Lords Sitting of 22 March 1976

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

OVERSEAS STUDENTS' FEES
Baroness VICKERS: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to relieve hardship to overseas students who are at present on courses in this country and who will be faced with 30 per cent. fee increases announced since their course commencement and for which, therefore, they would not have been able to budget.
The PARLIAMENTARY UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE, NORTHERN IRELAND OFFICE (Lord DONALDSON of KINGSBRIDGE): My Lords, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Education and Science reminded authorities in Circular 14/75, issued on 23rd December last year, of the need to continue to exercise discretion in hardship cases. It is, of course, open to universities to take similar action. The 30 per cent. increase which he recommended represents a rise commensurate with increased educational costs, and it is applicable to home and overseas students alike. It would not be appropriate for the Government to safeguard one particular group, such as overseas students, from increasing costs of this kind.
Baroness VICKERS: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord whether he realises how difficult it may be for some who have not budgeted for these increases? Can they get help from local authorities or voluntary organisations, as happened in the case of the Biafran students when they found themselves in similar difficulties?
Lord DONALDSON of KINGS-BRIDGE: My Lords, within the educational system there are two sources of hardship relief which seem to be open to students. Under the higher education system, as opposed to universities, in the instructions given by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State regarding the 1975–76 increases, he suggested that in cases of special hardship some provision should be made. This has been done, and his announcement on 16th December suggested obliquely, by reference to other paragraphs, that this should remain open to institutions. In the case of universities, as the noble Baroness will remember, the University Grants Committee allocated a sum of money which has not altogether been used up. Whether they decide to use the balance for this purpose or prefer to keep it for the original purpose is a matter for them. Regarding the direct approach to local authorities for special welfare provision, I have no suggestions to make at the moment. I do not think anything is available, and I do not think it is intended that anything outside what I have mentioned should be made available.
Lord MAYBRAY-KING: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that we appreciate the need for the increased cost to overseas students and also the sympathetic answers he has given so far? Is the noble Lord aware that the real hardship will fall on those overseas students who are half-way or perhaps two-thirds of the way through a course and who cannot possibly find this new 30 per cent. increase? If he could persuade the local authorities and universities to interpret sympathetically what he has said today, it will be a great help.
Lord DONALDSON of KINGS-BRIDGE: My Lords, the noble Lord is really repeating what the noble Baroness was saying. I am trying, as he has admitted, to be sympathetic over this matter. It is not known how many students are half-way through their courses; but it is quite certain that if one were to take them in their entirety this would put the whole issue out of court. If there are a limited number of hard cases—and one hopes that would be so—then what I have already suggested may be sufficient to deal with the matter. There is the additional problem that each institution has, somehow or other, to find

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out which are the genuine hardship cases; and this is extremely difficult.
Lord BROCKWAY: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord the Minister whether it would be possible for the Government to inform students of these possibilities? Is it not often the case that they are ignorant of the opportunities open to them?
Lord DONALDSON of KINGS-BRIDGE: My Lords, I think that is a constructive suggestion. I shall see that something of the kind is done, if it has not been done already, through the institutions concerned.
Lord LEATHERLAND: My Lords, is my noble friend aware, or would he agree, that as a general principle we ought not to put any obstacles in the way of overseas students attending British universities?—because if they do not study here they might attend the universities of some Communist countries. Secondly, have the Government been in touch with the Governments of the countries concerned to see whether they can subsidise their students for the rest of their courses?
Lord DONALDSON of KINGS-BRIDGE: My Lords, regarding the second case, this is standard procedure. As regards the first case, it is hard to see what more can be done. The taxpayer is already paying 88½ per cent. of the entire cost of educating foreign students; and this is not a bad start.
Lord GLADWYN: My Lords, would the Government not agree that although the 30 per cent. increase appears to be even-handed as applying to all foreign and British students, the effect is that the great bulk of British students do not pay this increase and that in fact they do not pay any fees at all because they are paid for?
Lord DONALDSON of KINGS-BRIDGE: My Lords, the facts are true: the action is still even-handed.
Baroness SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, may I ask my noble friend what inquiries are made as to the circumstances of these students before they are accepted?
Lord DONALDSON of KINGS-BRIDGE: My Lords, that is a separate question, of which I should like notice.
Lord GORE-BOOTH: My Lords, is there any possibility of the Minister reminding the UGC of this matter, and in some way expressing a hope that it will indeed use up the money that it has for this purpose?
Lord DONALDSON of KINGS-BRIDGE: My Lords, the noble Lord knows the delicacy of the position between my right honourable friend the Secretary of State and the UGC. It would be most improper for me to make suggestions. Whether it would be possible to let slip an idea is another matter.

LORDS-IN-WAITING
2.43 p.m.
Lord SHINWELL: 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 members of the Government Front Bench described as Lords-in-Waiting can be more closely identified with Departments for which they have responsibility, either as Parliamentary or Under-Secretaries, and whether Lords-in-Waiting could be selected from other Peers, not as members of the Government but solely for ceremonial purposes when required.
The LORD PRIVY SEAL (Lord SHEPHERD): My Lords, when Lords-in-Waiting speak in this House on behalf of the Government, they do so with its full authority. Apart from undertaking ceremonial duties, five Lords-in-Waiting serve, and are paid, as Government Whips and are on occasions also invited to assist Ministers in Departments. In addition, four other Lords-in-Waiting, holding "Palace" appointments, perform ceremonial duties and are paid from the Civil List.
Lord SHINWELL: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that he has not answered my Question at all? What he has told your Lordships' House is something with which we are familiar. I am asking whether he will attach members of the Government Front Bench to Departments, so that Questions might be addressed to them specifically and in order that we can know precisely what are their

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responsibilities, as in the case of Ministers of State. Or are the Government impervious to practical and concrete ideas?
Lord SHEPHERD: No, my Lords, we are not impervious. If my noble friend wishes to know which Ministers on this Front Bench are responsible for any subject there is in the Chief Whip's Office, and has been for a good number of years, a list setting out the ministerial and subject responsibilities of my noble friends, and of noble Lords opposite when they occupied this Bench. I am happy to say that all Lords-in-Waiting are assigned to Departments where they generally have an office and are provided with secretarial assistance. Whether it is right or wrong in your Lordships' House, Questions have always been directed to Her Majesty's Government, and it therefore falls to Ministers to answer for matters for which they may not be directly ministerially responsible. If my noble friend is in any doubt as to their responsibilities, and as to the Departments for which my noble friends speak, then, if he wishes, I will show him the list in the Chief Whip's Office. But I am suggesting that he needs only to refer to Hansard to see very clearly the Departments for which my noble friends are responsible.
Lord SHINWELL: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that his suggestion, that I might read Hansard in order to discover which Minister is responsible for which Department, will certainly not do? But if he will be good enough to issue a statement for every Member of your Lordships' House, which can be read through the medium of the Official Report, stating which Minister is responsible, either specifically or occasionally, for particular Departments, that will be of some value. Will my noble friend also answer this further supplementary question? In view of his proposition which we heard the other week, about the formation of a Committee which will study procedure and matters relating to the conduct of Members of this House, will he refer this question to them? Will he also take into account the possibility of a change of Government very shortly—I mean the personnel of the Government—and perhaps an adjustment of the Government Front Bench, when an opportunity will be afforded of putting my proposal into operation?
Lord SHEPHERD: My Lords, I do not intend to speculate about what adjustments may be made on this Front Bench. We still have some more days to go before we find out who will be the next Prime Minister. As regards referring this matter to a Committee of your Lordships' House, I must reject that suggestion. This is a responsibility of the Prime Minister of the day. However, I am prepared, and am very willing, to send to the noble Lord a list of ministerial responsibilities. If he so wishes—because I have it, and it is available—I can also send him a list of those Departmental subjects for which noble Lords on the Front Bench opposite are responsible.
Lord CARRINGTON: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that we on this side are worried about the Answers, not about those who do the answering?
Lord BYERS: My Lords, when the noble Lord makes any reference to the new Committee which is to be set up, will he draw its attention to the need for very short supplementary questions?
Lord SHEPHERD: My Lords, it is not for me to say whether the noble Lord was looking in the right or wrong direction.
Lord BOOTHBY: My Lords, is it not clear from the noble Lord's reply that there are at present far too many Lords-in-Waiting, that they ought to be reduced in number, and that they are all well paid?
Lord SHEPHERD: My Lords, I think my noble friend Lord Boothby is living in the wrong era. When I first came to your Lordships' House Lords-in-Waiting played a very small part, because attendance and the amount of work did not require them to perform the very heavy duties we place upon Lords-in-Waiting today. If I may say so, without appearing to address myself to the noble Lord, Lord Boyle, I believe that in terms of the workload which they perform they are grossly underpaid.
Several Noble Lords: Hear, hear!
Lord SHINWELL: My Lords, if as my noble friend says this is really a matter for the future Prime Minister, will he be good enough to consult the right

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honourable gentleman when he appears, because he happens to be a friend of mine?
Lord SHEPHERD: Fortunately, my Lords, we know that my noble friend has many friends.
Baroness SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, what will be the qualifications of those Peers who it is suggested should be chosen for ceremonial purposes only?
Lord SHEPHERD: My Lords, if my noble friend is referring to the four Lords-in-Waiting who are now appointed by the Palace for ceremonial duties, this is the responsibility of the Palace. Certainly it does not fall within my responsibility in this House.
Lord SLATER: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that the Lords-in-Waiting do a very good job on behalf of both Her Majesty's Government and the various Ministries? Speaking as an ex-Minister for the Post Office, we were well served by noble Lords in this House who answered Questions on behalf of the Post Office with which they have no connection whatever, apart from the memoranda that they had to peruse which had been passed to them relating to Questions that were to be asked in this Chamber.
Lord SHEPHERD: My Lords, I am most grateful for what my noble friend has said.

ST. PAUL'S SCHOOL PLAYING FIELDS
2.51 p.m.
Baroness PHILLIPS: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will institute a public inquiry into the proposed plans for the playing fields of St. Paul's School.
The PARLIAMENTARY UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE, DEPARTMENT of the ENVIRONMENT (Baroness Birk): No, my Lords, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for the Environment agreed to look into the GLC's proposals for developing the St. Paul's School site, following represent-
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tations from Hammersmith Borough Council who were concerned about over-development. Representations were also received from local residents over the loss of open land. The GLC have now agreed to reduce the housing density on the site supported by Hammersmith Borough Council. The ILEA have also agreed to make the South-West corner of the site available for recreational purposes until it is required for development. The Secretary of State hopes these measures will go far towards meeting local objections and has decided to take no further action in the matter.
Baroness PHILLIPS: My Lords, while thanking the Minister for that very disappointing reply—I am lucky enough not to have a Lord-in-Waiting sitting behind me—may I ask her whether she is aware that a very large number of local residents called for this public inquriry? Surely my noble friend will be aware that there can be no real difficulty in announcing a decision following a public inquiry. Secondly, may I ask whether my noble friend is aware that, in the present climate of opinion, to spend money on educational purposes where there are additional and alternative sites, appears to be very short-sighted?
Baroness BIRK: My Lords, in answer to the first of my noble friend's questions, the Secretary of State could not call in the proposals for his own decision since deemed planning permission had been granted. Therefore, the point at which a public inquiry of the kind my noble friend wants has gone by. Agreement was reached in January 1971. The previous Government were in Office, but they had particular regard to the housing gain which would arise from the proposed development. If I may deal with the second point of my noble friend, regarding the additional cost, she will be aware that this has been going on for a considerable number of years. Loan charges on the delay are now costing in the region of £5,000 a week. My noble friend possibly saw the other day the letter in the New Statesman from the leader of Hammersmith Borough Council which pointed out that this was the best possible "mix" by lessening the housing density and also by making the site available for education. Incidentally, two acres of that site can be used for open

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space until it is ready to be rebuilt upon, and eventually 2,500 students will be housed there. Although I appreciate the demands for open space and am well aware of how some residents feel, because of the needs of housing and education I think that in all the circumstances the decision reached is the right one.
Lord ABERDARE: My Lords, is the noble Baroness aware that this is a unique opportunity to preserve a piece of open space in a very overcrowded borough and that to miss this opportunity puts a grave responsibility on all concerned? Would not the noble Baroness agree that this land was purchased originally by the then London County Council wth the object of providing 10 acres of open space? Would not the noble Baroness also agree that there are plenty of other opportunities for education and other facilities throughout London, since there are many derelict sites and empty houses, and that it is very wrong to use open space in this way?
Baroness BIRK: No, my Lords, the noble Lord is wrong. The London County Council purchaser offered the site to Hammersmith Borough Council who could not afford to buy it for open space. Also, the idea that this land has been used as open space and suddenly snatched away is quite wrong. When it was used by St. Paul's School it was visually open space but was used by nobody except the school. It is a problem, but I know that the noble Lord is aware that certainly in London the overwhelming demand for housing and education must take priority. There will be four acres of open space, in any case.
Lord AVEBURY: My Lords, will the noble Baroness agree that even with the amount of open space which it has now been decided to leave on this site the borough will still be relatively poorly endowed with open space as a whole, at less than the recommended minimum allowed by the GLC? Reverting to the Question which was asked by the noble Baroness, will the Minister consider whether the educational requirements which will be satisfied on this site might not just as well be taken care of in the teacher training colleges which it is now proposed to close elsewhere in Greater
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London, for which no other use has been found?
Baroness BIRK: My Lords, on the last point, I understand that all these colleges are now scattered around in about 30 buildings. I have already explained that two acres will remain for open space purposes for the next 15 years. The provision of open space is a great problem in many boroughs but agreement has now been reached between the GLC and Hammersmith Borough Council. I have also been into the matter very closely and in detail in my Department. Although I have great sympathy with providing as much open space as possible, in the circumstances I believe that this is the best possible decision.
Lord WALLACE of COSLANY: My Lords, will my noble friend say whether any provision has been made on this site for allotment gardens?

LOTTERIES AND AMUSEMENTS BILL [H.L.]
The LORD CHANCELLOR (Lord Elwyn Jones): My Lords, I beg to introduce a Bill to consolidate certain enactments relating to lotteries, prize competitions and amusements with prizes. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 1a.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Bill read 1a, and to be printed.

RHODESIA
Baroness LLEWELYN-DAVIES of HASTOE: My Lords, with the leave of the House, at a convenient moment after 3.30 p.m. my noble friend Lord Goronwy-Roberts will repeat a Statement on Rhodesia.
TRADE UNION AND LABOUR RELATIONS (AMENDMENT) BILL
Returned from the Commons on Friday last with certain of the Lords Amendments agreed to, and with the remaining Lords Amendment disagreed to with a Reason for such disagreement; the said Reason printed pursuant to Standing Order No. 47.

WATER CHARGES BILL
2.58 p.m.
Bill read 3a, with the Amendments.
Baroness BIRK: My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill do now pass. In so moving I do not wish again to go over any of the ground already covered in our previous debates. I am sure that your Lordships will not wish me to do so. We are all familiar with the background of the Bill and recognise the need to get it on to the Statute Book as quickly as possible so that people may begin to get the refunds that are due to them. This general agreement has been reflected in the spirit in which our debates have been conducted. I should like to take this opportunity of expressing my personal thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, for his co-operation and assistance. We have made a number of amendments to the Bill. These have been welcomed on both sides of the House and have helped to clarify the intentions of the Bill.
I had intended to read the full list of the bodies which had been consulted for the Consultation Document, but since all are now present for the next business I will deprive your Lordships of that pleasure.
Moved, That the Bill do now pass.—(Baroness Birk.)
On Question, Bill passed, and returned to the Commons.

TRADE UNION AND LABOUR RELATIONS (AMENDMENT) BILL
3 p.m.
Lord SHEPHERD: My Lords, I beg to move that the Commons Reason for disagreeing with the Lords Amendment be now considered.
Moved, That the Commons Reason for disagreeing with one of the Lords Amendments be now considered.—(Lord Shepherd.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

COMMONS REASON FOR DISAGREEING TO A LORDS AMENDMENT
[References are to Bill (67) as first printed for the Lords. The Commons Reason is printed in italics.]
LORDS AMENDMENT, Clause 1, page 1, line 21, at end insert:
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"(2) In paragraph 6(5) of Schedule 1 to the principal Act there shall be inserted after the word "objects" the following words:
"on grounds of sincerely held personal conscientious conviction not motivated by hope of financial gain or material advantage or"."
The Commons disagreed to this Amendment for the following Reason:—
Because the clause, as amended, would lead to too much uncertainty in union membership agreements.
Lord SHEPHERD: My Lords, I beg to move that this House doth not insist on their Amendment to Clause 1, to which the Commons have disagreed for the following reason:
Because the clause, as amended, would lead to too much uncertainty in union membership agreements.
I beg to move.
Moved, That this House doth not insist on its Amendment to which the Commons have disagreed.—(Lord Shepherd.)
Lord HAILSHAM of SAINT MARYLEBONE: My Lords, I trust that this is positively my last appearance on this particular item. Loud groans from the noble Lord, Lord Melchett! I think it is worth while now, in considering whether or not we insist upon our previous Amendment, to consider the course which this Bill has taken before your Lordships' House. We have said all along that this is a thoroughly disreputable Bill, and if this Chamber were simply a Second Chamber with a right of veto the correct course from the start would have been as I said, I think a year and a half ago, to reject it on its first Second Reading. But this is neither the constitutional position nor the course which we have taken. Quite apart from constitutional questions, it would have been the least effective course that we could have taken.
There were originally three main issues in the Bill. The first was the question of unreasonable exclusion or expulsion from a trade union and that had to be viewed in the light of a potential closed shop situation, as indeed do the other two. On that we took a line the first time round and it has now emerged that the point of principle is conceded; that is to say, the Government accept that in a closed shop situation it is wrong to allow unions to exclude or expel unreasonably. What is

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more, the Government have reluctantly but ultimately given the clear undertaking that if what they have conceded does not work without legislation they will in fact undertake legislation. What they have conceded is that the principle is right, but unlike those of us who have taken a different view they pin their faith to a purely voluntary arrangement offered by the Trades Union Congress but without powers of enforcement and they have promised to legislate if that does not work.
Well, my Lords, that is something. In this field or in other fields I have no faith in purely voluntary arrangements, but in the circumstances the first time round we thought it right to accept the Government's undertaking and to give that a trial, having gained something but not, in my judgment, enough. On the second time round, we chose to do battle on the Press. This was not because it was more important as a matter of principle than the third issue—the issue of conscience to which I am coming—but because we thought that the freedom of the Press was of overriding practical and constitutional importance. Again, we secured something; not much and not enough. I did not share, and I do not now share, the view of the noble Lord, Lord Goodman—who, I think, is not here today—that the "Houghton charter", as we came to call it, is positively a menace. On the contrary, I have always regarded it in exactly the same light as the Government concession on the first issue: that is, an admission on the vital principle, coupled with a refusal to give it legal effect.
Without the safeguards we proposed, I regard the proposed charter as almost valueless, but perhaps not absolutely valueless and not a menace. That it is of very little value is, I believe, demonstrated by the incidents at Barnsley, which incidentally took place after the second time round; the incidents were rightly condemned by the Prime Minister and rather more grudgingly by the Secretary of State. This point was demonstrated also by the rather more serious incident the other day, with the Financial Times, where the union concerned was not, of course, the NUJ. I think both are sinister omens for the future. In the meantime, unless I am mistaken—and I shall be corrected if I
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am—we have again got the Government's promise to legislate if the thing does not work. If the matter had not been singled out for attention the second time round as being of overriding constitutional importance, I would have sought to have it sent back to the House of Commons this time round; but, for reasons which I explained and which I still think were valid, it seemed to me that once the vital point which we had sent back had been considered again it would be lacking in reasonable courtesy to send it back the second time.
Similarly, although, when asked, I willingly conceded a free vote, for that very reason I did not agree with the proposed Amendment at Report stage, and on the free vote I think the House was wise not to accept it. That brings me to the one outstanding question which must be viewed in the light of the other two; that is, the question of conscience. It is the question which now remains for consideration. I think it important; indeed, I think it the most important moral issue in the Bill. Of the three issues it is the issue which I think shows up the Government, and in particular shows up the Secretary of State in the worst light. It is the point at which the Bill most obviously conflicts both with natural rights and with the European Convention by which this country is bound and for breaches of which it can be brought before the European Commission as being in breach of its international obligations. The pretext that conscience is not definable is a bogus one, as the Government must know perfectly well.
I will not repeat the arguments again, except to summarise them. It is enshrined in the European Convention, it is enshrined in words, which the present Amendment sought to repeat, in the Standing Orders of the Labour Party; it has been operated by the tribunals during the war in connection with military service. Today I say only—it is sufficient to say that conscience is a question of fact and not a question of law, like that which is honest, that which is defamatory—like a dozen, perhaps 100, questions of fact which the tribunals of this country, including juries, have to decide, and do decide without difficulty, every day. It is certainly a question which any industrial tribunal with courage and integrity,

