Lords Sitting of 14 April 1976

Preamble
The House met at eleven of the clock: The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Bradford.

MATERNITY SERVICES
Baroness SUMMERSKILL: 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 why the maternity services have been selected for financial cuts, in view of the perinatal mortality figures which are higher than those of our European neighbours.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, reduced expenditure on the maternity services is planned to take account of the under-utilisation of existing beds brought about by the fall in the birthrate. At the same time, we are determined to improve the standard of care provided. Closures will be concentrated on inefficient and ill-equipped units, so allowing a greater proportion of births to take place in district general hospitals where the full range of modern obstetric and paediatric facilities is available, and this should itself contribute to reducing the perinatal mortality figures.
Baroness SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that Answer. Is it not a fact that perinatal mortality is linked with the incidence of children born with a physical or mental abnormality? Therefore, is it not a short-sighted policy to cut down the obstetrical services even in a small degree, and thereby increase this condition?
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, my noble friend will know better than I the recommendations of the Peel Report, which encouraged the use of hospitals for the very reason which I should have thought my noble friend had in mind, that great care can be exercised in the obstetric field at the time of confine-
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ment. It is with this in view that I gave the Government's reply a moment or two ago.
Lord WALLACE of COSLANY: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that closure of many of these hospitals will mean that a pregnant mother has to travel a considerable distance under great difficulty for pre-natal treatment, which will not be to the advantage of the mother or the unborn child? How would my noble friend like to be a pregnant mother in such circumstances?
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, in reply to my noble friend's last point, I really do not know. But in reply to his first point, we shall never have a system that provides complete ante-natal care either in the home or on a person's doorstep. It is absolutely essential that we provide the best possible facilities that we think can be provided in district general hospitals where there is expert staff, modern equipment and everything that is required. Of necessity, some people—whether for ante-natal purposes, confinement or ordinary illness—will have to travel a certain distance. That cannot be avoided.
The Earl of CRANBROOK: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware of the great difficulty people in rural districts experience in obtaining ante-natal care of the kind to which he has referred? Is he also aware that some years ago a Committee reported that the smaller local hospitals in rural areas were probably perfectly adequate for dealing with second and third confinements, and that what was essential was to get first and multiple confinements into the larger hospitals? But the smaller maternity hospitals in smaller towns and rural areas are absolutely essential if we are to give proper ante-natal care and treatment, in cases where it is not likely that complications will arise.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I am aware of the problems in rural areas. For some years I was, in the wilds of East Anglia, a near neighbour of the noble Earl who has just spoken and I know the situation well. These factors have been taken into account. This matter was considered by the Peel Committee and the recommendation was to provide—and I

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do not want to cover the ground again—these facilities in district general hospitals as the best way of meeting this problem.
The Earl of CRANBROOK: My Lords, perhaps the noble Lord will read the Report of the Cranbrook Committee.
Lord SEGAL: My Lords, can my noble friend say how, when these maternity facilities are cut, the services of the redundant personnel will be utilised?
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I cannot answer precisely, but where inefficient and ill-equipped units are closed down the personnel will presumably be used in the district hospitals and in the other facilities provided in the area.
Lord GAINFORD: My Lords, if any clinic or establishment is judged to be inefficient, would it not be easier to improve its efficiency and keep it remaining as a valuable unit?
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: No, my Lords. I have on more than one occasion had to say to your Lordships that the money available within the National Health Service, and the work it has to undertake in the United Kingdom, must be put to the best possible use. Therefore, it is necessary to close these inefficient and ill-equipped units. It is necessary, and will remain necessary, to close certain hospitals. But in the long run we shall be providing a far better, more effective and more efficient service.
Lord PLATT: My Lords, is not this a case where the best is the enemy of the good? Was not the Peel Committee thinking of all the wonderful facilities that can be provided and perhaps forgetting that the onset of labour can be a very sudden emergency and that in those circumstances the idea that the nearest help is 20 miles away is not very comforting to a pregnant woman? Are Her Majesty's Government further aware that in New Zealand where all this is organised they say that 98 per cent. of births now take place in hospital and the other 2 per cent in the ambulance on the way to hospital?
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, the noble Lord will know that the Cardiff study which was reported in the British Medical Journal on 27th March last dis-
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covered that delivery in hospital had become almost universal. I am not going to say that there will not be areas which may give cause for concern for a while, but these will not be overlooked.
Lord CARRINGTON: My Lords, if the clock were working I wonder whether the noble Lord the Leader of the House would think that we had spent long enough on this Question?
Baroness SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, with the approval of my noble friend I wonder whether I may put another question on perinatal mortality—about which, I am sure, he knows nothing. May I ask my noble friend to make more investigations with regard to perinatal mortality? Is he aware that St. Mary's Hospital, which is situated right in the heart of the congested area of Paddington, has applied the methods which I should like to see applied throughout the country, but which, as a result of my noble friend's answer, will not be applied? Is my noble friend aware that, as a result, St. Mary's Hospital have reduced perinatal mortality from 30 per 1,000 to 12 per 1,000, and is he further aware that this is the kind of thing some of us would like to see throughout the country?
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I will take note of what my noble friend has said. We know that many factors are involved, but I understand that there is no simple answer. However, I will look at what my noble friend has said and pass it on to my right honourable friend.

ROAD SPEED LIMITS
11.15 a.m.
Lord DUNLEATH: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government how much longer they intend to continue trying to enforce the general speed limits on previously de-restricted roads.
Baroness STEDMAN: My Lords, the enforcement of speed limits, whether general or local, is a matter for chief officers of police and I am sure they will continue to devote to it whatever resources they can. If the noble Lord has in mind the duration of the fuel-saving limits of 60 and 50 miles per hour, he

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may like to know that the present Temporary Speed Limit Order will expire on 30th November next and that during the autumn the question of extending the limits will be considered by my honourable friend the Minister for Transport, my right honourable and learned friend the Secretary of State for Wales and my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Scotland.
Lord DUNLEATH: My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for her reply. May I ask whether or not she agrees that the general speed limit is an irrational way of trying to save fuel, in view of the fact that I should use more fuel by taking my 4½ litre Bentley up to 50 mph in second gear than I would by cruising a car of small capacity at 80 mph in overdrive? Would the noble Baroness further agree that, being generally unenforceable, these speed limits are generally unenforced and therefore bring the law into disrepute? Would the noble Baroness further agree that—
The LORD PRIVY SEAL (Lord Shepherd): My Lords, I hesitate to intervene, but the noble Lord is reading his supplementary question, which I know is of great importance and interest to him; but he is going on a little too long.
Lord DUNLEATH: My Lords, I beg your Lordships' pardon.
Baroness STEDMAN:My Lords, the fact remains that the Minister of Transport has stated that last autumn about 80 per cent. of the motorists surveyed in the summer of 1975 were observing the fuel saving speed limits. I am sure that the points raised by the noble Lord will be taken into account when my right honourable and honourable friends consider the amendment to the order.
Lord O'NEILL of the MAINE: My Lords, is the noble Baroness aware that in America the speed limit on motorways is 60 miles per hour?
Baroness STEDMAN: Yes, my Lords.
Lord DE CLIFFORD: My Lords, would the noble Baroness agree that unenforceable laws are bad laws and tend to bring the law into disrepute? Would the noble Baroness also agree that an unenforceable law merely starts to bring
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degrees of enforcement into the law, which is bad, and would she further agree that when it is merely considered bad luck if you are caught disobeying a law the time has come to do something about it?
Baroness STEDMAN: My Lords, as I said earlier, the enforcement of the speed limit is a matter for chief officers of police. I am sure that they are devoting their efforts to it and that they will continue to devote whatever efforts and resources are necessary to ensure that the law of the land is abided by.

PARKING IN CENTRAL LONDON
11.18 a.m.
The Earl of KIMBERLEY: 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 on what double yellow lined streets in Central London parking is permissible, and at what times.
Baroness STEDMAN: My Lords, orders imposing waiting restrictions in Central London are made by the Greater London Council who would have the detailed information requested by the noble Earl. I understand that there are well over 100 locations within the central area where waiting restrictions indicated by double yellow lines do not apply at all times.
The Earl of KIMBERLEY: My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for that Answer. Could she please bring some pressure to bear on the Greater London Council to put up signs so that motorists know which are these streets?
Baroness STEDMAN: My Lords, my information is that the signs have been put up. The Greater London Council do not have to obtain the approval of the Department of the Environment for any lessening of the restrictions which they make. However, from the information which is available to us more than 100 locations are available within the central area. Indeed, when the orders for each borough were consolidated it was found that the consolidated orders for Westminster alone ran to 282 pages, and

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the eight schedules listing "when and where" restrictions applied to 274 pages. That information can be obtained from the Greater London Council.
The Earl of KIMBERLEY: My Lords, may I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman, for her very comprehensive answer.

TERRORISTS AND IMMIGRATION CONTROL
11.20 a.m.
Lord JANNER: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they are aware that Mr. Sean Kenny, Sinn Fein Director of International Affairs, has said that "all delegates attending the Conference which is to be held in Dublin and Belfast would be advised to travel incognito to avoid intervention by the immigration authorities"; and what steps are being taken to prevent terrorists from attending the conference.
The MINISTER of STATE, HOME OFFICE (Lord Harris of Greenwich): My Lords, the situation is being watched carefully and my right honourable friend the Home Secretary will be alert to prevent the entry into the United Kingdom of anyone subject to immigration control who there is reason to believe may engage in or encourage acts of violence.
Lord JANNER: My Lords, may I ask my noble friend why the Government are not prepared to stop all people who belong to the P.L.O., which has shown quite clearly the kind of policy it is adopting by its methods of shooting children in the head and murdering Christian Arabs in Lebanon, from being allowed to come to meetings which are being held for the purpose of ascertaining how best to deal with the situation, which is being discussed in this particular gathering in Belfast and in Dublin?
Lord HARRIS of GREENWICH: My Lords, I think if my noble friend studies the reply I have given he will see that the Government intend to do their best to prevent entry into the United
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Kingdom of anyone who there is reason to believe may engage in or encourage acts of violence, and I think that is the answer to his question.
Lord JANNER: But, my Lords, may I please ask again why the Government do not realise that a member of the P.L.O. is a person who has allowed himself to be associated with, if not actually participating in, these horrible brutalities which are taking place, and if such people come to a meeting of the sort contemplated in Belfast and in Dublin they are likely to do their best to introduce those particular methods, which can be utilised against our people in the same way as against Christians in Lebanon and Jews and others in other parts of the world?
Lord HARRIS of GREENWICH: My Lords, with great respect to my noble friend, I think I have answered that question.

JUDICIAL STANDING ORDERS
The LORD CHANCELLOR (Lord Elwyn-Jones): My Lords, I beg to move the amendments to Judicial Standing Orders standing in my name on the Order Paper. These amendments are consequential upon the Third Report from the Offices Committee to which your Lordships' House agreed yesterday. I beg to move.
Moved, That the following amendments be made to the Standing Orders regulating Judicial Business, the amendments to take effect on 27th April next:—
Standing Order VI
Paragraph (1)
In sub-paragraph (a), line 2, leave out ("one") and insert ("two").
In sub-paragraph (b), line 1, leave out ("five hundred") and insert ("one thousand").
In sub-paragraph (b), line 4, leave out ("five hundred") and insert ("one thousand").
In sub-paragraph (c), line 3, leave out ("five hundred") and insert ("one thousand").
In sub-paragraph (c), line 5, leave out ("five hundred") and insert ("one thousand").
Paragraph (2)
Line 15, leave out ("five hundred") and insert ("one thousand").
Standing Order XIV
In the Schedule of Fees
Line 2, leave out ("4") and insert ("10").
Line 3, leave out ("1") and insert ("2").
Line 4, leave out ("4") and insert ("10").
Line 5, leave out ("4") and insert ("10").
Line 6, leave out ("4") and insert ("10").
Line 7, leave out ("2") and insert ("5").
Line 9, leave out ("6") and insert ("12").
Line 10, leave out ("2") and insert ("5").
Line 13, leave out ("26") and insert ("50").
Line 16, leave out ("46") and insert ("100").
Line 17, leave out ("4") and insert ("10").
Line 18, leave out ("4") and insert ("10").
Line 19, leave out ("6") and insert ("12").—(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

NORTHERN IRELAND
11.23 a.m.
Lord BRADWELL Lord BRADWELL rose to ask Her Majesty's Government whether, in view of the present political vacuum in Northern Ireland, which can be filled only with further violence and bloodshed, they will start to consider and discuss the withdrawal of British troops and the ultimate severance of the British connection; and to move for Papers. The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper and in doing so I must thank your Lordships, especially those of you who have come from Northern Ireland for this debate, for attending. Whether I shall feel equally grateful to your Lordships when you have finished with me I am not quite sure, but it is a matter of great importance that there
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should be a good attendance and that this matter should be thoroughly debated so that the public, especially in Northern Ireland, may know that your Lordships' House is fully apprised of the situation.
I shall be as brief as I can, but your Lordships will be aware that, in addition to myself and my noble friend who is to reply for the Government, who I take it will be allowed the customary time, 13 other speakers have put down their names to speak and I am advised by better mathematicians than I am that that suggests a voluntary time-limit of only about eight minutes a head; and I am asked to advise your Lordships that the speaking-time clock is not yet working.
It is particularly poignant that, by the chance of the ballot, we are debating the tragedy of Northern Ireland at this season of the year. As many of your Lordships will know, yesterday was observed by the Churches as a day of prayer for peace in Northern Ireland, yet this morning on the radio we heard the usual, familiar, ghastly tale of tragedies: a shop bombed, two small boys drenched in petrol and set on fire by youths of another faith. To my mind there is something peculiarly horrible about sectarian murders. I do not myself believe that religious differences are the basic cause of the conflict in Northern Ireland but they are certainly one aspect of it, and I fear it will be a long time before the ecumenical movement, as it is called, has made enough headway there to melt the prejudices of the fanatics on either side. We may perhaps recall bitterly the old irony of,
"See how these Christians love one another";
or some of your Lordships may prefer the famous line of Lucretius,
"Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum."
Perhaps at this point I may dispose of one matter that some of your Lordships might have considered raising in this debate; namely, the extraordinary proposal by the distinguished historian, Mr. A. J. P. Taylor, which was reported in The Times on Monday, that all the Protestants in Northern Ireland should be driven out by the Catholic minority. I need hardly say that I regard this fantastic and literally outlandish proposal as being totally unacceptable; but it is only fair to Mr. Taylor to say that when I spoke to him about it he said that his

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remarks had been misquoted or garbled in some way, and indeed he modifies them in a letter in today's Guardian. At least, he does not repeat the most extreme of his proposals. Perhaps we may leave that there.
One much less extreme proposal has been made from time to time—that there should be voluntary and assisted resettlement of the Roman Catholic minority in the Republic or in England. I have tried this proposal on several Irish Catholic friends. One or two of them have said that the idea is worth considering, but most of them come out strongly against it. One of them said, "Why should they move? They regard Northern Ireland as their homeland just as much as it is the Protestants' homeland, so why move them?" In a sense this proposal is a variant of another that is often mooted, that the Border should be redrawn to include some Catholic areas in the Republic. This, again, is a highly contentious proposal. For one thing, many Roman Catholics in Northern Ireland do not want to live in the Republic, with its lower standard of social services and, if my noble friend Lord Longford will forgive me, with its generally retrograde and repressive clerical system.
The main point I want to make is that this highly important issue should not remain what it was called in the Guardian the other day—one of the great undebated issues of the decade, so far as Parliament is concerned. I am aware that some of my right honourable friends in another place are regarding this debate with anxiety. They seem to think that any discussion in Parliament of the subject of the withdrawal of troops may provoke the terrorists to further outrages, in the belief that they are winning. That surely depends on what is said in the debate. There is no noble Lord present who does not regard the activities of the terrorists with utter loathing and detestation.
None the less, nobody believes that the British troops are in Northern Ireland for ever. My Motion does not suggest a precipitate withdrawal. It asks Her Majesty's Government to "start to consider and discuss" what should obviously be a phased withdrawal, not one, as the cliché goes, overnight. Even the Secre-
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tary of State, to whose patience I think we should all pay tribute, has had discussions with the Provisional IRA, admittedly to the fury of some Protestants and the SDLP. Why should the Government be afraid of full-scale debates in Parliament? Although some Questions have been answered in another place, it is quite a long time since there was a full-scale debate there on this subject, and I do not think the Government have wanted it. One consequence of this is that the Provisionals think that Parliament is not interested—that it takes a bomb to wake us up—while they go on recruiting 15-year-old and 16-year-old adolescents for their murderous purposes.
Of course, we must not cherish the illusion that withdrawal will be easy to plan. Some of my friends, not in this House, have approached the problem in too simpliste a way. First, we must define what we mean by "troops". There are three elements to be identified: the garrison which has been there since 1920—4,000 or 5,000 men, I suppose, who could indeed be withdrawn. So could the bulk of the Army which has been there since 1969. But you cannot "withdraw" the Ulster Defence Regiment, indigenous and perhaps 96 per cent. Protestant, which forms about one-third of the British Army there.
It is also our responsibility to create the conditions in which withdrawal becomes generally acceptable. This means tackling even more vigorously than hithero two great evils—unemployment and bad housing—and the creation of a Bill of Rights. The greatest evil of all is fear. The Protestants fear the loss of their economic superiority, although, indeed, they too are savagely hurt by unemployment. The Catholics fear what they have suffered from for so long, not only economic but social inferiority. In this connection, I believe that the Minister of State, Mr. Stanley Orme, has done excellent work during his period in that office. The role of the trade union movement is also of crucial importance. I cannot praise too highly the work of the Northern Ireland Committee of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, and their campaign known as "A Better Life for All".
My Lords, one answer usually given on the subject of withdrawal of troops is that our withdrawal would be followed

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by what is called a "bloodbath". I submit with respect that there are two replies to that hypothetical prophecy. One is that, alas! a great deal of blood has already been shed. In a cathedral yesterday, 1,300 names of the dead were read out. I heard on the BBC radio this morning that 200 names were not read out because they were the names of people suspected of terrorist associations. If I may say so with the utmost respect to the dean involved, I should have thought that they needed prayers even more than their victims. However, that is a sensitive matter upon which I must not further intrude. More than 100 people have been killed already this year.
Another answer to the bloodbath argument is that we are always told that the ordinary people of Northern Ireland are sick and tired of the terror which haunts them daily. If this is so, as I believe it may be, it is unlikely that with our withdrawal they would want to be plunged into a full-scale civil war, which would need the co-operation of the general population. Whatever the people of Northern Ireland may think or do, a large number of the ordinary people in England are fed up with having their sons and brothers killed in a dispute not of their making. The troops will go on doing their duty courageously; so will the bomb disposal people, and the police in Northern Ireland, in the Republic, and in England—and in London particularly, perhaps, where there is the horrible menace of possible Tube bombing and the massacre that that would involve.
My Lords I hope I shall be forgiven for having used rather a full note, but as your Lordships will know, that is one condition of keeping a speech fairly short. I conclude by reading a short passage from a book on Northern Ireland, published only three years ago. The passage reads:
"If, at any time, the Assembly and the Executive should be made unworkable through a deliberate refusal by the majority to play their part, then in my judgment the United Kingdom would be entitled to reconsider her position and her pledges on all matters… Westminster has made a compact, costly and difficult to carry out, and fraught with danger. Britain cannot be expected to adhere to it unless the majority in Northern Ireland fulfil their part of the bargain too. If such a problem arose because politicians made the constitution of Northern Ireland unworkable, I would recommend the Government of the day to call a round-table conference of all parties
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at Westminster and associate with it those in the North who were prepared to co-operate. At a suitable stage the Republic of Ireland would need to be brought into consultation also… So if, by sabotage of the political structure of Northern Ireland, the majority deliberately contracted out, then Britain should feel morally free to reconsider the link between herself and Northern Ireland, the provision of troops to Northern Ireland and the financial subsidy to the Province".
That book is called, A House Divided; the author is James Callaghan, now Prime Minister of Great Britain. The situation hypothetically foreshadowed in that passage now confronts us. All previous policies have failed. There is a vacuum. I believe it is time for Her Majesty's Government to start thinking and talking very seriously about options, and perhaps even fixing a date for withdrawal. I beg to move for Papers.
11.40 a.m.
Lord O'NEILL of the MAINE: My Lords, I will stick to the rule of being short, not only because I always have done, but because I have recently, to use an American expression, undergone major surgery. The wording on the Order Paper is what is known all over Ireland as a "declaration of intent". Might I, at this stage, say that of course the noble Lord is fully entitled to raise this matter in the House; we are a free society, and I fully accept his right to do what he did today, but we also are entitled to comment on it. It is a very incomplete sentence that—a declaration of intent—but what it means is that the British Government should make a declaration of their intention to withdraw from Northern Ireland. This, of course, is the major plank of the IRA programme. In November, before I underwent the surgeon's knife, I travelled to Cork to address a Society of Cork University College, and when the Secretary of the Society saw what I intended to speak about he said, "You will have a very hostile reception". My theme was that a declaration of intent would be a declaration of disaster. I might add, my Lords, that when I sat down I received a standing ovation.
I have often in the past warned the people of Northern Ireland what would happen if we did not adopt British standards. I explained to them that the British connection would be endangered. Why then, my Lords, do I not support this short debate? I have already told you

