Lords Sitting of 21 October 1976

Preamble
The House met at three of the clock (Prayers having been read earlier at the Judicial Sitting by the Lord Bishop of Wakefield):
The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
The Duke of Leinster—Sat first in Parliament after the death of his father.

TRAFFIC SPEED LIMITS IN LONDON
Lord REDESDALE: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what progress has been made on the review of speed limits in London proposed by the Minister of Transport in his Policy Statement to the House of Commons on 5th March 1969.
Baroness STEDMAN: My Lords, a Joint Working Party of officials was set up to review the speed limits on London's main roads. It comprised representatives of the Greater London Council, the Metropolitan Police and the Ministry of Transport. A detailed survey of 794 miles of road led to a recommendation that the limits should be raised on 175 miles, of which 125 miles were on principal roads for which the Greater London Council are responsible. However, progress in implementing the report has been slow and only 21 miles have actually had the limit raised to what the Working Party regarded as a realistic level. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Transport has a number of orders for trunk roads in the offing and I understand that the Greater London Council are consulting the London boroughs about proposals for a limited number of orders for principal roads.
Lord REDESDALE: My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for that helpful and, as always, courteous reply. As only 12½ per cent. of the recommendations
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have been implemented so far, and as this goes back to 1969, would she agree that this seems to be a rather small amount of implementation? Does the Secretary of State have the right under the Road Traffic Act 1967 to command that the rate of implementation be increased and will these powers be requested shortly in view of what she has just said?
Baroness STEDMAN: My Lords, I accept what the noble Lord says. There seems to be some reluctance locally to accept that the raising of limits to a realistic level does not lead to higher actual speeds, although experience is all to the contrary. The Greater London Council is negotiating with all the London boroughs. Up to now the Department has been reluctant to interfere with the local authorities but, as I said, my Department now has some orders in the offing and, if necessary, we shall be instituting the procedures.
Lord LEATHERLAND: My Lords, when my noble friend refers to raising the speed limit to "a realistic level" may I ask her what she means by a realistic level? Is she talking about raising it from 30 mph to 40 mph or from 40 mph to 50 mph?
Baroness STEDMAN: My Lords, it varies according to the type of road. There has been this review of 794 miles about which it has been suggested that on some the limit should be raised from 30 mph to 40 mph, on some from 40 mph to 50 mph and so on; each road is looked at on its merits and according to the use it gets. The realistic speed is the one at which I think it would be fair to say most people normally travel now, without accident, when they do not adhere to the speed limits. Where we have unrealistically low speed limits it is difficult for the police to enforce them, but where we have what we think are realistic limits it does not take so many police to enforce them and we can perhaps be more realistic about the whole thing.
Lord SOMERS: My Lords, would the noble Baroness agree that one of the chief problems with speed limits is that of enforcement and that with a very reduced police force, as we have, who are engaged on other and more important work, it will be extremely difficult to enforce any limits that are made?
Lord MOWBRAY and STOURTON: My Lords, is the noble Baroness aware that the whole House is filled with admiration of her definition of "a realistic speed limit"?
Baroness WOOTTON of ABINGER: My Lords, does the noble Baroness realise that she is enunciating a very dangerous doctrine; namely, that the law should adapt itself to the level at which it is commonly broken?
Baroness STEDMAN: I was not suggesting that, my Lords. I was saying that the common practice throughout the country appears to be that when we have a very low speed limit motorists do not adhere to it but travel at four, five or six miles per hour faster than that limit. If we had what appears to be a more realistic limit, provided no more accidents occur than occur at present, it would be much easier for the police to enforce that limit.
Lord POPPLEWELL: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that a realistic speed limit depends on whether one is a motorist, pedestrian or other road user and that that should be the most important factor taken into account when considering what is a realistic speed limit, as distinct from whether the law can be enforced?
Baroness STEDMAN: My Lords, I am sure that the Joint Working Party took that into consideration. Those on it represented not only the Greater London Council and the police but the Ministry of Transport and people concerned with pedestrians as well as road users.
Lord WALLACE of COSLANY: My Lords, may I ask my noble friend if she will extend the speed limits on the present proceedings in this House?
Baroness STEDMAN: I should be delighted to do so, my Lords.

TRIUMPH SPITFIRE CAR AND GERMAN AWARD
Lord O'HAGAN: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they have noted that the West German Automobile Club has awarded its annual Silver Lemon for a new car with the worst defects to a Triumph Spitfire from British Leyland.
Lord WINTERBOTTOM: My Lords, Her Majesty's Government arc aware of Press reports not only on this matter but also of those dealing with the comparison by a German magazine, Auto, Motor and Sport, of the readiness of availability of a representative selection of spares for a wide range of imported cars, in which British Leyland came out joint best.
Lord O'HAGAN: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for that friendly, though rather complacent Answer, which did not really answer the specific point of my Question. Can he tell me what action is being taken to ensure that we do not win this award again next year?
Lord WINTERBOTTOM: My Lords, as knocking British Leyland seems to have become a national sport, and as this is the first occasion on which a British vehicle has won the "Bitter Lemon", one may assume that foreign cars have been winning it in the past.
Lord STOKES: My Lords, while I should perhaps declare that I have a personal interest in this matter, may I ask the Minister whether he is aware that the owner of this particular car had parts availability within 24 hours and that he has actually bought another British Leyland car, which must indicate his satisfaction? May I also ask whether it is the view of this House that Questions of this sort asked here do no good for British industry and certainly do no good for British Leyland.
Several Noble Lords: Hear, hear!

WESTMINSTER HALL AND FURNITURE STORAGE
3.9 p.m.
Lord AMULREE: 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 it would be possible to find somewhere other than Westminster furniture.
Baroness STEDMAN: My Lords, I am advised by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for the Environment that arrangements are being made to provide alternative temporary storage facilities for small batches of furniture in transit. However, there is no other suitable area available for the temporary storage of the occasional very large delivery of furniture.
Lord AMULREE: My Lords, while thanking the noble Baroness for that reply, may I ask her whether it would not be possible for the furniture in future to be kept in the warehouse where it is, and not brought into the Palace of Westminster until such time as the place where it is to go is prepared to receive it?
Baroness STEDMAN: My Lords, the furniture was replacement office furniture for the offices which had suffered from bomb damage. It all arrived in one delivery. It seemed to my Department to be much more sensible to have it all deposited there and then to move it straight into the offices, rather than have it delivered to a warehouse and then have to have it taken out again. The cost would have been much higher. If it is any satisfaction to the noble Lord, Lord Amulree, we are making arrangements to have a purpose-built trailer provided which will be parked in the Peers' Court, from which it can be removed as and when necessary.
Lord SANDFORD: My Lords, is the noble Baroness not aware that her right honourable friend the Secretary of State at the Department of the Environment is the person and Westminster Hall is the place where, above all, an example of how to look after an historic building and how to display it to the public ought to be shown? It is disgraceful that so many visitors, both from this country and from abroad, should constantly see Westminster Hall used as a furniture store.
Baroness STEDMAN: My Lords, I do not feel that it is right to say that it is "constantly" used as a furniture store. Normally we only have large deliveries of furniture about once a year and they come in our Summer Recess, which is generally a little longer than the one we had this year.
Lord DERWENT: My Lords, is the noble Baroness aware that if she will have this furniture sent up to Yorkshire, I can, at a suitable fee, provide a storage place for it?
Baroness STEDMAN: My Lords, the cost of getting it back from Yorkshire would make such a scheme exorbitant.
Lord MERRIVALE: My Lords, does the noble Baroness agree that scaffolding to maintain the roof is kept in the Hall on a fairly permanent basis, and also that rolls of carpet, furniture and other items have been there for months and months? As my noble friend said from the Front Bench, Westminster Hall is the only ancient part of the Palace of Westminster; cannot something be done to keep it clean, tidy and neat?
Baroness STEDMAN: My Lords, as I said, we are making arrangements for alternative storage accommodation to be provided.
Lord PANNELL: My Lords, is it not a fact that this nonsense has only arisen since the Ministry of Works was taken into that giant Department, the Department of the Environment? The Ministry of Works had some historical basis and a degree of sensitivity about Westminster Hall, which is the most famous and illustrious part of Parliament; is it not about time that the Department of the Environment was broken down and set up in a proper way?
Baroness STEDMAN: My Lords, I do not believe that having a Ministry of Works rather than this coming under the Department of the Environment has anything to do with the fact that the IRA bombed part of the Palace of Westminster and that we have had to repair the damage and to do the refurnishing.
The Earl of KIMBERLEY: My Lords, may I ask the noble Baroness where the furniture was stored before Westminster Hall was used?
Baroness STEDMAN: My Lords, this furniture is to replace furniture that was damaged. I have only been a Member of your Lordships' House for two years and I do not know where furniture was stored before that on previous such occasions.
Lord PAGET of NORTHAMPTON: My Lords, for most of its history Westminster Hall has been used as a storage place for the citizens of London.
Lord MACKIE of BENSHIE: My Lords, does the noble Baroness not think that the newest part of the Palace—to wit, the car park—might have been more suitable as a storage place than the oldest and most venerable part?
Baroness STEDMAN: My Lords, I should have thought that Members would prefer to have their cars in the car park.
Lord DRUMALBYN: My Lords, can the noble Baroness say where the trailer is to be stored when it is not storing furniture? Is it to be permanently in the Peers' Court?
Baroness STEDMAN: My Lords, I cannot give the actual destination, but I am advised that it is a trailer that can be removed from the Peers' Court as and when necessary, so presumably we have some idea as to where we are going to put it. I have not, however.

CIVIL AVIATION AUTHORITY SALARIES
3.15 p.m.
Lord TREFGARNE: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government why it is that they have failed to authorise certain salary increases for key members of the Civil Aviation Authority.
Lord ORAM: My Lords, The Top Salaries Review Body made certain recommendations for salary increases in its December 1974 report but the wider considerations relating to higher incomes referred to by the previous Prime Minister in his Answer in another place on 20th December 1974 have so far prevented their implementation. The Government are conscious of the problems which have been created as a result, but there are also serious difficulties attached to the implementation of these recommendations. The matter remains under close review.
Lord TREFGARNE: My Lords, while I thank the noble Lord for that reply, may I ask him whether he is aware that there are now certain senior employees of the Authority just below the level to which I have referred who are receiving higher salaries than those immediately above them? Is the noble Lord aware also of the remark in the last annual report of the Authority which said, in relation to this matter, that the effective functioning of the Authority is therefore now in jeopardy?
Lord ORAM: Yes, my Lords, I am aware of the factors to which the noble Lord has called attention. With regard to his first point, it is true that this is a very serious anomaly, but it is the nature of any cut-off level or period that anomalies will be created on one side or another. We recognise the difficulty, as I have said. The matter is under review, but it is not the appropriate time nor am I the appropriate person to make a statement about it.
As to the reference in the annual report, there was a strong warning in the report, but I am glad to say that no resignations have occurred. I feel that it was rather an overstatement to suggest that the effective functioning of the Authority is in jeopardy.
Lord PANNELL: But, my Lords, is the Minister aware that there is nothing sacrosanct about the recommendations of the Boyle Report? Members of Parliament and Ministers have suffered in the past because the recommendations of the Boyle Committee have not been carried out and we have had the ridiculous situation of a Minister in charge of a

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Department getting less in the way of a stipend than the third official in his Department.
Lord ORAM: Yes, my Lords, one recognises that also as one of the anomalies that arise, but the overriding consideration is that these pay policies, at both the higher and the lower levels, are a very necessary part of the attack on inflation.
Lord ORR-EWING: My Lords, can the noble Lord bear in mind when the Government are considering the future of higher salaries, that a section that has been most hardly hit by the freeze is that of the managers in industry, and that until that is put right we shall continue to lose some of our most promising leaders and shall not get the productivity which is so essential for our success in putting our balance of payments and our exports right?
Lord ORAM: No, my Lords, I do not accept the implication of the first part of the noble Lord's suggestion. There are others lower down the scale who are hit very much more.
Lord TREFGARNE: My Lords, can the noble Lord just give an assurance that this matter will be kept under urgent review and the anomalies corrected at the very earliest possible moment?
Lord ORAM: My Lords, that was the reason why I included in the original Answer the information that the matter is being kept under review. Of course anomalies will be corrected when the economic situation permits.

CROMARTY HARBOUR ORDER CONFIRMATION BILL
Brought from the Commons, read 1ª, and (pursuant to the Private Legislation Procedure (Scotland) Act 1936) deemed to have been read 2ª and reported from the Committee.

HEALTH SERVICES BILL
3.19 p.m.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I shall not pretend that the measure to
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which I am asking your Lordships to give a Second Reading is not a controversial one. It deals with an issue on which sincerely held opinions have been deeply divided for a long time, and we on this side of the House recognise that there is a very deep divide between the Government and the Opposition and that it may well be that there is little, if any, meeting point between us.
But the issue is whether today it is socially acceptable to set aside in National Health Service hospitals accommodation and facilities to enable consultants to treat their private patients. When the National Health Service was established in 1948, the late Aneurin Bevan accepted as a means of securing the wholehearted co-operation of consultants in the new service that the practice of the former voluntary hospitals of setting aside a few beds for patients who wished to receive and pay for private treatment should, for the time being, continue in the National Health Service; that was the new National Health Service. Although he made it clear in his book In Place of Fear that he had not contemplated that it would continue indefinitely, the arrangement has in fact continued for the best part of 30 years. In that time demand for private treatment has diminished with the development of a comprehensive National Health Service. Increasingly, however, in recent years the co-existence in the same hospital of a small private sector and public provision of essential medical services has come to be regarded by many patients, and by a large number of people who work in our hospitals, as socially divisive, a source of serious grievance, dissension and, I regret to say, in some places, as your Lordships know, confrontation.
The root of the dissension and confrontation is the widely held belief that it is morally indefensible that those who can afford the high cost of private treatment or the cost of insuring against it, say with BUPA or one of the other provident associations, should be able to arrange for non-urgent hospital treatment sooner in the National Health Service than if, like the majority of patients, they had to rely solely on the National Health Service. In short, it is a widely held belief that the continued existence of pay beds has conferred, at the expense of the majority, an unacceptable

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degree of privilege on those who can afford to pay a premium for jumping the queue.
In the Government's judgment, access to a service that is financed by the community as a whole should not be influenced by any consideration other than the relative urgency of the individual patient's need for treatment. No one, my Lords, would dream of denying immediate access to the Health Service if life was endangered. Society as a whole recognises that where it is a question of life and death immediate access should be afforded regardless of a patient's means or financial circumstances, and all our arrangements for emergency services are directed to that end. In fact, 42 per cent. of all admissions to National Health Service hospitals are classed as emergencies.
Difficulty begins only where one is considering essential but non-urgent admissions. It is, I am afraid, a fact of life that demand for health care is infinite, and that ascertained need for treatment exceeds the capacity of available resources to meet that need immediately. In a perfect world no doubt, where resources would be unlimited, there would be no need for waiting lists, no need for queues. In the real world in which we live we have got to face the fact, whether we like it or not, that some rationing of health care is unavoidable.
One issue which this Bill seeks to resolve is how such rationing should be effected; whether a priority should be assessed in terms of clinical and social needs, or in terms of the individual's ability to buy a higher priority than his clinical condition really warrants. In the Government's view there can be only one answer in National Health Service hospitals: priority must he assessed on clinical and social need alone. The Government are satisfied that so long as it is possible for a patient to receive treatment privately in a National Health Service hospital, it will be difficult to ensure that that will happen, or to satisfy the public at large that ability to pay a private fee does not in some way influence the speed of admission.
The National Health Service exists to provide a comprehensive health service for all citizens, irrespective of their means. It is not, therefore, in business to meet the special needs of private patients. The
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fact that it has continued to set aside some of its resources for the benefit of private patients is regarded by many of the most ardent supporters of the Health Service as morally objectionable, socially unjust, and a potential source of abuse.
That view is shared by the Government, and that is why my Party laid the policy of separation before the electorate in the successive General Elections in 1974; a policy which the electorate endorsed twice. I need not remind your Lordships that the policy was strongly opposed by the medical and dental professions, and equally strongly supported by the representatives of Health Service staffs. No one, however, could accuse the Government of acting precipitately in this matter. For nine months after my Party was returned to power we tried in the Owen Working Party to discuss future arrangements for private practice with representatives of consultants. And what happened? We were told that they had no mandate to discuss private practice, but we continued to try.
I will not weary your Lordships by recounting the events which led up to the publication in August last year of a Consultative Document or of the discussions between the then Secretary of State and representatives of the professions—discussions in which the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, acted as an intermediary. I do not see the noble Lord in your Lordships' House and perhaps it might well be considered a piece of impertinence on my part to say how indebted the Government, and I think probably everybody in your Lordships' House, are to him for the part he played in what we have come to call the "Goodman proposals".
I do not think that it is going too far to say that the Goodman proposals marked a dividing line between a period of increasing dissension and confrontation in the National Health Service and a period of calmer counsels. I would not pretend that the Goodman proposals offer the perfect solution. I am sure that the noble Lord would be the first to admit that. They are essentially a compromise formula that recognises the deep division of view between, at one extreme, those who see advantage in the continued existence of private medical practice in the National Health Service and, at the other, those