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or any jury, is perfectly competent to decide.
We are told that the matter of conscience would cause too much uncertainty in union membership agreements. It would not cause any uncertainty at all in union membership agreements, because it has nothing to do with union membership agreements. The membership agreements are fixed by negotiation between the union and the employer, or the employer's association. The question of conscience does not arise at that stage. It arises only when a man has been dismissed, as we would say unfairly, on grounds of conscience. That is a question which does not arise in connection with the union membership agreement at all. It arises only for the industrial tribunal to decide whether or not the dismissed employee should be entitled to damages or compensation from his employer.
Therefore, the reason given by the Government, or the other place, is a bogus reason. I do not at all regret sending this matter back to the Commons. I think it has shown up the Labour Party; it has shown up the Government, and, in particular, it has shown up the Secretary of State in his true light. They have voted against conscience, and conscience as such. An attempt was made the first time round to depict the Secretary of State as the friend of liberty, a true democrat, and a true liberal, of course with a small "1". He is just about as much a friend of liberty as the late Maximilien Robespierre. When he is in Opposition, he operates a contrived anarchy, and when in power, he favours an elective dictatorship; but neither is a liberal democracy with Parliamentary Government as we on these Benches understand it.
My Lords, we have to decide what we must do. In my opinion, the course which we have to adopt is the same course as we have adopted before. We were well entitled to send this matter back to the House of Commons. It has now been returned to us, with the dictat of the Government. In my opinion, we have now exhausted our legal powers, and in my opinion the Speaker would he entitled, and perhaps be bound, to certify under the Parliament Act if we sent it back. We have discharged our duty to the full. I think
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that as a matter of comity, having discharged it, we do not send the issue back again. The Labour Party have chosen to vote against conscience; they have chosen to vote that a man discharged on grounds of conscience should not be entitled to compensation. They have done so in defiance of the European Convention on Legal Rights. That is what they have done.
They have chosen to describe the inner light, other than that enjoyed by some of the smallest religious denominations, to whom they allow the right of compensation—the voice of conscience, which some of us believe to be the stirring of the spirit within us—as something which cannot be defined; and the introduction of it into the law between employer are employed, though not, of course, although they pretend the contrary, between employers and the trade unions, they described as being something which would lead to uncertainty. To my mind, that is a sin which will not be forgiven. Let them glory in their triumph. It will, I hope and pray, be brief. I hope that it may in the end, not so far removed, help to bring about their destruction. Heaven help this country if the present Secretary of State for Employment were ever elected Leader of that Party.
3.15 p.m.
Lord BROCKWAY: My Lords, I support this Bill, and am exceedingly grateful as a journalist to the noble Lord, Lord Houghton of Sowerby, for proposing the Press charter for the freedom of writers. I want to say at once to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone, that I regard his criticisms of Mr. Michael Foot as one of the most unjustifiable attacks that has been made in this House. I have known the Minister for very many years. I know of no one who has stood more for personal liberties and Parliamentary democracy than the Minister whom the noble and learned Lord has denounced.
Secondly, as a defender of conscience in the First World War and in the Second World War, I want to say to the noble and learned Lord that I find it a little extraordinary that the Opposition is now defending conscience, because on both those occasions I found the greatest difficulty in asserting the right of

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conscience because of the attitude of the Opposition Party. Having said that, I want to be frank, and say that I deeply regret that the conscience clause in this Bill is limited to a religious objection. That is a very serious retreat from the recognised liberties of this country.
My Lords, during the Second World War, although I did not agreed with their attitude, I was the chairman of the Central Board for Conscientious Objectors, because I believed conscience to be at the very heart of liberty in any country. I took the test case before the tribunals, and I won a definition of "conscience" by the tribunals that it did not apply only to religion, and did not apply even to absolute pacifism. The tribunal agreed that if anyone felt deeply that it was wrong to engage in that war, if he could convince the tribunal that it was a moral conviction he would be regarded as a conscientious objector. I have written to the right honourable gentleman Mr. Foot putting that point of view very strongly. We have gone back on our definition of "conscience" in a way which I believe is a retreat from liberty.
My Lords, the Opposition probably will not agree with this, but I go on to say that if one has a conscience towards belonging to a trade union, one should also have a conscience in accepting the gains which that trade union secures.
Lord HAILSHAM of SAINT MARYLEBONE: My Lords, I do not know whether the noble Lord, Lord Lord Brockway, will forgive me for interrupting him, but if he had been present on previous occasions, as I think he may have been, he will remember that I have repeatedly said the same thing myself. I have never favoured the so-called free rider, but think that a trade union is wrong to apply compulsion against him.
Lord BROCKWAY: My Lords, let me carry that a stage further, and I do so historically. As I have said, during the Second World War I was chairman of the Central Board for Conscientious Objectors. I negotiated with Mr. Ernest Bevin, who was then the Minister of Labour, and he made this offer: that if conscientious objectors would agree to live on the same income as private
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soldiers, and devote the margin between that income and their present income to a recognised charitable organisation, he would exempt all our members. I was in favour of that principle. Unfortunately, my Board did not accept it, because they took the view it would be a compromise on conscription.
I want to apply that same principle now. In fact, there is more than one firm in this country—Burtons is one; I think Littlewoods is another—which accept this principle. When they deduct trade union contribution from wages, they ask that those who are not members of a trade union devote that amount to a charitable organisation. I want to suggest that if there is genuine conscientious objection to belonging to a trade union, which leads to individuals not making their subscriptions, not contributing to its effect in gaining advances in the conditions of the workers, they should contribute to a recognised charitable organisation the subscriptions which otherwise would go to the trade union.
I go further than that. If one has a conscientious objection to belonging to a trade union, and the trade union wins advances in wages as a result of its activity, the man who has done nothing to assist the trade union to gain that ought similarly to contribute the advance which the trade union has obtained to a recognised charitable organisation. I want to say this to the Minister. I urge very strongly, even at this late hour, that the retreat from the definition of conscience limited only to religion—the Atheist can have a conscience; the Agnostic can have a conscience; the Humanist, like myself, can have a conscience—is wrong, that conscience should not be limited to religious objectors. But I say also that conscientious objectors to trade unionism should also have a conscience to accepting the gains which trade unions win.
Lord SHINWELL: My Lords, I hope your Lordships will forgive me, but we are very close to embarking on a Second Reading debate. In view of the harsh indictment levelled against the Government by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham, it did occur to me that this calls for a reply by a Government Minister, either my noble friend the Leader of the House or my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor. If

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they are disposed to reply—and I assume they are likely to do so—I want to make only one observation, if they will allow me to do so.
I am not going to enter into the somewhat, for me, mystical and philosophical argument about conscience. Quite frankly, I have never been troubled by it. I have done what I believed was right; I had no theological dispensation or no dispensation from any theological source, so I do not embark on a discussion along those lines. But I do want to say this. I do not agree with my noble friend Lord Brockway in one observation he made. He condemned the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham, for not only his undoubtedly harsh indictment against the Government but what was somehow personal to me in its aspect, the indictment against the Minister for Employment. Quite frankly—and this may surprise some of my noble friends on this side and probably on the other side of your Lordships' House—in my opinion, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham, as a politician, and with the Party system still operating in this country (for how long it is difficult to say) has a perfect right to indulge in political criticism, however harsh it may seem. That is our purpose, that is our right, and that is a right and a privilege from which we should not depart; nor should it be taken away from us. So I do not complain about that at all.
What I do complain about is this, and I present it in a personal form. If I believed strongly and passionately and vigorously, and almost with invective, and, if I may be allowed to say so without offence, almost with venom in this splenetic fashion, that the Government were wrong, that they had committed a misdemeanour, an offence from which there could be no (to use the noble and learned Lord's language) forgiveness, I would set aside, abandon at once, discard, the constitutional position; namely, as the noble Lord himself mentioned, that it is within the power of the Speaker in another place to proceed automatically and declare this Bill accepted by both Houses of Parliament. I would discard it, and I would do what I think he should do in the circumstances, ask his colleagues beside him and behind him to vote against this Amendment. If he believes as he does, that is what I would represent as conscience. If I believed
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as strongly as that, as passionately as that, I would say "Let us fight the people in another place; they deserve what they get" instead of running away, scuttling. That is what it means.
If ever the noble and learned Lord should have a feeling of regret, even of shame—he is a man of remarkable ability and intelligence, whose moral attitude is beyond reproach—it is that here was a great opportunity, the opportunity of a lifetime, to represent his principles in genuine convictions, passion, strong conviction, to do that and to fight what he regards as an offence to our Constitution and to our liberties.
Lord SHEPHERD: My Lords, I am sure that in one thing I shall have full support from every quarter of the House: that this debate should be shortly brought to a conclusion, and that we should accept the advice of the noble and learned Lord to let it go through and let the normal procedures apply. I hope that the House will accept the advice of the noble and learned Lord, for, above all else, it has meant that we have been able to avoid the use of the Parliament Act procedure. I hope that none of my noble friends will in any way assist my noble friend, Lord Shinwell, to coerce the noble and learned Lord to do otherwise than what he himself has recommended to the House.
I did not intend to say anything in this debate, but in the light of the speech that has just been made by the noble and learned Lord, I do not think it would be right for me, speaking from this side, to leave those words unanswered. I think I should remind the noble and learned Lord what we set out to do in 1974, which we seek to complete today. We seek to remove the Industrial Relations Act.
Lord HAILSHAM of SAINT MARYLEBONE: It has been removed, my Lords.
Lord SHEPHERD: My Lords, we seek to finish it completely today. If ever there was a piece of legislation most arrogantly put through Parliament, on matters about which noble Lords themselves had little idea, what they were seeking to legislate, or the consequences and effect on labour relations throughout this country, the record will show. We have sought to the best of our ability to put the law back

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to what it was prior to the Industrial Relations Act. Certain provisions have had to be included because of the provisions on unfair dismissal, which were included for the benefit of employees and not of employers.
The noble and learned Lord seemed to take credit for what is now referred to as the "Houghton clause", the Press clause. That was the initiative of my noble friend Lord Houghton. He did not receive any assistance from any quarter except on this side of the House. It was an imaginative proposal, and I believe that if we are taking the responsibility of those within the Press—and, Heaven knows! the Press certainly need it today—the provisions of that particular clause, amended at the suggestion of my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Employment, will provide an opportunity for both sides of that industry to secure the freedom of the Press. I have listened to many criticisms of my right honourable friend in this respect, but throughout we have sought to ensure this by voluntary effort, because it is only by voluntary effort that security and freedom can be ensured, not by the law. We have said, and I will confirm to the noble and learned Lord, that if it was necessary, as a consequence of the Royal Commission on the Press—a Commission which this Government set up, recognising the great difficulties of the Press today—we would legislate if any of their proposals required legislation and received the support not only of both sides of Parliament, in this House and in another place, but also in the Press.
There has never been anything between us on the question of conscience. Here I agree so much with my noble friend Lord Brockway. What we have said throughout is that it is not possible in legislation, by Statute, to draft the question of conscience. There are enough examples already to show the difficulties when you go down this road. As the noble and learned Lord himself will admit, there have been many efforts made to deal with this question through the passage of this Bill, and on other forms of legislation, in the last two years. But I believe that the question of conscience is one which the trade union movement and the employers can more easily and
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more satisfactorily deal with than the law. There are enough examples in the last three months in which employers and trade unions have satisfactorily worked out union shop agreements which provided for the full conscience clause. It is for them to interpret. We have approached this question in the solid belief that the trade union movement are a democratic force within the United Kingdom. They are no different from any of us who sit in this House; they are as jealous of the rights and the freedom of the individual as any other body.
My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Employment may not be quite as vocal as the noble and learned Lord on the question of conscience. Perhaps, thank God! that may be so, but I can say of my right honourable friend that throughout his life, in Parliament and in journalism, there is no one who has spoken or written with a greater degree of integrity. At least when you read Michael Foot's articles in the Press you know that that is what he believes. That is a great deal more than one can say of some, and particularly those who write the leading articles of our newspapers today. There was the leading article of The Times the other day which said that it preferred a certain person drunk to the Prime Minister sober. If that is the level of the Press, then the better that we should look to men like Michael Foot and others when they put pen to paper and their articles are published; so much the better for our journalism, so much the better for our own integrity and our freedom.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

RHODESIA
3.36 p.m.
The MINISTER of STATE, FOREIGN and COMMONWEALTH OFFICE (Lord Goronwy-Roberts): My Lords, with permission, I shall repeat a Statement now being made by my right honourable friend in another place. The Statement is as follows:
"I will, with your permission, Mr. Speaker, and that of the House, make a Statement on the situation in Rhodesia.

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"The news that negotiations between Mr. Nkomo and Mr. Smith were broken off on Friday is a matter of deep concern. Yet another attempt to find a solution to Rhodesia's problem by peaceful means has been thrown away because of Mr. Smith's refusal to accept the principle of majority rule at an early date.
"This effort has failed like its predecessor that was launched by the four Presidents and Mr. Vorster in December 1974 because of Mr. Smith's prevarications. His purpose has not been to negotiate a constitutional settlement but to buy time in order to remove the pressures on him.
"When Mr. Nkomo took his decision to begin fresh discussions with Mr. Smith it was made clear that, while Her Majesty's Government had no wish to take sides in the internal differences of the African National Council, we welcomed his initiative and wished it success. He and his colleagues have shown patience and determination in recent months and I believe when the account of the negotiations is published it will be seen that the demands put forward by Mr. Nkomo were both reasonable and moderate. It seemed likely in mid-February that the talks might founder and I heard from a number of sources that Mr. Smith wished Britain to become involved. I therefore asked Lord Greenhill to visit Salisbury to assess Mr. Smith's position in order that I might consider whether there was any real prospect of Britain being able to promote a settlement.
"Lord Greenhill's report did not give an indication that there was a sufficient change in Mr. Smith's attitude to make it useful for Britain to assume a role in the talks then going on.
"More recently he sent word to me that he would like the British Government to appoint a Commission of wise men to put forward the terms of a settlement. In the absence of any commitment by him to majority rule this seemed to me to be retreading old ground and I made clear to Mr. Smith that I rejected the proposal.
"Last week Mr. Smith made a fresh proposal to the honourable Member for Bury St. Edmunds which incor-
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porated the original idea of three wise men but proposed that they should take part in a round table conference to be attended by representatives of the Rhodesian Front, other representatives of the European Community, of Mr. Nkomo's ANC and selected leaders of the external wing of the ANC. The honourable Member was good enough to communicate this proposal to my right honourable friend the Minister of State as soon as he returned, but by then the talks were on the point of breaking down. In my view they were designed to do no more than buy even more time for Mr. Smith's régime. He does not seem to realise that he no longer has much time to buy.
"During recent months I have been giving a great deal of thought to the ways in which Britain could help to secure an orderly transfer of power in Rhodesia. During this period I have kept in touch with the African Nationalist leaders and also with the four Presidents, whose advice I greatly value. It is my understanding that the four Presidents, despite their belief that the armed struggle may now be inevitable, still sincerely wish to see a peaceful settlement in Rhodesia.
"If their hopes and ours are to be fulfilled, there must be a two-stage operation. First, there must be prior agreement by all the principal parties of a number of preconditions. These are as follows: first, acceptance of the principle of majority rule; second, elections for majority rule to take place in 18 months to two years third, agreement that there will be no independence before majority rule; fourth, the negotiations must not be long drawn out. There would also need to be assurances that the transition to majority rule and to an independent Rhodesia would not be thwarted, and would be orderly. If these preconditions were accepted, it would then become possible for the second stage to begin; namely, the negotiations of the actual terms of a constitution for independence.
"We should also need to ensure that the settlement provided a background in which both communities could live and work together in an independent Rhodesia. Many African leaders have

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reiterated their strong desire that those Europeans who are prepared to put their faith in Rhodesia should remain in that country and that their presence will help to ensure the country's development. Her Majesty's Government would be willing to consider financial and other means to assist this end.
"Given the acceptance of the principle of early majority rule, it is in my view possible to reach a settlement which could go a very long way towards reconciling African aspirations and European fears. Britain would be prepared to play a constructive part in any negotiations in which these preconditions have been accepted, and would be willing to sit down with representatives of all shades of Rhodesian opinions inside and out.
"An independent Rhodesia will need development assistance and aid for educational and other purposes on a significant scale. Britain would play her part, but I hope that members of the Commonwealth, the European Communities and others would also he willing to help.
"In a final settlement achieved along these lines, all should be ready to agree that guerrilla activity should cease and that an approach could be made to the United Nations with a view to lifting the economic sanctions now in force. I ready ready to discuss this approach with all concerned, but no agreement would be worth anything until the principle of majority rule opens the door to new negotiations.
"As things are, Mr. Smith is leading his country on the path of death and destruction. Even at this late stage I ask the European population of Rhodesia to believe that there is an alternative path. It is still just possible for Mr. Smith to follow it. If not, I hope other leaders will emerge who recognise the realities of the hour and that the time is here when the legitimate aspirations of the African people can be met and reconciled with the desires of the European population. Only in this way can there be hope for a peaceful future for Rhodesia."
My Lords, that is the end of the Statement.
3.45 p.m.
Lord CARRINGTON: My Lords, I certainly welcome what the noble Lord has said in his Statement about the Government being prepared to take action and to take part in negotiations in certain circumstances. I do not think that we can just sit back and wash our hands of the whole thing. We have responsibilities to the white people and the black people in Rhodesia, and responsibilities which spread further than that, to the surrounding countries, for what may or may not happen. Certainly the situation is grave.
If the position is that the negotiations have been finally broken off—as they seem to have been—there is obviously a very real danger of an increase in terrorism and other activity from outside as well as inside Rhodesia. I should have thought it self-evident that no settlement is possible if Mr. Smith does not agree to majority rule at an early date. I confess, though, that I am a little uneasy that the Government in their Statement have put a precise time on it; I think that that at this stage is perhaps unwise. I think most of your Lordships would agree that certainly an early date is essential, but I hope that that is for negotiation. I should also have thought that Mr. Nkomo is the Rhodesian African leader most likely to negotiate a settlement and lead a Party, an African Party, which is acceptable to both black and white. I believe that this may very well be the last occasion when an opportunity for a settlement of this kind may arise.
Mr. Smith has improvised over these last 10 years with a great deal of success, but I do not really believe that there is any more time for improvisation. I think the situation has now changed and I hope very much that he will be able to look, perhaps with that one amendment that I have made, at the proposals of Her Majesty's Government, realising that perhaps this is the last chance for avoiding a very grave situation in Rhodesia.
3.47 p.m.
Lord GLADWYN: My Lords, we must thank the Minister for repeating that extremely important Statement, which gives us all cause for reflection. I would personally have welcomed having a copy of the Statement somewhat before the noble Lord rose to his feet to speak. All I can say is that we of course agree