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what happened at Cork University College. I have not told you of the brave speeches that people like Conor Cruise-O'Brien and Garett FitzGerald have made during the last few months, and the great bravery shown by not only them but leaders of the SDLP who have travelled to America and spoken in Boston and begged the Irish to stop sending dollars to be used to buy guns. That is probably known to all of us.
On Friday in a taxi in Dublin, not mentioning this debate, I said to the taxi-driver, "Would you like to see the British troops withdrawn from Northern Ireland?" His reply, which again could be made only in Ireland and which I understood straight away, was, "Oh, they'd all be slaughtered". What he had in mind, of course, was the small Catholic enclave in the Short Strand and the very much larger Catholic enclave in the Falls Road. That was his immediate reaction. I know that the leaders of the Catholic Church do not want the British troops to be withdrawn. I know that the Dublin Government do not want the British troops to be withdrawn. I think all these things must be borne in mind when we are considering this terribly difficult matter.
Extremists of both kinds would welcome a withdrawal, as they both believe that they would win the ensuing civil war. But this war would not be confined to Ireland. It would spread into Glasgow. Ask a Glasgow policeman whether he enjoys the night after Celtic and Rangers have had a football match. It would not be confined to Ireland. It would spread to Glasgow and Liverpool, and maybe, now that there is an enormous Irish population in London, even to London.
I have often pleaded with your Lordships to show patience during the last six years, while at the same time explaining to my friends how appallingly difficult the situation is in Northern Ireland today. But to quote the Prime Minister of South Africa in another context, the alternative is too ghastly to contemplate. So, though your patience has been sorely tried during the past six or seven years, do remember that by and large, still today we have—perhaps the Home Office would not entirely agree with this—a homogeneous society in Britain. Unfortunately, this is not the
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case in Northern Ireland. So I would plead with your Lordships to show more patience, because the alternative, if I may repeat myself, is too ghastly to contemplate.
11.45 a.m.
Lord HUNT: My Lords, I have to start my speech today with an apology to your Lordships, and in particular to the mover of this Motion, Lord Bradwell, for the fact that I shall not be able to stay throughout the debate because of a previous engagement from which I cannot extract myself. I hasten to assure your Lordships that it is a working lunch and I would not leave this Chamber had it not been necessary. We last discussed the proposition that the troops should be withdrawn from Northern Ireland in the course of a wider debate on, I think, 3rd June 1974, and I for one am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Bradwell, for focussing attention on this subject this morning; the more so because it is now nearly seven years since our soldiers, in August 1969, first came into the position which they have had to hold ever since. What was then deemed to be an exceptional burden and duty, dangerous and distasteful for our troops, has now become the norm. I am sure we should from time to time look at it quite seriously.
That debate, I recollect, took place in the immediate aftermath of the collapse of the power sharing Executive, short-lived but not I think entirely unsuccessful; therefore, we were talking in an atmosphere of deep disillusion. Nothing was more striking—and I am sure those of your Lordships who were here at that time will remember it—than the near unanimous view, expressed by Members of this House with strong conviction that there should be no question of withdrawal at that time, that we must, in the notable words of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham, "Soldier on"; that is, our responsibilities did not diminish as the problems and the difficulties grew, they were not in inverse proportion the one to the other, and we should not evade our responsibilities.
Some of us at that time had the added conviction—and I seemed to sense this in the speech at that time from the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor—that with a fresh initiative impending from the British Government it was, to

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say the least of it, inopportune that the question of withdrawal should even, at that time, be considered. However that may be, today such hopes as we may have then entertained about a successful further initiative have been shattered, and I feel we all share a sense of disappointment, perhaps for some verging on despair that there can be in the foreseeable future any solution.
In regard to the question posed and the proposal made in Lord Bradwell's Motion, I think we have to ask ourselves certain relevant questions, and they seem to me to be these. Is the situation more opportune now to withdraw the troops or even to consider doing so than it was in 1974? Have circumstances since June 1974 invalidated the arguments which then prevailed, in particular the arguments regarding our obligations to the people of all communities in Ulster? Has the Army lost control of the internal security situation? Could the RUC take over now, or in the foreseeable future, so long as the level of terrorism and counter-terrorism continues as it is at present? Finally, is there the slightest indication—and this seems to me to be the most important question of all—that notice of withdrawal, a serious intention to withdraw by a certain date, would have the effect of bringing the parties together rather than drawing up the battle lines and stepping up preparations for civil war? Our answers to these questions may vary in emphasis, in qualification, and of course some of them could give rise to a wider debate than we are engaged in this morning. But, in sum, they surely amount to the clear conviction and conclusion that the proposal to withdraw the Army to barracks is no more opportune, no more realistic, and no more morally right now than it was two years ago, however reluctantly and regretfully we arrive at that conclusion.
We are not talking today about the policy or the tactics for the use of our troops in Northern Ireland. Undoubtedly this is a matter where genuine and honourable differences of opinion could arise. Nor are we discussing the question of which must come first: whether it must be a political accommodation or solution, or the defeat of terrorism, the terrorists and the wreckers. I remember very well in that debate the noble Lord, Lord Moyola, expressing his views on that
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subject. I happen to believe that we should continue, against all the apparent odds, to put the search for a new move towards an eventual political solution as a higher priority than the defeat of terrorism. I happen to believe that the eventual solution, however distant, will be in a voluntary way the reunification of Ireland. But I think these questions are academic because the two actions and initiatives must go hand in hand.
I mention it because I recollect that it was suggested by more than one noble Lord in our earlier debate that the military activity should be stepped up and that there should be something like a military offensive launched to hasten the end of terrorism in Northern Ireland. I can only say that I believe now, as I believed then, that the consequences in innocent suffering and consequent bitterness would push back to an unimaginably long date in the future any peaceful solution. Indeed, so long as we adhere to our concepts of democracy we should not resort to methods which we have rightly condemned in other people, such as happened in Czechoslovakia and Hungary. I am equally sure that we should not do a Congo or an Angola in Northern Ireland.
I believe that, despite what very many people on this side of the Irish Sea are saying—and I have great sympathy with what they are saying; in so many words, "Let us get out and leave the people of Ulster to get on with it", or in cruder language—the sense of British honour, the sense of British justice, runs deep and it runs true. A political plan, or proposal, to withdraw in present circumstances, or without a very definite prospect of an improvement in the situation, with a full-scale civil war—and I deeply believe that would be a possible outcome—would divide the nation as Suez did. I do not think that any British Government would subscribe to such an action. Nor do I believe that any British Government could ignore the effect on world opinion of scuttling from our duties in Ulster.
We must not lose our heads. I think there is no real danger of that. Nor must we lose heart, and I think there is some danger of that. We must not forfeit our obligations. We must not sell out to the IRA, or their extremist and equally nationalistic opponents in the Protestant

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camp. We must keep faith with the very many innocent and peace-loving people of all communities in Northern Ireland, and continue with patience and with firmness—as the soldiers have so magnificently done all along—to soldier on.
Finally in that connection, and although I regret not being here to hear his reply, I should be grateful if, when he comes to reply, the Minister, my noble friend Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge, would let us know three things: first, is the Ulster Defence Regiment, in which I must confess a paternal concern and pride, still able to make an effective contribution? Is recruitment to that regiment satisfactory? Would it be possible and appropriate to raise the establishment of that force? Secondly, about the Royal Ulster Constabulary, has there been any significant change in its internal security duties vis-à-vis the Army since 1974? I recollect that several noble Lords expressed the view—I was one of them—that the RUC should progressively take a more forward stance. Finally, about co-operation across the Border; how good is this in fact and in practice? Is it not possible to envisage joint operations under unified command to deal more effectively with the Border situation and terrorist activities on both sides of the Border? The lack of such operations does, after all, work to the great detriment of both the North and the South, and I should have thought that a unified command might be more effective. I should be most grateful if the Minister would adddress himself to those questions when he comes to reply.
Viscount MASSEREENE and FERRARD: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, may I ask him a question? I could not quite understand his reference to Czechoslovakia and Hungary. The Russians moved into Czechoslovakia and Hungary to crush freedom. But to call for action to be stepped up by the British Army is not to crush freedom in Northern Ireland; it is to preserve freedom in Norhern Ireland and to crush terrorism. I could not understand the noble Lord's reference to Czechoslovakia and Hungary.
Lord HUNT: My Lords, the motivation would be quite different but the effects might be very similar. In order to crush the terrorists in the built-up urban areas
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where they are at present hiding, and intimidating the people of their own communities, if military action was taken on a large scale it would be inevitable that great damage, great destruction, and great loss of life would be caused to many innocent people.
11.58 a.m.
Lord BEAUMONT of WHITLEY: My Lords, many people have thought it unfortunate that the noble Lord, Lord Bradwell, should raise this question today. I do not agree with that. In fact it is a very good thing because I hope that it gives your Lordships an opportunity to reject firmly the implications behind this Motion, as indeed has already been done by the last two speakers. I shall do my best to be brief, and one of the main reasons is that I am looking forward to the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Dunleath. I hope that we can all co-operate in seeing that, since he is unfortunately at the end of our list of speakers before the one winding-up, this representative of the Alliance Party—one of the sanest and most sensible bodies in the whole of Northern Ireland politics at the moment—gets a chance to address your Lordships' House fully.
For some time there have been various suggestions that we should withdraw and that is why it is right that we should discuss them and not pretend that they do not exist; and the suggestion of Mr. A. J. P. Taylor is merely the last and the most logical in a whole series. Lord Bradwell tells us that Mr. Taylor says that he was to a certain extent misrepresented, but his letter in the Guardian, which was referred to, gives no indication of this or any withdrawal of even his more extreme views as they were represented. What we are discussing is, I believe, the stark alternative which Mr. Taylor put. I hesitate to accuse a politician whom I have all my life respected, as I have Lord Bradwell, of naivety, but to say that it is unlikely that there would be a bloodbath or civil war merely because the people in Northern Ireland are sick and tired of it and do not want it, is rather naive. A great many wars happen when the great majority of the people do not want them. In certain situations, there are forces which drive people on to war, even if the great majority do not want it. In my view, we are talking, if we are talking about

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withdrawal, about the very real possibility of a bloodbath.
In some ways there is something extremely attractive about Mr. Taylor's honesty and forthrightness in putting this alternative to us, because it may well be that if there were a bloodbath it would cost fewer lives than continuing to soldier on, because we may have to soldier on for a very long time. But that cannot be done because what we, as a civilised country, are trying to do is to increase and spread civilisation; we cannot go back to the barbaric methods of real-politik, whatever the short and medium-term benefits might seem to be, because ruthlessness of this kind, though it may be beneficial in the medium-term, is disastrous in the long-term. If we betray the people to whom we owe loyalty and protection in Northern Ireland, who are British citizens, we should be letting down the whole standard of civilised behaviour in the free world. It cannot be done. However badly others behave, that is no excuse for us not doing our duty.
It is sometimes very easy for politicians to talk about doing our duty when it is other people who are doing the dying. I suppose that we can, in a way, feel a little relieved in our conscience in that in these days of terrorism none of us is actually out of the firing line, even though our risks are far less than those of our soldiers. We are very fortunate to have a volunteer army, which knows how to do its duty and which does its duty; and we are very proud of that and proud that we can rely on it.
Solutions to the Northern Ireland problem are far from easy. I have on previous occasions put to your Lordships the proposition that it takes one as long to get out of a mess as it took one to get into it, and we have spent a very long time getting into the Northern Irish mess. I think that I see the ultimate solution somewhere within the framework of a united Europe, and this is one of the many reasons why I absolutely deplore the attitude of this country as a whole, and particularly of the Government, to European unity and progress towards that end. Whereas I admire this Government's stand on Northern Ireland, I deplore their stand on Europe, which I think might in the long run contribute to that solution. A solution will in the end be
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found. This is no time for honourable men to indulge in appeasement, cowardice or cold-blooded disregard of our obligations which real-politik might seem to demand. I hope that your Lordships in the remaining time at our disposal will wholeheartedly reject the implications behind the Motion.
12.5 p.m.
The Earl of LONGFORD: My Lords, I am glad that a subject has arisen on which I can for once agree with the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont of Whitley; we have always disagreed on murkier topics. I also agree not only with his general conclusion but with what he said, the tribute he seemed to be paying to the noble Lord, Lord Bradwell, for raising the matter, and raising it, if I may say so, with the skill which we associate with him. I, like the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, believe that in the end a united Ireland is the only possible solution, and that seems to be the implication of the latter part of Lord Bradwell's Motion; but that does not arise at the present time and I think that discussing it more than making this kind of passing reference will retard rather than accelerate the day of its coming, so let us come to the immediate question of the proposed withdrawal of British troops.
Some may fear that the IRA—for whom I have never said any good and will, so far as I can see, never say any good—will prosper under the withdrawal. I would not think that that would be so, and I certainly would not expect them to be in any way in charge of the situation. But what we would be doing of course in practice would be handing over Northern Ireland, and the Catholic minority in particular, to the Protestant majority; and I am bound to ask, I hope not too starkly, whether, in the light of history, past and more recent, the Catholic minority can reasonably be expected to accept that kind of prospect without grave fears.
When we ask whether the Northern Irish Protestants can be trusted to treat the Catholic minority as equal citizens, the question which naturally has to be pursued is: what kind of Northern Ireland Protestants are we talking about? The noble Lord, Lord O'Neill of the Maine, who I am glad to see back because I heard rumours that he had not been

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well, could of course be trusted absolutely. So could the noble Lord, Lord Moyola. But they, unfortunately, have both been overthrown because they were too enlightened. And Mr. Faulkner—perhaps we shall salute him here as Lord Faulkner before we are much older; he would make a very good Member of the House—could no doubt in his latter days be trusted very well, but he has to all intents and purposes been overthrown, too. I do not admire anybody in Northern Ireland more than Mr. Harry Murray, the Leader of the Ulster workers' strike. He became extremely well-disposed towards the Catholics and generally showed himself to be a man of truth and justice, but he was got rid of. Even Mr. Craig, who has shown a great deal of enlightenment lately, has lost much position. I only hope that this fate does not befall the noble Lord, Lord Dunleath, who I am glad to see will be speaking later. We could all trust him if he was in charge of the situation, which is not likely to be the case in the immediate future.
Thus, when we are talking of the Protestant rule which would follow the withdrawal of the British troops, we must ask ourselves who would be in charge. In fact, they would be the very people who have overthrown all these excellent gentlemen, at any rate for the time being. They would be people like Mr. Paisley, or worse, if one can get worse; at any rate, they would, I am afraid, be people of that kidney, and therefore we cannot expect the Catholics to treat this prospect with anything except the gravest misgiving. Therefore, to follow the line of thought of Lord Beaumont, we should be betraying our obligations if we simply cleared out because it had become rather more convenient or because it had become a nuisance for us to stay there. We should not be betraying our obligations to the Catholics only. We cannot tell for certain whether there would be a civil war or bloodbath, or whatever one likes to call it; but if it started up there, as well it might, it would almost certainly spread to Ireland as a whole, throughout the whole island. Although people may say that I am putting purely moral arguments, if we look to the self-interest of this country, it is hardly credible that we could have a civil war raging in Ireland without grave consequences here. So, from all those
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points of view, the proposition so moderately advanced by the noble Lord, Lord Bradwell, must, I believe, be totally rejected.
As regards the future, we are told that power sharing is dead, but, as was once said of the Russian Duma, "Power sharing is dead, long live power sharing!" I was the first in this House and almost the first anywhere—the Northern Ireland Labour Party was actually first—to propose coalition government in Northern Ireland, or, as it has come to be called, power sharing. The idea was ridiculed at the time but, in due course, power sharing was tried with great success. Mr. Faulkner got on extremely well with his Catholic colleagues and the idea that Catholic and Protestant can get on all over the world except in that one small corner was finally refuted. So there is no difficulty about power sharing, once one can persuade the majority of the population—in this case, the Protestant majority—to accept it.
We cannot say that power sharing can be restored tomorrow. We can work towards it and I myself am still an unrepentant believer in the conviction that a devolved Government with representatives of both the communities is the only future that holds out any hope for Northern Ireland. I believe that we shall see it before we are very much older. However, in the meanwhile, there is the struggle with terrorism. There are encouraging features there in spite of the tragedies all round us. I was glad that the noble Lord, Lord Bradwell, mentioned praying together because, after all, this all goes back through history to religious wars. Those wars are long since over but those who took part in them rule us to some extent from their graves. We must proceed along the lines which the noble Lord mentioned but we must also continue to operate on the firmest military lines. There is evidence that the British and Irish Governments are now acting with a shared determination to defeat the evil thing. I do not believe that anyone could now say that the Dublin Government are softer towards the IRA than are the British or Northern Ireland authorities. The opposite could be argued.
Following earlier speakers, I salute with all my heart Mr. Rees and his colleagues, above all the noble Lord, Lord

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Donaldson, who has been tireless in his exertions in Northern Ireland and in all he does to enlighten us here. It is notable today that the majority Parties in Northern Ireland, the Alliance Party—so well represented here by the noble Lord, Lord Dunleath—and the SDLP are all opposed to the withdrawal of British troops. Only the IRA supports the idea, so far as I know. As has been mentioned, Dublin would be horrified if such a thing occurred. Perhaps we can find in those facts which I have just mentioned yet one more richly deserved tribute to the British Army in Northern Ireland.
12.15 p.m.
Lord MOYOLA: My Lords. I must confess to having come over to the debate today in a pretty acrimonious frame of mind. However, I am bound also to say that the noble Lord, Lord Bradwell, put his Motion in such a way that he has to a very large extent disarmed me. On the other hand, I would say that there are undoubtedly dangers—although these things have to be talked about—in talking about this subject and I can only add that, to prevent escalation in Northern Ireland as well as an increase in the number of civilian deaths in this country, I would hope that your Lordships will give a resounding "No" to the Motion.
The Motion speaks of the political vacuum that exists in Northern Ireland. It is with that that I should like to deal. What is wrong and why is it that we cannot get a settlement? If we could get a settlement, the need for large numbers of troops would rapidly disappear. The answer to that question is, I am afraid, a very simple one. It is lack of trust. There is lack of trust as between people in this country and the people of Northern Ireland and, unfortunately, it is reciprocated in that there is lack of confidence, of faith and of trust between the people of Northern Ireland and the British Government. I believe that it arises from two causes. One is in the security field and arises because we over there feel—and it is a true belief—that we are not trusted to do anything to help ourselves. I am sure that this comes from the fact that there is a widely held belief that all Protestants want to shoot all Catholics and all Catholics want to shoot all Protestants. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. How-
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ever, if terror gangs were roaming the Sussex Downs or the Welsh Hills, shooting people in their homes and farmhouses, your Lordships would not expect those people to sit still and do nothing about it.
That is the difficult situation in which we find ourselves. The only relief for people living in the remote areas is the possibility of a military patrol, and even this would cease if the Motion were carried. I simply cannot accept that if such a situation pertained in this country people would be left as defenceless as they feel in Northern Ireland. That is the nub of the problem. We are not able to help ourselves and because we are not able to help ourselves we do not trust a Government which does not allow us the right of self-defence.
There is a second aspect. The Secretary of State was quoted in The Times of last Saturday as saying in reply to some points of Mr. Neave,
"I did not call the cease-fire and, as I have said from the beginning, we respond to whatever the level of violence is."
That is not a policy. It is saying to the people of Northern Ireland, in effect, that we are content to go on forever with the present situation. It allows absolutely no light at the end of the tunnel and no hope of any sort or kind.
There is always great activity after an incident but, beforehand, even when it is quite obvious to some of us who live there that things are building up, there certainly seems to be little or no activity. Again, while there is of course a happy mean and we cannot launch a wholehearted offensive against terrorists in Northern Ireland without dire consequences, I do not believe that that happy mean has yet been reached. That is a further reason for lack of trust and confidence.
Next, there is the political aspect. We all want a reasonable settlement, yet, unfortunately, politics have been driven into the hands of the activists and para-militarists. The ordinary person feels that he can no longer do anything about his own defence, or indeed about anything else. Even local government is now so centralised as to have been virtually removed from him. There is no point in going to a political meeting because he can do nothing at the end of

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it. All he can do is to listen to the activists slanging each other. No normal person in Northern Ireland at present has anything to hold on to and the result is that every time there is an election such people fall back into the old battle lines and the activists are the people who hold sway. That is why there is a vacuum, and the first answer to resolving the problem is to allow the people of Northern Ireland to try to do something for themselves. Let us feel that we can influence events, then the vacuum will start to disappear and I believe that, if the scene were rightly set, a settlement would not necessarily be far away.
I turn now to the question of the removal of troops. I was the person who, in 1969, asked for the troops to come in, so I know the background to the matter only too well. They came in to prevent both sides fighting each other, to prevent a confrontation—if one wishes to call it that—to act as a kind of buffer zone. In passing, it is worth reminding oneself that we then thought that they would be in for a matter of three or four days. But if the troops go away now, a similar situation will arise, but it will be worse than previously, because there has been the growth of paramilitaries on all sides, and those organisations would certainly get on the move. It must be obvious to everyone that if that happened the Republic could not stand idly by; it would feel bound to protect its co-religionists. Then I could see only a real conflagration which, as the noble Lord, Lord O'Neill of the Maine, said, would not be confined to the island of Ireland. I was a Regular soldier in an Irish regiment for 19 years and we drew probably as many recruits from Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham and London as we did from the island of Ireland. Thus we must not forget that there is a very strong Irish population here. If civil war were to start in Ireland, they are not likely to sit idly by in this country, either.
I have tried to show, my Lords, why there is a vacuum, why very little progres is made, and perhaps explain why there is a feeling in this country that we are contributing nothing. I believe that we would get co-operation if the people of Northern Ireland were to be given some sense of purpose. Once they feel
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that they have an influence over what goes on, then in my view that would start to fill the political vacuum and there would be no need for us to discuss a Motion of this kind.
12.22 p.m.
Lord GREY of NAUNTON: My Lords, in any desperate situation there is always a temptation to suppose that there must be some desperate, but quick and effective solution, if only one had the wit to think of it and the courage to put it into force. There is no need for words to make the point that the Northern Ireland situation is desperate. The noble Lord, Lord Bradwell, invites Her Majesty's Government to consider a desperate solution to it. Of course, he does not ask in terms for the withdrawal of British troops or the ultimate severing of the British connection. He merely invites Her Majesty's Government to start to consider and discuss these policies of despair.
But in Irish circumstances, and to Irish minds—as the noble Lord, Lord O'Neill of the Maine, has quite roundly pointed out, and is undoubtedly correct in so saying—acceptance of this invitation by Her Majesty's Government would be taken to be a declaration of intention to withdraw British troops and to sever the connection. I adopt the phrase of the noble Lord, Lord Bradwell, although he did not elaborate it in his speech, and I take it that he means to sever the constitutional connection, because, as has just been vividly illustrated by the noble Lord, Lord Moyola, whatever we did constitutionally, we would not totally sever the connections between Northern Ireland and Great Britain.
The sad truth is that in many desperate human situations there is no quick, dramatic solution; there is no desperate remedy. There is only the need to go on in hope and dogged determination, week after weary week, and month after weary month, until, eventually, one struggles out painfully into some less desperate circumstances. This is what the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, reminded us of; we have to soldier on and we have to stick to it, greatly, though one must admit that the people of Northern Ireland have themselves helped to exhaust patience over here.

