Lords Sitting of 13 May 1976

Preamble
The House met at three of the clock: The LORD CHANCELLOR On the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Norwich
The Lord Rockley—Sat first in Parliament after the death of his father.

DELINEATION OF UK OILFIELDS
Lord CAMPBELL of CROY: 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 there have been any difficulties or disputes over the delineation of individual oilfields in the United Kingdom Continental Shelf for the purposes of legislation.
The PARLIAMENTARY UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE, DEPARTMENT of INDUSTRY (Lord Melchett): My Lords, discussions are proceeding on the delineation of the oilfields which have so far been declared commercial with the licensees. Agreement has already been reached on the delineation of some; in the case of the remainder I see no obstacles to a satisfactory outcome.
Lord CAMPBELL of CROY: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for his Answer. Since petroleum revenue tax is to be levied on each oilfield as a separate unit and not on a company's profits from the Continental Shelf, may I ask whether the noble Lord is aware that uncertainty whether a reservoir constitutes one, two or more fields is a crucial factor in deciding whether it is worth while to extract oil at all? This arises because of the separate fixed tax allowance for each recognised oil field.
Lord MELCHETT: My Lords, as the noble Lord knows, it was made clear during the passage of the Oil Taxation Act that the decision on the extent and
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delineation of an oilfield would be made on geologicsal. I am not aware that this has given rise to any difficulties.
Lord HAILSHAM of SAINT MARY-LEBONE: My Lords, is there any method of deciding in the case of disputes? Is a dispute to be decided by the courts? If so, Scottish or English? Or is it to be decided by arbitration; or by the fiat of the Government?
Lord MELCHETT: My Lords, as was made clear during the passage of the Bill through Parliament, the decision of the Secretary of State is final in this matter.
Lord CAMPBELL of CROY: My Lords, does the noble Lord agree that the geological criteria for delineation of fields can produce different results since their application cannot be certain or precise?
Lord MELCHETT: My Lords, I am not aware that any substantial difficulties have arisen so far and in some fields the delineation has been agreed.

WHITSUN RECESS
Baroness LLEWLYN-DAVIES of HASTOE: My Lords, with the leave of the House, I will make a Statement about the Whitsun Recess. Subject to the progress of business, it is proposed that the House will rise on Thursday, 27th May and return on Tuesday, 8th June. The Sitting on Thursday 27th May will be at 11 o'clock in the morning.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
Baroness LLEWELYN-DAVIES of HASTOE: My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend the Leader of the House, I beg to move the Motion standing in his name on the Order Paper.
Moved, That leave be given to the Lord Hinton of Bankside to advance his Motion on the siting of JET from Thursday the 20th to Tuesday the 18th instant.—[Baroness Llewelyn-Davies of Hastoe.]
On Question, Motion agreed to.

LEGITIMACY BILL [H.L.]
The LORD CHANCELLOR (Lord Elwyn-Jones): My Lords, I understand that no Amendment has been put down to this Bill and that no noble Lord has indicated a wish to move a manuscript Amendment or to speak in Committee. Unless, therefore, any noble Lord objects, I beg to move that the Order of Recommitment be discharged.
Moved, That the Order of Recommitment be discharged.—[The Lord Chancellor.]
On Question, Motion agreed to.

PUBLIC LENDING RIGHT BILL [H.L.]
Read 3a; an Amendment (privilege) made; Bill passed, and sent to the Commons.

LICENSING (AMENDMENT) BILL [H.L.]
Lord WIGG: My Lords, I beg to move that the Commons Amendment be now considered.
Moved, That the Commons Amendment be now considered.—[Lord Wigg.]
On Question, Motion agreed to.
[References are to Bill (56) as first printed for the Commons]

COMMONS AMENDMENT
Clause 2, page 1, line 11, leave out subsection (2) and insert—
"(2) The Licensing Acts 1964 and 1967 and this Act may be cited together as the Licensing Acts 1964 to 1976."
Lord WIGG: My Lords, I beg to move that this House doth agree with the Commons in their Amendment. I perhaps owe a word of explanation as to how it comes about that I move this Amendment, because the work on the Bill was undertaken by the noble Lord, Lord Harmar-Nicholls. He is abroad and has asked me to move the Amendment in his name; and it is perhaps fitting that I should pay tribute to him for the hard work he put in, and also to Members of another place.
This Bill is a technical Bill. The Amendment which your Lordships are
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now considering is a technical Amendment, but technical though it may be, it affects the livelihoods of some 200,000 people and the enjoyment of very many more. All the Bill does is to alter the law to what everybody thought it was until a case was decided in the opposite direction. The effects have been catastrophic in terms of employment and catastrophic in terms of the people who spend their time in going to dances and the like. Indeed, as recently as last Friday a Birmingham court, on the basis of the law as it will be until this Bill becomes an Act, imposed a fine of £500. A few weeks ago in Birmingham a group of people were fined £600.
The work of the noble Lord, Lord Harmar-Nicholls, was very important indeed. Perhaps I might say, as one who is sometimes critical of the procedures in your Lordships' House, that when your Lordships wish you can move with great speed. The proceedings in this connection started only on the last day before the Session was brought to an end, under the Ten Minute Rule in another place. Then the noble Lord, Lord Harmar-Nicholls, took up the task and introduced the Bill in this House. It had a speedy passage, as indeed it should because it is technical and non-controversial. Then a Labour Member, Mr. Rooker, undertook the task of piloting the Bill through the House of Commons, again on an all-Party basis. There was support from all sides of the House of Commons, as there has been in this House. My Lords, I apologise for detaining your Lordships for as long as I have, but I wished to pay a proper tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Harmar-Nicholls, and those associated with him, in the passage of this Bill. I beg to move that this House doth agree with the Commons in their Amendment.
Moved, That this House doth agree with the Commons in the said Amendment.—(Lord Wigg.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

LOCAL GOVERNMENT (MISCELLANEOUS PROVISIONS) BILL
3.15 p.m.
The PARLIAMENTARY UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE, DEPARTMENT of the ENVIRONMENT (Baroness Birk): My Lords, I beg to move

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that this Bill be read a second time. It gives me great pleasure to introduce this Bill, the chief purpose of which is to give general effect to clauses which are commonly precedented in Local Acts. Many of your Lordships will remember that in the context of the controversial South Glamorgan Bill on 9th December we had a lively discussion on the role of private legislation and its relationship with public legislation. As that debate confirmed, it is generally agreed that the state of local legislation is chaotic, its processes expensive and time-consuming and the results voluminous.
Under Section 262 of the Local Government Act 1972, existing local legislation is to be repealed as from 1984, 1979 in metropolitan counties. In the meantime, counties promote Private Bills seeking to retain those powers which are really needed for the efficient conduct of local administration. And we have already seen the different interpretations that are given to these words. For their part, the Government undertook to produce a Bill giving general effect to those powers which are well precedented and which were thought to be of' value to the majority of authorities.
The aim was to present the Public Bill before the bulk of local authority Bills, so that there would be a saving in time and effort for local authorities, agents, Government Departments and of course Parliament; in fact, all those closely concerned. It was hoped that the body of local law would be greatly reduced and streamlined by these means. Unfortunately, events did not keep pace with our intentions, and so when the debate on the 9th December took place, although the Bill had already been drafted, I was unfortunately unable to give a date for its introduction. As it turned out in the event it was introduced on 12th February in another place. However, before summarising its progress, there are a few words I feel that I must say about the principles on which the Bill is based.
The first important point is that the Bill consists almost entirely of provisions which have commonly appeared in local Acts. This means that it is not intended to include new provisions even though they may be desirable. And the Department will be discussing with the local
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authority associations next week how best to proceed on these matters. Mean-while, the present Bill follows the precedent of Public Health Acts, the last being the Public Health Act 1961 which was also restricted to well-precedented provisions.
We have avoided clauses which might lead to controversy since we wanted, at this stage, to avoid taking up too much Parliamentary time. The aim was to give local authorities a useful batch of powers and to do it as quickly as possible. I appreciate that some local authorities and also the local authority associations may feel that it would have been better to make this an even bigger Bill including other precedented clauses for which a case can be made but which might be controversial. We recognise that there may be provisions of this kind and also others which are suitable for this Bill but which were identified too late to be included in it. These matters, too, will be covered in the discussions next week with the local authority associations.
I should also mention the subsidiary purpose of the Bill. This is to alter certain provisions of the Public Health Acts; and I will return to this when I deal with the individual clauses. A further point I must emphasise is that all these powers are discretionary. Therefore they place no obligations on local authorities who will continue to be free to decide whether or not to operate them, just as they are with their own private legislation. It is important that this should be widely understood in view of the current restraints on local authority expenditure.
I turn now to the progress of the Bill so far. When it was introduced it contained 33 substantive clauses covering a wide variety of topics. The Bill made smooth and rapid progress because it was welcomed by both sides of the House of Commons, as I am sure it will be here. In only four Sessions, 54 new clauses were considered in Committee and of these 37 were added to the Bill. They consisted of the code of taxi provisions which now form Part II of the Bill. Of the other new clauses considered, most were precedented in local Acts and of these four were accepted in principle for amendment at a later stage of the Bill. They dealt with the amendment of Section 55 to the

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Public Health Act 1936, which is concerned with requiring satisfactory access for refuse collection; private sewers and the duty to clear obstructions; the restoration of gas, water and electricity supplies; and payment to local authority officers in certain circumstances. One further clause—enclosure of excavations to afford protection to the public—is currently being considered to see whether it is possible to prepare a Government Amendment to give effect to this.
On Report, a clause concerning the use of spare capacity of computers and printing equipment of local authorities was added by Government Amendment to meet the case made by the local authority associations. The Bill therefore comes to this House as a substantial Bill of 72 clauses, which must have a significant effect in reducing the size of the Bills which local authorities promote. Indeed, we fervently hope that some authorities will feel that they have no need to present Bills of their own before 1984.
I come now to the individual provisions of the Bill; but, since some of them are of a very minor nature, I shall, I am sure with the approval of the House, mention only the more important. The first six clauses deal with minor improvements in the law on highways, and are quite straightforward. Clause 7 enables a local authority to board up property condemned as unfit and vacated as a result of action under the housing Acts; Clause 8 enables by-laws to be made controlling the open land on housing estates to stop, for example, unauthorised parking or other activities unsuitable for the particular location such as Concorde-noise level games by children immediately outside old people's flats.
Clauses 10 and 11 contain a code of powers which will enable local authorities to supply heat from a common source to both public and private sectors. These are welcomed by the District Heating Association and the local authority associations. The requirement in Section 11(4) to keep separate accounts was put in on Report in another place by Government Amendment as a result of a proposal by the Opposition. Clause 12 and Schedule 1 empower local authorities to acquire compulsorily, on payment of compensation, rights over land rather
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than purchasing the land itself; for example, rights of access to adjoining land. This avoids the acquisition of land when only an easement or right is required.
Clause 14 empowers local authorities to survey land they propose to acquire compulsorily before they make a compulsory purchase order. This ensures that proceedings do not reach an advanced stage if the land then proves on investigation to be unsuitable for, say, geological reasons. Clause 15 gives local authorities a general power, for the purpose of performing their functions, to obtain information about the ownership of land. This, like the other provisions, is well precedented in Private Acts and replaces several such powers already in public Acts. Clause 18 replaces Section 4 of the Physical Training and Recreation Act 1937 which has been the subject of frequent amendment by Private Acts.
Clauses 22 and 26 are the only ones which are not precedented in local Acts. They derive from the secondary purpose of the Bill which I mentioned earlier—which is to tidy up various procedural provisions of the Public Health Acts 1875 to 1936 before the Law Commission begin to consolidate the Public Health Acts. Since there was clearly a lot of misunderstanding about Clause 26 in another place, I feel I should emphasise that it is not based on local Acts but on Section 274 of the Public Health Act 1936. This enables a local authority to use its powers under that Act outside its area. It seems right that that principle should apply to all local authority powers and not just to the Public Health Act 1936. Thus the clause confers no new powers on local authorities but merely affects the area in which their existing powers may be employed. For example, it would enable them to provide a school or clinic just over their boundary to serve a population which resides within that boundary.
Clause 23 is a general power to enable local authorities to set up funds at their discretion instead of having to obtain specific statutory powers for each fund, as they have to do at present—a tortuous and lengthy procedure. Clauses 27 and 28 are designed to cope with the situation which is arising because of the heart-breaking spread of Dutch elm disease. It was already in some of the local Acts,

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but it is for this reason that we feel it should be included in this public legislation. At this stage, that is all I want to say on Part I.
Part II of the Bill is now its dominating feature, and since it was added at the Committee stage it deserves some special mention. For a long time there has been a widespread demand for a review of legislation relating to the control of taxis in areas of England and Wales outside London and for this control to be extended to include the private hire car trade. At present, control of taxis can be exercised in England (outside London) and in Wales under the Town Police Clauses Act 1847. There is no general legislation for the control of private hire cars, but a number of local authorities have taken powers in local legislation to extend or modify the powers of the Act of 1847 in respect of taxis and to introduce new controls over the operation of private hire cars.
My right honourable friend the Home Secretary has been preparing a Consultative Document on the control of taxis and private hire cars. His intention was that, when this document had been prepared and issued, there should be consultations with the local authority associations and other interested organisations. Following these consultations, the Government would prepare their own legislation which would take account of the many developments which have taken place both in technology and in society since the Town Police Clauses Act was passed in 1847. It was because it was thought that this was the best course of action that we advised the Standing Committee in another place not to include in this Bill provisions on taxis and private hire cars. The Committee did not accept the Government's advice on this matter and the Bill now includes a very substantial number of provisions relating to taxis and private hire cars. In view of the general demand for these provisions, we have accepted that they should stay in the Bill until the Government bring forward their own proposals. The Home Office are working on these now and expect to issue a Consultative Document shortly.
These are some of the more important clauses in the Bill. Although in the context of contemporary legislation it
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is not a major Bill, nevertheless it will be of considerable use to local authorities in serving the community. It is indeed a significant Bill in the rationalisation of local law. It will also save authorities money as well as time—a powerful justification, I consider, for a piece of legislation. I beg to move that the Bill be now read a second time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Baroness Birk.)
3.29 p.m.
Baroness YOUNG: My Lords, I should like to thank the noble Baroness, Lady Birk, for introducing this Bill to us today and for explaining it so clearly. It follows from Section 262 of the Local Government Act 1972, which provides that most local government Private Acts will be repealed in the metropolitan counties in 1979 and elsewhere in 1984. The House has already experienced the consequences of this provision, for it had before it not so long ago the South Glamorgan County Council Bill, and already proceeding through its Committee stage is the Tyne and Wear Bill. But for the Bill before us, there would be very many more such local authority Private Bills.
That being so, we on this side of the House welcome the Bill, which we regard as necessary. Its proposals are, in the main, non-controversial, and in the interests of good local government we wish to speed its passage. Indeed, we agreed to take the Second Reading this afternoon after the Bill had received its Third Reading in another place only on Tuesday. This is in no sense a criticism, but it means that I have not had time to study as closely as I should like the results of the Report stage and Third Reading in another place. Nor, indeed, has it been possible to consult as fully as we should have liked our colleagues in local government, who have been surprised at the speed with which this Bill is progressing.
There is one general question which I should like to ask. I understand that one of the principles behind the Bill is that its clauses are both non-controversial and well precedented. Will the Government therefore accept Amendments which in any way extend local authorities' powers? A number of new clauses were debated in Committee in another place, and others

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have been proposed by local authorities; and, indeed, discussions upon these are proceeding. What is important to know is how this general principle is to be interpreted, and if the noble Baroness can say anything further on that it would be helpful.
I was very grateful for her detailed comment on Part II of the Bill, which was, of course, added in Committee in another place. It refers to the law relating to hackney carriages and private hire cars and, as I understand it, arose following strong representations made from the local authority associations, in particular the Association of District Councils. The clauses are based on the latest Private Act on the subject; that is, the Plymouth City Council Act 1975. However, as the noble Baroness herself has recognised, this Bill cannot be the last word on the subject as the law is still based largely on the Town Police Clauses Act 1847, which, after all, is 130 years out of date.
I wonder whether I could press her further about the Consultative Document which has been promised from the Home Office. As I understand the position, this has been promised for some time and it would be useful to know what the Government's timetable on the document and subsequent legislation is likely to be. Clearly, any new legislation must depend upon extensive consultations, not only with local authorities but with the trade itself. I am bound to add a personal comment, that when I was in local government I knew of hardly any subject which caused greater discussion, and often greater controversy, than taxis and hire cars. But I think it is important in the interests of good and efficient local government, as well as in the interests of the trade, let alone those who use taxis and private hire cars, that this matter should be put right as soon as possible.
There are a number of other powers which local authorities are seeking. Some Government undertakings were given in another place that Amendments would be tabled during the passage of the Bill through your Lordships' House, and I was therefore very glad to hear from the noble Baroness of five Amendments which the Government propose to put down during its passage through this House. There are, however, a number of others that, so far as I can see, have not yet been
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debated. I do not intend to take up the time of the House this afternoon by going through them all.
I regard this as very much a Committee stage Bill dealing with rather smaller and technical points, and not one for aprolonged Second Reading debate. So far as I can see, contentious matters might arise only if there was any suggestion to extend direct labour schemes, to which we on this side of the House are opposed, or any attempt to include in the Bill any form of municipal trading. These matters were not accepted in another place, and I hope they will not be accepted in your Lordships' House. That said, we on this side of the House support the Bill. We wish it a speedy passage through this House, because it is important to get it on the Statute Book. We agree that it will make local government more effective, it will certainly save local government money, and we shall give every help we can to seeing that it makes its way on to the Statute Book.
3.35 p.m.
The CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES (The Earl of Listowel): My Lords, I welcome the introduction of this Bill and I should like to join the noble Baroness, Lady Young, in congratulating the noble Baroness, Lady Birk, on the way in which she introduced it, because it is an important first step—but only a first step—in the rationalisation of local government law made possible by the Local Government Act 1972. It contains a number of clauses—though, the noble Baroness, Lady Birk, will not be surprised to hear, not as many as I should have liked—that have hitherto been included in Bills promoted by local authorities for general powers. I was glad to hear from the noble Baroness that she will have discussions shortly with the local authorities, which I hope may include the desirability of further legislation.
One result of the Bill, when it passes, will be that legislation on these subjects will no longer be piecemeal in parallel and differing local Acts, but will be incorporated in the public general law and thus capable of being kept up to date by the ordinary processes of Statute law revision. I particularly welcome the inclusion in the Bill of Part II relating to hackney carriages and private hire vehicles, which, as both

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noble Baronesses have pointed out, was put into the Bill during the Committee stage in another place. This will replace the antique law—I think "antique" is the correct adjective—contained for the most part in the Town Police Clauses Act 1847. I notice that Part II contains 37 clauses, and it will be readily understood that the passing of legislation of this extent and complexity in private Acts is an exercise that cannot be effectively performed by Committees on Private Bills.
I hope that there will be no difference of opinion about the principle of the Bill, and no difference of opinion has been expressed so far. But I should like, if I may, to draw the attention of the House to the provisions in two clauses about which contrary views may be expressed. I agree entirely with the noble Baroness, Lady Young, that this is essentially, from the point of view of the work of this House, a Committee stage Bill, so I hope that I may be permitted to make a few comments on two of the clauses.
The first of these is Clause 2, which introduces a new restriction on the placing of scaffolding on the highway for the purpose of building and cleaning operations on premises fronting a highway. I believe that provisions of this kind are already in force in Inner London. The general law gives a householder, who is also a frontager, a right to erect scaffolding on a highway for the purpose of cleaning, repairing or painting his house, provided of course that he does not unreasonably obstruct the highway. It is for the highway authority to proceed against him if it considers the obstruction unreasonable, and of course for the courts to decide. But under this clause, either the frontager or his builder will have to obtain a licence from the highway authority before any work that requires the placing of scaffolding on a highway can be done. So far as I am aware—and there may be facts of which I am not aware—the existing law has not created difficulty. Perhaps I may remind your Lordships that a similar clause was disallowed in the County of South Glamorgan Bill. But I hope that your Lordships will examine this clause with special care in Committee, and will not accept it as it stands, unless the Government can prove conclusively that there is a genuine need for this restriction and that the advantage to road users is
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likely to outweigh the disadvantage to the householder.
The second provision which I think deserves careful scrutiny by your Lordships is Clause 27, which gives local authorities power to deal with trees that are complained of, because they are likely to cause damage to persons or property upon a neighbour's land. The law as it stands deals only with trees and other vegetations, such as hedges or shrubs, that affect a highway or other road or footpath to which the public has access, so as to endanger or obstruct vehicles or pedestrians which are likely to cause danger by falling on the highway, road or path. Thus the present law allows danger to be dealt with not only where it already exists, because a tree overhangs a road, but where it is likely, because the tree may fall. The law protects the users not only of highways but also of other roads and paths to which the public has access. Therefore, it enables a highway authority, or in some cases a local authority, to require the owner of the tree or the occupier of the land on which the tree stands to fell it or make it safe. On failure to comply with the requirement the authority may act and recover expenses from the defaulter.
Subsections (2) to (6) of Clause 27 of the Bill go much further than this. They are for the benefit of the person who says to his local authority, "On my neighbour's land there is a tree which is in such a condition that it is likely to cause damage to persons or property on my land. If you agree, order my neighbour to fell the tree". If the local authority agrees, it may order the adjoining owner to fell the tree to make it safe. If he fails to do so, the local authority may send its employees on to his land, do the work and recover the expenses from him. This is new law. At present these matters are covered by the right of the subject to sue his neighbour. I am sure that your Lordships will wish to hear from the Government in what respects the present law is inadequate and, if so, how far it is desirable to give to local authorities the important new powers proposed in this clause. They would include, as I have pointed out, the power in certain circumstances to enter land without the consent of the owner or occupier in order to lop or fell trees that they, the local authorities, may consider to be a danger to his neighbour.

