right to talk about the affairs of trade unionists. I happen to prefer the Amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, to that of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone, but I will vote for both. My only problem with the Amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Goodman—and we had this argument some while ago—is that I wonder to myself why he thinks it is especially true of journalists and should not be applied to the rest of trade unionists. This came up clearly when my noble friend Lord Douglass of Cleveland spoke. He spoke as a manipulator, a controller, and he gave absolutely nothing to the ordinary members of trade unions. I support the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, in this, and the reason why I hope his proposal will get accepted is that if we are not careful we shall be creating a new power, a new creation.
If one becomes the leader of a union, it does not really matter whether one's members are with one. One has, by definition, become "it" and, with respect to my noble friend Lord Douglass, it happened to the steel workers before it is now happening to the NUJ. It is happening to them all. I speak as a trade unionist and not as a lawyer. I do not lead or advise a trade union; I speak just as I have always spoken, as a trade unionist. It is very worrying. Bosses are arriving, the Mafia is arriving. I remember hearing the noble Lord, Lord Bernstein—who I am glad to see here tonight—saying in a debate that the one union he got along with very well was the one that was Communist controlled. He had no trouble with them, he said. That is why I support the Amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, and why I would even have supported the Amendment of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham.
We are individuals. We formed trade unions because we individuals thought that we were being trodden into the ground by bosses who had too much power. Now we are in a new situation, and I beg the noble Lord, Lord Douglass of Cleveland, to understand that. One

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can get into a new situation when one's bosses tread one into the ground. My purpose as a trade unionist is to make sure that, whether I am an editor, a journalist, a member of the Transport and General Workers Union—the least skilled of the lot—or one of the noble Lord, Lord Douglass's precious steelworkers or blast furnace men, I a in m free, free to argue and free to disrupt if need be. We created this trade union movement of ours order to be free to disrupt if need be.
We are now getting infiltration—and the noble Lords, Lord Goodman and Lord Douglass, know this as well as I do —by people who do not want us to be free and who just want to run the movement. If I may say so to the noble Lord, Lord Wigg, we do not really need any help from Colonel-Generals and we are fighting a tremendous battle ourselves to try to relieve ourselves of infiltrators who want to use our movement as a way into total control. Those infiltrators will control our money, our members and our thinking, and the noble Lord, Lord Wigg—with whom I have fought many a battle for good against chaps who do not have the courage that he and, I hope, I have—should remember that these Amendments will not do us all that much good except that, by carrying them, we shall establish something in which decent folk ought to believe.
I once had a quarrel with the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, which I did not want to have. We quarrelled because I asked him why he thought it only true of newspapers and journalists and he said—rather arrogantly, I thought—"Because we are creative", meaning, I suppose, that the rest of us are non-creative. However, I am with him tonight and I do not mean to pick a fight. I want to go on from this point. My father is still alive and carrying an 1898 docker's card. He must be the only man alive who is still doing that. I speak as a trade unionist who has gone all the way through. I want freedom from all the bosses, not only those with whom we argue but those in our unions. I do not want anybody saying who is to belong to which union. I want freedom for us all and if I do not want to belong to that union I want freedom to belong to this one. I do not want an American
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trade union situation. If I want someone to join my union, it is my business to convince him that he should belong to my union. I do not want a fixed arrangement. Speaking as an ordinary trade unionist, I urge that we should keep the law as free as we can. Leave us to sort out ourselves which union we want to choose.
7.17 p.m.
Baroness GAITSKELL: My Lords, it is very difficult for someone who is not a lawyer to take part in this debate in any seriousness, be he or she layman or laywoman. I came here today full of sympathy with the Amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Goodman. However, when I heard him say that he agreed with the Amendment of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham, I did not know where I was, because that Amendment retraced the steps of the Conservative Party in their Industrial Relations Act, which was a disaster. I remain very confused.
In discussing the wide range of Press freedoms, I feel that it is necessary to find a balance between two freedoms—the freedom of association, which is the trade union freedom, and the freedom of expression. The noble Lord, Lord Goodman, originally wanted a statutory code for the benefit of proprietors and editors. However, as I understand it—and I stand to be corrected by the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor—in his new Amendment the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, has wisely compromised and has abandoned statutory wrongs and agreed that the proposed Press charter should apply both to proprietors and editors and to the unions; in other words, that it should apply in both directions. To me, that seems to make some kind of logic and sense.
The noble Lord, Lord Goodman, also wants it to be made clear that the charter will be a declaration of public policy. I do not understand all the intricacies of how lawyers interpret the words "public policy", but I cannot see why, when a Labour Government are in power, they should so strongly object to the words "public policy". This seems to me to be a very important question, because unless the charter has this declaration of public policy it will be of little value in practice.