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Who—quite frankly, like myself—see it as morally objectionable. They offer a formula for giving effect to the Government's commitment to separate private practice from the National Health Service, while at the same time providing for those who believe in private practice reasonable opportunity for making suitable alternative provision outside the National Health Service. They allow for the immediate phasing out of 1,000 pay beds, which I ask your Lordships to bear in mind are very little used, and thereafter for the pace of the phasing out of the remainder to be determined by a Health Services Board who will be quite independent of the Secretary of State. They lay down four basic principles for the guidance of the Board and provide for private patients to have access to National Health Service facilities for highly specialised treatment on an occasional basis and, a point to which the professions attached great importance, they provide for private practice to be guaranteed by legislation.
As I said earlier, the Government undertook, if these proposals were acceptable to the professions, to give effect to them in early legislation. The British Medical Association thereupon held a ballot of its consultant members and approximately 12,200 consultants in England, Wales and Scotland received the ballot papers. The ballot put to the consultants a rather severe dichotomy: Would you rather accept the proposals of 15th December 1975 as a basis for legislation or resign from the National Health Service? Out of 12,200 consultants, the British Medical Association received 7,039 replies; 63 per cent. of the 7,039 consultants were prepared to accept that the Goodman proposals should be incorporated in legislation. That means that of the 12,200 consultants, only 21 per cent., 2,604, were opposed to the Goodman proposals but, as I say, as a result of the ballot based on the Goodman proposals industrial action was halted and this Bill was prepared.
The Health Service Bill was introduced in another place on 12th April of this year. Since that date there have been almost continuous discussions of its provisions both within and outside Parliament. My right honourable friend, the Secretary of State for Social Services has had several meetings with representatives of the medical
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and dental professions. The Chief Medical Officer has had discussions with representatives of the Joint Consultants' Committee, the Department has consulted the Independent Hospitals Group on numerous occasions. There was continuous consultation up to 30th September with the National Health Service health authorities about the best distribution between individual Area Health Authorities and preserved Boards of Governors of the 1,000 pay beds whose authorisations are to be withdrawn within six months of the Royal Assent.
Simultaneously, from 18th May to 3rd August, through 29 sittings the Standing Committee in another place was scrutinising this Bill, not just clause by clause. I think the noble Baroness would agree with me if I said, word by word, line by line. There were something like 500 Amendments considered. They spent upwards of 70 hours discussing this matter. I only say this because I believe, my Lords, there can be few Bills so meticulously, so thoroughly and, let me be quite frank about it, so constructively considered. A number of highly important changes were made, with the Government's agreement, both during the Committee's consideration and also, as a result of it, at Report stage. So careful and intent was the examination of the Bill by the Committee that the Government yielded to the strong persuasion of honourable Members of the Opposition to grant two days for Report.
My Lords, there can be no doubt that this Bill has derived immense benefit from both the customary Parliamentary scrutiny and from the enormous amount of consultation with interested bodies outside. The Government wholeheartedly acknowledge that errors and weaknesses have been identified and have been eradicated. One of the major improvements, I would suggest, was the addition at Report of the provisions which will include the Health Services Board and its Committees among the bodies in respect of which the Health Service Commissioners are empowered to conduct investigations. So the Health Services Board will be subject to the authority of the Health Services Commission should the need arise.
The Board will, I think, gain in stature. Not only will it be fully independent, as

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the proposals brought forward under the aegis of the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, envisaged; it will also be openly required to maintain the high standard of administration required of bodies subject to the Health Services Commissioners. Moreover, the Board will, when acting in its quasi-judicial capacity under Part III of the Bill, also be under the supervision of the Council on Tribunals. Noble Lords, may therefore, be assured that both the administrative and the judicial integrity of the Board will at all times be subject to supervision.
Your Lordships may wish me to recapitulate the main provisions of the Bill. I do not propose, because of the time, to go into them in great detail. I know sufficient about your Lordships to know that many of you will have studied them in very great detail. The Bill as it now stands consists of four Parts (containing 24 clauses) with five Schedules. Part I and Schedule 1 deal with the constitution, status and method of appointment of the Health Services Board and its Scottish and Welsh Committees: they contain the important provisions which delineate the Board's relationship with Parliament, with the Crown (in particular with the Secretary of State), with the Health Service Commissioners and with the Council on Tribunals.
Part II begins with the declaration that consultants cannot be compelled by regulation to hold wholetime contracts, which would imply the loss of the right to practise privately. It goes on, in Clause 3, taken with Schedule 2, to require the Secretary of State to remove within six months of Royal Assent, the authorisation of 1,000 pay beds, distributed between the Area Health Authorities of England, Wales and Scotland in the manner set out in Schedule 2. Clauses 4 and 5 describe the way in which the Board must carry out its function to make proposals (which the Secretary of State must implement) for the revocation of authorisations previously given for pay beds and private out-patient facilities. Clause 6 lays an additional duty on the Board, to make recommendations to the Secretary of State for the best method of achieving Common waiting lists for NHS and pay bed patients requiring admission to NHS hospitals. The provisions of Clauses 7 and 8 are concerned with the new system under which patients who require highly
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specialised treatment which is not available at all, or accessible to them, in the private sector can be admitted, as private patients, to NHS hospitals on an occasional basis, and in carefully specified circumstances. The rights of general practitioners and others to preserve and make new arrangements with the Secretary of State to treat their private patients in health centres is also dealt with in Clause 9.
Part III contains the provisions for the setting up of a new system of control of some forms of hospital building in the private sector. The Board will have to operate that system. Developers of large acute private hospitals—that is hospitals providing over 100 beds if in London or with over 75 beds if outside London—will need to apply for authorisations from the Board before local planning authorities will consider an application from them for planning permission. These authorisations will be granted unless the Board is satisfied that the development in question would cause detriment to the National Health Service. Other acute private hospital developments will have to be notified to the Board (your Lordships will find that in Clause 14) but the Board will have no powers of control over these. The reason for the inclusion in the Bill of the notification procedure is that the Board must at all times—and it seems to me to be perfectly reasonably and will be acceptable to many of your Lordships—have adequate accurate information about all private sector developments of a kind likely to be relevant to the consideration of whether pay beds in a given area could be phased out. The four principles on which the Board must base its recommendations about phasing out pay beds include the existence or not of adequate alternative facilities in the private sector. I think most noble Lords will consider this to be of supreme importance.
Clause 19 makes a link between the Bill and existing nursing homes legislation under which at present private nursing homes and hospitals are registered by health authorities and are supervised for the quality and standards of the facilities, accommodation and staffing. The clause amends the nursing homes legislation, so that an additional ground for refusing orcancelling registration would be, in the case of a new development of the kind requiring an authorisation from the Board, the contravention by a

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developer of the requirement in Clause 12 to obtain an authorisation before building a private hospital. These Amendments also raise the penalty for carrying on a private nursing home or hospital without being registered from a maximum fine of £50 (which has been in existence at that level since 1936) to a maximum of £400 on summary conviction or an unlimited fine on indictment.
My Lords, I think it must be clear now, I hope beyond doubt, what are the aims of the Government in bringing forward the Health Services Bill. The care with which the independence, the rectitude and the balance of the Health Services Board have been attended to, cannot but lead to the evolution of a rational, just and methodical approach to the task of phasing out pay beds from National Health Service hospitals. There will be nothing hasty and nothing arbitrary in the way in which this is done. Similarly, in the testing and delicate field of considering applications for authorisation for the building of large acute hospitals in the private sector, the obvious standing and integrity of the Board must have its effect on the way in which these decisions are made.
In other places, there have been misrepresentations of the Government's intentions. I believe that some of these have been quite deliberate because the Bill itself is explicit, and the Government have explained time and again the reasons for the provisions of Part III. The Bill cannot and does not empower Ministers to squash, squeeze or hustle private practice out of existence; that is, out of the private sector itself—out of the National Health Service, yes.
Since the first announcements of the Government's policy, during the spring and summer of 1975, and increasingly since the publication of the Bill, the Department has kept itself as informed as possible about actual and planned increases in the amount of hospital provision in the private sector. I want to say something about that because I think it will surprise a good many of your Lordships. We know, for example, that between the spring of 1975, when the Government's policy was first announced, and the expected end of the "initial period", that is May 1977, about 300 new
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beds for acute treatment in the private sector will have become available in London alone. This will bring the total number of private sector beds for acute treatment in London to approximately 2,000, almost half of the total number of such beds in the whole of Great Britain. In addition, we are aware of a number of well-advanced plans for further expansion of the number of acute facilities in the country. All we say is that for obvious reasons if it is a hospital of over 75 beds outside London or over 100 in London the Secretary of State must know what these developments are for.
I trust that the Government's assurances of good faith are not going to be viewed with suspicion by your Lordships. We do not desire or intend to do anything further in the matter of private practice than carry out the provisions of this Bill; we do not therefore have plans to abolish private practice. Our aim is to foster harmony between the people who work in the National Health Service and who work in the field of health for the people of Great Britain.
We sincerely hope by this Bill to remove a long-standing source of bitterness, anger, frustration and disruption, and to get back to the most important thing; namely, the care of patients. It is because we are concerned with the care of patients, particularly those who have to use the National Health Service, that we have brought in this Bill. My Lords, I commend the Bill to you and hope that you will give it a Second Reading.
Moved, that the Bill be now read 2ª.—(Lord Wells-Pestell).
3.49 p.m.
Baroness YOUNG: My Lords, I should like to begin by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, for introducing this Bill to us today and for explaining so clearly its purpose and its background. It is always a pleasure to work with the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, and on many occasions in the past we have found ourselves in complete agreement over a great many things, but as he himself has indicated it will not be the case on this Bill which is a highly contentious measure. I regret to say that the only congratulations I can offer him are offered because he has made the best of a very bad case. At the start I should like to offer my good

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wishes to the maiden speaker this afternoon the noble Lord, Lord Stone, and to say from this side of the House that we wish him well.
The Bill before us is important. It comes to us at a very late time in the day. As I understand it, it has only just managed, with one day to spare, to avoid being caught by the Parliament Act. I believe a month is required from the First Reading to the end of the Session, and in fact the Government have allowed one day over that time. However, I find it astonishing that the House of Lords, whose prime function is as an amending Chamber, should have so little time to consider a Bill which must inevitably affect all patients in the National Health Service in hospital now, a Bill which has been subject to a great many tied votes in Committee in another place and one on which finally the guillotine fell.
It comes to us at a time when the House seems to have been in almost continuous session since September, and many Members of your Lordships' House must feel that enough is enough. It seems to me that all the more deplorable such an important Bill should arrive here so late and with so little time for debate; for, despite the fact that the Bill has been looked at very thoroughly by another place, there area great many detailed points to which we shall want to return on Committee; and quite properly we should return to them on Committee. I cannot accept the reason given by the noble Lord that at two Elections the population voted for this measure. He will be as well aware as I am that only 28 per cent. of the population supported the Labour Government in October, 1974, and to claim by any stretch of the imagination that most people want this Bill is simply wishful thinking.
The fact is that although the Bill is entitled "Health Services Bill", it does absolutely nothing to help the National Health Service patient or to improve his care. I listened with great care to what the noble Lord said in making out his case and I cannot see that he advanced one single practical way in which the ordinary National Health patient will be better off when this piece of legislation reaches the Statute Book. I have looked very hard for evidence to find out how this Bill would make the care of a patient
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better. It is because I have been unable to find any at all—because I do not believe any exists—that we on this side of the House are opposed in principle to it.
The noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, has explained the Bill, which does, broadly speaking, two things. First, it phases out 1,000 pay beds from the National Health Hospital Service; secondly, it introduces new controls over private hospitals, their building and maintenance. By the separation of the Health Service and private practice it created a kind of medical apartheid.
I am sure that no one wants the care of the National Health Service patients to decline. The doctors do not want it and I am sure the trade union leaders and their members do not want it; nor do the Government or the Opposition. At first sight it may be contradictory to say that we believe that National Health Service patients will be worse off because of this Bill; but so often is it the case that the full effects of a piece of legislation are not appreciated at the time that that legislation is going through the House. It seems to me therefore worth while to consider what will be the practical effects of this piece of legislation on the Health Service.
The first effect must he on the doctors, and because of that, its effect on the patients. I do not come from a family of doctors; but all my family have been engaged in the professions, particularly in education. The fact is that in the education world, if you get a good head of a school he or she will attract and will appoint good staff. The pupils, as a consequence, will be well taught. So it is in medicine: the quality of the service is measured by the quality of the staff. We in this country have, rightly, been proud of the National Health Service, which has been in many respects the envy of the world. It is the present generation of consultants and others in the Hospital Service who have to a very large extent given the National Health Service the reputation that it has. One consultant who came to see me put it to me that he was glad in 1948 to join the National Health Service. Before the National Health Service, medicine was not always an easy profession to enter, especially for a young man or young woman starting out.

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The introduction of the National Health Service meant that it was no longer necessary for a doctor to see enormous numbers of private patients in order to make a living, and that the staffing of the hospital was geared to the needs of the population and not dependent upon a generation of need by private patients. There were therefore great advantages to the doctor in joining the National Health Service; and beause there were great advantages to the doctor, there were great advantages to the patient, and a bargain was struck.
It is no exaggeration to say that many consultants have worked far more than the hours they are obliged to work by contract, and many will work as much as 30 hours a week over and above what they are obliged to do, because they believe in the Service. Part of the bargain was that they should be allowed private practice and that they should be allowed private practice in hospitals. The consequence has been, whatever the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, may say—and I do not doubt for one minute his sincerity—that they feel that this trust has been broken. The argument for taking the private beds out of the National Health Service hospitals is that somehow the doctors are doing something that is morally wrong.
What is being said—and all that the doctors are asking for—is the right to sell their skill in the market place after they have fulfilled their contracts, and frequently more than fulfilled their contracts, to the National Health Service. This, after all, is not a surprising request. If a plumber or an electrician works in the evening or at weekends in his own time, taking private clients after he has fulfilled his contract to his employer, what has he done that is wrong? If the teacher in his spare time coaches a backward child with reading difficulties and gets paid for it, is this a crime? Indeed, if the university lecturer lectures to the Workers' Educational Association two evenings a week, what is this but a form of private practice? Nobody is suggesting that any of these people who do things quite properly in their own spare time are doing anything but something which is a help to the community at large; and if it helps themselves in the process, there is nothing morally wrong with that at all.
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The fact is that many doctors see this Bill as a step in the direction of a full-time salaried Service, of a Service in which there will not be the freedom to practise medicine privately after fulfilling their work in the National Health Service. Everybody must realise that if this came to pass the care of the patient would inevitably deteriorate. What such a full-time salaried Service would mean is that minimum standards of care would be set, and not maximum standards, and so the patient would suffer. I cannot believe that this is the intention of the Government.
The noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, has explained at length those parts of this Bill which have been written in to guarantee the right of private practice to doctors. But what are people to think? All sorts of guarantees were given in 1948. Legisation cannot guarantee because we cannot bind our successors; and what, above all, is needed is trust. That seems to be one of the most important things that is missing at this time.
The centre of my argument is that, as a result of this legislation, it is the patient who will suffer, and I should like to consider in detail a number of other points. The first is the question of finance. We are all agreed that we are in a time of economic crisis when money is scarce. I am not sure what the final sum is that it is accepted that private patients contribute to the National Health Service, but in the last figures I saw it was generally thought to be about £23 million a year. This money will of course be lost, and it seems to me very difficult to argue that when £23 million is going to be taken away from the National Health Service, National Health Service patients will be better looked after.
Secondly, what will happen to the pay beds when they are phased out? We must have an assurance from the Government that they will in fact be used for National Health Service patients. It is disturbing to learn, for instance, that at University College Hospital 24 pay beds have been phased out and the accommodation is now used for administration. As the Bill stands there is no guarantee at all that these beds will be used by patients in the National Health Service, and if this guarantee is not given, there can be no shortening of the National Health Service queue—if that is the aim