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It is the proper custom of your Lordships' House to declare an interest, and perhaps when Irish affairs are discussed it might be well for one not only to declare an interest if one has one, but to declare some credentials to speak at all. Perhaps too much, rather than too little, is said and written about Irish affairs. I know that the good people over there, who, of course, overwhelmingly outnumber the bad, feel that some of us should speak up more often to counteract the bad publicity. But it is fatally easy to speak with the best of intentions but so only as to do harm. My only claim to speak at all to your Lordships in this debate is that I lived for five of the recent troublous years in Northern Ireland, admittedly in a privileged position, but one which afforded some opportunity to learn a little about Ulster and Ulstermen; that I got to know quite a number of people of all kinds; and that I keep the great concern for their wellbeing that I acquired then.
As to the withdrawal of British troops, of course every Government of the United Kingdom must be continuously considering whether troops can be withdrawn from aid to the civil power. Unlike some countries, we do not keep the Armed Forces of the Crown for the primary purpose of keeping any part of the civilian population in subjection. We have the Armed Forces of the Crown to defend us against external enemies, and it is only in an emergency that they must be given the distasteful task of coming to the aid of the civil power. That fact remains, even though unhappily in Northern Ireland, contrary to what has happened in other emergencies around the world, the need to aid the civil power has gone on and wearily on.
But to consider when the time has come to withdraw British troops from aid to the civil power is very different from withdrawing even two elements in the British troops of whom the noble Lord spoke—the garrison and the bulk of the British Army—while leaving the UDR there. To talk about it now, unless it is given the resounding answer "No", as I hope your Lordships will give it, is to encourage the belief that this is indeed what the United Kingdom intends. Of course it would be inherent, in the ending of the "British connection"—
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the words used in the noble Lord's Motion—that all British troops would then disappear from Northern Ireland entirely.
After seven years of death and destruction, and after a toll of human sorrow that does not bear thinking about in any detail, one can well understand that many people in Great Britain say: "Let us get out, let us leave the people over there to settle matters for themselves." It is easy enough to produce arguments to that end which, taken in isolation, sound quite convincing, if only they would provide a remedy for the desperate situation, as some people think. But there are arguments to the contrary. There are arguments of great moral weight; there are arguments of duty; there are arguments of obligation; and, because of the consequences which we are told would flow over here, there are arguments of self-interest. Most of these have been recited publicly many times, and I do not intend to attempt to rehearse them now. When all is said and done, two facts remain. Successive Governments of the United Kingdom have said that Northern Ireland shall not cease to be a part of the United Kingdom unless and until a majority of the people of Northern Ireland wish it so. So long as it remains part of the United Kingdom, there is the obligation to maintain law and order; and so long as there is the obligation to maintain law and order and it is not within the competence of the civil power to do it, so long must the Armed Forces of the Crown remain there.
Her Majesty's Government would need to be satisfied, not on any balance of argument but beyond a peradventure, that if any substantial move towards a withdrawal of British troops were made the obligation to maintain law and order could still be discharged—and no evidence has thus far been adduced that there is any such change, or is likely to be any such early change, as would make that possible, as would make it in the least likely that Her Majesty's Government could be satisfied of their ability to discharge their obligations. Now if the constitutional link were to be severed, which I take to be the meaning of the noble Lord, then of course the constitutional obligation to maintain law and order would also drop away. Whether

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the moral arguments against such a course, or the arguments, indeed, of self-interest, would be diminished is another matter.
But before Her Majesty's Government were to contemplate any unilateral action of that kind, in breach of all their assurances and in the face of all arguments of every kind to the contrary, they would surely have to be convinced that this would be to the overwhelming advantage of the people of Northern Ireland, whether or not they thought it would. To announce now an intention to withdraw troops or to contemplate the ultimate severance of the British connection would bring not only dishonour but the very violence and bloodshed that the noble Lord fears. The sad truth, my Lords, is that, whether or not Britain likes it, there is no immediate, dramatic solution to this desperate problem. The hard and painful road continues before us.
12.33 p.m.
Lord SOPER: My Lords, I find myself the first in this debate to support the proposition inaugurated by my noble friend Lord Bradwell. It may well be that I shall be the last, but I hope not because of what I have to say. I find the support possible—in fact, necessary—on two grounds. The first is in the precise intention and meaning of the Motion itself, which is that we should "consider and discuss" means whereby two entirely desirable ends should be reached; for I take it that your Lordships would be in general agreement that sooner or later, and preferably sooner than later, troops should be withdrawn and that, ultimately, the only final or satisfactory solution to the present troubles of Ireland should be some kind of unity, greater and more permanent than even the best at present advocated. Therefore, if the situation is, as I believe it to be, one that requires close attention in the light of the comparative failures to achieve a result as yet. I do not believe it is sufficient to talk of soldiering on. I think it is necessary that we should be prepared even to contemplate what may appear at first sight to be extravagant options which hitherto have not been entertained.
That constitutes the second reason for which I, very briefly and with temper-
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ance, and I hope with humility, would advocate the pacifist case. It is a reputable theological proposition according to the immortal Dr. Temple; it is one which I have cherished for long enough; and it is one which, with the indulgence of your Lordships, I believe merits a closer attention than that to which it has been subjected or that which it has been given. It is at this moment a witness: it cannot be, in the present circumstances, a programme. I witness to the capacity to provide through non-violent means more adequate methods of dealing with even the most exigent, difficult and violent of human problems. I do that theologically because it is part of the faith I hold. I also do it pragmatically because I believe that it has a relevance to the situation as it can be perceived and understood by ordinary people and, of course, by those who are expert in these affairs.
It is necessary, I think, to remind myself and perhaps your Lordships that there is an element in the make-up of our human affairs which is so often ignored in those who wish to secure ends by means which they believe are available. It is that a process of doing what is wrong progressively erodes the capacity of those who, on other grounds, might later on believe it to be right to do something else. We are in a position in which, as I think it, the prevalence of violence or the prevalence of the instruments of violence has produced a stasis, almost perhaps a paralysis, to which my noble friend refers in his Motion—that vacuum which is an ever-increasing violence and an ever-increasing terror. Let me interpolate my own sense of deep responsibility in talking about the possibilities of that which would lie ahead if at this precise moment the troops were withdrawn. It is quite impossible that they should he so withdrawn, but it is not impossible that we should begin to entertain the kind of arguments which might create a climate in which that would be possible.
That, of course, is the pacifist argument. It is that the wages of sin is death, and that those who take the sword will perish by it. I should have thought that there was almost absolute evidence that this is precisely what is now happening, not because of the malevolence of those who would persist in the exercise of the

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martial arts and warfare, or in the prevention by violent means of warfare. On the one hand, I have no regard at all for those bloodthirsty people who assume that parsons should regard themselves as irrelevant because they have no use for the strong arm of justice. On the other hand, I have no use for those who, in the interests of the Christian faith—and there are some in Northern Ireland—exhibit an attitude of rage and hatred rather than of love and concord. But if this debate is to be worth while, my Lords, then in my judgment and in the judgment of many people who wear the cloth that I wear and who subscribe to the faith that I subscribe to, it would be quite improper entirely to relegate to a world of complete irrelevancy the concept of an alternative method of dealing with the situation which now persists in Northern Ireland.
It is true that guerrilla warfare, with the accessibility of sophisticated weapons which can be carried on your back and have a fire-power greater than a regiment of artillery of past days, has revolutionised the whole capacity to keep the peace; and the situation though not in every point similar, has to be drawn, I think, from Vietnam. It is also true that there are those who are willing and ready, and in many cases prepared, for other methods of solution to these existing problems, economic and social—for how heartily I agree that religious animosities are very often masks to persuade people to think less of the problems of society in economic and social terms! It is nevertheless true that we who believe in the pacifist case are convinced that there is another way which at least should be considered. If it is not opportune now, then surely our business is to examine it with the greater care to see whether or not that which we now believe in and witness to can ultimately be a programme in which we can join.
It is with that in mind I would humbly submit to your Lordships, speaking in the middle of Holy Week and under the shadow of Good Friday, that we who belong to the Christian faith cannot subscribe to a view of life in which those things which most we cherish are the very things which have to be achieved by the arbitrament of violence. It is for that reason that I add my witness, not in argument for the immediate withdrawal of
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troops, and not for immediate severance—because under the present situation these things are impossible—but in order that we may put into the whole argument and centre of our thinking, or the thinking which I believe we ought to entertain, an alternative method whereby we may solve what has hitherto produced an insoluble situation. I do that in the belief that it is infinitely worthwhile in the absence of the possibilities and probabilities of solution by the contemporary methods. I add my own word of congratulation and comfort to those who, in a situation in which they cannot believe what I believe, are nevertheless intent upon the same end which I cherish.
12.41 p.m.
Lord MONSON: My Lords, a few days ago I received through the post a copy of the British Legion's Annual Report and Accounts for 1975. Leafing through it, I came across a report of the results of the Poppy appeal which contained league tables showing the relative generosity towards the appeal of 10 United Kingdom regions and 65 United Kingdom counties and conurbations. It was interesting to see that of the 10 United Kingdom regions, Northern Ireland came second from the top; and of the 65 counties and conurbations, no fewer than three Northern Irish counties came in the top six. One of the counties in question lies West of the Bann which demonstrates—if demonstration were needed—that it is not members of one religious community only who wish to manifest their affinity for Britain and British traditions, and to affirm indirectly their support for the values for which the United Kingdom has fought in two world wars.
A few days later, last Sunday, I opened my copy of the Observer and the first thing I saw was that one out of every 70 Protestants inhabiting South Armagh has been murdered by the Provisional IRA. This is proportionately greater than the number of British civilians killed by a different form of Nazi during World War Two. But one must be fair to the IRA. I remember that about three years ago the IRA blew up the customs post at Newry, which is not so very far as the crow flies from South Armagh, and killed nine people. This was before they really got into their stride. Of the nine killed, seven were Roman Catholics. There have been many other similar instances. So let

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nobody say that the IRA are not truly ecumenical in exterminating those who stand in their way.
This is why I cannot possibly support the Motion of the noble Lord, Lord Brad well, which was moved with undoubted moderation. He rightly pointed out that the British people were sick of having their sons and brothers killed in disputes that are not of their making. But during the past 70 years what disputes have the British Army been involved in that were of Britain's making, whether it be the First World War, the Second World War, Korea or even Malaya? In all those instances, the British Army, whether Regular soldiers or conscripts, have proudly come to the aid of other people. It is worth quashing a certain canard which has been put about to the effect that British soldiers in Northern Ireland have been killed by gunmen from both sides equally. It is worth remembering that just over 99 per cent. of the British troops killed in Northern Ireland have been killed by one or other wing of the IRA.
Leaving aside the extraordinary proposition that United Kingdom troops should be withdrawn from United Kingdom territory, such a course would accentuate the bloodshed, as many noble Lords have pointed out. It would be contrary to the wishes of the overwhelming majority of people in the North, and indeed the South, as the noble Lord, Lord O'Neill of the Maine, indicated. It would demonstrate that a small, fanatical minority anywhere in the world, whether it be the Baader-Meinhof gang, the Japanese Red Army or the Symbionese Liberation Army, or whatever, can ride roughshod over the majority—using the word "majority" in its broadest sense—provided that they are unscrupulous, totally ruthless and kill enough people. This is totally unacceptable, and this is why we cannot support the noble Lord's Motion today.
12.47 p.m.
The Lord Bishop of CHELMSFORD: My Lords, I claim no great political expertise concerning the tragedy of Ireland. But I am emboldened to speak in your Lordships' House as an officer of the British Council of Churches, which keeps close contact with the Irish Council of Churches, and as a member of a small
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delegation which visits Ireland regularly for consultation with senior churchmen of every persuasion over there. It is also perhaps proper that a churchman should speak because of the religious elements which, as has been said, obviously exist over there. I acknowledge the fact that eminent churchmen before me have spoken in this debate, and not least of them the proposer of the Motion, the noble Lord, Lord Bradwell. The Irish Church themselves are acutely aware how inevitably in the past they have been swayed by partisan considerations. But we all know—and this has been said—that this is not basically a religious struggle. There are ethnic, social, cultural and class elements in it as well. Meanwhile the leaders of the Churches do what they can in joint statements condemning the violence. We heard of the day of prayer yesterday which has been widely observed, not just in Ireland.
Infinitely more important than this, we read of the ordinary Christians and other men and women of good will who are hard at work, at great cost to themselves in terms of danger, exercising reconciling work in the localities. All in this House must join in saluting the heroism and self-sacrifice of many men and women who work across the barriers of the divisions in Northern Ireland, establishing centres of reconciliation, in a situation where men are murdered for no better reasons than they are seeking for peace. Here I believe are the real points of growth. The noble Lord, Lord Soper, reminded us—and he has just told me that he has had to leave the House to fight the good fight on Tower Hill—that this is Holy Week, the week when we think of the sacrifice of the Cross and of the creative power which emerged from that. I believe the real points of growth are at these points of reconciliation. It is such people to whom I have spoken who are alarmed by this Motion, although they fully understand the pressures which may have led to it. They feel it to be a rash and premature withdrawal which is being proposed. In fact no one has spoken for that today, least of all the noble Lord, Lord Bradwell.
All Ulster men will welcome the day when the political situation is such that the troops may return. I hear increasing talk when I go there of an independent

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Ulster, after suitable boundary changes have been effected, but little agreement as to its political and economic viability. Many of my Protestant friends over many years have worked for a united Ireland, though that seems now to be further away in spite of, or perhaps because of, the changed attitude of the Eire Government towards terrorists who identify themselves with the goal of union.
The Earl of LONGFORD: My Lords, I thought that last remark extraordinarily cryptic.
The Lord Bishop of CHELMSFORD: My Lords, I think my understanding of it is that it is felt by some of them that the terrorists are losing the sympathy of the Eire Government and therefore this forces them to more extreme measures.
The Earl of LONGFORD: My Lords, I misunderstood the right reverend Prelate.
The Lord Bishop of CHELMSFORD: My Lords, no solution, I think we are agreed, can be reached until a political settlement is made. We all know that the day-to-day concern of the Province at the political level rests with the 12 MPs in another place. Municipal concerns, for example, since the closure of Stormont are especially hit and isolated. This is where people particularly feel the vacuum of which we hear. The district councils can deal only with cleansing, sanitation, parks, cemeteries and recreation which is not the stuff of power politics. There is nothing between the Ulster MPs and district councils. People deprived of participation in decision-making and democratic control of their own affairs, turn naturally to their own sub-organisations; hence the jealousies of the para-military groups who appear, apart from their uncontrolled splinter groups, carefully to control violence in order to maintain an atmosphere of uncertainty and to demonstrate their own power. The apprehensions of the Province are further magnified by evidence which suggests a degree of collusion between the para-military groups themselves across the divide.
We do not know what would happen were the Army to be withdrawn. There is no proposal to withdraw it immediately; but those Irishmen I speak to
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foresee a complete take-over by the paramilitary, with the Marxists and official IRA standing by inscrutably in the wings, and with, they think, the certainty of civil war. Withdrawal is not seriously considered by them as an option which would improve the chances of a constitutional settlement in Ireland, which we all want.
As has been said, there are some signs of hope. The policy of the Government has succeeded in that with 400 detainees released from internment there has been no escalation of violence—nor, alas, a diminution of it. The Royal Ulster Constabulary is taking a more prominent part in the establishment of law and order and normal police work has issued in many arrests. This could be the first stage of an ultimate withdrawal of troops. But the trail is obviously long.
Direct Rule cannot go on indefinitely as it is with the political vacuum propressively demoralising the whole Province. Without doubt, the Government are continuing their strivings, which must, I suppose, be hidden from us until some fruit emerges. Presumably inter-Party talks are going on all the time. One wonders whether the position of the Ulster MPs might be strengthened so that they may in some way more effectively be helped to fill this vacuum until something more permanent emerges. There has been a considerable movement in political, as well as religious and social attitudes in Northern Ireland in a very short period, when we consider the long time it took us to get into this mess. This, I think, should be acknowledged. But it is against the background of deeply entrenched fears—many of them justified—and prejudices on both sides of the community divide. Perhaps we must recognise that Irish affairs are not to be seen in terms of a succession of problems which have to be solved but as a not uniquely intractable reality which has to be lived with while a process of evolution in attitudes and behaviour gets under way.
The Churches in Ireland have demonstrated in their way both the possibility of and the difficulties inherent in such a process. It may be that the immediate future political reconstruction may have to take second place to reconstruction and reconciliation in other spheres of the life of the Province. The patience of the Minister has been commended. He and

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those with him have been sorely tried. Too much is at stake—and the whole debate reflects this—to echo the words of the infamous Adolf Hitler whose patience was constantly being exhausted. Our patience cannot be exhausted; and there is no evidence today, I believe, to show that it is likely to be so.
12.54 p.m.
Lord DE CLIFFORD: My Lords, I rise to address your Lordships as someone who must confess to having no connection with Northern Ireland, who has not been to Northern Ireland since the troubles started and who is in the position, as are many millions of people in this country, of having to obtain his information from media of all kinds, but who has the added advantage of obtaining information from the debates in this House and in another place. I feel today that we are tending to talk about solutions rather than about what the noble Lord, Lord Bradwell, has written in this Motion, that,
"… they will start to consider and discuss the withdrawal of British troops and the ultimate severance of the British connection…"
What "they" have been asked to do today is to abandon a principle. This principle, I feel, is that we must either accept Northern Ireland as part of the United Kingdom or we must abandon it.
So far as my knowledge goes, and so far as I can obtain knowledge from the media and from everything which goes on, the majority of people in Northern Ireland do not wish to be parted from the United Kingdom. Until such time as they express such an intention, we should be abrogating our responsibility in a terrible manner if we took our troops out of Northern Ireland.
The noble Lord, Lord Bradwell, said that there had been enough of a bloodbath already; that you could not talk about there being a bloodbath if we withdrew our troops from Northern Ireland. I must submit to your Lordships that the question of a bloodbath and a letting of blood has really now come to a position where it is the difference between a cut on the hand and somebody cutting their throat. If we walked out of Northern Ireland, the amount of blood to be shed would be enormous. I cannot, and I must not because I have not full knowledge, get involved in the subject of solu-
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tions. All I am appealing to your Lordships to do is emphatically to reject the proposition that so smoothly and quietly is introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Bradwell, that we should abandon our responsibilities in Northern Ireland by taking our troops out.
12.58 p.m.
Lord BROCKWAY: My Lords, there were some misgivings when this Motion appeared on the Order Paper. I think that the debate which has taken place has removed those fears. It was opened by the noble Lord, Lord Bradwell, in a quiet, moderate and reasonable speech, and his example has been followed on all sides of the House. I think the debate on this emotional and controversial subject is another tribute to the way in which this House can discuss matters of this kind.
Recently there have been just two slight rays of light in the darkness which now overwhelms Northern Ireland. The first has been the public opinion poll in Northern Ireland on the proposal made by Mr. Craig for a power-sharing Government during the emergency. While one must not pay too much attention to polls of this character, I think the quite extraordinary majority, both Protestant and Catholic, in favour of that proposal was a reason for great encouragement. The second encouragement we have recently had was the decision by the largest Party in the Unionist Coalition to oppose the suggestion that the Unionist Parties should join with the para-military organisations in an unconstitutional council. That, again, is a matter of hope in the present situation.
I think every one of us is hoping for the time when the British troops who have, exceptionally, gone to Northern Ireland will be able to withdraw; but I would urge upon this House that before such a step is taken conditions in Northern Ireland must be such as to make that proposal safe. Reference has been made to a recent comment by the historian, Mr. A. J. P. Taylor. I have a great regard for him, and generally I accept his conclusions. On this occasion I do not. He referred to the precedent of the British withdrawal from India. That withdrawal led to the loss of 1 million lives in the conflict between India and Pakistan. I agree with him that the loss of life would have been less if the decision to withdraw from