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In the new Amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, he does not wish to create new legal wrongs. He says he wishes to enable the charter to be a source of practical guidance to courts in dealing with existing wrongs. Unless the Government accept this, which I see as a reasonable approach, I believe that there is real danger of a constitutional crisis which is wholly unnecessary, because there is only a minor difference between the Government's Amendment and that of the noble Lord, Lord Goodman. Therefore, while on the last occasion when we debated this matter I thought that the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, was unwise in risking a constitutional crisis, today I think that the Government should not risk losing the Press charter by invoking the Parliament Act.
The Earl of MANSFIELD: My Lords, your Lordships' House has been considering this matter for some time now, and it may be that your Lordships will wish to cease your deliberations and decide the issue before very long. It may be worth stating, very shortly, in the absence of my noble and learned friend, what we on these Benches consider to be the way our feelings are running over the Amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, and others. I say, first, that I should have thought that in all quarters of your Lordships' House it would have been admitted—probably, readily admitted—that the speech by my noble and learned friend was certainly conciliatory, and he certainly showed that he had an earnest desire to try, as far as possible, to bring the two sides together.
Since he moved his Amendment—and I will not go over that ground again—the debate has gone down several paths. But, in the end, if I may sum it up from this side of the House, the whole argument can be encapsulated (if that is the right word) in very small compass indeed. I thought that the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd of Hampstead, put the matter very well when he was discussing the Amendments put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Goodman. No new right of action is introduced or indeed contemplated. These Amendments are merely declaratory of the law as it is at the moment.
Going back in time to the Amendments of my noble and learned friend Lord
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Hailsham, they seek to do precisely the same, but in a different way. The question can be posed quite shortly—and so far no noble Lord on the Government Benches has sought to answer it—that if a person is wronged in the circumstances which have been outlined by several noble Lords, if a journalist is excluded from his employment, if a contributor is not allowed, by wrong action, to contribute to the paper according to the wishes of the editor, is there, first, to be are medy, and, secondly, what kind of remedy shall there be?
The answer so far as the Bill is concerned—before your Lordships voted on my noble and learned friend's Amendment—was "None". There was no remedy at all! The Amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, seek, as I think in a very similar way, to achieve much the same as the Amendments of my noble and learned friend. As I see it, that is the issue between us, and it is an argument in comparatively small compass.
When my noble and learned friend opened the debate he said, in effect, that he had certain reservations about the noble Lord's Amendments, and I shall not seek to go down that avenue now, nor shall I seek to argue about it. Nevertheless, despite those reservations, we on this side of the House think that a safety net, a remedy of whatever kind, is vital to the freedom of the Press in the future, and I hope that noble Lords on this side will support the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, in his endeavour.
7.24 p.m.
The LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, at the beginning of his speech the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, indicated that there is a question of principle at issue here. We have debated that question of principle for many hours, and I apprehend that the House will not want me to occupy it very much longer. On the question as to how far legal sanctions should intrude into the sphere of industrial relations in the context of newspapers, we on the Labour side of your Lordships' House take the view that that intervention would be damaging to industrial relations—damaging by its possible disruptive consequences to the freedom of the Press itself. I am in full agreement with what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, said; that there would be

961
few things more damaging to the rule of law than the imposition of unenforceable orders by the court.
Before I turn to the content of the Amendments, there are one or two matters with which I wish to deal. The noble Earl, Lord Drogheda, asked whether I could give any undertaking—because that might have affected the vote; I doubt whether it would, even if it had been a favourable answer that I was about to give—as to whether the Government would accept the words now in Amendment 10 in subsection (2) (the words printed in black), or whether we would wish to revert to the words approved in another place. The answer is that we would propose in another place to revert to the words that were approved there; so I must not mislead the noble Earl into thinking that there is any comfort for him along that road.
The noble Lord, Lord Goodman, raised the position of the Royal Commission on the Press. The Chairman of the Royal Commission has made his, and the Commission's, position plain. When taking oral evidence from the National Union of Journalists on 23rd September, he stated that the Commission would want to consider the major issue of the closed shop and Press freedom at a later stage. He was not prepared to do so while the question of legislation was still before Parliament, and discussions were continuing between the parties. He would take full evidence when the law was in being, and he made it clear that he would not assume that the law as it then stood would necessarily be the most desirable form. In other words, as I understand it, the present Chairman, like his predecessor, does not want to be rushed into special inquiries into that aspect of Press freedom, and he reserves the right of the Commission to make up its own mind about what is needed, irrespective of the form of law passed by Parliament on this occasion; but he wanted to consider the issues against a stable background.
My Lords, I should like to say this in regard to the general argument that has taken place. I believe that in the present climate of opinion there is a real chance that a voluntary scheme, a voluntary charter, a voluntary supervisory body can work; and if it can work, is it not the best solution? Let us try it! We have tried the other way—it failed. I beg your
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Lordships to give this scheme a chance now, in this present climate of conciliation, which we see manifested in various ways. I do not at all share the pessimism expressed in some of the astonishing speeches we have heard in your Lordships' House tonight. There is an awareness of a need to pull together and a need to substitute agreement and conciliation for the constant in-fighting in industrial relations. So let us give it a chance. As the noble Lord, Lord Wigg, said, I have given a solemn undertaking on the part of the Government that if it fails we shall come back to seek other powers.
I come now to the content of the Amendments which the Government and I find unacceptable. The suggestion which the Amendments make, that a Statute might deem something to be contrary to public policy is, as far as I can recall, an entirely new device. The effect originally intended in the Amendment as first put down by the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, was, as I understand it, that a rule or agreement of a union which offended the charter should be void or possibly illegal. That limited purpose has now been greatly extended by widening the Amendment to cover acts or conduct which are contrary to the provisions of the charter, thereby incorporating an earlier Amendment.
The purpose of this exercise (if that is not too respectful a name to give it) is of course to bring the courts in. In the face of this provision becoming part of our law—that every infringement of the charter is to be treated as contrary to public policy—the intention, presumably, is that the complainant can then go to the court and seek an injunction or a declaration in order to restrain that about which complaint is made. The unusual feature of this proposal is that the courts themselves would have no discretion to determine what was contrary to public policy. That decision would be taken away from them, whereas normally, of course, it falls to the courts to consider where public policy is a relevant consideration. Once a court or a tribunal had found, on the strength of this Amendment if it became law, as a finding of fact that a rule or an agreement conflicted with the charter, the Statute would itself determine the result in law; namely, that public policy must be taken to be infringed, with the inevitable consequences that it must be