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I have made these comments on these two clauses not in any carping spirit—they do not in the least diminish my gratitude for the Bill—but in case they may be helpful to your Lordships in the consideration of this Bill in Committee. What I should like to say most of all at this stage of the Bill is that I am indeed grateful to the Department of the Environment for fashioning the Bill and to the Government for introducing it because it will bring some measure of order into the chaos of local government law. Therefore, I hope that the House will give unanimous support to the Second Reading.
3.43 p.m.
Lord AIREDALE: My Lords, we are indeed grateful to the Government for bringing forward a Bill which, by its very nature, is not of the kind that is popular with Governments. The truth of the matter is that there are not many votes to be got out of a Bill of this kind and my suspicion is that, as Governments come and go, they find at the bottom of their predecessors' pending tray proposals for such a Bill and there they remain indefinitely. I suppose, therefore, that we have to be grateful that this Bill has finally emerged.
It seems to me that what is needed is a greater stimulus to get such Bills rolling and I suggest that we need to invent a new procedure. I suggest that we need a body such as a commission—possibly a Joint Committee of both Houses—with whom would be deposited a copy of every local authority's Private Bill. It would be the duty of this committee to scrutinise the clauses to find any clause which fulfilled two requirements and dealt, first, with a matter of general application and, secondly, with a matter which was non-controversial. Any clause which fulfilled those two requirements would be recommended by the committee to be brought forward in a general Miscellaneous Provisions Bill.
I hope that that committee would be strengthened in its work in the kind of way that the Boundaries Commission is strengthened in its work, by all-Party agreement that the recommendations of such a committee would be respected and and that whatever non-controversial
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measures were recommended by the committee to be brought forward would be brought forward by whatever Party was in power at that time. If we are dealing with non-controversial matters, such Bills need not take up much Parliamentary time. Indeed, the quick passage of this Bill, upon which the noble Baroness, Lady Birk, commented, advertises that not much Parliamentary time need be taken up with Bills of this kind.
So much for that general point. I come now to the rather more ticklish matter of trying to deal with individual clauses without being told that I am making a series of Committee points. I have selected three or four matters which I trust your Lordships will think are a little wider than pure Committee points. Clause 19 empowers local authorities to require what the Bill calls "sanitary appliances" to be provided in, among other places, betting shops. When the legislation which swept away the street bookmaker and established the betting shops was going through Parliament, I thought that Parliament was very strongly of the opinion that people should not be encouraged and should positively be discouraged from loitering and hanging about in betting shops. To that end Parliament laid down that television should not be provided in betting shops, as a discouragement to people to hang about and loiter there. I believe that sound commentaries are provided but not television. If people are not to loiter in betting shops, if they are to treat betting shops like other shops to which they go to make a transaction and then leave, it seems to me that there is no need to require betting shops, any more than other ordinary shops, to provide "sanitary appliances". I think we should seriously consider whether or not we still adhere to the idea that people must be discouraged from hanging about in these places and that we should set our faces against the provision of lavatories in betting shops.
I join with the noble Earl the Chairman of Committees in quarrelling with Clause 27: "Power of local authorities to deal with dangerous trees". I do not quarrel at all with the principle, which seems to be admirable. However, the clause is extremely long and complicated,

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and to my mind it contains one extraordinary curiosity. It operates only if the information about the dangerous tree comes to the local authority from an owner or occupier. Why should this be? If a tree, to use the words in the Bill, is in such a condition that there is imminent danger of its causing damage to persons or property, why should the local authority not be empowered to act if it gets its information from the policeman, or the postman, or the milk roundsman who may go to the local authority and say, "Do you realise that at No. 63 there is a large bough hanging by a thread and I am terrified every time I have to pass underneath it to serve those premises?" In those circumstances, why should not the local authority be allowed to invoke this clause? It seems to me quite extraordinary that there is this strange provision that only the owner or occupier of property shall set the ball rolling.
I hope that in Committee we can greatly simplify this clause by laying down that where a tree is in imminent danger of causing injury or damage to property, the local authority may go upon any land and do whatever is required; save only that if it is practicable they shall first inform the owner or occupier, who may be able to carry out the work more cheaply than the local authority, because of course the owner or occupier will have to pay for it in the end and he may have the equipment to enable him to do it himself. Secondly, if the danger is not all that imminent but nevertheless the local authority consider—again irrespective of who has informed them—that the tree is dangerous, though not imminently dangerous, then they may serve a notice upon the owner or occupier, requiring him to do whatever work is required to remove the danger.
Clause 30 deals with the spare capacity of computers. Here again we have in principle the very sensible idea that, with computers and printing equipment which local authorities genuinely require for their own purposes, if they have spare capacity they shall be able to hire out the equipment in order that the spare capacity may be used. A clause of this nature came before the second Committee which considered the unopposed parts of the County of South Glamorgan Bill. It was felt by that Committee that great care
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should be taken to see that the local authority, in hiring out their spare capacity of computers, should not undercut private enterprise in the same field, which after all they very easily could if the local authority chose to disregard the total cost of installing or hiring a machine upon the ground that anyway they needed it for their own purposes. They could show on paper quite a good profit by hiring it out at rates which would seriously undercut any private enterprise concern, who of course in fixing their charges would have to take into account the enormous cost of hiring or purchasing the machine in the first place.
The Promoters of the South Glamorgan Bill came back to the Committee on Unopposed Bills with an Amendment to their clause which said that they would not substantially undercut private enterprise; but the Committee was still not satisfied and the Promoters were persuaded to remove the word, "substantially". I feel this is an important matter, because Parliament tends to set its face against municipal trading, which I think was the expression used by the noble Baroness, Lady Young. I seem to remember that not long ago a local authority came to Parliament with a Bill which would empower them to run shops and to engage in retail trading, and they did not get very far with that Bill. The matter of the spare capacity of computers is very much on the fringe of municipal trading, and I think this point should be looked at.
Lord GEORGE-BROWN: My Lords, will the noble Lord allow me to interrupt for a moment. Unhappily I did not hear the noble Baroness, Lady Young, but I heard the noble Lord say that Parliament has on the whole—I hope I am quoting him correctly—set its face against municipal trading. As I understand it, he quoted the noble Baroness, Lady Young, as having made that remark. I am just trying to relate that to Joseph Chamberlain and Neville Chamberlain, and indeed the whole Chamberlain family, in terms of the Birmingham Municipal Bank. When did the Conservative Party set its face against municipal trading? The Birmingham Bank—the Chamberlain Bank—is municipal trading.
Lord AIREDALE: My Lords, my memory goes back certainly to Neville

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Chamberlain, but it does not go back so far as the memory of the noble Lord, Lord George-Brown. In so far as the attitude of the Conservative Party to municipal trading is concerned, I do not think I dare trespass on that ground. All I wish to say is that apparently quite recently Parliament did not approve of a local authority's proposal to open shops and engage in retail trading, and I thought I was speaking on a clause which was upon the fringe of that topic.
I await with anxiety and great interest a new clause which I understand we are to have before the Committee stage, which I think was promised by the Minister in Standing Committee in another place, which will deal with a harrowing state of affairs which was related to both of the Committees on Unopposed Bills which considered the County of South Glamorgan Bill. The matter concerned a mother with several young children who had done nothing wrong and who had paid her rent, which included the provision of electricity and gas to her premises. She had her electricity cut off in the depth of winter, not because she had done anything wrong at all but because her landlord, to whom she had paid her full rent, had failed to pay the electricity bill. It seems that in a case of that kind it would be right and proper to empower the local authority to pay the cost of reconnecting the premises and recover that cost from the defaulting landlord. I think we have been promised a clause which will deal with that matter and I shall welcome it with open arms when it arrives.
Finally, if the noble Baroness, Lady Birk, would like to look forward for a moment to the next of this series of Miscellaneous Provisions Bills, which I hope we are to have, and select the first topic which needs to be dealt with in the next one, I suggest that it ought to be the control of street trading. If the noble Baroness ever goes shopping in Oxford Street, as I dare say she does from time to time, I am sure she will realise that the control of street trading is something which deserves the attention of Parliament.
3.58 p.m.
Viscount AMORY: My Lords, if I may venture to reply to the noble Lord, Lord George-Brown, in the way that my noble friend from the Liberal Benches
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was too shy to reply, I should like to say that the Conservative Party never stands still, and over the past seventy years it has refined and perfected its policies in several matters. Perhaps I may leave it like that.
Lord GEORGE-BROWN: My Lords, I rather caught the noble Lord out.
Viscount AMORY: My Lords, I wish to give a very warm welcome to this Bill. At the time when we were debating the South Glamorgan Bill the Ministers from the Front Bench, in response to requests from some of us that a Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill should be produced as soon as possible, promised us that that would happen, and I feel that the Ministers have fulfilled their obligation completely by bringing forward this Bill within a few months of telling us that. Harking back for one moment to the debate we had on that Bill, we all remember the extreme courtesy with which the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, dealt with the matter on that occasion. It was a pleasure to hear him again today.
The alternative to this Bill was, as my noble friend Lady Young said, a flood of separate local Bills which would have to come forward between now and 1984. The noble Baroness, Lady Birk, said that that is the alternative, and it is perfectly clearly so; and if that course had had to be followed, the resultant Bills would have been immensely expensive in time and manpower, and money, too. The members of the Association of County Councils, the local government association with which I am most familiar, have very few criticisms indeed to make about what is in the Bill. They feel that it could, with advantage, have gone further. We quite see the point made by the noble Baroness about it not being appropriate in a Bill like this to introduce very controversial matters, but I think there are a number of other rather similar matters to this which have been selected for inclusion. I think the Association of County Councils will be anxious to discuss these at the meeting to be held next week to which the noble Baroness, Lady Birk, referred. They have some suggestions to make of very similar kinds of provision which they think could well be included in the Bill, and which would not

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fall under the heading of being very controversial, or controversial at all, and, it is thought, would not take long to prepare.
My Lords, when one looks at the clauses in this Bill, they are a wonderful mixed grill, but the Bill is none the worse for that. I like the rather cheerful and colourful rubric to Clause 1:
"Power to erect flagpoles, etc., on highways."
That is a very cheery start. These flagpoles are given the very respectable description, in the last line of page 1, of "relevant works". Next year being Jubilee Year, I hope that the whole country will be sprinkled with relevant works.
There is no more I wish to say at this Second Reading stage. This is a good and useful Bill. I should like to give it complete support and, in particular, support the points which were so clearly made by the noble Baroness, Lady Young. My statistical advisers have told me that it is my practice to address your Lordships for an average of twelve minutes. On this occasion, I have held your Lordships spellbound for only four minutes, but I should like to say I hope very much that the other eight minutes will be credited to me for the embellishment of any future speeches I wish to make to your Lordships over the next twelve months.
4.2 p.m.
Lord MERRIVALE: My Lords, I apologise for taking part in this Second Reading debate without previously having put down my name on the list of speakers, but there is a point of principle which I should like to raise. The noble Lord, Lord Airedale, referred to Clause 30 of the Bill, mainly with reference to computers, as I understood him, but not to printing equipment. in another place last Monday, 10th May, the Government introduced on Report—and at very short notice, I may add—a new clause, Clause 30, which in effect is giving much concern to CBI members in the printing industry. When introducing it, Mr. Guy Barnett, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department of the Environment, said the clause would enable local authorities to use up the spare capacity of computer equipment and reprographic machinery installed for their own use. As far as I
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can understand it, he concentrated his argument almost entirely on data processing and photographic facilities. Also as far as I can gather, on this basis the Opposition, who had no time to consult anybody in advance, accepted the provision.
The CBI and their members think that the clause in fact would allow local authorities all over the country—and I stress the words "all over the country"—to carry out printing in competition with private enterprise. The rubric to Clause 30 reads as follows:
"Use of spare capacity of computers and printing equipment of local authorities."
The West Midland County Council tried to take a similar power in Clause 6 of their Bill earlier this year, but that Bill failed to obtain a Second Reading, largely because of the proposed extension of local authority manufacturing and trading powers.
So far as I can ascertain, the only precedent for Clause 30 is Section 38 of the Greater London Council (General Powers) Act 1969. I should like to quote this to your Lordships because I think it places less emphasis on printing machinery. Section 38(1) of the Greater London Council (General Powers) Act, 1969, says:
"The Council may by agreement with any person, for that person's purposes, use or promote the use of any electronic, mechanical or other equipment for accounting, analytical, statistical or other purposes or for the printing and reproduction of documents (including equipment for microfilm recording) which the Council have provided for the purposes of all or any of their work, and may provide any facilities and services ancillary to or necessary or convenient for, the use of the said equipment and make such charges as may be agreed for the use of such equipment and the provision of such facilities or services."
Section 38 is headed purely:
"Electronic, mechanical or other equipment, etc."
Therefore there is no emphasis on the printing equipment.
I understand, too, that with these lesser powers, the Greater London Council have never used the power to carry out printing for other persons. The CBI would like to see Clause 30 amended, so that the power can be used only in relation to computers or data processing equipment which, in the normal sense,

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would not cover printing machinery. I shall endeavour to devise for the Committee stage an Amendment to this end. In the meantime, I feel it right at Second Reading that I should raise this point of principle with regard to the question of the extension of local authority trading powers. I sincerely hope, especially as Clause 30 was introduced into the Bill only last Monday, that Her Majesty's Government will be able before the Committee stage to give consideration to the points I have made today.
4.10 p.m.
Lord LEATHERLAND: My Lords, it is perhaps appropriate that a few words of welcome for the Bill should be expressed on this side of the House. I think it is a very good Bill; I hope it will have a very quick passage through the House. It is also probably appropriate that I should be the one to say these few words, because in a few minutes we shall be passing on to consider the Endangered Species Bill, and the Local Government Act 1972 certainly endangered the species to which I belonged, that of the county alderman. He no longer exists; he is now an extinguished species. I was for 25 years or so a county alderman and I also served on a district council. I therefore approach this Bill as one who is very interested indeed.
If one wanted to be unkind, one could possibly say that it is a hotchpotch kind of Bill, something like the vicar's wife's stall at the parish garden party. Nevertheless, it is a very good Bill, a very useful Bill, and it will be appreciated by every local government authority in the country. At the present time some of these authorities have certain powers and others have not. These powers have often been obtained through the promotion of private legislation by municipal authorities who were well heeled, whereas poorer ones could not afford the expense. This Bill will now give all councils an opportunity to adopt and put into operation the various services which are enumerated in the Bill. They will not be compelled to, but they will have the opportunity to do so if they wish. It very considerably extends the freedom of local authorities, and I think that is something that everybody in the House wants to see.

But, my Lords, I think we shall need to have another Bill from the same stable
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very shortly, because the various local government organisations, as the noble Viscount, Lord Amory, said, have a number of items which they would like to see in this Bill and which they propose to discuss with the Minister. If there is no time for these matters to be settled before the Bill is passed on to the Statute Book, it looks as though another Bill will be necessary.
There are a number of what appear to me to be very sensible proposals that the associations would like to see, proposals, for example, dealing with the sale of food on the verges of roads, particularly main roads. One sees this when one motors out into the country; one sees a beautiful bunch of flowers or a bag of apples or a sack of potatoes outside a farm gate and one is invited to pull up and purchase. You pull up and all the traffic behind you has to pull up; that is, if it does not bump into the back of your own car. The associations also want to see the prohibition of camping on the verges of roads, and they want to see something done to protect dangerous ponds from careful or careless members of the public.
There are one or two items in the Bill to which I would draw specific attention. Clause 5 prohibits posters on trees on the roadside. I think this is a very useful innovation. I get very angry as I motor out into the country around my area and see tree after tree labelled with such objectionable signs as "Vote Conservative" and things like that. Clause 16—and I think this is something that can be put right in the Department by the draftsmen—in one paragraph deals with 1,000 metres and in the next paragraph it deals with 1,000 yards, while Clause 2 deals with 12 inches. I think out of respect for the noble Lord, Lord Orr-Ewing, of the Metrication Board, we ought to standardise the system which we use in the Bill. Clause 10 says that councils can produce heat. You can take it from me, my Lords, as a former chairman of a county council, that a council meeting can produce heat. Clause 11 says it can produce hot air, and the same remark applies to that.
I come now to what I think is a serious point. Clause 18 allows a council to provide various forms of recreation. I see that it does not mention croquet in the long list that it gives. Quite a lot of the

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old people who go to our parks would, I am sure, like to be able to have a game of croquet there. They cannot participate in the other sports and recreations mentioned, like tennis. I think that would be an improvement. A point to which I want to draw attention, and to which I am opposed really, is that which says that councils can set up riding schools. I fear that councils may be involved in many suits for damages if the pupils at these riding schools are injured during their lessons. It is one thing for an instructor to show you how to get on a horse, it is another thing for the instructor to show you how to sit on the horse. But one thing the instructor cannot tell you is how to fall off a horse and to be safe on every possible occasion.
I feel that the Minister should look at that clause again and perhaps have some hesitation about authorising local authorities to set up riding schools. I speak feelingly about this because my horse once hit the top bar of an oak fence; I went into the ditch on the other side and the horse came down on top of me. I am tough and can take it, but some of the youngsters attending these riding schools might not be able to and they might be hurt more seriously than I was.
There is a trifling matter of drafting in Clause 27. We have paragraph (c) at the top of page 33 which says that,
"Where such a council—
(c) knows the name and address of no person…"
If there is no person, how can you know his name and address? It might be possible to redraft this along the lines: "Where the council does not know the name and address of any person", and so on.
The new clause which has been added to Part II dealing with taxicabs and hire cars is, I think, very necessary indeed. I have lived in places where the regulation of taxicabs is very strictly enforced. I have lived in other places where there has been very considerable slackness. I would also mention Clause 23, which sets out the circumstances in which councils can establish funds. The 1972 Act provided that a council could establish what is called a capital fund. This has nothing at all to do with its consolidated loans
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fund, which deals with the gross amount of the money that the council has raised from outside. The capital fund is a fund which is internally established by the council itself. If it finds itself with a surplus on its estimates at the end of the year it can, if it wishes, instead of using that to reduce next year's rate, post it to a capital fund. It can also give so many pence in the pound of the rate each year to the capital fund. I established such a capital fund when I was finance committee chairman of my county council. We used to give a 3d. rate per year to the fund, and I think later on we increased it to 6d. By using this capital fund for minor capital works, we were able to save a considerable amount of money for the ratepayers.
What I want to know from my noble friend, after she has looked at the very lengthy Clause 23, is whether the new Bill in any way restricts the enjoyment which councils at present have to set up these internal capital funds; and, secondly, whether it restricts in any degree the way in which councils can invest their superannuation funds. I remember we altered our superannuation fund so that we were not restricted to investing funds in property and gilt edged stocks. We decided to go into equities as well, and the experience has been very beneficial.
The only other matter that remains is Clause 26, which authorises councils to indulge in what is called direct labour. I hope noble Lords will not overplay this clause. I do not think it means that the local council is going to become one of the great merchandising establishments in the district. There are circumstances in which it is desirable that a council should be able to use its direct labour squad on work which is outside its own local boundaries. The Greater London Council, for example, has big housing estates at Dagenham, at Romford, and also at Ockenden in Essex, and it seems sensible to me that if they want to carry out repairs to those thousands of houses they should be able to use their direct labour building squads to do the work rather than have to put it out to contract. As I say, I hope that this proposal will not be overplayed.
Of course, there is no element of Party politics in this. My memory goes back quite a long time. I remember that Tory

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councils used to run gasworks and electricity works, and I remember when I was in charge of the costing system of one of the Birmingham Corporation Departments some 55 years ago we carried on quite a big trading organisation. We used to sell pig food, we used to sell fertilizers, and we used to sell quite a lot of other things. There was no outcry from local traders because we engaged in this work. In fact, we were saving and earning money for the ratepayers at the same time as we were obliging the farmers in the surrounding districts. There are, as I say, one or two untidy bits of verbiage in the Bill. I think that this can all be put right, and I sincerely hope that the Bill will have a very quick passage.
4.21 p.m.
Baroness BIRK: My Lords, this has been a wide ranging and interesting debate. It is amazing how quite a small number of speakers, each taking a very limited time to speak, can cover such an enormous area. I suppose it is because a Bill of this sort—and, as my noble friend Lord Leatherland rightly said, it is quite a hotch-potch—is consolidating private legislation which reaches into every nook and corner of local authority activity. The Bill demonstrates this, and also that, whereas some noble Lords would like to stop up some of the holes and corners, others would like considerably to extend other areas of them.
First, I should like to thank all noble Lords who have spoken for their welcome to the Bill and their general support of it. I should also like to emphasise that it is part only of a continuing process of securing for local authorities in public legislation those ancillary powers that they need to enable them to work smoothly and effectively. The point was made again by my noble friend Lord Leatherland that he would like to see it go further. This covers some of the points that will be discussed at the meeting with the Association of County Councils next week. Any positive result from that will be by way of future legislation, or Amendments which I hope to move on behalf of the Government.
The noble Baroness, Lady Young, asked me whether this extends local authority powers. Of course, it is true that the Government have already
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accepted four clauses in another place, and we shall be prepared to accept additional clauses here where they fit the twin criteria of being desirable and of being well precedented and non-contentious. Within that area there is certainly room for discussion. The noble Baroness, Lady Young, the noble Lord, Lord Airedale, and my noble friend Lord Leatherland raised the question referring to direct labour. As we are all aware, a Working Party to go into this has been set up by my honourable friend the Minister for Housing and Construction. The Government intend to bring in general legislation on direct labour. I think that my noble friend Lord Leatherland put it extremely well, and the Government are certainly not apologetic about our support for efficiently run direct labour organisations in doing local authority work. The extension of this to any great degree must, of course, be a matter for general legislation and not part of a Bill like this.
On municipal trading, a subject which the noble Baroness also raised, the Bill does not contain any provision which would increase the opportunity for provisional trading. As there is no general power in local authority Acts to engage in municipal trading, it would not he appropriate in this Bill. There are a few isolated examples of municipal trading, such as the Birmingham Bank. and my noble friend Lord George-Brown gently tapped my shoulder and reminded me that the Tory areas of Bournemouth, Eastbourne, Scarborough and I think several other places, indulge in municipal trading. I think that this depends not only on the authority but on the trading and on the circumstances; but this Bill certainly is not opening any wide doors in that area.
I am grateful for the warm welcome given to the Bill by the noble Earl, Lord Listowel. I was quite aware of how pleased he must be to see this coming about at last, as he has had to carry so much responsibility for all the problems arising in the disputes over Private Bills. Taking up the points he raised on Clause 2 and Clause 27, the point on Clause 2 about the scaffolding is well precendented and it is not anything new. The clause has been put in to give the public protection against dangerous scaffolding, and the frontagers protection against proceedings, provided they have obtained a licence.