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with the action which Her Majesty's Government propose to take. As expounded in the Statement, it seems reasonable and very desirable, but, after all, what is the position? The position is that Mr. Smith has said that he would not agree to black majority rule even in 1,000 years. Those who speak for the black majority, to say nothing of the leaders of the neighbouring States, say—and I think we must believe them—that majority rule cannot now be put off for more than 1,000 days, and this figure of 1,000 days seems indeed to have been accepted implicitly in the Government's Statement.
Thus, unless Mr. Smith gives in or unless Mr. Smith is replaced—and I greatly fear that both eventualities are unlikely—we must now, as realists, expect some kind of armed confrontation to occur. We must do everything we can to prevent it, but we must expect that it will probably occur. The end of such a confrontation, even if it goes on for 1,000 days, must surely be evident. Unless Mr. Smith receives some armed support, which again seems most unlikely, it will end in defeat for the Rhodesian white minority. That is inevitable, but even so, would the Government agree that a bloodbath is by no means inevitable or that this path will inevitably lead, as I think the Government's Statement says, to "death and destruction"?
When it becomes apparent that, for various reasons—economic as well as military and perhaps principally economic—the Smith régime can no longer run the country, will not all those who simply cannot accept black majority rule just leave Rhodesia and, so far as the 150,000 whites of British origin are concerned, effectively find refuge in this country? After all, when it became apparent that France could no longer dominate the brown majority, General de Gaulle successfully evacuated no fewer than 750,000 French people to France, and I believe that they were all successfully incorporated in the French economy. Ought we not to take all this into account when planning realistically for the future?
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, may I at once express appreciation of the temperate and thoughtful response of the noble Lord, Lord Carrington? I take fully on board what he said about the time scale. I thought
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that the Statement was fairly tentative on that point. One must of course bear in mind that there are very substantial moderate as well as extremist elements in Southern and Central Africa which would regard 18 months as being excessively long. However, I know that the noble Lord has these matters in mind. I shall certainly draw the attention of my right honourable friend to what the noble Lord has said.
As to the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, I enjoyed his speech, as always. On the questions which he raised, I very much regret that the noble Lord was late in receiving a copy of this Statement. So was I. On these occasions, all three Front Benches are well used to having to wait for important Statements. These have to be put together as carefully as possible and that takes a little time. The noble Lord said that a blood bath was not inevitable. It certainly is not, if, even at this late hour, practical common sense sets in in Salisbury. I have never felt that it would be impossible to build in Rhodesia a shared responsibility for the business and the government of that magnificent country, but time is short if we are to avoid either a Congo or an Algerian situation.
Lord HOME of the HIRSEL: My Lords, will the noble Lord, Lord Goronwy-Roberts, accept that I believe the Statement of the Foreign Secretary has given the Rhodesians yet one more opportunity to come to an arrangement if they will? May I ask the noble Lord also to accept that I share my noble Leader's fear that time is running out and that Mr. Nkomo and Mr. Smith or a representative of the Rhodesian Front must settle this in a short time? There is a danger that we may miss the time. May I also point out that "majority rule" is a very emotional phrase and suggest that it is impossible to imagine how one could fail to achieve majority rule with even a comparatively small adjustment of the franchise? In other words, must Mr. Smith not accept that, if the franchise is altered—as surely it must be—majority rule must follow at the next election? What I am trying to say is that majority rule is an emotional phrase but that, nevertheless, a single small adjustment of the franchise would help the Rhodesian Front to feel

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that there might be a responsible Government in Rhodesia rather than one man one vote from the start. It is rather difficult to make this clear in the form of a question, but I believe that it is a point which is worth considering.
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, I am sure that, as always, the noble Lord, Lord Home of the Hirsel, has made his views crystal clear. They will of course be studied with very great care and respect by my right honourable friend and, one hopes, in Salisbury as well.
Lord PAGET of NORTHAMPTON: My Lords, can the Minister clarify certain points which seem to me to be important? My noble friend will of course be aware that no Constitution yet granted in Africa has been observed and that a Constitution under multiracial circumstances is in a sense a social contract. What have the Government in mind for guaranteeing the terms of this Constitution if it is granted? Further, the parties of Mr. Nkomo and Mr. Sithole have been at open war for some 10 years and there is no indication at all that that war will cease. A black or multiracial Government in Rhodesia will certainly have to fight for its life against a foreign invader as Mr. Roberto Holden tried unsuccessfully to do in Luanda. Do we intend to fight on the side of Rhodesia in the event of that invasion and are we going to back this Constitution and this State if it comes into being as our colony or under our guarantee? Those seem to be two vital questions.
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, my noble friend as usual puts forward assumptions as if they were facts. Nevertheless they are important hypotheses. May I stand on this? This is a situation of, one hopes, immediate negotiation, in which all possible hypotheses and assumptions will have to be considered with a view not simply to Constitutions, essential as those are, but to a peaceful settlement. On that point, I leave my noble friend. I hope that he will make a full speech in a broader discussion of these assumptions and possibilities on another occasion.
Lord BARNBY: My Lords, arising out of that answer, may I ask the
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Minister whether he can see his way to making some supplementary Statement because in the Press there has been much reference to relations with neighbouring African States? If I remember the Statement correctly, it contained no reference to the neighbouring States in South Africa. It would seem, therefore, that insufficient cognisance is given to the fact that in Rhodesia there is a constitutional government with black member representation though, admittedly, by far fewer than the majority of us in this House would wish. Surely, that is a lack of sophistication which would be corrected in time as the standard for appointment by qualification rather than by political expediency—as frequently occurs in other countries—was achieved. In the main, those States have jettisoned their constitutional status and are either single Party Governments or dictatorships. Yet great attention is being paid to them.
The second question which I should like to ask arises from that. It has been suggested that assistance should be given to increasing terrorism from these neighbouring States. Terrorism is there and the objection to it is much the same as it is in Ireland, Cyprus or elsewhere—
Lord SHEPHERD: My Lords, if the noble Lord will forgive me for interrupting, I am in some difficulty. I know that the noble Lord feels strongly on this matter. We normally have a Statement for the purposes of elucidating further information on the Statement, though I regret that your Lordships' House decided that all could make short statements. However, I have a feeling that the noble Lord was going a little beyond that and was making a speech. I wonder whether he will bring his remarks quickly to an end, perhaps by putting a question to my noble friend.
Lord BARNBY: My Lords, with due respect to the noble Lord the Leader of the House, one recognises that there have been doubts about the permission of time with regard to questions. Recently in the life of the present Parliament indulgence has been given for quite long statements and it is for that reason that I ask the indulgence of the noble Lord to allow me to finish the questions which I wished to put to the Minister and which seemed to arise from the absence of these facts. My point was that there are

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many blacks in the Rhodesian Army, as there are in the police. Therefore, a suggestion of assistance from international organisations will put black against black. Surely that is not what Britain wants. Lastly, if we give any assistance to Mozambique, will there be an assurance that there will be protection for the great industrial electrical project at Cabora Bassa which will supply not only Rhodesia and South Africa but also Malawi and Zambia?
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, I think that two questions arise out of that very interesting contribution by the noble Lord. There is no constitutional government in Rhodesia, and the answer to his second question is that we are in touch with the Heads of neighbouring States mostly concerned. My right honourable friend referred twice in his Statement to the four Presidents, whose influence is bound to prove paramount.
Lord CARADON: My Lords, I have a question which I should like to raise. It is a matter of great consequence, and while I doubt whether it could be answered immediately, I should certainly like to raise it now. In view of the long record of prevarication and delay, and indeed of double dealing, which we know of in this matter, is it sufficient that we should enter into a long negotiation, perhaps as is suggested, removing sanctions in the interval, without some assurance that whatever agreement is reached is put into effect? Would it not be right, and far preferable, that the illegal régime in Rhodesia is brought to an end, so that we can look forward to a time when this Government, who still carry the main responsibility in this matter, could then work with all concerned—yes, all concerned—to achieve the purposes of the kind which have been stated here today, and to ensure that they are promptly carried out?
Why is it that we should agree to deal with an illegal régime in which we have no reason to have confidence? I agree of course, and I understand, that it would be unlikely that the illegal régime would immediately accept such proposals, but the question I ask is this. Is it not likely, in the disastrously dangerous situation which we now face, that they will realise
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that it would be in the interests of all in Rhodesia to end the illegal régime and put the responsibility back where it should be, in the hands of Her Majesty's Government?
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, of course my noble friend's remarks are very well in line with Her Majesty's Government's policy and, I imagine, with that of the consensus of this House and of the other place. I certainly assure him, in the words of the Statement I have just repeated, there will not be any long-drawn-out negotiations.
Lord PANNELL: My Lords, does the Minister think that 18 months is too short a time, bearing in mind the frustrated efforts we have made for years and years amidst great prevarication? Surely 18 months is the maximum time, and not the minimum.
Lord GRIMSTON of WESTBURY: My Lords, will the Government bear in mind the very genuine fears of large numbers of the white population, arising from what they have seen going on around them—one man, one vote once, followed by dictatorship, with the only way of altering the Government being a coup? The noble Lord said to me one day that there are coups and coups. But there may be genuine fears. Are the Government prepared to do anything to help those who have these genuine fears, to make a new life elsewhere?
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, I commend to the noble Lord a further study of the Statement I have just read. I think the noble Lord will find that both questions are very fully dealt with in that Statement. With regard to my noble friend's point about the time scale, I agree that this is an important matter. The noble Lord, Lord Carrington, had suggestions on this. Our experience this afternoon indicates that there are varying views on this. The Government's view is, the earlier the better. We have put the period of 18 months in the Statement simply as something that could bear negotiation one way or another.
Lord GRIMSTON of WESTBURY: My Lords, can the noble Lord tell me where in the Statement there is a reference to what I was asking about?
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, I refer the noble Lord to the Statement, where I think he will find the answers to his questions.
Lord GRIMSTON of WESTBURY: My Lords, the Statement simply says—
Several Noble Lords: Order!
Lord SHEPHERD: My Lords, copies of Statements are given to the Front Benches as a matter of courtesy, and I think it would be wrong for a Statement to be referred to in the way the noble Lord was about to do. We have been on this matter for 30 minutes. I know that it is a matter of supreme importance, but we must take into account that there is other business to follow. Bearing in mind that it is an important matter, I wonder whether your Lordships would agree that we devote five more minutes to it and then bring it to an end?
Lord TREVELYAN: My Lords, I appreciate the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, about the timetable, but will the Government bear in mind that experience shows that if there is an agreement leading to independence, which takes more than a comparatively brief time to put into effect, it will not ever be put into effect?
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, that is certainly a point of view which Her Majesty's Government must take into account. I personally find it most acceptable.
Lord GORE-BOOTH: My Lords, having agonised with my noble friend the Minister for some years over this matter may I ask just one, perhaps somewhat unorthodox, question? Clearly the Government Statement has been very thoughtfully drafted, and I express my recognition of this and my gratitude that my noble friend Lord Greenhill of Harrow has had some part in the matter. Have the Government considered whether, in the light of the fact that Mr. Smith now has to face history, which he has avoided hitherto, we might perhaps have a little self-abnegation for a very short time—and I agree on the time limit—in which perhaps we temper our abuse of Mr. Smith personally, which would only make him more obstinate? Should we not, perhaps, simply speak more in
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terms of the inevitability of what must happen, however much understanding one may have for the case of the white Rhodesians, and, with all sympathy, insist to Mr. Smith that he must really see this at last?
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, everything that has been said to Mr. Smith for the past 11 years has emphasised the urgency of the situation and the danger of letting it drift and, indeed, to drift to its present situation. He bears a major responsibility for the great dangers which face all races in Rhodesia and Southern Africa today.
Lord MONSON: My Lords, can the Minister give an assurance that in any negotiations in which the British Government become involved, the interests of the coloured and the Asian communities will be taken into account, as well as the interests of those Africans—whether they be in the police, the Army or the Civil Service—who have served the existing régime loyally?
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, our aim is to achieve a multiracial, independent State in Rhodesia, and that means all races now living there.
Lady RUTHVEN of FREELAND: My Lords, may I say a few words to your Lordships? I am one who has lived through the independence of India and the partition of India and Pakistan. I was present through the many months that it went on, and I can assure your Lordships that what occurred was a blood bath. Even though the noble Earl, Lord Mountbatten of Burma, did his very best to hurry up the independence and the partition, it was still almost impossible to prevent the blood bath.

ENERGY BILL [H.L.]
4.9 p.m.
The PARLIAMENTARY-UNDERSECRETARY of STATE, DEPARTMENT of ENERGY (Lord Lovell-Davis): My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. This Bill, which supersedes the Fuel and Electricity (Control) Act 1973, is required to give the Government permanent powers to meet the United Kingdom's obligations under the Agreement on an International Energy Program and as a

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member of the European Communities, and to develop our energy conservation policies. The Agreement on an International Energy Program entered into force on 19th January 1976 for those States, including the United Kingdom, who have notified their consent to be bound. Under its terms the United Kingdom is required to have available powers which will enable us to impose restrictions on the supply and use of energy in an emergency; to meet our obligations to hold a minimum level of oil stocks, and to provide information to the International Energy Agency. Some of these obligations can be met under the 1973 Act, but this Act requires Parliamentary approval for renewal annually and is therefore not a satisfactory basis on which to undertake international obligations. For that purpose the requisite powers must be permanently available, and seen to be so by other signatories. Furthermore, the 1973 Act was designed to meet an emergency, not to meet the requirements of a long-term programme of international co-operation. It does not, for example, provide wide enough powers, particularly in the field of information, which is an important element of the International Energy Program.
In order to prepare for an oil emergency, we need to have permanently available powers which will enable the United Kingdom to meet its obligations as a participant in the International Energy Program's oil-sharing scheme. Among other things, this requires the United Kingdom to be able to reduce oil demand by the amounts specified in the agreement and to direct the oil companies to re-allocate supplies among themselves and, if necessary, to supply other countries. We have decided, therefore, that the crisis management powers contained in the 1973 Act should be permanently available, but we recognise that they should only be exercisable for IEP purposes at times when the IEP agreement requires them. The IEP agreement defines these circumstances, and noble Lords will note the Government's intention that the extensive powers to control supply or use by order or direction should be used only after Her Majesty has, by Order in Council, activated them as a result of an oil emergency being declared by the members of the International Energy Agency. The IEP agreement also
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requires us, as part of its provision for cushioning the effect of an oil shortage, to hold a minimum level of oil stocks. We are therefore seeking powers in this Bill which will enable the Secretary of State to require the oil industry to hold a minimum level of oil stocks. The same provision will also enable us to meet our EEC obligations to hold minimum stocks of oil.
We have also to bear in mind the continuing, need to have available contingency measures for controlling the production, acquisition, use and supply of energy, and for regulating oil prices, during a domestic emergency. I am sure noble Lords will agree that it would be prudent to retain powers similar to those in the 1973 Act for domestic crisis management, subject of course, as noble Lords will see from Clause 3, to the same degree of Parliamentary control as provided in that Act.
I turn now, my Lords, to energy conservation. As noble Lords are aware, following on the considerable increase in energy prices that has taken place since October 1973 the Government's energy conservation programme has been launched and is designed to encourage greater efficiency in the use of energy in order to reduce our energy consumption below what it would otherwise be. Fossil fuel reserves are finite, and even though we have coal as well as North Sea oil and gas it is essential that our indigenous reserves be put to the best possible use. Our energy conservation programme has sought to stimulate consumers to help themselves by saving energy. Millions of decisions affecting the use of energy are taken each day; the Government's role is to encourage the decision-takers to save energy to the extent that is economically worth while.
However, there are areas where voluntary restraint is not enough and where Government can reinforce by statutory measures the voluntary effort of consumers in the wider public interest. The Government have introduced statutory conservation measures: limits on heating levels in buildings other than domestic dwellings, restrictions on the use of electricity for advertising lighting and regulations lowering the maximum speed limits on certain roads. These measures are implemented under the Fuel and Electricity (Control) Act 1973, which was

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renewed in November 1974 and November 1975 and is due to expire at the end of November this year unless renewed. The Government believe that energy conservation is an integral and therefore continuing element in our energy policy, which should rest on permanent powers. The emphasis in our conservation programme—
Lord HARMAR-NICHOLLS: My Lords, would the noble Lord bear in mind, when the Government are thinking of future policy, to which he is now referring, that it is a good thing to retain the goodwill of the consumer? For example, we have had too many cases where, by means of a special tariff advantage, people were encouraged to buy storage heaters, which receive their boost during the night, only to find very soon afterwards that the advantage was taken away. People are discouraged from cooperating in the way of making such an investment if the advantages are removed after such very short notice.
Lord LOVELL-DAVIS: My Lords, yes. I hope the noble Lord intends to intervene again. He might do so, and thus give me an opportunity to answer him when I come to wind up. The fact is that people using storage heaters still enjoy an advantage, as I am sure the noble Lord recognises. In all other respects, I think it is true to say that we are continuing to go ahead and keep their goodwill. In fact, I think we are encouraging people in showing a good deal of co-operation with industry, and are getting a good deal back in our conservation programme—and, of course, at a domestic level.
As I was saying, the emphasis in our conservation programme must change from time to time, and powers are needed to permit us to introduce new measures as and when we consider them to be necessary in support of the encouraging efforts being made to save energy throughout the economy. We are therefore proposing that the power to control the use of energy, similar to that in the Fuel and Electricity (Control) Act 1973, will be permanently available; but it will be exercisable only by order, which will be subject to Negative Resolution procedure and, thus, to the control of Parliament. The Government have also decided
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to include a new power to subject fuel consumption in cars to a standard test, the results of which should be brought to the notice of the public. This will enable car-buyers to make a reliable comparison of fuel consumption when contemplating a purchase. The arrangements proposed follow international agreement, and have been agreed with the motor industry and trade.
We are proposing to replace Section 9 of the Continental Shelf Act 1964 with new provisions which will complete our ability to co-ordinate gas supplies to the maximum benefit of the country. In particular, these provisions will enable us to control liquefaction and the conversion of natural gas to methanol. These are processes which waste substantial amounts of gas and are not subject to control under the Continental Shelf Act. For similar reasons, we propose to control all flaring, some of which is not currently controlled by the Petroleum and Submarine Pipelines Act. Finally, we are taking this opportunity to remove some of the anomalies in the present situation, especially by providing only one system of control for gas supplied from refineries.
The Bill also contains provisions which will enable the United Kingdom, as a Member of the European Communities, to implement Council Directives and enforce EEC regulations in the energy field. One important Directive is 73/238, which requires us to have powers for crisis management in an energy emergency when declared by the European Communities. Other Directives implemented under the Bill are 68/414, as amended, which requires us to hold a minimum level of reserves of oil (I referred to this earlier): 75/339, which covers the holding of minimum stocks of fossil fuels at power stations; and 75/404 and 75/405, which cover the fuelling of power stations. Of these, those concerning crisis management and oil stocks are currently implemented by the 1973 Act.
Finally, the Bill contains powers to control prices of oil products. As with the powers connected with energy conservation, it is proposed that these powers should be permanently available, although they will be exercisable only by order, which will be subject to Negative Resolution by either House of Parliament. These powers are currently

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being used only to control the price of paraffin, which is of special importance to low-income users.
Before going as briefly as may be possible through the clauses of the Bill, I should like to stress again the circumstances in which the Government propose to use the powers to control supply and use. First, in the case of an international oil emergency we are proposing that the full emergency powers are to be activated by Order in Council upon a declaration by the members of the International Energy Agency or of the EEC that an emergency exists. Secondly, for a domestic emergency we propose that the powers shall similarly be activated by Order in Council but that such an Order in Council shall be subject to Affirmative Resolution by Parliament. Thirdly, for energy conservation we are seeking the power to control use only by order subject to Negative Resolution by Parliament. Thus, the United Kingdom will be able to meet its international obligations while retaining Parliamentary control of the activation of the contingency plans for a domestic emergency and measures for energy conservation.
I now turn to the clauses of the Bill. The first four clauses to a large extent re-enact the 1973 Act with modifications to cater, first, for the different circumstances in which the crisis management powers will need to be activated and, second, for the long-term powers to control use of energy and prices of petroleum products which should be permanently available, exercisable by order subject to Negative Resolution. Clause 1 provides that the Secretary of State may make orders regulating or prohibiting the production, supply, acquisition and use of crude liquid petroleum, natural gas and petroleum products and other substances used as fuel, or electricity. The Secretary of State may also regulate, by order, the prices of crude liquid petroleum, natural gas and petroleum products. I will deal with the circumstances in which these powers may be exercised when I come to Clause 3.
Clause 2 enables the Secretary of State to give directions to producers of the substances mentioned in Clause 1, as to their production and use, including the prohibition or restriction of the use of any material for the production of the substances and the disposal of stocks.
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Directions may also be given to suppliers of the substances, as to whom they shall or shall not supply anywhere in the world. These directions will enable us to implement the IEP emergency oil sharing scheme. Such directions may, in the case of crude liquid petroleum or natural gas or petroleum products, require supplies to be made at specified prices. Persons carrying on undertakings using the substances may be given directions prohibiting or restricting their use, including the purposes for which or the periods in which they may be used. The clause also applies to electricity.
Clause 3 covers the circumstances in which the full powers contained in Clauses 1 and 2 may be exercised. If these powers are required to meet the United Kingdom's international obligations, either as a member of the EEC or as a party to the Agreement on an International Energy program, they can be activated by Order in Council, subject only to the order being laid before Parliament. Such action would be taken only in circumstances where either the members of the EEC or the members of the IEA had decided that an energy emergency existed or was imminent, and urgent action was required to fulfil the Government's obligations. If the powers are required for crisis management of a domestic emergency, they will be activated by Order in Council, but this will expire after 28 days unless approved by Resolution of both Houses and will, in any case, automatically expire after 12 months unless renewed.
If no Order in Council is in force, only the use of the substances referred to in Clause 1(1), or electricity, and the price at which petroleum products may be supplied, can be controlled, and then only by order. This permanent power to control use is required to enable us to continue existing energy conservation measures, and to introduce such measures in future as we consider necessary. Currently, the equivalent power in the 1973 Act is being used to control heating in non-domestic premises and to restrict lighting for advertising purposes, and these measures are continued in force under the new Bill.
As to the power to control prices, the only product at present subject to retail