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deemed by the court to be invalid, because the courts will not enforce that which is contrary to public policy, and the whole paraphernalia of injunctions and declarations would again flow in.
In my submission, the concept is not only unusual but fraught with difficulty and obscurity, and one is bound to ask where it would lead in practice. I would remind your Lordships that the contents of the charter as outlined in the Bill will cover a wide range of matters relating to the freedom of the Press. No doubt there will be provisions which will give precise guidance which can be applied to particular situations, but other provisions may well be couched in terms quite unsuitable for use in the way this Amendment proposes. I must tell the House that I simply do not know what limits could be foreseen to the possible scope of this Amendment, or its consequences in practice. If rules and agreements, which is what the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, was originally thinking of, were to have added to them acts or conduct, the difficulties could be compounded. Noble Lords with experience of industrial relations will no doubt be able to imagine for themselves the kind of situation in which to declare invalid a trade union rule or a contract of employment, perhaps embodying a collective agreement, would have serious consequences. There must be a real risk that by its potential disruption of industrial relations this Amendment could bring in again, but this time by the back door, the difficulties which we have already experienced from introducing legal sanctions and which this Government are determined to avoid.
My Lords, there is also a second leg to Amendment No. 16B which ensures that nothing in the charter should be taken to restrict or abridge any right existing by Statute or Common Law. It is not of course the Government's intention that the charter should restrict such rights, but it is unnecessary to say this in the Statute and I cannot commend even that part of the Amendment to your Lordships. If there is any suggestion of abrogating the Common Law, that can be done only by a specific provision in a Statute. Then, as to Amendment No. 16A, in my submission it is too simple a view of the situation to
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regard Amendment No. 16A as simply a paving Amendment for Amendment No. 16B. What it seems to do is to make it abundantly clear that the charter can, in the circumstances which are defined in paragraphs (c) and (d) of Amendment No. 16B, make a person liable to proceedings. For the reasons I have given—and I do not propose to add to the long time we have spent on this very important debate—I submit that the Amendments proposed should be rejected by your Lordships.
Lord GOODMAN: My Lords, I shall reply very briefly. The noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor really defeated his own argument when he said that the vice of my Amendment was that it might produce industrial disruption and upheaval to an extent which would make it impossible for the law to be enforced. What he is in effect saying is that if that situation arises which he has promised to rectify by legislation he will not rectify it by legislation for the very good and valid reason that he will recognise that the legislation will not be enforceable. Hence, we have the most profound doubts about the assurance he gave, not as to his good faith or integrity, but as to the possibility of an assurance that this will be put right in later legislation if it goes wrong. His very argument defeats that. If he were able to say that there was something wrong with my Amendment in legal terms because it does not operate in the right way, that is one thing: but what, in effect, he is saying is, "Look at what an up heaval might be precipitated if it is sought to enforce this charter".
It must also be remembered that the charter prescribes what is to be done. There is no suggestion that public policy would enlarge that in the slightest degree. Everything that is in the charter is something which is now being promised by the unions, by the employees, by the employers—by everyone concerned—as things that they will or will not do. Hence, that this should be enforceable is not only a matter of logic; it is a matter of decency and a matter of good faith, and the suggestion that to enforce it is something which nobody can achieve is really to say that the rule of law has departed, and we must accept the fact that in many areas it is impossible to

965
impose upon large elements of society the discipline which arises from legislation. If it may be so, let us say so; but, in that event, why are we apprehensive about the dissolution of the House of Lords? What is the possible point of maintaining an institution which legislates to no purpose? What is the possible point of maintaining an institution which legislates for Statutes which cannot be enforced? I do not believe that we have attained any such position. I do not believe that if decent, respectable, self-this country or of the mass of trade unionists in this country. I think the phenomenon of the Industrial Relations Act is something quite distinct, and I do not intend to try to enter into the complicated history of that matter. But I do believe that if decent, respectable self-evidently just legislation is enacted by the Legislature, by both Houses, it will be enforced by the people of this country. If I did not believe that, we would all be wise to be packing our bags.
My Lords, there were a number of other speeches. The noble Baroness, Lady Gaitskell, made a speech which I found very encouraging. May I explain to her why I have adopted the apparently inconsistent course of supporting the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham —support to whom has given apoplexy to the noble Lord, Lord Wigg—and at the same time supporting a measure which is at variance with it? It is quite simple. I believe that my Amendment is a moderate Amendment and that with verbal adjustments and legal discussions it ought to be acceptable to the Government. I still maintain the hope that this may be the case. I shall be immensely conciliatory, whatever other views may be expressed, in adjusting the wording, changing the emphasis, producing something which nevertheless achieves what is wanted while at the same time giving the minimum of affront.
But I am supporting the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham, for the reason that if the Government intransigently refuse to accept anything, then it is reasonable that both should be on the list so that they may make a choice. But I have made it clear that if these Amendments are passed and they go to the other place, and if it is con-
966
templated. that my Amendment is possible but they will not accept the Amendment moved by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham, I shall abandon him without the slightest compunction. It will be one of the greatest betrayals in the history of this House. I am concerned to have something that achieves the result I think necessary. The most important result that will emerge is a declaration from both Houses that the rule of law still obtains and that it is no longer an indecency to contemplate bringing an action to vindicate your rights.
There is nothing else I need say except to address one remark to the noble Lord Lord George-Brown, who said that I could claim some special status of superciliatory and superior character for the writer and artist. I do not think that the artist, writer, painter or any creative person is a whit better than the tailor or metal beater or others engaged in industrial activities. I never said so. I said that industrial disciplines cannot apply to him; because each writer writes something different. There you have a situation which is totally at variance with the ordinary industrial routine. Whether he writes well or badly, grandly or pornographically, he is writing something different; and industrial disciplines cannot apply to that effect. The noble Lord, Lord George-Brown, has forgotten that I specially disclaimed any superior status for the writer. That I may believe that he has a superior status is a matter between me and my personal deliberations. That I claim that for him in the Legislature would be something that the writer would repudiate and disclaim.
My Lords, having said that, may I say that it is a matter of great regret that the Government have not been able to accept this very mild Amendment. It is, therefore, my hope, even at this late stage—and I do not think that we are anywhere near the constitutional crisis—there may be second thoughts about what the real issues are, and what the implications will be if it is ultimately rejected.
The LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, the original Question was that Amendment No. 16 be agreed to; since when Amendments Nos. 16E, 16A, 16B