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But, if there is any particular point the noble Earl wants to raise on the clause, we can consider it in Committee. I also like the view taken of this clause by the noble Viscount, Lord Amory.
The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, also raised the question of trees, as indeed did the noble Lord, Lord Airedale. I think that probably we have got that one right, because they both took entirely different views about it and we seem to be holding the middle ground. The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, felt that this introduced a new law, and that the clause went much wider than he felt it should. But there are local Acts precedent, and we have been extremely careful to build in safeguards for the owners of dangerous trees; that is, they have a right of appeal. Further, we have not included the right of local authorities to enter land without a request from the owner occupier or some other person. The noble Lord, Lord Airedale, on the other hand, would like to see the new law going rather wider. We deliberately took a restrictive view on the right of local authorities to enter private land to do this work, because, in the context of this type of legislation, we felt that it would be wrong to give other people who have no real connection —if you like a familial connection—with the property the right to start the operation of this clause. I appreciate his motivation over this, and particularly in the situation we have today with the danger of Dutch elm disease, but this is the reason. This again is something that can be discussed in Committee.
The noble Lord, Lord Airedale, made an interesting suggestion about agreed Bills. It is an idea which I think should be given careful consideration. If the noble Lord will forgive me, I will not deal with the subject of sanitary appliances in betting shops, not because of female modesty but because I would rather consider the matter between now and Committee.
The noble Lord and the noble Lord, Lord Merrivale, raised the question of the spare capacity of computers. The intention is not to undercut private concerns; and this again is a subject which we will consider in Committee because Lord Merrivale indicated his intention to raise it then. The argument for saving
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ratepayers' money by using the spare capacity of computers applies equally to printing equipment and certainly if one can save the ratepayers' money, then I should have thought that that would receive support on both sides of the House and certainly from noble Lords opposite in view of the criticism that they have expressed in our debates. The limiting words in the clause make it clear that the power extends only to equipment installed for their own needs; it will not allow them to get enormous amounts of equipment which go beyond their own needs but to run their equipment at full capacity. I should have thought that such an approach to productivity would have been very attractive to all noble Lords.
Lord MERRIVALE: My Lords, is this not in effect a new power, much wider than anything that has existed in the past? As I mentioned, one reason why the West Midlands County Council Bill was rejected was that in their Clause 6 they were seeking these powers. It is rather unfair competition on the printing industry because local authorities are not set up to act in competion with, for one, the printing industry.
Baroness BIRK: My Lords, there were a great many other points in the West Midlands County Council Bill which made it unacceptable. In any event, it was not drafted with exactly this wording. On the face of it, I think it would be difficult in principle to justify dealing differently with printing equipment than with computers. There would be great difficulty in distinguishing the boundary line between one category and the other, and although we shall be giving further consideration to the matter between now and Committee, the basis of the argument —that the local authority in this particular area should not be in competition with private enterprise, when, on the other hand, we are hearing that competition is being reduced in so many places and that this is taking the challenge and bite out of commercial life and the opportunity to give the best to the consumer—is perhaps that we should think in terms of the consumer as well. However, I have no doubt that we shall return to this subject in Committee.
Lord MERRIVALE: My Lords, may I just ask the noble Baroness—
Baroness BIRK: I think I should get on, my Lords.
Lord MERRIVALE: Would the noble Baroness allow me to raise a point about the GLC, my Lords?
Baroness BIRK: No, my Lords. As the noble Lord intends to raise it in Committee, I think we should leave it there for now. I was very grateful for the support of the noble Viscount, Lord Amory. If the noble Viscount supports so many of the things we do he will continue to be my favourite Tory so far as local government matters are concerned. As usual, he did so with great felicity and, as he pointed out, with great brevity. So far as I am concerned, he has a rain check, for which he asked, for future debates.
My noble friend Lord Leatherland raised a number of points and I think I have dealt with most of them. I should like to consider the one he raised about the riding school when we come to it. The fact that there is a certain amount of danger could apply to many other issues. My noble friend and the noble Lord, Lord Airedale, raised the question of street trading. This matter is being considered by the Home Office, which is really the Department concerned, and it is one for general legislation rather than for a Bill of this type. In the way that the noble Baroness thought that taxes caused almost the greatest amount of argument in relation to Bills of this sort, I think that street trading would come equal to it or a close second. We have heard today the different views of noble Lords on this subject, but, as I say, it is not part of the Bill.
It is clear that many of the points that have been raised will come up in Committee. Perhaps my noble friend Lord Leatherland will allow me to answer his question about local authority funds in writing. I have the answer with me but it is a rather complicated matter. I would only say at this point that it does not restrict the powers of local authorities to set up funds; in fact, it widens them. Nor does it affect the investment of their superannuation funds. As I say, this is a complicated subject and I would rather write to him about it. My noble friend also raised the question of posters on
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trees. I am glad that he supports the enhancement of the environment which is contained in the clause concerned. On the whole, it seems that the Bill has been well received by the House. I hope that we are able to give it the speedy passage that it got in another place so that it may quickly reach the Statute Book, and then local authority private legislation will be able to be reduced; these provisions will be there to be enacted as soon as possible.
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

ENDANGERED SPECIES (IMPORT AND EXPORT) BILL [H.L.]
Report received.
Clause 1 [Restriction of importation and exportation of certain annuals and plants]:
4.37 p.m.
Baroness STEDMAN Baroness STEDMAN moved Amendment No. 1:
Page 1, line 20, leave out from ("kinds") to end of line 22 and insert ("to which Schedule 1 to this Act for the time being applies;").
The noble Baroness said: My Lords, it might be for the convenience of the House if, in speaking to this Amendment, I spoke at the same time to Amendments Nos. 2, 10, 14, 19 and 20. The effect of this series of Amendments is to secure reverse listing in the Schedules generally and to introduce the revised version of Schedule 1 which reverses lists of mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians. Amendments Nos. 1 and 2 simply remove the references in Clause 1(1) to columns in Schedules and provide for references to the Schedules themselves. Amendment No. 10 puts it beyond doubt that the Secretary of State can by order introduce reverse listing or revert to simple listing and can alter the lists of excepted species. Amendments Nos. 14 and 20 are simply consequential.
When we debated the Amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Craigton, in Committee, the advantages of reverse listing were discussed and I think we reached a large measure of agreement; I will not therefore repeat the arguments today. However, I should perhaps describe how Schedule 1 is now arranged and explain the ideas that lie behind it. The revised

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Schedule I is divided into two parts The first, which contains mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians, is reverse listed. The second part is simple listed and contains fish, insects and molluscs. The original sequence of groups, starting with those which are most advanced in an evolutionary sense, is thus maintained. For legal purposes it is necessary to use the scientific names of the species which alone give sufficient precision and clarity.
I have been mindful of the need to make the lists as understandable as possible, especially to traders. We have therefore introduced common names in the cross headings. These correspond generally but not exactly to orders and families. We have also inserted common names for the species where we can and the lists are complete for the well-known excepted species but incomplete for the restricted species which are rare and less well-known. I should like to draw your Lordships' attention to the footnote to Schedule 1, which makes it clear that the common names are for guidance only.
A great deal of work and consultation has gone into the preparation of these lists and I should like to pay tribute to the help given to us by traders and by the voluntary bodies. But inevitably there will still be some omissions or errors and I should welcome your Lordships' comments. We have no intention at present of altering the format of Schedule 2. Reverse listing appears to be impracticable. There are few common names and the family name is the most useful guide to the kind of plant.
In Schedule 3 each paragraph is logically independent and can be dealt with separately. The Government intend later to bring forward Amendments to paragraph 20, which deals with plumage, in order to revise the list of excepted species of birds. We are also considering whether it would be feasible to control mammal skins on the reverse listing principle and to bring Schedule 3 more into line with Schedule I by introducing common names. We are also still considering whether it would be appropriate to use italics for scientific names in accordance with accepted practice. I beg to move.
Lord CRAIGTON: My Lords, it takes a long time to complain in this House and it takes a very short time to say thank
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you. I should like to say thank you not only on behalf of your Lordships but also on behalf of all the conservation bodies in this country. We are very grateful to the noble Baroness and I am sure that, with a few exceptions, we shall be content to leave the schedule to the Department of the Environment and the scientific authorities, who will do what is right. I thank the noble Baroness very much.
Lord MOWBRAY and STOURTON: My Lords, I, too, should like to reiterate the thanks expressed by my noble friend. I feel that the noble Baroness and her Department have listened with great wisdom and taken the advice of the House as a whole, and I am sure that they will have made the life of the Customs and Excise authorities a great deal easier by so doing.
Viscount MONCK: My Lords, may I also add my thanks and congratulations to the noble Baroness for having succeeded in doing what I first asked the Government to do when the noble Lord, Lord Wynne-Jones, introduced his Bill?—that is, to include the English equivalent, where possible. There is one small note of sadness. I am sorry to see that the Government have not been able to find the English for my old friend Bufo bufo—and that has nothing to do with the noble Earl who sits on the Liberal Benche—sand it is a small blot on the escutcheon. I thank and very warmly congratulate the noble Baroness.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Baroness STEDMAN Baroness STEDMAN moved Amendment No. 2:
Page 2, line I, leave out from ("kinds") to end of line 3 and insert ("to which Schedule 2 to this Act for the time being applies;").
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
4.44 p.m.
Lord STOW HILL Lord STOW HILL moved Amendment No. 3:
Page 2, line 8, at end insert—
("( ) Without prejudice to any penalty imposed by any enactment, and in particular without prejudice to the imposition of penalties under the Customs and Excise Act 1952 (notwithstanding the provisions of sections 45(3), 56(4) and 304 of that Act), any person who, knowing of or reckless as to its nature, is in any

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way concerned in the importation or exportation of anything mentioned in subsection (1) above, except in accordance with the terms of a licence issued under subsection (2) above, shall be liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding £400 or to imprisonment not exceeding 3 months, or to both.")
The noble and learned Lord said: My Lords, this Amendment appeared on the Marshalled List at the Committee stage of the Bill and my noble friend Lady Stedman kindly said that she would look into the points which I then ventured to raise before the present stage of the Bill. She has certainly done so and, I have no doubt, has considered those points with the greatest care. Unhappily, it has not been possible to find what I may describe as an accommodation which would meet the point of view which she had and that which I ventured to put before the Committee. So the matter comes again before your Lordships' House for reconsideration in its original form.
I do not believe that I should be very usefully occupying the time of the House were I to repeat in any detail the longish argument which I put to the House when sitting in Committee. Very briefly, however, I remind the House that the point of the Amendment is that it is accepted that, as the Bill is at present drawn, the only prosecuting authority is the Customs and Excise, under the provisions of the Customs and Excise Act 1952. As the Bill stands, nobody else can approach the courts in order to take up any particular case which, in the judgment of that person, seems to require judicial consideration. The broad point is that there is danger of the Bill failing in its objective if the very many conservation organisations which take a keen and active interest in the general objective of the Bill, and particularly in the preservation of species that are endangered, cannot take up individual cases in order to make sure that offenders are brought to justice, abuses stopped and the attention of the public in general directed to the situation which the organisation seeks to raise by its prosecution.
Broadly speaking, I believe that I shall be interpreting the view of my noble friend Lady Stedman correctly if I say that her anxiety is that if one can have two possible prosecuting sources—namely, the Customs and Excise and the voluntary
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conservation bodies—prosecutions by the Customs and Excise may be seriously impeded and there may be general muddle. I believe that this is the broad basis of the anxiety which has prevented my noble friend from making any concession to the point of view which I put before the Committee. That is one view, and it is clearly a view of great importance. I do not deny that for a moment. However, I submit that the other point of view is also of great importance and, if it is not in some way given place in the drafting of the Bill, I put it to the House that there is a danger of a major objective of the Bill not being achieved and of the Bill not getting anywhere near providing protection for endangered species the protection of which is a matter of great concern to very many well-meaning people, who hate to think that animals and birds can be endangered because they or that which is derived from them is used, notwithstanding that it has not been thought appropriate to license their importation or exportation.
I should like to make the following general comment, having reminded the House of the broad conflict of view. I accept at once that the Customs and Excise is composed of serious and responsible people of high principle and that they have extremely important duties to fulfil. I also accept that they ought not to be impeded in the fulfilment of their duties. Having said that, however, I believe that it is equally the case that, when considering the membership of the voluntary conservation societies, those bodies are also composed of people who are public spirited and well-intentioned and who do not rush into prosecutions merely because it suits their whim. They are not what we used in the old days to call angry young men and angry young women. They are sensible people, too. So we are dealing with the Customs and Excise, which is made up of sensible people with one approach to these problems, and with the conservation bodies who also are sensible people, but with a completely different approach and objective. It is not in the least designed to interfere with the Customs and Excise. On the contrary, it is an objective which aims to achieve what I should have thought was a very deep purpose which lies behind the whole of this projected legislation. On the danger of a prosecution by the voluntary conservation bodies

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impeding or bringing confusion into a prosecution by the Customs and Excise, I would simply say that we are dealing with two groups of perfectly sensible people.
It is unreasonable to suppose that if they both act according to their instincts, their common sense, their sense of public duty, their sense of pity, their sense of general obligation, they will fall foul of each other, one will get in the way of the other, and there will be a kind of unseemly general clash in their proceedings. That is most unlikely. I would go further. From the point of view of the conservation authorities your Lordships may well think that the last thing in the world they would want to do would be to undertake a prosecution which was likely to fail; a foolish prosecution; a prosecution which would seem to be wholly unjustifiable, and which would result in the public thinking that they were the kind of people who had some bee in their bonnets and who delighted in wasting public time. Those are not the kind of people one is dealing with. One is dealing on both sides with decent people who have honourable motives and common sense, by which they are guided. I respectfully submit to my noble friend that her apprehensions are not justified when one considers the actual situation.
I hope that I have not re-expounded the argument at too great a length. I know that I have not convinced my noble friend. Unless other views prevail, I feel that I ought, in due course—after other noble Lords intervene, if they wish—to invite the House to express an opinion on this matter in the Division Lobby. I do it with reluctance. I do not wish to impede or hold up the proceedings, but I feel it to be a plain duty upon me to invite the opinion of the House. Perhaps the view which I am putting will not be acceptable. If that is so, I shall be told so in most certain terms by figures which are easy to read. But it may well be that my noble friend will find that there is more feeling in favour of the point of view I am putting forward than, perhaps, she suspects. I beg to move.
Lord CRAIGTON: My Lords, I agree with everything the noble and learned Lord said, including his closing sentences about dividing the House. What is this
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Bill about? Surely it is an attempt by mankind to prevent the destruction forever of species which, unless we do something, will disappear off the face of the earth. This is not a matter which, for whatever good reasons, could rightly be left to a Government Department with wide other interests, when there are so many other people, including conservation bodies of whom the noble and learned Lord spoke, who are willing to help sensibly. I assure the noble Baroness that I agree with the noble and learned Lord when he said—and I wrote down the words—that there is a danger of the Bill failing in its object unless private prosecutions are allowed. There are so many ways of getting round the terms of the Bill otherwise. Thus I beg the noble Baroness to say that she will consider the matter and so prevent us taking the action we shall otherwise have to take.
Lord WYNNE-JONES: My Lords, I also wish to support my noble and learned friend Lord Stowhill and the noble Lord, Lord Craigton, on this matter. If we are serious about the Bill, and if we want to be sure that it will operate, we should allow private prosecutions, because to leave the whole matter with the Customs and Excise would be to leave a task which is of vital importance to the carrying out of the Bill in the hands of people who have a vast number of other jobs to do and who cannot be expected to police every shop in the country and watch exactly where all these species are being dealt with and sold. I know that the Customs and Excise has a very ancient history. I suppose it goes back to a time almost earlier than the origins of the kind of ordered government to which we have been accustomed in this country. I think I am right in saying that the Customs and Excise goes back beyond the foundation of the United States of America, the bicentenary of which we are now celebrating. Perhaps those involved in Customs and Excise at that time were the people who were responsible for founding the United States by the actions of Customs and Excise.
Nevertheless, Customs and Excise, from the nature of its activities, could not effectively be able to police or control the purposes of the Bill. Therefore, I strongly support my noble friend Lord Stow Hill. I hope that my noble friend Lady

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Stedman, who has done such a remarkable job in getting the Bill this far, will be able to help us a little further and ensure its effective implementation.
Lord HOUGHTON of SOWERBY: My Lords, I have strong reservations about the right of private prosecutions. I believe that in some circumstances such a right can be abused, and that different forms of pressure and intimidation can be brought to bear. I recall how strongly I objected to the idea of private prosecutions in the case of the Bill relating to cinematograph and indecent displays. In that case, it was not difficult to see the kind of intimidation that could be brought to bear on a newsagent, bookseller, or anyone else who might display a publication or other matter which could be proceeded against under Act of Parliament. We know that some people have almost made a business of pursuing private prosecutions. I do not want to mention any names in this connection, but those who keep a watch on these matters see how, at any rate in some fields, the right of private prosecution can be viewed with some misgivings. I do not suppose that in the conservation of endangered species people will get all worked up as they do over indecent displays and other matters affecting the emotional side of sexual morals. Nevertheless, I believe that the principle is important.
Notwithstanding my reservations, I shall support the Amendment, because I hope that if it were included in the Bill it would be acceptable to the Government to remove the right of any person to take proceedings on his own account (as is proposed in the Amendment) and substitute that with the names of acceptable conservation bodies. I made this suggestion during the Committee stage, and I believe that there is much to be said for giving the right of private prosecution to responsible bodies working in this field, whose motives would be free of any criticism.
I entirely agree with my noble friend Lord Stow Hill, and other noble Lords who have spoken, that to leave the right of prosecution exclusively in the hands of the Customs and Excise would be to reduce the likelihood of prosecutions in a number of cases where there would, in fact, be grounds for taking them. That is why wider vigilance is desirable, but to
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scatter this around the whole of the population and give people the right to prosecute their next door neighbour, or anyone else whom they feel has transgressed the Bill after it becomes an Act, would be to carry the matter too far. That is what I feel about it. Some compromise would probably be generally acceptable to everybody, perhaps, except the Government, and if the rest of the House is in favour of something then the Government do not matter. I think the will of the House should prevail if it feels that way; but I must express my reservations on the right of private prosecutions.
Lord MOWBRAY and STOURTON: My Lords, I should merely like to say that my point of view is rather similar to that of the noble Lord, Lord Houghton of Sowerby. I appreciate the action of the Government in defending the view of the Customs and Excise. They have to support this point of view as much as they can, because the Customs and Excise are a very important body in the enforcement of Government excise policy, in the collection of revenue and in watching out at the ports. It will become very hard for the Customs and Excise if this Amendment which has been moved by the noble Lord, Lord Stow Hill, is not accepted. The Customs and Excise are not really very suitable for finding things or for initiating prosecutions in inland areas, though they are very good at dealing with things at airports and ports. The noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, may laugh, but we like to think they are good. They try hard. But if the noble Lord laughs at their being good at that, how much more should he laugh at their being good at places inland. So I think that if the House passes this Amendment it will at least partly concentrate the mind of the Government on bridging this gap between the views of the House and those of the Customs and Excise authorities, and I think that this is an exercise which is well worth while carrying out.
Lord BROCKWAY: My Lords, I spoke at the Committee stage on a similar Amendment, and I do not want to repeat the arguments that I made then; but I do want to ask the Government if they will very carefully consider the compromise which has been proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Houghton of Sowerby. He

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has an extraordinary genius for compromises, as was shown in the proposal he made when we were discussing the rights of the Press and the rights of journalists. I want to suggest this. I am not sure that we are yet adjusting ourselves to the development of democracy in this country; that is, that we are getting at the root organisations of people particularly concerned in issues—organisations which are contributing enormously to public opinion on the issues in which they are concerned. I think this applies particularly to conservation societies. If one looks back over the last few years at the pressures which they have exerted in advancing proposals of benefit to the nation, of benefit to the beauty of our countryside and of benefit to the species of wild life and strange life, their efforts really have been a contribution to our nation. That is taking place in other spheres as well; and the time will come when Governments will have to recognise the contribution which these kinds of organisations are making to the dynamic democratic life of our country. I hope very much that this proposal will be accepted.
The Earl of ONSLOW: My Lords, I think there is one point which does not seem to have been mentioned so far. I should very much like to support the noble Lord, Lord Stow Hill, in this Amendment. The one point which would underline its importance is that a member of a conservation society is more likely to be able to know what a blue walleye perch is, whereas a member of the Customs and Excise is probably less likely to know. If there is some illegal animal which is found in a shop or in son-le other form of sale, this Amendment could possibly even tend to make sure that a prosecution is brought, and brought effectively, as opposed to waiting for a Customs and Excise official to come along who, even then, will perhaps not be able to recognise the animal. By this, I do not want to imply any criticism of the Customs and Excise. What I should like to say is that this will enable the conservation authorities to act as a great help to the Customs and Excise; and, knowing what a kind and good heart the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman, has, I am sure she will listen with great sympathy to what we have all said.
Baroness STEDMAN: My Lords, this afternoon my heart is not kind enough to go all the way with your Lordships. I think that, in speaking to this Amendment, with the leave of the House and, I hope, with the approval of the noble Lord, Lord Mowbray and Stourton, I may also perhaps refer to Amendment No. 5, which is to come, because they are very similar and it will save my repeating myself at that stage. I was aware, and was deeply conscious at Committee stage, of the feeling of your Lordships about this Amendment, and, indeed, I have been made even more conscious of it this afternoon. I assure your Lordships that we have sought a compromise and that we have had long hours of consultation on this particular set of Amendments. Both the Amendments are designed essentially to permit private prosecution in relation to imports and exports which are illegal under this Bill. The general trend of argument in support of these Amendments in Committee was that it was unreasonable to expect the Department of Customs and Excise to take the kind of personal interest in the enforcement of the provisions of this Bill which the voluntary organisations will doubtless regularly take, and that too much might be thrown upon Customs and Excise, so that it should be made possible for action to be taken by interested bodies.
No evidence has been brought forward that the policing of the controls for conservation purposes by Customs for very many years has been inadequate; and owing to the inadequacies in the private means of collection of evidence, the enforcement of the Bill would be prejudiced, in our view, if this Amendment were accepted. As the House will know, the Customs and Excise have been charged by Parliament with the enforcement of numerous prohibitions and restrictions in relation to import and export. The legal provisions in their own Acts have been in existence for many years, and their experience of enforcing prohibitions is considerable. I am no lawyer, my Lords, but I am advised that the jurisprudence in relation to their statutes is conveniently set out in Volume 12 of Halsburv's Laws of England, of which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham, is editor-in-chief. Both those in the Customs and Excise who deal with enforcement and the public at large and

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its advisers are aware of the provisions and the jurisprudence, as well as of the powers and resources of the commissioners of Customs and Excise, to which I referred recently in my speech at Committee stage.
It may here be convenient if I refer briefly to the legal position in relation to what has been termed "point of sale". Evasion of a prohibition has been held by the Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) to be a continuing offence, and the decisions of the courts show that offences against Section 304 of the Customs and Excise Act 1952 may be committed, whether in relation. on the one hand, to goods which are dutiable or, on the other hand, in relation to goods whose import is prohibited, at any time or place after importation of the goods into the United Kingdom. These authorities are set out in the volume of Halsbury to which I referred earlier.
From a technical point of view the Amendments would not attract any of the enforcement provisions in the Customs Acts. Also, the first of them would provide for the offence to be summary; that is, it would not enable an accused person to elect trial by jury if he so desired, which is the case under the equivalent provisions in the Customs Act, and the period of limitation within which proceedings would have to be taken if they were not to be out of time would be six months, under the Magistrates' Courts Act, contrasted with the period of three years, which is the limitation period laid down in Section 283 of the Customs and Excise Act 1952. Private individuals, or bodies, will have no power to ask questions which the questioned person is obliged to answer. they will have no power to take possession of any item alleged to be prohibited and in the country, in contravention of the provisions of the Bill; and none of the onus of proof provisions in Section 290 of the Customs and Excise Act 1952 will be applicable.
Even if it were legally possible for both Customs and private organisations to have power to prosecute, some thought would have to be given to the practical consequences. A Customs prosecution usually results from a painstaking inquiry which can take quite a long time. If a private prosecution were brought before
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the inquiry was completed, it would almost certainly be lost for lack of evidence, and Customs would then be unable to prosecute, so that the time and effort spent on the inquiry would be wasted.
It is therefore natural that Customs would be unwilling to commit resources to such inquiries, in view of this risk. Conversely, if the inquiry showed the person to be innocent and Customs indicated this to him, he would feel justifiably annoyed if proceedings were taken against him by another organisation, and Customs may even be open to an accusation of bad faith. Provision for private prosecution could therefore effectively prevent Customs from prosecuting in any case.
Apart from technical difficulties which might well in practice have the effect of making the proposed clause a dead letter, there is a further objection on the ground of basic principle. It is this: in relation to import and export offences, Parliament has consistently over many years required the enforcement of prohibitions and restrictions, whether on import or export, to be in the hands of a public authority—today, actually a Department of State. I do not here need to refer to the Director of Public Prosecutions who has power, as your Lordships will know, himself to take over and conduct penalty proceedings by any Government Department. The reason for this is that it has been considered important in the interest of the citizen that the decision whether or not to put a citizen on trial should be taken by a public authority. It is a decision which has been consistently maintained for many years in relation to import and export and the Government are not prepared, in the context of another prohibition among many, to depart from it. That, my Lords, is the crucial point. Is the citizen to be brought before the courts following a decision of a public authority, when there are offences for which the punishment of imprisonment is possible and he has a right to elect trial by his peers, or is the decision to put him in peril to be taken by some private individual who can put a fellow citizen in peril of imprisonment without responsibility as a public Department, or without accountability, through Ministers, to Parliament?