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India had been made earlier, and the terms of the agreement were disastrous, as Bangladesh afterwards illustrated. But when one considers that more lives were lost than were lost in the whole of Europe during the Second World War, one has to be very cautious indeed in suggesting an immediate withdrawal of our troops from Northern Ireland, with the loss of life that would almost inevitably occur in an uncontrolled civil war.
I should like simply to urge that when we are thinking of a withdrawal from Northern Ireland we must encourage two changes which will bring about conditions there that will ultimately enable troops to be withdrawn. The first is the acceptance of a Bill of Rights for Northern Ireland. We had a discussion about that recently and so I shall not now go into great detail about it; but under the chairmanship of my noble friend Lord Feather we have a Commission who are examining that proposal. The Commission are likely to report early in the autumn and I hope very much that Her Majesty's Government, in the next Queen's Speech for the new Session of Parliament, will be able to include a Bill of Rights for Northern Ireland. Every Party and every organisation in Northern Ireland is in favour of the proposal, except the Provisional IRA. I believe that a guarantee of equal rights is one of the conditions upon which a new climate can be engendered in Northern Ireland.
The second condition which would permit the withdrawal of troops is the very hopeful development of the unity of the working class in Northern Ireland over a social and economic programme. I recently met a prominent trade union official in this country who had gone to Harland and Wolff and met their shop stewards' committee. Harland and Wolff's employees are almost entirely Protestant; yet, strangely enough, that company is today the instance of a greater advance towards industrial democracy than any concern in the United Kingdom—Protestants, contributing to that tremendous Socialist development! This trade union official goes there and he hears their proposals for social and economic changes in Northern Ireland; he then goes to a factory in Londonderry, where the workers are almost entirely
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Catholic. He finds absolute unity between the Protestant workers at Harland and Wolff and the Catholic workers in the factory in Derry on their social and economic demands.
In this situation we now have the Northern Committee of the Irish Trades Union Congress conducting its campaign for a better life in Northern Ireland. I want to urge that our Labour Movement should be behind this hopeful development in the unity of the Protestant and Catholic workers. I want to uge that our own Trades Union Congress should unite with the Irish Trade Union Congress to bring about this solution. If we can accomplish the basic recognition of human rights in Northern Ireland with the unanimity of the working class, Catholic and Protestant, behind social and economic policies, then we may secure the conditions which will permit the withdrawal of our troops.
1.8 p.m.
Lord DUNLEATH: My Lords, I came across from Northern Ireland specially to attend your Lordships' House today because I confess I was very apprehensive—indeed frightened—when I saw the Motion which had been tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Bradwell. In the event, I am going back to Northern Ireland this afternoon in a very much happier mood than that in which I came. I have been really heartened and encouraged to hear the constructive debate we have had today and the resolution that has been expressed by your Lordships not to abandon Northern Ireland. I am very much happier.
Several noble Lords mentioned points I was going to make. I particularly agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, has just said about the unity (for want of a better word) of workers in Northern Ireland, and heartily endorse the tributes that have been paid to the Northern Ireland Committee of the ICTU and the officers thereof. They have been one of the most stabilising influences in the Province over the last seven or eight years, and I sincerely hope that that influence will increase. So I shall confine myself to one aspect of the situation as it refers to this Motion.
I can well understand that many people in Great Britain must think that the Northern Ireland campaign is another

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Vietnam war, a war that can never be won, a war that can be ended only by withdrawal. Those who have lost relatives and friends serving in Northern Ireland must wonder to what purpose have their lives been spent; to what purpose have the injuries been sustained and has the money apparently been wasted? But I say respectfully, with all the emphasis at my command, that if such sentiments had been expressed in your Lordships' House today, or if at any time they were expressed in another place, that would be extremely dangerous because, as your Lordships know, a terrorist campaign is essentially a psychological war.
The lives that are taken and the property that is damaged are incidental. They are a means to an end and the final objective, the end, is to break the will of the lawful Government to resist that terrorist movement and, in order to do that, simultaneously to break the will of the electorate that put that Government into power. If there seems to be any hint of weakening or wavering on the part of the Government, that immediately raises the morale of the terrorists and makes them believe that victory is only just around the corner, and one final big heave will achieve their objective. If, on the other hand, they are met with solid unshakeable resistance, the psychological weapon boomerangs and the terrorists themselves lose the will eventually to maintain their campaign. That is why I am so delighted at the tone of the debate in your Lordships' House today.
The principle is not confined to Northern Ireland by any means. The principle is the same anywhere in the world, where a small minority who have no mandate from the people—if they had a mandate they would not need to use terrorism—want to impose their will on the majority by means of violence. It does not matter whether it is a bombing campaign, assassination, hi-jacking of aircraft or kidnapping of prominent personalities—the principle is the same. If you once begin to waver, you are giving in to terrorism and that is a slippery slope.
An example in question was the kidnapping of Dr. Herrema in the South of
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Ireland. The Government of the Republic demonstrated by at no stage giving the slightest hint that then, or at any time, they would compromise or negotiate with the terrorists. Terrorism can be beaten in this way, and in this way only, and all credit to the Government of the Republic for having so done. I put it sincerely to the noble Lord, Lord Bradwell: does he think that Dr. Herrema would be free and alive today if there had been a debate in the Dail, as to whether or not the terrorists' wishes should be granted, and if even a minority in the Dail had said Yes, they thought those wishes should be granted? Does he think that the terrorists would have given up? They would have calculated that the Government's resolve was crumbling and that by holding out they had everything to gain and nothing to lose.
That is the position of the IRA in Northern Ireland. Their electoral support is infinitesimal. I should be surprised if they had anything like 1 per cent. of active or passive support. This is demonstrated by the fact that they avoided the last elections and, indeed, tried to intimidate people into abstaining from voting because they know that they do not have any electoral support and could not save a deposit anywhere. So they are a minute minority. When I talk about the "majority", on whom they are trying to impose their will in Northern Ireland, I am not talking about Protestants or Unionists of any kind; I am talking about the majority of people, both Protestant and Catholic, who aspire to nothing more than the right to live, work and associate with their neighbours in a peaceful and civilised manner. The majority of people in Northern Ireland—I have said this before in your Lordships' House, and I am sorry for repeating myself—are peace-loving decent people, who pay their taxes and their rates and who, when given an opportunity so to do in the present employment situation, earn their living in an honest manner. So I am greatly heartened by what has been said today.
I, too, regret the political vacuum to which the noble Lord's Motion refers. I can only say that the Alliance Party which I represent—and, in passing I thank the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont of Whitley, for his kind remarks—has done its utmost to try to find a consensus whereby that political vacuum can be

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filled. We even went so far as to contemplate proposals and compromises with which we might not have been entirely happy, and which would not have been our first choice, but we felt that if that brought about a consensus whereby the political vacuum could be filled it was worth doing. However, I am afraid that we failed to bring together politicians who were elected on a tribal sectarian vote, and all we can do now is battle on to try to find a solution.
How heartened I was to hear the impressions of the situation of the noble Lord, Lord Brockway! Especially coming from the noble Lord, such optimism was really heartening. So I am convinced that, while we are dealing with this situation, if there were any hint or suggestion that the resolve of Her Majesty's Government was beginning to weaken this would only lead, to use the words of the noble Lord, Lord Bradwell, to further violence and bloodshed. I am delighted to have witnessed today that that is not the case, and I thank your Lordships most sincerely.
1.18 p.m.
Lord BELSTEAD: My Lords, in following the noble Lord, Lord Dunleath, and indeed many other noble Lords who have a deep knowledge of the Northern Ireland problem, I hope that the House will acquit me of taking an unduly English view if I refer to the bipartisan approach, as it has been called, which has been maintained in both Houses of Parliament. But on the occasion of this debate I believe it is necessary to recall that the reason for this has not derived from some kind of political agreement. Indeed, there have been disagreements on Northern Ireland affairs in both Houses of Parliament. All along the Parliamentary Opposition has reserved the right to disagree with the Government of the day on particular aspects of policy, but, at the same time, all Parties in Parliament have accepted that, whatever mistakes we make and however much we may stumble through the appalling difficulties which beset us, somehow or other an agreement must be found if that is possible.
In order even to attempt this task, it has been necessary at every stage to try to dispel the apprehensions which are ingrained within both communities. In
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the past, the Roman Catholics in Northern Ireland have harboured deep grievances concerning the penalty of internment and the relative absence of political opportunities; and, indeed, the noble Earl, Lord Longford, put it in sharp relief when, in his speech, he felt he had to ask the question: what would be the view of the Roman Catholic minority if the British Government were now to withdraw? So in 1972 detention replaced internment, and last year the Secretary of State took the resolute step of doing away completely with detention: and always the Government of the day have worked to try to establish a settlement which will give the minority community a representative voice in Government.
So far as the Protestant majority and, indeed, I think it is fair to claim, many other people in Northern Ireland have been concerned there has always been the suspicion that in some way the integrity of the Border might not be preserved. It was for this reason that the Border poll was held in 1973 and, as the noble Lord, Lord Grey of Naunton, reminded us, the Constitution Act of the same year confirmed the declaration that Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom, a policy which has been continued at all times by the present Secretary of State. My claim, therefore, is that the basis of the bipartisan policy has been to attempt to remove grounds of fear and suspicion and, by doing so, to try to draw together the communities in Northern Ireland so that they can solve the problems of the Province.
Let us be clear that the Motion today of the noble Lord would strike at the very roots of the bipartisan policy. To speak of the withdrawal of the military presence from a part of the United Kingdom, to be followed by a severance of the rule of Parliament, is an incredible sequence of events to propose. We are not talking of some kind of academic study; as my noble friend Lord O'Neill of the Maine said, we are talking of a declaration of intent. It would be the clearest example of a nation washing its hands of its own problems within its own jurisdiction and would, I believe, remain on the conscience of the people of this country for years to come.
What would such a declaration of intent at the present time imply? To

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the people of Great Britain it would imply total abdication of responsibility, both moral and also strategic, an aspect which we have not heard all that much about in the debate this morning. To the Protestants in Northern Ireland it would be a clear case of betrayal, and to the politicians of the minority community I believe—and my belief is reinforced by people who have spoken in the debate this morning and know a great deal more about it than I do—it would mean that their hopes of participating in Northern Ireland politics would be dashed amid the suspicion and probably the bloodshed that such a withdrawal would cause. Yet the case which the noble Lord has today put to the House rests on an assumption that if Northern Ireland were to cease to be within the United Kingdom the problems of Ulster would, in some way which he did not specify, be solved.
Although it is tempting for those who are bearing the heat and the burden of the problems in Northern Ireland to look to the day when those burdens might slip from their backs, I must confess that I do not believe that the noble Lord's assumption bears even a cursory examination. First of all, the Border poll of 1973 proved that an overwhelming majority in Northern Ireland wish to remain within the United Kingdom. More recently, one of the interesting facts to come out of the proceedings of the Convention was that all Parties found themselves united in wanting a firmer security policy. Nor is the noble Lord's assumption in line with the policy of the Republic. Only six weeks ago the Toiseach visited London and a joint communiqué stated that the two Prime Ministers agreed that they would support in every possible way institutions of government in Northern Ireland if those institutions could be established on a basis of partnership and participation. It is true that those words have something of a hollow ring about them at the present time; but does the noble Lord really believe that it would be either honourable or practical for such words to be followed by a withdrawal of British troops?
When the people of Great Britain came to study the real applications of what the noble Lord is proposing, I think that
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they would perceive the trap into which they could be led. I believe that my noble friend Lord O'Neill of the Maine and the noble Lord, Lord Moyola, were absolutely right to warn that violence could only spread. This is a view which has been stated in public on more than one occasion by the present Secretary of State; and, strategically, if we were to concede to the IRA the only real objective which they have, would not we then be leaving Northern Ireland a prey to any power which might aim to occupy it and to menace our security?
The policy which is being urged upon us would be a very strange reward for the constancy which has been shown by the Security Forces. A month ago I went to Northern Ireland with a group of Members of Parliament. It was clear that all of the Security Forces are putting in immensely long hours to meet the operational demands that are being made upon them. Both the Army and the RUC are continuing to take great pride in their community relations role, and the increasing information which is coming in is evidence that their efforts are not going entirely unrewarded. Clearly, also, great efforts are being made to try to reintroduce normal policing into the more difficult areas. Does it sound as though it would be wise to talk about the withdrawal of troops before normal policing can extend once again over Northern Ireland which is possibly the most important factor in the discussion which we are having today?
Certainly I concede that these remain very dark days for Northern Ireland, but in company this morning, with many other noble Lords in all parts of the House I reach a different conclusion from that of the noble Lord, Lord Bradwell. In closing I should like to put two points to the Government in regard to facing the future. First, I trust that the Government recognise the problems of the political vacuum. To that extent I agree with the Motion. The assumption I make has nothing to do with the discharge of Ministers' duties. I am certain that they are being most admirably performed. That is no mere politeness to the noble Lord who sits on the Front Bench in this House. However, I am absolutely certain that we cannot for one moment believe that Direct Rule in the form in which we have it at the present time

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is a satisfactory method of government. The deduction which must be made from the speech which the noble Lord, Lord Moyola, delivered is that a Government of Northern Ireland who do not include Northern Ireland politicians are not going to carry the people of Northern Ireland with them for an indefinite period of time. I believe that this is a warning which must be heeded.
The other point I should like to put to the Government is this. I would press them very strongly to look with greater urgency at how to apprehend those who organise terrorism. The statistics of those who are charged and convicted reflect the greatest credit on the Security Forces, but the present level of terrorism clearly shows that the men behind the violence, the men who are encouraging the young people who are going to be tomorrow's terrorists, are not being convicted. They are probably not being charged; and in many cases they may well have returned to violence following detention. Clearly lawyers would immediately say that intimidation, incitement and proof of membership of a proscribed organisation are very difficult problems to bring home. But surely it is possible that the creation of an offence of terrorism might, as the Gardiner Committee recommended, result in prosecutions of those who previously could be dealt with only by detention.
There are thousands of people in Northern Ireland, Protestants and Catholics, who long for a settlement which will enable them and their families to live in peace. The news that this House is even discussing the possibility of withdrawal from Northern Ireland could well, I think, be greeted by those people with dismay. I only hope, as the noble Lord, Lord Dunleath, said, that a full report of this debate may be made in Northern Ireland papers, so that the opinion in this House may satisfactorily be got across to those people. Eventually, only the people of Northern Ireland can make a constitutional settlement succeed, but Parliament has the responsibility of searching for that settlement. I believe it is essential to continue that search if we are to justify the reason why so many have already died, and why so many still live in hope.
1.30 p.m.
The PARLIAMENTARY UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE, NORTHERN IRELAND OFFICE (Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge): My Lords, before I say any more, I think I must congratulate the House. We have got through 14 speeches in 126 minutes, which I reckon must be a record in this House, and I congratulate noble Lords on their self-discipline and care for others, which are both qualities which we should like to see more of in the subjects we are discussing.
My noble friend has raised a question of great importance which concerns the honour of this country and the lives of a number of its citizens. Whether this was a helpful moment to raise it is another point, but in all fairness I must admit that during the last two years when I have been a Minister in Northern Ireland there never has been a moment which was not the wrong time to raise such sensitive issues, and certainly my noble friend raised them with elegance and moderation. But the harm or good that a debate can do depends not only on its topic but also, as I think somebody else said in the course of the debate, on what is said in it. What has been said today has been uniformally helpful and presents a wide consensus in support of the Government's basic position on this limited question. The only possible deviant was my old and pacifist noble friend Lord Soper. The pacifist point of view is one which we can all respect; it is one which is a great deal easier applied personally than in any kind of institutional way and my noble friend made it perfectly clear that although he was against the whole thing he would not alter anything at the moment. I think one should regard that as support for the Government rather than for my noble friend who moved the Motion.
It is worth noting that the speakers have included a prominent Roman Catholic, a Bishop of the Church of England, a Moderator—or whatever the right word is—of the Methodist Church and a prominent Humanist, and morally we have had an extraordinarily strong and united vote of confidence in what the Government are doing on this point. I do not wish to saddle noble Lords with more than that because I know, for

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example, that the noble Lord, Lord Moyola, raised a number of other points, but in regard to the main point we seem to have total agreement and I am most grateful for it.
Before taking up some of the points—and I shall be highly selective because if I am going to do my part in the time race I cannot deal with all the speeches—I should like to make one or two general remarks about the political framework and indicate what some of the realities are, because it is worth looking at this again. Of a population of 1½ million we have approximately two-thirds Protestant and one-third Catholic. The great majority of Protestants want to remain citizens of the United Kingdom. I do not think anybody would dispute that. Moreover, about half the Catholic population are themselves opposed to a united Ireland, if one can believe the latest polls. This is a very different situation from what happened in India or Palestine, where both sides were anxious that the British should get out.
We must add that a growing coolness on the part of the South towards the idea of absorbing anything as indigestible as Ulster is quite evident. Any idea on their part of moving towards a united Ireland in the near future has virtually disappeared. The Provos ignore the reality of the views of the Protestant community in Northern Ireland and believe, wrongly, that they can be bombed into wanting a united Ireland. The demand for the withdrawal of British troops from Northern Ireland is one of the key planks of the provisional IRA policy. They forget that British troops originally went to Northern Ireland to help to protect the Catholic population. Without the Army, the Catholic areas in Belfast in particular would be at risk and nothing but the Security Forces could give them real protection. The Provos seem to have forgotten the streets burning in Belfast; the riots, pillage and wholesale destruction of the past. I can assure noble Lords that the Government have not forgotten it.
There are apparently more sophisticated variations of this policy. The suggestion has been made that our withdrawal need not take place at once but should be made over a number of years. All that is wanted from us now is a declaration of intent of a date. I can only
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repeat what my right honourable friend the Secretary of State said in another place on 11th December of last year:
"I am firmly of the view that any such statement would lead to an immediate outburst of violence on a scale that we have not yet seen".
The noble Lord who introduced this Motion, my noble friend Lord Bradwell, made one or two comments which I should like to take up. I really do not believe that the re-drawing of the boundaries to which he referred will get us anywhere. It could accompany the settlement but it will not in any way provide a settlement. His comment about Professor Taylor relieves me of making any further comment, but it was a very odd suggestion which, as the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont of Whitley, said, has been in no way withdrawn by his letter this morning in The Guardian. In my opinion, it is a suggestion which would not be contemplated by any serious student of the subject. He wondered whether we were frightened of full-scale debates. Neither the Secretary of State in another place nor I have ever refused or even suggested that it would be undesirable to debate this subject, but what are technically known as "the channels" have thought that enough is enough; that our debates tend to say exactly the same thing time after time because the situation does not change fundamentally, and all I can say is that any lack of debate is not due either to the Secretary of State or to myself.
One is grateful to the noble Lord for his wholesale condemnation of terrorism; he has made it perfectly clear that in what he has said—even though the course he is advocating is the course of the terrorist—he does not share their intentions or methods beyond that, and of course we give him total credit for that. At the end of his speech the noble Lord gave a very long quotation from the book written three or four years ago by the present Prime Minister, in which the relevant and potentially damaging sentence is that if the situation changes in certain ways we shall be entitled to reconsider our pledges. The situation has changed: the Government have reconsidered their pledges and the Government of which Mr. Callaghan is now Prime Minister have made it absolutely clear that they have not altered their intention to stand by them. I think that probably finishes that quotation fairly effectively.