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of this Bill—and the position will remain precisely as it is now. As I see it, the Government's difficulty about giving such a guarantee at present is that it would undoubtedly cost the Service more money, because the money which paid for the beds and paid for the staff will not be there. The Government will have to find the money to pay for the beds and to pay for the staff, and it will find it difficult to do that with a background of the July cuts, when the National Health Service and the personal social services were asked to lop £70 million off their expenditure.
I find it exceedingly difficult, therefore, to see how having less money for the Health Service is going to help the National Health patient. By phasing out the pay beds from the hospital system and by replacing them with private nursing homes or private hospitals, it will be necessary in many instances for consultants to have to travel some distance to a private hospital or a nursing home to visit their private patients. That means inevitably that the consultants will have less time altogether to care for all of their patients. It is perfectly true that Clause 8 of the Bill sets out the terms under which the private hospitals are to be set up and indicates that they must be readily available for the patient. But it is equally important that they should be readily available for the consultant. There arc, after all, only 24 hours in a day, and if much of that is taken up by travelling then clearly there will be less time for all the patients—less time for the consultant to discuss his National Health Service patients with junior doctors. This will become inevitable, sooner or later.
The fact is that at present the overwhelming majority of consultants who work part time for the National Health Service—by which is meant nine-elevenths of their time—are able to do a great deal of extra work for their National Health Service patients because they are in the same building and can go from one to the other, seeing their National Health Service patients in the evenings. I cannot see that the National Health Service patients will benefit if consultants have altogether less time.
My Lords, modern British medicine is much respected all over the world. British standards of medical education are high
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and there is an international market for the skills of British doctors. In December, EEC regulations will come into force allowing a much freer movement of doctors within the European Economic Community. If doctors and consultants feel dissatisfied with conditions in this country they will emigrate, and it is distressing how many have already done so. For the reality of the situation is that emigration today does not mean going to the other side of the world and leaving one's family and relatives here for very long periods of time; it means working in Paris, or Holland, or Germany—in some cases no further than moving to a different part of Great Britain. In so going the doctors would find themselves going to societies that want them, respect them and appreciate them. Emigration is not simply an empty phrase but a reality in front of us all, and I cannot see how the National Health Service patient will benefit when large numbers of doctors emigrate if they feel that they are under threat in this country.
There are many other points that I should like to make but there are a number of other speakers and we shall have an opportunity to go into these points on Committee. Among the many matters that we need to discuss is the right of an individual to spend his own money as he chooses. If, after he has paid his taxes, he wants to spend it on a doctor of his own choice, why not? If a woman wishes to see a woman consultant of her own choice, why not? It may well be that if the doctors feel deeply disturbed, these rights of individuals will gradually disappear, not just through this legislation but because of what is implied behind it. We shall want to look carefully at the terms of reference of the Health Board and its composition and whether its freedom is guaranteed. It must be possible to see that it is impartial. We shall need to consider the problem of private facilities for anyone living in a new town, which at the moment seem to be almost an impossibility.
I am sure that we shall all listen with great interest to the speech from the noble Lord, Lord Goodman. We appreciate the work that he has done to bring about a compromise in a very difficult situation, and I am sure that he will know as well as anyone that what is needed now is trust and that we have somehow to

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establish trust, because if we do not, all patients will suffer. I believe, however, that we need more than to establish trust. Nothing could better illustrate the ills of our country today than the situation that now exists in the Hospital Service and, if I may say so, the reasons that the noble Lord gave for having this Bill. We, as a country, have got to learn to live together; otherwise we shall die by a series of self-inflicted wounds. The internal fights going on in the Health Service are damaging the doctors, damaging the patients, are damaging the country. Sooner or later all of us are going to require medical services, and it is a terrible thing that we cannot find a way out of these difficulties. For our part, we shall do what we can to be constructive, to try, in what is a very difficult situation, to make matters better than they are now. It is not our intention to vote against the Second Reading of this Bill or in any way to be obstructive.
I should like to conclude in much the same vein as the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, for it seems to me that what we should be talking about today are the real problems of the National Health Service: the need for extra money; the problems of health care in an economic crisis; the problems of an ageing population, when even now 40 per cent. of all National Health Service beds are occupied by the elderly and when the largest growth in our population is of those over 75 years of age; the problems of staffing in mental hospitals, and the relationship between the National Health Service and the personal social services. These are very big issues calling for the undivided attention of Parliament, of Ministers and of civil servants alike. It is to these problems that we should be turning our attention and not to this unnecessary and unwanted Bill.
4.8 p.m.
Lord AMULREE: My Lords, I should like to join the noble Baroness who has just spoken in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, for the very good and clear way in which he explained this not entirely uncomplicated Bill to us. But as that is the kind of thing we have come to expect from the noble Lord, I am not really surprised at how well he did it. Before I came into this Chamber to speak
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this afternoon I looked up the preamble of the National Health Service Act which was introduced to help the sick, and it says:
"It shall be the duty of the Minister … to promote the establishment in England and Wales of a comprehensive health service designed to secure improvement in the physical and mental health of the people in England and Wales and for the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of illness…"
My Lords, that purpose was carried out very well in the Health Service when it first came in, and it went along very satisfactorily for a long time. Then we had the Bill which was introduced by the Party on my left for the reorganisation of the Health Service, and so far as I can make out that did nothing, or nothing appreciable, to help the care of the patient. It was a great managerial revolution, but that is about as far as it went. Now we have the present Bill coming along and, in spite of what the noble Lord has said so kindly and persuasively, I cannot see that it is going to be any help at all to the patients in the National Health Service. Therefore we have not got much "for-rarder".
I will begin by saying that I have no particular feeling myself either for pay beds or against pay beds. I have used them extremely rarely and that was for geographical and topographical rather than for ideological reasons. I think I admitted only two patients into the private beds of University College Hospital where I was on the staff; and one of those, I must say, was admitted at the urgent request of Transport House for a senior member of the Party opposite who was in need of medical care. That was in the happy days before there were bodies called by curious names, like NUPE, COHSE, and NALGO, with whom I have been associated for a very long time. Therefore I am not really a person who uses the pay beds; but there they are.
I remember once dining out privately in the company of Aneurin Bevan—that was shortly after the Health Service had come into being and we were talking about it in a general kind of way. He and I were both agreed that one of the really good things, among many others, that it had done was to have got rid of quite a lot of expensive and not very well run nursing homes, because the patients who would have been in them got into the private wards in the National Health Service

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hospitals. That must have been about five or six years after the Service had started; I am sorry that I cannot remember the exact date.
Therefore, I can see no real reason now for trying to phase out permanently the pay beds and I would agree entirely with the approach that if they are not wanted for paying patients they should at once be used for National Health Service patients. The noble Baroness referred to the sad fact that one of the floors of the private patients' wing at University College Hospital now has become the offices of the Area Health Authority. It is therefore lost to patients. I assume that that was the result of the National Health Service Reorganisation Act. I do not think that it has anything to do with the Bill in front of us now. I would very much hope that that kind of action will not be taken again and that if beds are not required for private patients they will be used for Health Service patients and not for administrative offices.
My Lords, one is not quite sure of what is the gain in money to the Health Service from the private sector. Perhaps the noble Lord when he comes to reply will be able to give me some idea. I have seen figures of between £20 million and £40 million, although I should have thought it was probably more likely to be the lower figure. Supposing that money were to continue to be available—and because it is going to be taken away I am going to regard it as money that could be used for something different and new—one wonders whether the sensible thing to do with it would not be to increase the number of people working in the National Health Service hospitals—particularly the mental hospitals and, particularly, those mental hospitals that take care of elderly patients. One has seen in the Press several accounts of troubles and disturbances and of things that go wrong in these hospitals. I am quite sure that the main reason for this is lack of staff and not lack of good will. That it can be the latter, I would not believe for a second. You do not need to have your hospitals fully staffed with trained nurses. Provided that you have a few good trained nurses in charge of the wards or departments they can make use of partly-trained people of good will to do quite a lot of the care and work that needs to be done in these hospitals.
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My Lords, that is where I should like to come back to the pay bed question and to refer to the strange tale of the amenity beds. These were mentioned in Section 4 of the National Health Service Act, the provisions of which would allow hospitals to use single rooms or small wards to provide accommodation for people who wanted them—provided they were not needed urgently for general medical purposes—on the payment of a relatively small weekly charge. These never get mentioned, so far as I know, in all the discussions that go on—and I am pleased to see that the noble Baroness, Lady Lee of Asheridge, agrees with what I say. It has always seemed to me that that was one of the weaknesses in the pay bed argument; that there were these amenity beds available which could be used on practically every occasion if they were required. One wonders whether their number is going to be increased or whether they are gradually going to fade away. I am not quite sure what is to become of them.
I am pleased that there is no intention to abolish private practice because, speaking purely as a consultant, I have found that to have a little private practice, one which was not big enough to make any appreciable financial return to myself, was extremely good for me from a training point of view. It made one think. For example, if I had been a full-time employee of University College Hospital and an elderly patient had come in, he or she would have been seen by my registrar or houseman or someone like that. It would mean that I came in at the end to give the final diagnosis, if I possibly could, or say something; whereas, in private practice one can get called out by a GP (and I can quote several cases like this) to a flat on the top floor of a converted house to find an elderly couple living by themselves, aged, say, 75 and 73, one of whom has had a stroke and the GP wants to know what to do. Unlike the hospital situation, you have nobody to call upon. You have to make up your mind; you have to think about it. I am sure that my friends in this House who are consultants will agree that it is a good thing for consultants to be made to think from time to time—it is very easy not to.
I now come to the question of waiting lists. I have always been rather sceptical about them. I agree that they are

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probably longer than they should be, but I wonder whether anyone has made a genuine inquiry into waiting lists and found out the number of patients kept waiting because it was more convenient to them as they wanted to settle their business affairs, and so on, before going into hospital; or, in the case of children, whether it was more convenient for them to go into hospital during the school holidays. So waiting lists pile up in a very odd way.
Then one finds that quite a number of people tend to be on the waiting lists of more than one hospital. I remember that when I first began to work in the geriatric department of University College Hospital we had a long waiting list which, luckily, was from a comparatively circumscribed area. The only way to find out what to do was to visit them all. One found that a certain number had died, a certain number were on the waiting lists of more than one hospital, and a certain number were not at all suitable for hospital and ought to go into a welfare home. So it did not take very long before that rather formidable waiting list vanished away to normal, workable size, and I wonder whether there could be a similar inquiry on a big scale. It would be an expensive operation, but it might save a great deal of trouble.
Finally, I should like to refer to what the noble Baroness, Lady Young, said about the waste of consultants' time if pay beds are moved from Health Service hospitals into private hospitals. It will mean that a consultant, whether male or female—I do not mind what sex a consultant is—has to travel a long way to see patients, which in London takes a very great deal of time. Whereas, if they are working in the same building, the private patients and the National Health Service patients will see their consultants for a longer time than if they are merely working regular hours—although I agree that most of them work considerably more than their official hours—and they will not be able to give so much time. Therefore, I am lukewarm about this Bill, which seems to me unnecessary, and the advantages of getting rid of unwanted private beds could have been achieved in a far less traumatic way than is proposed.
4.23 p.m.
Lord GOODMAN: My Lords, I regard it as a considerable privilege to be enabled to address your Lordships this afternoon, and to say a word about a matter in which I was very much involved in time and effort some months ago. May I first say this? Perhaps I may be permitted, in relation to explaining my personal position, to incorporate in my speech two brief extracts from a letter that I wrote to The Times in April this year. I said—and here I am wholly in agreement with the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Young—that:
"I have already expressed my own view that the restoration of real confidence will only be achieved if the Government indicate a proper sense of values as to which voices are to have the Greatest influence. A medical service must be guided by informed medical views and it is imperative that doctors should feel that this is the spirit in which the present proposals emerged and will be operated. That does not mean that other views enjoy no relevance."
The other extract which I should like to quote is this:
"The new Secretary of State has a grave and ever terrifying responsibility to restore tranquility to a profession which traditionally wishes to get on with its job. But he also has an historic opportunity. What he says and how he says it will to a considerable extent determine the matter. He must convey to the doctors that he understands their feeling that the profession cannot be restricted to State employment and retain the independence of action and judgment towards their patients about which the struggle s largely concerned. I believe he does recognize this and I hope indeed that he will succeed in conveying this recognition in sufficiently generous and reassuring terms to end this dangerous conflict."
The tone and atmosphere in which the debate has been conducted this afternoon have been, in my view, exemplary. I think they create a situation and background in which, with a little luck, the whole of this unnecessary dispute can be resolved. Perhaps I ought to say this. I have not come here to urge these proposals on your Lordships. There is an honourable arrangement. If the medical profession contrive to defeat this Bill, they are regarded as entitled to do so. This assurance was given to them by the former Prime Minister, in my own hearing, in the clearest possible terms. I have come here to say—and to that extent I am prepared to take a partisan view—that I think it would be a mistake if they defeated this Bill. I say that for this reason. I wholly agree with the

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noble Baroness, Lady Young, and the noble Lord speaking from the Liberal Benches, that this Bill will not do anything to assist the patient. But I would ask the House to take into perspective, and into proportion, the nature of the problem.
We have, I believe, something like 400,000 hospital beds in the United Kingdom, and we are dealing with 4,000 beds—1 per cent. That is the extent and nature of the problem in terms of beds. But one also has to take very much into account the consideration that those beds are at the moment extremely expensive. They are not available to the great majority of patients, because of their cost. A much more urgent necessity today is to make provision for solitude, to make provision for privacy, to make provision for the things that a lot of people need and require on a mass scale, and these cannot be provided by dint of 4,000 beds out of 400,000.
What I would venture to say to noble Lords on the Opposition Benches is this. The importance of this Bill is not to provide additional facilities for National Health Service patients; it is to reassure doctors that private medicine will remain in this country, and remain indefinitely; and the importance of that cannot be exaggerated. It is to make the doctor, whether he is employed full-time in the State service, whether he is employed part-time in the paid service, feel that he has a liberty of choice if he wishes to take it. It may be a very limited field of choice, in terms of the availability of offices and appointments. But the fact remains that preservation of that liberty of choice makes him continue to feel that he is a free man operating in a free country; and that is very largely what the trouble is about.
The doctors suspected, and with justification—not with cause; I do not think their suspicions were well founded, but they were rational because of what was said and because of an unfortunate Consultative Document—that they were going to be squeezed at both ends. They suspected that the phasing out of hospital beds, accompanied by additional restrictions on the licensing of private beds, would mean the end of private practice. That was the suspicion entertained by all of them which it was impossible to dispel. I think it would be unreasonable if the doctors today, in the light of these
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recommendations, continued to maintain their suspicion. One of the most unfortunate parts of the whole matter is that suspicions are not easily dispelled. They remember the Consultative Document.
The noble Baroness herself said—and I think she might reflect, having regard to the generally conciliatory and helpful tone of her remarks—that it is not much use legislating at all, if one is going to take the position that that legislation can be repealed, revoked or amended by a subsequent Government. We must take legislation at its face value. It is no use saying that we have suspicions, doubts and misgivings about what people will do in the future. If we do that, then no action taken by anyone can ever be reassuring in a troubled situation of this kind. Also, I think it is important to remember that these proposals were not very acceptable to or very well loved by the Government. They have been accepted as a compromise proposal.
The Government's problem was a very real one. I do not know how well they handled it, or how ill they handled it. But their problem was that they had a number of people, who I do not think had any right to behave as they did, in key and crucial positions in hospitals, who were making what I consider to be unjustified and unreasonable demands. However, it is not much use saying that the demand is unjustifiable or unreasonable if some threat to the personal comfort of the patient and to the continuity of the health scheme can be maintained, and the Government have to deal with the situation.
I have no comment to make on how well or how ill they will deal with it, nor do I wish to say that if I had been asked to recommend what to do in the situation before the trouble started I should have said that any such legislation as this was necessary. In the light of the minute nature of the problem—the 4,000 out of the 400,000 beds—and in the light of the fact that in most parts of the country there was relative tranquillity, there was no reason why things should not have been left alone, but for some reason, and the history is well known to many of you, the situation arose where, things not having been left alone, an increasingly corroded atmosphere arose to a point where great numbers of consultants went on strike.