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price control under the 1973 Act is paraffin, because, as I have said, many old and poor people rely on this fuel for heating. While there is no present intention to control the price of any other oil products, the need to do so could well arise in the future, and the Government consider it prudent to seek the necessary reserve powers. These powers could, however, be exercised only by order, subject to Negative Resolution by Parliament.
Clause 4 provides supplementary powers which may be needed to manage an energy emergency. Like Section 4 of the 1973 Act, it enables the Secretary of State to grant authorities relaxing statutory or contractual obligations, or relaxing certain provisions of road traffic and transport law, as set out in Schedule 1. The clause also contains power to modify, by Order in Council, enactments which affect the supply or use of fuels and electricity, and this extends to modification of an order under the Counter-Inflation Act 1973, if necessary for price control purposes. All these powers are available only in an energy crisis, when an Order in Council is in force under Clause 3(1). In addition, the power to modify enactments affecting use can be exercised for energy conservation at any time, by Order in Council under Clause 4(3). This power supplements the power to control use by order, and its counterpart in the 1973 Act is currently used to impose lower speed limits. The power to impose speed limits for fuel conservation purposes will be preserved under the Bill.
Clause 5 is a logical extension of the underlying purpose of Clause 4; namely, that of preventing normal statutory controls from unnecessarily hindering national objectives in times of emergency. In the case of an oil emergency we will be particularly dependent on the industry acting collectively to implement directions given by the Government. Such joint action by oil companies might infringe the provisions of the Restrictive Trade Practices Acts. Clause 5, therefore, provides partial exemption for certain restrictive agreements made by the oil industry while an Order in Council under Clause 3 is in force; that is only during an energy crisis.
Clause 6 implements the United Kingdom's obligations under EEC Council Directives on oil stocks (68/414 as amended) and the oil stockpiling provi-
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sions of the International Energy Program, both of which are currently implemented by the 1973 Act. The clause enables the Secretary of State to give directions requiring the holding of stocks of crude oil or petroleum products by undertakings producing, supplying or using these substances. The effect of the clause will be to impose very much the same régime as at present (under the 1973 Act) on the oil companies.
Clause 7 implements the United Kingdom's obligations under EEC Council Directive 75/339 and provides powers to direct electricity boards, and undertakings generating electricity, to hold stocks of fuel, at or near those generating stations, which have a capacity of at least 100 Megawatts. The directions will stipulate that a minimum of 30 days' stocks should be held. The generating boards already hold, for commercial reasons, sufficient stocks to meet that requirement. The number of private generators affected by the Directive will be very small, and we shall frame directions that take account of their particular circumstances.
Clause 8 supersedes Section 9 of the Continental Shelf Act 1964. It provides that persons other than the British Gas Corporation may supply or use United Kingdom natural gas by pipe, only with the consent of the Secretary of State, unless it is being supplied to the British Gas Corporation. This will close the present loophole in the Continental Shelf Act and complete the essential control on the use of this premium fuel. The provision will also enable us to control the conversion of natural gas to methanol and liquefaction. These are processes which waste gas and can be justified only in special circumstances. Opportunity is being taken to clear up the anomalous position of gas dissolved in crude from the Continental Shelf by exempting from control all gas dissolved in crude brought in by ship.
Clause 9 will also provide an important control on the wasteful disposal of our natural gas. The Petroleum and Submarine Pipelines Act only controls flaring by the licensees in connection with activities controlled by the licence; it does not necessarily control flaring at, for instance, onshore stabilisation and treatment plant or in refineries. This clause

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will make it illegal to flare gas without the Secretary of State's consent.
Clause 10 is designed to remove the potential confusion over the controls applied to gas from refineries. At present, that gas would be subject to the Gas Act 1972, if derived from imported crude, but to the different régime of the Continental Shelf Act if obtained from the North Sea. But the two gases are indistinguishable. It is therefore proposed to establish a single régime, closely following that of the Gas Act 1972, for all gas supplied from refineries.
Clause 11 gives permanent effect to the relief of the British Gas Corporation from its obligation under the Gas Act 1972 to meet demands for new or additional supplies of gas if these would involve supply of over 25,000 therms a year to the premises in question. This relief has been given for the last two years by a special authority granted under the 1973 Act, and needs to be maintained to ensure that demand does not outstrip available supplies through a major unregulated growth of non-domestic use.
Clause 12 will enable United Kingdom obligations under EEC Council Directives 75/404 and 75/405 to be implemented. It requires that the Secretary of State be notified of any proposal to establish or convert an electricity generating station to burn crude oil, petroleum products or natural gas or to enter into new arrangements or extend existing arrangements for the supply of natural gas as fuel for such stations. He may then give directions in relation to the proposals. An order will be made under subsection (4) of the clause to exempt mobile generating stations and stations which are for emergency use only. Consideration will also be given to exempting stations of less than a specified capacity from the need for authorisation.
Clause 13 is an important element in our campaign to encourage people to conserve energy. It provides that the Secretary of State may make orders requiring the fuel consumption of passenger cars to be officially tested and the results to be recorded and brought to the notice of the public. In particular, the official consumption figures will then have to be stated in any advertisement or other promotional material which mentions fuel consumption, and also in manuals and
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handbooks issued to the first purchaser of a car. It will also be necessary for retailers of cars to display at their premises a full set of official consumption figures, covering all the cars which have been officially tested, not just cars sold at the premises concerned. This will ensure that purchasers of cars will have reliable and comparable information on the car's fuel consumption, compared with other models. This will be a further incentive to car manufacturers to improve fuel consumption, as well as an indication to the consumer of relative running costs in terms of fuel.
Clause 14 raises the upper limit of the contributions payable under Section 2 of the Electricity Act 1972 from £25 million to £45 million, mainly to take account of inflation. Section 2 of the 1972 Act enabled the then Government to contribute to the costs incurred by the electricity boards in carrying out projects which they had agreed to advance in order to promote employment. The largest of these was Ince "B" power station in Greater Manchester. Clause 15 is a general clause relating to the use of orders and directions under the Bill. Apart from the Orders in Council under Clause 3(1), which activate the emergency measures and which I have already dealt with, and orders under Clauses 8(6) (consent for supply et cetera of natural gas) and 21(2) (appointed days), all orders under this legislation will be by statutory instrument, subject to annulment in pursuance of a Resolution in either House of Parliament.
Clause 16, with Schedule 2, provides powers to obtain from undertakings information relating both to the substances mentioned in Clause 1, and electricity, and to the undertakings themselves. This latter provision is necessary to implement our obligations under the IEP Agreement to furnish information on the structure and organisation of oil companies. The information may, however, only be disclosed in specified cases, such as to the International Energy Agency, EEC institutions and other Government Departments for the exercise of their functions. The Schedule includes powers to call for documents and, in certain circumstances (and subject to safeguards), to enter non-domestic premises. This clause also creates appropriate offences for non-compliance with provisions made

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by or under the Bill, and with the EEC Council Regulations listed in Schedule 3, and for making false statements or possessing false documents.
Clause 17 provides penalties for these offences. All are subject to a fine not exceeding £400 on summary conviction, but in some cases there is the alternative of an unlimited fine on conviction on indictment. There may, in addition, be a penalty of up to three months' imprisonment on summary conviction, or up to two years on conviction on indictment, for certain offences. The remaining Clauses 18, 19, 20 and 21 deal with miscellaneous provisions and general matters and cover financial provisions, interpretation, repeals and savings, citation, commencement and extension to Northern Ireland and territories outside the United Kingdom.
I feel sure noble Lords will agree that the provisions I have outlined are necessary in a Bill which is intended to provide a basis for our energy conservation programme, as it develops, and to meet our international obligations. The Government attach the highest importance to meeting these obligations, which are an important part of the United Kingdom's contribution to solving the world's energy crisis. The Government also recognise that the 1973 Act was not a suitable basis for meeting long-term obligations. The Bill now before your Lordships represents a sensible and coherent approach to our energy problems and is an essential part of our energy policy. As I am sure noble Lords will agree, energy is an essential basis of our social and economic life, and it would be irresponsible not to safeguard it by all the means that Parliament can provide. This Bill will achieve that objective, both in normal times and during energy emergencies. I commend the Bill to your Lordships and beg to move that it be now read a second time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Lord Lovell-Davis.)
4.37 p.m.
Lord LUCAS of CHILWORTH: My Lords, I am quite sure that we should thank the noble Lord for his very clear, if somewhat long, explanation of this extraordinary piece of proposed legislation. It is perhaps a pity that we have
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had so little time to study the Bill, the printed form of which came into your Lordships' House only on Friday afternoon. I know that a number of interested parties, apart from having spoken to the Department of Energy, perhaps to the Department of Industry and, I understand, also to the Department of the Environment, last November and December, have very little knowledge of what is contained in the Bill.
I would describe it, in culinary terms, as "a collation of snacks", and those of your Lordships who embark upon entertainment of that nature will know that such a collation brings not the satisfaction of a full meal but gross indigestion. That is precisely what this Bill will bring to us in the next few weeks. Indeed, some parts of it are so badly drafted that we may well have to decide exactly what it is we are to discuss. For example, on pages 2 and 6 there is a reference to "his"—but I wonder whether the reference should be to "hers", "his" or "theirs". What exactly is meant? Perhaps it is worth quoting what might be described as the most incredibly sloppy piece of Parliamentary writing it is possible to imagine. At page 12 of the photostat copy—I imagine it is the same page in the printed version—Clause 13(3)(b) reads:
"include that information in any manual or handbook compiled with a view to a copy of it being issued to any first purchaser of the car;".
Either we are going to print the wretched thing and make sure that the first purchaser has it, or we are not. As to whether or not views about this or that should be incorporated into a Bill, I am not sure: I cannot see the point. I should like to come back to that later.
The Minister explained that this Bill has two purposes: first, to meet our international obligations; and, secondly, to conserve energy. I should have thought that those two purposes differed very widely and that it might have been very much better to deal with our international obligations in a different Bill from one which attempts—and, in many ways, attempts most crudely—to assist in our energy conservation programme, because, while we are wrapping that up in Clauses 3 and 8, we are very severely shackling the hands of the oil producers. We know quite well that North Sea crude oil is very expensive and that the very best use must

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be made of it, which may not necessarily mean petrol. The Minister is taking power in an emergency—an international emergency or a domestic emergency; and God knows who will decide when these emergencies arise, because we lurch through domestic emergencies from year to year—to determine that any gas which a company may extract, having been offered to the British Gas Council and, presumably, been refused by them, cannot be used for any purpose that the producing company may seek, which may well be animal feedstuff's or some other aspect of petrochemicals. But he may, for devious reasons, determine that it should be used for a completely different purpose, and one which will greatly inhibit the producing companies.
From a conversation that I had with one of the leading petrol companies, it seems that we may very well wish to come back in great detail to both Clause 3 and Clause 8. It is quite extraordinary that a Minister should seek permanent powers for controlling the price of petrol products. During the crisis period two and a half years ago, the Government back-pedalled on price control. The last thing they want to do is to control the price—"Let natural competition take care of the price to the consumer". From personal experience, I can assure your Lordships that in the last 12 months natural competition has brought down the price of petrol to the consumer to a very low figure indeed, and the need for any Government to seek permanent powers to control the price of this product in the name of conservation is absolute rubbish. I do not know the reason for this provision. If I were inclined to wild outbursts, I might suggest that price control will ensure that some supplying companies exist and others do not exist, and perhaps help the ground to be well prepared for the National Enterprise Board to sweep through the lower echelons of petrol supply in a market place which is in complete disarray, so enabling even further inroads by the nationalisation of fuel. But that is very hypothetical.
Legislation of this kind should form part of those committees and groups that were suggested in our debate on 11th March, because, while the Minister said in relation to Clause 13 that the motor industry had been consulted and had
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agreed, the people in that part of the motor industry that I know do not consider that they have been consulted. Indeed, the best thing about Clause 13 is that subsection in it which promises consultation with interested parties. Of course we are all very glad to see that written in, and we hope that these consultations will continue. At the outset, Clause 13 was an attempt to meet an international obligation regarding consumption figure on all motor cars, notably in relation to the French, Swiss and American markets. But it has now become very much wider, and there are some points which I should like to bring to your Lordships' notice now, because we will be speaking about them later in very much greater detail.
As I said at the outset, much of this Bill, particularly Clause 13, is far more consumer orientated than energy conservation orientated. Or is this a subtle hint that, by publishing figures for the domestic market, users of big motor cars needing a lot of petrol might be shamed into using something smaller, or into thinking that for some extraordinary reason they are contravening the Government's intentions in this matter? I do not know how anybody in his right mind could imagine that the publication of any kind of standard for miles per gallon would do anything whatsoever to conserve energy. The most important saving of energy on a motor car is from the right foot on the throttle. Consumption figures also depend on the road, on the weather, on the load and on the state of maintenance of the engine; and there is irrefutable evidence that motor cars are extremely badly looked after largely because the cost is getting to be very high. But the publication of miles per gallon figures will not promote any greater energy in motor engine design with a view to more efficiency, because all those people who are making, selling and buying motor cars recognise that miles per gallon is only one small facet of this matter. Indeed, if two miles per gallon were able to be saved on a medium-sized family saloon car, that saving would be off-set within eight months by the increased costs of servicing and insurance—items outside the control of the motorist.
In this attempt to conserve energy, can the Minister tell the House what proportion of a barrel of crude oil is used as

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petrol in motor cars—I suspect that it is probably as low as 10 or 11 per cent.—and what proportion of crude oil purchases this amount of petrol represents. In other words, what kind of saving does the Minister think he will get by sticking a notice in a showroom window stating that a motor-car does x miles to the gallon? Who will carry out this test? There are upwards of 500 new motor variants on sale in this country today, and new ones and altered ones appear every other day. Is the Minister saying that every time a manufacturer makes a small modification to the jet size in a carburettor the vehicle has to be offered for re-test, because substantially the engine has been changed? Let him pay for it. Are the Government going to pay the manufacturer to undertake the test, or is the manufacturer going to pay some other party to undertake the test, or is the retailer going to have to pay? There is only one man who is going to pay and that is the ultimate buyer of the motorcar, and he will not like it. If the Government really want to save fuel by testing mpg, I suspect that they should put it into the annual test and let the consumer pay so that if his car does not come within a certain norm something has to be done. I doubt very much, however, whether Her Majesty's Government would saddle the motoring public with an annual cost of this nature; it comes very near the bone.
Secondly, who is going to see to this? Is it to be the Department of Consumer Protection? What happens when Mr. Brown buys his motor-car and it fails to do x miles to the gallon? Is he to rush down to the Department of Consumer Protection and say, "I wish you to bring an action against XYZ Garage under the Supply of Goods (Implied Terms) Act because my car will not do this gallonage. I am very light; I put my car in the garage; and I do this and I do that"? This is no answer.
The Bill provides also that the notice of the tested figure shall be displayed in every showroom. I have already suggested that there are upward of 500 motorcars, so every showroom will have 500 motor-booklets, or a big chart listing 500 motor-cars with little stickers on it for the modifications each year so that the buyer can come along and look. Whenever in
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our history has it been necessary for a seller of goods, in this case of motor-cars, by law to display information about his competitors? God bless my soul! What shall we have next in the supermarket—a list of 473 detergents, each giving its price, its composition, exactly how many pounds of wet whites, dry whites, mixed whites, colours or what-have-you, it will wash? This is the kind of hare that a Bill of this nature starts.
My time is up. I have attempted to illustrate one or two points which I think we shall have to look at more closely. I will come back to the speed limit at the Committee stage. Oh yes, my Lords, I can see a 50 mpg limit on ordinary roads and the upper limits, brought in under emergency powers, becoming part of our way of life, and I can see this happening not for good reasons being put forward in support but by default of any reasons being put against. Of course, these are matters which are better debated in Committee.
I do not like this collation. In 17 minutes I have got indigestion, although I have sampled only about five of the snacks on the tray. No doubt my noble friend on the Front Bench will get an equal dose of indigestion if he samples the remaining snacks on this rather horrid tray of goodies.
Baroness PHILLIPS: My Lords, before he sits down may I ask the noble Lord whether he was a supporter of our entry into Europe? If so, may I ask him whether he appreciates that many of the points he has been criticising stem directly from the need to conform to the EEC regulations?
Lord LUCAS of CHILWORTH: My Lords, the noble Baroness knows full well that I was an ardent supporter of our entry into Europe. Indeed, I remain so, despite the many problems that our entry has brought upon us. If, however, the noble Baroness will read what I said, she will see that I said that I could understand the need for Britain's meeting international obligations by some of the measures that are proposed in this Bill and that I suggested they should be dealt with in that context and should not be wrapped up in a wider Bill which also has something to do with energy conservation. If by my support of entry into

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Europe the noble Baroness thinks I have argued that we should meet our international obligations, but not this one because it concerns the motor-car, she is quite wrong. If the noble Baroness reads what I said she will probably appreciate this point. I said, by all means have a list but do not think for one minute that it will help energy conservation, or that it will stimulate motor-car manufacturers to make more efficient car engines. Then I dealt with the wider aspect of what is contained in Clause 13; namely, what I consider to be unfair competition by having to post up one's competitors. I do not think that either of us is at all apart on what I have said or on what the noble Baroness thinks I meant to say.
4.57 p.m.
Lord SLATER: My Lords, during the course of Lord Lucas's speech, which I followed very closely, I came to the conclusion that he is seeking to make a case on the Energy Bill—which I have not read, nor has anybody read it to me—not on behalf of that side of the House but on behalf of the motor-car industry of this country. The noble Lord referred to the price of petrol going down. So far as the consumer in this country is concerned, the question of how far the price of petrol has gone down is more or less negligible. In my opinion, he is paying far too high a price for his petrol, even at the prices which are fixed for consumer consumption. As drivers of motor vehicles we all know that the saving of petrol will depend upon the speed of travel. If a driver with a high-powered car is prepared to travel at 90 miles an hour on the motorways, a gallon of petrol will not take him very far; he will soon be looking for another garage to buy petrol.
While listening to my noble friend's presentation of this Bill and to his outline of the various clauses, I asked myself what is the reason for this Bill. No reference was made to the Gas Bill, the Electricity Bill, the Mines Bill and everything else that is related to the consumption of energy in this country. I cannot understand the reason for this Bill. There were many references in the speech made by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas of Chilworth, to which my noble friend Baroness Phillips referred, to certain Council Directives connected with this Bill. Must we take our directions
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and instructions from the Council of Europe because we have become a member of the EEC? Have we altogether lost our identity when it comes to the products that we are able to make in this country for the benefit of our people? Or have we to take the wide view and say that this must cover the whole of Europe and not only the United Kingdom?
Up to now the EEC has not done very much for us. Some people may say the contrary, but as an anti-Common Marketeer in the first place I cannot see anything that they have done for us as a nation. Nor, knowing the French as I do, do I expect that they will come down on the side of the people of this nation in giving us any support when we seek to deal with the energy problems with which we may be confronted in the future.
I should like my noble friend to be a little more clear in his reply. I am a great supporter of the Government and I should like him to tell us why the Government have come along at this particular juncture with this Bill, because we have North Sea gas and there is the new oil extraction now taking place from the seabed. Why we should be faced with this issue at this particular juncture I cannot for the life of me understand. After spending so many hours on this subject during the lifetimes of previous Governments and even during the present Government, I do not see why we should now seek to formulate a new fuel policy for this nation, which in my view has been running very well on the policies which have been pursued and which are now embodied in Acts of Parliament. They give all the forms of benefit that people could expect.
5.2 p.m.
Lord WYNNE-JONES: My Lords, I have formed a distinct impression that the last two noble Lords have been somewhat against this Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Lucas of Chilworth, spent a great deal of time discussing whether it was miles per gallon or feet on the throttle that made the difference, and he seemed very much concerned with such problems as how the tests were to be carried out. On the other hand, my noble friend Lord Slater was very much concerned with the question of interference from Europe.