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The noble Lord, Lord O'Neill of the Maine, described the declaration of intent which is implicit in the question as a declaration of disaster, and I think this has been echoed by nearly every speaker. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, asked me three questions. I am not going to answer them. I am going to answer part of them in the course of my speech, but two of them are questions which had better wait for the report of the Special Committee which my right honourable friend set up and announced on the 12th January, which is looking into these things in detail, and I am not going to anticipate the findings of that Committee. I shall speak to him personally when I next have a chance of doing so.
My Lords, my noble friend Lord Longford said that one of the most grievous things of the whole of the last 10 years was that whenever a moderate appeared he was immediately stabbed in the back. I agree with him that this is probably the tragedy of Northern Ireland above everything else. I also agree with him that we must not abandon the possibility of power sharing, but in the Government we feel that we have pushed this about as hard as we can for the moment, and it is now up to other people to see what they can do.
The noble Lord, Lord Grey of Naunton, who has great experience of the Province, said something which I feel very strongly about, that the good enormously outnumber the bad. We must never forget that. I have just looked at the time, and I had better stop talking about what other people have said for the moment, otherwise I shall not get through my speech in a reasonable time. I must say a word or two about Government policy which, as has been stated again and again, is to phase out the deployment of British troops in their present role as and when the security situation warrants, and at the same time to build up the strength of the police so that they can deal, without Army aid, with the spasmodic violence likely to go on for some time yet. Some progress has been made on both fronts. The RUC have increased their strength, and the Army presence is being increasingly directed towards helping the police bring criminals before the courts. We are continually reviewing the law to see
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whether it can be strengthened in any way. But by far the most important thing, as has been said by several noble Lords, is good police work.
Since the Secretary of State made his announcement on policing in September 1974 the strength of the RUC has increased by 500, and the Reserve by over 2,000. The "A" squad and the Special Patrol Group have been created to meet particular operational requirements. The growth in RUC numbers is continuing, and for the future my right honourable friend hopes that his current round of studies will open the way to further progress. We are getting increasing help and co-operation from the security forces of the Irish Republic, and my right honourable friend the Secretary of State has had a number of valuable meetings with the Irish Minister for Justice.
My right honourable friend the Secretary of State has made it clear that we can talk about the reduction of the Army presence only in the context of the effectiveness of the police—again something which nearly every noble Lord has mentioned—only, that is, to the extent it can be achieved without increasing the danger to the lives and property of the people of Northern Ireland. Clearly the Army cannot remain indefinitely in Northern Ireland in its present strength. This has never been in any doubt. But any reduction in the level of Armed Forces must be related to the build up of the police, and to the security situation. Again, this is related to the efforts to bring life back to normal and to base security on the rule of law. This is why steps have been taken to end detention and to phase out special category status, both of which are most abnormal conditions. This is what lies behind the current examination by my right honourable friend, with colleagues, to which I referred earlier, of the action and resources required for the next few years to maintain law and order: how best to achieve the primacy of the police; the size and role of locally recruited forces and the progressive reduction of the Armed Forces as soon as safely practicable. As the police are able to assume an increased role, so then can the Army decrease its role. But we cannot take a decision about troop levels in isolation.

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However, there are those who would have us do just this, people who seek to have the troops withdrawn immediately. Although my noble friend did not suggest this in his Motion, there is no doubt whatever that this will be in the minds of many who read our discussions. The people who wish for this fall into two groups. First, there are those who have a genuine belief that it is the right course and that we cannot go on as we are. Some may argue that we cannot afford to meet our responsibilities by keeping the Army in Northern Ireland; others that the soldiers there are being used in a role for which they have not been recruited or trained, or for which, for one reason or another, they are not suitable. Others again, like the noble Lords, Lord Wigg and Lord Annan, in our 1974 debates on this subject, argue for withdrawal of the troops on the grounds that in the end the two opposing groups have got to settle matters themselves, and they never will do so as long as the Army is there to keep the lid on. This week, we have had a new and somewhat eccentric suggestion from Professor Taylor, to which I have already referred.
The other group of people, of course, are the IRA, who are the enemy. They are those who deliberately seek to undermine the efforts of Government, of Parliament, and of the people of the United Kingdom as a whole to restore peace and harmony in Northern Ireland. Their inspiration is hatred; their objective irrational and their methods barbarous. I am not suggesting that any Members of your Lordships' House are in any way associated with the beliefs of the IRA, but there is a danger that those who, for honest reasons, support this policy may unwittingly play into the hands of the IRA.
The noble Lord, Lord Bradwell, mentioned in his Motion a political vacuum. We do not admit a political vacuum. If by that the noble Lord means the absence of a Parliament and Government at Stormont, then, of course, in this sense a vacuum has existed since 1972, and certainly before the recent disssolution of the Constitutional Convention. The normal processes of political life in which the claims of conflicting groups are moderated by debate, negotiation and
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mutual concession, for a long time have been rendered completely ineffective in Northern Ireland by the deep divisions within society there. It may be that the noble Lord considers that the absence of a political talking shop in Northern Ireland will cause a greater vacuum. This is certainly not the case. The Government at Westminster intend to govern effectively, impartially, and with positive direction. Moreover, whatever may be said about opinion polls, they have demonstrated clearly that the majority of people, from both communities, welcome a period of direct rule from Westminster, if for different reasons.
The noble Lord also refered to the ultimate severance of the British connection. Successive Governments have repeatedly made the position clear. There is no more to be said than has been said already, but I will say it again. The United Kingdom and the Irish Government have both declared that the wishes of the majority in Northern Ireland must determine the status of Northern Ireland, and that there can be no change in that status until the majority so desire it. This is said over and over again, and time after time people come back with exactly the same suspicion—"We believe you are going to run out and leave us". There is no basis for this whatever, and I cannot repeat it too strongly.
To sum up, there is no political vacuum in our opinion under Direct Rule. Consideration, however, is being given to the withdrawal of British troops in their present role as part of a long-term and well publicised policy. But there can be no question of a precipitate withdrawal, and the policy is dependent on the police assuming their full responsibilities. It will be implemented only after taking full account of the security situation, and the need to protect the citizens of the United Kingdom in Northern Ireland. The vicious and indiscriminate attempts by the IRA to frighten the Government into hastening this programme will have no effect whatever.
Finally, my Lords, I want to make one thing absolutely clear. The policy of the Government in Northern Ireland is to govern. This is not to say that we foreclose on the possibility of a devolved Government in Northern Ireland one day. But this is not the time for a simple solution. The one we have been offered today is an example of an instant and

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simple solution. Independence is another. These will not do, and never have done. We must work firmly and fairly to find a way to bring a divided community together. The Government will not shirk this task, and will continue to govern in Northern Ireland.
1.50 p.m.
Lord BRADWELL: My Lords, I am extremely grateful to my noble friend Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge for leaving me the customary few minutes to make a few observations. I must repeat my gratitude to those noble Lords who came specially from Northern Ireland to take part in the debate, particularly, if I may say so without impertinence, to the noble Lord, Lord O'Neill of the Maine, in view of his recent indisposition. I am grateful also to the noble Lord, Lord Dunleath, and my noble friend Lord Brockway for the support that they gave me in what I said about the trade unions in Northern Ireland. This is, I think, one of the most important, hopeful and positive aspects of the terribly tragic situation, one of the gleams of hope. The right reverend Prelate spoke of reconciliation within the Churches, and I hope that increasingly the people of Northern Ireland, the workers in general and their families, will learn to think of themselves as workers, as Irish men and women, rather than as Protestants and Catholics only or primarily. I believe that is the most important thing that could be said.
I am extremely glad to learn from my noble friend who wound up for the Government that there is no apprehension, no fear, on behalf of the Government about discussion of this very important subject. This is quite contrary to the impression I have gained in conversation with some of my right honourable friends in another place, but no doubt they were misled themselves. Since there is no apprehension, I hope that the ventilation of the subject will spread from your Lordships' Chamber to another place, and indeed to the general public outside, who are at present, in my view quite absurdly, prevented from hearing about it or discussing it in Trafalgar Square, the principal forum of free speech. Anybody who applies to use Trafalgar Square for a meeting about Ireland gets turned down automatically by the Department of the Environment,
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who in this case, of course, are merely carrying the can, if I may be permitted a vulgarism, for the Home Office.
The LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, is the noble Lord indicating a desire to withdraw the Motion?
Lord BRADWELL: My Lords, I understand that I have used up all my time.
The LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, it is the case that the time allotted for this debate by the Rules of the House has, unfortunately, elapsed and, accordingly, I must ask whether the noble Lord wishes to withdraw the Motion.
Lord BRADWELL: My Lords, in that case, I must beg leave to withdraw the Motion.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

WAR WIDOWS' PENSIONS
1.53 p.m.
Lord CHELWOOD Lord CHELWOOD rose to call attention to the inadequacy of war widows' pensions and the wide disparities in their pension income; and to move for Papers. The noble Lord said: My Lords, I greatly welcome this chance of drawing attention to the inadequacy of war widows' pensions and to the wide disparity in their pension income. I understand that if I stick strictly to my time limit, and if the noble Lord the Minister takes his full time, there will be a good ten minutes for other noble Lords who have been good enough to indicate that they wish to speak in this debate.
My Lords, this subject is very complicated, and I can only try to explain it in outline in my twenty minutes. I should like to say that where the war widows themselves are concerned they simply cannot understand why there is such inequity between the treatment of one war widow and another. I feel strongly that it is high time that the confusion was cleared up and that initial steps were taken to put war widows' pensions on a more straightforward, more understandable and more equitable basis.
I am very glad indeed to say that this question is not in any way bedevilled by Party politics, as too many things are; but I think that we must all accept that

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successive Governments—successive Parties, perhaps I should say—have made promises in general terms when Elections have been in the offing and then not carried them out as fully as many of us feel they should have been carried out. Today, at a time when public expenditure must not only be curbed but cut and cut hard, it would be unrealistic and irresponsible for me to ask for anything more than token extra expenditure. I therefore beg the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, when he comes to reply, to view this debate as an exchange of ideas, on a non-Party basis, on how best to achieve an object which I believe we all share.
I want to make it absolutely clear that I am not asking for parity, which has so often been asked for in the past. I am not asking for it now or even in the foreseeable future. Parity I think is the ideal, but I recognise that it is beyond the nation's means at present, so it must be ruled out, at any rate on cost, though I was very sorry that in another place the Government appeared to rule it out in principle as well. With that I do not agree. I am not asking, either, that war widows' pensions should be made tax free. There are probably many noble Lords who think that this should be so. It is the case in many countries in Western Europe and in all the old Commonwealth countries, and I certainly do not rule out this possibility, but I am not asking for it today.
I also want to make it absolutely clear that I am only concerning myself today with the pensions awarded to war widows, that is to attributable pensions awarded to Service widows. The very term "war widows" is itself misleading. It refers to the widows of officers and other ranks whose death is accepted by the Department of Health and Social Security as resulting from or being hastened by their service in the Armed Forces. I hope that is exactly right. It is as well to know what we are talking about. Six months ago, I gather, there were about 91,000 such war widows. Roundly, 25,000 of them were widowed in the First World War—and they must all be 75 years old or more—or between the wars, and some 66,000, I think, from the 1939–45 war and the years since. It would be interest-
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ing to know the latest figures. Inevitably, of course, these figures are naturally declining, I believe by about 3,000 a year.
May I try to give a brief, though I fear inadequate, outline of the main changes in the pattern of war widows' pensions over the past 30 years, not an easy task. Until the early 1950s a war widow's pension, that is an attributable pension, was at a reasonably generous level. I recognise that without any doubt at all. In 1948 the National Insurance widows' pension was introduced, first at a low rate but gradually increasing, and in 1950 the Forces Family Pension Scheme started. A war widow who lost her husband before these new schemes were introduced was not entitled to either of those pensions in addition to her war widows' pension. Therefore, though there is still a differential, as I shall explain in a moment, between a war widow and other widows, resulting, I suppose, from what is commonly called overlapping benefits, the differential began to be eroded, the former not being entitled to overlapping benefits.
I should like to spell out four reasons why, as a matter of principle, I think that war widows should expect and indeed deserve to get special consideration, and I do not think that there is any conflict of opinion between the three main political Parties about these points. The only difference of opinion would arise over how big the differential should be. First of all, members of the Armed Forces are servants of the Crown; they are not, like civil servants, Government servants. They cannot sue their employers—that is to say, the Crown—for instance, for wrongful dismissal, nor can they appeal to the Ombudsman. Therefore, their widows, unlike other widows, cannot sue their late husband's employers. Secondly, they cannot expect to be covered by insurance schemes which accept the risk of death attributable to conditions of their work. Thirdly, with the unique exception of Northern Ireland, they cannot seek civil compensation through the courts. Lastly, some war widows were married to men who voluntarily accepted not only the risks inherent in service in the Armed Forces but the duty of accepting an order which could endanger their lives; but, on the other hand, many other war widows were in fact married to men

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who were conscripted under National Service and had no choice at all in this respect.
May I now try to describe the position of a war widow whose husband died before 1st September 1950. Her present basic war widow's pension paid by the Department of Health and Social Security is £17·20 per week, compared with the National Insurance basic widow's pension of £13·30 a week. So recognition of her special circumstances is expressed by a differential of £3·90 a week. On 15th November next these rates will change, and I understand that the differential will then rise to about £4·50 a week. But I think we should bear in mind—and I do not want to make a partisan point—that the increases that are going to be given across the board are not going to compensate for the inflation we have actually suffered, as the rises will be in the nature of 15 per cent. and not of 22½ per cent. Worse still, war widows' pensions will of course be subject, as they always have been, to taxation, whereas the increases given to the unemployed will not be so subject. I do not wish to introduce into this non-Party debate any element whatsoever of Party conflict; I only want to explain the position where war widows are concerned.
The pre-1950 war widow, with one minor exception, is not entitled, by the way, to any addition to her war widow's pension apart from the age allowances. I think that these started in a modest way in 1958, or round about then. They now amount to £1·70 a week for those over 65, rising to £3·40 for those over 70. No doubt these figures will be going up next November. It is unfortunately true, and very sad, that a considerable number of these war widows from before 1950, to whom I have been referring, who are entitled only to the DHSS pension, are so in need that they have to apply for supplementary benefits. The same is true of war widows bereaved between September 1950 and March 1973; quite a number of them as well have to apply for supplementary benefits. I wish to be quite outspoken here and to say that I think it is absolutely scandalous that any war widow should be reduced to seeking supplementary benefits in order to meet essential expenses.
From 31st March 1973 a war widow became eligible for an attributable forces
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family pension in addition to her war widow's pension, and this new attributable pension is not tied in any way to length of service. I want to ask, how can anyone begin to explain, or even try to explain, to a war widow whose husband served a number of years, why she should be far worse off—I emphasise, "far worse off"—than another war widow whose husband perhaps served for one week before she was bereaved in similar circumstances? I do not think there is a logical or proper explanation.
There are many other complications where war widows' pensions are concerned; many exceptions, many absurdities, many illogicalities, and many things which are not easy to understand, but I cannot go into them now in the time available. I can, however, give an example or two of the glaring anomalies that have been created. The widow of an Army major with 20 years' service killed in the 1939–45 war receives no pension from the Ministry of Defence, only her war widow's pension from the DHSS of £987 a year. But if this Army major died today from attributable causes, his widow would receive a pension of £2,505 a year in addition to her war widow's pension—a total of £3,399, or three and a half times as much as if her husband had been killed in the 1939–45 war. That really is an incredible and unjustifiable situation.
The same kind of figures apply to a war widow of a sergeant killed in 1943 compared with the war widow of a sergeant killed yesterday—perhaps in Northern Ireland. The same sort of figures apply also to the widow of a private soldier. Where the former, the sergeant, is concerned, today's pension is roughly two and a half times what it would be if he had been killed in 1943; and where the private is concerned it is rather more than twice as large. These are very great anomalies indeed.
It is unfortunate that responsibility for war widows' pensions is divided between two Ministries. The Department of Health and Social Security is responsible for paying small pensions to which war widows are entitled by reason of their husband's attributable death, but the Ministry of Defence pays the modified forces family pension, and the attributable forces family pension as well. I cannot help saying, after having been a

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Member of another place for some 29 years or so and trying to help war widows in a variety of ways, that I have found there has been quite a lot of buck-passing between the two Government Departments concerned. Incidentally, I did not mention in connection with a widow of a man whose death is attributable to service in Northern Ireland that, unlike any other war widow, she may sue for civil compensation, so that accentuates matters still further. There is no time to explain the anomalies existing between the widows of those who died before 1st September 1950, and those who died between that date and 31st March, 1973, and those who died after that date. I have just touched on this subject, and I can assure your Lordships that the distinctions are arbitrary and unjust, and regarded as such by the war widows concerned.
I have a number of questions that I should like to have answered. I have taken the liberty of sending them to the noble Lord the Minister who is to reply. I am sorry that it was rather late in the day. He has been kind enough to tell me that he has got them and will do his best to answer them fully. To save time, I shall not go through them now. They refer to the number of war widows in receipt of supplementary pensions. There is a question about how many war widows are receiving the modified forces family pension in addition to their war widow's pension, and a number of other questions as well.
I come to my suggestions, my quite modest requests on behalf of war widows, to which I very much hope that the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, will give encouraging answers. First, I suggest that there should be an end to this division of responsibility between two Government Departments for the payment of war widows' pensions, and a return to single responsibility, which worked much better. I suggest that this responsibility should now be placed squarely on the shoulders of the Ministry of Defence. This would mean streamlining the system and would surely result in a saving in administrative costs. Secondly, I suggest very strongly indeed that in some appropriate form, and soon—in time, shall we say, at any rate, for the next Session—the
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facts and figures relating to war widows' pensions should be made public. They have been concealed behind a cloak or a smokescreen—I do not know exactly what to call it—and they have been so difficult to get at that to put the whole story together is an incredibly difficult operation. I feel that we are entitled to know exactly the position.
Whether these facts and figures should be published as a White Paper, whether there should be a Select Committee or whether there should be an inter-Departmental publication, I do not particularly mind; but I am absolutely sure that the facts and figures are all available in the two Departments concerned and that they should be made public. Perhaps at the same time some comparisons might be made, where they are valid—and they are not by any means always valid—with other EEC countries, bearing in mind that it is part of the Treaty of Rome that the social services should be harmonised gradually upwards, and there is no doubt from the investigations I have made that, on the whole, war widows are much more generously treated in other EEC countries than they are here.
Thirdly—in some ways this is the most important; this is my only suggestion for expenditure—I feel very strongly indeed that the basic war widow's pension should as of right be at such a level and kept at such a level, as the cost of living rises, as to ensure that no war widow ever again has to depend on supplementary benefit to make both ends meet. She should not have to appeal to charity, which many are too proud to do. I received a letter this morning from my noble friend Lord Haig who reminded me of this point and who asked me to mention it.
I conclude by summing up the three suggestions I have made. I should like Her Majesty's Government to put this whole question on a far better and sounder footing. This is long overdue. I am asking the Government, first, to give one Ministry sole responsibility; secondly, to spell out in detail the present position, warts and all, perhaps in a White Paper—that might be the most appropriate method; and, thirdly, to make a token gesture in the very near future by helping our neediest war widows. I believe that, if all three of these things were done, it would do a lot to restore faith in the

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Government's good intentions. Then, later on, when our feeble economy begins to recover through the creation of new wealth, as we profoundly hope it will before long, those war widows with the smallest pensions must be given the highest priority as, step by step, justice is done and the great anomalies, some of which I have described, are gradually removed. The suffering, anxieties and sacrifices that have to be endured by war widows and their families are inevitable, but the shabby treatment meted out to those who are the neediest is not.
2.15 p.m.
Lord BANKS: My Lords, I am sure that the whole House will he grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Chelwood, for raising this important matter today. This question of war widows' pensions gives rise for concern in all quarters of the House, a concern which I am sure is fully shared by the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, who will reply to the debate for the Government. To be fair to the Government, we must recognise the fact that the basic war widows' pension has been raised from £10·10 to £17·20 during the lifetime of the present Government and, as Lord Chelwood said, it will rise to £19·80 in November. Lord Chelwood referred also to the age allowances of £1·70 at age 65 which will go up to £1·95 and £3·40 at age 70, which will go up to £3·90, and there are certain allowances as well which are tax free.
As I understand it, the basic war widow's pension has been kept consistently at about 30 per cent. above the National Insurance level. It has, therefore, been increased to offset inflation in the main. It has been increased in line with the increases of other benefits, but we know that the basic National Insurance pension itself is inadequate and that about one-third of the recipients have to rely on supplementary benefit. I believe that about 5 per cent. of the recipients of war widows' pensions also rely on supplementary benefit, and the question is whether the 30 per cent. above the National Insurance level is a proper level for a war widow's basic pension. We know that it is lower than the pension paid in many countries—I believe that in the Netherlands the war widow's pension is £52 a week—and clearly the Government do not think that this level is enough, since in 1973 they set up the
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armed forces pension scheme, under the Ministry of Defence, which is virtually an occupational scheme for Servicemen. Under this, those war widows since 1973, their husbands having been killed on active service, receive in addition to the war widows' pension, as Lord Chelwood said, another pension which probably about doubles the total amount and there is provision for a lump-sum payment as well.
Should the pension of the pre-1973 widows be increased to the post-1973 level? Lord Chelwood obviously thought that in principle it should, although he made it clear that he was not pressing for that at the moment. The Government say, or have said in the past, that they cannot make a new occupational scheme retrospective; that an employer would not be expected to make provision for employees already retired if he were introducing an occupational scheme or widows already widowed. But I think that the Government cannot be regarded as having no more obligation in this matter than an ordinary employer. If the State expects some of its citizens to run the risk of death on active service, then it has a very particular responsibility to the families of those citizens in the event of their death. The Government say, quite apart from the question whether this should be done in principle, that there is the question of cost. I believe that it costs about £86½ million to provide the war widows' pensions at the moment and that to give parity to pre-1973 widows would cost a further £100 million. But the Government say—and one can see the point—that, if there are not to be two levels of war widows, the same must apply to disablement pensioners, and this would bring the total cost up to £250 million. But I am not clear whether in computing that sum the Government have taken into effect the amount which would be clawed back in tax. Perhaps the noble Lord can give us further enlightenment on that point.
Mention of taxes raises the whole question, which was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Chelwood, of whether the war widows' pension should be taxed. Personally I have no objection to pensions being taxed, provided that the tax threshold is at a reasonable level. At present, as a result both of inflation and of not increasing the personal allowances