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and 16F have been moved by the noble Lord, Lord Goodman. The Question therefore I now put is that Amendments 16E, 16A, 16B and 16F be agreed to en bloc.
7.41 p.m.
On Question, Whether the said Amendments (Nos. 16E, 16A, 16B and 16F) shall be agreed to?
Their Lordships divided: Contents, 138; Not-Contents, 58.

CONTENTS

Aberdare, L.

Falkland, V.

O'Hagan, L.

Airedale, L.

Ferrers, E.

Onslow, E.

Allerton, L.

Feversham, L.

Orr-Ewing, L.

Amherst of Hackney, L.

Fraser of Kilmorack, L.

Pender, L.

Amory, V.

Gainford, L.

Penrhyn, L.

Arran, E.

Gaitskell, B.

Perth, E.

Atholl, D.

Garner, L.

Platt, L.

Balerno, L.

George-Brown, L.

Rankeillour, L.

Balfour, E.

Gibson, L. [Teller.]

Rathcreedan, L.

Banks, L.

Goodman, L.

Reading, M.

Barrington, V.

Gore-Booth, L.

Redesdale, L.

Beaumont of Whitley, L.

Gowrie, E.

Reigate, L.

Belstead, L.

Granville of Eye, L.

Robbins, L.

Berkeley, B.

Greenway, L.

Robertson of Oakridge, L.

Bledisloe, V.

Gridley, L.

Robson of Kiddington, B.

Boothby, L.

Hankey, L.

Rochester, Bp.

Brougham and Vaux, L.

Harmar-Nicholls, L.

Rothermere, V.

Byers, L.

Harvey of Tasburgh, L.

Ruthven of Freeland, Ly.

Caldecote, V.

Henley, L.

St. Aldwyn, E.

Campbell of Croy, L.

Hood, V.

St. Davids, V.

Camrose, V.

Hunt of Fawley, L.

St. Helens, L.

Carrington, L.

Hylton, L.

Saint Oswald, L.

Cathcart, E.

Hylton-Foster, B.

Sandford, L.

Chelwood, L.

Iliffe, L.

Sandys, L.

Clwyd, L.

Inchyra, L.

Savile, L.

Cole, L.

Inglewood, L.

Sempill, Ly.

Colville of Culross, V.

Kemsley, V.

Sharples, B.

Cork and Orrery, E.

Kinnaird, L.

Snow, L.

Cottesloe, L.

Kissin, L.

Somers, L.

Craigavon, V.

Lauderdale, E.

Stamp, L.

Crawshaw, L.

Lindsey and Abingdon, E.

Strathclyde, L.

Cross, V.

Lloyd of Hampstead, L.

Strathcona and Mount Royal, L.

Daventry, V.

Lloyd of Kilgerran, L.

Sudeley, L.

de Clifford, L.

Long, V.

Swaythling, L.

Denham, L.

Lucas of Chilworth, L.

Tanlaw, L.

Drogheda, E. [Teller.]

Lyell, L.

Tenby, V.

Drumalbyn, L.

Macpherson of Drumochter, L.

Thorneycroft, L.

Dundee, E.

Malmesbury, E.

Tweedsmuir, L.

Eccles, V.

Mansfield, E.

Vickers, B.

Effingham, E.

Merrivale, L.

Vivian, L.

Ellenborough L.

Mersey, V.

Ward of North Tyneside, B.

Elles, B.

Monck, V.

Ward of Witley, V.

Elliot of Harwood, B.

Monk Bretton, L.

Wigoder, L.

Elton, L.

Mowbray and Stourton, L.

Windlesham, L.

Emmet of Amberley, B.

Netherthorpe, L.

Wolverton, L.

Exeter, M.

Northchurch, B.

Young, B.

NOT-CONTENTS

Ardwick, L.

Delacourt-Smith of Alteryn, B.

Kirkhill, L.

Bacon, B.

Donaldson of Kingsbridge, L.

Leatherland, L.

Bernstein, L.

Douglass of Cleveland, L.

Lee of Newton, L.

Birk, B.

Elwyn-Jones, L. (L. Chancellor.)

Llewelyn-Davies, L.

Blyton, L.

Fisher of Camden, L.

Llewelyn-Davies of Hastoe, B.

Brockway, L.

Fisher of Rednal, B.

Lovell-Davis, L. [Teller.]

Brown, L.

Gardiner, L.

Lyons of Brighton, L.

Bruce of Donington, L.

Goronwy-Roberts, L.

Maelor, L.

Burton of Coventry, B.