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This is really quite a simple Bill, is it not? It has a number of points in it: I cannot say whether each one of these is a good point or not but the primary purpose of the Bill is outlined quite clearly; namely, to deal with the question of emergencies and stocks, how oil and gas are brought ashore to this country and how they are dealt with. These are basically simple matters, but they involve a certain amount of legislation.
I do not want to make a long speech because I did not put my name on the list of speakers. I had not intended to speak but, because of something I read just before lunch, I decided that I must ask a question of my noble friend the Minister. First, may I ask a question in connection with the International Energy Agency and the European Economic Community. We are members of both organisations, and oddly enough the two bodies are very different in their membership. A number of countries belong to both, but the organisations do not have a common membership. To take a particular instance, France—which always likes to go its own way—is not a member of the International Energy Agency and there is therefore a considerable probability that the recommendations of these two bodies will not be identical.
Therefore, when we look at Clause 3(1), which says:
"Her Majesty may by order in Council declare the powers of sections 1 and 2 above exercisable to their fullest extent because either—
(a) they are required for the implementation of obligations incumbent on the United Kingdom as a member of the European Communities or the International Energy Agency"—
I should like to ask: which takes precedence? Supposing the two do not make the same recommendation? Indeed, it is more than likely that they would not make the same recommendation. The International Energy Agency includes the United States of America, which has distinctly different interests and, as I have said, the EEC includes France, whereas the IEA does not. Therefore, it is surely rather important that we should know which of these bodies takes precedence when an emergency arises and if, as could happen—and it is by no means a hypothetical contingency, but from what
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one can see of the working of these bodies it might easily happen—they do not give the same instructions, which instruction do we take? Is it left entirely to us or are we bound to take the instruction of the EEC? Can my noble friend give some information on this point?
The second matter which I should like to ask him about arises from a short article in the business section of The Times of today, which refers to the fear of the chemical industry that this Bill would affect them. I copied out the relevant sentence, which reads:
"Government moves to end the automatic right of chemical companies to use any gas they may find during exploration in the North Sea as feedstock is causing concern in the petro-chemical industry."
They may well be right, but I cannot find anything in the Bill which ought to give them this concern. Therefore, I should like to ask my noble friend to tell us whether there is any justification for this. The only reference I can find to this is in Clause 8(1):
"No person other than the British Gas Corporation shall supply off-shore natural gas through pipes to premises in Great Britain, unless the supply is for industrial purposes."
I should have thought that completely covered the petro-chemical industry, but perhaps I am wrong. If I am right in my interpretation it seems to me that the article in The Times is completely misleading. In my view there are several matters here which require further elucidation and I hope that my noble friend will be able to provide it.
5.9 p.m.
The Earl of KINTORE: My Lords, first I want to apologise for taking part in this debate without having put down my name; but I hope the Minister will forgive me when I say that, living in Scotland as I do, there was not much chance of getting hold of the Bill to read it before I came down here. That being the case, I again apologise if I ask questions to which I should have known the answers had I read the Bill properly.
The first point that worried me a little was flaring. Flaring is all right if you are supplying oil through a pipeline but if you are supplying oil through a single point mooring buoy, as is being done in some of the more remote fields and the

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marginally economic fields, this might have an awkward bearing on the profitability. I do not know, and have not had time to consult my friends, or anything of that sort, so I merely ask the question and hope the noble Lord can reassure me on that. Like my noble friend, I am a little anxious about giving mileage consumption for cars. Two people driving exactly the same car over exactly the same distance at exactly the same speed will achieve completely different results, depending on how they have driven the vehicle. While I agree that the object is worth while, I am not quite sure how it can be accomplished by putting it in a Bill. This needs a little more explanation.
Other matters which I do not think are hinted at or given any encouragement in the Bill—and, after all, this is the Energy Bill—are housing estates which are centrally heated on a group basis. In this context, there appears to me to be a great potential for saving fuel and energy, so we should encourage group heating for domestic housing. We lay a cold water pipe, we lay a sewage pipe and we lay a gas pipe. Why should we not lay a hot water pipe, properly insulated? Why should we not have a central system as do many other parts of the world? There is a vast potential for saving energy, and we should go into this and give people encouragement to do such things as this.
The fourth point to which I want to draw attention is that there is still competition between the two nationalised gas and electricity industries. Usually, there are two showrooms, side by side, competing with each other. Despite the glib answers one receives, this could be abolished, and one showroom could serve both industries. If one uses electricity generated from fossilised fuels, before it enters the house it is only 30 per cent. efficient; whereas gas is 100 per cent. efficient by the time it is at its point of use, no matter what is done with it afterwards. These matters should be considered when talking about the utilisation of fuel. I do not think that they are considered enough.
There is another side issue: the cost of all these fuels. Why in the world do we not have, and insist on having, meters that can be read from outside the house? The meter reader has now to knock on
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the door and rouse the housewife. If she is not there, he has to return. So the meter reader has to come back again, and all this is a charge on the fuel bill. In America and other countries meters are situated so that they can be read from the outside of the house. It is perfectly easy to arrange. One should tell the people who build houses that this is to be done. It can save an enormous amount by way of cost, which would be to the general benefit of the country.
When talking about labour, it is an interesting point to note the statistics from research carried out in Aberdeen. Along with many others, I complained that street lights remained on all night. We went into this matter, as did the Department concerned. They proved—on an experimental basis anyway—that to employ a person to stand by and go round to alter the time clocks, costs more than leaving the lights on all night. This kind of labour-effective matter is something we should consider.
My Lords, I am a little perturbed about chemicals. I do not quite see where natural gas liquids come into it. These liquids have been extracted from the gas. Before one can use gas as gas, one has to take off the liquids, which become feed stocks. Secondly, how do we cater for the Norwegian gas which is coming ashore in my part of the world? There is a Norwegian firm who will turn a good deal of it into liquid ammonia, and then will ship it back to Norway as a fertiliser. How will these people be affected by these laws?
Lastly, I was an ardent supporter, and still am, of the Common Market. One of the reasons for joining a club is that if you are a member, you have an equal right with everyone else to change the rules. France pays no attention to any rule of the EEC if it does not suit her. The sooner we take a tough attitude in dealing with the Community rules—some of which are idiotic—the better. Only the other day there was the question of pollution. We are a full member of the Common Market, and, if things do not suit us, we have every right to tell the others to go to the devil.
5.17 p.m.
Lord STRATHCONA and MOUNT ROYAL: My Lords, unlike Brutus on

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the subject of Caesar, I find little enough to praise in this Bill, and frankly, would prefer to bury it. However, I hope I shall not have cause to comment in quite such a trenchant manner as did my noble friend Lord Kintore just now. In seeking the good apple in what I reckon is a generally rotten barrel, I was heartened by the genuflections of the noble Lord, towards at least what I prefer to call energy saving, rather than using the word "conservation", which means a number of other things to a number of other people. I welcome his particular involvement in this matter and, indeed, I am not sure it is not the first occasion, for me at any rate, to congratulate him on being put in charge of this operation.
My Lords, as a number of speakers have said, we have had little time to consider what is, by any standards, a very complicated Bill. Frankly, I find it both a pretentious and depressing Bill; pretentious because the title suggests that the Bill sets out energy policy, which it certainly does not. It is a ragbag of unnecessary and objectionable measures, in my opinion. I find it depressing because it once again shows, I think, the Government and Whitehall approach to legislating our way out of the mess we are in at the moment; whereas we believe that we go in deeper in direct proportion to the degree of Government intervention, involvement and direction.
It is interesting to look back at the remarks made by no less a person than Mr. Benn in the 1973 debate in another place. I believe the rules of the House preclude me from quoting, so I shall have to paraphrase what he said. He was contrasting the wisdom of the civil servants and the intellectual establishment with the wisdom of people with knowledge of the industry. He says that often in his experience the people with knowledge of the industry have turned out to be right, which seems to me at variance really with the objectives of this Bill. The noble Lord presents this Bill as an innocuous tidying-up measure, whereas it really represents a formidable extension of the powers of the Executive. We are bound, I think, to object in principle to this accretion of ill-defined powers. They are expressed, as I find it, on, I admit, an inadequate inspection, in obscure and complicated language, of which I shall
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give details in a moment. Again, Mr. Benn himself has described these powers as massive. Furthermore, it seems to me that there is an attempt in this Bill to bypass Parliament by making what were essentially emergency regulations into a permanent feature of the legislation.
I was, to some extent, reassured by the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Lovell-Davis, in that, at least his objectives appear to be worthy ones. But, here again, I cannot apologise for being disturbed, and questioning the motivation of a Minister, as he now is, who when he was in Opposition was talking about the original 1973 Act and saying how pleased he was about that Act, because it took powers to control all the oil companies and all the multinationals and to fix all their prices and their distribution systems, and these powers could be used to control every other fuel and its use, including the chemical industry. I have already explained why I do not find those at all reassuring as objectives.
I shall now try to be slightly more specific as I go through some of the clauses of this Bill. I will take, first, Clauses 1, 2 and 3. I find it very difficult in the Bill to disentangle which of these regulations are in fact subject to Negative Resolution. We have to go forward to Clause 15 to discover how this is intended to work. I think I am right in saying that Orders in Council under Clause 3 are subject to Affirmative Resolution, except for the two exceptions, something to do with the origin of gas, and the starting date of the Bill, and these are presumably not subject to any kind of appeal procedure. Then we come to this very strange expression in Clause 3, which I certainly do not ever remember seeing in legislation before; this expression about exercising the powers to "their fullest extent". Could the noble Lord tell us exactly what is less than the fullest extent of the exercise of these powers, and how is less than the fullest extent to be defined? Has this expression been lifted out of some other piece of legislation which I ought to be aware of but am not?
Then, under Clause 3(2)(a) and (b) we find a regulating power, regulating the use, and also a power to regulate the price, which has already been referred to by my noble friend Lord Lucas. These,

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I would have thought, were powers which were only needed in an emergency situation. It may simply be that the convoluted drafting has defeated me. As I see it, there are orders under Clause 1 which are not exercisable except by Order in Council, except for the regulation under (a) and price under (b). But then directions are excepted from Orders in Council, whereas under Clause 2(2)(b)(iii) they are brought in again, and that seems to be duplicated in 3(2)(b). I am sorry to quote all these references, but I should go on at great length if I tried to quote all the paragraphs in question. Then we find Clause 3(2)(a), and this seems to be a really good all-embracing kind of clause which is one of those "anything I have not thought of before" kind of clauses which Governments always pop in if you are not watching very carefully.
The issue of electricity I find even more confusing. This seems to be like a yo-yo that goes in and out of the regulations in each alternate paragraph. We find it excluded from price control under Clause 2(2)(b)(iii), which we read with Clause 2(4), and then we find it popped back in again under Clause 4(5). I suggest it might be quite useful if the noble Lord tells us what the Government mean to do about electricity. Possibly I could ask him to examine whether it would not be easier, seeing that this is supposed to be a piece of tidying-up legislation, to sweep all these things into one section which a reasonable man might possibly understand.
My next point is that Clause 5(2)(d) is not in Parliamentary language. What on earth does this mean:
"…that the agreement is not to the like effect as another agreement made while the Order in Council is in force in respect of which exemption has been withdrawn under subsection (4) below, unless—
(i) none of the parties to the new agreement were parties to the previous agreement."
Some noble Lords may possibly be reminded of an old Marx Brothers film, in which I recall very much that same language occurring, and I do not really think we should use Marx Brothers script writers in writing legislation for the British Parliament.
When we come to Clause 6, this has already been referred to, and I very much take the point which the noble
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Lord, Lord Wynne-Jones made, which I must confess I had not spotted. I was going to ask what is the force of these EEC Directives. A number of noble Lords have asked this question. Are we following the EEC Directives exactly, and does the Secretary of State intend to do what he is told by the EEC? I thought I heard the noble Lord say that we were talking about 30 day stocks, whereas my recollection is than the EEC Directives on stocking have raised stock figures from 65 days to 90 days. That, again, could possibly be my confusion.
What exactly are we committed to under the International Energy Program, because the Preamble to the Bill says that we are going to follow the powers under the International Energy Program and I cannot find anything actually in the body of the Bill which does what the Preamble says the Bill intends to do. Incidentally, on the subject of stocks, may I ask one other question. This could be quite an expensive, onerous imposition to place upon a company or an organisation, if they have to finance large quantities of stocks. The question arises as to who is to pay for that and how are these obligations to be imposed. Will they be imposed in a fair-minded manner?
Under Clause 7(2) we specify the minimum size of generating plant to which this is going to apply. However, if we look forward to Clause 12 that particular issue—I admit in a slightly different connection—is left open. I shall return to this point when I look at Clause 12. On Clause 7, the EEC Directive I have, which is L 153/36, says in paragraph 4:
"Stocks shall be held on the premises of the power station or at a place directly linked thereto. Stocks may be held at a place further removed, provided that they can be conveyed to the power station at all times."
Have we, in this Bill, made satisfactory provision for access?—because some of us will remember that during the fuel crisis of 1973 we were in a position where stocks were available but it was impossible to get them into the power stations. Surely that is something that we ought to deal with under the Bill.
The next group of clauses is concerned with the gas industry. I get the impression here that there has been inadequate consultation with the industry. Certainly as expressed to me, the industry have been both painfully surprised and shocked

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by what is in these four clauses. I shall not go into great detail on these issues because they are more suitably kept to Committee stage points. We are here seeking to extend the Continental Shelf Act 1964 to cover the user of the gas. I would instance the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Wynne-Jones, that the exemption from control of feed stocks has now been brought, as I understand it, within the ambit of the Bill. Furthermore, the Bill now extends beyond methane to, for example, ethane, butane and propane. I think that the noble Lord, himself, said that liquefaction is now coming under the control of the Bill. The danger here is that we shall be putting the whole liquid petroleum gas industry, which is not a Gas Corporation function at all, within the Government's control. This is surely a piece of economic nonsense and liable to create a hopeless distortion of the market, and it is not a function that either by constitution or experience the Gas Corporation is qualified to operate.
When we go back to the objections in principle to a number of these clauses we get back to points we laboriously made under the Petroleum and Submarine Pipelines Bill. I shall have to repeat the argument again, and I hope that perhaps the present Minister with whom we are dealing will be more able to understand the point which I tried to make. Even with the support of my noble and learned friend Lord Hailsham, I could never persuade the noble Lord, Lord Balogh, of what we were talking about. There is an objection in principle to legislation which has a retrospective element in it and which, in effect, by changing a licence takes something away from a company which has paid for the licence. I did not say it, but in point of fact this was precisely the argument we were taking in this House a week ago in another connection concerning Laker. I do not intend to labour the point but it is a serious issue. It has happened too often, and it is something about which we should be very careful, and the Minister can hardly complain if the industry is upset when the Government bring in legislation of this kind.
There is a further objection, in that this kind of legislation tends to decrease the competitive nature of the United Kingdom energy industry, and therefore the
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industrial sectors which are dependent upon it, and the uncertainty which it creates slows down the decision-making process and has a devastating effect, as we are already seeing, on the ability of the industry to make their rational forward plans.
There are a couple of specific questions on the gas issue. Clause 8(2) states "in the same group", referring to supply between one company and another. If that is put into the Bill is that not going to be an invitation to companies to force themselves into some kind of conglomerate in order to get round that point, and really invite evasive tactics? When we come to Clause 9, about which we have already spoken, on the question of flaring, I think this is going to create a certain amount of worry in the industry because there are technical reasons why they need to have permission to flare. This leads me to wonder whether Clause 9(1) implies, as so many lawyers' points do, that the Minister of States' consent is required. Do we, in Parliamentary legislation, also insert the lawyers' words, "which consent may not be unreasonably withheld"? If that were there, even by implication, this might go some way towards reassuring the industry.
Then, under Clause 10 we talk about refineries, but I cannot find any definition of the word "refinery". Much the same argument applies here as I referred to in regard to the same group. If you say that certain things are not to be done outside a refinery, is not this going to be an invitation to the industry to try and so create their refineries that they can carry on their gas activities within the complex and thereby take themselves out of the Minister's control? I agree that that is a rather technical point.
I have already referred to the apparent difference of approach in Clause 12. As it stands, the Minister's permission would be needed to put in an ordinary diesel generating set. He makes it quite clear that he has every intention of stating a lower limit, but if the lower limit of size is to be stated under the previous clause would it not be sensible to put into the Bill a lower limit below which this permission would not be needed, in the same way as is done in Clause 7(2)?
I do not think that I need to expand on Clause 13, about which my noble friend Lord Lucas of Chilworth is an

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expert. I am not going to say that I go quite so far as he does in being critical of the Government's intentions here, but it is clear that the industry does express some concern. Under Clause 14 I think the Minister said that the main reason for increasing the aggregate of the amounts of money available was inflation, by which presumably he is suggesting that costs have very nearly doubled between 1973 and 1976, a sad reflection on what has been going on. Could he let us have in due time—I appreciate that he cannot let us have the details now—a list of the projects which are intended or which have been supported under this clause? I recall reading in the Press recently that a generating plant which the Electricity Board did not want was being built as part of the job creation programme. This is something we should know about if we are considering increasing the sum under this clause. When we come to Clause 15, this, as I said earlier, seems to define the way in which the first two clauses operate.
Lord DAVIES of LEEK: My Lords, I apologise for not being in my place at the outset; snow was about in places through which I was driving. Before the noble Lord deals with Clause 15, I should like to tell him that I listened with interest to the points he rightly made in connection with Clause 13. While of course preferring to leave certain points until we arrive at the Committee stage, may I draw his attention to Schedule 1 which, in my view, destroys everything that is said in Clause 13, because the Schedule says:
"A person acting under and in accordance with a general or special authority granted by the Secretary of State…may use, or cause to permit the use of, any vehicle on a road as a public service vehicle—

(a) without a licence, permit, agreement or consent otherwise required; and

(b) notwithstanding that the vehicle does not comply with regulations."

Heaven help us! One could put a boat on the road under that provision. Clause 13, meanwhile, refers to tests and officers, but all of that is made bunkum by what is said in Schedule 1.
This may be a Committee point, but a number of such points have been made. I simply wish to draw attention to the breadth of permission, so to speak, that is available under the measure. We are in the Common Market and it seems that
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we could have vehicles as large as the "Lusitania" running through our villages.
Lord STRATHCONA and MOUNT ROYAL: My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord that we should raise as many points as possible at this stage—we do not have long before the Committee stage—so giving the Minister notice of the kind of points we shall wish to discuss in Committee. What the noble Lord says reinforces my unhappiness about the drafting of the Bill. I confess that I had not studied Schedule 1; it was rather too near the end of the Bill for me to study in the time I had available.
I am particularly concerned about Clause 15(4)(a) which seems to be another splendid example of gobbledegook, because it says:
"An order under this Act…may—
(a) apply to persons, premises or undertakings generally, or to classes of persons, premises or undertakings, or to particular persons, premises or undertakings, and may so apply either in all areas or in specified areas".
If that means anything, it seems to mean everything. There may be a perfectly rational explanation for it and we may be given it in Committee, but at present it defeats me and, in defeating me, it worries me. There is a broader issue here, because the companies feel worried in that the powers in the clause could be exercised in a discriminatory fashion in favour of our old enemy, as I prefer to see it, the British National Oil Corporation. Furthermore, the clause seems to give the Minister power to control the whole profitability of the entire refining industry of this country in an arbitrary fashion. With the best will in the world, I cannot see that that is a power he needs or that we would wish him to have.
In coming to Clause 16, very much the same issues apply, especially when one reads the clause with Schedule 2. The Schedule starts by saying:
"…whenever the Secretary of State thinks it expedient…"
It goes on to say that he can call for documents, have entry without warrant, or
"…direct any person carrying on an undertaking"
or
"…furnish, as and when specified, estimates, forecasts, returns and information relating to such a substance, or to electricity".