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to match inflation, we are in the position where the threshold is far too low, and many widows and others on low incomes have been brought into the tax net, but should not be there. The task is to raise the threshold to a proper level and then, I suggest, index the personal allowances so that they would rise automatically as the cost of living rises. I believe that the increases in social security benefits, announced last week, cost another £1,390 million as a whole, which we understand is covered by the recent increases in contributions.
I mention that figure in order to put in perspective the figure of £250 million. I realise the current financial limitations, and I wish to take a responsible attitude to them. But I can recall many things in the past which have been said to be too expensive and yet eventually have been found possible, even essential. Therefore, while appreciating all the economic factors militating against it, I will continue to press for the establishment of parity for war widows at the earliest possible date.
2.22 p.m.
Baroness YOUNG: My Lords, I am sure that we are all grateful to my noble friend Lord Chelwood for introducing this debate this afternoon and for explaining the case so very clearly. He is an expert on this question, and I very much wish to support the suggestions he has made to the Government. The three of them are valuable, because it seems to me that the divided responsibility between the Department of Health and Social Security and the Ministry of Defence must make for administrative expense, if not the general difficulties that always arise when there is a need to consult two Departments over the affairs of one particular group of people. I hope that we will see either a White Paper or a full inquiry into this whole question, and that we see this within a measurable length of time. I should say that a period of six months would not be unreasonable, because it seems to me that the more one looks at this matter the more confusing and the more difficult it is. Although it is not for us on this side of the House to make proposals about the level of war widows' pensions, having looked at the matter I am convinced that something ought to be done about it.
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I come to this debate not at all as an expert, but as somebody who has looked at this whole question in considerable detail for the first time only in the past few weeks. I do not flatter myself that I am good at doing very many things, but years of experience in public life have, I hope, taught me to read White Papers and to learn the subjects upon which I am about to speak. I have found this to be one of the most difficult and complex subjects I have looked at, and therefore it is hardly surprising that for the people involved it is totally unintelligible. I speak not only for this side of the House but for the country as a whole when I say that it is quite disgraceful to have allowed such an extraordinary situation ever to arise.
I understand that it is thought that there are 91,000 war widows, of whom approximately 2,500 receive an additional pension from the Ministry of Defence. These 2,500 are divided into four separate categories, and I understand that their pension may be based on the date either of the death of their husband or of his service. Therefore it will be readily apparent that there are at least five categories of war widows receiving five different levels of war pension, and receiving within those categories some differences as well. Small wonder, therefore, that everybody is confused; and small wonder that people must feel resentful that because of some arbitrary quirk of fate they are so much worse off than somebody else, whereas they have all suffered as much as any woman can expect to suffer by losing her husband.
Therefore, there is the case of the anomalies. Then there is the case of the unfairness of it. I can well appreciate, as can anyone who has ever taken positions of responsibility, the dislike of special pleading. But, after all, war widows are a special case, and they have been recognised as a special case by Government Departments in two respects. In the first place, they are paid 30 per cent. more than other widows, which makes them a special case, and, I understand, they are paid an extra amount at age 65, and a further extra amount at the age of 70. Neither of these two categories applies to other widows. I do not understand why the figure of 30 per cent. was arrived at, and I have been

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unable to find anyone who can tell me what it was based on. But if it was based on some decision about 25 years ago I should have thought that it was at least open to question that it should be reviewed now. After all, in the past 25 years nearly all of us have undergone a rise in our standing of living; certainly we have had a rise in our expectations. It seems to me quite wrong that this group of people, who have suffered through no fault of their own, should have been left with this quite arbitrary scale, to fend for themselves in a world in which they see other people prospering.
I agree with my noble friend Lord Chelwood. I regard it as a national scandal that 5,000 war widows should be receiving supplementary benefit. I do not think that anyone interested in this subject can rest until that is put right. What we do not know is whether the war widows' pension has risen in real terms at all since first institued. We know that it is subject to tax, and we know, furthermore, that the war widows' pension, being linked to other pensions, now suffers from this curious anomaly as seen in the most recently published figures on pensions (in the Budget Statement) whereby those receiving pensions have got a slightly lower proportionate increase than those receiving unemployment benefit. It is difficult to argue between one group of people and another. But the fact is that if the basis of the calculation is altered at very short notice, a great many people will be worse off; and just as, relatively speaking, retirement pensioners are worse off, as are widows and others, so, of course, are the war widows, too. Thus it seems to me only right that because this situation is anomalous and unfair the matter should be looked at.
I wish to turn to the group of people who receive supplementary pensions from the Ministry of Defence. When looking at the figures I was aghast to see how little some of these people get. Let us take one case as an example. A widow now aged 91 is living on a total income of £957 widows' pension, plus £176·80 age allowance. She is therefore living on just over £21 a week and she only survives because of a charity. Another very similar case is that of a widow of 89 who is, again, living on between £20 and £21 a week. She lives in a nursing home and, again, is supported by charity. There must
2210
be many of these very hard and tragic cases. I believe that, if one looks at such cases, one can appreciate their situation very much more forcibly than if one simply talks about numbers and about people in general.
I should therefore like to suggest to the Government—and they will, I am sure, say that it is very hard to have special cases and, as the noble Lord, Lord Banks said, very hard to have legislation which works backwards in relation to people who have accepted a scale and who then find it impossible to manage on it so that another scale has to be produced for them—that there is a similarity between the case of these war widows and that of pensions for the over-80s. The arguments have quite a number of similarities. That group of old people were too old to join the scheme in 1948 and they were therefore left out. An Act of Parliament gave them pensions, and I was pleased to see, on looking at the list of retirement benefit increases, that the over-80s group are included and will get, as will everybody else, an increased pension under the Budget proposals.
One of the arguments in favour of pensions for that group was that they are a diminishing group. It seems to me that, in so far as one can foresee anything, elderly war widows in particular must also be a diminishing group and that there are some marked parallels. I should have thought that it ought not to be beyond the wit of two Government Departments to find a way of using this case as a precedent to help the war widows. I put this forward as a constructive suggestion which might be used in the argument.
Others who are far more experienced than I have spoken but I believe that, when we have looked at the admistrative case of these poor, unfortunate people and have studied the anomalies and unfairness of their situation, we should all remember that it is because they and their husbands have sacrificed everything that we are in a position to debate any benefits at all for our society.
2.34 p.m.
Lord BOURNE: My Lords, I ought to declare an interest straight away, in that I am president of the Officers' Pension Society and am therefore very much interested in this subject. The noble Lord, Lord Chelwood, is to be thanked

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for drawing this subject to your Lordships' attention, as are the other speakers, the noble Lord, Lord Banks, and the noble Baroness, Lady Young. I agree with everything they have said. However, if I highlight the position of the war widows, it is only because I feel that they have not done so. In my opinion, it is scandalous that as many as 5,000 war widows who are being paid £17·20 a month at the moment should have to go to supplementary benefit in order to sustain life. Last weekend, I saw a well-to-do widow who is 95; what she has to put up with, quite apart from the money, is terrible. As the noble Baroness, Lady Young, has said, we have unfortunately produced a system which one must be a genius to understand. I should like to underline what the noble Lord, Lord Chelwood, said: these war widows who are paid by the Department of Health and Social Security cannot sue their husband's employer because that employer is the Crown. They cannot cover the possibility of their husband's death by insurance and they have had the courts highlight the possibility of civil compensation to a terrific degree in Northern Ireland.
To turn to the Ministry of Defence, four types of pension exist and one must be quite a clever widow in order to discover which one is entitled to. There is the forces family pension fund, the modified force's family pension, the attributable forces family pension, which is dated from 31st March 1973, and the ex gratia payments. The only one we are interested in is the attributable pension which relates to cases where the husband has died since 31st March 1973. Before that date, the fund to which a widow could apply depended on the date of her husband's death or service or when she became a widow and she must be quite a clever woman to know which is which.
The noble Lord, Lord Chelwood, gave three conclusions. I should like to suggest that, although this is a very bad time to ask for extra money—indeed, we cannot do it—the Government could at least sort matters out as the noble Baroness, Lady Young, has suggested and could arrange priorities for the better time which is coming. Meantime, these widows are dying at the rate of 3,500 a year, and there are very many old ladies-25,000
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—whose widowhood dates from before World War I or up to World War II. That is over 30 per cent. of the 91,000 widows of whom we are speaking.
The noble Lord, Lord Chelwood, made a very interesting suggestion when he proposed that the Government should review these complicated pensions which are most unfair, and suggested that the very fact of publication of a review would, it itself, have a good effect. Lastly, I should like to suggest that the DHSS, which pays the war widows' pensions, ought to pay £10 or £12 a week more to war widows. After all, they suffered the factors which I mentioned earlier and they ought to be completely free. It is an absolute scandal that they have to go to supplementary benefits or to charity.
2.40 p.m.
Earl CATHCART: My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Chelwood, for giving us this opportunity today to debate war widows' pensions and the many anomalies which exist in that area. I strongly support his suggestion that there should be a White Paper now to up-date and identify the exact situation with regard to these regulations, which have grown over the years like Topsy and can now best be described as "a dog's dinner". A very large proportion of the 91,000 war widow pensioners who have been referred to receive no pension of any sort at all except the one war widows' pension from the Department of Health and Social Security. So although we are not debating the affairs of a very large group of people, they are nevertheless very important, and people we cannot afford to forget.
There are very many anomalies in the war widows' pension scheme, but I am going to stress only one of them. It is an anomaly in itself, and it is the tax that a war widow receiving the basic standard war widows' pension has to pay. It is that on which I propose to base most of my arguments today. The case has been argued many times before, but in my view the situation has changed radically so that it is now imperative to lift the preferential element of these pensions out of the controversial area of wages and incomes negotiations by making them tax-free. To do this would mean a reduction in revenue, according to my calculations, of £7 million a year.

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It is not practical to compare the fiscal arrangements of one country with those of another, but, nevertheless, as the noble Lord, Lord Chelwood, has said, there are 18 countries, including the United States, France, Germany, Canada and Japan, who award their war widows' pensions free of tax.
Admittedly, in step with the standard National Insurance widows' pension, the standard war widows' pension has risen since October 1974 from £10·10 a week to £17·20 a week and, as announced in the Budget, it will rise again on the 15th November to £19·80 a week, or just on £1,000 a year. But this pension is designed (and, as some noble Lords have already said, fails) to keep pace with inflation, and it is liable to taxation at the rate of £1·50 a wek, or £78 a year. The tax threshhold excludes from tax the standard widows' pension and the industrial widows' pension, but it does not exclude the war widows' pension, and that is what I want now to get excluded from tax. It therefore happens that the war preference element of a war widows' pension, which stands at just under £4 a week and has been maintained successfully by successive Governments at about 30 per cent. above the National Insurance standard widows' pension, is reduced and eroded by taxation down to 18 per cent.
The matter is further aggravated by the fact that the rise in the tax thresh-hold, forecast in the Budget, from £675 to £725 will, I understand, be subject to the current negotiations between the Government and the trade unions over tax and wage restraint. I do not wish to involve the House in other controversial matters, particularly when we are debating this subject, but I must say that it is from these controversial areas of negotiation that I would wish to exclude the war widows' pension. We live in times of powerful and active pressure groups. War widows are not powerful, and they cannot apply much pressure, but they want to share with their fellow countrymen the good things which they see all around them and which would have been theirs had their husbands not died on service. I think it is necessary to remind ourselves, as a number of noble Lords have done, of the reasons why the preferential element of the war widows' pension should be respected. When these
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war widows' pensions were first awarded in World War I and World War II (they were also awarded subsequently, but at that time), those two wars were still going on and were fresh in the minds of the public. At that time the nation felt not only a debt, but a strong sense of responsibility to these women. Time should not allow this sense of responsibility to be dimmed.
When I asked a Question on this subject last May and drew attention to the fact that a war widow living solely on her war widows' pension was now subjected to tax at the rate of £1·50 a week, I described the war widows' pension as "a memorial to her husband and his service to the country". That is exactly what it is. But these are sentimental arguments, and I believe we must find more practical arguments if we are going to justify any major adjustment in their pension. The noble Lord, Lord Chelwood, has outlined most of these, but I should like to stress that in most cases a war widow's husband died or was killed in the war in very special circumstances. In most cases he was doing his duty and obeying orders which he was not in a position to disobey, and under conditions which were utterly without parallel in normal civilian or industrial life. As a member of the Armed Forces he could play no part in negotiating his terms or conditions of service, nor in his rates of pay or pension.
The other point which the noble Lord, Lord Chelwood, mentioned merely emphasised the need to respect this war widows' pension element. How can you justify it to a war widow that the little extra pension that a man or woman receives as a result of losing a limb through service is tax-free, whereas the little extra preference which she gets because her husband was killed on war service is taxed? The whole problem was caused, in my opinion, by a bad ruling given by the Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1919—the year in which I was born, incidentally—when he said that, "war widows' pension was paid in augmentation of income diminished by death". Of course, it is much more than that, as I have tried to point out. Incidentally, the Royal Warrant which deals with pensions, including war widows' pensions, spells it out that the pension is compensation for death or injury. That

2215
would not appear to be in agreement with what the Chancellor of the Exchequer said in 1919. What I am trying to argue is that the war widows' pension in general and the preference element in particular should be tax-free, and I regard this as a debt of honour owed to these women by the nation.
2.49 p.m.
Lord HOUGHTON of SOWERBY: My Lords, I am sure that we are all very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Chelwood, for raising this matter. He made an attempt to do so on a previous occasion, when it got rather mixed up with supplementary benefit, and the issues did not come out so clearly then as they have done today. The term "war widows" suggests to many people today a legacy of the past rather than a current and continuing claim upon the sympathy and resources of the nation, and it is the latter that we must keep before people today. While paying tribute to the sacrifices and the valour of those who fought, in war, for freedom, the dreadful consequences, the legacies of loneliness and bereavement, are easily forgotten. There are many clamorous voices in the economy today and the reasonable claims of war widows should not be overlooked.
I thought that the noble Lord, Lord Chelwood, was altogether too modest and restrained. One should not let feelings about public expenditure mute the demand for justice. After all, the whole of the Government's pensions policy, notwithstanding the economic difficulties of today, is to uphold the position of those who no longer are able to recover falling values in their domestic resources by demands for pay increases and for additions to emoluments of various kinds. War widows are heavily dependent on the State. They cannot get benefits from increased National Insurance contributions of others. It is therefore upon public expenditure that the war widows must rely. The economists are now drawing a distinction between expenditure which makes a demand on resources and expenditure which is a transfer payment, a transfer of purchasing power from one part of the community to another. So I do not think that we need be unduly afraid of public expenditure in this connection.
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May I, however, make a comment for a moment on a matter which I do not think provides the remedy, and that is taxation relief. The noble Earl, Lord Cathcart, mentioned it a moment ago and it was referred to in earlier speeches. There is no administrative difficulty about this. It is just as easy to exempt a war widow's pension as to exempt a disablement pension—and a disablement pension is exempted. Moreover, we realise that the taxation systems of many other countries provide for tax exemption of war widows pensions. It is, perhaps, that we have a convention of relativities and comparative justice which it is extremely difficult to overcome. We are more sensitive to degrees of fairness, perhaps, than one sees in the systems of other countries. One raises the question of the exemption of war widows' pensions: and immediately there is the question of the police pension, of the fireman's pension, of the industrial injuries pension and all deaths which are violent or caused by disease consequent upon one's vocation or service, other pensions in the public services due to death on duty by accident or even more violent treatment by vandals and others.
This is the problem. It does not stop at the war widows in the sort of atmosphere in which we look at comparative justice in our tax system. Moreover, tax exemption benefits only those who are tax liable and many of the war widows are not tax liable so that tax exemption would confer nothing on them. If we are going to have a tax exemption system as a part remedy for the problem of war widows, we must go to the Government's proposals for a combination of pay increase and tax reliefs so that those who do not get the benefit of tax relief get the benefit of tax money. I am sure that we would not wish to translate that complicated exercise which will occur in another place for some weeks to come and transplant it into the field of war widows.
In my opinion it is better to discard the tax exemption concession in this connection. We have debated it time and time again. We never get anywhere with it. With great respect, I am sure it is no good raising it now in the hope that therein lies the remedy. It does not. It lies in the straight movement towards adjustment of the amount of

2217
pensions so that we know what they are and taxation can take its part of the additional resources in the ordinary course of the incidence of taxation of citizens generally.
The noble Baroness, Lady Young, made an extremely penetrating speech on this complicated subject in the space of a few minutes. I wish I could do it as succinctly and as briefly; but I shall not keep your Lordships very long. The real mischief of the complexities of the war widow's pension scheme is that it represents the failure of successive Ministers of Defence to overcome the resistance of the Treasury. It represents the Treasury view of remedying things for the future without giving corresponding benefits to the existing people. This is the old way in which the Treasury introduce reforms for future beneficiaries and do nothing for the people who are already claiming their pensions. That is very largely the explanation. Ministers of Defence have not been able to get a comprehensive reform and they have had to put up with piecemeal changes which benefit future and not the past beneficiaries. I believe that this question of war widows pension should now be looked at by a small and independent committee so that they can report to the public what condition these pensions are in—which is pretty dreadful.
I sympathise with the noble Baroness, Lady Young, in trying to understand what is the real significance of these pensions. We have an attributable forces family pension. What is it? It is payable to all widows whose husbands gave service on or after 31st March 1973 and whose death in service was attributable, or whose death after attributable invalidity was attributable. What do you make of that? Yet this is the brief definition of a form of war widows' pension. It means that if you have got an invalid pension which is attributable to war service and you die then, at the end of it, you may get this extra pension for your death being attributable to a attributable condition of invalidism arising from war service. My explanation is just as intelligible as the original definition.
My Lords, I will conclude by saying that we should not, in my view, confine ourselves to what the noble Lord, Lord Chelwood, called a token gesture. With respect, we do not want a token gesture.
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We want a revision of these pensions which will bring intelligibility and justice into an extremely anomalous code of war widows' pension. I think that that is what we ought to press for. I hope that this short opportunity of giving support to the noble Lord will excite a renewed interest in this subject, fresh determination to get something down, and impress that view firmly on the representative of the Government on the Front Bench here.
2.58 p.m.
Baroness WARD of NORTH TYNESIDE: My Lords, I am delighted to have this opportunity to take part in this very important debate. The noble Lord, Lord Chelwood, outlined, as have so many other speakers, the problems which must be solved. If I may say so to my noble friend Lady Young, I was delighted to hear her speech and I would remind her that sooner or later she will be in a position—if we have not won the battle before then, which I hope we shall—a distinguished and able position, to be able to see that our Manifesto, at any rate, deals with this matter in detail. I have always believed that Part of the problem of dealing with injustices is that sometimes they are forgotten when Manifestoes are being drawn up; or if Manifestoes are drawn up something happens and they are not implemented. So I say to my noble friend that I hope she will see that when our manifesto is drawn up, if we have not won the battle, that it will be included; and then if we have the chance—which I hope we shall—it will be implemented.
I am in favour, as a matter of fact, of a tax reduction. I have lived a long time and remember very well both world wars. I also understand that at the end of the First World War the recommendation was that war service widows' pensions should be tax-free. That is a very long time ago and we never implemented that recommendation, which I find very disturbing and very distressing.
I also want to repeat—because this is important—that 18 countries, both those who were our allies and our enemies, pay their war widows their pensions free of tax. That is a very good idea. Because I like giving credit where credit is due, one other point is that several noble Lords mentioned the over-80 pensions, which were introduced fairly recently, I