Greene of Harrow Weald, L.

Maybray-King, L.

Champion, L.

Greenwood of Rossendale, L.

Melchett, L.

Collison, L.

Hale, L.

Milner of Leeds, L.

Cooper of Stockton Heath, L.

Harris of Greenwich, L.

Morris of Kenwood, L.

Crook, L.

Houghton of Sowerby, L.

Paget of Northampton, L.

Crowther-Hunt, L.

Jacques, L. [Teller.]

Pannell, L.

Cudlipp, L.

Janner, L.

Peddie, L.

Phillips, B.

Stedman, B.

Wallace of Coslany, L.

Popplewell, L.

Stewart of Alvechurch, B.

Wigg, L.

Sainsbury, L.

Strabolgi, L.

Winterbottom, L.

Shepherd, L. (L. Privy Seal.)

Taylor of Mansfield, L.

Wynne-Jones, L.

Slater, L.

On Question, Motion agreed to.

Resolved in the affirmative, and Amendments agreed to accordingly.
7.51 p.m.
The LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, the Question is, That the House doth agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 16, as amended, to the Lords Amendment No. 10.

CINEMATOGRAPH FILMS BILL
7.52 p.m.
Lord WINTERBOTTOM: My Lords, may I descend from the sublime to the mundane and commend this Bill to the House. It is short, and it has the support of all sides of the industry. Its aim is to divert a very small part of the British Film Fund to the National Film Finance Corporation where it will be used for financial assistance at the pre-production stage of film production, including script-writing.
I think I should first explain the circumstances which have led to this Bill being brought before the House. For years past the cinema and film production industry in this country have been declining. There are now just over 1,600 cinemas in Great Britain compared with nearly 2,000 ten years ago, and nearly 5,000 at their peak in the late 1930s. The number of admissions has fallen from 385 million in 1964 to 138.5 million in 1974. We must accept that many people wish to sit at home and watch television, and we cannot hope to put the clock back to the 1950s. Nevertheless, while the huge attendances of the immediate post-war years are unlikely to return, there is still a large audience for good films in cinemas. The number of admissions has recently gone up by nearly 4 million, from 134·2 million in 1973 to the 138.5 million in 1974 which I mentioned earlier. Cinema takings in 1974, including VAT, totalled £69·8 million and are up by about £11 million on the previous year. I hope it will be possible to continue this upward trend and maintain the cinema as a means of family
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entertainment. I should however add a further note of warning. These increased takings are due far more to inflation than to increased business; and credit is due to the many cinematograph exhibitors who throughout this economically difficult period have remained in business despite their many problems, which cannot always be met simply by increasing seat prices.
The effect of the growth of multi-screen cinema complexes on the size of the British Film Fund was mentioned in the brief debate we had last week on the draft regulation which raised the exemption limit for small cinemas to £700. This problem was first raised in the Cinematograph Films Council in October 1974. This was prior to the receipt of a joint proposal from the Cinematograph Exhibitors' Association and the Association of Independent Cinemas for an increase in the limit of weekly cinema takings at or below which a cinemais exempted from payment of levy. In considering the proposal the Council were thus able to take into account the possible effects of the growth of multi-cinema complexes on the British Film Fund.
The Cinematograph Films Council made a number of useful and constructive proposals in their Annual Report for 1973–74 which were intended to remedy the present situation. The particular proposal which led to the Bill has the unanimous support of all members. It is also supported by the Film Production Association of Great Britain, the Writers' Guild of Great Britain, and the Federation of Film Unions—all of whom played a part in devising the scheme. The proposal was put forward because, however attractive a project may appear to its sponsors, it must be effectively worked up before it can attract financial backing. The experienced and well-known film producer may well be able always to raise finance for his films whenever he has a good project to offer. This is not true, however, of the younger and less well-known producers and writers who, if they are not permitted to develop their ideas and abilities because of economic difficulties, will be lost to the industry in

971
years to come, so that there may eventually be no one to succeed today's experienced producers.
It is hoped that this Bill will go some way towards solving this problem and remedying the shortage of good projects. The scheme will enable someone who comes up with a good idea, but who has not sufficient funds himself to develop it to the point where he can attract investment capital for production, to get additional finance to enable him to develop his idea. He would be able to prepare a complete script and plan for the proposed film, and so reach the stage where he could convince potential backers that the project is worth pursuing.
The money for assistance under the proposed scheme will come, as I said, from the British Film Fund. It will thus be the industry's own money, and the Bill will not lay a new burden on the taxpayer. The rate of levy will not be increased, so there will be no additional burden on exhibitors. The money will, in effect, come from the makers of British films as the establishment of the Fund will mean that less money will be available for distribution to film makers. The Bill is necessary because the existing Cinematograph Films Acts prescribe the uses to which levy money may be put, and these statutory uses do not include the kind of financial assistance which we have in mind.
Although the Bill does not itself limit either the amount to be made available or the period during which the scheme will operate, it is my right honourable friend's intention to follow the recommendation of the CFC, and to make the sum of £200,000 available in each of the first two years of the scheme, after which it will be reviewed. That sum will be divided up so as to provide enough money for script-writing and pre-production expenses for about 20 projects in each year. The Bill would permit assistance to be provided in the form of grants; but the present intention is that assistance will be provided in the form of loans, repayable whenever a project actually goes into production. No single project will receive more than £10,000, including the script fee.
Turning to the Bill itself, the first clause authorises the British Film Fund Agency
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to make payments to the National Film Finance Corporation. This is required because the use of the monies in the British Film Fund are confined, under the Cinematograph Films Acts 1957 to 1970, to payments to makers of British films and to payments to three bodies; namely, the British Film Institute, the National Film School and the Children's Film Foundation.
Clause 1 of the Bill will add the NFFC to the bodies which may receive payments. The Bill does not specify how much these payments will be, but follows the precedent whereby the Secretary of State is required to consult the Cinematograph Films Council in every case before approving a payment to these bodies. Hence, the industry will have ample opportunity to make recommendations as to the amount to be used. It is intended that the monies will be administered as a separate fund, unconnected with the other funds held by the NFFC; and Clause 2 of the Bill directs that the NFFC shall apply the payments in accordance with arrangements to be approved by the Secretary of State. I am sure that he will consult the industry fully before giving his approval to the initial arrangements, or to any subsequent amendments which prove necessary as a result of practical experience. Indeed, the Cinematograph Films Council has already been considering them; and I hope that it will be possible to bring them into force very soon after the passage of the Bill.
I think it might also be useful if I describe what are likely to be the main features of these arrangements. They will specify that an Advisory Committee, probably composed of six persons, will be appointed by the Secretary of State to advise the National Film Finance Corporation on the suitability of applications for assistance under the scheme. This Committee will have nothing to do with the other work of the Corporation. I expect that, as in the case of the arrangements themselves, the Secretary of State will consult the appropriate bodies in the industry, including in particular the Writers' Guild of Great Britain, the Film Production Association of Great Britain, and the Federation of Film Unions, before making appointments. I hope that it will be possible to complete these consultation and appoint the members of the