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My Lords, may I refer, in addition, to the position in Scotland in relation to the taking of the decision to institute penalty proceedings. In that country that decision is taken by the Procurators Fiscal, or the Lord Advocate, whichever enforcement authority is charged with the investigation and the preparation of the case. Private prosecutions are not taken in Scotland. The Bill is to apply throughout the United Kingdom; so that the result of the insertion of this clause, if your Lordships so decide, will be to permit private prosecutions in England alone. For my part, I can see no reason for making such a distinction between the enforcement in each country of a provision common to both, in implementation of an International Convention to which the United Kingdom, as one whole, is a signatory.
I do not want to overstate the case, because there may well be instances where,
Resolved in the affirmative, and Amendment agreed to accordingly.
5.25 p.m.
Viscount MASSEREENE and FERRARD Viscount MASSEREENE and FERRARD moved Amendment No. 4:
in limited and closely defined circumstances, certain outside organisations may have limited powers. But in the case of this proposed clause the object of which is to enable private prosecutions to take place for what are, in effect, Customs offences, the Government cannot do other than move that the proposal be rejected when responsibility lies with a public Department supported by long experience and clear jurisprudence, used to enforcing prohibitions of a varied kind, and for whose activities, both during the investigations and also for its decisions, Ministers may be called to account. I ask your Lordships to reject this Amendment.
5.15 p.m.
On Question, Whether the said Amendment (No. 3) shall be agreed to?
Their Lordships divided: Contents, 66; Not-Contents, 31.

CONTENTS

Alport, L.

Ferrers, E.

Morris, L.

Amherst of Hackney, L.

Fraser of Kilmorack, L.

Mowbray and Stourton, L.

Aylestone, L.

Gainford, L.

Netherthorpe, L.

Balfour, E.

George-Brown, L.

Norwich, V.

Birdwood, L.

Gray, L.

Nugent of Guildford, L.

Blake, L.

Greenway, L.

Onslow, E.

Brecon, L.

Hamnett, L.

Phillips, B.

Brockway, L.

Hanworth, V.

Platt, L.

Chorley, L.

Hawke, L.

Porritt, L.

Clitheroe, L.

Hornsby-Smith, B.

Rankeillour, L.

Craigavon, V.

Houghton of Sowerby, L.

Redesdale, L.

Craigton, L. [Teller.]

Hylton-Foster, B.

Robbins, L.

Cromartie, E.

Inglewood, L.

St. Davids, V.

Cullen of Ashbourne, L.

Killearn, L.

Sempill, Ly.

de Clifford, L.

Kinnoull, E.

Skelmersdale, L.

de Freyne, L.

Lloyd of Hampstead, L.

Stow Hill, L. [Teller.]

Denham, L.

Long, V.

Strang, L.

Dulverton, L.

Longford, E.

Sudeley, L.

Dundee, E.

Lyell, L.

Wall, L.

Elliot of Harwood, B.

Macleod of Borve, B.

Ward of North Tyneside, B.

Emmet of Amberley, B.

Massereene and Ferrard, V.

Willis, L.

Evans of Hungershall, L.

Meston, L.

Wynne-Jones, L.

NOT-CONTENTS

Airedale, L.

Donaldson of Kingsbridge, L.

Oram, L. [Teller.]

Amulree, L.

Douglas of Barloch, L.

Ritchie-Calder, L.

Banks, L.

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

Segal, L.

Beaumont of Whitley, L.

Gaitskell, B.

Shepherd, L. (L. Privy Seal.)

Birk, B.

Henley, L.

Shinwell, L.

Bradwell, L.

Jacques, L.

Stedman, B.

Collison, L.

Kennet, L.

Stewart of Alvechurch, B.

Cooper of Stockton Heath, L.

Leatherland, L.

Strabolgi, L. [Teller.]

Darling of Hillsborough, L.

Llewelyn-Davies of Hastoe, B.

Wallace of Coslany, L.

Davies of Leek, L.

Ogmore, L.

Wigoder, L.

Derwent, L.

Page 3, line 14, at end insert—
("(8) In this section, "dead" includes preserved in any manner, eviscerated, and an incomplete specimen prepared in such a way that it still externally resembles the dead animal or plant.")
The noble Viscount said: My Lords, in speaking to Amendment No. 4 I should also like to speak to Amendments Nos. 28 and 29 because these are consequential on Amendment No. 4. Amendments No. 28 and 29 are to omit paragraphs 16 and 18 of Schedule 3. Paragraph 16 says:
"The dried body of any animal of any of the families Alligatoridae and Crocodylidae."
Paragraph 18 reads:
"The preserved body of any animal of the subspecies Atelopus varius zeteki".
The object of Amendment No. 4, coupled with these Amendments, is to make it clear that animals and plants which are dried, pickled or otherwise preserved are included within the term deal animal or dead plant. Unless this is stated specifically in the Bill, this may be a matter of doubt. If paragraphs 16 and 18 in Schedule 3 are retained in the Bill, it appears clear that preserved specimens are not included because those paragraphs specifically control certain types of preserved bodies of specified kinds of animals. The implication of that is surely that these preserved bodies are not otherwise covered. That does not automatically include preserved bodies. It is for that reason that I have put down Amendments Nos. 28 and 29 because if paragraphs 16 and 18 of Schedule 3 are not struck out, I believe that preserved, dried or pickled specimens could slip through the Act.
The most likely people to import preserved bodies are museums. Any reputable museum could obtain a licence and would have no difficulty in importing these specimens. There may be certain types of collectors who might not be so reputable. They might want to bring in preserved rare specimens, such as rare butterflies, which if dead are restricted. The same argument applies to an eviscerated animal, what we call in Scotland gralloched, if it is a stag. It is an animal, bird or fish whose guts are removed. This argument also applies to birds and stuffed animals. But it is surely illogical to control the import of dead animals—as this Bill does—to be stuffed and put on display if you do not also control the import of animals already stuffed and ready for display. I agree that might lead to difficulties with imported animals which have been stuffed before the Bill becomes law. It would be up to the
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importer to prove that these animals have been killed and stuffed before the Bill becomes law. For exhibitions and museums I can see no difficulty, because licences could be granted. I beg to move.
Baroness STEDMAN: My Lords, as the noble Viscount has said, this Amendment needs to be considered with Amendments Nos. 28 and 29. The effect of these Amendments would be to extend the coverage of Schedules 1 and 2, which at present cover whole live or dead animals and plants, to preserved, eviscerated and incomplete specimens, provided they still resemble the complete animal or plant. Dead animals and plants were included in Schedules 1 and 2 to comply with the Convention.
Those preserved dead bodies which we thought to be significant in trade and capable of recognition have been listed as parts or derivatives in Schedule 3. There is inevitably a measure of duplication between Schedules 1 and 3. This Amendment will undoubtedly extend the area of duplication. It will also place controls on the preserved bodies of many more species. I do not think those are serious objections, and I am prepared to accept the Amendment on the understanding that we shall want to consider further the precise wording. We accept its intention.
Viscount MASSEREENE and FERRARD: My Lords, I should like to thank the noble Baroness. I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
5.30 p.m.
Lord MOWBRAY AND STOURTON Lord MOWBRAY AND STOURTON moved Amendment No. 5:
Page 3, line 14, at end insert—
"( ) A person handles unlicensed goods, if knowing or believing them to be items unlawfully imported by virtue of this section, he dishonestly receives the goods, or dishonestly undertakes or assists in their retention, removal, dispersal or realisation by, or for the benefit of another person, or if he arranges to do so.
( ) A person guilty of handling unlicensed goods shall be liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding £400 or to imprisonment for a period not exceeding three months, or on conviction on indictment to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 2 years or a fine, or both."
The noble Lord said: My Lords, this is the Amendment put down at Committee

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stage by my noble friend Lord Mansfield, who regrets that he cannot be here himself to take part in this Report stage since he has to be in Scotland on business. The Amendment has an addition which my noble friend himself mentioned on moving it previously, namely that it will now be possible to take an offender to a higher court and impose penalties of two years' imprisonment or an unlimited fine. This Amendment is complementary to that moved by the noble Lord, Lord Stow Hill, and which has just been accepted by your Lordships, to punish illegal import and export. The Amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Stow Hill covers activities at the ports of entry. This Amendment applies to people further inland who deal in illegally imported goods. Between the two of them, therefore, they cover most of the possibilities of wrongful possession of endangered species.
The wording of this Amendment closely follows Section 22 of the Theft Act 1968, which deals with the handling of stolen goods, often still known by its old name of "receiving stolen goods". The idea is that just as no one should knowingly deal in stolen goods, no one should knowingly deal in unlicensed endangered species. As my noble friend Lord Mansfield stressed at the Committee stage, this Amendment will not penalise innocent people, such as a lorry driver who may have no idea that his cargo is unlicensed or even rare, but only those who know what they are doing.
This Amendment allows anyone to prosecute; and that includes the conservation bodies, the police and even Customs and Excise, if they so choose. However, the point of having the Amendment is that Customs are not really the proper people to control unlicensed goods in the shops. The most sensible way of dealing with that would be for those individuals who are concerned and who suspect an offence to notify the local police on the spot, who could then investigate, if necessary getting information from Customs; but they are clearly the right people to investigate. If, however, the police decide not to prosecute but, for example, the conservation bodies feel there is a point of principle which the courts ought to consider, they can take up the matter themselves.
Without this Amendment, the only available offences will be under the Customs
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and Excise Act, which means that only Customs can prosecute and both the police and the conservation bodies would be cut out. We all know that Customs cannot increase their staff to deal with litigation over the complicated problems which might arise, and the voluntary bodies would be very happy to sort out any difficult matters out of their own general funds. Therefore, the possibility offered by this Amendment is that of keeping a stricter control over endangered species at no cost to the public purse. If the Bill remains as it stands it will not affect public funds, because Customs simply will not be able to pay more staff to do the work, but it will quite possibly affect the world's stock of rare species, which is a resource this Bill is supposed to protect. I beg to move.
Lord STOW HILL: My Lords, I should like to support this Amendment. As the noble Lord has pointed out, it covers a great deal of the ground covered by the Amendment which the House has just carried, but it has one special and particular feature. So far as I read the Customs and Excise Act 1952, it contains no provision which can lead to the prosecution of a person who dishonestly and fraudently deals in imported matter, unlicensed, knowing that that is the case, and after it has passed through the Customs barrier.
I reread the argument that took place on the Committee stage of this Bill, when the same Amendment was moved and discussed. I also read the speech of my noble friend Lady Stedman in reply. If she will allow me to say so, the only real answer that I thought she gave was that it was quite unnecessary to have this power because a power to do precisely what the Amendment sought to achieve is already contained in existing legislation. I am sure it is my fault; but I do not know of any such power.
May I ask my noble friend a direct question: will she please tell me what section of what Act of Parliament enables a prosecution to take place of a person who knowingly deals in matter which has passed through Customs when without licence, and dishonestly does so by selling it or moving it or dealing with it in some way? What power is there? I do not know of any such power. I confess I may have missed it, because I have not had the opportunity of going through all

1093
the volumes of Halsbury to which my noble friend referred when she was dealing with the last Amendment but one; if she will be so very kind as to tell me in what section of what Act there is a power to prosecute a person who dishonestly, fraudently, deals in, moves, adapts and generally handles matter which has been passed through the Customs without licence, I should be very glad to know it. If she could point to such a power, I would have thought that the Amendment loses a great deal of its force, but I would ask the specific question: where is that power?
This Amendment is modelled on a very similar provision of the Theft Act; in effect, receiving stolen goods. So far as I know, in the Customs and Excise Act, although there are plenty of powers to prosecute for fraudulent evasion of the Customs prohibition, there is no power to go after a person who after the goods have gone through the Customs barrier, proceeds fraudently to deal with them, either for his own advantage or for someone else's. Therefore, I should be very grateful if my noble friend would indicate to me the section that is referred to here. I am sure that my noble friend's advisers must have told her of such a power; otherwise she would not have felt able to give the advice to the House that she gave last time. I hope she will be able to tell me what is the section.
Baroness STEDMAN: My Lords, I do not want to repeat all the arguments, which are as relevant to this Amendment as they were to Amendment No. 3. But, in response to my noble and learned friend Lord Stow Hill, I explained when replying to the earlier Amendment that evasion of a prohibition has been held by the Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) to be a continuing offence, and the decisions of the courts show that offences against Section 304 of the Customs and Excise Act 1952 may be committed,
1094
whether in relation on the one hand to goods which are dutiable, or on the other hand to goods whose import is prohibited, at any time or in any place after importation of the goods into the United Kingdom. I should have thought that that was sufficient for Customs to act upon, and Customs is the only body that has readily available information about imports and exports.
I said in Committee that we wanted the co-operation of the voluntary bodies. if they will come to my Department and say "Such-and-such a shop or such-andsuch a person has possession of these items. Have they been issued with a licence?", then, provided that they can produce a good reason for making the inquiry, my Department will give them information as to whether or not a licence has been issued. I thought I had given the assurance in Committee, that if we found that someone had any goods, parts or derivatives, or anything which he should not have, and did not have a licence, then my Department would deal with the matter promptly and would ask for the promptest and best co-operation of the Customs and Excise, which we have been assured we should have. In the light of that assurance, I hope that the noble Lord will see his way clear to withdraw the Amendment.
Lord MOWBRAY and STOURTON: My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Baroness, but I really do not see how her arguments are any more germane to this Amendment than they were to that of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Stow Hill. I should still like to test the feeling of the House on this Amendment.
5.42 p.m.
On Question, Whether the said Amendment (No. 5) shall be agreed to?
Their Lordships divided: Contents, 73; Not-Contents, 19.

CONTENTS

Alport, L.

Gainford, L.

Onslow, E.

Amulree, L.

George-Brown, L.

Orr-Ewing, L.

Auckland, L.

Gray, L.

Phillips, B.

Balfour, E.

Greenway, L.

Platt, L.

Banks, L.

Hanworth, V.

Porritt, L.

Beaumont of Whitley, L.

Hawke, L.

Rankeillour, L.

Boyd of Merton, V.

Henley, L.

Redesdale, L.

Brecon, L.

Hornsby-Smith, B.

St. Aldwyn, E.

Brockway, L.

Houghton of Sowerby, L.

St. Davids, V.

Carrington, L.

Hylton-Foster, B.

St. Just, L.

Chorley, L.

Killearn, L.

Sempill, Ly.

Clitheroe, L.

Lloyd of Hampstead, L.

Shinwell, L.

Craigton, L.

Long. V. [Teller]

Skelmersdale, L.

Cromartie, E.

Longford, E.

Stow Hill, L.

Cullen of Ashbourne, L.

Macleod of Borve, B.

Strathspey, L.

de Clifford, L.

Massereene and Ferrard, V.

Sudeley, L.

de Freyne, L.

Merrivale, L.

Taylor of Gryfe, L.

Denham, L.

Monck, V.

Wall, L.

Douglas of Barloch, L.

Morris, L.

Ward of North Tyneside, B.

Eccles, V.

Mottistone, L.

Wigoder, L.

Elles, B.

Mowbray and Stourton, L. [Teller.]

Willis, L.

Elliot of Harwood, B.

Winstanley, L.

Evans of Hungershall, L.

Northesk, E.

Wynne-Jones, L.

Foot, L.

Norwich, V.

Young, B.

Fraser of Kilmorack, L.

Nugent of Guildford, L.

NOT-CONTENTS

Aylestone, L.

Jacques, L. [Teller.]

Ritchie-Calder, L.

Bradwell, L.

Kennet, L.

Shepherd, L. [L. Privy Seal.]

Collison, L.

Leatherland, L.

Stedman, B.

Cooper of Stockton Heath, L.

Llewelyn-Davies of Hastoe, B.

Stewart of Alvechurch, B.

Davies of Leek, L.

Mais, L.

Strabolgi, L.

Douglass of Cleveland, L.

Oram, L. [Teller.]

Wallace of Coslany, L.

Gaitskell, B.

Resolved in the affirmative, and Amendment agreed to accordingly.
5.50 p.m.
Lord WYNNE-JONES Lord WYNNE-JONES moved Amendment No. 6:
Page 3, line 14, at end insert—
(" (7A) It shall be the duty of the Secretary of State—

(a) to maintain a register of licences issued under subsection (2) above, and of certificates issued in pursuance of subsection (7B) below;

(b) to secure that the register is open to inspection by the public free of charge at all reasonable hours; and

(c) to afford members of the public reasonable facilities for obtaining from the Secretary of State, on payment of reasonable charges, copies of entries in the register.")

The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg to move Amendment No. 6. This Amendment is designed to bring in at the end of Clause 1 a subsection that would require the Secretary of State to maintain a register of licences, to secure that the register is open to inspection by the public, free of charge, and to afford to members of the public reasonable facilities
1096
for obtaining, on payment of reasonable charges, copies of entries in the register. With regard to the last Amendment, my noble friend Lady Stedman mentioned that only the Department would have the information upon which action could be taken.
The purpose of Amendment No. 6 is to ensure that such information would be available so that people who were interested—particularly the conservation societies—could obtain the necessary information about licences. If I may refer to the following Amendment, Amendment No. 7 permits any individual applicant for a licence to ask the Secretary of State for exemption from the requirement that the information on the licence should be made public. This would be allowed only if there were a serious reason for it. Amendment No. 7 is designed to cover the case which has been mentioned previously, where commercial secrecy might make it undesirable for the details of licences to be generally published. However, quite clearly the purpose of Amendment No. 6 is to make available such information as is required in order to