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In this country the medical profession is very largely a splendid and a great profession. We are doing remarkable things here which ought to redound more loudly than they do. To take an instance, the EMI scanner was invented by a young man who refused to take any personal reward for the royalties that came from the scanner; he insisted that the money should be put back into a fund for research. That is the kind of spirit which should till us with great pride and pleasure when we hear that it is happening in this country. There have been other discoveries. We were prominent in the development of the kidney machine and we now have an experiment with a new liver machine whose aid and assistance is sought all over the world. I could multiply considerably these details.
Our profession is one of which we can be proud and it should be a source of shame to all of us that the profession was nearly brought to a standstill by a relative trifle of this kind. I say "a relative trifle" in relation the the number of beds, their utility to the population at large and to the fact that the most was made of the difficulties, not because of the real issues but because the medical profession suspected, and suspected with justification if not with cause, that an attempt was being made to phase out private medicine. It would be the highest degree of folly in relation to the medical profession that the suspicion should be allowed to be maintained by doctors that private medicine is in peril.
As I have said before, and I do not apologise for repeating it, I believe that private medicine is indispensable for a healthy medical profession in this country. That does not mean that all our efforts and attention should not be concentrated on the real question of how to give an adequate medical service to the great number of people who are now without it at all. Some of them are rich people. I am inclined to believe that the rich are the worst doctored section of the community. They listen to every kind of nonsense that is talked, they consult every kind of doctor who has the most dubious qualifications and they end up in the cemetery long before anybody else. I strongly recommend rich people to take advantage of the specially established medical advisory service that will give
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them, free of charge, a list of addresses of honest, decent, simple doctors who can look after them.
However, that is not the issue before the House this afternoon. The issue today is for this House to consider whether, having regard to all the circumstances, it would be sensible to seek to defeat this legislation, remembering that it is legislation—I make no bones about it—that we could well have done without in different circumstances. It is legislation whose only utility is that it has resolved the problem that caused a great number of doctors, men to whom such behaviour was totally alien and contrary to the tradition of generations and centuries, to go on strike.
I know from my conversations that the great majority of consultants who went on strike were profoundly uneasy and unhappy; they did not think that it was right that they should go on strike, because it went against a tradition and they did not like the notion. However, they said to themselves, and it was difficult to answer, "What are we to do? How are we to achieve what we want if we do not take the same industrial measures as are available to the rest of the population?" It was no use putting to them what I regard as the total answer: "It is not available to you to take such measures. You have entered a profession which is akin to Holy Orders, a profession where you do not have the choice of undertaking industrial action in order to support material claims for your livelihood. You must leave it to the rest of the community to rate you properly." A society where the efforts of doctors are not rated properly and a society which sees that doctors do not get their proper return is one which deserves the kind of confusion that has operated here.
I have not come here to reproach doctors for considering industrial action. I have come here to say one thing only: that in my view the medical profession, in all the circumstances, is much more likely to be withdrawn from the political arena, and that there is much more likely to be peace and tranquillity if this Bill is passed into law than if, once again, the whole question is thrown back into controversy. That is the real merit of the Bill.
There are all kinds of points that I could raise, and I could carry on for hours

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but I will not. For instance, 1,000 beds are to be phased out immediately. I do not think that it is a matter of dispute that the experts, with whom I have had long discussions, have all agreed that something approaching 1,000 beds were redundant and unnecessary. The basis upon which the agreement was reached was that they had said, "We do not need these 1,000 beds; we can do without them." There has been argument and discussion, as the noble Lord speaking for the Government said, in immense detail about where the 1,000 beds should come from. Happily, I have not been involved in those discussions. I believe that a substantial measure of agreement may have been reached already, but that there was a considerable number of surplus beds was a matter of general agreement.
Nor is it quite true to say that the Bill is resolutely opposed by the entire medical profession. In private conversations with doctors one finds that there are great numbers—I would not presume to say a majority or a minority—who see the end of this dispute as the happiest thing which could happen to them in many years. They can historically maintain their grievances. At medical dinners over the years they can explain how it came about, how wronged they were and what misfortunes they have suffered; and that I think they are entitled to do. It is a very small return for the discomforts and irritations that they have suffered during the course of the negotiations. However, I do not believe that there is universal hostility to the measures, and I believe that a great number of people would willingly support them on the basis that it is the end of the battle, and that it will enable doctors to get on with the valuable and important work with which they are concerned.
One of the real problems has been that doctors are sturdy individualists. To get doctors around a table is one of the most interesting, frustrating and irritating operations that any human being can conceive. To find two doctors in agreement on anything is a near impossibility; to find three doctors in agreement is a total impossibility. To find a doctor who does not wish to express a view on a highly political matter is also a near impossibility. They will agree about the things that they know about: about remedies, prescriptions, operations and so on. But when it
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becomes a matter of medical politics, fortunately they have had no experience of the matter. They continue to do their work alone in their surgeries over the years.
May I make a few more specific observations about the Bill. I believe that the Bill represents pretty fairly the proposals that were put to the Government. I think that the Government have quite honourably discharged their obligation to produce proposals which were in conformity with the arrangements made to end the consultants' strike. Equally I say, as I did at the outset, that the Government and the doctors are absolutely entitled to urge your Lordships' House to reject the proposals in total.
I should like to see another ballot because I believe that that ballot said more than that the doctors were merely approving those proposals as a basis for ending the strike. I think they were expressing very general agreement that the proposals, for good or for ill, were better than they had been offered and that they might be wise to accept them and call it a day. In that respect, may I quote from the British Medical Association's own letter when they sent the proposals to their members. They said:
"Clearly it is difficult to assess the validity on the one hand of the assurances given by the Goodman proposals and on the other the anxieties expressed in debate that so much remains a matter of individual interpretation and, so far as implementation is concerned, a matter of good faith".
I could not emphasise that too strongly. The letter continues:
"If the proposals were to be implemented as intended by Lord Goodman, then a significant measure of protection for the future of the independent practice of medicine would be achieved. If, however, the proposals were to be distorted by Government and Lord Goodman's aims were not to be preserved, then there is no doubt that both private practice and the independence of the profession would suffer."
That is an objective and fair statement of the position.
If the Government continue as they have begun by enacting the proposals in a decent and honourable form, subject to some Amendments which seem to me might reasonably be called for, if they maintain that spirit and if, again and again, they will assure the profession, as the former Prime Minister did, that they have no intention whatever of attacking the continued existence of private medicine but

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intend to allow it to continue to exist side by side with the National Health Service, I think that we might in the end find that something rather good comes out of the whole of this unfortunate matter. That is my belief. I think that might well happen.
If the Government distort the proposals, if they allow people who are not doctors to have an undue sway in medical matters, if they allow situations to arise where patients can regard themselves as being at risk because they are private patients, I think there will again be trouble because the consultants have discovered that they have a muscle they did not previously think they had. If I may say so, it is a sorry discovery and it would be better if they had never discovered it, but I do not think they can be blamed for it. The fact remains that the day when the first doctor went on the first strike was the day when we ought all to have been alerted to the very real danger to this great profession which is so crucial to all our needs.
I should like to conclude by making just a few observations on matters in the Bill on which I think possibly there is need for reassurance. The first is, as I think was introduced by the noble Baroness, Lady Young, that there is a provision in the Bill that private medicine should have accessible and available to it facilities in National Health Service hospitals for specialised operations, so that if a specialised operation is required by a consultant he can use the National Health hospital if it is available, use the equipment and use his team, and in a sense that is a much greater assurance than has existed in the past in relation to these matters. But the wording is a little ambiguous and as there is a considerable degree of mistrust and lack of confidence I think it behoves the Government to see that in any case where there is ambiguity they should not seek to rely on the preferable interpretation which they think removes the ambiguity. I think they should accept an Amendment which enables one to point out to the most controversial and political of doctors and say, "Nothing on earth can make this mean anything except this and that". I think this is most important when dealing with the medical profession.
In the particular matter with which I am concerned there is a provision that these facilities should be available—I think the
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wording is "at a hospital accessible to the patient". It has been pointed out, validly pointed out, that this would be not only unreasonable but rather foolish. If there is a busy consultant in London and he has a patient in Bradford or in Newcastle it is an absurdity to suggest that he should travel to Bradford or Newcastle to carry out an operation with a brand new team of people, with equipment with which he is not familiar and in unfamiliar surroundings. I think this will be a very small concession to make, and I have a feeling from a conversation that I had with the Secretary of State—and I should like to pay a tribute to him, if I may, because I think from the outset he has approached this matter with a desire to restore confidence—that this was an arrangement he would like to accept.
There is another matter which concerns the profession and I think it is one where they are straining interpretation. It is on the nature of the alternative accommodation that the hospital board can accept as justifying the phasing out of a bed or two—or three or four. The Bill contains a provision that that accommodation shall be reasonably suitable. The doctors say that it does not necessarily mean "reasonable" in terms of quality: it means reasonable, perhaps, in terms of geographical position or in terms of size but it may not mean reasonable in terms of being good enough, clean enough, light enough, in the right position. My own interpretation of "reasonable", which I think would be supported by better lawyers than I am, is that the word must mean "reasonable in every sense". In my view it is not necessary to underline it but at the same time it would cost nothing to underline it. If the restoration of a little confidence can be achieved by adding a couple of words at the expense of the common printer, I would say let us add those words and make quite sure that everything the doctors want that is reasonably required by them should be provided and this Bill should be set off under the very best possible auspices.
There are other changes which are much of the same sort and they are changes which the doctors seek because they want a clarification of the position and a reassurance that what they are told the Bill means is in fact what the Bill

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means. I would urge the Government to give it to them in every single case. I think they deserve it. I think they have had a very rough time. As I say, how far it is their own fault will be a matter for historical examination, but I do not think that this situation need have arisen if it had been treated in a different way and with perhaps a greater recognition of the extraordinarily sensitive and suspicious nature of men who are engaged in a specialised activity all day long and who do not have time to come here to notice what an exceptionally reasonable and trustworthy people we all are.
I am very pleased to note that the debate is being conducted in a spirit where we are not spending our time describing how individual members of the Government have pay beds in Wellington Clinic—or wherever it is. I may say, perhaps unkindly, that on some occasions when I have been in this House—very rarely—I have had the feeling that it would not be a bad thing if the whole of the Government were occupying pay beds. That is an unkind comment and it relates to some of the activities of last week.
I should like to conclude simply by saying that this is not a highly political measure and it ought not to be made a highly political measure. In so far as in Committee we can improve it, let us do so, but I believe that when it is passed and when it is clear that the Government intend to accept it in the spirit in which it has been offered it will go a long way towards solving the problem that we observed at the beginning of the year and also at the end of last year—a problem that ought never to have happened and which can cause great rifts between the Government and a profession which should be held in high repute—and that this Bill will enable the sort of young man I was talking about who made that important discovery, and other young men, to continue their work and to make a real contribution to medical science, instead of endless argumentation on arid political themes.
4.47 p.m.
Lord STONE: My Lords, after that great speech by my noble friend Lord Goodman I crave your Lordships' indulgence—a double indulgence. First, may I declare a vested interest in this Bill in
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that I am a practising medical practitioner. In my long experience I have often heard from patients such remarks as, "I've got butterflies and flutterings in my tummy". I have looked for them, felt for them and listened for them, but never found them. I now know, feeling as I do at this moment, here and now, that they can and do exist. In my maiden speech it is not for me to comment deeply on the Health Services Bill which is being presented to your Lordships today. Sufficient that it will allow me, at a later stage, to make comments in further debates.
I was in medical practice before 1948 when the National Health Service was inaugurated, and have been ever since. I find myself in a strong position to assess it right up to the present day and I wish to say at the outset that in my opinion it is the best Health Service in the world, despite what one reads and hears to the contrary and that—and I quote—"It is on its last legs". Not a bit of it! I know it all because I have been in it for such a long time. Given time, the present difficulties will settle themselves and those who are young in the profession will realise that in any field of medicine a good doctor will always make a good living (never a fortune) and he will learn that his reward will be the warmth of the satisfaction he gets by just helping along and being involved with the daily problems of people, old and young.
In the light of my experience I am in favour of the phasing out of pay beds—with emphasis on the "phasing". Let it he gradual and not dramatic and all will be well. I hope, too, that the present Bill will not overload the already top-heavy—indeed far too top-heavy—bureaucracy that now exists and that it will be realised that the backbone of the medical profession is the general practitioners, who are hardly brought into the status in the profession that they rightly deserve, despite the fact that day by day, and every day, it is the GPs who are dealing with a majority of patients who are in need of daily medical attention without having to be referred to hospitals or clinics for the purpose. One must remember that the GP as a family doctor finds himself involved, as well as with illness, in all manner of human domestic problems—in the young and the old, the diligent and the lazy, the scholar and the slow learner; with drug problems, the question of

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alcoholism and all kinds of social and marital and even legal problems.
In my long experience as a doctor I have seen tremendous progress and advances in medicine and surgery. Thanks to the enormous developments in anaesthesia surgeons have been able to perform what, at one time, could only he considered "miracles": the removal of lungs, the transplant of hearts, kidneys and even of the liver; replacement of joints, corneal grafting—I could go on. On the medical side we have seen the eradication of diphtheria and whooping cough and poliomyelitis, all brought about by mass inoculation. Tuberculosis has become a rare disease as a result of mass radiography and therapy of the highest order. One could go on and on. Smallpox has been eradicated all over the world. Recently, I learnt that the last pocket of smallpox in Eritrea has been eliminated. It has all been so exciting and stimulating—researching and developing all the time. Let there be no restriction on them. ft is all for the benefit of the human race, Catholic and Protestant, black or white, Jew or Moslem. Even so, let us be wary of recent advances; let us be cautious of the noxious gases and chemicals we hear so much about and, not least, the applications, ramifications and dangers of the advances in nuclear energy, and their trial experiments.
My Lords, when I was elevated to this House a friend sent me a message saying, "How do you feel now you are a Peer of the Realm?" I answered, "Highly honoured—but terrified". I still feel highly honoured but, as this speech is now over, I no longer feel terrified. I thank your Lordships for your kindness and indulgence in listening to me.
4.51 p.m.
Lord FERRIER: My Lords, it falls to me to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Stone, on his excellent maiden speech. His speech contributed very considerably to the general tone of the debate which was commended by the noble Lord, Lord Goodman. Now that the noble Lord, Lord Stone, is no longer terrified I think your Lordships will agree that we can look forward to hearing from him again.
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My Lords, on the subject of being terrified, I am a little terrified myself at the moment. I should have liked to hear more speeches from medical men before I brought my own contribution to the notice of your Lordships. But I must say that I was greatly fortified by the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, which held out a real hope—and I hope he is right—that this Bill, which he admits will require some amendment, may lead to a thorough improvement in the general atmosphere as between the public, medicine and the hospitals.
I followed the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Young, with great interest. She covered nearly all the ground that I proposed to cover in my own speech and, therefore, I will spare myself and your Lordships from going on too long, except that there are one or two comments I have to make with regard to my own feelings. First of all, queue-jumping is the big headache so far as the public is concerned. Obviously, we do not like it and, obviously, it is to be avoided. I rather doubt whether the contents of this measure will do practically anything to reduce it. The way to avoid queue-jumping is to avoid a queue.
Reading the Explanatory Memorandum, I feel that the complications in terms of bureaucracy and expenditure are somewhat underestimated. As the noble Lord, Lord Stone, said, he hoped that this was not going to lead to more and more civil servants. I am thinking of Scotland, which is to have an individual Board of its own. The noble Lord, Lord Amulree, touched on the question of the money that will be spent. An eminent medical man with whom I was talking only last night, said he felt that to some extent the Bill was a mistake because there were so many more priorities. But here we are. We have all been heartened by what was said by the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, that this represents something which, when somewhat amended, will work. Let us hope he proves to be right.
My Lords, speaking of queue-jumping and waiting lists and the provisions of the Bill, I believe that in the North of Scotland the waiting list, for example for an operation on the hip, is very long. I have heard mentioned a figure of two years on the waiting list for an ordinary bed. I reinforce what was said by the