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Committee within a month or two of the Royal Assent to the Bill. The arrangements will preclude a member of the Advisory Committee from voting, forming part of the quorum, or taking part in the discussion on any application in which he, or any company with which he is associated by way of business, has an interest.
Responsibility for making loans will rest with the NFFC, but the NFFC will normally follow the recommendations of the Advisory Committee in selecting applicants and in determining the amounts to be loaned, subject of course to the terms of the arrangements. Under the arrangements, the Advisory Committee will, in recommending applicants, be expected to satisfy itself that the application is based on a genuinely thought-out proposal. The Advisory Committee will take account of the previous record of the applicants, who must include a writer and a producer or director in film production matters; but the Committee will not be expected to make any qualitative judgment on the story itself or on the treatment of a particular subject. No interest as such will be charged on loans, but if a project goes into production then the loan will be immediately repayable. In addition, a premium will also become due. This will enable the NFFC to receive a small sum from the expected profits, which will help to cover the losses resulting from loans made for projects which do not succeed in attracting backers and which do not go into production.
The question of the size of the premium is still being considered but, at least initially, it is likely to be 50 per cent. In any event, the amount of the premium will be spelt out in the arrangements, so that applicants will know what their liabilities will be. The arrangements will also require the NFFC to make a formal agreement with each successful applicant, and this will spell out the exact conditions of the loan.
Subsection (2) of Clause 2 is necessary because, in the course of its normal lending business, the NFFC is restricted as to the period of a loan and as to the interest which must be charged. Financial assistance under this new scheme will take a different form and these restrictions would be inappropriate. Subsection (3) of Clause 2 will confine the scheme to projects intended to result in
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the production of films primarily for exhibition in cinemas. Clause 3 includes the normal statement on citation. Subsection (2) follows the precedent of other Films Acts which generally do not extend to Northern Ireland; but this subsection would not debar a citizen of Northern Ireland from eligibility to receive financial assistance under the scheme.
I appreciate that £200,000 in each of the next two years are small sums of money in relation to the problems facing the industry and to the very considerable sums which are normally needed to finance a feature film. But we must bear in mind the difference between, on the one hand, the money needed for the development of a script and of the preliminaries necessary to demonstrate that the idea has merit—this is the pump-priming part of the operation—and, on the other hand, the much larger sums needed to convert the project into a fully-developed production. This Bill is thus an interim measure, to provide some immediate help to the industry until the more far-reaching recommendations, which I hope will emerge from the Working Party set up by the Prime Minister, can be received and studied. It has the support of all branches of the industry, and I confidently hope that the House will accept it. My Lords, I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Lord Winterbottom.)
8.5 p.m.
Lord ELTON: My Lords, we must thank the noble Lord opposite for having introduced with such admirable succinctness the supporting programme after the main feature is over and also for having turned a favourable eye on the screen which he has unveiled. The cinema at the moment is struggling with increasing signs of success against the small screen, and in so doing it has to use material which is either outstandingly good or outstandingly controversial. In between, there must be a great deal of material which goes to waste, which is the work of potential writers and producers of great ability. If we now have a fund which will enable the script writers in particular to survive the arid years from inspiration to general release, then we are to congratulate them on having beaten the authors of printed works, who still await the introduction of the Public Lending