1097
control and check the proper dealing with all the substances which are covered by this Bill.
My noble friend Lady Stedman has mentioned already that certain assurances were given, but I should like to press her a little further on this point. If satisfactory assurances are given and my noble friend considered that it was impracticable, I should not wish to press this Amendment to a Division. At the same time, I believe that the purpose of the Amendment is important. It is essential that information should be made available to those people who are interested in the enforcement of the Bill when it becomes an Act of Parliament. I hope, therefore, that my noble friend will be able to go into a little more detail than was possible at the Committee stage and reassure the House that we shall indeed be able quite readily to obtain information from her Department.
Baroness STEDMAN: My Lords, as my noble friend Lord Wynne-Jones has said, we discussed at Committee stage the Amendments moved by him and by my noble friend Lady White which would have had the effect of making available for public inspection detailed information about licences, except where a certificate of exemption had been issued. The Amendments now before the House are in similar terms, and, like my noble friend, I should like to look at both of them together.
I am ready to repeat the assurance I gave then, that if an individual or body contacts the Department of the Environment, gives the name of the assumed importer of an Appendix I species, identifies himself and gives a good reason for his inquiry, my officials will be prepared to say whether or not a licence has been issued. We have considered the matter deeply since the Committee stage and I am prepared to extend that assurance in certain circumstances to cover Appendix II species as well as Appendix I. If, for example, the country of origin were to place a ban on the export of an Appendix II species, its status would become similar to that of an Appendix I species. I am also prepared to say that where conditions have been attached to a licence then, in the circumstances I have des
1098
cribed, my officials will be prepared to say what those conditions are.
I must stress, however, that we cannot divulge an importer's name. The person applying for the information must already know it, or suspect it. Nor can we publish the actual register of licences. I repeat that commercial confidence must be protected and traders' sources of supply safeguarded. I hope that this assurance will allow my noble friend to withdraw his Amendment. We have appreciated the opportunity of consultation with him since the Committee stage, and I hope he will now be satisfied with what we propose.
Lord WYNNE-JONES: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend. She has effectively met all the points which were raised at the Committee stage and which I have just again raised. Therefore, with permission, I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 2 [Scientific authorities]:
5.57 p.m.
Lord CRAIGTON Lord CRAIGTON moved Amendment No. 8:
Page 3, line 19, at end insert (" and he may by order exempt such a body or bodies from the provisions of section 1 of this Act").
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg to move Amendment No. 8 and, by leave of the House, to speak to Amendment No. 9 at the same time. This is a quite simple point. I believe that something has been left out of the Bill. When at the Committee stage the noble Baroness moved the new Clause 2 on page 3 she allowed that the Secretary of State may
"(b) assign to any other body or bodies the duty referred to in subsection (4) below".
Therefore, the noble Baroness allowed herself the right to appoint not only a scientific body but a body such as the Natural History Museum to act as though it were a scientific body. At col. 495 of Hansard the noble Baroness referred to this scientific body which she intends to use as an advisory body, and said:
"It is his intention"—
that is, of the Minister"—
"to 'designate' these bodies formally after the Bill becomes law,"—[Official Report; 4/5/76; col. 495]
There are bodies which quite properly should be freed from the obligation to comply with this Bill. Again, it might even be the Natural History Museum. However, it would be quite a nonsense to apply formally for a licence to import bits of an animal, or scientific specimens.
Even at this stage, therefore, the noble Baroness has not given an undertaking to designate such a body. However, I put it to your Lordships that the designation of a body for the purpose of freeing it from the provisions of the Bill should be public knowledge and should be discussed in the proper way, as happens with all Acts of Parliament. Therefore, after Section 2(1)(b) by which the Secretary of State may assign to any other body or bodies the duty referred to in subsection (4), my Amendment would insert:
"and he may by order exempt such a body or bodies from the provisions of section 1 of this Act".
This gives to the noble Baroness powers which she does not now possess to exempt from the Bill the body which she is going to use as a scientific body, and to add to it other scientific bodies which may not necessarily advise her but which, quite rightly and properly, should be exempted from the Bill. I feel that both Parliament and the public should have in proper form any exemptions from this Bill, be it a scientific body that advises the noble Baroness, or simply a scientific body that is doing a good job. I beg to move.
Baroness STEDMAN: My Lords, this Amendment, as the noble Lord has said, should be considered together with his Amendment No. 9 and they would allow the Secretary of State by order to exempt scientific authorities from the need to obtain licences. The Convention allows, but it does not oblige, party States to grant exemption from licensing for specimens exchanged between scientific institutions in different countries. I understand that the noble Lord probably has it in mind to designate all reputable scientific institutions.
Lord CRAIGTON: No, my Lords.
Baroness STEDMAN: My Lords, I beg the noble Lord's pardon—but if so it would seem invidious to exempt one or two institutions and not others that were similar, and I do not think the Secretary of
1100
State could contemplate assigning the functions of a scientific authority to a host of institutions for no reason other than to grant them exemption.
We have looked at the possibility of exempting scientific institutions in general and we have concluded that it would be unnecessarily complex to translate this exemption into a satisfactory provision in the Bill. We would have to consult and make decisions as to which scientific authorities can be regarded as reputable and it would seem to us to be easier to proceed by administrative action. The only significant amount of exchange appears to be in herbarium specimens of pressed plants. I can assure the noble Lord that it will not be necessary for licences to be obtained for individual consignments, and if scientific specimens are to be exempt I think I should want to take this back and look at it again. At the moment, I could not accept the noble Lord's Amendments.
Lord CRAIGTON: My Lords, it is through no fault of the noble Baroness that we have had only a very short while to look at these matters. I am content to withdraw my Amendment because I believe that what I have said will be found to make sense when the noble Baroness and her officials study it. It was the last intention in the world of mine that she should give a blanket exemption to all institutions. This is something we do not want. That is why it is much better to do it in a formal way and put it in the Bill. Having said that, I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 3 [Power to modify Schedules 1 to 3.]:
Baroness STEDMAN Baroness STEDMAN moved Amendment No. 10:
Page 4, line 34, at end insert—
("(e) to facilitate the more effective or more convenient administration of any restriction which is for the time being imposed by virtue of this Act on the importation and exportation of animals or plants of any particular kind or of any particular items.")
The noble Baroness said: My Lords, I beg to move Amendment No. 10, to which I have already spoken.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
6.3 p.m.
Baroness STEDMAN Baroness STEDMAN moved Amendment No. 11:
After Clause 3 insert the following new clause: Power to restrict ports at which live animals may be landed.
—(1) If it appears to the Secretary of State desirable to do so for the purpose of assisting the discovery of any importation contrary to section 1 above of any live animal of any of the kinds to which Schedule I to this Act for the time being applies, he may by order provide that, subject to such exceptions as may be specified in the order, it is prohibited to import any live animal of any kind specified in the order uness—

(a) the animal is imported at a port, or one of the ports, specified in the order in relation to animals of that kind, or

(b) the Secretary of State authorises the animal to be imported at some other place.

(2) Any order under this section may be varied or revoked by a subsequent order thereunder.

(3) The power conferred by this section to make any order shall be exercisable by statutory instrument which shall be subject to annulment in pursuance of a resolution of either House of Parliament.

The noble Baroness said: My Lords, this Amendment should be considered with Amendment No. 31. These Amendments would give the Secretary of State power to restrict by order the ports of entry at which a live animal could be imported. Noble Lords will remember our discussion of this subject at Committee stage. I said that it might be possible to consider some form of permissive power, and I am moving this Amendment now as a result of these considerations.
This Amendment resembles closely Amendments Nos. 12 and 13. But it makes clear that the power to restrict ports is being provided as an aid in enforcing the controls of the Bill. We are not yet convinced that restricting ports would ease identification problems, and noble Lords will remember the arguments which I put forward at Committee stage. But we accept that future experience might show that these restrictions were desirable, and we wish to have the power available. Other arguments have been put forward on animal welfare grounds. We can appreciate the feeling behind them. But the scope of the Bill will allow us to consider the welfare of endangered species only. If restrictions are to be brought in for the welfare of common animals, they will have to be inserted in a more appropriate Bill.
The Amendment would allow the power to be exercised by Statutory Instrument, which could be varied or revoked at any time. It would also permit the Secretary of State to make exceptions, either generally in the order or specifically in any particular case. It is important to provide for an animal which needs to reach its destination by the shortest possible route to use an undesignated port. I note that the noble Lord, Lord Craigton, has proposed this sort of provision in his Amendment No. 13. In the light of what I have said, I hope the House will accept this Amendment, and perhaps the two succeeding ones might be satisfied. I beg to move.
Lord MOWBRAY and STOURTON: My Lords, I should like to thank the noble Baroness for the way in which she has met this point. I am well aware that parts of my Amendment No. 12 were defective, but I will reserve detailed comments on that until it is called. In the meantime, I am happy with Amendment No. 11 in so far as it goes.
Lord WYNNE-JONES: My Lords, I am delighted to welcome this Amendment and I thank my noble friend for introducing it, because it is one of the points which was raised in my original Bill. I am very glad to see it now.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Lord MOWBRAY and STOURTON Lord MOWBRAY and STOURTON moved Amendment No. 12:
After Clause 3, insert the following new clause:
"Restriction of importation and exportation to specified ports.
—(1) The Secretary of State may by order provide that the importation or exportation of any kind of live animal shall, in any or specified circumstances, be prohibited, unless landed or despatched at one of the ports as specified in the order.
(2) An order under subsection (1) above shall be made by statutory instrument, subject to annulment in pursuance of a resolution of either House of Parliament, and may be varied or revoked by a subsequent order.
(3) A person in breach of an order made under subsection (1) above shall be liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding £400, and the animal shall be liable to forfeiture under the Customs and Excise Act 1952."
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I must apologise to the House for what I am now going to do, but in my own defence must say that I saw the Marshalled List

1103
only this morning and have not had much time to study it as I had other things to do. What I should like to do now is this. I have expressed my pleasure, and the House has expressed its pleasure, at Amendment No. 11, which we have now passed and is the new clause. I should now like to insert the third paragraph only of my Amendment No. 12. It would read:
"Insert after the new clause:
(3) A person in breach of an order …"
and so on. I understand from the Table that I am in order in doing this, and I apologise for not having had a moment to tell the noble Baroness what I intended to do. The only objection which I had to her Amendment was that I felt it did not go quite far enough, because by not making a breach a specific offence it makes any import in breach of the order a Customs offence; that is, it can be prosecuted only by Customs and Excise. All the arguments advanced on the other Amendments for private prosecution also apply. The Government have been defeated 66 to 31 and 73 to 19 on Amendments Nos. 3 and 5, and what I am doing is directly in line with those Amendments which your Lordships have approved.
In addition, it is likely that conservation organisations, or animal welfare organisations who tend to co-operate with conservation organisations in such matters, are very likely to obtain relevant information and ought to be in a better position than the Customs to give evidence, for example that the animal was of a particular species. The Customs argument, that in private matters they would have all the important information, therefore would not apply and in my opinion that tells against the Customs. Therefore, I suggest that we should do what is in line with what the House has done. We have already moved exactly the same principle in the second part of Amendment No. 5. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
"(3) A person in breach of an order made under subsection (1) above shall be liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding £400, and the animal shall be liable to forfeiture under the Customs and Excise Act 1952.")—(Lord Mowbray and Stourton.)
Baroness STEDMAN: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for explaining
1104
why he wants this particular addition and, as he has said, we have accepted the principle of his Amendment. We were not happy about the wording of his Amendment as it then stood, and the part which he now wants to add to the Government Amendment provides for the penalty of a final forfeiture under the Customs and Excise Act for the breach of an order.
We do not consider that it is necessary to spell out a specific penalty here. If the animals are brought into an undesignated port, they become illegal imports and they will be subject to the Customs penalties in any case. I think it is unlikely that a prosecution or a seizure would be desirable if the import was otherwise in order. As the noble Lord says, we have not had time for any consultations about this. I hope that what I have said will lead him to see that we think that it is perhaps unnecessary. But if the noble Lord wants to press it, I would be happy to take it back and have another look at it.
Lord MOWBRAY and STOURTON: My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Baroness. If she is willing to take this back and have another look at it, and perhaps have a word with me before Third Reading next Thursday, it would give us all time. I do not like putting things down on Third Reading, but the point has been aired. I do not want to have more pains and penalties in the Bill than we need, so I will leave it at that, and beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 4. [Restriction of movement of certain live animals after importation.]:
6.11 p.m.
Baroness STEDMAN Baroness STEDMAN moved Amendment No. 14:
Page 4, line 43, leave out from ("kinds") to ("and") in line 44 and insert ("to which Schedule 1 to this Act for the time being applies")
The noble Baroness said: My Lords, I spoke to this Amendment with Amendment No. 1. I beg to move.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Lord MOWBRAY and STOURTON Lord MOWBRAY and STOURTON moved Amendment No. 15:
Page 5, line 9, at end insert—
("(1A) The Secretary of State shall keep available, for public inspection at all reasonable times, a register of directions given under subsection (1) above.")
The noble Lord said: My Lords, this is exactly the same Amendment as I moved in Committee, which I put down again. I have read the answer of the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman, and I am not totally convinced as to why this should not be. I do not regard it as being a similar Amendment to that of the noble Lord, Lord Wynne-Jones, which he withdrew, because I do not see that in this case there is any commercial gain to be won by the information to outside parties. I cannot see what harm it can do to outside parties.
The only objection I can see is that it might cause busy men to have to spend time giving information to people who they might consider were being unnecessarily Clizzy-Lizzy. If, as I believe, there is a danger of people moving animals unnecessarily once they have been imported, and probably for wrongful purposes—I instanced the other day the example of animals being moved from a zoo to a safari park—with the intention of persuading people that the young animals they moved from the zoo had really been reared in a safari park, and if someone suspected these animals were not being born in a safari park and had not got the ability to ask for this information, I do not see how that safari park could be faulted with regard to the implication that they were rearing animals. This is only one small example; there are others which noble Lords can think of for themselves. Apart from the little time involved, and I do not regard it as more than a little time, this Amendment is not going to cause many inquiries. I should like to hear the further views of the noble Baroness. I beg to move.
Baroness STEDMAN: My Lords, I have considered the points the noble Lord, Lord Mowbray and Stourton, made when we debated this type of Amendment in Committee. It is quite true that directions are generally made only in respect of Appendix I animals, and no commercial interest is involved. But the information contained in the register will be simply the whereabouts of an animal, and this is something an inquirer presumably will normally already know.
When we discussed Amendment No. 6 I said that in certain circumstances we could reveal to a bona fide inquirer facts
1106
about the conditions attached to a licence. I am certainly prepared to extend this undertaking to include the fact as to whether or not a movement direction has been imposed. I think this procedure might prove to be simpler and cheaper than having to maintain a register publicly available. I think it might be less tempting to irresponsible inquirers to indulge in random snooping. It would certainly mean some expense on staff, and on accommodation in which to keep the register where people could go and consult it. Also, there would be an element of expense in producing such a register. I hope that, in the light of this, the noble Lord, Lord Mowbray and Stourton, will see fit to withdraw his Amendment.
Lord MOWBRAY and STOURTON: My Lords, as usual, I am grateful to the noble Baroness. Far be it from me or the Party I represent to wish to impose on the Government any more expenditure; that would be the last thing I would wish to do, unless there was a good reason behind it. I think the explanation the noble Baroness has given is reasonable. If, on mature consideration, my friends do not regard it so, no doubt my friends in another place can deal with it accordingly. I beg to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Lord CRAIGTON Lord CRAIGTON moved Amendment No. 16:
Page 5, line 30, after ("premises") insert ("having suitable conditions for care as are approved by the scientific authority")
The noble Lord said: My Lords, the noble Earl, Lord Cranbrook, is sick, and has asked me to put down once again an Amendment in line with the one he moved towards the end of the Committee stage, at col. 444 of Hansard, At that time, the noble Earl put down a fairly long Amendment, laying out in some detail the type of accommodation required. I will read to your Lordships, and especially to the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman, what she said in reply. The noble Baroness said:
"Clearly, these are highly laudable aims and the Government are in sympathy with them. But it does not seem necessary and, indeed, I think it is undesirable, to spell them out in the Bill. There is always a danger that, if certain conditions are spelt out, doubt is thereby cast upon the Government's power to impose others not so specified.

1107
The Convention requires that the scientific authority shall be satisfied that the proposed recipient of a living specimen is suitably equipped to house and care for it before it issues an import licence…".—[Official Report, 4/5/76; col. 445.]
As the noble Earl did not then have the opportunity of knowing the newly-worded clause of the noble Baroness about describing scientific premises, I felt he would like me simply to say such premises,
"…having suitable conditions for care as are provided by the scientific authority",
the word "care" covering all the things my noble friend wanted to put in. This may seem slightly frivolous, but it seems to me that the serious point is that nowhere in this clause is the Secretary of State obliged to consult the scientific authority on this matter of suitable care. He can consult the scientific authority about the issuing of a licence, but nowhere is he empowered to consult about care. On those two grounds, I beg to move.
Lord WYNNE-JONES: My Lords, I support this Amendment. It seems to me to pinpoint exactly what is meant by the International Convention. It is taking what is stated in the International Convention and putting it straight into the Bill, making this an absolute legal requirement. I would think that there is not only nothing to lose by this but a great deal to gain by having it so clearly stated. I hope the Government will be prepared to accept the Amendment.
Leave out Schedule 1 and insert—

("SCHEDULE 1)

ANIMALS THE IMPORTATION AND EXPORTATION OF WHICH ARE RESTRICTED

This Schedule applies to the following kinds of animal, namely:—

PART I

MAMMALS

1. All kinds of mammal except the kinds specified in the first column below—

Excepted kind

Common name or names

Marsupials

Macropus giganteus

Eastern grey kangaroo

Macropus fuliginosus

Western grey kangaroo

Insectivores

Talpa europaea

Common eurasian mole

Primates

Macaca rhesus

Rhesus monkey

Macaca nemestrina

Pig-tailed monkey

Cercopithecus aethiops

Velvet monkey

Rabbits and hares

Lepus catensis

Brown hare

Oryctolagus cuniculus

European rabbit (otherwise known as domestic rabbit)

Lord de CLIFFORD: My Lords, I should like to support this Amendment. The care of animals generally is being increasingly invested in councils. They have powers of inspection of boarding kennels, breeding kennels, pet shops, everything. Councils, in this case, are not the people who should have the powers: the scientific authorities are the people who should have them.
Baroness STEDMAN: My Lords, as noble Lords will have gathered when we discussed this Amendment in Committee, the Government would comply with this provision in any case. The Convention provides for this type of approval. We have looked at it again, and still do not consider it necessary for it to be stated overtly in the Bill. In the interests of co-operation, and because Parliamentary Counsel have a few minor doubts about drafting, I would be happy to consider it.
Lord CRAIGTON: My Lords, on that assurance, I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Schedule 1 [Animals the importation and exportation of which are restricted]:
6.20 p.m.
Baroness STEDMAN Baroness STEDMAN moved Amendment No. 19:

Rodents2

Sciurus carolinensis

Grey squirrel

Sciurus vulgaris

Eurasian red squirrel

Castor Canadensis

Canadian beaver

Rattus norvegicus

Common rat (otherwise known as laboratory rat)

Rattus rattus

Ship rat

Mus musculus

House mouse (otherwise known as laboratory mouse)

Meriones unguiculatus

Clawed jird (otherwise known as Mongoliangerbil)

Any domestic form of Mesocricetus auratus

Domestic golden hamster

Any domestic form of Ondatra zibethicus

Domestic muskrat (otherwise known as musquash)

Cavia porcellus

Domestic guinea pig

Any domestic form of Chinchilla laniger

Domestic chinchilla

Myocastor coypus

Domestic coypu (otherwise known as Nutria)

Carnivores

Canis familiaris

Domestic dog

Vulpes vulpes

Common fox and silver fox

Alopex lagopus

Artie fox

Procyon lotor

North American raccoon

Procyon cancrivorus

Crab-eating raccoon

Mustela vison

North American mink

Mustela fivo

Domestic ferret

Martes zibellina

Sable

Felis catus

Domestic cat

Seals

Callorhinus ursinus

Northern fur seal

Odd-toed ungulates

Equus caballus

Domestic horse

Equus asinus

Domestic donkey

Equus caballus x assinus

Mule and hinny

Even-toed ungulates

Any domestic form of Sus scrofa

Domestic pig

Lama glama

Domestic llama

Lama pacos

Domestic alpaca

Any domestic form of Camelus bactrianus

Domestic bactrian camel

Camelus dromedaries

Arabian camel

Cervus elaphus

Red deer

Dama dama

European fallow deer

Any domestic form of Rangifer tarandus

Domestic reindeer

Any domestic form of Bubalus bubalis

Domestic water buffalo

Bos taurus

Domestic ox

Bos indicus

Domestic zebra

Bos frontalis

Domestic gayal

Any domestic form of Bos grunniens

Domestic yak

Any domestic form of Capora hircus

Domestic goat

Ovis aries

Domestic sheep

BIRDS

2. All kinds of bird except the kinds specified in the first column below—

Excepted kind

Common name or names

Gamebirds

Perdix perdix

Common partridge

Alectoris

Partridges

Lophortyx californica

California quail

Colinus virginianus

Bobwhite quail

Coturnix

Quails

Excalfactoria chinensis

Painted quail (otherwise known as blue-breasted quail

Bambosicola theracica

Bamboo partridge

Gallus gallus

Red junglefowl

Rollulus roulroul

Roulroul partridge

Phasianus colchicus

Common pheasant

Phasianus versicolor

Green pheasant

Lophura hycthemera

Silver pheasant

Syrmaticus reevesi

Reeve's pheasant

Chrysolophus

Golden pheasants and Amherst pheasants

Pave cristatus

Indian peacock (otherwise known as blue peacock)

Numida

Spotted guineafowls

Guttera

Acryllium

Cranes

Grus antigone

Sarus crane

Anthropoides virgo

Demoiselle crane

Balearica pavonina

Crowned crane

Button quails

Turnix

Button quails

Rails

Porphyrio porphyrio

Purple gallinule

Laterallus laucopyrrhus

Red and white crake

Pigeons and doves

Colomba guinea

Speckled pigeon

Streptopelia

Typical doves

Cena capensis

Masked dove

Turtur

Wood doves

Chalcophaps indica

Green-winged dove

Geopelia striata

Barred dove

Geopelia cuneata

Diamond dove

Ocyphaps lophotes

Crested bronzewing

Phaps chalcoptera

Common bronzewing

Phaps elegans

Brush bronzewing

Zenaida auriculata

Eared dove

Columbina

Small America ground doves

Scardefella

Parrots

Trichoglossus haematodus

Rainbow lorikeet

Cacatua sulphurea

Lesser sulphur-crested cockatoo

Cacatua moluccensis

Salmon-crested cockatoo

Cacatua roseicapilla

Galah (otherwise known as roseate cockatoo)

Ara ararauna

Blue and yellow macaw

Ara macao

Red and yellow macaw

Ara chloroptera

Red and green macaw

Nandaya nanday

Black-headed conure

Myiopsitta monachus

Monk parakeet (otherwise known as quaker parakeet)

Cyancliseua patagonus

Patagonian conure

Forpus

Parrotlets

Brotogeris

Small South American parakeets

Psittacus erythacus

African grey parrot

Piocephalus senegalus

Senegal parrot

Poicephalus ruppelli

Ruppell's parrot

Agapornis

Lovebirds

Loriculus

Hanging parrots

Psittacula eupatria

Alexandrine parrot

Psittacula krameri

Rose-ringed parrot

Psittacula himalayana

Slaty-headed parrot

Psittacula cyanocephala

Plum-headed parrot

Psittacula roseate

Blossom-headed parrot

Psittacula longicauda

Long-tailed parrot

Psittacula alexandria

Moustached parrot

Amazona aestiva

Blue-fronted Amazon

Amazona ochrocephala

Yellow-headed Amazon

Neophema elegans

Elegant parakeet

Neophema chrysostoma

Blue-winged parakeet

Neophema pulchella

Turqoisine parakeet

Neophema bourkii

Bourke's parakeet

Psephotus haernatonotus

Red-rumped parakeet

Platycercus eximius

Northern rosella

Platycercus elegans

Crimson rosella

Nymphicus hollandicus

Cockatiel

Melopsittacus undulates

Budgerigar

Starlings

Lamprotornis

African glossy starlings

Spreo superba

Superb starling

Sturnus malabaricus

Malabar starling

Sturnus pagodarum

Pagoda starling

Sturnus roseus

Rose-coloured starling

Sturnus contra

Pied starling

Sturnus burmanicus

Jerdon's starling

Auridotheres

Typical mynahs

Gracula religiosa

Hill mynah

Corvids

Garrulus glandarius

Jay

Garrulus lanceolatus

Lanceolated jay

Cyanocorax yncas

Green jay

Urocissa erythrorhyncha

Red-billed blue magpie

Cissa chinensis

Hunting cissa

Dendrocitta vagabunda

Rufous tree-pie

Corvus

Crows

Babblers

Garrulax albogularis

White-throated laughing-thrush

Garrulax leucolophus

White-crested laughing-thrush

Garrulax menileger

Lesser necklaced laughing-thrush

Garrulax pectoralis

Greater necklaced laughing-thrush

Garrulax rufogularis

Rufous-chinned laughing-thrush

Garrulax canorus

Hwamei laughing-thrush

Garrulax sannio

White-cheeked laughing-thrush

Garrulax erythrocephalus

Red-headed laughing-thrush

Leiothrix argentauris Silver-fared mesia

Leiothrix lutea Pekin robin

Minla cyanoptera

Blue-winged siva

Heterophasia capistrata

Black-headed sibia

Yuhina

Yuhinas

Bulbuls

Pycnonotus

Typical bulbuls

Leafbirds

Chloropsis aurifrons

Golden-fronted fruitsucker

Irena puella

Fairy bluebirds

Thrushes

Copsychus saularis

Asian magpie-robin

Copsychus malabaricus

Shama

Zoothera citrina

Orange-headed ground thrush

Flycatchers

Niltava sundana

Rufous-bellied niltava

Dunnocks

Acceptor

Dunnocks

White-eyes

Zosterops palpebrosa

Oriental white-eye

Troupials

Icterus icterus

Troupial

Finches

Serinus serinus

Common Serin

Serinus lercopygius

White-rumped seed-eater

Serinus atrogularis

Yellow-rumped seed-eater

Serinus mazambicus

Green singing finch

Carduclis sinica

Chinese greenfinch

Carduelis spinoides

Himalayan greenfinch

Spinus magellanicus

Black-headed siskin

Carpodacus erythrinus

Common rosefinch (otherwise known as scarlet grosbeak)