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noble Lord, Lord Amulree. Are these waiting lists really as long as that? Or are the figures for those such as children who can be dealt with only during the school holidays, and old people who cannot in winter travel long distances such as are necessary in the North of Scotland? When there are long distances to cover, there is also the difficulty that visitors cannot come to visit old people. Hospitalisation can be a lonely business.
I do not propose to take up the time of the House in repeating the catalogues of objections. I feel that the Bill might increase the overall burden of Government expenditure out of all proportion to the amount with which it will improve the overall—and I emphasise the word "overall"—treatment of patients, whether in pay beds or otherwise. At one time, I had thought that, with all the pressure on the shoulders of your Lordships as a result of the log jam of Bills, this was one which really could be dropped in order to give your Lordships' House and Parliament more time to give proper attention to going over legislation which comes up from below.
My Lords, I only hope that the tone of this debate will continue as it has begun and that it will not tend to make the matter a divisive one. I was greatly heartened by the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, as I have already said. One of the reasons why I am speaking is that I feel it proper to protest at what was said in the Commons the other day, when the right honourable gentleman the Prime Minister said:
"I have no doubt that the other place will continue with its self-appointed task of mutilating Bills…"—[Official Report, Commons; 19/10/76, col. 1111.]
I hope your Lordships will agree with me in objecting to the phrase "self-appointed". No noble Peer is self-appointed. It is really a very odd idea.
The present form of the House of Lords is that laid down by Parliament by enactments of successive measures of reform by both Parties in Parliament assembled, introduced from time to time. To play, "Let's pretend" in the way in which the Prime Minister did does not do any good. This is the case, and I feel that the Prime Minister has just got to "lump it". I, for one, as a Life Peer feel offended that there should be the faintest
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suggestion that we came here of our own volition and that we choose to be beastly, which we do not. We are doing a duty laid down by Parliament here assembled, and if people go on knocking the Second Chamber then, as sure as night follows day, the spring from which comes the supply of individuals willing to serve your Lordships' House will dry up, but that is another matter and I will leave the subject there.
I got an angle on the relationship between the private and public ward some time ago that was new to me. A patient was to undergo an orthopaedic operation and the surgeon was warned that she was occasionally subject to severe attacks of asthma and that she might get one at any time. The surgeon and his team decided that she should be in a public ward, because they felt that if she suddenly had a seizure, that was the best place for her to receive immediate attention. In fact she had such an attack, but the skilful measures taken in time avoided further trouble. I had another curious experience in that orthopaedic hospital. I was visiting a patient and noticed that there were eight empty beds. "We hear about enormous queues for hospital beds, but here are eight empty ones. Why is that"? I asked, and I was told that the hospital, which was built between the wars, had accommodation designed to meet the surgical and medical post-operative experience of those days.
The noble Lord, Lord Stone, mentioned the enormous advances that have been made in anaesthesia in surgery and post-operative treatment. The theatre accommodation in that hospital was insufficient to keep the beds full because patients were being released so much earlier than used to be the case. In fact, the surgeon told me, "Those two old ladies over there could have been released last week but we happen to know that they live in not very commodious accommodation with lots of stairs. They are far better off here because we have the accommodation, nurses, heating, food and so on."
I give these illustrations to show that the money, every penny of it, which will be spent in perhaps bureaucratic ways to support this Bill could be spent on improving conditions in hospitals and elsewhere or in improving, as the noble Lord, Lord Amulree, said, the amount of

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staff available in geriatric, mental and other hospitals. Money spent in that way would be money well spent. Perhaps I should add that for all I know an additional theatre has been built at the hospital about which I have been speaking; my experience there occurred four or five years ago. Nevertheless, it illustrates how money should be spent on hospital developments. I would go so far as to say that we should save and scrape until we get the money we need for that purpose.
The medical man with whom I was speaking last night is desperately anxious, as I am, to see waiting lists reduced and no need for queue jumping, if it takes place. The noble Baroness, Lady Young, pointed out that one could not get away from the fact that the number of private patients, particularly in private hospitals, means shorter queues elsewhere. I feel that what should go out from this House when we have done with the Bill is a sense of compassion for all those involved, a feeling of confidence in our medical staff and a belief that the existing hospital arrangements under the National Health Service can and should be made to work as well as possible.
5.6 p.m.
Lord WINSTANLEY: My Lords, I join in the congratulations that have been expressed to the noble Lord, Lord Stone, on his excellent maiden speech. It was delivered with the kind of clarity and directness that I have come to expect rather more from general practitioners than perhaps from consultants, and I agreed with much of what he said. I am not sure that I will always agree with him, because, as the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, said, one need get two doctors together for only a couple of minutes for them to arrive at a state of total and utter disagreement. Nevertheless, it was a pleasure to hear from a fellow general practitioner speaking in that way, and I am sure that we all look forward to hearing him on many future occasions.
I wish to make it absolutely clear at the outset that I have no interest to declare in this matter. Although I worked all my professional life in the National Health Service, inside and outside hospitals, I have no private patients and I have no present intention of acpuiring any. I
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might add that I not only worked in the NHS but perhaps I could be forgiven for saying that I worked very hard for it for many years, not only working in it but trying—through television, the Press and journalism—to help it to function; to help to overcome in this co-operative venture some of the misunderstandings between the two sides which have sometimes caused difficulties; and trying to help on official bodies. Going further back than that, I remember perambulating about the country making speeches, trying to persuade my fellow medical men not only to join the Service but fully to support it. That was in the days before 5th July, 1948. I hope, therefore, that it will be accepted that I speak from that standpoint.
My purpose in criticising the Bill, as I shall, is not to defend private practice but to try to defend and preserve the Health Service and the principles that underlie it. I would not shed many tears if private practice disappeared altogether, provided it disappeared for the right reasons and in the right way. Reference has been made, and rightly, to Nye Bevan, as it was made frequently in debates in another place and to his book In Place of Fear. Nye Bevan looked forward to the disappearance of private practice and I had the privilege of discussing this matter with him on two separate occasions way back just before 1950. It was my impression then that his view was the the same as mine; he looked forward to a day when the NHS would be so constructed and so working that private practice would disappear because of lack of need. In other words, there would no longer be a supply because the demand would have disappeared, and I think he was right.
He was certainly right to say that that would happen, and the proof of the pudding is in the eating. If we look at areas of this country where the Health Service is flourishing, where there are new and modern hospitals, fully staffed, where the doctor/patient ratio is adequate, where waiting lists are short if not non-existent and where there are enough nurses, physiotherapists and the other ancillary workers who go to make the whole business of medicine, we shall look in vain for evidence of private practice.
On the other hand, the worrying thing is that if we look at other areas—and I regret that there are too many of them—

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where the Health Service is beginning to fail, where the waiting lists are long, in my view disastrously long in certain respects, despite what the noble Lord, Lord Ferrier, and the noble Lord, Lord Amulree, said, we find in those areas that once the Health Service begins to run down and there is a suspicion that it is no longer giving an adequate service, there is a re-emergence of private practice. That is the area in which it flourishes. So my aim is to see what I can do and what we all can do in your Lordships' House to see that the National Health Service ultimately reaches the required standard for everybody, so that this argument about private practice can disappear. But I am afraid that at first sight I can see nothing in the Bill that can do anything to improve the standards of the National Health Service or to bring that Service everywhere up to the ideal standard that exists in certain areas.
First, I believe that the Bill will precipitate a conflict or at least arouse resentment and antagonism. The noble Lord, Lord Goodman, has talked about this and I believe that we are all indebted to him for what he has done to try to arrive at some kind of compromise which could perhaps minimise the degree of resentment and antagonism. However, I believe that he would agree that while what he has done may have cooled the atmosphere, it has certainly not extinguished the flames altogether. Whether we like it or not—and I do not like it—one of the results of the Bill will he trouble, antagonism and resentment. I am not saying that that will be reasonable, nor am I saying that this House or any House should be blackmailed by unreasonable people, but I am saying that we should be realists, that we should accept the fact that real people behave like real people and that, if we possibly can, we should avoid promoting conflicts unnecessarily.
It seems to me that the National Health Service at the moment already has enough troubles of its own without having extra ones added to it by precipitating some kind of confrontation. Indeed, to me, the timing of this measure seems to rank in folly with Mr. Heath's decision to take on the miners at the time when we had suddenly become totally dependent upon coal. I hope
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that my fears are groundless and that we may not have difficulties of that kind, but, if we do—and I believe that we probably shall—the trouble will be that that will make it much more difficult to do the things that really are necessary.
I agree entirely with those noble Lords who have said, and said rightly, that something must he done to deal with abuses that exist in a system in which private and National Health Service practice exist side by side. I am talking about queue-jumping and the other undesirable—indeed, deplorable—things that have been suggested. I believe that the way to get rid of them is by agreement. I do not believe that we shall get rid of them all by Statute or by a policing system, but I feel that the more we can retain the mood of co-operation with those upon whom we are dependent, the more chance we have of getting rid of all those abuses by agreement and conciliation, given time. My theory is that some of the effects of the Bill may make it difficult to get rid of this kind of abuse and to get the degree of co-operation we undoubtedly need to get in order to drive out the abuses.
My next objection to the Bill is that it does nothing to create new resources. The plain fact is that there is a global volume of medical work to be done and that the total volume of resources to do that work is at present inadequate. We must accept that. No amount of manoeuvring within the limitations of those resources will create new resources. I believe that there are a lot of fallacies about the extent to which we can somehow draw new resources from the abolition of private practice. Indeed, I wandered into the other place the other day to hear the Third Reading debate, and Mrs. Short was talking about queues of private patients going along to the laboratory for a blood test. So what? Is it suggested that these many private patients having successions of blood tests to the point of extreme exsanguination are somehow having them for fun, or is it accepted that they need blood tests? If they need blood tests, they must have them, and whether they have them privately or publicly makes no difference at all to the total amount of resources that are available. I believe that there is a kind of assumption that if a patient has his appendix out privately he occupies two beds instead of one and makes work for two surgeons. All right,

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the queue-jumping point is a real one and must be dealt with, but do not let us run away with the idea that this kind of manipulation with a very small number of beds within the private sector will somehow liberate a tremendous amount of new resources and that that will put the Health Service to rights.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, will the noble Lord allow me to interrupt him? He knows better than most people what is the average bed occupancy in the course of a year. When we are talking about 2,500 to 3,000 private beds that are occupied for private purposes, I wonder how many patients he would say would occupy those 2,500 beds in the course of a year, an average bed being occupied by, say, 12 different people in the course of a year.
Lord WINSTANLEY: My Lords, I do not think that I can venture on doing public arithmetic with the noble Lord. I take his point, but the real point is, by whom are these beds occupied? Are they occupied by patients or a sort of hotel visitor? If the people concerned need medical treatment, they will occupy a bed whether they are private or National Health Service patients. Admittedly, the queue-jumping point comes in, but the point of total resources remains. Let us accept that the queues are too long and that waiting lists are too long. I say this to the noble Lord, Lord Ferrier, and Lord Amulree, who mentioned this point: in parts of the country, waiting lists are deplorable. There are people waiting for two years for so-called "non-urgent" operations. The degree of urgency or otherwise of any operation depends on who is to have that operation. If it is one's own operation, one tends to feel that it is not so non-urgent after all.
There are other aspects of this matter. When the wage earner has an uncomplicated, non-urgent, irreducible inguinal hernia and has to wait for two years to have it operated on, there will be economic effects. He will be a burden upon the social services and so will his wife and his family while he is waiting. I agree with every noble Lord who has said that we must do what we can to get rid of waiting lists. I agree, too, that we must
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do what we can to get rid of queue-jumping; but let us not run away with the idea that, somehow, new resources will suddenly become available and that the Health Service in some of the worst areas—and I practice in Salford, which is not the best—will somehow magically become better. I do not think that it will.
I come now to my last point, a point that was made by the noble Baroness, Lady Young, who referred to the introduction of apartheid in our medical services. I think she has a point. There may be difficulties in having private and public practice side by side in the same hospitals, but at least people can see what is happening and do something to control it. But when one has once separated the two and built up outside the National Health Service a wholly separate private service and that wholly separate private service is flourishing, it will bleed the National Health Service white.
We have already heard about consultants on nine-elevenths of time. I can tell you that I know many consultants who would like to go full-time. One may talk about their private earnings but they say that they would love to have a full-time contract. However, in many cases hospitals cannot offer them a full-time contract. Perhaps that is in part because the hospitals are already getting full-time work out of them although they are paying them for ten-elevenths. They will not get full-time work out of them when the consultants are on two-elevenths and not in the same hospital but a very long way away.
So I put that forward as a little bit of a fear: deliberately and as a matter of policy to build up two separate services, one the Health Service and one a private service outside, is I believe, inviting resources to go to the private service. Money will go to it; money for research will go to it; many workers will leave the one and go to the other because, perhaps mistakenly, they think that they will have more freedom, better opportunities or better facilities. There will be many reasons, but I nevertheless predict that, if we ever establish this "apartheid" system of a private sector outside the National Health Service, it will bleed that Service white.
I have said enough. But it seems to me rather sad that in my day, working in this area for the National Health Service, we began with a private sector which was

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then terrified by the prospect of the introduction of a new, free public service. We have arrived at a situation where we now have a public sector free, which is now so frightened of an expensive private sector that somehow it feels that it has to hide it away. The wheel has turned full circle indeed. It is my view that with the right priorities, with the right use of our resources, with efficient administration and the abolition of waste and duplication, it would be perfectly possible for our nation to mount a fully comprehensive health service, free at the time of use to every man, woman, and child in this country. It is on that that we should be concentrating our attention.
After I sit down, my Lords, you will hear many eminent doctors speak and, if I may say so, you will also hear many eminent patients speak. The views of both sides are equally important. But I hope that at least all of them will be speaking from the point of view of preserving and cherishing and maintaining our National Health Service.
5.22 p.m.
Lord HUNT of FAWLEY: My Lords, I, too, should like to thank and congratulate my fellow general medical practitioner, the noble Lord, Lord Stone, on his maiden speech. I much enjoyed listening to what he said, and I hope that he will speak to us often in future. Many points in this Bill are complex and a large proportion of doctors will agree with my noble friend Lady Young when she said that not enough time has been given for their proper consideration by the medical profession and by your Lordships' House. The British Medical Journal, in a leading article (10.5.76) has called the Bill, "hasty, ill-considered legislation". With this and the guillotine imposed in another place there is an element of truth and some significance in the colloquial question put to me recently: "Are the Government pulling a fast one on the medical profession by introducing this Bill just now?" In some ways many doctors think that they are.
We owe a great deal to the noble Lord, Lord Goodman. We realise that the Bill now contains much that has become known as "the spirit of Goodman", and we all thank him for this and for the hard work he has done for us. But—
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and it is a big "but"—we must appreciate that at no time has the medical profession as a whole (as represented by the Royal Colleges and Faculties, and by the British Medical Association) accepted any compromise over its total opposition to this Bill, even with the Goodman proposals incorporated in it.
Last week I met the President of the Royal College of Surgeons, Sir Rodney Smith, who is chairman of an important Working Party (of the Royal Colleges and of the BMA) which is studying the ethical responsibilities of the medical profession within the framework of the National Health Service. I met also Dr. James Cameron and Dr. Elston Grey Turner (Chairman of Council, and Secretary of the BMA). They all told me that the Royal Colleges and Faculties, and the BMA are still implacably opposed to this Bill. They sincerely believe, for reasons with which your Lordships are by now familiar, that it will do British medicine, the National Health Service, patients and doctors a great deal of harm; and they rely on Parliament to have the good sense not to pass it in the face of this strong medical opposition. The suggestion which I have heard, that we should accept the Bill for fear that if we do not do so something worse might be proposed next Session, is to my mind a weak one. To accept it meekly now might easily encourage our opponents to add something very much more unpleasant soon.
What my profession has said is that if the day is lost and the Bill receives Royal Assent (when the doctors could not then act against the will of Parliament), they would do their best to make it work, provided it includes the negotiated Goodman compromises which are better than those suggested in the original Consultative Document. The word "compromise" implies agreement, and this is the only agreement which my profession as a whole has made so far; and it will act on this only if and when, against its wishes and advice, this Bill becomes law.
The right honourable Mrs. Barbara Castle, in another place on 12th October—only nine days ago—issued a warning to your Lordships' House. She said:
"I issue a warning … If this compromise is to be challenged and injured … there will be no