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Right Bill promised to them before the last General Election. We now see the growth of a seed which was sown in the "reign" of my noble friend Lord Eccles, and we are glad to see that there is a recognition that the garret and genius syndrome rests upon the fallacious assumption that one is a genius because one lives in a garret when in fact one lives in a garret because one is a genius. One hopes that this small Bill will release funds to enable men of potential worth and ability in this field to be freed for productive work.
The noble Lord mentioned the reference he made in this Chamber last week to the film complex, when I suggested that it would be appropriate to examine the exemption limit in connection with a film complex where effectively a triple exemption was achieved for the same number of seats in the same ownership as there had been prior to the conversion of the building. Perhaps it would be appropriate to say that of course any such review, as I think the noble Lord implied, should be coupled with a review of what in the trade is called, I believe, "the equity factor"—that is, the lower limit which is the proportion of the receipt per ticket which is exempted from the levy.
The noble Lord, Lord Winter bottom, outlined matters which we may look at more closely in Committee, and in particular the reason (which had puzzled me) for the exemption included in Clause 2(2) from Section 2 of the Cinematograph Film Productions (Special Loans) Act 1949. This leads me on to ground to which we may return in Committee, because it appeared to me from what he said that the first beneficiaries from this new enactment would benefit by means of grant, whereas subsequent beneficiaries would benefit by means of loan. I may have misheard him, but it sounded as though he was saying that this was a transitional period, and it is something that we may want to look at later.
I do not wish to detain your Lordships after such a long and exciting evening, and it only remains for me to say that we were glad to hear the noble Lord say that although it will not be within the purview of the Advisory Committee of the NFFC to control the treatment of any subject which is accepted for grant or loan, it may be possible for them to bear
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in mind his reference to the need for an increase is family entertainment when this subject is being looked at. This is in no way to advocate straight control or censorship of the screen, but I am sure nobody would wish public funds to be expended in a way which might subsequently give public offence. That said, we welcome anything which may bring encouragement to men and women of talent who are able to enrich the nation's life in preserving what is not only a means of communication, but also a valuable art form.
8.10 p.m.
Lord BEAUMONT of WHITLEY: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Winterbottom, for introducing and explaining this Bill. It is a Bill, which as he says, is welcomed on all sides; and I, for one, should like to welcome it, not just personally but also on behalf of the Liberal Party and in my capacity as President of the British Federation of Film Societies. As all noble Lords in this House already know, the Federation is at present celebrating its 50th anniversary —or, if your Lordships do not know, we have not been doing our publicity well enough. It is very important that this recommendation of the Cinematograph Films Council should have been put forward in a Bill as quickly as this without waiting for the other recommendations to be considered, as no doubt they will be by the Films Working Party.
This is an extremely necessary Bill. It is a great pity that there is no new money. Sooner or later, if the film industry is to prosper, new money must be put in. It is a pity that the amount in question is so ludicrously small. But we all know the problems which the Government have to face, and we all have sympathy with their efforts to try to be economical at these moments. All I can say is that we hope that in the future something much more far-reaching may be done. It is very important that money should be available to stimulate and help those people who have not yet achieved reputations, to enable them to put forward ideas for films, and to allow these films to reach the production stage.
I would make a point which was not made in another place but which is extremely important; that is, about the necessity to cultivate the people who are working straight from the idea through

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the film. As we all know, a great many good films have been made from books. But the cinema is an art in itself; it is an art form on its own, and the more we can encourage those people who write scripts directly for the cinema from the original idea, the better it will be for the cinema as a whole. This Bill will certainly do this.
There is one serious point I wish to make, which I hope the noble Lord the Minister will take on board, and perhaps we may come back to it at another stage. I have not given him notice of it tonight, for which I apologise, and I do not expect an answer tonight. But we are told that the grants will become repayable with a premium when the film goes into production. It is absolutely right that the grant should be repayable. It is absolutely right that there should be a premium, and as hefty a one as 50 per cent. is not at all unfair, judging by the fact that there will obviously be a certain number of losses as well. But I do not think that the moment for both those things should be when the film goes into production. The moment for repayment should be when the film goes into production, but the moment for paying back the premium should be when the film begins to make a profit, and it should be done out of profits. Otherwise, we are deterring the very thing we want to encourage; we are deterring people from taking up the young, experimental film makers, from taking a risk in going into production, on something which may very well not make money. So far as I can see, this is a point which has not been seriously considered, and I ask the Government and the Department to take it on board, to look at it again and to come back to us with it.
All sorts of other things need to be done in this area. We need to ensure that films of this kind, made in this way, are in fact distributed. We all know that the structure of distribution of the industry in this country is such that it does not always happen. Such good films as, "England Made Me", both the recent versions of "A Doll's House" and "Zardos", have had exhibitions in London but very few outside. "Kes", which eventually made a great deal of money for its makers, got general distribution only because the critics shouted about it so much—and more power to them!
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We must find some way of ensuring that good films receive a wider distribution. That is something which the Working Party will no doubt look at.
Another matter which they must look at again is the whole busines of the Eady levy, and the National Film Finance Corporation, and we look forward to that. In the meantime, we very much welcome this Bill. As the noble Lord, Lord Elton, suggested, there are one or two points we may want to take up at a later stage. Among others I should like to take up is the point of films being either outstandingly good or outstandingly controversial. I do not know whether that was a slip of the tongue, or whether the noble Lord was retreating into deep conservatism in thinking that a film which was outstandingly controversial could not be outstandingly good. It is hardly a point which arises—
Lord ELTON: My Lords, the inference from my remarks should be entirely the view of the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont. Whether a controversial film is good or bad is open to question. Some are very good and some are very bad. I do not think that being controversial is necessarily bad; it is not necessarily good, either.
Lord BEAUMONT of WHITLEY: No, my Lords, but I am glad to have that elucidation. Meanwhile, from these Benches I should certainly like to welcome this Bill.
8.16 p.m.
Lord LLOYD of HAMPSTEAD: My Lords, I too should like to thank my noble friend Lord Winterbottom for introducing this Bill and for the admirable way in which he did so. Naturally, I strongly approve the purposes of this Bill. I say, "naturally" because, being the chairman of the British Film Institute as well as of the National Film School, it is hardly surprising that I have a particular interest in any measures which are calculated to encourage the activities of young, creative film-makers. The only reason why I desired to intervene briefly in this debate was simply to give expression to a certain faint apprehension that I have, an apprehension which I hope will prove to be totally unfounded.