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Here again, these seem to be terrifyingly wide powers of disclosure which will raise all the issues of confidentiality and, again, the thorny question of the danger of unfair discriminatory information as between the BNOC and the oil companies.
I must, in concluding, say as usual that I have spoken at greater length than I had intended. We fear that this measure is a piece of Socialist planning masquerading as legislation to cater for emergencies. I am sure that we shall need to amend it considerably in Committee. Above all, we shall need to try to restore Parliamentary control over what otherwise seems to be an invitation on the part of the Government to exercise almost unlimited and arbitrary and, therefore, in my book, by definition, undesirable powers of control and direction.
5.47 p.m.
Lord LOVELL-DAVIS: My Lords, I have found the discussion most interesting and although there have been only a few contributions, they have been very wide-ranging in scope and I am grateful to noble Lords who have taken part for the useful points they have made and the questions they have put to me. I will do my best to answer them. First, the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas of Chilworth. This may seem to him a collation of snacks, the main ones of which, indigestible as he may find them, were first created by the then Government in the 1973 Act, which was designed to meet the energy crisis of 1973 and 1974 and the decision of the noble Lord's Government to enter the Common Market. These are the prime considerations for our drawing them together and meeting the various requirements of the EEC and IEA in this Bill.
In referring to the motor industry, Lord Lucas said that he knew of no bodies which had been consulted. I can assure him that many organisations were consulted about the fuel consumption testing of cars. I will name a few: the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders; the Scottish Motor Traders' Association; the Consumer Association; the National Consumer Council; the Motor Agents' Association; the RAC and the AA. We did, in fact, consult a considerable number of the bodies involved. The noble
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Lord questioned the reason for our introducing this provision in the Bill. In my view it is important. Its aim is to make the industry more fuel economy conscious and to give people the chance to choose the model which is most economical to run. He referred to such things as badly looked after cars; and other noble Lords referred to the different ways people drive. Nevertheless, people must have the ability to judge what the car is capable of; which car will achieve the most miles per gallon or kilometres per litre.
I regret that I cannot answer the noble Lord's question about the amount in each barrel of oil devoted to petrol, but I imagine that he would not expect me to do so. The noble Lord asked who was to carry out the test and gave the impression that every car would be tested. That is not so. Models will be tested and the testing will be selective. The manufacturers themselves will carry out the tests, subject to the agreement of the Secretary of State. The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders has requested a year's notice of the scheme in order to be able to carry out the heavy programme of testing necessary. It is therefore proposed that the scheme should come into effect on 1st April 1977, but it is our intention that, at least initially, this will be a matter of self-certification, though the Government will retain the right to supervise testing and to carry out test checks. As the cars tested will be samples from the models and as not every car will be tested the cost will not be much of a charge on the great mass of motorists.
The noble Lord also referred to retailers publishing lists of their competitors' products. Here again, I wonder whether he is suggesting that we should not try to help the consumer make his choice, or does he not think it important that we should attempt to conserve energy in this very vital area? This is an extraordinarily difficult area. We know it ourselves and I am sure that noble Lords are all aware how difficult it is to modify methods of driving so as to conserve energy. There is an enormous wastage in this area and we must try to do something about it.
The noble Lords also asked about speed limits. It is very difficult—indeed it is impossible—to attribute specific

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savings to the introduction of the lower limits, but there is no doubt that drivers are behaving more economically and that the speed limit must be making a contribution to that. No speed limit is 100 per cent. observed, but the latest surveys showed that about 80 per cent. of drivers were observing the limits and that is a good standard of observance and is, for instance, better than the standard of observance on motorways.
The noble Lord also referred to the EEC aspects of conservation. Clause 12 of the Bill which deals with the fuelling of power stations is directly related to our EEC obligations, and Clause 13 is based on international discussions in ECE, the Economic Commission for Europe. France has already gone ahead with a similar scheme and the EEC as a whole is likely to follow. Clauses 1 to 4, to which the noble Lord referred, especially arise both from EEC and IEA obligations in the case of emergency.
He referred to Clause 13 in connection with passenger cars. It could not and is not intended to affect the rights of purchasers of cars. This would depend on whether the dealer warranted that a particular car would do the miles per gallon specified for that type of car. The clause deals only with testing the models, as I have said. It does not cover the performance of individual cars.
My noble friend Lord Slater asked why we were introducing the Bill. I had hoped that I had clearly set out the reasons for our wishing to do so. I would rather not repeat them. I can only commend the Bill to him once again and point out that North Sea oil and gas will not solve our energy problems. The fact is that North Sea oil and gas will probably run out during the lifetime of most of us. Fossil fuels are finite. We must implement a proper conservation programme. My noble friend referred to other Acts on the Statute Book, but the reason for introducing the Bill is because those Acts do not adequately cover the requirements for which we have designed the Energy Bill. As Members of the EEC and the IEA and as a country responsible, as are all other main energy-using countries, for the world's energy future and for conserving the energy resources which we have at present, we had an obligation to take this step.
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I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Wynne-Jones. As he said, the matters covered by the Bill may seem complex but the Bill itself is not overcomplex. The fact is that we must be adequately covered for the reasons which I have already stated. My noble friend asked which out of the EEC or the IEA Directives would take precedence in terms of energy directions if the aims of the two were not identical. The Government are making efforts to ensure that the two emergency schemes of the IEA and the EEC shall be as nearly identical as possible. We cannot prejudge the outcome of the meeting later this week of the EEC Council of Ministers, but we are very hopeful that the EEC proposals will mirror those set out in the International Energy Agreement. I do not know whether my noble friend Lord Wynne-Jones had a narrower point in mind, but either body, if it decided to trigger an emergency, would give rise to the use of Clause 3(1). I suppose that whichever came first would apply.
Lord WYNNE-JONES: My Lords, I was specifically raising the issue of the possible conflict between an International Energy Agency Directive and one from the EEC because of the difference in the composition of the two bodies. I believe I am right in saying that Japan is included in the International Energy Agency and that France is not. It could easily happen that a body which includes America and Japan could have a different view of an energy emergency to the EEC, which includes France but not America and Japan. The point which I was raising was whether there was any priority given to the decisions reached by the two bodies in so far as their effect upon this country is concerned. Otherwise, we may be faced with a position in which we receive opposing Directives from the two bodies.
Lord LOVELL-DAVIS: I take my noble friend's point. The International Energy Agency consists of 18 countries and includes countries which are not in the EEC. Also France is not a member. However, I believe that my noble friend will agree that for either body to take action there would have to be agreement within the body in question and that, if the IBA agreed that emergency conditions existed, this would mean that the

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majority of the members of the EEC were of like mind, in that they had gone along with the IEA decision. I do not believe that I can say more on this than I have already said. As I said, if either body decided to trigger an emergency, it would give rise to the use of Clause 3(1). My noble friend Lord Wynne-Jones also mentioned a story he saw in The Times. The use of natural gas for petrochemical purposes will require the discretionary consent of the Secretary of State, but there is no question of a general prohibition on its use for petro-chemical purposes—
Lord WYNNE-JONES: My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt my noble friend again. The clause dealing with this matter seems to me to state quite clearly that where the gas was required for industrial purposes it could indeed be brought ashore, and a permit would not be required. Clause 8(1) says:
"No person other than the British Gas Corporation shall supply off-shore natural gas through pipes to premises in Great Britain, unless the supply is for industrial purposes."
Well, my Lords, what is feedstock but an industrial purpose?
Lord LOVELL-DAVIS: My Lords, I regret that without the information on this point I am unable to answer my noble friend at present, and if I am unable to do so before I sit down I hope he will be agreeable to my writing to him on the matter.
I turn to matters raised by the noble Earl, Lord Kintore. He referred to flaring from a field with a single point buoy mooring. There is no question of absolute prohibition on flaring; problems, such as those mentioned by the noble Earl, would be taken into account by the Secretary of State in considering any application to flare. The noble Earl mentioned natural gas liquids; that is to say, heavier natural gases. These are treated in the same way as other constituents of natural gas. He referred also to imported Norwegian gas. That is not covered by this Bill, which deals with gas from the United Kingdom shelf. Norwegian gas would be caught by the 1972 Gas Act, except for the particular case of refinery gas, which is dealt with in Clause 10, and which applies controls similar to the Gas Act.
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The noble Earl also mentioned other points, such as the way people drive, and referred to group central heating. This matter has arisen several times in the Department of Energy, through advisory bodies, and is under general consideration. The noble Earl spoke, too, about the possibility of joint gas and electricity showrooms. We have sought advice from the consultative councils of consumers in both these industries, from the unions, and from the industries themselves and the Secretary of State hopes to make a Statement on this matter shortly. The noble Earl also referred to meters positioned outside the house. As he may be aware, I am in charge of an inquiry into methods of payment, collection and other matters, and I shall gladly take note of his recommendations in conducting the inquiry. I do not know whether there are any other points mentioned by the noble Earl which I have not adequately covered.
I now have a note which I hope might answer the question raised by my noble friend Lord Wynne-Jones regarding Clause 8(1). The clause and subsection refers to the supply for industrial purposes, in order to make it clear that domestic supply is the province of the British Gas Corporation. The remainder of the clause spells out the particular controls. I do not know whether that is an adequate reply.
I come now to the fairly lengthy summing-up by the noble Lord, Lord Strathcona and Mount Royal. I am very sorry that he finds the Bill to be a ragbag. In fact it is not a ragbag. It is less complicated than it looks, and has very specific aims, as I said, primarily in terms of the Fuel and Electricity (Control) Act and our entry into the EEC. I will try to answer as many of the points raised by the noble Lord as I can, although I felt that he was at times rather anticipating the Committee stage.
If I may pass back to him the Marx Brothers' film comment on the party of the first part, I should say that I wonder whether we can leave a good deal of this to the party of the Committee part. He said that we had by-passed Parliament. The only way we could be said to have by-passed Parliament in this Bill is in the emergency provisions which, as I explained, relate only to IEA and EEC obligations which,

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I am advised, need to be as automatic as possible. By making some powers permanent—which were dealt with under the 1973 Act—we are now able to provide that the general powers of the 1973 Act are available only for use in an emergency. The noble Lord referred to Clause 5(2)(d). This provides that an agreement, which is to the same effect as an earlier agreement from which exemption is withdrawn, does not enjoy exemption without the Secretary of State's consent. This controls an obvious way of evading a withdrawal of exemption.
The noble Lord mentioned Clause 3(2)(a) and the use of the word "use", in addition to the price control of petroleum products. Only these two provisions are permanent, outside the emergency provisions of Clause 3(1). The word "use" is wide in scope, but as I explained, this will be employed only in energy conservation measures. The question of EEC stocks was also referred to by the noble Lord—or at least I believe it was the noble Lord. The correct figure for United Kingdom oil stocks in general is 90 days, and the figure of 30 days relates to fossil fuel supplies—that is to say, oil and coal—at power stations. The situation is that the oil companies already have sufficient stocks and therefore we believe that no extra cost is involved.
The noble Lord also spoke about companies which have automatic rights to their own gas and he asked why should they not continue to do so. The Secretary of State will decide on the disposal of all United Kingdom Shelf gas, taking account of the maximum benefit to the nation. Companies' use of gas like that of all licensees will be subject to the Secretary of State's discretionary consent. The use of gas by a licensee for non-fuel purposes will not be subject to any requirement of a first offer to British Gas. The noble Lord asked what were the intentions on electricity. For most purposes the general control provisions in Clauses 1 to 4 of the Bill cover both electricity and other substances. All other emergency powers apply to electricity, except price, and those provisions dealing specifically with gas are in Clauses 8 to 11, fuel stocks are covered in Clauses 6 to 7, the RTPA exemption is covered in Clause 5, and car fuel consumption testing is covered by Clause 13.
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The noble Lord asked for some details on the appropriation, Clause 14, the raising of the limit from £25 million to £45 million. I believe the noble Lord asked me if I could give some indication—and, although he did not expect me to have them, I have the figures—how the sum breaks down. The principal charge is concerned with the Ince B power station, which accounts for about £36·8 million of the sum. The others are all comparatively minor projects. The CEGB's largest other one is the Leicester Gas Turbine Station; but these six particular projects account for only £1·45 million. There are a number of projects—116—under the area electricity boards; and the South of Scotland, the North of Scotland and the Highlands Electricity Boards also have a number of projects which account for about £3 million. In toto, allowing for contingency, the sum amounts to about £45 million; but, as I say, the primary charge is for Ince B power station.
I should have liked to reply to the noble Lord's request for a definition of a refinery, but I do not think I am able to do so in a very adequate way. We are relying on a common general understanding of what is meant by an oil refinery. We decided there was no need to define the term for the Energy Bill. In attempting a definition, a major difficulty would be that many of the processes carried out in a refinery are the same as or similar to those of a petro-chemical plant, for instance. I believe the noble Lord gave the impression that a gasworks could be built within a refinery. If gas was supplied from a gasworks built within a refinery, like any other gas supplied from the refinery it would be subject to the control of British Gas with, in the case of non-supply, a right to appeal to the Secretary of State.
The noble Lord referred to Clause 15(4)(a) and said this might be favouring BNOC. This clause provides the necessary flexibility required for orders made under emergency conditions. I would refer briefly to three other points that the noble Lord, Lord Strathcona and Mount Royal, raised. The Bill does not extend control to ethane, propane and butane. These substances are, and always have been, natural gas. Nor does the Bill bring British Gas any further

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into liquid petroleum gas than did the previous Act. The provision to grant consent by order is intended specifically to reduce uncertainty. For that reason, no Parliamentary procedure is necessary. So far as flaring is concerned, when this is really necessary it will now be covered by order.
Finally, I come to the matters raised by my noble friend Lord Davies of Leek. I should like to point out first of all that Schedule 1 is only for emergencies, and Clause 13 is a permanent provision, hopefully with effect from the 1st April 1977. My noble friend also referred to paragraph 1 of Schedule 1. This is related to Clause 4(2), and enables a public service vehicle to be operated without a licence or permit required under Part III (control of operations of public service vehicles) of the Road Traffic Act 1960; (1) a road service licence for the route and (2) a public service vehicle licence for the vehicle. A permit under Section 30 of the Transport Act 1968 is an alternative to the first, for the route. The regulations referred to are described in paragraph 1(2), and relate specifically to psv's. Clause 4(2) would permit these relaxations, but only when an Order in Council bringing the emergency reserve powers into operation was in force.
Lord DAVIES of LEEK: My Lords, I apologise to my noble friend, because really this is a Committee point. Consequently, rather than make heavy weather of it I will take the opportunity of raising it again during the Committee stage, when I am sure my noble friend will be able to satisfy us.
Lord LOVELL-DAVIS: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend. I found myself getting into rather deep water there, and was in danger of sinking. I hope noble Lords will feel that I have managed—I am sorry I have taken such time to do so—to deal with at least a major proportion of the issues raised today. There will no doubt be further points in the minds of noble Lords, particularly when they have had more time to study the detail of this important measure, which we shall have the opportunity to consider when we take the Bill clause by clause through the Committee stage. The essential characteristics of the Bill are, once more, to fulfil United King-
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dom obligations to the IEA and the EEC and to provide, as well as the specific conservation measures in the Bill, general powers to control the use of energy for conservation purposes by order, subject to Negative Resolution. In an energy emergency we would need to adopt one of two alternative courses: for an IEA or an EEC emergency, the Government would lay an Order in Council before Parliament which would be subject to no further Parliamentary sanction; for a domestic emergency, the Government would proceed by Order in Council subject to Affirmative Resolution. Having said that, I commend the Bill to your Lordships' House.
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

BAIL BILL [H.L.]
6.18 p.m.
The MINISTER of STATE, HOME OFFICE (Lord Harris of Greenwich): My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. My Lords, this Bill emphasises the Government's concern over the size of our prison population, and their desire to see that bail is given in all cases where this is reasonable. The House will recall that this problem of bail was dealt with in the Criminal Justice Act 1967, and if I may be forgiven a trip down memory lane—on which I hope I shall carry the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone, with me—I well remember that Bill for a number of reasons. One is that I had the pleasure of hearing the noble and learned Lord speak on this Bill on a number of occasions in another place when I was sitting in the Officials' Box in the Standing Committee. The Bill went fairly wide—well outside the area of bail. It dealt with the question of parole, on which the noble and learned Lord made a number of the most significant proposals, as a result of which the Government accepted that his proposals were more satisfactory than theirs; and that has in fact been the basis of our parole system since then. Secondly, the noble and learned Lord and my right honourable friend the Home Secretary joined together in a coalition against the legal conservatives of both

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Parties in the matter of majority verdicts. That was a departunre from the existing situation which no one has subsequently challenged but which was then regarded, as the noble and learned Lord will recall, as a particularly revolutionary doctrine.
We dealt with those two particular problems, I think, in a fairly satisfactory way, but we did not deal as well with the question of bail. The Act provided that bail should not be refused except on one or more of a number of listed grounds. It also provided that the reason for refusal should be given if the defendant was not legally represented, or if his legal representative asked for it. However, the provision did not apply to all accused, but only to those accused of lesser offences. The percentage of remands in custody fell, it is true, from 33·9 per cent. in 1967 to 15 per cent in 1974. Nevertheless, in 1974 over 51,000 men and women were received in prison before they had been tried for criminal offences. With the great pressure on our prisons caused by rising crime, this is not a figure which any Government can afford to ignore.
The present Bill attempts to improve on the provisions of the 1967 Act. Governments of both Parties have recognised the need for some improvement. In 1971, the previous Administration set up a Working Party on Bail Procedures in Magistrates' Courts, at the suggestion of the Magistrates' Association. We are indebted to the members of the Working Party for their thorough review of the law and practice and for their detailed recommendations, which were unanimous. Some of these recommendations could be implemented without legislation, and we commended them to magistrates, chief constables, probation committees and others concerned in a circular last October. The present Bill seeks to implement those recommendations which require legislation.
Before turning to the main provisions of the Bill, I should mention the Government's general objective. We are concerned to improve the quality of bail decisions. It is an axiom of British justice that there is a presumption of innocence; and I do not think it is in dispute that an accused should not be remanded in custody unless there are compelling reasons for doing so. Of course, such compelling reasons some-
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times exist. In addition, we must recognise that decisions on the grant or refusal of bail present peculiar difficulties which I suggest do not apply, at any rate to the same extent, to other judicial decisions. The first decision has to be taken shortly after the arrest, when information must necessarily be limited. It is, by its nature, a forecast of future conduct, not simply an assessment of past conduct, and must therefore be based on probabilities.
The administrative recommendations we included in our circular last October were largely directed to improving the information on which these decisions are based. In particular, the circular asked courts to consider the introduction, within existing resources, of bail information schemes. It may be helpful if I describe the background to these. The Working Party noted that the Manhattan Bail Project of the VERA Institute of Justice in New York had achieved significant results by providing verified information to courts concerning community ties of persons making their first appearance in court. The Working Party considered that experiments of a similar nature to the Manhattan Project might provide lessons for the operation of bail procedures in England and Wales. As a result, in November 1974, with the agreement of my right honourable friend the Horne Secretary, two members of the staff of the VERA Institute were seconded to the Inner London Probation and After-Care Service to collaborate on a number of projects—the first of which was a pilot bail information scheme.
The pilot project was launched in Camberwell Green Magistrates' Court in March of last year. Similar schemes have since been started in the Thames and Horseferry Road Magistrates' Courts. The schemes aim to test the feasibility of gathering, verifying and presenting to magistrates, relevant information on any defendant at risk of being remanded in custody. The task of collecting, verifying and presenting information has been undertaken by ancillaries employed by the Inner London Probation and After-Care Service and by volunteers. I had the opportunity of seeing this scheme in operation a few months ago. Although it is of very limited duration in so far as it was introduced only last March, there