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peace in the NHS. Their Lordships will have reopened the gates for industrial action, and it will be upon their own heads …"—[Official Report, Commons, 12/10/76; col. 306.]
That would not be on our heads alone, my Lords, for no one has forgotten that it was her Government which started all this trouble over a mere 1 per cent. of the beds in the National Health Service. She has thrown down the gauntlet at your Lordships' feet, and we shall have to decide quite soon whether or not, on behalf of the medical profession, we accept her challenge.
If this Bill is passed and we act along the lines of the Goodman proposals I, as a practising doctor, am particularly interested in three points in them. First, the phasing out of pay beds in National Health Service hospitals, if and when this takes place, must be done in an orderly and reasonable manner, and only when consultants are convinced that good altertive private bed accommodation of equal quality and availability for patients and doctors is provided. This alternative accommodation must be in addition to the beds at present in private nursing homes and hospitals which are, in Central London anyway, already fully occupied (but not always so in the Provinces); and this is before any phasing out begins. This is an important point which I do not believe is fully appreciated.
Secondly, the proposed Health Services Board must be seen to be truly independent politically, and unbiased. Thirdly, the Government, trades unions, local authorities and others must agree that there will be no interference in future on political or ideological grounds with the building, staffing or running of any of the private hospitals mentioned in the Bill, nor with private beds and facilities which remain in NHS hospitals during the period of phasing out. And there must be no interference, either, with private medical insurance organisations.
I know, my Lords, that this Bill aims to take private practice out of the NHS and not to abolish it; and I agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, said about this. Many senior members of the Labour Party, including Sir Harold Wilson, Mrs. Barbara Castle, the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, and the present Secretary of State for Social Services have
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said time and time again that they wish to preserve a healthy private sector of medicine in Britain. I gave some of these references to this House in my speech on 3rd December 1975, and here are two more. Mrs Barbara Castle, at the first meeting of the Select Committee on this Bill said:
"It would be intolerable in a democratic society to prevent people buying private medical care if they felt that it was an essential part of their personal interest."—[Official Report, Commons, Standing Committee D, 18/5/76; col. 38.]
The present Secretary of State for Social Services, the right honourable David Ennals, confirmed this attitude on 27th April this year, at the Second Reading of the Bill in another place:
"This Government have said … that it is no part of their policy to abolish private medicine."—[Official Report, Commons, 27/4/76; cols. 207–208.]
If the National Health Service does not improve soon, it will need a great deal of help from the private sector in these days of financial stringency. The private sector will then gradually and reasonably expand. I am in full agreement that the quality and standards of hospitals both within and without the National Health Service should be kept under careful scrutiny, and that some equilibrium must be maintained between the two sectors. Every patient who chooses to be treated privately saves the National Health Service money, equipment, personnel and much else, and standards of total pateint care depend on both sectors. If any Government in future, for politically motivated doctrinaire reasons, try to strangle the development, by quantity licensing, of private hospital beds, that will be a most damaging action to prevent the private sector playing its proper role. Sooner or later, and the sooner the better, everyone must accept that the public and private sectors of medicine in Britain must learn to work together in harmony, helping each other with good will and understanding, with reasonable and friendly liaison between the two, each making a useful contribution, as happens with public and private transport on our roads. This symbiosis should logically take place within the walls of our large and famous hospitals, and in many smaller hospitals too throughout our country. It will be much to my regret if Party politics and this proposed Bill make this impossible, so that they will have to work

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from separate establishments, to the detriment of both.
My Lords, during the last few minutes of my speech I should like to ask you three questions: Should my profession ever accept, without a struggle, politically-motivated direction imposed upon it by any Government? If doctors dislike that direction strongly, should they fight and, if so, how? Or should they emigrate in appreciable numbers? First, should the medical profession accept quietly, without opposition, arbitrary doctrinaire control imposed upon it by Government or trades unions? Such unopposed direction must lead to impairment, or loss, of professional independence of action and judgment, with curtailment, too of clinical freedom both for patients and their doctors. One example of this would be a patient's freedom of choice as to who would operate on him, and when and where?
Second, should my profession fight for these freedoms and, if so, how? If a Government, for Party-political ends, is dictatorial and unreasonable with a great profession, forcing through a Bill like this, which the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, himself agrees was not really necessary in the first place, that profession must defend itself, as would any other. The legal profession, for instance, has been considering this problem seriously, as the President of the Law Society has so clearly pointed out recently. What he said was published in The Times on 8th October. But what can we do if discussion is cut short, our views are ignored and agreement cannot be reached? Most doctors would agree with the principle proposed by the President of the Royal College of Physicians, Sir Cyril Clarke, when he wrote in a letter to The Times of 30th July about his Royal College:
"We do not believe it is right to take any action which may bring harm to patients."
But what effective practical alternative has been put forward? None. The Royal College of Physicians has suggested a, "Council of Conciliation", the Working Party of the Royal Colleges and of the BMA (which I have already mentioned) has not reported yet, and the Government have refused to put the pay bed dispute to the Royal Commission, as many doctors thought they should have done.
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During the past 12 months, my Lords, the mood of my profession has hardened, and it has learned how to fight. Medicine is not an industry, so "industrial action" is an incorrect, inappropriate, and misleading term when applied to doctors. They are learning how to take what is better called "professional action"—highly-selective action of various kinds—within the law and within their contracts and terms of service, which they can take either individually or collectively with the support of the British Medical Association.
In December 1975, it was the collective professional action of doctors which played a large part in persuading the Government to introduce Lord Goodman's proposals into the Bill. More recently, it was collective professional action which helped the junior doctors to obtain what they wanted in their dispute with the Department of Health and Social Security. No doctor wants to inconvenience or harm his patients in any way which can be avoided. Neither does a surgeon who operates, say, to remove an abdominal tumour, want to hurt his patient; but, as Hamlet says:
"Diseases desperate grown,
By desperate appliance are reliev'd,
Or not at all."
The surgeon and his patient appreciate and accept that a certain amount of temporary inconvenience and pain are necessary for a cure. So it is with doctors taking collective professional action. The President of the Royal College of Surgeons wrote to The Times of 2nd August an immediate addition to that of his fellow President, pointing out the dilemma facing the medical profession now:
"If a Government acts in a manner so damaging to the practice of medicine that harm to patients must result (and one must include in this measures that reduce the morale of those working in the NHS) how can doctors oppose if the most effective means of opposition might itself harm patients?"
It is the conviction of many thousand members of my profession, now, that collective professional action may be justified, under certain circumstances, for the benefit of British medicine in the future. These circumstances arise when there is a serious risk of erosion of our professional freedoms by Party-political moves such as the forcing through of a Bill like this, and when no conciliatory mechanism exists which will ensure that both sides will listen to reasonable arguments and respond to them. The

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noble Lord, Lord Taylor, who as a young doctor and Labour M.P. for Barnet—Stephen Taylor—was responsible to a considerable extent for the inception of the N.H.S. by influencing and advising Aneurin Bevan, wrote this about doctors on 10th March this year in the journal World Medicine:
"Doctors must remember that Parliament cannot bind its successors in perpetuity. If future legislation were to threaten their essential professional freedoms, they would be justified, in the long-term interests of their patients, in fighting the proposals by every means in their power."
My third and last short question, my Lords, is, "Should our doctors emigrate?" Inevitably, better facilities, conditions of service and freedom from political and trade-union interference are attracting gifted medical men and women to other countries, as my noble friend Lady Young has already mentioned. Many of us firmly believe that it will be far better for the future of British medicine for our good doctors to stay here caring for their patients, and fighting for their principles and beliefs, rather than that they should move away to other countries taking their talents and the fruits of their expensive training, and their experience, with them. Such emigration of even a small proportion of the flower of our profession will do our patients and the National Health Service far more harm, in the long run, than will any temporary collective professional action taken now. You will appreciate, my Lords, that I and many of my colleagues are in a fighting mood. We are determined to protect our patients and our own legitimate and reasonable professional freedoms whatever happens to this particular Bill.
5.40 p.m.
Lord PLATT: My Lords, I should like to congratulate—I was going to say "Dr. Stone "—the noble Lord, Lord Stone, on his maiden speech, which we were very pleased to listen to and very glad that he has got it over because obviously it was a great relief to him. He is now what I may call a fully paid-up member of your Lordships' House and he will be able to intervene in our debates and discussions in Committee stages and so on.
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I have a feeling when I have been thinking about these problems of the Health Service that one of the most important criteria by which we should judge any proposed change or innovation is what will be its effects on the reputation of British medicine at home and abroad. I think that that reputation still stands very high, but I do not know how long it will go on standing high in the present state of the profession. The reputation of British medicine will not be served by threats of mass resignations, by strikes, by consultants working to rule, all of which I am afraid I find completely unacceptable. I agree there with the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, who likened our profession to joining the Church in which that kind of action is no longer available to you because you have joined a profession which is a service. I did not come here to disagree with my friend of many years the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Fawley, but on that point I disagree. But I cannot disagree with him without trying to answer his question.
The question was a very reasonable and notable one: What other measures can we take? I think that this really begs the question altogether. I think the question is: who allowed the situation to get as bad as this? I do not think that the profession itself can say that they are not guilty when threats of strikes and so on have been mooted almost before the subject has been discussed. If he wants an alternative, I personally believe that the only solution is a real collaboration between the Department and the profession which I do not think has ever happened since the beginning of the Health Service. In order to facilitate that, I have no doubt that some kind of body which does not belong to the Government or any Party and is not overloaded by members of the medical profession should meet as a conciliatory kind of body and try to solve these problems seeing the seriousness of them before they reaach that stage.
Neither is the reputation of British medicine served by the disastrous reorganisation—I am sorry to use that word but it is my favourite word for it—of the Health Service in 1974 which made communication more and more difficult when communication was firston the list of what needed to be improved in the Health Service—communication between

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doctors and patients: "My doctor will not listen to me"; communication between GPs and consultants: "He does not get a letter from the consultant for three weeks after the patient is in hospital" communication between doctors and nurses; communication between doctors and doctors; and finally between the profession and the Department. The result of the reorganisation was to make communication more difficult at a time when it was the only solution to the difficulties. Neither will the reputation of British medicine be served by this Bill. Not at all.
What is called in America the geographical wholetime system is surely the best of all—perhaps the only thing in American medicine that I agree with, but I agree strongly with it. That means that a man's first loyalty—and these are top consultants, medical scientists and so on—is to the hospital or the medical school—which is the same thing: the hospital being part of the medical school. His first loyalty is to his hospital and although he is allowed private practice and allowed to accept fees he does his private work geographically in the same place as he does his other work. He is then—coming now to translate it into British terms—always available to his National Health Service patients. He is not in Hampstead or at Lord's cricket ground when he ought to be at Guy's Hospital. He is in Guy's Hospital. If at the end of the day when he is ready to go home he wants to pop in and see one of his NHS patients whom he saw in the morning and about whom he is worried he does so; but he will not come all the way from St. John's Wood or wherever to Guy's Hospital to do that.
He is also subject to a continual scrutiny by his colleagues and junior staff. Everybody knows what he is doing, what his standards are, what his ethical standards are. I think this is a tremendous advantage and to throw it away is madness. There is no advantage in doing so. There is a lot of very grave danger in doing so. This, I am surprised to say, does not seem to have been mentioned. I have listened to almost every speech, although I missed a little of the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, at the beginning, and it does not really seem to have been considered. All right. The private sector can go on building up. Nobody is going to interfere with private
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practice. But are we going back to the old inefficient nursing homes? No. We are going to see that any new nursing homes or private hospitals that are built are visited and that their standards are up to the standards required nowadays of people practising modern medicine and surgery.
Fine! But who is going to scrutinise the doctors who work in them? Who will they be? If you go to a private bed—and I only take London as an example as many of your Lordships live in and around London—in a London teaching hospital, St. Thomas's or Guy's—you know the consultant in charge has been through the mill with proper training, of gaining appointments and of distinction in them and that he is a thoroughly qualified specialist in the job he is setting out to do. Will there be the same scrutiny for the private sector? Will somebody say, "No, you cannot practise here. We think you are a second-rate doctor and we only want first-rate doctors." Who is going to say that? Nobody has answered that question. It is crucial. Your Lordships know what happens in America where all kinds of people operate on patients who do not need operations and they do not even always do the operation very well, as we know in one notable example in public life.
I think this is bad and I think it will lead to a division in the profession either slowly or quickly where the loyal people will spend more and more time in their hospitals and those who are out to make money will spend more and more time in the private sector. I think that they will gradually grow apart and then, as I say, useless operations may be performed; the people who abuse the Service now and about whom much has been said will be the very ones who will abuse it in the private sector and the premiums for insurance against malpractice will go up sky high. A Californian nose and throat surgeon writing in a journal the other day said that his premium for insurance protection against actions for malpractice was 16,000 dollars a year, roughly £8,000. The rate varies and for specialties such as neurosurgery and gynaecology probably the premium would be more. this is the kind of thing we do not want to encourage in this country.
We have a National Health Service, we have pay beds in hospitals with all the

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facilities, and we have got the men—though, of course, there are a lot of things we have not got. But why change it and leave it open to all these abuses? As to the abuses charged against workers in the National Health Service, the chief one seems to be the one of queue-jumping. This is serious; it means that if you pay something you get into hospital sooner. This Bill will do nothing whatever to prevent it. Ordinary chaps—I was going to say like you and me, but we are rather a mixed bag—would say, "I can afford a consultation fee. I do not want to go and wait in an out-patient department. I might see the registrar when I really wanted to see Dr. So-and-So. I will pay his consultation fee and see him in his consulting rooms" (which are preferably in the hospital itself). He sees the doctor, but Dr. So-and-So is not satisfied and he says, "I think this is what is happening but you must come into hospital for further investigation", or, "It is imperative that you have an operation". The patient says, "How much is this going to cost?", and the doctor says, "It could run into £300 or £400 easily". The chap says, "I cannot afford it" and the doctor says, "I will take you into one of my beds".
If the doctor is less than absolutely scrupulous with his conscience, this is where the queue-jumping comes in. He is liable to have pressure brought on him by the general practitioner handling the patient who says, "Mrs. So-and-So whom you saw a week or so ago is getting no better and should come in", so Mrs. So-and-So gets higher up the queue than perhaps sheer medical necessity would dictate. That is the main abuse and this Bill does absolutely nothing for it. It allows you to have a private consultation and it does not prevent you from going into an NHS hospital after it, so from that point of view it is useless.
Bed occupancy was discussed and there was a little passage between the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, and the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, on mathematics. The question was: how many of these private beds are occupied? The occupancy level is bound to be less because the patients are not staying so long. For several reasons many patients in Health Service beds stay in much longer than they need. Sometimes surgeons have different ideas as to how long patients should stay in
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hospital. They are not paying for it so it does not matter. Sometimes the consultant comes round twice a week; he sees the patient on Tuesday and thinks that he ought to get the gall bladder X-rayed and on Friday he comes again and it has not yet been done. On Tuesday it has been done but the report has not come through from the X-ray department so that patient can stay in hospital for 10 unnecessary days. The bed occupancy is 100 per cent. but the use that is being made of it is 0 per cent., whereas the private patient naturally says, "How long need I stay? This is costing me so much per week". That has to be taken into the calculation, my Lords.
Amenity beds have been mentioned. I am sure the noble Baroness, Lady Lee of Asheridge, will almost certainly refer to these. I thought what a splendid idea amenity beds were. Ordinary people, perhaps more likely to be professional people than manual workers, would say they wanted privacy, they wanted to be alone and so on; some of them were rather shy about it all. However my experience—which of course covers only a few hospitals—is that these beds just do not work. There were so few of them that they were always needed for some ordinary patient—ordinary in the sense that he was not asking for an amenity bed but was very ill and had to be nursed separately. If you got the amenity bed system to work it would not help with the queue-jumping. Either a person wanted an amenity bed and there were enough so that he got it quickly or there were so few that he would have to wait longer, so the queue-jumping is not solved by amenity beds.
Waiting lists have been mentioned. I am sure that if a real concerted attack between the profession and the department were made on waiting lists we should find that there is an awful lot of nonsense about them. Whether it is true that the less scrupulous members of my profession like to have long waiting lists so that they can say to the patient, "I shall have to keep you waiting for two years" I have no evidence one way or another. There are certain people in my profession "who I would not put it past", if that is the right expression. The high reputation of British medicine depends on the most notable people in the profession, many of whom have achieved their celebrity by research and teaching others, by the