Coccothraustes personatus

Japanese grosbeak

Coccothraustes migratorius

Yellow-billed grosbeak

Wax bills

Lagonesticta

Direfinches

Estrilda

Typical waxbills

Uraeginthus

Blue waxbills and violet-ears

Hypangos niveoguttatus

Peter's twinspot

Amandava

Avadavats

Ortygospiza atricollis

Quail finch

Erythrura prasina

Pintailed parrotfinch

Lonchura malabarica

Indian silverbill

Lonchura cantans

African silverbill

Lonchura griseicapilla

Pearl-headed silverbill

Lonchura cucullata

Bronze-winged mannikin

Lonchura bicolor

Pied mannikin

Lonchura fringilloides

Magpie mannikin

Lonchura striata

Striated munia (including Bengalese finch)

Lonchura punctulata

Spotted munia

Lonchura Malacca

Black-headed munia

Lonchura maja

White-headed munia

Lonchura castaneothorax

Chestnut-brested finch

Aidemosyna modesta

Cherry finch (otherwise known as plum-capped finch)

Amadina erythrocephala

Red-headed finch

Amadina fasciata

Cutthroat

Padda oryziovora

Java sparrow

Emblema guttata

Spotted-sidedfinch (otherwise known as diamond finch)

Neochmia ruficauda

Star finch

Poephila guttata

Zebra finch

Poephiia bichenovii

Double-barred finch

Poephila personata

Masked finch

Poephila acuticauda

Long-tailed finch

Poephila cincta

Black-throated finch (otherwise known as parson's finch)

Chloebia gouldiae

Gouldian finch

Aidemsoyna modesta

Cherry finch (otherwise known as plum-capped finch)

Lonchura castaneothorax

Chestnut-breasted finch

Weavers

Passer lutea

Golden sparrow

Petronia xanthocollis

Yellow-throated sparrow

Sporopipes

Speckled-fronted weavers and scaly-crowned weavers

Ploceus cacullatus

Village weaver

Ploceus philippinus

Baya weaver

Ploceus intermedius

Lesser masked weaver

Ploceus velatus

Greater masked weaver

Quelea

Quelea weavers

Euplectes

Bishops and large wydahs

Buntings

Hypochera

Combassous

Vidua macrqura

Pin-tailed wydah

Vidua paradisaea

Paradise wydah

Buntings

Emberiza leucocephala

Pine bunting

Emeriza cia

Rock bunting

Emberiza hortulana

Ortolan bunting

Emberiza tahapisi

Cinnamon-breasted bunting

Emberiza elegans

Yellow-throated bunting

Emberiza aureola

Yellow-breasted bunting

Emberiza fiaviventris

African golden-breasted bunting

Emberiza melanocephala

Black-headed bunting

Emberiza bruniceps

Red-headed bunting

Melophus lathami

Crested bunting

Sicalis flabeola

Saffron finch

Tiaris

Grassquits

Gubernatrix

Cardinals

Paroaria

Cardinalis

Cyranerpes

Honeycreepersv

REPTILES

3. All kinds of reptile except the kinds specified in the first column below—

Excepted kind

Common name or names

Geckos

Hemjdactylus brookii

Brook's gecko

Hemidactylus flaviviridis

Hemidactylus frenatus

Bridled house gecko

Hemidactylus mabouia

Morean's gecko

Hemidactylus turcicus

Turkish gecko

Lygodactylus picturatus

Pachydactylus bibroni

Bibron's clawless gecko

Tarentola mauritanica

Moorish clawless gecko

Thecadactylus rapicauda

Turnip-tailed gecko (otherwise known as top-tailed gecko)

Agamids

Agama agama

Margouillat lizard (otherwise known as rainbow lizard)

Agama atricollis

Black-necked agama

Calotes cristatellus

Londok agama

Galotes versicolor

Harlequin lizard (otherwise known as blood-sucker lizard)

Leiolepis belliana

Bell's agama

Physignathus concinnus

Iguanids

Anolis carolinensis

Carolina anole (otherwise known as green anole)

Iguana iguana

Plica plica

Tropidurus torquatus

Taraguia lizard (otherwise known as Wiel's ring-necked lizard)

Basiliscus basiliscus

Teids

Ameiva ameiva

Surinam lizard

Lacertids

Acanthodactylus boskianus

Daudin's fringe-toed lizard

Acanthodactylus pardalis

Leopard fringe-toed lizard

Lacerta muralis

Common wall lizard

Lacerta sicula

Italian wall lizard

Lacerta vivipara

Common lizard (otherwise known as viviparous lizard)

Cordylids

Cordylus cordylus

Rough-scaled girdled lizard

Gerrhosaurus flavigularis

Yellow-throated plated lizard

Gerrhosaurus nigrigularis

Black-throated plated lizard

Gerrhosaurus major

Platysaurus guttatus

Skinks

Chalcides ocellatus

Ocellated skink

Mabuya mabouya

Raddi's skink

Mabuya multifasciata

Many banded skink

Mabuya striata

Common two-striped skink

Mabuya varia

Savanna variable skink

Anguids

Anguis fragilis

Slow worm

Typical snakes

Boaedon fulignosus

Coluber constrictor

American racer

Coluber viridiflavus

European whip-snake

Drymarchon corais

Indigo snake

Elaphe guttata

Elaphe obsolete

American rat snake

Lampropetis getulus

Malpolon mospessulana

Montpellier snake

Natrix maura

Viperine snake

Natrix natrix

European grass snake

Philothammus semi variegates

Natrix rhombifera

Rhomb snake

Natrix sipedon

North American water snake

Natrix tessellate

Tessellated snake (otherwise known as diced snake)

Oxybelius aeneus

American vine snake

Oxybelis fulgidus

Spalerosophis diadema

Clifford's snake

Thamnophis sirtalis

Common garter snake

Thamnophis sauritus

Ribbon snake

Terrapins

Chrysemys scripta elegans(otherwise known as Pseudemys scripta elegans)

Red-eared terrapin

Chrysemys picta

Painted terrapin

Mauremys caspica leprosa (otherwise known as Clemmys caspica leprosa)

Snapping Turtles

Chelvdra serpentine

Common snapping turtle

AMPHIBIANS

4. All kinds of amphibian except the kinds specified in the first column below—

Excepted kind

Common name or names

Mole salamanders

Ambystoma maculatum

American spotted salamander

Ambystoma tigrinum

Tiger salamander

Newts

Salamandra salamdra

European spotted salamander

Triturus cristatus

Crested newt (otherwise known as warty newt)

Triturus vulgaris

Common newt (otherwise known as smooth newt)

Triturus helveticus

Palmate newt

Tongue-less frogs

Xenopus laevis

African clawed toad

Atelopus ignescens

Fire bellies and midwives

Bombina variegate

Narrow-mouthed frogs

Kaloula pulchra

Malayan bull frog

True frogs

Pyxicephalus delalandei (otherwise known as Rana delalandei)

Delaland's burrowing frog

Rana angolensis

Angola frog

Rana cancrivora

Rana catesbeiana

American bull frog

Rana chalconota

Rana esculenta

Edible frog

Rana ridibunda

Marsh frog

Rana temporaria

Common European frog

Tree frogs

Polypedetes leucomystax (otherwise known as Rhacophorus leucomystax)

Malayan tree frog

Sedge frogs

Hyperolius concolor

Hallowells tree frog

Hyperolius nasutus

Hyperolius picturatus

Hyperolius pusillus

Arrow poison frogs

Dendrobates auratus

Dendrobates histrionicus

True toads

Bufo bufo

Bufo marinus

Bufo mclanostictus

Asian common toad

Bufo regularis

African square-marked toad

Bufo viridis

Paradoxical frogs

Pseudis paradoxa

Paradoxical frog

Tree frogs

Hyla arborea

Common European tree frog

Hyla boans

Hyla cinerea

American green tree frog

Hyla crepitans

Rattle-voiced South American tree frog

Hyla crucifer

Spring peeper frog

Hyla meridonalis

Stripeless European frog

Hyla nasica

Hyla rubra

Dundin's tree frog

Hyla versicolor

Phrynohyas venulosa

Warty tree frog

Similisca baudini

Mexican tree frog

PART II

FISH

5. The kinds offish specified in the first column below—

Restricted kind

Common name or names

Sturgeons

Acipenser brevirostrum

Shortnose sturgeon

Acipenser fulvescens

Lake sturgeon

Acipenser oxyrrhynchus

Atlantic sturgeon

Acipenser sturio

Common sturgeon

Bonytongues

Arapaima gigas

Arapaima

Scleropages formosus

Asiatic bonytongue

Salmon

Coregonus alpenae

Longjaw cisco

Salmo chrysogaster

Mexican golden trout

Stenodus leucichthys leucichthys

Inconnu

Carplike fish

Chasmistes cujus

Cui-ui

Plagopterus argentissimus

Woundfin

Probarbus jullieni

Ikan temoleh

Ptychocheilus Iucius

Colorada squawfish

Atherine fish

Cynolebias constanciae

Annual killifish

Cynolebias marmoratus

Cynolebias minimus

Cynolebias opalescens

Cynolebias splendens

Xiphophorus couchianus

Monterrey platyfish

Coelacanths

Latimeria chalumnae

Coelacanth

Australian lung fish

Neoceratodus forsterl

Australian lungfish

Catfish

Pangasianodon gigas

Giant catfish

Perch

Stizostedion vitreum galucum

Blue walleye

INSECTS

6. The kind of insect specified in the first column below—

Restricted kind

Common name

Butterflies

Parnassius appollo Apollo

Apollo butterfly

MOLLUSCS

7. The kinds of mollusc specified below—

Restricted kind

Freshwater mussels

Conradilla caelata
Cyprogenia aberti
Dromus dromas
Epioblasma florentina curtisi (otherwise known as Dysnomia florentina curtisi)
Epioblasma florentina florentina (otherwise known as Dysnomia florentina florentina)
Epioblasma sampsoni (otherwise known as Dysnomia sampsoni)
Epioblasma sulcata perobliqua (otherwise known as Dysnomia sulcata perobliqua)
Epioblasma torulosa gubernaculum (otherwise known as Dysnomia torulosa gubernaculum)
Epioblasma torulosa rangiana (otherwise known as Dysnomia torulosa rangiana)
Epioblasma torulosa torulosa (otherwise known as Dysnomia torulosa torulosa)
Epioblasma turgidula (otherwise known as Dysnomia turgidula)
Epioblasma walkeri (otherwise known as Dysnomia walkeri)
Fusconaia cuneolus
Fusconaia edgariana
Fusconaia subrotunda
Lampsilis brevicula
Lampsilis higginsi
Lampsilis orbiculata orbiculata
Lampsilis satura
Lampsilis virescens
Lexingtonia dolabelloides
Pleurobema clava
Plethobasis cicatricosus
Plethobasis cooperianus
Pleurobema plenum
Potamilus capax (otherwise known as Proptera capax)
Quadrula intermedia
Quadrula sparsa
Toxolasma cylindrella (otherwise known as Carunculina cylindrella)
Unio nickliniana (otherwise known as Megalonaias nickliniana
Union tempicoenis tecomatensis (otherwise known as Lampsilis tampicoenis tecomatensis)
Villosa travalis (otherwise known as Micromya trabalis)
Land snails
Papustyla pulcherrima (otherwise known as Papuina pulcherrima) Paraphanta
Restricted kind
Freshwater snails
Coahuilix hubbsi
Cochliopina milleri
Durangonella coahuilac
Mexipyrgus carranzae
Mexipyrgus churinceanus
Mexipyrgus escobedae
Mexipyrgus lugoi
Mexipyrgus mojarralis
Mexipyrgus multilineatus
tvlexithauma quadripaludium
Nymphophilus minckleyi
Paludiscala caramba
NOTE: The second column of this Schedule gives a common name or names, where available, and is included by way of explanation only; in the event of any dispute or proceedings, only the first column is to he taken into account.
The noble Baroness said: My Lords, I beg to move Amendment No. 19. I spoke to this Amendment with Amendment No. 1.
Lord MERRIVALE: My Lords, this is a very small point, but I am rather intrigued by the inclusion under "Fish" in Part II of the new Schedule of Latimeria chahannae, in other words Coelacanth. So far as I can gather, coelacanths are practically an extinct species. A few years ago I believe one was caught off the North-West coast of Madagascar. I believe some scientists consider that man is descended from the coelocanth. I am wondering to what extent countries who have coelocanths in their waters would be prepared to see them exported from their shores and imported into this country. I am rather intrigued to see that it is a species which can be imported into this country.
Baroness STEDMAN: My Lords, that we have included this in the Schedule only goes to prove how desperate we are to save our endangered species.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Schedule 2 [Plants the importation and exportation of which are restricted]:
Baroness STEDMAN Baroness STEDMAN moved Amendment No. 20:
Page 24, line 21, at end insert—
("This Schedule applies to the kinds of plant specified in the second column below—").
The noble Baroness said: I beg to move Amendment No. 20. I spoke to this with Amendment No. 1.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Schedule 3 [Items the importation and exportation of which are restricted]:
Baroness STEDMAN moved Amendment No. 21:
Page 26, line 10, leave out paragraph 5.
The noble Baroness said: My Lords, this Amendment would lift from elephant hair bracelets the licence controls under this Bill. Our policy with regard to Schedule 3 has been to include items which
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are major parts or products of the species concerned and which are readily recognisable, and although elephant hair bracelets are recognisable by Customs, we feel on consideration that they are such a minor product of the elephant that licensing would be inappropriate. The controls remain on elephant tusks and heads, which are clearly more significant in terms of trade and are the parts for which elephants are killed. I beg to move.
Lord WYNNE-JONES: My Lords, I am really a little surprised at this Amendment I must confess that I am not an expert on the hair of the elephant—occasionally the hair of the dog that bit me last night, but the hair of the elephant is rather different. I am informed that this hair was indeed at one time used for making bracelets, and I suppose what has been done in the past may be revived. I should have thought it was unwise to exclude specifically from this list the elephant hair. After all, we know that at the moment the elephant is a very much endangered species; figures which were put forward not so very long ago suggested that in Africa elephants were being destroyed at the rate of between 5,000 to 10,000 a year. With a total elephant population of about 50,000, that would mean that elephants will not survive very long. Anything which in any way encourages the trade in parts of the elephant is undesirable. Having had this product inserted originally, I should have thought it wise to leave it in rather than at this stage to take it out. But I must confess that when it comes to detail I would leave it to those who are more expert in the hair of the elephant than I am.
Lord MOWBRAY and STOURTON: My Lords, may I ask the noble Baroness, or perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Wynne-Jones, whether it is a possibility that the owner of an elephant is able, without injuring the elephant at all, to pluck hairs from various parts of the body and make them into bracelets as presents for his wives, aunts or children?
Lord MERRI VALE: My Lords, before the noble Baroness replies, may I ask why paragraph 8 was inserted? I know this is not part of the Amendment, but perhaps I might raise the point. Paragraph 8 reads:

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"Any tooth of any animal, if unworked or simply prepared, any part of any such tooth and powder and waste of any tooth of any animal."
Last April I was in Senegal where you can buy in shops the teeth of tiny sharks; they are mounted into little lucky charms which can be worn on a bracelet or round the neck, if one is so inclined. I should have thought these tiny sharks are caught in large numbers, and that to put an embargo on the importation on the teeth of such animals, mounted in very small mountings, seems rather unnecessary. The sharks have been caught anyway, and if one wants to use the teeth for decoration, why not?
Baroness STEDMAN: My Lords, I am afraid I cannot answer the question as to whether a keeper can pull hairs out of an elephant without hurting the elephant. If the House feels very strongly about this and thinks that elephant hair bracelets ought to be left in, I would not push the Amendment to the ultimate. What we felt was that no one went out and killed elephants in order to get hair to make bracelets; elephants are killed in order to get tusks and heads. Perhaps this is just a by-product anyway. I am now advised by my advisers that elephant hairs can be pulled out without damage to the elephant but with much damage to the puller. Perhaps that answers the noble Lord's question. Leaving in paragraph 5 we felt meant including some trivialities in the Bill. I hope that your Lordships will accept the Amendment.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
6.28 p.m.
Lord de CLIFFORD Lord de CLIFFORD moved Amendment No. 22:
Page 26, line 38, leave out ("(except where the furskin is trimming only)").
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I rise to move this Amendment in some trepidation because no doubt the noble Baroness knows far more about trimmings than I do. I find this proposal objectionable on two grounds. To me "trimming only" is far too vague a term in a Bill which is creating a criminal offence. Is a six inch square piece of fur on a coat trimming only? Is a piece of six inch square fur on a handkerchief case or some such other item trimming only? To me it appears very uncertain, and I do not feel that in a Bill of this importance
1128
we can stand anomalies. I can see no justification at all for excluding trimmings from control, whatever they may be. In any case, even in relation to large animals small trimmings could deplete the species if used in sufficient quantities. Even if the trimmings are offcuts, for which it might be assumed the animal would not have been killed, it is psychologically undesirable, in my view, to allow a market in small fripperies in an endangered species when large articles may be completely forbidden.
It is to be hoped that the scientific authority, when it comes to consider controls on newly endangered species, will take the view that goods made from them should be strictly controlled, regardless of whether it is generally believed that small items will not, in themselves, lead to the animals being killed. The rarer the animal the higher the value of even the small pieces of it, and the greater the damage of even one animal being killed for the trimmings. I would hope that the Government might accept in principle that we should protect endangered species by all possible means, and not allow a species to become extinct because of the lack of proper attention to legislation in small details. I beg to move.
Baroness STEDMAN: My Lords, this Amendment would extend the controls on furskin goods to cover items where the trimming only was from the fur of a specified animal. We have always appreciated that furskin coats, rugs, and so on are a very sensitive area of trade, but I do not feel that we can agree to the noble Lord's Amendment: first, because a trimming is, by definition, an extremely small area of fur, and the smaller the fur the greater the difficulty in the identification, and it would often be impossible to distinguish the species from which the trimming came and whether or not it should have been subject to a licence; secondly, the trimmings are only a byproduct of the furskin trade. Few people, I think, would kill a leopard simply to make collars, and it seems much more important to us to control the trade in skins and in certain made up goods in which the skin forms a significant part, rather than to try to deal with what is a comparatively insignificant area and one which would present considerable difficulties in recognition. I hope, in the

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light of what I have said, that the noble Lord will feel that he can withdraw his Amendment.
Lord BEAUMONT of WHITLEY: My Lords, I must say that I do not think that the noble Baroness is her usual convincing self on this particular matter. Trimmings, of course, vary, because I do not know that there is any legal definition of the absolute extent. For instance, what is trimming on a glove is much smaller than trimming on one of your Lordships' mantles or robes. Surely, the point is that there are a number of beautiful furs which, merely because they are beautiful, are on animals which have been made nearly extinct, and because they are beautiful are also to be valued as trimmings on clothes. I think this fact means that you could get rare animals being killed just to produce the very rich trimmings for the clothes of very rich people, where there was a question of beautiful furs and beautiful skins. I take the point that the noble Baroness makes about them being difficult to recognise. But if they are not recognised there is actually no real problem. The point we are talking about is where we can recognise them, and I should have thought the noble Lord was right in this Amendment and that the noble Baroness ought to think again.
Lord de CLIFFORD: My Lords, I must thank the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont of Whitley, for his support. I feel in some difficulty here because I am not sure of the strength of feeling of your Lordships in this matter. I shall withdraw this Amendment, but would seriously ask the noble Baroness whether she and her advisers would think once again about this matter. Meanwhile, I am prepared to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
6.34 p.m.
Lord MOWBRAY and STOURTON Lord MOWBRAY and STOURTON moved Amendment No. 24:
Page 27, leave out lines 3 and 4 and insert—

("Aonyx

Enhydra

Genetta

Lutra

Martes

Paradoxurus Pteronura")

The noble Lord said: My Lords, in moving this Amendment I again wish to be slightly pernickety because I wish to withdraw the third line up, Martes; so I am moving the Amendment as printed with the exception of Martes in the third line from the bottom. I am doing this because I am keen that this Amendment should be accepted by the Government or insisted on by the House. All the rest of the species are the otter family, and I do not want the House to be told by the Government that Martes are not all that important, and therefore to cloud the issue with another species.
This Amendment would have the effect of adding to the Schedule of products to be controlled the skins of all otters, and it is with these otters that I think we should all be concerned. The imports of otter skins in 1975 numbered just under 23,000; in 1974 there were only 15,000, so it can be seen how the figures are going up. Certainly just under half, and probably more than half, came from endangered otters which are in Appendix 1. These Appendix 1 animals should not be allowed to enter commercial trade and, as the Bill stands, the live otters would not be allowed for importation for commercial purposes. They are the giant otter; the La Plata otter; the Southern River otter, all from South America; and the Cameroun clawless otter from Africa.
Customs and Excise have, we understand, hitherto insisted that only products that are really recognisable may be controlled under this Bill, and they quote the letter of the Convention which indeed states that readily recognisable products shall be controlled. We should not, however, forget that the Convention also allows us to go further than the letter of the Convention. First, let me say that we are not convinced that these furskins are not recognisable since the fur trade prizes the South American furs above others because of the colour, lustre, and general quality of the fur. I would suggest that as they can recognise them, we can learn to do the same. Secondly, it is a shameful situation if we stick so closely to the letter of the Convention that we allow a skin trade of this nature to exterminate, as it well may, even one species of otter.
Finally, I believe that this Amendment would to some extent circumvent this