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is no doubt that quite a number of criminal defendants are now receiving bail who otherwise would have been remanded in custody. As I have indicated, we have drawn the attention of the Probation and After-Care Committees to the experiments in London so that they can consider whether within existing resources they can introduce bail information schemes in their own areas.
The aim of the circular last October was, in large part, to improve the information on which the decision about bail is based. The Bill is directed, among other things, to the giving of guidance as to the criteria to be applied in reaching that decision, and requires the giving of reasons so that consistent practices may be developed. The Government believe that these provisions, together with the new statutory presumption in favour of the grant of bail, to which I shall refer again later, will result in more people being granted bail than hitherto.
My Lords, it may be appropriate if I now refer briefly to the main provisions of the Bill. Clauses 1 and 2 of the Bill consist of definitions of terms. Clause 3 is important because it sets out a new concept of bail. It provides that any person granted bail in criminal proceedings is under a duty to surrender himself at the time and place appointed, which will, of course, ordinarily be the time and place appointed for his trial. It also provides that this duty is enforceable in accordance with Clause 6; in other words, it will be an offence for a bailed person to fail without reasonable cause to surrender himself at the appointed time and place. The old system of taking recognizances from the accused is abolished. An additional power is provided in subsection (5) of Clause 3 to require an accused who is unlikely to remain in Great Britain until the time appointed for him to surrender, to give security for his later appearance. Hitherto, this power has been confined to the High Court and Crown Court. Its purpose is to facilitate the release on bail, where appropriate, of the increasing number of people resident abroad who may be charged with an offence whilst on a visit to this country—an inevitable product of greater freedom of movement, particularly
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within the European Economic Community.
Clause 4, which confers a general right on accused persons, is the most important provision of the Bill. Subsection (1) provides expressly that a person accused of an offence shall be granted bail unless he falls within one or other of the exceptions set out in Schedule 1. The Schedule provides that the accused need not be granted bail if the court is satisfied that it is probable that the accused, if released on bail, would fail to surrender at the time and place appointed or would commit an offence whilst on bail, or would interfere with witnesses or otherwise obstruct the course of justice. He also need not be granted bail if the court is satisfied that he should remain in custody for his own protection or (if he is a child or young person) for his own welfare. There are also two other obvious exceptions; that is, where the accused is already serving a sentence, or where the court is satisfied that it has not been practicable in the time available to obtain sufficient information on which to base a decision.
These main criteria for the grant or refusal of bail are based on the common law, and are already well known to magistrates from a statement by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone, when speaking to the Gloucestershire branch of the Magistrates' Association in September 1971. As I have mentioned earlier, the 1967 Act adopted a different approach, by listing a number of specific factors which the magistrates might take into account. It has, however, been urged on us on a number of occasions, both by the Working Party and in debates in this House, that a better approach is the one now adopted in this Bill, that is to say to recite the essential criteria and to treat other circumstances, such as the absence of any fixed abode, as merely factors to be considered among others as an indication of whether or not the defendant, if remanded on bail is likely to abscond.
Clause 5 of the Bill is also of considerable importance. This clause requires that a record shall be made of the terms on which bail is granted, and that if the defendant requires a copy it shall be given to him. This is necessary to ensure that the defendant knows his obligations. Subsection (3) provides that where a

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court withholds bail in criminal proceedings or imposes conditions on the grant of bail or varies these conditions, it shall give reasons for its action. The purpose of this requirement is to enable the defendant to consider an application for bail to another court, and it will have the further advantage of directing the minds of the magistrates or of the judge to the need to comply with the requirements of Clause 4 and to enable consistent practices between different courts to be developed.
Clause 6 creates the offence of absconding by a person who has been released on bail. Proceedings can only be brought for failure to surrender without reasonable cause. The creation of this offence is a necessary consequence of the conferring by Clause 4 of a right to be granted bail without application, unless one or other of the exceptions in the first Schedule applies. It also has the further advantage of deterring a person released on bail from failing to surrender, and thereby making it more likely that the courts will be willing to grant bail in a marginal case. The provisions about the offence are aimed at ensuring, wherever possible, that the offence of absconding can be dealt with at the same time as the main offence with which the defendant has been charged.
Those are the most important provisions of the Bill. As to the remainder, Clause 7 is mainly procedural, being a recital of the liability to arrest for absconding or breaking bail conditions. Clause 8, which relates to sureties, defines, for the first time in a Statute, the factors which should be taken into account when consideration is being given to the acceptability or otherwise of a surety. It makes it clear that the decision as to the suitability of the surety is one for the court and not for the police. I should add that in our October circular we drew to the attention of the courts the conclusion of the Working Party that sureties should not be required as a matter of course, and that the court should first consider whether the defendant can safely be released on bail without sureties.
Clause 9, which creates a specific offence of agreeing to indemnify sureties in criminal proceedings, is one step on the way to reforming the law of conspiracy. It is already an offence under
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the common law of conspiracy to indemnify a surety, and this clause is included to replace the common law on this point. The Government agree with the Working Party that it is essential to retain this offence since otherwise we would be in danger of developing the "bail bond" system current in the United States—I think all of us, and also a substantial number of people in the United States, would consider such a development here to be highly undesirable.
Clause 10 extends existing law by allowing coroners to grant bail to a person charged by a coroner's inquisition with murder, as well as to a person charged with manslaughter or infanticide. The Government have already indicated their intention of altering the existing law requiring coroners to commit for trial persons who have been named by a jury as responsible for a death, where the verdict is one of homicide. They still intend to introduce such legislation in due course. However, until such legislation is introduced, it is necessary to keep the law on the granting of bail by coroners in line with the general law and, in particular, to ensure that a person charged is at no disadvantage through being committed by a coroner's inquisition.
The purpose of Clause 11 is to ensure that an unrepresented defendant who is in danger of being remanded in custody shall be granted legal aid for bail purposes on his second appearance, if he is not (but wishes to be) legally represented. The clause has to be read together with the Legal Aid Act 1974, which it amends in this respect. It is designed as a safety net rather than as an operative provision. The defendant would often have been represented on his first appearance by a solicitor engaged privately, by a solicitor he had obtained on legal aid while in custody after arrest, or by a duty solicitor at one of the 45 courts (including many of the larger ones) where duty solicitors are available. If not, he would ordinarily have applied for, and obtained, legal aid while in custody between his first and second appearances. If, however, he has still failed to obtain representation but desires to have it, and does not have sufficient means to pay for it himself, the provision requires the court to grant legal aid on his second appearance.

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Clauses 12 and 13 are procedural. As regards the Schedules, I referred to Schedule 1 when speaking about Clause 4. Schedule 2 is substantial because of the antiquity of bail procedures. Schedule 3 contains the repeals and Schedule 4 the necessary transitional provisions. This Bill is of very considerable importance, both as an additional protection for our country's liberties and because of the beneficial effects which we hope will flow from it, not least on the size of the prison population. Its provisions have been generally welcomed. Legislation can, of course, meet only part of the problem. Administrative measures, as well as the general attitude of all those concerned in the decision-making process, are perhaps of even greater importance. Nevertheless, this legislation is an important step forward and, as such, I commend it to your Lordships' House. I beg to move that the Bill be now read a second time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Lord Harris of Greenwich.)
6.36 p.m.
Lord HAILSHAM of SAINT MARYLEBONE: My Lords, I know that the House, even at this relatively late hour, will be grateful to the noble Lord for his introduction of the Bill, and I should like to thank him personally for the various friendly references which he made to me during his speech. It is, of course, the case that neither as shadow Home Secretary in another place, nor, I hope, in this place, have I ever treated the criminal law as a proper vehicle for either histrionics or Party politics. I think that is a highly desirable tradition that we should seek to maintain.
I believe that this Bill will probably receive a chorus of approval and I am a little sorry that the remarks I am about to make may be rather more critical than I should have wished. But I believe that one is under an obligation to give the benefit of such experience as one has and to give advice in these cases. In the present case I feel that a few rather critical remarks would not be out of place. First, of course, I accept the general philosophy of the Bill, which is that in all cases where a person has not been convicted the presumption must be in favour of bail, and it should be a fairly strong presumption. For that reason, of
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course—as the noble Lord has indicated, I made this very clear during my tenure of Office as Lord Chancellor in a speech to which he referred—there can be no question but that one would support the statutory presumption recommended by the Working Party and, indeed, contained in the Bill.
Having said that, however, it is very clear, is it not, that where the accused has not been convicted the withholding of liberty is in itself an evil, which can be justified, if at all, only on the grounds of public policy? The noble Lord, quite rightly, referred to the prison population and the desire to clear the gaols; and no doubt there will also be a saving of public expense by not keeping people in prison. But we should keep this very much in the background because the real question surrounding bail is not whether you spend money on building more prison places and keeping people in prison, but whether or not you deprive people of their liberty. This is, at least in my opinion, a matter of a quite different order of importance.
Also, there can be no question but that I would accept at once the abolition of the own recognisances procedure. Equally, I see nothing to complain of in the proposal for legal aid on a second appearance in court, although I would personally hope that by that time, if there were any question of a custodial sentence, the accused would have got legal aid. In the ordinary course that would extend to applications for bail wherever necessary, so I do not attach a great deal of importance to it. I also accept the view that it should be a substantive offence to fail to surrender to bail, instead of going through this mysterious business of estreating the recognisances. I also agree that an agreement to indemnify the sureties against bail should be a substantive offence, instead of depending as it does now upon the law of conspiracy.
Having said that, I am bound to say that there are defects in this Bill which I think, on balance, will cause it in its present form—although the points I shall make could be put right in Committee—to do a little more harm than good. But may I start by making one or two general observations. There are five separate different occasions upon which bail may be asked for and granted, and the considerations in each of them are not the same.

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First, there is bail on a remand after a a charge has been brought, but before committal for trial. As I understand it, the Bill applies to that, among others. Secondly, there is bail after committal: that is to say, after it has been conceded or proved that a prima facie case exists, because otherwise a committal is not justified. Thirdly, there is bail during the actual trial, on the adjournment of the case, while it is in progress whether the case is summary or on indictment. Fourthly, there is bail after conviction and before sentence; and, fifthly, there is bail after conviction and sentence, and pending appeal. As I understand it, the first three cases which I have mentioned, which are all before conviction, are affected by this Bill, but the fourth and the fifth, after conviction and before sentence or after conviction and sentence and before appeal, are not affected by this Bill. I ask the noble Lord to confirm that view, because a member of the Judiciary has written to me asking me to raise this point. That is the first general observation I want to make.
The second point I want to make is that it is sometimes said—certainly not by the noble Lord in his speech and, I think, not by any reputable source—that there is a general case for asserting that, on the whole, magistrates are too harsh in withholding hail. This charge is, I think, wholly untrue. We have the lowest figures in Europe for persons held in prison awaiting trial, and I think the lowest figures in the West. It is probably worth while putting on record what I understand to be the league table, if that is the right phrase, and the figures are all per 100,000 of the population, which is not a bad test.
Sweden and the United Kingdom are equal top of the league with 6; Australia comes next at 8; Holland, 10; Canada, 12, equal with Norway; Belgium, 13; Denmark, 17; Spain, oddly enough, also 17, which is lower than France at 21; West Germany, 26; and Italy, 28. In other words, we have half as many people in prison awaiting trial as in Canada and Norway, less than a third as many as France and less than a quarter as many as West Germany. On the other hand, one must also point out that it is not possible to ensure that nobody awaiting trial who is ultimately acquitted will be refused bail on remand. For that
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purpose I refer to, and quote, paragraph 79 of the Working Party's Report, in which they refer to the same speech of mine when in Office as the noble Lord referred to, and as regards the then figures, which I think I gave in 1971, of those remaining in custody between 4 per cent. and 5 per cent. were eventually acquitted altogether. I regarded the last proportion as reasonably low, since, of course, of pleas of not guilty 40 per cent. were normally acquitted, and that meant that, on the whole, magistrates were granting bail in cases likely to be acquitted. I noted in passing that since 1967—as the noble Lord pointed out—the figures had dropped by about half. So that I was about midway in that period, and I think they have since fallen again.
I went on to say:
"It is obviously regrettable that anyone ultimately acquitted should spend his time before trial in custody. But provided we all do our best to keep the figure at a minimum I think we are entitled to point out that in any system like our own., where the scales of the ultimate trial are rightly, but heavily, balanced in favour of the defence, it is reasonable to believe that the actual amount of injustice is much smaller than even these figures would seem to indicate."
The Report went on:
"Nor is the fact that a person who has been remanded in custody subsequently receives a non-custodial sentence necessarily an indication that the original decision to refuse bail was unjustified."
Those words, again, are taken from the Report of the Working Party, where they point out that there are two good reasons for that: first, the likely sentence to be ultimately imposed by the court is only one of the many considerations which may affect the success or otherwise of the application; and, secondly, where a person has been in custody awaiting trial the court will take this into account in determining the sentence. There has been, both on the television and on the radio, sonic attempt by the publicists to suggest that there is a general case against the present system. I do not think that is true, for the reasons which I have been seeking to give.
I now come to the criticisms which I desire to make of the Bill as it stands. I state them with some diffidence, but I am fortified by the fact that I know that in doing so I am reflecting the view of the Criminal Bar Association who have issued a document through the Senate of

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the Inns of Court and the Bar, and certainly of at least one important member of the Judiciary with whom I have been in contact, and who approached me of his own accord to raise the points which I am now raising.
The first point to which I draw attention is the curiously inverted language of paragraph 1 of Schedule 1, when read with Clause 4. It seems to be designed to give the impression that justices retain a discretion, when in fact the discretion is being removed as a result of the way in which the clause and the Schedule are drafted. About this, the Criminal Bar Association has this to say and I do not think I can better their language. They say on closer examination, having given the kind of general welcome to the Bill that I have been trying to give:
"…it appears that the policy the Bill has adopted may sacrifice one existing consideration for bail-"—
I will come to that in a moment—
"and provide a procedure for satisfying the Court of the objections that not only involves an unacceptable risk, but goes much further than paragraph 56 of the Working Party's report",
and they go on to elaborate that in some following paragraphs. They then say this, with which I agree:
"To satisfy the court that conduct is probable seems to us to be a needlessly high burden to discharge where the risks involved to the public are high as exceptions 1(a) to 1(c)".
If you look at the Bill, your Lordships will see that subsection (1) of Clause 4 states:
"A person to whom this section applies shall be granted bail except as provided in Schedule 1".
If your Lordships turn to Schedule 1 and the exceptions to right to bail, it will be seen that paragraph 1 reads as follows:
"The accused need not be granted bail if the court is satisfied that it is probable that the accused, if released on bail (whether subject to conditions or not) would—

(a) fail to surrender to custody, or

(b) commit an offence while on bail, or

(c) interfere with witnesses or otherwise obstruct the course of justice, whether in relation to himself or any other person."

I would say without doubt that this is to put on the authorities an unduly high burden when one has regard to the serious consequences of going wrong in regard to the necessary protection of the public.
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The member of the Judiciary who has been in touch with me says, even more strongly:
"I hope something can be done about the Inverted language of paragraph 1 of the First Schedule. It seems to have been designed to give the impression that the Justices retain a discretion when in fact any such discretion is being removed. It is difficult to imagine a situation in which the Justices are satisfied that it is probable that the accused would fail to surrender. I imagine that a change at this point would be more difficult to obtain; it certainly seems to me to create a situation in which a refusal of bail would be almost impossible".
That is also the view of the Criminal Bar Association who say this:
"If an officer has evidence or information which satisfies the court that such a risk"—
that is, a risk of the kind enumerated in paragraphs (a) to (c) of paragraph 1 of Schedule 1—
"is a real possibility we would argue that the Court ought to have the power to refuse bail. Critics who fear that such wide powers would be abused and would lead to large scale, unnecessary remands in custody may surely have their fears allayed by the wording of the Schedule that even if such a possibility were held to be a reality the accused need not be granted bail but by the same token he may he granted bail if the Court so directs".
I might add to that, of course, that the accused can make repeated applications, first to the court originally granting or refusing bail, or to the judge in chambers or to the judge of the Crown Court.
The first question, therefore, which I raise is whether the language of Schedule 1 does not impose too high a burden on the court so as to render the refusal of bail a virtual impossibility. This is the considered opinion both of a member of the Judiciary and of the Criminal Bar Association whose opinions I happen to share and it is the main reason why I consider that in its present form the Bill will do more harm than good in so far as the legitimate requirement of protection of the public is not sufficiently safeguarded.
The second point I make is as regards the other point raised by the Criminal Bar Association. Hitherto, it has been elementary in the granting or the withholding of bail that on very serious charges—let us say, murder, or treason, or very serious assaults of violence—the mere seriousness of the offence is in itself a reason not to grant bail. That it should be so was clearly indicated by the Working Party who, in paragraph 56, after

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considering the arguments on both sides, came to this conclusion:
"The first factor"—
this is a factor which is not included as a factor in the Schedule to the Bill—
"which the court should consider is the seriousness and nature of the offence charged. It would be impracticable to divide offences so as to say that persons accused of certain offences should normally have bail and those accused of other offences should be remanded in custody, since many offences, such as theft and criminal damage, cover a very wide range of gravity and much depends on the circumstances of the individual offence. However, the more serious the offence charged, the stronger the temptation to abscond is likely to be, since a defendant who is liable, if convicted, to receive a long sentence of imprisonment has more incentive to abscond than one facing a less serious charge. Moreover, the more serious the offence, the smaller is the risk that can justifiably be taken either in the defendant's absconding or of his committing offences similar to that with which he is charged. Indeed, in our view there may exceptionally be occasions when all the circumstances of the case make the offence so grave and so shocking to public opinion that bail can properly be refused on this ground, even though the danger of absconding or of offences being committed if bail is granted is slight. We accept that usually the seriousness of the offence is closely related to the Likelihood or otherwise of the defendant's answering bail. It seems to us, however, that cases can arise in which it is artificial to regard this only as an indication of the defendant's likely reaction to bail rather than as a reason in its own right for refusing bail. At the other extreme, the comparative triviality of the offence may of itself indicate that a remand in custody is not justified…".
That was the very clear recommendation of the Committee and I am bound to say that it met with my complete approval. The Criminal Bar Association came to exactly the same conclusions. After quoting paragraph 6 they said:
"We are so wholly in agreement with the force of this paragraph that both in the evidence which we gave to the Working Party and in our reaction to their report we found no area with which we were in fundamental disagreement."
They went on to say that it was because of their agreement with the Working Party in this respect that they had welcomed the Report. They ended with this recommendation:
"We therefore recommend that Schedule 1 be redrafted to read—
'The accused need not be granted bail if the Court is satisfied upon evidence that it is possible that the accused, if released on bail'"—
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then follow the words as in paragraph 1 (a) to (c)—
"and that a clause be inserted in Schedule 1 to give the Court powers comparable with Section 18(5)(f) of the Criminal Justice Act 1967 to give effect to paragraphs 56 and 57 of the Working Party's report".
The member of the Judiciary who has been in touch with me put this point first in his letter to me. He said:
"First, the obligation to grant bail does not except a case where the gravity of the offence requires custody. It follows that the most bloody murderer can demand bail"—
he must not assume, of course, that a conviction has taken place but this is how he put it to me—
"as long as there is no reason to suppose that he will fail to surrender, commit an offence while on bail, or interfere with witnesses".
Although I have made a modest criticism of what this member of the Judiciary wrote to me, the sentiment is one with which otherwise I wholly agree. I am sorry that this is taking rather long, but it is important that I should put these points on the Record.
I move now to much less serious criticisms. The third point I should like to make is that anyone who has glanced at the Working Party's report will see that the following criteria are stressed, and so far as I know they are nowhere to be found in this piece of legislation. There are just four criteria. The first is the strength of the case against the defendant. This is of great importance in those cases where bail is granted or refused during an adjournment or after committal.
The second is the defendant's antecedents which render it certain in some cases that there will be a custodial sentence if conviction follows, and certain in others that there will not. Thirdly, there is the likely sentence from the nature of the case, and the last and—this was referred to by the noble Lord in his opening speech—the defendant's community ties and whether or not he has these ties to keep him in order while the point is pending.
The last point I want to make—and I think this really is the last—is that it is crucial for the proper implementation of the Working Party's report that adequate information—and vastly improved information, if I may say so—should be available to magistrates before they are in a

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position to implement the recommendations adequately. The noble Lord, quite rightly and with my entire approval, mentioned the various projects which at the moment are on foot to achieve that purpose, but of course they are available only in a limited range of courts at the present time and I am bound to say, without in any way criticising the noble Lord, but simply taking facts as they are, that in this period of financial stringency I doubt whether the implementations could be much more widely available. Simply looking at it from this point of view I should be happy if they were so.
I venture to make to the Government and to the House the point which I made years ago when I was shadow spokesman for the Home Office in another place. We were then talking about the Children Bill (as it then was) which afterwards became the Children and Young Persons Act 1969, and my point was that it was all very well but it was no good putting forward such high-minded stuff if one had not got available the trained personnel and also the bricks and mortar necessary to carry the policy into effect. I warned them then that their Act was going to break down on this, in spite of the high-minded attitude of the then Home Secretary, Mr. Callaghan, and in fact it did so. I do not think it is the sensible course to raise people's hopes with a genuine idealism and then find that, when you come down to the brass tacks of whether you have the bricks and mortar and whether you have the trained personnel, you cannot carry out your promises.
Having said that, I repeat my thanks to the noble Lord and would say again that there is no element of Party politics to be made out of this discussion and that I recognise the good intentions of the Government and accept the general philosophy underlying the Bill.
7.2 p.m.
Lord WIGODER: My Lords, I have been asked by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, to present his apologies to your Lordships for the fact that another duty has called him away and has thereby deprived your Lordships' House of the opportunity to listen to what I know would have been con-
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structive and humane comments upon this Bill.
I have to differ from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone, in that he has indicated that this Bill may do some harm. I suggest that it would do neither harm nor good; it is a singularly ineffective measure. It contributes very little to the solution of a problem which by its very nature is not amenable to legislation. It simply re-enacts tests and criteria which have been adopted by the Judiciary, certainly ever since I was called to the Bar, a comparatively long time ago; it simply reiterates what is already the standard practice in almost every court in the land.
It creates one new advance: it creates the offence of absconding while on bail, which I accept is an improvement upon the present rather artificial position of threatening to estreat a recognisance of some vast sum of money which everyone knows the defendant has not got and indeed never possessed at the time when he first entered into it. But, in substance, this Bill will add minimally, if at all, to the number of people who are released on bail. There are two sets of figures that give concern. The first is that in a year, as we know, some 30,000 people are remanded in custody and eventually not sent to prison after their conviction. The Working Party pointed out, quite rightly, that that is a figure to be looked at somewhat critically because the fact that people have been remanded in custody is often a substantial factor in their not being sent to prison when they are sentenced. Indeed, many members of the Bar and many solicitors frequently advise their clients not to apply for bail when they are awaiting trial, because it might well turn out to be the most important factor in mitigation—particularly when it is known that there is to be a plea of guilty—to be able to say that one's client has been in prison and has had a "taste of custody", which I think is the general expression which is commonly used on these occasions.
I would add, too, that the other argument in relation to the number of people who are remanded in custody but where non-custodial sentences are eventually passed I find unimpressive; that is, the argument that on principle it is wrong to remand somebody in custody if it is