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My apprehension stems from the fact that this further sum of £200,000, which of course in itself for this purpose is a very modest sum, as the noble Lord, Lord Winterbottom, conceded, is nevertheless to come out of Eady money—the Film Fund, the same Fund which is already providing grants for the Production Board of the British Film Institute, for the National Film School and also for the Children's Film Foundation. In these circumstances, one naturally feels some faint apprehension that those who are concerned with and have a say in the giving of these grants may feel that having another grantee included in the list might be a ground for reassessing the grants made to the other beneficiaries.
I was to some extent fortified in my apprehension and to some extent relieved by an exchange which took place in the other place, where Mr. Durant asked for an assurance that the proposal would not in any way penalise the other grantees. Mr. Deakins gave a helpful assurance, so far as it went. At column 438 of Hansard (Commons), in the Second Reading debate in the other place, on 21st October 1975, he said:
"The hon. Member for Reading, North made an important point about whether there would be a penalty imposed in the form of, perhaps, reduced payments out of the Eady money to the Children's Film Foundation, the National Film School and the British Film Institute Production Board. I can assure the hon. Gentleman that that is not the case. The new scheme will in no way prejudice the payments made from the levy to those three institutions and the Cinematograph Films Council will continue to be consulted about all these payments. That is an adequate safeguard for those organisations and for the industry."
As I say, I am relieved to have read of that assurance. It seems to me, however, that there remains a possible lacuna in this situation. One would like to have some kind of assurance that the Cinematograph Films Council has got the message and will accept the view and, in giving its advice in subsequent years, will proceed on the basis that nothing contained in the Bill should be regarded as diminishing the claims of the other beneficiaries.
From this point of view, one has to consider how vulnerable the grantee is in this inflationary situation with which
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we are all faced. Year by year one needs a good deal more to stand in the same position as one held in the previous year. If one receives a grant, it is no good being told, "You are getting the same as you had before". Indeed, this may mean a substantial cut in one's grant. Also, there is the fact that new developments occur and that from time to time there is a need for an increase in the grant. Therefore, one hopes that this matter will be left not simply to future deliberations but that it will be clearly understood and made manifest that the granting of the sum envisaged under this Bill to the new beneficiary—which I entirely applaud and think is a valuable proposal—must not be regarded as in any way affecting what would be granted to the other beneficiaries had this new provision not been made.
I hope very earnestly that the noble Lord, Lord Winterbottom, will be able to give an assurance that the matter will be looked at from that point of view and not regarded just as a pure matter of discretion, so that in future these claims are regarded as competing one with the other. The fact of the matter is that there is no competition between any of these claimants. All of them complement one another; in their different ways they are all serving the same end. Therefore, it is vital that the grants they receive should not be diminished simply because they are coming out of the same pool. Any kind of diminution in the flow of grant in relation to any of these beneficiaries (although I speak particularly in relation to the Film School and the Production Board) would deal a very severe blow to those avenues through which fresh creative talent can be injected into the industry. It would be a sad day indeed if this beneficial Bill, which has nothing but the advantage of the industry at heart, should eventually turn out to have caused more harm than good. I am sure that that is remote from the intention of the Government, but may I urge upon them that they should give very careful consideration to this matter and appropriate advice to all those who will be concerned with the administration of this Fund.
8.24 p.m.
Lord WINTERBOTTOM: My Lords, what is important about this Bill is that although we are in the middle of

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lean years we can, with some confidence, hope for better years to come. The one thing that lean years do not stop is the work of young creative artists who are moving in the field of creativity in the film industry. They are perhaps impelled by the lean years to develop their talents. This House has recognised that it is good that the fund which is being created should be available while a wider plan for the film industry as a whole is being worked out.
May I touch on one or two points. We can go into the more important ones in greater depth at the Committee stage of the Bill next Friday. I have great sympathy with the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Elton. In his final words he stressed "family entertainment". Today there is a tendency for many films to stress the sensational, in the wider sense of the word "sensational". Anybody who can make sex boring should immediately be abolished from this planet! For this reason we ought to consider the point made by the noble Lord. The noble Lord, Lord Elton, also raised the question of grant versus loan. We have a hybrid here. It is a question of heads I win both times". If the young script-writer with his sponsor is accepted, he obtains his grant. He has to repay it only if the script goes into production.
I have noted the point that was made by the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont of Whitley, that it would be good to repay the grant in two tranches—the money he had when the film went into production and the premium when it becomes profitable. That seems to me to be sensible and equitable, and I shall bring it to the notice of my right honourable friend. Very rightly, the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd of Hampstead, is defending his own two areas of responsibility. However, may I draw to his attention the Order which we passed on Wednesday, 29th October, 1975, which is called the Cinematograph Films (Collection of Levy) (Amendment No. 4) Regulations 1975—a very splendid title.
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He is rightly worried about the impact of inflation. The value of money now is not what it was, nor what it is likely to be. It is recognised in this Order that the upper limit of £5 million was specified in 1957, and that at present price levels its value then is the same as £13 million now, almost exclusively because of inflation. While the limit that we are proposing need not approach this figure, it is necessary to raise it to a more realistic level and £7 million was the figure that we chose. Therefore, I do not think that competition between the various beneficiaries of the Fund need worry my noble friend. We are increasing the Fund and, if it were necessary, could increase it further by Order. I look forward to going into the various points on this Bill later in the week. May I thank the House for its general welcome to our proposals.
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.