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wisdom, knowledge and integrity of their advice. We want these people to have their first loyalty to the hospital in which they served. Why do we push them out to do their private work somewhere else? It seems to me to be madness.
I was greatly stirred by reading an article in The Times yesterday which reported that Sir Alec Merrison, the Chairman of the Royal Commission on the Health Service, made it clear that we need not wait two years for his report on some major issue; they were willing to give a running commentary from time to time. If this was not a broad hint that the Merrison Commission were not greatly pleased with this Bill, then I have misinterpreted his words. It seems to me a very broad hint. So let us hope that if we are going to pass this Bill the phasing out of pay beds from the National Health Service will be so slow that we shall have the Merrison Report before we get any further.
6 p.m.
Baroness LEE of ASHERIDGE: My Lords, I too should like to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Stone, on a charming maiden speech—not only charming but obviously based on many years of dedicated service as a general practitioner. I cannot resist quoting two sentences from In Place of Fear, the reference made by Aneurin Bevan when he was writing in 1951 to the feeling about the tempestuous atmosphere of that early time. He wrote:
"I have a warm spot for the general practitioner despite his tempestuousness. The family doctor is in many ways the most important person in the Service. He is also the most highly individualistic member of the medical world".
It is fascinating to compare the atmosphere in which we are discussing the Health Service today with the atmosphere in another place in the 1945–50 Parliament. We have had a militant, rousing speech from the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Fawley, who holds opinions obviously fervently, and of course with deep sincerity. Not so much in this House but in the other House, we have had speeches of equal fervour taking an opposite point of view. I hope and believe that neither of these forms of "a 100 per cent. my way" or "a 100 per cent. your way" are going to win.
This is such a passionate subject that we must congratulate the noble Lord,
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Lord Goodman, and those who worked with him. It is almost a miracle that he has so much understanding of the compromise which he thinks ought to be adopted. Your Lordships' House must know that most of the giving has been from our side. Before coming here today I was looking through some old papers. I came across something that was written by Dr. Somerville Hastings about Aneurin Bevan at a moment of great grief, when Aneurin Bevan died. Although there was a strong personal affection between the two men, Dr. Somerville Hastings fought his Minister for the health service he wanted. He said:
"Do you realise some of us in the Socialist Medical Association have given the best years of our lives to prepare the way for the Health Service, and we want this Health Service to be available to all of us as one great family? We do not want anyone advantaged by wealth and we do not want anyone disadvantaged by poverty."
This sentiment was expressed with great ardour.
Regarding pay beds, how he chided his Minister, who was also his friend! He said: "How can you make these kinds of compromises?" The answer in that Parliament was that certain compromises had to be made or we should not have had our National Health Service. We had to bring in the great teaching hospitals. We had to deal not just with the legitimate fears of the medical profession but with a great deal of ghosts and bogey men. If the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Fawley, will forgive me, I heard an echo of them today. Surely no civil servant and no politician is going to interfere between a doctor and his patient.
It is not in the philosophy of those of us who are democratic socialists that we want to prohibit private medicine. We believe in a mixed economy. We want more on the public sector than noble Lords opposite do. I do not think any Conservative now would say that lie wants the whole of industry in private hands. We could not survive that. Noble Lords will not find those of us who are democratic socialists saying that we want 100 per cent. nationalisation of all industry, because we know, too, that that would be the road to an authoritarian society.
We have to consider the genuine fears of doctors. The Goodman compromise must go a very long way to answering their fears. If it is necessary to have it

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put in an Act of Parliament that private medicine should exist side by side with the Health Service, well and good. When we have been talking about our hospitals we have been talking quite properly about the dedicated men and women who are nurses and doctors. My only claim to intervene for a short time tonight is that I know every nuance of the struggle in the early days of establishing the Health Service. I know that I am speaking in the presence of many in this House who in recent years, as some are doing at the present moment, have given a great deal of time, energy and services, some professionally and some in an administrative capacity. I do not share that experience.
I am a grateful patient of the National Health Service, and I am glad that we have heard from all parts of the House expressions that we have the best National Health Service in the world, with all its faults. When there is a serious illness in the home, when an emergency operation is required, all would agree that our Health Service is superb. All would agree that the care of the expectant mother and child is superb. There is a great field in between where of course we need a better service, more money spent on hospitals, and so on. You cannot run a great hospital with nurses and doctors alone. There has to be the ambulance service, the auxiliary workers, the cleaners and the cooks; in other words, there has to be a good atmosphere in the hospital embracing everyone, whatever part he is playing.
In my experience, there is more impatience among the auxiliary workers in hospitals against private beds. They know that originally a compromise was made to get the Health Service started. The belief was that once the Service was started there would be less and less need for private medicine. If anyone wants private medicine in our society they ought to have it; but I do not think pay beds can survive in the general hospitals, because it is against the spirit of the age. The people serving in many capacities do not like it and they feel that when we are ill we should all be treated in the same way.
I am glad that several noble Lords mentioned amenity beds. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Platt, that the
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amenity bed has not done the job that Aneurin Bevan and the other founders of the Health Service wanted it to do. The amenity bed ought to reassure those members of the public who have such a great distaste of going into a public ward that they would almost keep out of hospital altogether. I can remember visiting hospitals with Aneurin Bevan. A great deal of attention was paid to personal privacy, drawing curtains round a patient's bed and so on. I have spent much time recently as a visitor to one of our great London hospitals and was impressed by the efforts which are made to give privacy in public wards, whether the patient requires a bed pan or some minor attention. Great improvements have been made.
We have not nearly enough amenity beds. It is no good having a leading member of the Cabinet or Shadow Cabinet in a public ward; they are a confounded nuisance. They get too many flowers, too many telegrams and upset the rhythm of the ward. We must have common sense about this. If there is a side ward, which is private, then they can get on with reading their official papers or receive masses of flowers, and all the rest of it. That seems a sensible arrangement. Or you may be a businessman who has a broken leg or something that means that you can still do a good deal of work; and you may have that kind of reason for wanting an amenity bed. But if there is a scarcity of beds, then these beds must first go to those who require privacy for medical reasons. That is why I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Platt, that there are not enough amenity beds. I should like to think that when we come to the Committee stage we can again reassure not only doctors, who have far too many fears that are not really founded, but also members of the public who also fear a violation of their privacy, and that we shall give real attention to this particular matter.
My Lords, I hope that before anyone again tries to suggest that the first Minister of the Health Service was in favour of private beds or was in favour of a part-time consultancy service they will go to the Library where they will find his book. They will then see quite clearly that the essential thing—and we all agree now that it was essential and we do not have the fierce opposition of earlier days—

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was to get the National Health Service started. We have got it, we are proud of it and proud of all those who serve in it, in whatever capacity they serve. On the subject of the Goodman compromise, which does not please me and which does not satisfy many of my friends, just as it does not satisfy the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Fawley, we may have to agree to differ, and if it is the will of the majority of Parliament that that compromise should go through, then let it go through and let us all work to make it a success.
6.12 p.m.
Lady RUTHVEN of FREELAND: My Lords, may I join with other noble Lords in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Stone, on his maiden speech. It was very much to the point and nice and short, which is what a maiden speech should be.
I hesitated to address your Lordships tonight as you have already listened to so many excellent speeches and some brilliant speeches from the medical profession, but I felt that as I had been for so many years, in an amateurish way, involved in the Health Service on organisation and administration perhaps I should be "doing a St. Peter" if I did not stand up and be counted, because I do not like this Health Services Bill and I feel that I must justify my views on that point.
Much of my time has been given up to this Health Service. I even go on now, in my old age, visiting many hospitals for the League of Hospital Friends, and so I still keep in touch with what goes on in the Health Service. I should like to say how much I agree with what has been said by so many of my noble friends on this side of the House and also with the speeches made by members on the Liberal Benches and on the Cross-Benches. I have listened with the greatest interest to all that they have said, and particularly to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Fawley, who interested me intensely.
The Health Service sets out the Government's plan for phasing out all the pay beds eventually. It seems very hard that sick people able and willing to pay the full cost of their treatment should not be allowed to do so. The architects of todays' Hospital Service, the old voluntary hospitals, had for some considerable number of years built private wings,
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often financed by grateful patients and others interested in medical and nursing care for those in need. The revenue from the private wings, after meeting the cost of treatment for the patients in those private wings, was then used towards the overall costs of the hospital service. When the hospitals were transferred to the Ministry of Health on the introduction of the National Health Service in 1948 the private wings were also transferred, and the Government of the day set aside the beds and facilities provided by the private wings for the use of patients who would be willing to pay the full cost of their treatment. At the same time, Mr. Aneurin Bevan—whom I am glad to say was a great friend of mine and I was pleased to hear the noble Baroness, Baroness Lee of Asheridge, speak just before me—created a system under which consultants in the hospitals could choose to give up a part of their salaries in return for the freedon to do some private work for patients in the private beds.
Until the last year or two this system worked well. Unfortunately, other things have intervened and the system is now breaking down. Not only has the National Health Service patient benefited from the care of many brilliant doctors who, without this freedom, to do private work might never have joined the National Health Service, but the fact that they have been able to combine public and private practice in one hospital has meant the saving of countless hours of travelling and countless lives have been saved in emergencies. The patients have benefited from the private facilities of the National Health Service hospitals and it will be the patients who will suffer if the pay beds are phased out of the hospitals.
Cuts are already being made in the expenditure on the Health Service. Hospitals are being closed and many wards are empty. They cannot be staffed because of lack of money. Waiting lists are just as long and will be until the Government are able to release more money to open these closed wards and to recommence work on curtailed building pogrammes. Our Health Service is not measuring up to what the public has come to expect from it, and it is not the admiration of all eyes as it was in the past. I spent a lot of time in America in years gone by, visiting hospitals, and I was always asked to speak about our Health Service.

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There were "Oohs!" and "Aahs!" and questions I was not always capable of answering. But it was the admiration of the American world; I know that, I rather doubt its being so now.
The Bill to phase out the pay beds will not shorten the waiting lists, but it can and it will increase the shortage of doctors in the National Health Service hospitals. The long-term effect of this could be disastrous, especially to the teaching of the young doctors should the consultants choose to leave the National Health Service hospitals for the private hospitals and nursing homes. I cannot emphasise too strongly the loss of teaching material, particularly from the London and big provincial teaching hospitals, if all private beds are abolished. I know one particularly interesting case on which a friend of mine, a professor of dental surgery, was teaching his students. The patient was discharged but had to return for further treatment, and when the patient arrived she found that the pay beds of the hospital where she had been had been eliminated and she was in a private nursing home. The professor was able to visit the patient after his day's work was over but unaccompanied by students. The loss of teaching material is of great consequence and seems to have passed unnoticed by the Department when it drafted the Bill.
There will always be a section of the public which will want to have private medical attention, and those members of the public should be allowed to have it and to pay for it over and above the contribution that they make through income tax and through the Health Insurance tax. To encourage members of the public to have private insurance cover to pay for private treatment in hospital would appear to be a sensible way of attracting additional revenue for a starved National Health Service. I must say that I subscribe to one of these societies. Though I have been in many private rooms, several times I have been in National Health Service hospital wards. I know which I prefer, although that is neither here nor there. It would seem more sensible to have more pay bed facilities than to force private treatment to go to an extension of private hospitals like the London Clinic, the Wellington and many others, the profits from which benefit no one but the shareholders of public
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companies. I should like to end by saying that the care of the sick should, in my view, be everyone's concern and should not be allowed to become a matter for Party politics.
6.20 p.m.
Lord PORRITT: My Lords, may I add my voice to previous speakers and congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Stone, on his maiden speech, which was both simple and brief—two very fine points. As an ex-member of the profession, belonging to that part which has been somewhat rudely criticised this afternoon—the specialists and consultants—I congratulate him on a straightforward statement from a genuine doctor. I hope, now that he has got over his terror, that we shall hear him often.
I have been fortunate in having spent two-thirds of a fairly long life in the practice of medicine, both clinical and administrative, and half of that, at least, has been under the aegis of and concerned with the National Health Service. I am glad to be speaking this evening from the Cross-Benches, and I want your Lordships to believe that even if some of my remarks may seem rather hard, this is a completely unbiased statement of a firmly held belief. My only bias is towards medicine. To me, it is sad enough and bad enough that, over the years, medicine should have become more and more involved in politics. This was obviously going to happen when the fascinating experiment of nationalising a profession for the first time in history was attempted in 1946–48. That has happened and we accept it, but when medicine is being used as a Party political football to be kicked about by ideologies and ideologists, then it is nothing but tragic. That is how I look at this Bill. I feel that it represents that last statement.
Another great interest of mine over the past 50 years has been the Olympic movement, and your Lordships will all know what has recently happened in that sphere in Canada, which will continue to happen with the same result and for the same reason. Those are two ideals, medicine and Olympism, which promoted both health, in its fullest sense—mental, physical and moral—and friendship, mutual trust and understanding between peoples; both already tarnished and at

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risk of ultimate destruction because of unnecessary and ever-increasing doctrinaire methodology. Your Lordships will note, I trust, that I have categorically defined the NHS as an ideal. This I believe it initially was. Equally, I have no doubt that it has done immeasurable good to a great many people who could not otherwise, except through its influence, have received the benefits which they have had. All the more sad it is to see it slowly strangled by the octopus of over-administration, and swamped by the crushing weight of top-heavy bureaucracy.
At one time, it might have been described as the best State medical service in the world, and that has been mentioned once or twice already today. That, sadly, I suggest, was a long time ago. Nationalised medicine in one shape or another has been inaugurated in many countries throughout the world, and not one of them has seen fit to copy our Service. The best health service in the world is one in which all patients are private patients. This has been very nearly achieved in Canada.
That brings me back to this Bill, this pathetic, rather small Bill, which was barely half discussed in the other place, was guillotined, is full of contradictions and omissions, is often vague and sometimes very difficult to understand. And for what purpose? It benefits neither patients nor doctors; nor for that matter the National Health Service itself. It starts off by stating in the Explanatory Memorandum that its main purposes are, first, to separate from National Health Service hospitals accommodation and facilities—often, life-saving facilities—used for the private practice of medicine; and, secondly, to introduce new powers of control over private hospital building to safeguard the NHS. Safeguard from what? Is the mighty NHS so frightened, or perhaps so envious, of the quality of the service provided in the relatively minuscule private sector that it must legislate against it? I think this is bringing the whole business of British medicine down to the lowest common denominator. Is it not patently obvious that the health and stimulation which a virtually bankrupt NHS could obtain from a well supported and flourishing private sector is just the very thing that it wants more than anything else?
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Without doubt, the worst disease from which we as a nation are suffering today is the canker of egalitarianism. All men, my Lords, are not born equal nor alike. It is a genetic impossibility. Let us harness the attributes of those who are better endowed, whether mentally, physically or materially, for the benefit of those less fortunate; but let us remember that there is no class distinction between these two groups of people. Despite the stated purposes of this Bill, which I have already quoted, the only real objective is to fulfil a Manifesto pledge expressive of a narrow sectional interest which, with its overtone of Marxist dogma, just cannot offer any benefit to the community as a whole. Surely the exclusions and restrictions of this Bill constitute a direct attack on the basic freedoms of the individual, both patient and doctor—a point which I was very interested to see was underlined by the noble Lord, Lord Goodman—and if that be the case no Amendments, however well-intentioned, no bargain, should be allowed to cloud the simple issue that we are dealing with primary principles. The pay beds issue, which has already created so much disruption and ill-feeling in the Service and in the profession, is essentially a deliberate, contentious red herring introduced for Party political purposes.
However, even if we stick to the private beds in NHS hospitals argument, let us remember—and it has been remembered quite frequently this afternoon—that there was a proviso. I learned from the noble Baroness, Lady Lee, on a previous occasion not to call it a promise, which it was not. But there was a proviso at the very beginning of this Health Service which allowed it to be set up, and which was an agreement with the Royal Colleges to allow private practice to take place in National Health Service hospital beds. Reverting to my Olympic analogy, the situation seems to resemble very closely that which occurred immediately before the recent Games in Montreal, when the host Government of Canada went back on its written promise to admit competitors from all countries. Again, in what we are discussing this afternoon, if it is not a promise—and I have said that I now take that back—an agreement is being broken, an agreement entered into in good faith, and it is unilaterally being set aside. I think that this is what the profession