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unlikely that a prison sentence will in due course be imposed. It seems to me that they are wholly different considerations. For example, if it is established that a defendant will attack and injure witnesses in his case, that is a perfectly proper reason for remanding him in custody even though it is in the highest degree unlikely that he will be sent to prison as a result of his trial.
There has been a further proposal put abroad in the Press recently that people who have been convicted by a jury and appeal should be entitled to bail on appeal on the same criteria as those already set out in this Bill. I see the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham, shaking his head. May I say at once that this would obviously cause the courts of this country to grind to a halt, and I hope that no further consideration will be given to that suggestion.
The other figure that is mentioned is the one that is of course perturbing; that is, that some 2,000 people a year are remanded in custody and then acquitted of their charge. As a matter of common sense it would he wrong to talk about "2,000 innocent people"; but they are 2,000 people whose cases had in due course not been proved by the prosecution. This is a figure which clearly causes anxiety and it is a problem which this Bill attempts to tackle. It tackles it simply by setting out that bail should be granted unless the provisions in Schedule 1 come into effect.
The crux of the Bill is in the Schedules, as it so often is these days with the customary standards of Parliamentary draftsmanship. There is nothing new in this. Certainly, for so long as I can remember, there is a presumption that bail will be granted unless certain matters are shown to the contrary. The matters that are shown to the contrary have always been the ones that are set out in the Schedule. The first one is that it is probable that the accused would fail to surrender to custody. I think that the most recent set of figures on this shows that something like 7 per cent. of those who are granted bail fail to surrender to their trial. This is a matter of some gravity, not only because it interferes with the general administration of justice but because, particularly where there are joint trials and it is necessary to present a complete picture, the absence of a defendant
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can result in a serious miscarriage of justice so far as other defendants are concerned. It is certainly not unknown for defendants if they are on bail to arrange among themselves that one or other should fail to surrender to the bail in order that in due course his colleagues might have a better chance of success at their trial.
The fact that a person might fail to surrender to custody is clearly a good reason for not granting bail. As I have always understood it, this is the area in which the considerations mentioned by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham, arise. As I have always understood it, the gravity of the offence has been not an independent factor which warrants the refusal of bail; it has been a factor which the courts consider in deciding whether or not a person will surrender to stand his trial. Certainly, in recent years it has been not unknown for bail to be granted in murder cases where it is clear that a person will stand his trial, will not interfere with witnesses and will not commit further offences while on bail. Indeed, the other matters mentioned by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham—the strength of the case, the question of community tics, and so forth—I suggest are really all matters which primarily come under the heading, "Will the defendant fail to surrender at his trial?".
My Lords, the second ground given in the Schedule, that it is probable that the defendant will commit an offence while on bail, again is something that perhaps ought not to be looked at too lightly. As I understand from Sir Robert Marks' latest figures for the Metropolitan area, on an average day some seven people are arrested and charged with robbery who are already on bail for the offence of robbery. Perhaps the victims of the seven people on that average day might justifiably query whether bail ought to have been granted to their assailants. The third ground that is given is, in my judgment at least, not perhaps quite as realistic as the other two; that is, that it is probable that the accused will interfere with witnesses. I say that because my own experience certainly is that the sort of case in which interference with witnesses is likely is really a case of organised crime, where gangs of people are concerned and where in consequence

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it is as easy for a person in custody to arrange for the interference of witnesses as it is if a person is on bail.
All this merely raises, perhaps, the crucial problem mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, in the course of introducing the Bill: the crucial problem as to how courts can determine these matters. Clearly, the courts must have full information, and in so far as the Bill ensures there will be full information, I would welcome it. But equally clearly, as was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, the decision whether to grant bail is perhaps the most difficult decision that any tribunal has to take—and I speak as someone who, at times sitting as a recorder, has to make that decision. It is usually possible to weigh up evidence and decide whether someone has done something in the past. It is usually possible to assess what might be the appropriate sentence in a particular case. But the decision whether to grant bail is in fact nothing more than a well-informed guess as to a person's future conduct if he is released from custody.
All that a court can do in those circumstances, having obtained the fullest available practical information on background and community ties, record, and so on, is to rely on what a police officer says. A police officer will say that his information is that a defendant will not stand his trial; he will say his information is that there is a boat on the South Coast, that witnesses are in grave danger, and so on. But whatever the police officer says is unlikely to be susceptible to detailed cross-examination. Inevitably the police officer's sources of information are confidential, and much depends, therefore, on the instinct of the court in dealing with the matter, and on the reliance they can place on the information given by the police officer.
My Lords, I would add, not in any general criticism of the police, that this is an area in which there are temptations. There are temptations, sometimes for police officers, not to oppose bail when they should oppose bail. Equally, there are temptations, of which I think the courts are much aware, where a police officer, for one reason or another, has a grievance against a particular defendant—that defendant may have been awk-
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ward or difficult; or it may be a particularly unpleasant kind of trial. It is all too easy for an officer to say that he is entirely satisfied that the defendant will not surrender to his trial, although he can give no reasons and when in fact there may not be any information to that effect. Therefore, all a court can do in dealing with a bail application is to use its experience and instinct, and to decide on the guidelines that the Bill lays down—and which have been laid down for many years now—whether bail can be granted.
May I end my speech by suggesting certain practical steps that could be taken to deal with the serious problem of bail. First, it is obviously important—particularly in view of what I have just said—that the courts should feel able to rely upon the integrity of the police officers who are giving information to the courts. I welcome the very dramatic progress made in that respect by the present Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police in enabling the courts to feel that they can, with confidence in the great majority of cases, rely on what is being said to them.
Secondly, it is important that if a person is remanded in custody awaiting trial, it should be for as short a time as possible. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone, when on the Woolsack, did much to ensure that trials came on more speedily than they had done in the past. But there is still, I believe—and I do not want to explore this now because it is a rather different topic—a vast area of improvement that could be made, particularly where the committal procedures which have evolved since 1967, the Section 1 procedures, are so operated as to mean that an enormous waste of time takes place at the trial, although much time is saved at the magistrates' court. This is a separate area, and clearly not one that it would be profitable to pursue at this moment.
My Lords, the third aspect of the matter which I would mention is this. It cannot be right that people who have not been tried should be remanded in custody to places where the conditions are as unpleasant as in Brixton prison.
Lord HAILSHAM of SAINT MARYLEBONE: Hear, hear!
Lord WIGODER: My Lords, I appreciate that at this particular moment the economy of the nation is not such that pleas for expenditure on providing new bail institutions are likely to be received with acclamation. I know, too, that there never have been any votes in penal reform, and that even when money is available the plea for new institutions of that kind is one that inevitably goes to the end of the list. But I would hope that something could be done in the reasonably near future, so that where people are presumed to be innocent and remanded in custody, it can be done in conditions which are reasonably tolerable and civilised. I would venture to think that by taking practical steps along these lines we can reduce the present hardships of the bail situation, rather than on the lines of a Bill which I suspect will turn out to be singularly ineffective.
7.17 p.m.
Lord FOOT: My Lords, as the list of speakers testifies, it was not my intention to participate in this debate. I do so only because the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, has been called away. He would, I think, have said all the things that I want to say but, of course, he would have said them much better than I. I am singularly unprepared to take part in this debate, but I think it would be a grave detriment if this important Bill, as many of us regard it, and what some of us regard as this radical and very necessary reform, were to go through this House without having received support from anybody except the Minister who is presenting it.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone, said that he thought that on balance there were more bad than good points to it. The noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, went even further than that, and suggested that the whole thing was really unnecessary, and avoids the real issues. Both the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham, and the noble, and, perhaps I can also call him, learned Lord, Lord Wigoder—we certainly called him that in another place—both live in the judicial stratosphere. I have been engaged in the practice of the law for almost the same length of time as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham. If I remember rightly, he was about two years my senior. I have been engaged in the practice of the law as a
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solicitor, in the main in the magistrates' courts. I can only give testimony as to the way in which bail applications have been dealt with in the courts in my 40 years' experience, and it differs considerably, evidently, from the experience of the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder. The noble Lord said at the beginning that this Bill does not really add anything to what has been the ordinary judicial process for many years past.
Those who have practised as a solicitor, as I did for 40 years, appearing perhaps four or five times a day in the magistrates' courts—and I have made, I suppose, tens of thousands of applications for bail, both before the 1967 Act and since the 1967 Act—know the terribly frustrating experience that all of us who practice in the magistrates' courts have gone through over and over again. When the police get up and oppose bail and ask for a remand in custody, it is extremely difficult for the magistrates to refuse that application for this reason: the magistrates are dealing with police officers with whom they deal every week, perhaps every day of the week. If one of those police officers, in whom they have very natural confidence, gets up and says, "I have reason to think that this man will abscond"; or, "I have reason to think that he will interfere with witnesses"; or "I have reason to think that he will do this, that or the other", it is very difficult for the magistrates in those circumstances to allow the application for bail without appearing to reflect upon the judgment of those police officers. Therefore, their task is extremely difficult. What the Bill does, and all it does, the general principle of the Bill, is to bring it home to magistrates that the burden of satisfying them that bail should not be granted rests upon those who assert it; and other things being equal, unless the exemptions apply, then, in the ordinary way, bail should be granted. To my mind, that can do no harm and it can do a great deal of good.
I come now, if I may, to the criticisms of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham. One of them which, if I may say so, obviously has great substance—it is supported by judicial authority whose name he did not give us, supported by the Criminal Bar Association, and supported, most important of all, by Lord Hailsham himself—is that the words of Schedule 1 go too far: that for the word "probable"

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you ought to substitute the word "possible"; then, further down, you ought to bring in an exemption relating to the seriousness of the offence. That is a point which is certainly arguable, and, it is a point from which I do not necessarily at this stage dissent. But even if that was done, even if that was achieved, and this amendment were made in Committee, it would still present clearly to a bench of magistrates that the burden of satisfying them that bail should be refused rests upon those who assert it, and that it is not for the accused person to satisfy them positively that he should be granted bail. That is what the Bill achieves.
Turning to the other criticisms of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham, I do not want to do him any injustice, because he himself said that he thought these were all matters that could be cured in Committee. If I may emphasise that, I entirely agree; I thought all his points of criticism were matters which could be dealt with and, if they are wrong, could be cured in Committee. The first I have already referred to: that the words in Schedule 1 put the whole thing too high. That can obviously easily be cured in Committee. The second is the insertion of a consideration of the seriousness of the offence. If people want it, that can go into Schedule 1. Then the noble and learned Lord said that the Bill does not include some of the factors emphasised by the Working Party; the strength of the case against the person concerned when you have a committal for trial; the defendant's antecedents; the likely sentence he would get if eventually convicted, and the question of the defendant's community ties. As the noble and learned Lord himself agreed, these are Committee points, matters which can all be dealt with at a later stage.
The noble Lord very rightly drew attention to the fact—and with this I entirely agree—that if you try to put into the Bill something that will require that courts, when considering hail applications, must get proper information about the accused, you may well be setting up an ideal which you cannot achieve because you do not have the machinery or the people to provide the information. I am entirely with the noble Lord about that, but it is not, to my mind, a criticism of the Bill; it is a general observation,
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a useful observation upon the whole problem of how we should manage the bail system.
Therefore, I believe that the Bill, in principle, is a very useful guide to all courts, a very clear demonstration to them; and, after all, it embodies the basic recommendations of the Working Party which was set up under the previous Administration. The Government have adopted all the main proposals of that Working Party. They obviously regarded this matter as a matter of great concern, and so do I. I wish the Bill well, although there may be some points which I shall want to see amended in Committee when we get to that stage.
7.27 p.m.
Lord HARRIS of GREENWICH: My Lords, I am grateful to those noble Lords who have participated in this debate and for the general welcome, perhaps more qualified in the case of some noble Lords than others, that has been given to the broad intentions of the Bill. I think all sides of the House recognise the real difficulty—the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham, touched on this point—faced by the courts when they have a decision to make as to whether or not a person is to receive bail. The noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, was quite right when he made the point that it is obviously extremely difficult for the court at that stage to be clear as to whether the man is subsequently likely to be acquitted.
I accept that there are some doubts which have been raised by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham, and by the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, but I am bound to say I find myself in almost total agreement with the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Foot, not altogether to his surprise, because I think he went to the heart of the matter. I think it is going altogether too far to say—as the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, did—that this is no doubt a well-intentioned measure but it will have no significant effect. I think Lord Foot's answer to that is that it will have that effect because of the question of onus. The person will receive bail "unless": that, with great respect to the noble Lord, is in itself an important change in the law, as is the abolition of the old recognisance system which had become growingly ineffectual; obviously

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a man who believes that he is likely to go to prison is not particularly worried about forfeiting his own recognisance, because he knows nobody will succeed in recovering the recognisance from him. So that in itself is a significant change in the law. I must come back to this point. These recommendations have been made by a Working Party which consisted of representatives of the Association of Chief Police Officers and of the Magistrates Association, by a widely representative Committee of those people with practical experience in dealing with matters of this sort. I shall come in a moment to the point raised by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham, to the effect that we have in some respects gone rather further than the Working Party recommended. But I must take the point quite clearly that the Bill stems from the recommendations of this extremely broadly-based Committee.
May I deal first with the points made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone. The noble and learned Lord welcomed the general philosophy of the Bill. He rightly pointed out that if the Bill worked it would, hopefully, have an effect on the size of the prison population, which is true, and that it would deal to some extent (again, if it worked) with this serious problem of deprivation of liberty of people who might subsequently be acquitted. He welcomed the abolition of the own recognisance system, and I have dealt with that point, and also the creation of the new offence of absconding while on bail. I think that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wigoder, joined him in that. He asked a question as to whether the Bill dealt with only the pre-conviction situation. Yes, the noble and learned Lord is right, it does. There is no intention of going to the extreme position which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wigoder, touched on, and say that it would have to apply in all cases where people were, for instance, going to appeal because, as he rightly said, that would create something of an absurdity.
The noble and learned Lord raised two particular questions. First, the language of Schedule 1 to the Bill. Obviously, we shall look at the point with care, as at the other one as well, between now and Committee or Report stage. I am not sure that I would altogether agree
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with him that we have gone further, so far as this first point is concerned, than the recommendation of the Working Party. For instance, I do not think that the language we use in fact removes the courts' discretion. It simply indicates the way in which they should exercise it. I think that there is a clear distinction.
The second point which the noble and learned Lord raised concerned the question of whether the seriousness of the offence should not in itself be a reason why a person should be denied bail. Again we shall look at this point between now and the later stages of the Bill. As the Working Party indicated in the paragraph which the noble and learned Lord read out, to some degree this is met by condition (a), the failure to surrender to custody. Clearly, to take an extreme example—I am going to use my language rather carefully and not incur the displeasure of the noble and learned Lord, as did his judicial friend—if an alleged IRA terrorist were to be arrested and charged, I do not think that the language of this Bill would mean that there would have to be a lengthy discussion as to whether he was going to receive bail or not, because clearly he would be unlikely to surrender to custody at his subsequent trial, and that is perfectly adequately dealt with in the Bill. Nevertheless, the noble and learned Lord has rightly said that he always approaches matters of this sort in a wholly non-partisan way, as he does, and we shall look seriously at the points which he has raised.
The noble and learned Lord also touched on the resource implications of these proposals and referred to the Children and Young Persons Act 1969. With respect to him, there are indeed some resource implications but these largely apply in the non-statutory areas of our proposals. So far as this Bill is concerned there are not immediate resource implications. However, on the point I raised earlier, the non-statutory elements, the point raised in our Circular of last October concerning bail verification schemes, there clearly are resource implications. So far as these are concerned, this is a matter for probation and aftercare committees. We have made it quite clear that there can be no additional resources made available for bail verification schemes. Nevertheless, we have said

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to all probation and after-care committees that in the current situation it is right that they should constantly, as should other public services, re-examine their own priorities so far as the day-to-day work which they are discharging is concerned to see whether it is possible to introduce schemes of this sort without major staff implications following.
All I would say to the noble and learned Lord on this is that in London a great deal of this work is done by volunteers. It is a great tribute to the Inner London Probation Service that they have succeeded in creating this scheme which, at the moment, is supervised by only one member of the Probation Service supported by some ancillary workers, but the remainder of the people doing day-to-day work of verifying the information given by criminal defendants is done by volunteers. All one would say is that it would be quite wrong for the Government to apply great pressure on every probation and after-care committee to bring this in and not provide resources. It is a matter of local option, of local choice, as to whether, having re-examined their priorities, it is possible to introduce schemes of this sort. In London they have done so with, in my view, substantial success, and so far with fairly limited resource implications.
Before I leave this point may I deal with bail hostels. This again would have resource implications. There is a rolling programme of the provision of probation hostels, which was begun by the Government of which the noble and learned Lord was a Member and which continues at the present time. We have in fact now switched the emphasis towards bail hostels of which, I may say, there are still tragically few, and not all that number of additional hostels projected. Nevertheless, there is some movement in this area. In addition, we have asked probation and after-care committees to consider whether bail hostel places can, in appropriate cases, be made available in probation hostels so that they would serve a dual purpose of providing probation places and bail places.
It is true that some committees are reluctant to do this because there obviously can be difficulties created. Nevertheless, others are doing so. Indeed,
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I was in North Wales on Friday where the local probation and after-care committee will, within, I think, the next 12 months, have a joint probation and bail hostel in existence. Undoubtedly there are not going to be enormous resources for widespread extension of bail hostels. However, we are doing what we can with the very limited resources available to us.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Wigoder—I keep on referring to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wigoder; I am sure that he will not object to the description—made the point earlier, which I have done my best to answer; namely, that this problem is not really amenable to legislation, which was a phrase which he used at the beginning of his speech. I think, on reflection, he would hesitate before he used the term going quite as wide as that. After all, as I endeavoured to point out in my speech, the 1967 Act, with its imperfections so far as bail is concerned, has had a fairly significant effect. It has reduced the percentage of remands in custody from 33·9 per cent. in 1967 to 15 per cent. in 1974. Therefore, it has had some effect. When this Bill, as I hope it will be, is on the Statute Book, I hope that this too will further reduce that proportion.
The noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, went to the heart of the matter when he referred to conditions at Brixton. I too have been to Brixton in the last 12 months, and it is the most serious matter that hundreds of our fellow citizens are kept in overcrowded conditions of this sort. It is quite clear that in the present economic situation it is impossible to contemplate a large prison building programme. There is no point in arguing that there should be severe restrictions on public expenditure—I say this in no criticism of the noble Lord, as he will recognise—while at the same time advocating a large prison building programme. It is obvious that there is no immediate prospect of biting into this very serious problem unless we can act to deal with unnecessary remands in custody.
I hope that I have said enough to indicate that the Government will look carefully at the points which have been made this afternoon. The Bill is a quite significant reform in our system of criminal procedure and in the general development of our penal system. Some

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criticisms have been put forward and I assure the House that they will be examined with care by the Government between now and the later stages of the Bill.
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

SOLICITORS (SCOTLAND) BILL [H.L.]
Returned from the Commons agreed to with an Amendment: the said Amendment considered and agreed to.