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problem because it places all otter skins under control. Thus all will be licensed and the honest dealer—and they must represent at least 50 per cent. of the trade —will declare his skin for what it is. If he is dishonest, it is more than probable that the goods made from that contraband skin will be recognised sooner or later in some prestigious store, and may then be seized. One or two cases of this nature would be sufficient to deter most retailers from carelessly taking otter skin goods from furriers. I urge the House to accept this Amendment. I would also suggest to the Government that, at the meeting of the parties in November, the words "readily recognisable" be modified to avoid those who wish only to abide by the letter of the Convention using it as an excuse for this kind of loophole. I beg to move.
Baroness STEDMAN: My Lords, this Amendment would extend to the otter the controls on furskins under Schedule 3. Our existing controls cover all the heavily spotted furs and those of a few other species which, together, form a readily recognisable group. But otters are a much more complicated proposition. Not only is it extremely difficult to distinguish the skin of one otter from another, but I am advised that it is no easy matter to tell an otter skin from that of any other brown animal furs. There is a substantial trade in the skins of the common species of otter so that, if all otter skins were controlled, Customs would be faced with a very considerable identification problem. I must advise against trying to enact legislation which those on whom the duty will fall know full well they cannot operate.
There is also the point that, in assessing whether it is justifiable to burden the legitimate trade with licensing requirements, we must have some regard to the relative proportions of the common and of the endangered species. As I have said, there is a substantial trade in common otter skins. Many of us find that repugnant and want it stopped, but that is not what this Bill is about. We would not consider it justifiable, at this time, to require licences for all species, when only half a dozen are endangered.
I appreciate the importance of trying to stop the trade in the skins of endangered
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species of the otter, and, if the noble Lord is prepared to accept this, I am willing to take the matter back to examine further the possibility of controlling the import specifically from those countries where the endangered species are found. I do not think at this stage that I could go further, but I am willing to have consultations with the noble Lord on those lines.
Lord MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for what she has told me. I do not ever like being told that because something is hard to do, it cannot be done. I take the point made by the noble Baroness and I accept her offer. Bearing in mind that there will be time for discussion in another place, albeit somewhat rushed, I will, on her words, withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
6.41 p.m.
Lord MOWBRAY and STOURTON Lord MOWBRAY and STOURTON moved Amendment No. 25:
Page 28, line 6, at end insert (" and anything made wholly or partly from that fabric.").
The noble Lord said: My Lords, briefly, this Amendment deals with the vicuna. I accept that the principle of what the noble Baroness has said applies to this as well, but I draw attention to it just to hear what she has to offer by way of answer. I beg to move.
Baroness STEDMAN: My Lords, this Amendment would result in a ban being placed on goods made from vicuna fabric as well as the fabric itself. I have every sympathy with the aims of the Amendment. It is obviously desirable to try to control manufactured parts of any endangered species, but the problem throughout in implementing the Convention has been to identify parts and derivatives that are readily recognisable and which can be specified precisely so that traders know what they can and cannot import. It would be unacceptable to control all manufactured items; we should need to define the items, such as coats, which we intended to control. We should also need to find out whether vicuna fibre can be detected without damaging the coat, and to find out more about the pattern of trade.
The Amendment is, I am afraid, somewhat unacceptable as it stands, but if the

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noble Lord is prepared to withdraw it, I will give the matter further consideration. I can assure him that it is our intention to add further items to Schedule 3 whenever we know that we can overcome the recognisability problem.
Lord MOWBRAY and STOURTON: My Lords, I am grateful for what the noble Baroness has said, and I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Baroness STEDMAN Baroness STEDMAN moved Amendment No. 26:
Page 28, line 11, leave out ("orders Crocodylia, Lacertilia and Serpentes") and insert ("class Reptilia").
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Lord MOWBRAY and STOURTON had given Notice of his intention to move Amendment No. 27:
Page 28, line 11, leave out ("Lacertilia and Serpentes") and insert ("Squamata and Testudines and anything made wholly or partly of that hide, skin or leather.")
The noble Lord said: My Lords, it is obvious that this Amendment could not go through as it is, the House having agreed to Amendment No. 26. However, it would do one or two things which are not in the Government Amendment
because—
The DEPUTY SPEAKER (Lord Nugent of Guildford): My Lords, I was instructed—I am afraid that I omitted to mention it—that if Amendment No. 26 were passed I would be unable to call No. 27. Perhaps the House will accept my apologies for having missed that point.
Lord MOWBRAY and STOURTON: It is rather unfair, my Lords, in that it was not pointed out by the Chair or by anyone at the point when Amendment No. 26 was moved that I would not be able to speak on this subject at this point.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER: My Lords, I am entirely at fault and I apologise to the noble Lord and the House. I should have done so when I called Amendment No. 26 I am afraid that I failed to do so.
In the Long Title:
Lord MOWBRAY and STOURTON Lord MOWBRAY and STOURTON moved Amendment No. 30:
Line 2, after ("items") insert ("and trade in them").
The noble Lord said: My Lords, this is a direct follow-on in the Long Title of the Bill—the House having passed Amendment No. 5—which becomes necessary, and I do not think I need say more than that.
Lord WYNNE-JONES: My Lords, I hope that this Amendment will be accepted because it is essential to define accurately what is the purpose of the Bill, and the trade is very important.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Baroness STEDMAN Baroness STEDMAN moved Amendment No. 31:
Line 2, after ("items;") insert (" to confer on the Secretary of State power to restrict by order the ports at which live animals may be imported;").
The noble Baroness said: My Lords, this Amendment is consequential on the passing of Amendment No. 11. I beg to move.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
6.46 p.m.

FISHERIES POLICY
Lord KENNET Lord KENNET rose to ask Her Majesty's Government why they consider 6 per cent. the right amount for our share of the herring caught in the North Sea; why they have gone along in the North East Atlantic Fisheries Commission with an overall catch which they know to be too high; why they have claimed only a 12–50 mile exclusive fishing zone when the fishing industry wants 100 miles and almost everybody else including the United States, Canada, Norway and Iceland is laying claim to 200 miles; why they think ships which cannot catch foreign trawlers are going to be able to defend this zone; what is so far the cost to the taxpayer (including repairs to the ships damaged) of the 4th cod war; and in general, what is their fisheries policy. The noble Lord said: Although my Unstarred Question relates very largely to an endangered species, I wish to put it into its political context right away by quoting something said by my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary in the House of

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Commons on 28th April last. He was asked whether he thought that the harmonisation of foreign policy in the European Community was one of the top priorities and whether it was possible. His answer was that it was one of the most fruitful lines of development in the Community and he said:
"Indeed, it was in the belief that that was possible that I first became a supporter of our entry into the Common Market."
There then follows the word "Interruption" in Hansard, and the Foreign Secretary continued:
"I am still, on the whole, a supporter as long as the EEC allows the fisheries policy to come all right".—(Official Report, Commons, 28/4/76, col. 370.)
That is a measure of the gravity of the situation posed by the fisheries difficulty we have at the moment, and I go along with that formulation. My purpose in raising this Question is not to obstruct or hinder or annoy the Government. I deliberately put all the barbs and pins into the Question so as to show the Government the way I would be going, but I will try to keep them out of my speech; my purpose is to help the Government if possible to adjust to a new world. I regret that I shall not be here next week when the Opposition have made a larger and related subject the subject of their Wednesday debate; it was put down after my Question. They did not mention the Community aspect in their Motion and I hope that today we can draw from the Government some facts which may be useful in the Opposition debate next week.
We are considering all these things against the background of the fact that we are importers of food and that world supplies of food proportionately to world population are diminishing. We have no alternative therefore but to protect our own local supplies of food, not only to keep ourselves alive, but because if we do not it will force us, being a rich country, to import food from others who have a better right to it than we have. It is out duty to eat what we can find on our own soil and in our own seas close to us and not to insist on bringing in food from poorer parts of the world. Against this background, I find British fishery policy at the moment illegible and incomprehensible. It is like a series of marks on a page which is clear in print
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but it does not fall together into a recognisable whole, and I hope that the Government can help us today to see what a recognisable whole there is. It seems to have three aspects. In UNCLOS, the United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea, Her Majesty's Government at the moment favour the 200-miles exclusive economic zone, EEZ for short.
At UNCLOS, we are for EEZ. Iceland has taken a 200 miles EEZ and, there, we appear to be strongly against it. In the third place where these matters are discussed, in Brussels, at the Headquarters of the European Economic Community, it is hard to discern what our policy is. Let us take for an example—though there are others—the North Sea herring. The scientists of ICES, which, though not ideal, is the most international and probably the least biased organisation for fish stock assessment which we have in the world today, have said that there should be no herring fishing—and I repeat that—whatever in the North Sea in the second half of this year.
On 6th May, my noble friend Lord Strabolgi tacitly endorsed that when, in answering a Question from the noble Lord, Lord Boothby, he said:
"The proposed catch of North Sea herring—
that is, the agreed catch—
"is more than the stock can safely stand."
Nothing could be clearer. We then have to come to the question, Why is it that we appear to have gone along with the proposal that the North Sea catch in the second half of the year should be 73,000 tons? It was 87,000 tons in the first half and 73,000 tons in the second half. What happened in the North-East Atlantic Fisheries Commission when that question was put to the vote? Did this country vote against it in the knowledge of the ICES advice and knowing that it was more than the stock could bear? If not, why not? Did it abstain? If so, why? Or did it vote for it, and if so, why, why and why again?
I put a concrete question to my noble friend: according to the best advice available to the Government and since we know that the catch is excessive, when will the North Sea herring become extinct? It is simply a question of trend extrapolation. Will it be 1980 or 1990? Before we

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start calculating, let us remember that it is not only the herring catch which kills herring; it is also, as I see the noble Lord, Lord Boothby, knows, the sprat catch. Sprat fishermen, who are allowed to catch 650,000 tons of sprats in the North Sea—that is about 10 times as much—are allowed, within that catch, up to 10 per cent. of baby herrings; that is, they are allowed to take something roughly equal to the total herring catch in infancy and before breeding as if they were sprats. That is double the official total. That means an extra 65,000 tons of herring—and baby herring at that—which are permitted to he taken annually. The inspectors who at present, with some trepidation, doubt and inefficiency, are allowed to board the vessels of other fishing nations in the North Sea on behalf of this or that country, are allowed to sample the catch of each vessel to see that it contains what it is permitted to contain. Do you know what proportion of the sample of the sprat fishermen's catches they are allowed to look at? Two kilos. On each ship which they board, they are allowed to take two kilos and have a look to see what is the proportion of baby herrings among the sprats. If such a sample of a catch were ever brought to court in any country, I believe that we can imagine the difficulty which that court would have in deciding whether or not it was a sufficient sample. Of course, the inspector would know that before he took his two handfuls to look at.
The Government have agreed in the North-Eastern Atlantic Fisheries Commission to a proportion of the North Sea catch of herring for this country of 6 per cent. I wonder what we should all have thought our proportion ought to be. The main littoral States of the North Sea are Britain and Norway, and Denmark has quite a bit. Of course we immediately want to turn to see who gets the rest. If we only get 6 per cent. of the herring out of our own sea, who gets the rest? These proportions are some-what traditional. We find that our 6 per cent. equals 9,700 tons. Iceland, which is nowhere near the North Sea, gets a little less—9,200 tons. The Soviet Union, which is also nowhere near the North Sea, gets a little more—10,500 tons. Norway, which has a North Sea coast about equivalent to ours and a population which is about a tenth of ours, gets
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23,000 tons—two and a half times what we get—and Denmark including the Faeroes gets 51,000 tons—nearly 10 times what we get. These are ridiculous proportions in all human, economic and political common sense.
However, the fact of the matter is that the Norwegians and the Danes do not use herrings to eat, as we do. They use them to make into animal fodder in order to breed those battery fed pigs which taste of fish when bacon is made out of them. Here, also, I have a question for the Government: what measures have we tried to use to dissuade the Norwegians and the Danes from raiding the food chain half-way up and making this grossly uneconomic and distorted use of it? The human consumption at the end is something like 10 per cent. of what it ought to be in nutrition value.
Let us look for a moment at what happens elsewhere. We have this over-fishing in the North Sea. We ourselves agree—Mr. Hattersley has agreed—to an amount which we know signals extinction for the total catch and we agree to take 6 per cent. of it, which is about one-eighth of what Denmark takes. If we look at the herring fishing in the North-West Pacific—the biggest possible jump we can take—that is shared between Russia and Japan. The Soviet Union has imposed on the zone under its control a 50 per cent. cut in the herring fishing. There is no question of half measures there. I am not complaining that there has been no reduction in North Sea herring catches, but only that the reduction has been very slow. If we look at the North-West Atlantic—that is, the East coasts of the United States and Canada—we find that those two countries, faced with overfishing which was not nearly so grave as the over-fishing which we have, have both claimed de facto their 200-mile EEZ already and, under that, have negotiated with the Russians—because the Russians were the main culprits there—a reduction of 40 per cent. in the permitted catch. This was done in the North-West Atlantic Fisheries Commission. They got what they wanted by being a little bit firm against the Russians. The Russians got what they wanted by being a little bit firm against the Japanese. Have we got what we wanted? I wonder.
On the question of the 200-mile zone, can my noble friend foresee the time when we and Ireland may be alone in the North Atlantic with no legal rights because we do not take a 200 mile zone to protect ourselves against the incursions of the Soviet Union, Japan and Korea? I shall not repeat again what I have often said to your Lordships, that one of the big Central Atlantic fishing fleets at the moment is Korean. The way the Ministry of Agriculture and the Foreign Office are going, it looks as though we shall. But I should like to take this opportunity of showing your Lordships—and this will be difficult for Hansard—two pamphlets. On the left, is the annual report of the Department of Energy for last year, 1975, and on the right is that for this year, 1976. Your Lordships will see that, on the left, the Department has taken a Continental Shelf of rather modest proportions and that, on the right, they have annexed half the North Atlantic because of Rockall. They have made that change within one year while the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food have not made the corresponding change.
The point here is that the ability of unhabited islands to generate a Continental Shelf annexable by the owner of the island is just as much under discussion in UNCLOS as the ability of uninhabited islands to generate the EEZ in the waters superjacent to the seabed. We have an annexationist policy under my right honourable friend Mr. Benn, and we have a recessional policy under my right honourable friend Mr. Hattersley, and I do not know which way to look, but I hope that my noble friend on the Front Bench will be able to tell me. At present it looks as if the Government regard oil as more important than food, if they are prepared to pre-judge the results of UNCLOS by taking the Rockall Continental Shelf.
Let us now turn to what the British Government have taken as regards fisheries. They have claimed in Brussels a zone, a coastal belt, of national control ranging between 12 and 50 miles, and suggested a quota system beyond that. I have several questions here. First, how does this fit with the Treaty? It appears to me quite clearly to contradict the Treaty of Rome, and possibly the
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Treaty of Accession; and let me freely admit that the Treaty of Rome contradicts itself in many respects, including respects relevant to this Question. But how can one reconcile that with Articles 7, 58 and 222 of the Treaty of Rome? I will not bore the House by reading them, but they need looking at.
Furthermore, how long is the 12 to 50 mile deal for the control of fisheries proposed? Articles 100 to 103 of the Treaty of Accession envisage many changes in the fishery situation between 1978 and 1982. Article 102 in particular says that the Commission must propose, on the basis of studies and surveys, a new fisheries deal for all Community nations by 1978—six years from accession. This has not been done; it has not even begun to be approached yet. It is quite clear that the surveys called for have not been done; all we have from the Commission is a single working document referring to the figures for the 1973 catches only. There are no details of trends, no history, or no observation of what goes up and what goes down.
I am labouring this frankly abstruse point about the 15 to 50 miles in the Community context versus 200 miles in the UNCLOS context because the ownership of resources in the waters of EEZs will be exactly the same as that of oil under, and lobsters on, the seabed in Continental Shelf law; that is to say, total State ownership—or so at least everything that has so far happened at UNCLOS seems to suggest. And here is my punch question, my Lords: are the Government taking proper account of the fact that within the EEZ, which we tend to want, all natural resources will belong to the coastal State?—that is to say, there will be no difference between the fish in the water, the lobsters and the sand on the seabed, and the oil and the gas beneath it, about which everybody from the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, to the present Government have proclaimed their pride of ownership. The Government's discussions in Brussels about fish seem to envisage the fish having, in some way, a different status. Can the Government explain this difference in approach, given that the Treaty of Rome does not allow one Member State or the Commission to appropriate the property of another Member State; and these fish, if we take an EEZ, will be our property?
My Lords, I turn quickly to the last two points in my rather over-long Question. Let us consider the Jura-class boats. As we all know, these are boats, or rather large ships, which will carry no helicopter and will have a maximum speed of 16 knots, and a cruising speed of 13 to 14 knots. Soviet trawlers not fishing but getting away, can make 20 knots, as against 16 knots. The Government said at earlier times that it does not matter if they cannot catch the Soviet trawlers; all they need is to have very good sea-keeping qualities for rough weather and to be able to detect vessels fishing at low speeds. I ask the Government: what about Iceland? Is that what we ourselves have found in the cod war—that the Icelanders have been content to detect vessels fishing at low speed, and then pursue the matter in some international or national court? Have they not, on the contrary, cut our warps and engaged in collision tactics, and so on? What reason have we to expect that trawlers which can go faster than our own defence vessels, and belonging to a not-too-friendly Power, will adopt any different tactics from those which the Icelanders have in the North Sea? I should also remind the Government that the Canadians were able to get what they wanted in the North-West Atlantic Fisheries Commission only by boarding and examining no less than 300 fishing vessels in order to discover how the existing regulations were being flouted; and Jura boats could not do that.
Lastly, I turn to the question of the cost to the taxpayer. We do not know about this; we should like to know. We know that 16 frigates—16 separate ships—have been involved in the cod war up until 9th March this year. I think that others have been involved since which were not there before. Eleven of them were damaged between 25th November and 6th April, and more, we know, have been damaged since. We know that the cost to the taxpayer of chartering civilian vessels is £74,000 a week. Can the Government give us a global estimate of the cost of this cod war?
I believe that at this point Ministers should be being affable in Iceland and severe in Brussels. The threat to the British fishing industry does not come nearly so much from the 200-mile declaration of Iceland as from the natural, not
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culpable, ignorance by Brussels of fisheries and fishery management. I do not blame Ministers; I blame those who have, over the years, failed properly to inform Ministers.
7.7 p.m.
Lord BOOTHBY: My Lords, I rise to speak for a few minutes only because for over half a century I have been closely connected in public life with the fishing industry. I have already told your Lordships that when I was a Member of Parliament for East Aberdeenshire for 34 years we used to export over 1 million barrels of cured herring every year to the continent of Europe and to the Soviet Union, and that brought in a considerable income. But they were cheap. One could still buy in this country six herrings for a few pennies. They have now become a luxury fish, and this is absolutely outrageous. I do not know all the causes of the disappearance of the herring from the North Sea, but I know that in my time there were two great fishings: one in the summer out of Fraserburgh and Peterhead, and one in the autumn out of Yarmouth and Lowestoft. They were tremendous fishings. We were able to export herring all over the world, and did.
I went down to them both every year, and it was a fascinating sight. Both these fishings are now extinct. Fraser-burgh and Peterhead—from the point of view of herring—and Yarmouth and Lowestoft are dead ports, and the stocks have steadily diminished over the past few years. Some of this must be due to gross overfishing, especially of immature fish and sprats for industrial purposes. No Government in this country have done anything about it at all. Since the war, successive Governments have had no fisheries policy of any kind; and I am very glad that the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, has raised this subject this evening, because perhaps we might get from the Minister some explanation of what the Government have in mind about the future of the fisheries industry.
When Mr. Khruschev came to London, I was introduced to him. He said, "Your salt herrings are no good without vodka". I said, "I quite agree; you give us the vodka and we will give you the herrings". In due course a large order for herring came from Moscow. We could not fulfil

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it. The herring had begun to disappear, and since then it has disappeared steadily. There is a moderate herring fishing industry off the West Coast of Scotland, but most of the herring fishermen as I knew them have abandoned it and have given up, and have gone over to inshore white fishing. The other day I asked a question of the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, about the recent agreement, which I thought was a certain advance. In reply he said it was open to great objection, because the quotas fixed for herring were too high. I was surprised at that, because I really thought we had made an advance. But in reply to another question he said that the quota system was not really the right answer—zoning was the answer. Quotas, he said, were very difficult to enforce, whatever figure you fixed. It may be that he can tell us something about that this afternoon.
All I know, my Lords—and I am sad—is that the herring industry, which I played a part in building up, has now practically disappeared; that herring, which I love, are too expensive; that the herring fishermen have thrown in their hand; and that Fraserburgh and Peterhead are done as fishing ports, and also Yarmouth and Lowestoft. It was such fun in those days. My constituents then consisted mainly of small farmers, crofters and fishermen. They were all poor, and they were all happy. I went up to my old constituency the other clay to have a look. The oil is coming in to my constituency through Cruden Bay and St. Fergus. The pipes are being laid. Aberdeen is like a "hick-town" in Texas 50 years ago. Some people are making a great deal of money; others are faced with colossal rises in prices for everything. None of them is happy. I know we have to do it, but I am sad when I think of what oil is doing at this moment to the North-East of Scotland. Sooner rather than later it will pass, and then they will have to go back to farming and fishing, and they will be happier.
I want to say one word about the white fishing industry, which is also important. I wish the Government would give up this ridiculous cod war against Iceland. It is foolish and it is dangerous, because the Icelanders have right on their side. What they are striving to do is what we should all strive to do—conserve the
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stocks of fish with a view to their rehabilitation. It is dangerous because it threatens the whole NATO Alliance, upon which we depend absolutely for our defence. Stop this grabbing, these frigates and these gunboats, and the bullying—because it is bullying—of the Icelanders because they are weak. It is all they have to live on, and they are trying to preserve their way of life and their way of living.
I cannot understand the fishing policies of successive Governments since the war. In fact, they have not had any policies at all. I sometimes think that we ought to have a Ministry of Fisheries, because they have not much to do with agriculture, and I think the combination of the two is rather a mistake. I view the present situation with concern and sadness, because I have seen what was once a very great industry dying for the last 10 years.
7.16 p.m.
Lord RITCHIE-CALDER: My Lords, I intervene because I have been moved as most of us would be by the noble Lord, Lord Boothby. I come from his part of the world, too, and I sympathise with everything he says about the old herring fishing days—and it is not entirely nostalgia. It was real, it was meaningful, and it could still be. We are now faced with a situation which has got so completely out of hand that it has nothing to do with human beings, with the people who put out to sea in ships. It has nothing to do with them: they are the victims of the circumstances; they are the victims of the policies; they are, as somebody in your Lordships' House said the other day, the victims of the vacuum cleaners. If you go out to fish with vacuum cleaners and pick up the small herrings and the baby sprats, then what is to happen? But the thing which appals me—and again I follow the noble Lord, Lord Boothby— is that I cannot see the sense of this Icelandic war. Do not think I am unpatriotic; I am not, but I have not got that degree of blind patriotism. What I do not see is how we can be consistent or pretend to be consistent. At the United Nations Law of the Sea Conference—I have just come from it—we are on record as supporting the 200-mile limit. This is what the Icelanders are claiming. It is true that in legal terms they are out of court because it has not been confirmed or