2219
think the date was about 1958. I should like to say—sometimes I like to "bump up" my own Government—that that was as a result of a Private Bill introduced by Airey Neave in the House of Commons. The fight he had with my Government to get that is unbelievable.
Though I am a good supporter of my own Government, there are occasions when I am not such a good supporter, and I never mind saying it because everybody has their own priorities and has to fight for them; nothing comes easily. If all the facts that have been outlined today from both sides of the House were really presented to the country, I am certain that the country as a whole would be in favour of action.
I am now going to be a little immodest, because I remember a number of years ago when I was in another place, where I was a Member for 38½ years—I do not think I was a traditional Member of another place any more than I think I am a traditional Member of this distinguished House—a debate took place on this issue in your Lordships' House. I cannot remember whether anything emerged from it. It was when my Government were in power. I remember thinking how galling it was that when really good debates took place which dealt with injustice and matters on which the country wanted action taken, hardly anything which was said in debates in the House of Lords appeared in the Press.
I thought then that I must do something to try to help those who were then debating the pensions issue in the House of Lords. I walked down to the House of Commons and sat on the Government Front Bench. I remember the noble Lord, Lord Redmayne, who happened then to be my Chief Whip in the other place, came down and looked at me—I was sitting in the Prime Minister's place—and said, "Have you lunched too well?" I replied that I had not. He said, "Have you gone mad?" I said, "No." The House of Commons were discussing passports and I was then grateful to a Member of the Labour Party (who were then in Opposition) because a Member said, "Could the Foreign Secretary kindly say what sort of a passport has been handed to the honourable lady to entitle her to sit on the Govern-
2220
ment Front Bench?" I had sat on the Front Bench because I knew that at any rate would interest the Press. Of course as soon as I left the Chamber—I did it all very politely and quietly—the Press surrounded me and I said, "I am trying to ensure that the debate in the House of Lords on Service pensions will be properly reported, and I am giving them support in taking this rather unconstitutional action." And indeed the debate in the Lords was reported in the Press.
That was very many years ago. Here we are today, all these years later, still having to ask for justice for war widows' pensions. This distresses me enormously. The work which has to be done to deal with an injustice depends so much on how much the country knows, because the country is very realistic. It will support wholeheartedly any action to remedy injustice if it knows about it. I have been delighted to hear so many of my noble friends say today that we ought to have a White Paper and we ought to have proper Press coverage. Perhaps one of these great firms which always seems to be advertising things could be persuaded to advertise the position of the pensioners. We might then get a result from that. That is all I have to say on that. But, after all those years during which I was trying to help noble Lords, I suddenly find myself in this House, and I am very honoured to be here. Yet I wonder what I can now do to add to the representations and requests that have been made.
I am not a very emotional person and so cannot do a great deal to encourage the Minister; but I should like to say this about tax relief which has been adversely referred to by several speakers: surely the Chancellor of the Exchequer has brought into focus the advantages of tax relief. He has already created a precedent in that way, and if a precedent has been created by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, even though one may not very much like his other policies, by this means he has the chance to let people know that the tax relief, where it is due, is very good for people. Certainly, those people who cannot obtain tax relief must have increased pensions.
My Lords, that is all I have to say, except to repeat how glad I am to be here and how proud I was of the title that I achieved in another place of

2221
"Irene-Small-Fixed Incomes"! I believe that, if we can all work together to do away with this particular injustice, all of us will have made a contribution that will be welcomed by the country as a whole and by many people who really deserve to have whatever the country can afford to give them.
3.9 p.m.
Viscount BRIDGEMAN: My Lords, when my noble friend Lord Chelwood asked me to support this Motion, I told him I should be delighted to do so but that I might be no more than a voice from the past. Though I did a certain amount of work on this subject when my Party were in Opposition at the time of the Attlee Government, I must confess that in the years between I have "somewhat wearied in well-doing" even in this good cause. But then I console myself by thinking that this problem of pensions probably follows the French proverb to the effect that, "The more things change the more they remain the same:" Every word I have heard so far in this debate convinces me that is absolutely true.
My noble friend Lord Chelwood gave an extraordinarily clear outline of the problem, though time did not allow it to be more than an outline. Perhaps that is just as well, because in my opinion the Floor of this House is not and never has been a place where one can attempt detailed arguments on rates and differtials of the sort that win or lose the day when a subject like this is concerned. The only place where that can be done is inside a Department and the only people who can do that are the civil servants who discuss these complicated details with the outside bodies, whose duty it is to monitor the cases of people who ought to have pensions.
Of those bodies, the two most important ones are the Officers' Pensions Society and the British Legion. Only those who have seen this sort of work done at close quarters can have any idea of the complexity of the work and of the patience required to get the solution one wants without interfering with all sorts of other impacts which the decisions may have. I know a little about this, if only for the reason that just after the Armistice in the First World War I was at a Brigade Headquarters where I met a sergeant in the Royal Fusiliers: one of the clerks,
2222
whose name was A. G. Webb. We made friends and never lost touch. He became one of the original permanent officers of the British Legion specialising in pensions, and it was through his skill, devotion and patience that the code for dealing with the Ministry of Pensions, as it was then, and the British Legion was built up. I should like to take this opportunity of paying tribute to the standards he set and the lines he laid down, which have not altered very much in the years between.
These pension problems can range over a very wide field. Those who were in the House listening to the recent Motion concerning Far-East Prisoners of War moved by my noble friend Lord Gridley, will probably have realised that most of the cases brought up were one-off cases. They were individual cases, most of which could probably be dealt with by exercising discretion in the Department. Then one goes to the opposite extreme with a case involving a major principle. The one which comes to my mind happened some years ago—I believe it was a judgment by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning. This went by the name of "Fit for service, fit for pension" and there was every sort of pension case in between. Thus, with the best will in the world, the pension machinery gets out of gear, if it has not been overhauled in recent years, just like any other machine.
There are various forces at work which cause this to happen. One is the ordinary matter of inflation another is the fact that two Departments are concerned with the administration of pensions. This is done largely by the Department of Health and Social Security, but also, as my noble friend Lord Chelwood has pointed out, by the Ministry of Defence. Here I may raise a query about what he said, because I am not certain that the Ministry of Defence is the right Ministry on which to centralise these matters. That may need a careful look, because I hate the idea, which I have met before, that if a matter is dealt with by the Ministry of Defence one gets ludicrous arguments raised as to the relative importance of doing justice to war widows and supplying the British Army with tanks.
There is another matter which, every now and then, causes trouble; that is, the difference between certain pensions being administered under Statute and

2223
others being administered under the Royal Prerogative. If a pension is administered under the Royal Prerogative it means, in practice, that it is entirely under the control of the Treasury. So that, as former speakers have already said, this points to the need for regular reviews of the position and regular consultations with outside bodies. If I am right in believing that the last review—if it really was a review—was in 1971, then surely the time has now come for another. I do not mean appointing a time-wasting committee; I mean Departmental discussions of the kind that I have tried to indicate. If those discussions are not properly carried out, then the White Paper, if it appears, will be worth no more than the paper it is printed on.
But such a procedure will stand or fall—and it always has stood or fallen—on how hard Ministers have it in mind to make their civil servants try; how hard they mean to beat down the delaying arguments of the Treasury, which is what the Treasury are there for. That is why the noble Lord, Lord Houghton of Sowerby, was absolutely right in what he said in his speech. In my experience, there has been not too much difference in the attitudes of Ministers of Governments of either Party to this problem. I wish I could say that, in my opinion, my own Party when in Government have always succeeded in overcoming the resistance of the Treasury. I hope that when they are again in Office they will do so, and that, in the meantime, the present Government will proceed in the way I have tried to indicate. If Ministers feel that Parliament is behind them, then I have no doubt that they will be fortified in dealing with this task—and I appreciate the difficulty and toughness of it—of forcing people inside the Departments to get on with the job, and produce a result which they will be proud to announce in this House.
Before I end, may I give a tail-piece? I sometimes wonder whether these short debates would be better if they were related to each other, which the present two debates are not. If, for example, the noble Lord, Lord Bradwell, had moved a Motion to call attention to alleged squandering of public money on social security, we should have had two very interesting debates which we could
2224
have compared with each other, and the moral might easily have turned out to be one of straining at gnats and swallowing camels.
3.18 p.m.
Baroness VICKERS: My Lords, first may I join in the congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Chelwood, on choosing this subject for this short debate. I should also like to thank him for the years in which he has taken an interest, not only in this part of the service but in all parts, and we have benefited from his period in the other House. I agree with the noble Viscount, Lord Bridgeman, about not having the benefits administered by the Ministry of Defence. It would be very much better to leave them with the Department of Health and Social Security, because they handle the other benefits and could therefore combine the two. If the benefits are administered by the Ministry of Defence, they will obviously have to keep in touch with the other Department, whereas if they are administered by the Department of Health and Social Security they will be able to calculate all the benefits together. I should also like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Houghton of Sowerby, for joining in this debate, because by doing so not only do we have the benefit of his wisdom—and I agree with what he said about pensions and taxation—but he has also made this debate into an all-Party one, which is essential for this kind of discussion.
I should like to draw attention to a debate which I initiated on 2nd August 1972, and which is reported at column 567 of the Official Report, on this very subject. That, too, was an all-Party debate and I was very glad when an ex-Minister for the Navy joined in. I should also like to draw attention to what was said by Mr. A. V. Alexander, as he then was, on 11th May 1949. He said:
"As honourable Members are aware"—
this was said in the other House—
"a review was initiated some time ago into the long established scheme of non-contributory pensions for the widows and orphans of regular members of the Armed Forces. While this review was in progress His Majesty's Government decided to promote a family pension…. Agreement has been given in principle to the introduction of such a new and comprehensive scheme for the Forces and details are being worked out as quickly

2225
as possible."—[Official Report, Commons, 11/5/49; col. 1850.]
That was 27 years ago. I hope that we shall not have to wait another 27 years before we put this matter in order, because it is very important.
May I draw attention to another aspect. In the past it was possible to give compensation. Following, for example, the sinking of HMS "Sansomarez" and HMS "Volage" off Corfu, pensions were awarded to the widows and orphans of the officers and men who lost their lives. These pensions were paid in accordance with the rates laid down in the Order in Council of 4th June, 1946. However, these payments were considered to be not pensions but compensation, and this was another anomaly.
I am very glad, of course, that ex gratia payments have been made to the widows of men killed by terrorists in Northern Ireland, but the difficulty arises of those men who were killed in Malaysia, in Aden and in Indonesia. Regrettably they have not been so well treated. At a Royal British Legion Conference which commemorated 50 years of the work of this excellent organisation Lord Mountbatten said:
"It is painful to sit here and realise that we are behind every Commonwealth country in the treatment of widows. Why is it that year after year Governments are so hard-hearted about it?"
We are considering the matter again today and I hope that we shall not be hardhearted. It has been stated more than once by Ministers of both Governments that,
"Hardship should at least be mitigated by supplementary benefits, by rebates and other provisions."
This statement was made on 26th January, 1970, in col. 972, Volume 794, of the Official Report. These benefits, however, are limited and do not work out very adequately. For the Navy there is also what is known as the Greenwich Pension Fund. I have applied many times for that Fund, but have not always been successful. If, therefore, we have to go outside pensions and supplementary benefits to other voluntary funds it shows that if they qualify, as they often do, for the Fund these people are very hard up.
Another point which was made by the noble Lord, Lord Houghton of Sowerby,
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with regard to pensions related to a man who loses a limb. If a man has bad lungs as a result of a war wound and receives a 100 per cent. pension, his widow loses that pension when he dies because he did not die at the time of the injury. This causes great hardship for the widow. As I understand it, there are at least five categories of Service widows pensions, with two cut-off dates. There is one cut-off date for pre-1950 widows and another for 1950–1972 widows who receive what is known as a half pension. Another difficulty arises. For example, a man was killed in 1943. Had he lived for another 2½ months he would have completed six years on active service, but as he did not live that much longer his widow receives no pension.
The people for whom we are pleading today are very proud, and all that they are asking this House to do today is to consider what they consider to be their right. These widows did not have the usual type of married life. The older wives of men in the Navy were often separated from their husbands for at least three years at a time, and many of them had to move home time and time again. In the early days, pay was very low, so few of the older ones had the chance to save any money at all, while others were unable to accumulate money because of the extra expense of educating their children. If we do not pay to widows an adequate amount of money, it may eventually interfere with recruitment, for who will go into the Services? Obviously the time will come when a man wants to get married. He will realise that even in these days he may easily be killed while on duty. Then he leaves his widow in a very unhappy situation as compared with her civilian friends. This does not help with recruiting.
When a similar debate was held in another place the Minister ended by saying:
"I know that again I have disappointed the House on this problem. I assure my honourable friends and honourable gentlemen opposite that I have looked at this again with great care and sympathy."
I suggest that today we do not want just sympathy, we want action. When the noble Lord replies, I hope he will tell us that he intends to set up a Committee to review the whole situation, so that when

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the time comes we are prepared to take some action.
3.25 p.m.
Lord SANDYS: My Lords, I too should like to support my noble friend Lord Chelwood and all those who have spoken so eloquently in this short debate in bringing to the attention of the Government a matter which most urgently requires their investigation and redress. In the past I have done some research into the particular issue raised in regard to exemption from taxation, referred to by several noble Lords and especially by my noble friend Lord Cathcart.
If I may have the attention of the noble Lord the Minister who is to reply, I am holding in my hands a very important document. This document contains the First and Second Special Reports of the Select Committee on Pensions which met in 1919. I think it would be for the benefit of future research into this subject if I were to put on the current public record the comments which arise on this particular issue, appearing on page LVI. They said this:
"We recommend that all wives', widows', children's and dependants' flat-rate pensions and allowances being in fact payments on account of disability should, so far as not at present exempt, be freed from tax, and that in the case of alternative pensions an analagous allowance be made."
This is an important recommendation. It was one of the earliest made and it is a matter of special interest to your Lordships. I listened with interest to the speech made by the noble Lord, Lord Banks, who said that he did not particularly mind whether or not pensions were exempt provided the thresholds of tax were right. In that I very much agree with him, and I believe that in this respect he and the noble Lord, Lord Houghton of Sowerby, who cast doubt on the merit of this particular case, would come to one purpose.
It seems to me that there are two ways of setting about it. Nevertheless, I believe that this recommendation of the Select Committee on pensions as long ago as 1919 is a very important one. Governments have consistently ignored it and other kindred matters, no doubt for reasons given by the noble Lord, Lord Houghton. Nevertheless, I feel that this
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is a matter worth investigating and I join with other noble Lords in recommending to the Government that there is a very strong case for an Interdepartmental Working Party to examine the situation in much greater detail and to report.
If I may draw your Lordships' attention to a particular matter mentioned by my noble friend Lord Bridgeman, it is the conflict over the two Departments concerned; and if I may concentrate it still further, it is the question of whether a pension arises from an Act of Parliament, that being a statutory right, or under a Royal Warrant, that being a bounty. It is a matter of history that during the First World War there were no less than five Acts of Parliament which dealt with this and a very large number of Supplementary Orders, hence the complications, the thickets and the enormous amount of bureaucratic entaglements with which we have to deal. I think there is the strongest case for returning to a comment made, again in the Second Report which, with your Lordships' indulgence, I should like to quote, which brings this matter into focus so far as the widow is concerned. At paragraph 2184 the evidence says:
"As a matter of substance when a Royal Warrant says that a man is to have something, provided the machinery is good for carrying out that order, it really does not matter to the man whether the right rests on Royal Warrant or an Act of Parliament".
Here is a very important conflict. It is a matter of fact that when a Royal Warrant is issued, it cannot be amended or altered; it is supplemented at a later date by a future Warrant, and that those who were entitled under the previous Warrant are not to be entitled except under special provisions of a later piece of legislation. Herein lies much of the complication once again.
My Lords, I should like to make one final comment which relates to what my noble friend Lady Young said. She quoted the particular cases of two widows, now respectively 89 and 91 years old, who formed part of that very small class, about 25,000 in number, of widows from the First World War and subsequently. Their numbers may be small, but it should surely be a matter, as the noble Earl, Lord Cathcart, said, which would be a question of a debt of honour for this country to remedy.
3.32 p.m.
Lord PAGET of NORTHAMPTON: My Lords, may I commence by apologising to the noble Earl, Lord Cathcart, for rising in my seat earlier. I am afraid I had missed his name. May I further say how much I agreed with the last thing he said in his speech. I should also like to express my gratitude to the noble Lord, Lord Chelwood, for having raised this matter, and for having worked so hard in this sphere for so many years, both in this House and in another place where we used to sit together. For my part, I find myself in very great agreement and support what he said.
I do not believe exemption from taxation is an answer here. While we have progressive taxation, exemption from taxation always means that we give most to those who have most. I do not think it is the right way to deal with this problem. I revert to the principle which I have always held, and to which the noble Lord, Lord Sandys, referred at the end of his speech: that is, that it is dishonourable for a Government to pay its obligations in bad money. That is what the principle of parity is about. Governments pay their obligations in bad money, and they pay their most sacred and oldest obligations in their worst money—for those are the ones who receive the money which has most depreciated.
If one takes just as an example the position of the young widow of a colonel who may have been killed the other day in Ulster, and compare her with the very old lady whose husband, also a colonel, was killed on the Somme, I do not think our obligation to the younger widow is five times our obligation to the older. But that is the difference in the pension. This, I believe, is a matter of honour. When and if, as I hope it will be, this matter is reconsidered, as the noble Viscount, Lord Bridgeman, says, the question of parity should be considered very strongly indeed. It may be, perhaps, that so many of those old ladies having now died, it is cheaper to be honourable. But I think this is still a matter of honour, and one which Her Majesty's Government ought to recognise.
3.35 p.m.
Baroness MACLEOD of BORVE: My Lords, I apologise for intervening at this stage and not putting my name down to make a full speech at the beginning of the
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day. I was not certain that I could be here, because of a long court case, to hear the opening speech of my noble friend Lord Chelwood. I think perhaps I am right in saying that I am the only person here today who, albeit for only a short time, has been a war widow. My first husband was killed at the very beginning of the Second World War.
My Lords, I wanted to add a few words to the many words of wisdom that we have heard this afternoon, and particularly to thank all those who have not perhaps had the experience of being war widows for all that they are doing on their behalf now. I do not include just the Members of your Lordships' House. There are many other organisations helping, from all ages and all kinds of people, and I think the widows themselves owe these organisations and your Lordships a very great debt of gratitude.
I have heard, through many letters that I have received, of the enormous number of anomalies in the pension system, and I think that this has come out very clearly in the debate this afternoon. I hope that the Government will take note of the various ideas that have been put forward; that they will have either a committee to look into it, or in any case to bring into public recognition the fact that these people are in many cases in very great need and trouble. I hope that this debate today will prod the Government into doing something for the war widows in particular.
3.37 p.m.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, for many years the noble Lord, Lord Chelwood, has championed the cause of war pensioners and their families, and I do not think I have heard him more eloquent than he was today in putting forward the case for war widows. I have read, he may be surprised to know, the Hansard of your Lordships' House and of another place where he has raised this matter over a number of years. I want to say that I am sure that he speaks for everybody, because we agree basically and fundamentally with the things that he has said, with the sentiments he has expressed.
I want to try to show that successive Governments have given special treatment to war widows, although it is a truism that no Government are ever able to do all that they would like to do to

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assist those groups of people who look to them for help. Reference has been made by my noble friend Lord Houghton to the penetrating analysis which, I was going to say, my noble friend on the Opposition Front Bench, Lady Young, made. I think I would quarrel with her in only one way. When they speak the Front Bench opposite are getting into a very bad habit, of always implying that the faults of the present time lay with this Government. The noble Baroness is no exception. She said, in a quite determined way, that something ought to be done; she said it is quite disgraceful that this situation should have arisen, and that it should be reviewed now.
But since the war we have had no fewer than 18 years of Conservative Governments. At one period they had nine successive years in Office. What happened? Was there any special review? Was there any special committee set up? Was any sincere and sustained effort made to try to deal with this situation? I realise the difficulties that have faced this country for a good many years, probably ever since 1945, and I do not lay that at their door, but they must not lay it at our door, either. If by any chance I should ever find myself on the other side of this Chamber, I shall take the earliest possible opportunity of reminding the noble Baroness of that and asking what she is doing about it.
Lord CARR of HADLEY: My Lords, would the noble Lord say whether, at any time during those years he mentioned, inflation has ever reached 20 per cent. and 25 per cent?
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I do not know whether I can ask the noble Lord whether, at any time prior to this Government, any serious attempt was made in granting pensions to see that they kept pace with the cost of living and inflation. I think I know what the answer is.
I do not want to talk about eligibility for pensions because the noble Lord, Lord Chelwood, dealt with that in considerable detail. What I want to say is that the latest available figures show that pensions are drawn by about 90,000 war widows, including nearly 4,000 who are resident outside the United Kingdom and all of whom get the benefit of
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increases in pension as soon as they are payable in Britain. Approximately 24,000 are widows of the 1914 war.
The noble Lord's Motion states that the present pensions are inadequate. As I have said, no Government are ever able to help worthy causes as much as they would like. When we consider the provisions made for other groups, all competing for limited resources—and I think that we must keep this in the forefront of our minds—and the continuing, almost ever-growing demands that are being made by other sections in the community who are less fortunately placed than many of us, it is not possible to do all that one would like to do. But I cannot agree that the war widows have been left behind to such an extent as is believed, I think, by certain noble Lords who have spoken this afternoon. I do not think that it is generally appreciated how much provision is made for war widows, nor the extent to which they receive preference over other groups who look to the State for help.
Taking the standard war widow's pension (of which I think the noble Lord, Lord Banks, reminded us) payable to the widow of an Army private, the present rate is £17·20 a week. This is £3·90, or again, as the noble Lord reminded us, 30 per cent. higher than the pension payable to a widow under National Insurance. So there is this extra amount of money, and I am not complaining about that. It is, as I said, £3·90 or 30 per cent. higher. That figure will go up to £19·80 in November of this year. I think we could argue that this is not sufficient, but at least it shows that we and, for that matter, previous Governments, because of the 30 per cent., have always tried to do something a little more and a little better for war widows.
What have not been mentioned this afternoon—at least I do not think so, and I think I have heard every word of the debate in your Lordships' House—are the additional allowances. There is, for instance, an additional allowance of £6·70 a week payable for the first dependent child, with a slightly lower rate payable for subsequent children, for whom family allowance is also payable. A widow who has title to allowances for children may also be entitled to a rent allowance of up to £6·70 per week, and an educational allowance of up to £120 a year.

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These are additional allowances, all tax-free, and neither the rent allowance nor the education allowance has any counterpart whatever in the National Insurance Scheme. When one is assessing the situation one must take into account these additional allowances.
Reference has been made to older widows. It may be argued that it is all very well for the younger widow with children—and perhaps I should say that we are still paying allowances for about 7,000 children—but what about the elderly widows, those in the twilight of their lives who are no longer able to go out to work even if they wish to do so? I suggest that they have not been forgotten. They receive an age allowance, which is another unique preference for war widows. As has been mentioned, on reaching her 65th birthday she receives an extra £1·70 a week. This is doubled, to £3·40, when she reaches 70, so that the 70-year-old war widow is receiving at present at least £20·60 a week. I am not saying that that is a princely sum; I am saying that it is appreciably higher than widows who are receiving the widow's pension under National Insurance. These allowances will go up in November.
On top of this, it is estimated that about two-thirds of war widows over 60 also receive two State pensions; that is, their war widow's pension plus the age allowances for 65 and over, and a retirement pension based on contributions that they have paid during their working life. That is as to 60 per cent. their number. That, too, has to be taken into account if we are to look fairly and squarely at the situation. That, briefly, is an outline of what war widows get from the War Pensions Scheme administered by the Department of Health and Social Security.
Lord BOURNE: My Lords, why is it, then, that the noble Lord, Lord Chelwood, and I both used the word "scandalous" when pointing out that 5,000 of these war widows go for supplementary benefit?
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: I shall be dealing with the question of supplementary benefits before I finish, my Lords, and I shall also refer to that figure of 5,000. If the noble Lord will be patient, he will see that I do not run away from that question. First, however, I want
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to say something about the Armed Forces Pension Scheme, a matter which was touched on by the noble Baroness, Lady Vickers. We come now to what I believe to be the crux of the noble Lord's argument today and the cause of the wide disparity in pension income to which Lord Chelwood refers. I referred to the additional pension payable to the younger Service widows of today by their late husbands' employer, in this case the Ministry of Defence. I must stress right away that this pension has no connection, as noble Lords know, with the Government's War Pension Schemes and it is in fact, as the noble Lord, Lord Banks, said, an occupational pension scheme.
The noble Baroness, Lady Vickers, asked about who would join the Army today having regard to what is paid out. It is precisely to deal with that kind of situation that the Ministry of Defence introduced the Armed Forces Pension Scheme. It was to enable the Services to offer a worthwhile career to recruits. The Ministry of Defence revised the terms of the Armed Forces Pension Scheme in 1970 so that the occupational pension available to all ranks of the Regular Services was on a par with the best occupational schemes in the public and private sectors. Because it is an occupational scheme, the normal pension is related to rank and, therefore, earnings and the length of service and is, as I have already said, confined to Regular Servicemen.
This was done in order to encourage men to make the Army a career and to see that their widows and children were adequately provided for. As the revised scheme was introduced only in 1973, your Lordships will appreciate that, at present, it is mainly the younger widows of Servicemen killed in the Northern Ireland troubles who are benefiting from enhanced terms for dependants. Your Lordships may be interested to know that, at the last count, there are about 150 of these widows receiving a war widow's pension. I realise that the widows of the 1914–1918 and 1939–1945 wars must often wonder why the present-day war widows seem to get so much more money than they ever got. I believe the answer is that the good pension scheme for present-day Servicemen is provided by their employers, and not by the DHSS or any other Government Department.

2235
It has often been asked why the scheme could not have been made retrospective to include the elderly widows from the earlier wars. It is, however, a basic principle of occupational schemes in the public service that improvements which are introduced from time to time apply only after the date of introduction. I believe that the noble Lord, Lord Banks, will agree that that is so. If we had to give complete retrospection every time a new scheme was introduced, there would never be any advance, given the available resources existing at the time. In making improvements to pensions, therefore, there is a basic choice between, on the one hand, giving a relatively large increase to those now serving (or who will serve in the future) and their dependants or, on the other hand, giving smaller benefits which are not confined to these groups, but are extended backwards to those who have already retired or their dependants. In practice successive Governments have consistently adopted the first course; that is, they have opted for better improvements which are not made retrospective because of the cost involved. This has been the policy not only of the present Government but of a succession of Governments. It may be something which ought to be looked at and it may well be that, as the noble Baroness, Lady Young, said, something ought to be done about it, but it is principle which underlies and has underlain the granting of war pensions.
Noble Lords will know that, as retrospection has been ruled out, the possibility of equalising payments under the two schemes in various ways has been considered from time to time. However, the view has always been taken that this cannot be done, mainly because we are not comparing like with like. I have already explained that the Armed Forces Pensions Scheme compensates a Regular Serviceman or his dependant for the loss—and that is what is important—of a Service career. On the other hand, the War Pensions Scheme is concerned solely with disability or death from Service causes. Perhaps it can be summed up by saying that the Ministry of Defence has inaugurated a scheme for the benefit of what I shall describe as the professional soldier and that the DHSS is the Government Department responsible for looking after the dependants of such a soldier or,
2236
in the case of the soldier himself, if he is disabled, the wartime Serviceman. I believe that that is probably the distinction.
Apart from the essential difference between the two schemes, the cost of equating them would be about double the present cost. The noble Lord, Lord Banks, gave the figures. He will not mind if I say that they were accurate; I would not expect them to be otherwise. To give parity to all war widows would cost about £100 million a year. Clearly we could not equalise war widows' pensions without doing the same for war disabled pensioners, which would mean that the combined cost would be about £250 million a year. The question would arise as to whether in that case we ought not to do something precisely the same for civilian disabled, because they would say that their position was on a par with the war disabled. At the moment I do not know where it would stop.
It has been suggested that if we cannot give full parity, the matter could be resolved by giving war pensioners and widows a sizeable increase in their pensions. This still does not get over the fact that the two schemes are entirely different. To give increases in pensions under the war pensions scheme would not reduce the disparity in pension income, because even those widows covered by the new occupational scheme, and already receiving a higher income than the older war widow, would also receive the general increase. So disparity is not overcome at all. Your Lordships know that the Government have ensured that all State beneficiaries have kept ahead of inflation by increases in the rates of pensions and allowances, and war pensioners have also maintained their preference. There need be no cause for concern about that, as my right honourable friend the former Secretary of State made clear in her Statement in another place on 7th April.
Any additional money available in the past few years has been used to introduce new benefits for all severely disabled people and their helpers; for example, there has been the attendance allowance, the mobility allowance and the invalid care allowance, which is shortly to be introduced. Some severely disabled people, some who have been like that from birth, had no benefit at all to help to make

2237
their lives a little less difficult. This, too, is a matter which any Government who are concerned about the way in which some people live, and the difficulties under which they exist, must take into account. I do not think that anyone would suggest that these people should have to do without some financial help. We see the plight of such people around us; most of us could think of two or three immediately. The Government—I do not say this in any pious sense—would like to do more for all the people who look to them for help, but the age old problem of never having enough resources to satisfy everyone is still with us, and will be for some time. I am sure that it always will be, to a certain extent. But the more resources become available, the more we can meet unmet needs. It must be our priority from new resources to try to meet unmet needs.
I do not know whether I can say very much on overseas comparisons. I do not know how one makes comparisons when perhaps standards of living, incomes and overhead expenses are all different. But the relevant factors are such items as the purchasing power of the pension, the full range of compensation provided, and the availability of social services and I am talking about medical and hospital treatment. It is these things which ultimately determine the real value of one's income. We cannot close our eyes to that fact. Therefore I find it difficult to make comparisons with the situation overseas.
It was not my intention to say much about the tax position, but it has been mentioned and so it might be helpful if I say something about it. As the noble Earl, Lord Cathcart, pointed out, the tax policy is entirely the responsibility of the Chancellor, and the subject will no doubt be considered in another place quite extensively—probably too extensively—in the weeks to come. In recent months most war widows have come into the tax field because the regular increases in pension have meant that, even if their only income is their war widow's pension, their income outstrips their tax allowances. The Government have been faced, as were previous Governments, with renewed demands to take war widows' pensions out of taxation altogether. Our view—it certainly is the Government's view at the present
2238
moment, and it accords with the view taken by our predecessors when they were in Office—is that this would not be justified. The view has not changed since 1919, which was the year that the noble Earl mentioned, when the then Chancellor of the Exchequer decided it was necessary to distinguish between war disablement pensions, which were untaxed by analogy with workmen's compensation, and the war widows' pensions, which were regarded as maintenance payments payable, not for disablement, as the noble Earl said, but in augmentation of income diminished by death and, therefore, in the view of the Chancellor, properly chargeable to tax.
We can understand the feelings of those who take a contrary view. Indeed, early this week my honourable friend the Minister of State for the Treasury discussed the whole subject of taxation of war widows' pensions with representatives of the Royal British Legion; and, in case noble Lords think that nothing much has been done in this matter, my honourable friend the Minister for the Disabled had discussions on the 8th September 1975 with the Joint Committee concerning the level of war pensions; with BLESMA on the 18th October 1975; and with the Royal British Legion (Scotland) on the 19th November 1975, a meeting for which I think the noble Earl was responsible. He also had discussions on the 3rd December last with the Officers' Pensions Society. So in the last few months he has not let the matter go by default; there has been a good deal of discussion. But, of course, every one of us is concerned with what comes out of these discussions. We can all have discussions; but, as I say, discussions are pending, and my honourable friend is very much alive to the situation.
Our income tax system is based on the general principle of spreading the burden of tax as fairly as possible over the community by relating each individual's tax liability to his or her ability to pay as measured by total income and family circumstances. This is the criterion. A war widow's pension is part of her total income, and the Chancellor has made it clear that in his view it would not be right to fix a war widow's tax liability at a lower level than that of other widows or single people who are no better off financially. However,

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as I said earlier, among these matters of taxation which are to be discussed during the coming weeks, this will be one.
Lord HOUGHTON of SOWERBY: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for giving way. I thought he would probably refer to the proposal of the Chancellor to increase the age exemption for persons over the age of 65, so that many war widows who are now within the tax bracket will be tax-exempt under the extension of age exemption proposed in the Budget resolutions.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I deliberately avoided going into the matter too deeply. I have gone into it superficially because these are subjects of discussion at the present moment and I do not want to presume to express any comment or opinion on the matter.
The noble Lord, Lord Chelwood, did, as he said, "at a late hour"—but I am not complaining about that—send me a note of one or two matters on which he would like to have answers. His first question will take a little time to answer; but, as we have time, I hope that I shall have the indulgence of the House to reply. His first question was to know at the latest available date how many war widows were in receipt of supplementary pension; what proportion this was of the total number, and what is the estimate of the effect in this regard of forthcoming changes in the pension rates.
I think that the first thing I want to say—and it was touched on by what Lord Bourne said a moment ago—is that I do not understand the stigma which seems to be attached these days to applying for and drawing supplementary benefit. This is something that one has as of right; it certainly is not a charity. I know that there are large numbers of people, old-age pensioners particularly, who decline to draw it because they still think of it in terms of national assistance. We have moved a long way from national assistance. The attitude is different, the approach is different; this is part of a kind of insurance scheme which provides that if you have not got enough money coming in to meet essentials and to maintain a reasonable standard of living, you are entitled to apply for supplementary
2240
benefit. I see no stigma in that. I wish that we could encourage more and more people to apply. The benefit is part of a comprehensive social security scheme. Everyone has a right to claim and receive the benefit, and I hope that they will continue to do so.
The latest available figure from an inquiry made in November 1974—and the figures for 1975 are not yet available—is that some 5,000 war widows, the vast majority over pensionable age, were receiving supplementary benefit. I think that this works out to roughly 5 per cent. Undoubtedly many of the 5,000 are eligible for supplementary benefit only because of the special disregard of up to £4 of their widow's pension. I do not know how many over and above the 5,000 feel that they cannot manage on what they are getting; but I should like it to go out from this House that this is part of a comprehensive social security scheme; that people are not applying for charity; that they are getting what the State provides because it considers it an absolute essential.
The noble Lord asked how many war widows were receiving a modified forces family pension in addition to the war widows' pension. I am sorry that this information is not readily available. I am told that it could not be provided without disproportionate expense. I am informed, however, that the number is extremely small. I recognise that that is not a very satisfactory reply; and if there is any possibility of getting a figure that could be regarded as adequate I will write to the noble Lord and let him know.
He also asked how many war widows, bereaved before 1st September 1950, are receiving forces family pension, because this is more beneficial to them than the war widow's pension. I understand that the number is about 200. The fourth question is: What would be the extra cost of paying an attributable forces family pension to all war widows who at present receive a modified forces family pension under the same terms as apply to those war widows whose husbands gave service on or after 31st March 1973? In view of the answer to the previous question, where I said about 200, and based on the lowest rank, the costs would be in the region of £200,000; but this would assume that the Armed Forces'

2241
Pension Scheme is retrospective, which at the present moment it is not.
The noble Lord also said that the responsibility for their pensions should no longer be divided between two Departments, but preferably made the sole responsibility of the Ministry of Defence. I think I have already dealt with that. The Ministry of Defence, as employers of Regulars, is rightly responsible for their own occupational scheme. The War Pensions Scheme administered by the DHSS covers a wider field not being restricted to Regular Servicemen. The two Departments work closely together on the question of pensions and rationalisation. There are discussions taking place quite often on this matter. At present the transfer of inter-war cases from the Ministry of Defence—and I mean precisely that, in between the two wars—to the DHSS is under discussion.
Then I was asked that the facts and figures relating to pensions and also to war widows under existing schemes should be published. Details of war widows' pensions are contained in the Report on War Pensions which is published each year by the DHSS. Whether it is full enough or informative enough for the noble Lord, I do not know. The overall cost of the MOD scheme is given in the Defence White Paper, but it is only diagrammatical and just shows a little section representing the total cost of the whole. That may not be satisfactory from the noble Lord's point of view; but if there is anything I can do in respect of either, perhaps the noble Lord will let me know. He may prefer to get in touch with the Ministry of Defence himself to see whether he can get the diagrammatical information translated in terms of money.
The last point was that the basic war widow's pension should be increased in all cases where no additional pension is payable, and it should be maintained at a level relative to the cost of living so that no war widow ever has to depend on supplementary benefit in order to make ends meet. All war widows' pensions are regularly increased to keep ahead of the rise in the cost of living. It would not be feasible to ensure that no war widow ever had to claim supplementary benefit. The supplementary benefits scheme is an extremely flexible one geared to the needs of the individual
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and not to any specific classes within our society. Many war widows will be receiving supplementary benefit solely because of the high cost of their accommodation. I should like to emphasise here that some people find it necessary to claim for supplementary benefit because if they are in rented accommodation, as some of them are, the high cost of rent does not leave them sufficient of their pension for them to live in a reasonable way. More often than not, the claim is due to the high cost of rent.
It would not be possible to be certain that even large general increases in pension would cover every individual's need unless the increases in pension were so astronomical that they would cover everyone's needs. Then we should have a situation where a large number of people would be receiving, as it were, money in excess of their needs. This is something that must be taken into account. As less than 6 per cent. of the 90,000 war widows receive supplementary benefit, it must be remembered that this is only a small proportion, because some one-third of the 8 million National Insurance pensioners receive supplementary benefit.
I think I have answered most of the questions of the noble Lord, Lord Chelwood, even though perhaps not as adequately as he might have wished. However, if my answers do not go far enough, perhaps the noble Lord will let me know and I will try to give him any additional information he might want. This debate today, if I may say so, has been very helpful and revealing. This is only the second short debate in which I have had some interest where all the speakers have been able to keep within the time limit and even allow two more speakers to intervene and fill the gap. This has been a model way of conducting a short debate.
It may be, even after what I have said, that many of your Lordships will feel I have not extended a great deal of encouragement. But I want to do that, and I shall make a point of conveying personally to my right honourable friend the strong feeling that exists in this House. Although he will read the account of the debate for himself in Hansard, it is often helpful to cross the t's and dot the i's. I should like to convey the suggestion made by my noble friend Lord Houghton,

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which has been approved by a number of other speakers, that perhaps some committee could be set up to inquire into this subject. Noble Lords will realise that at the moment I am not in a position to do more than convey, which I will most faithfully, your views and opinions to my right honourable friend.
4.17 p.m.
Lord CHELWOOD: My Lords, we have had a very valuable debate of high quality and there have been some very moving speeches. Every single speaker has spoken from first-hand knowledge of one kind or another. I should like to thank the noble Lord the Minister for the care and detail with which he has replied to the many questions raised, although I must confess, to use the noble Lord's own words, that his replies did not give me much encouragement. I think it will be agreed that this has been a suitable time for this subject to be given a proper airing; and it has had one. There have been many constructive suggestions made and many questions asked, and as I have said, the noble Lord has done his best to reply to them.
However, during the debate there has been one very remarkable and pleasing feature to note; that is, the general agreement between speakers from all three Parties in your Lordships' House. It seems to have been agreed by everyone that serious anomalies exist; they have grown, and in many cases they are unfair and unjustified. It also seems to be agreed between all noble Lords who have spoken that war widows are in a special category. This fact has been recognised for many years by successive Governments through the differential, although whether it is high enough is perhaps to be disputed.
I made three suggestions, one for an inquiry, and I should like to say here that I was disappointed with the noble Lord's reply, although he left the door open. I do not feel that the published information is nearly sufficient. I think there is a strong case for a thoroughgoing and widespread review so that the whole subject can have a public airing, which I believe would benefit the war widows very considerably. So far as one Ministry having responsibility for war widows' pensions is concerned,
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I listened to what the noble Lord said and I must confess that I was disappointed with that as well, and I hope that Her Majesty's Government also have an open mind about that.
The noble Lord was not able to meet me on my third suggestion that no war widows should, in any circumstances, have to apply for supplementary benefit. I have never been one of those who think that any stigma attaches to those applying for them, but I feel that the debt we owe to war widows is such that the worst-off should not be put into the position of having to apply for supplementary benefit. I do not think that is right, and I do not think it is meeting our debt of honour. At one time, the noble Lord said he felt that war widows applied only because they were not receiving what is essential. What I and other noble Lords were suggesting was that the war widows' pension itself should meet their essential needs, without having to apply for supplementary benefit.
So I should like to thank everyone who has been good enough to contribute to this debate. The Government have been left in no doubt about the strength of feeling, and about the need for action. I feel sure that the voluntary bodies such as the Royal British Legion, the Officers' Pension Society and BLESMA will follow up these matters energetically, and I was pleased to hear that discussions on certain aspects of them are still continuing. But I must say again—and this is where I want to conclude, because I do not want to overshoot my time—that when the noble Lord said at the beginning of his speech that the Government basically and generally agreed with the case I made—which I think are the words he used—I was rather hopeful that he was going to meet me and other noble Lords at least halfway on some of the points. The fact of the matter is that he did not feel able to do so. So I can only conclude by expressing some considerable disappointment with the reply, while thanking the noble Lord for the care with which he went into all the questions that were asked, and by thanking all my noble friends, if I may so call them, especially today, for contributing to this debate. My Lords, I beg leave to withdraw my Motion.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.
Lord STRABOLGI: My Lords, with the leave of the House, may I, on behalf of my noble friends, wish noble Lords in all parts of the House a happy Easter and a restful Recess.

METHODIST CHURCH BILL [H.L.]
Reported from the Unopposed Bill Committee (on Recommitment) with Amendments.
COITY WALLIA COMMONS BILL [H.L.]
The Chairman of Committees informed the House that the opposition to the Bill was withdrawn. The Order made on the 15th of March last discharged, and Bill committed to an Unopposed Bill Committee.
HAMPSHIRE COUNTY COUNCIL (HASLAR BRIDGE) BILL
Report from the Standing Orders Committee, That the orders not complied with in respect of Petition for the Hampshire County Council (Haslar Bridge) Bill ought to be dispensed with, and leave given to introduce the Bill; read, and agreed to.