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reaffirmed. But what are we doing? We are playing the game of "dodg'em," like children, in the Arctic. We are bumping each other. For what?—for time to reconcile something which in terms of the United Nations Law of the Sea Conference should be at this moment reconciled. The whole thing has gone to blazes—the Conference. We shall be back arguing again in New York in August; but what is manifestly clear is that nobody there—except myself—disagrees about the 200-mile limit. Everybody accepts it. Everybody has been bought and sold on it. The one thing you can say about the 200-mile limit is that it is the greatest freak of international law which exists. It is totally and completely meaningless. But we are committed to it. The Icelanders on their own basis have taken a stand on it. The Congress of the United States have passed a law, and the President has signed it, which conies into operation next year and which claims the 200-mile limit for the United States.
My Lords, 200 miles is what? What are we talking about? This is what drives me crazy—really crazy. Are we talking about what is the behaviour of fish—where they go, where they come from, who catches them, who eats them? The answer is that 200 miles is totally and completely irrelevant. What the Icelanders are talking about are the edges of the shelves, the banks and so forth, where the fish manifest themselves. What we are complaining about here, what my noble friend Lord Kennet has been complaining about, is the disappearance of the herrings and the mackerel and so forth. They are an entirely different set of circumstances. Where do they come from and where do they go? We had a classic case two years ago, the complete collapse of the Peruvian fishing industry to the extent of 12 million tons a year. The biggest fishing industry in the world was Peru's. The only things they caught were anchovies. They did not eat them; they did not give them to their own people. They fed them to stock in America, to the pigs, to the battery-fed poultry and the stall-fed cattle. It was third stage—at three removes from—human consumption. Then it collapsed. Why? Peru had already claimed the 200 miles. They were the first. Peru claimed their 200
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miles, as did Colombia. This was their patrimonial sea, as they called it. The U.S. did nothing about it; they paid the fines of the tuna fishers who were caught. Peru claimed their 200 miles because they were protecting their fisheries. They brought in all kinds of restraints and restrictions against overfishing—and, in fairness, it must be said that they did a real job in controlling overfishing in Peruvian waters.
Then came El Nino, which means the Christchild. It is so old in South American tradition. It is part of the folk lore. It happens! Somewhere in the Western Pacific Sea, thousands of miles away, a hot current generates and comes in over the Humboldt current which brings the nutrient to the surface to produce the anchovies—and the guana from the seagulls. This was the equivalent of a land drought. It just swamped and killed off the nutrient of the anchovies. It was nothing to do with the 200 mile limit, it had little to do with overfishing. The Peruvians might just as well have put a claim on the entire Humboldt current. That is the only way to control it: to take over Nature! You cannot draw fences in the sea. There is no way.
Lord KENNET: My Lords, will the noble Lord allow me to interject? Would he not also agree that part of what went wrong was that an international commission of fisheries experts suggested a maximum catch level and the Peruvian Commission said, "Oh, they are pessimists. Let us up it by 10 per cent." The Government said, "They are only scientists." and they upped it by another 10 per cent. So this is a lesson for the politicians.
Lord RITCHIE-CALDER: Yes, my Lords, for the politicians to keep out of science. I would agree in large part; but it was the natural circumstances which were something completely different. The catastrophe was not the degree of overfishing. Here you have the problem in the ocean itself—and that is what we are supposed to be talking about at the Law of the Sea Conference: how the foresight of mankind can see a way in which to overcome these things which we are now blundering into and handling so stupidly. The answer is that until we get some real understanding of how

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we are going internationally—I extend the whole thing—from Brussels to Reykjavik to Washington and to Ottawa, where are we going to find sense in this situation which says "you must cooperate or else". We ought to be talking about what is happening to the fish. How much do we know about what happens? We know there was a situation with the pilchard in which simply a cold spill-over from the Arctic, from the Wycliffe Thompson Submarine Range, drove the pilchard out of Cornish waters just as sardines have been driven out of California. All these things belong to a bigger system than we can legislate for. Beyond all question of doubt, we must sit down and think in these terms; and not in silly terms of how we can bump Icelandic trawlers.
7.25 p.m.
Baroness HORNSBY-SMITH: My Lords, I apologise for not putting my name on the speakers' list. My excuse for intervening is that for 14 years I have been a director of a fishing port in the South-West. There, we have been fortunate-and I agree so much with the noble Lord, Lord Ritchie Calder—because unexpectedly, due to climatic and weather changes, we have been enjoying in the last few years a most extraordinary increase in the shoals of mackerel. This has increased the number of trawlers at our berths from 11 to over 90; and it has encouraged a lot of poaching from ships from the Continent-particularly the enormous factory ships which the noble Lord mentioned, which are far bigger than any of our trawlers, sucking in the shoals with sonic equipment. Unbelievably, their experts can tell whether they are in a shoal of sardines or mackerel or whether they are over plaice. They know exactly what they are going to suck up. They take quantities in one catch equivalent to the catch for a dozen trawlers from our harbour. They poach frequently and on two occasions in the last year they have been brought in.
I would not expect an answer this afternoon; but there is one point of very real concern and disaffection in the South-West. Perhaps the Minister might consider it at his leisure. It is the matter of the penalties when Navy boats bring in these large ships. On two occasions we
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have had Russian ships arraigned and brought into Plymouth. On the first occasion they had taken tens of tons of mackerel. They were ordered to disgorge the mackerel on to the docks. It was a very hot summer's day. It was all very fine and a matter of much delight to the local trawlermen; but on that hot day the poor Queen's Harbourmaster had a steadily growing hillock of slithering mackerel which he must get rid of. He dare not sell it. This would have infuriated the local fishermen, who would lose their own market. He could not give it away; for the same thing would happen. The problem gave rise to many hours of frustration before the fish were sent to the Midlands for animal food.
On the next occasion, another boat was brought in with tens of tons of mackerel poached in the 12-mile limit. They were not going to have the same dilemma this time. All that they did was to give a rebuke. Her Majesty's Government should endeavour to find some effective penalty—perhaps holding in port for two or three days; or something that would be more effective than giving great problems to comparatively small ports if vast quantities of fish are unloaded, perhaps in hot weather, either at Plymouth or at Brixham or at any fishing port in the South-West.
There is another point on which I agree with the noble Lord. What good does a 200-mile limit do in the Channel? It is inoperative and impossible. We ourselves in the South-West are basking in very heavy catches of certain varieties of fish; but no one can forecast when the swarms may move away or when climatic conditions, or hot or cold streams, may eradicate them so that the trawlermen who come to the area find their catches are too small.
We need serious and urgent consideration by the Government of these problems for our fishermen all round the seaboard. I speak with knowledge only of that South-Western port. I would urge the Government to treat it as a matter of really serious urgency. Fishing has been one of the age-long and traditional occupations in this country and, as an island, we should strengthen and maintain it.
Lord BOOTHBY: My Lords, before the noble Baroness sits down may I ask

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her one question? Can she tell us why the pilchard—a delicious fish which comes from her part of the country—has, for all practical purposes, disappeared?
Baroness HORNSBY-SMITH: My Lords, I do not think it has wholly disappeared. Something in the trends of climate may have brought us the glut of mackerel and the decline in pilchards. Some are still caught, but there is a heavy demand to buy them from the Continent.
Lord RITCHIE-CALDER: My Lords, on a point of information, the fact is that there was a cold water spill-over from the submerged Wycliffe Thompson Range which acts as the weir of the Arctic. A cold current came down the West Coast, chilled the North Atlantic Drift and pushed away the pilchards.
7.30 p.m.
Lord STRABOLGI: My Lords, I am sure that we are all grateful to my noble friend Lord Kennet for putting down this Question tonight. I am particularly grateful to him for spelling out so clearly on the printed Order Paper the details and different points that he was going to ask. I listened with great interest to the speech which followed by the noble Lord, Lord Boothby. I know what a great interest Lord Boothby has taken in this subject. As he said, he put down a Question only the other day. I have also listened with great interest to my noble friend Lord Ritchie-Calder and the noble Baroness, Lady Hornsby-Smith. I will do my best to answer all the questions which have been raised.
There is one matter upon which we can all agree, and that is that the fishing industry is unique in the uncertainties and, indeed, sometimes in the danger, which it faces as a matter of course in supplying our food. Those who work off Iceland are of course beset by particular hazards at present, as has been mentioned by noble Lords. I will refer again later to Iceland, if I may. I hope noble Lords will agree with me in paying tribute to the whole industry for the way in which they have always faced up to their special problems. The Government are firmly of the view that the United Kingdom fishing industry has a key role to play in the provision of an essential part of the
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nation's diet. To this end, Her Majesty's Government are pledged to supporting that industry and maintaining the stocks on which both the consumer and industry depend, as well as securing arrangements for the access of our fishing fleet to the resources it needs.
We all recognize—at this time more than ever before—that there are a great number of uncertainties surrounding the future operating conditions of this great industry. Noble Lords have mentioned several of these issues already. First, there is the extension of fishing limits. International law on jurisdiction over fisheries resources is undergoing great changes at present. Widespread international support for a 200-mile limit has emerged at the United Nations Law of the Sea Conference, which has just adjourned a further session in New York, and which will resume, as your Lordships know, again in New York on 2nd August. The Government support this concept and hope that the Conference will reach agreement on 200-mile fishing limits in the near future as part of a comprehensive Convention. As my noble friend Lord Kennet has said, a number of important maritime States are preparing to extend their fishing limits whether or not international agreement can be reached beforehand. The Government have long recognised the clear trend towards extended fishery limits. I can assure the House that if other countries unilaterally adopt extended limits we will be ready to take whatever action is appropriate to protect our legitimate interests. But we continue in the firm belief that a really satisfactory solution can be reached only by international agreement, and we will continue to seek agreement at future sessions of the Conference.
I hope therefore that there is no misunderstanding of the Government's support for the concept of 200-mile fishing limits. It is the Government's intention to move in an orderly way towards the adoption of such limits, preferably as part of a comprehensive agreement on the Law of the Sea. This brings me to my second point, the question of the reappraisal of the Common Fisheries Policy.
Lord KENNET: My Lords, would the noble Lord allow me to interject a question

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which is a crucial one? He has said that if everyone claims 200 miles in a disorderly way before international agreement, the Government will take whatever steps are necessary to protect our interests. There are two kinds of steps that they can take, and they are contradictory. Do we mean we shall continue to fish under armed protection, as we do in the Icelandic 200-mile zone; or do we mean, on the other hand, the opposite policy, that we shall take a 200-mile zone of our own and keep everybody else out of it? We cannot mean both.
Lord STRABOLGI: I wonder whether my noble friend would be patient and allow me to develop my speech. I will try to answer all these various points.
My Lords, I was about to deal with the Common Fisheries Policy. When fishery limits are extended, the United Kingdom, with the wealth of fish resources around its shores, will contribute the lion's share of the combined resources of the Community; and we stand to lose more than any other Member State from the exclusion of our fishing vessels from their traditional distant water grounds. The adoption of extended fishing limits by maritime States will in any case lead to great problems for our industry, which will need to adapt to a reduction in distant water fishing opportunities and to an increased reliance on the waters around our shores, where the mix of catches will be different from that which it has traditionally taken. But because of the common access provisions of the Common Fisheries Policy we will not be able to benefit from the exclusive control of our own 200-mile zone, and that is why we are seeking modifications in that policy.
There is no question, therefore, about our support for extension of fisheries jurisdiction. But within these extended areas the proper division of resources requires changes based on two elements: a system of coastal belts reserved for the fishermen of the coastal State concerned; and a scheme for the division of the remaining resources under the jurisdiction of Member States which takes adequate account of the particular importance of fishing to the United Kingdom, and which is related to a system of conservation measures which can be properly enforced.
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On the question of the width of the coastal reserved belts which we are seeking, my right honourable friend the Minister of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office described in another place last Thursday the proposals which he put to the meeting of the EEC Council of Ministers in Luxembourg earlier last week. My right honourable friend made it clear there that a 12-mile exclusive zone, outside which Member States would have free access to each others' waters, as the Commission had informally proposed, would not meet our needs. In looking at the key areas beyond 12 miles, however, we had found that many of them lay within 35 miles and all of them within 50 miles. As the noble Lord has reminded us, the industry has indeed called for an exclusive belt of 100 miles. But in the Government's view this is neither a realistic nor a necessary demand. We must not see the question of the coastal belt as if it were an isolated issue, but we must have regard. I suggest, to the content of the Common Fisheries Policy as a whole whose principles we have accepted and which involves not just questions of access but marketing policy, structural questions and, increasingly, conservation of resources.
We are not of course dealing here with the question of whether or not we should extend our fishing limits to 200 miles. As I have already indicated, the Government support such a development as part of a comprehensive agreement—and I stress the word "agreement"—on maritime questions. The fish stocks in our potential 200-mile zone and in the waters adjacent to it are migratory, and their habitats transcend lines drawn on maps. The stocks of most species. as my noble friend Lord Ritchie-Calder has said, and particularly the stocks of fish such as herring and mackerel, can migrate over distances of many hundreds of miles in their development from larvae stages to juveniles, and finally to mature fish. In terms of effective management of fishery resources, therefore, this means that their exploitation must be a matter for international action. The question at issue is how the resources of those waters which will fall within the extended fishing limits of EEC Member States are to he divided and how, when Member States extend their fishing limits, the access provisions which the previous Government negotiated need

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to be revised to deal with the new situation of a wider Community fishing zone.
My noble friend Lord Kennet asked for how long was the 12 to 50 mile zone proposed to last. I can say that we are seeking permanent changes now in the light of the permanent adoption of 200-mile zones. The noble Lord also raised an interesting point about the comparison of the Continental Shelf and the EEC. The Department of Energy is interested in the Continental Shelf to which, under international law, we have undoubted rights. There are no international rights to a 200-mile zone for fishing yet.
I should now like to deal with the question of conservation. Equally important to coastal belts, therefore, is the question of the enforcement and policing of quotas and other conservation measures. Before considering the future position, I should perhaps deal with the points which my noble friend raised about the existing situation. It is true that all the important commercial fishery resources in the North-East Atlantic area have come under increasingly heavy pressure as a result of advances in fishing technology, and the drive to find protein resources for human consumption as well as for the manufacture of fish meal. Successive Governments have strongly supported the work of the conservation bodies such as the North East Atlantic Fisheries Commission in pressing for adequate international controls to safeguard and manage fisheries in a rational way. We are determined to see these measures work properly, and have been instrumental in securing the Commissions' agreement to quotas on stocks and restrictions on the gear that may be used to fish them.
We are particularly concerned about the rapid increases that have taken place in fishing for reduction purposes. As was mentioned by my noble friend, it is a very indiscriminate type of fishing, having essentially no regard for the age, species or quality of fish taken, and it can therefore be excessively wasteful if not used carefully and in a controlled way. We accept, of course, that some species of fish have little or no value for direct consumption. But the tendency in the past has been to fish for all of those species that were readily available, and substantial by-catches of
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human consumption species have led to the decimation of some stocks, such as herring in the North Sea, and pose a serious threat to others such as haddock and whiting. This is a deplorable waste of much needed fish, and the United Kingdom delegation to NEAFC has consistently pressed for measures to control industrial fisheries of this kind. I am glad to say that there is now a ban on industrial fishing for herring in the North Sea as well as stringent limits on the percentages of herring which may be taken in other fisheries, though these have not yet been accepted by Denmark. There are also new quotas to control the sprat fishery itself, much of which goes for industrial purposes. Effective measures to control the by-catches of whitefish have, however, so far been blocked. This is of great concern to the United Kingdom and we are pressing for the improvements which are needed to protect stocks.
The proposed catch of North Sea herring is indeed more than the stock can safely stand, as has been said, though the 1976 agreed catch level is nearer the limits proposed to NEAFC by its scientific advisers than previous catch regulation agreements have achieved. At the NEAFC meeting last month, the United Kingdom pressed for more stringent measures, including a ban on all directed fishing for herring in the second half of the year, as the noble Lord, Lord Boothby, has said. This was agreed by our industry who stood to lose the valuable autumn fishery. They were prepared to agree to this, if all other countries would too, in order to stabilise the stocks. It was to our great regret that some countries would not accept this formula.
My noble friend asked what the United Kingdom did regarding the vote on North Sea herring. My Lords, we abstained. We wanted a zero catch for July and December, as proposed by our scientists. The 10 per cent. rule is for individual landings. The quota covers all catches of herring, as by-catches and catches for human consumption. With regard to the sampling of catches which my noble friend mentioned—
Lord KENNET: Before my noble friend leaves that point, would he say why we abstained? Why did we not vote against it?
Lord STRABOLGI: My Lords, it is not usual in NEAFC to explain particular votes or attitudes which have been taken. This is a question of a whole negotiation, and I should not like to go further than what I have said.
Lord KENNET: My Lords—
Lord STRABOLGI: My Lords, I am sorry; I am not prepared to go further than I have done. I have already gone further than my original brief said I could. With regard to the sampling of catches, two kilos is a minimum size of sampling only. It is up to the international inspectors to take whatever samples are necessary to establish a case which national Governments can act upon.
As to our national allocation of the agreed figure of 160,000 tonnes which is the total catch, our share is 9,700 tonnes which, as my noble friend Lord Kennett has said, is only 6 per cent. However, 6 per cent.—and this is a fact which my noble friend may not appreciate—is higher than our average share over the past five years, because these quotas are based on catches, not on coastlines or on anything like that, as my noble friend seemed to suppose. Perhaps I may remind your Lordships that the quota shares are determined on the basis of historic performance in the fisheries concerned: traditionally, in the North Sea area we have taken a small percentage of herring. In contrast, our share of the West Coast of Scotland total herring quota is over 50 per cent.
With the extension of fishery limits, coastal States will have a much more important role to play; and the noble Lord has rightly drawn attention to the importance of the control measures at our disposal. The Government recognise that the present fisheries protection arrangements will need to be augmented. Five new offshore vessels are under construction and arrangements are being made to provide additional air surveillance. This force will patrol both fishing grounds and oil rigs, and I am confident that together with the existing forces it will be adequate for the future. I am certainly not going to pretend that on their own the new ships which have been ordered would be able to police fishing in every square mile of our 200 mile zone, when established. It would be
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impossible for any class of ship to do that. What is important is that we should have the right combination of surface vessels, air surveillance and onshore controls such as statistical monitoring, to enable us to police our extended responsibilities adequately. Obviously it is equally important that the measures being policed themselves provide for easy enforcement. A great deal of work remains to be done on these questions—that I readily admit—but I can assure noble Lords that the Government are determined that practical and effective measures will be evolved.
I should now like to turn to the Icelandic dispute. Here it is the Government's aim to secure a negotiated solution from which both sides will benefit. Although Iceland's unilateral action in adopting extended fishing limits is illegal, our approach is not based on a narrow legalistic attitude. As I have said, widespread adoption of extended limits is on the way. But for this to be achieved fairly, it must be by international agreement and not by unilateral acts of force. We have always been prepared to recognise the Icelandic interest in the fish around Iceland's shores, but we must also consider the interests of our own fishermen who have operated there for centuries. In particular, they must be protected against the attacks of Icelandic coastguard vessels when carrying out their legal right to fish on what is still the high seas under international law.
As to my noble friend's question about the cost to the taxpayer of the current Icelandic dispute, I can tell him that the cost to date of chartering and operating the civilian defence vessels is estimated at about £1·6 million since last November when harassment began. Apart from some extra costs, the running costs of Royal Navy ships operating in waters off Iceland are broadly those that would be incurred wherever the vessels were deployed. Final and detailed repair costs arising from collisions between Her Majesty's Ships and Icelandic coastguard vessels will not be available until after work is completed in each case.
With regard to the point about the South-West and the landings of mackerel, which was raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Hornsby-Smith, I will, if she does not mind, look into that and write to her. However, I readily admit, on the general

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question of the South-West and the mackerel, that there has been no quota because, until recently, there has been nothing to be much concerned about. But I now agree that there has been so much over-fishing that the question of a quota will certainly have to be very seriously considered, and that is being borne in mind.
I think I can say, in general, that the Icelandic dispute is symptomatic of the complex of changes that are bound to lead to changes in the shape of our fishing fleet. There will be changes, too, in the quantities and varieties of the fish which they exploit. And socio-economic changes will follow for the industry's workforce and for those working in the ancillary industries. This is a testing time for Government and industry alike. It is our aim, with the help of the industry, to create the best possible conditions so that this great industry may respond and continue to catch the fish we need.
Lord KENNET: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, I wonder whether I may go back over two quite specific questions. He was not able to tell us why we did not vote against the 73,000 tons herring catch in the second half of this year, instead of abstaining. But he did tell us that we wanted these Fisheries Commissions to be effective. I wonder how he reconciles those two statements. Secondly, he asked me to be patient earlier about what we will do, if people go on claiming 200-mile EE zones, to protect our interests. Will we claim our own, or will we invade theirs? I was patient, my Lords, but I heard no answer to that question.
Lord STRABOLGI: My Lords, on the question of the allowable catches, I think we must put this into perspective. When one thinks back to 1974–75, taking the summer period in each case, the total allowable catch then was 500,000 tons. We have now got that down to 160,000 tons, as the noble Lord, Lord Boothby, was kind enough to say when I answered his Question. We think that a safe catch is 110,000 tons. We have not got it down as far as we can, but these are questions for negotiation. What went on at the conference in detail, I am afraid I cannot tell my noble friend. I was not there, and I cannot say any more than I have said.
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With regard to his second question, I think it is a hypothetical one which I am not prepared to try to answer.