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fears so much; that an agreement which it accepted and worked for 30 years is now set aside. The profession is frightened about other agreements or promises being set aside in future.
Furthermore, in the original Manifesto which gave birth to this Bill, although pay beds certainly featured to a marked extent, no mention whatsoever was made of limitations on private practice outside the NHS, which appear in Part III of the Bill. This is an addition which was not in the Manifesto. These limitations include the imposition of controls on the provision or extension of private hospital facilities, with consequent authorisations for planning permission, fees for such authorisation and certifications, and the appointment of inspectors with a right of entry to oversee all this new work. I suggest that regulations such as these, however much they may be camouflaged in honeyed words, cannot hide the stark truth that this is a positive preliminary move towards the total abolition of private practice, and the establishment of a monopolistic State service. With the best will in the world the profession could not, in all honesty, put any other interpretation upon such measures.
This brings me to the extremely serious question, in my view, of the effects, direct and indirect, that this Bill will have upon the standards of British medicine, effects which have been mentioned by one or two noble Lords and which I think need to be stressed. Surely this is a matter of prime importance to the National Health Service as a whole, as it was initially set up to provide for the people of this country the very best medical care obtainable.
Your Lordships will be well aware that for the first time in the 30-year history of the National Health Service the Royal Colleges and the specialist faculties, whose primary concern is to ensure that the overall standards of medicine are maintained and improved, have been constrained to enter the embattled arena of medical politics during recent months. I need not go into the details of the reasons they have given for their fears that this Bill will have a deleterious effect on these standards. A number of statements have now been issued putting forward cogent and, I would humbly suggest, almost
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irrefutable arguments against the withdrawing of private beds from the National Health Service hospitals and against the limitations of private practice in general.
It seems to me an extraordinary situation that the Bill should aim to establish two separate tiers of medical practice—the very antithesis of the original National Health Service ideal. As one noble Lord has already said in this debate, it represents apartheid in medicine in this country. The practice of medicine is an entity. It may be quantified by bureaucracy, although that is difficult enough, but it cannot be qualified by dogma without great detriment to the community at large.
This debate, being only a Second Reading, is probably not the place to introduce detailed consideration of the many contentious matters contained in the Bill, but I venture to mention one or two as, very sadly, I shall be leaving the country shortly, though not because of the Bill, and will be absent for the rest of the discussion. Therefore I should like to mention one or two rather general aspects.
I note that despite all the detailed methods described in the Bill for withdrawing private beds from National Health Service hospitals no mention is made of means for establishing such accommodation in areas where provision is inadequate or absent. And these areas do exist. It would he very interesting to learn of the use which has been made of private accommodation which has already been vacated. This point has just been mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Young, among others. It would not seem that the creation of office space, of storerooms, or even of its use for geriatric patients, who obviously can only be indifferently cared for in single room accommodation, are justifiable purposes to which to put previously fully used general medical beds.
Again, in today's age and in these present economic conditions, can there be the slightest justification for the financial outlay which is inherent in implementing the measures included in the Bill? Apart from the admitted loss of a substantial sum from private patients' accommodation fees, a sum which, as noble Lords have heard, has been variously estimated but

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is probably at least £20 million a year, there are boards to be set up and staffed not only centrally but also in Scotland and Wales. And I ask myself, not understanding these things, what is to happen in Northern Ireland? Inspectorates are to be set up and paid for and there is to be yet more paper work, more form filling and more bureaucratic waste of time and work. Is this not a most profligate waste of funds, funds which are urgently needed in other spheres of the Service?
And yet again—I know that this point has been mentioned already—is it really necessary to bring into the Bill that well worn red herring of waiting lists and queue jumping? There is only one reason for waiting lists and that is the shortage of operating theatre accommodation and of the staff to put into them. This shortage requires extra funding facilities, and those we are now going to spend upon setting up the unnecessary measures suggested in the Bill. For no really valid reason the Bill proposes to squander financial resources on measures which achieve nothing either for National Health Service or for private patients.
Your Lordships will be well aware by now that I am no politician and what I am about to propose may be administratively impossible, or even constituttionally out of order. But what a simply magnificent gesture it would be on the part of the Government if they offered, under existing circumstances, to withdraw the Bill, even temporarily, or perhaps, as has been suggested before, to refer it to the Royal Commission for study (for this is where it surely belongs) so that, as the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, has said, it can be put into perspective in the context of the medical set-up of this country as a whole. A magnanimous gesture of this kind not only would instil a breath of fresh air into the turgid hours that we have spent in this Chamber during the last few weeks, but would raise a cry of joy from the medical profession and do untold good in healing the disastrous rifts which have occurred in the last year between the medical profession and the Government. It would show a genuine desire for genuine co-operation and this is what is so very badly needed. By avoiding putting at risk the standards of British medicine, which are so dear to the hearts of all of us who are medical
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men both in this country and overseas, it would achieve what, after all, is surely the prime, initial and continuing object of the National Health Service—the best possible medical care for all patients in this country.
6.37 p.m.
Lord AUCKLAND: My Lords, one of the more impressive features of this somewhat depressing debate has been the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Stone, to which the whole House listened with enormous interest and respect. We hope that we shall often hear from the noble Lord.
I must echo what my noble friend Lady Young has said about the timing of the Bill. Certainly I exclude the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, from any blame. All those who know him and his contribution to medical matters have a deep respect for what he has done and what he will continue to do, whether or not we always agree with his point of view. However, it is an intolerable situation when the careers of many who are in medicine now, and, above all, of many who are planning to enter the profession—not to mention the most important people of all, the patients, who are so very conscientiously looked after by our doctors, whether they are British or Commonwealth doctors—are going to be very seriously jeopardised by many of the provisions of the Bill.
I must say at once that I have never been a private patient, nor have any members of my family, and I am never likely to be one. We have always received the very best treatment from the National Health Service. Recently, I re-read the debates which were held in the middle and late 1940s on the National Health Service. I believe that the country owes a considerable debt to the late right honourable Member for Ebbw Vale for introducing the Service, despite all the resulting problems and shortcomings. If he were alive today, just what he would be thinking of this legislation as at present drafted I do not know, but I have a shrewd feeling that he would be very disappointed at much of it.
Much of what I wish to say I will save, if I possibly can, for the Committee stage of the Bill. But, as other noble Lords have said, and particularly those in the medical profession, I feel that this shuttlecock on the National Health Service which

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is being passed from Government to Government is immensely damaging; but I am bound to say from these Benches that I had no more enthusiasm for the reorganisation of the National Health Service which was carried out by the Conservative Party than I have for this Bill. I must make that point; I should be very much less than sincere if I did not because I served, as have many other noble Lords (I have mentioned this in your Lordships' House before and I apologise for repeating it), prior to reorganisation, on the house committees of both a children's hospital and a mental hospital. It is no use crying over spilt milk: the fact is that reorganisation has taken place. It is obviously not in order to discuss it on a measure of this kind, except to say that a great deal of the demoralisation of the National Health Service has hitherto been caused by this, although I believe that those who work in the Area Health Authorities and the community health centres are doing their jobs as diligently as their terms of reference allow.
We now have a Bill on which, admittedly, there has been some consultation with the doctors but I submit that there has been not nearly enough. In many ways the Bill has been ill thought out and I believe that one of its worst aspects is the second Schedule, which mentions the number of beds which are to be phased out, among them as I understand it, the first 1,000 within the first six months from the date when the Bill goes on the Statute Book, if unhappily it does so.
For example, I cannot understand why in Cambridgeshire 20 beds out of 56 are to be phased out, which is almost half. Cambridgeshire has one of our leading teaching hospitals in Addenbrookes. How are they going to fare under this? Then as my noble friend Lady Young mentioned, there is the question of the new towns. We do not quite know geographically—at least I do not—how this will work, but I should have thought that the money which is to be expended in setting up these boards would have been better spent in equipping hospitals in some of the new town areas, particularly, for example, Milton Keynes which will have at least a six figure population. How much of the money could have been diverted to that area, where there will
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be a mixed population of young, middle-aged, those in work and those who have retired? I wonder how much consideration the Government have given to that.
Then there is the future of the nurses. Many of us have daughters who are nurses; or, in my case, I have one who is 17 and is going to be a nurse. It is a very good thing for nurses to have experience in all types of medicine and in many areas—the Potteries at Stoke-on-Trent, where they meet people who may perhaps talk roughly but have hearts of gold, or the patients of the East London Hospital, which is one of the finest hospitals in the country and which I was privileged to tour not so long ago. I believe one has to give some thought to those who are not only practising at the present time but will be in the future, be they from this country or be they the overseas doctors and nurses on whom we place such reliance and who give us such faithful service, whatever the colour of their skin and whatever their nationality.
The noble Baroness, Lady Lee of Asheridge, in what I thought was a most impressive speech, even if I did not agree with every single word of it, mentioned that absorbing book In Place of Fear which I re-read not long ago and which I—and I hope all noble Lords—will reread between now and the next stage of the Bill because it has much which is germane to medicine and the National Health Service today. I listened with interest to her comments about side wards for those who are prominent politicians, and perhaps for those who are prominent in other walks of life. The only trouble with that is that if there is a shortage of nurses, as there is in many hospitals, one does in fact get better treatment in a public ward. That is a point which has to be considered, but of course the wards where there are three or four patients can give a young doctor or a young nurse a great deal of experience.
I have just two more points to make at this stage of the Bill. This debate today has one advantage. We have heard, and are going to hear more, from members of the medical profession, consultants and general practitioners. The other point—the final one—is this. We can never divorce ourselves from the fact that our National Health Service is one

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of the finest in the world. I have travelled a fair amount this year; I have been to Czechoslovakia and seen one or two very large hospitals there, with modern equipment, some of which would make the mouths water of those who are running our own big teaching hospitals. But in Czechoslovakia, too, there is a shortage of nurses and doctors. So I do not think we should necessarily blind ourselves to these facts. There is much work remaining to be done on this Bill, particularly in some of the points enunciated by the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, in his very good speech. I hope we shall get plenty of time to devote to this Bill and that it will be carried out, as it has been today, in a non-partisan but constructive manner.
There is much in the Bill that is very wrong; there is much in the Bill which is almost unworkable, and there is much in the Bill which will have a very bad effect on the morale of those working in the Health Service. I do not wish to be unduly controversial, but some of the industrial disputes have been engineered by those who do not carry out the nursing of the patients. Of course, the hospital porters and others have a perfect right to give their views, but, after all, whether it be a private hospital, a general hospital or a geriatric hospital, or whatever type it is, a hospital is run by the nurses and doctors who administer to the patients. This is what we should have in the forefront of our minds as this Bill goes through its various stages, possibly taking many long hours.
6.52 p.m.
Lord WALLACE of COSLANY: My Lords, I am not a member of the medical profession, but for over forty years I have been engaged in a campaign for a National Health Service. I was proud to be in the House at the time when the Service was introduced, and took part in the celebration dinner with the late Aneurin Bevan, the only time I have felt "tiddly" in all my life. To get back to the present day, I am involved in the lay administration of the Health Service. I bitterly regret the political battles and attacks which are being made on the Service at the present time. I am very concerned about this, but I will develop that theme later.
There is one point I should like to clear up straight away. The noble Baroness,
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Lady Young, mentioned the loss of billions of pounds to the Health Service as a result of withdrawing private beds, and other speakers have made various comments about the figures involved, but I want to know what is the actual net figure involved, because private beds in hospitals are very expensive to run. There is not only the question of the medical attention, nursing attention and the work of the ancilliary staff; there is also the cost of drugs, of equipment and of many other things, especially certain of the things supplied with the private beds that do not normally apply to an ordinary bed. So a private bed in a hospital is more expensive to administer than an ordinary bed. Therefore I should like to know what is the actual figure of loss, if any—and I am hoping to receive the information—ensuing as a result, say, of the transfer of 1,000 beds out of the private beds service. It has already been said that many of the beds are not being used anyway, so perhaps later in the debate we could have this important information.
My Lords, I do not think any noble Lord or noble Baroness will quarrel with the statement that it is an essential human right in this modern age that the sick should receive the best available treatment and care, irrespective of class, colour or wealth. I do not think anybody would object to that. At least the great majority of people, particularly on the other side of the House, will pay lip-service to it. At the moment, I am a member of the Social and Health Questions Committee of the Council of Europe. One of the problems we have been dealing with is that of people abroad, or people going to the Council of Europe area for work. We have had cases of the fantastic cost falling on individuals because they have suddenly become ill or involved in accidents and because the country concerned charges expensive fees for the treatment of the sick. Some people insure when they go on holiday, but not everybody. There are problems. We are introducing a possible health card and are trying to overcome the problem through the making of a claim on the member country of the person involved. But this is the point: that in this country we have something that the rest of the world have not but which the rest of the world admires.
I welcome the Bill because, in essence, it goes a long way to ensure that in the

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State Health Service the possession of wealth shall not purchase priority or, indeed—and this is a point that should be borne in mind—carry the feeling that some payment of fees can produce a cure or prolong life. I know there are some people who pay fees in the desperate hope that such payment will secure a medical miracle to prolong a life. It is a fact, and we cannot ignore it, that in many cases queue-jumping does take place. It is no good dodging the question; queue-jumping does take place. I do not object to private health schemes outside the National Health Service, although we must bear in mind that the great majority of doctors in such services in any case will have received their expensive training and experience in the State Health Service, much of it at public expense. In fact, private schemes as they exist today could not exist if it were not for the doctors attracted or extracted from the Health Service.
One of the arguments for pay beds in National Health Service hospitals is that they ensure privacy for the patient. This argument overlooks the fact that amenity beds will continue to exist, and in any case the need for a room away from the ward should be based primarily on medical need. As I know full well from my own experience, in many cases where the medical need is evident and it is possible to do it the doctors cut out the regulations and the patients get the private rooms they need because of the state of their health. That applies not only to amenity beds but to the private beds as well.
Even today, when we refer to private schemes I would point out that they have their limits. For instance, only a few days ago we heard that BUPA has now stated that they are not prepared to continue the care of many elderly members needing long-term care; the extremely difficult problem of the care of the chronic sick and of geriatric nursing is for the National Health Service alone—in other words, private treatment is selective; it takes the plums and leaves the problems.
This Bill has received, and will receive, the strongest opposition from the Conservative Party. This comes as no great surprise to me, remembering their strong
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reputation as the Party of privilege. Their support for the National Health Service is lukewarm and certainly suspect. I remember that they voted against the National Health Service on the Third Reading of the Bill in the other place when the Health Service Act was brought in. It was a Conservative Government that created the reorganisation of the Service which today has created a bureaucratic system strangling patient care with excessive cost and remote impersonal control—I would say, apart from the argument of the consultants on the pay beds, one of the primary causes of unrest in the Health Service in our hospitals today.
Now reports are coming out of the recommendations of the Conservative Working Party which, if adopted, could wreck a Service which has gained the world's respect. The right of an individual to purchase privileged treatment outside the National Health Service because of ability to pay or through subscriptions or fees to private schemes, I would not challenge; that is the right of the individual. But to suggest that those schemes should be boosted by generous tax reliefs at the expense of the State Service and the majority of tax payers is downright immoral. Yet such proposals, if the reports are accurate, are being put forward to the Conservative Party. At the risk of electoral defeat, Conservatives would adopt those proposals, although it would be outrageous if they were brought into effect.
This is a Bill of principle and not of political Party dogma. The principle behind it is need rather than ability to pay, the very basis of the National Health Service as originally conceived and of which many of us are greatly proud. We wish it to overcome its difficulties and become the great ideal which Aneurin Bevan and many others had in mind but which is today being frustrated by political dogma, not from this side but from the other side of the House.
7.2 p.m.
Baroness FAITHFULL: My Lords, I am the fifteenth speaker in this afternoon's debate and everything that I had intended to say has been said. However, unashamedly I intend to say it again. I wish at the outset to pay tribute to the

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noble Lord, Lord Stone, for his maiden speech. I am not a doctor, but I have cause to be very grateful to the medical profession and I speak as an ordinary person. I speak against the Bill, but in doing so I recognise that there is much to be said on both sides of the question whether private pay beds should eventually be abolished or should remain in the Health Service.
These arguments concern certain specific areas but they are, I submit, indicative though irrelevant to the main issue. The specific areas of contention are well known and have been referred to many times today and therefore I will not speak for too long on each. On the question of queue jumping and queues generally, I support the noble Lord, Lord Porritt, in wondering why this position has not been referred to the Royal Commission which, after all, was set up to consider the best use and management of the financial and manpower resources. If a system could be worked out to prevent queue jumping to give a good service to both National Health and private patients, which in many cases is received at present, that would dispose of the allegation made by the right honourable Mrs. Barbara Castle when she said in another place that the argument over pay beds was fundamentally one about money and nothing else because money was made out of queue jumping. It would have been scientific, realistic and enormously helpful if the Royal Commission could have looked into this and could have suggested a system by which queue jumping was dealt with; that is, if queue jumping exists to any great extent.
The second area is dual standards. What are these dual standards? I can find in Hansard of the debate in another place no reference to dual standards in medical treatment by doctors. So far as I could see, the dual standards applied to such things as food, and here again, with proper management, this need not be so and indeed the difference in diet between National Health and private patients does not exist in many hospitals. In another place the Minister talked of the marriage of pay beds and the National Health Service and said that it had not been a happy one and that there had been intensity of feeling in hospitals. Why is there this feeling and where does it come from? The number of pay beds in the
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National Health Service, as has been said many times in this debate, represents only 1 per cent. of the total. It is perhaps understandable that nurses and ancillary staff might think that they should be paid extra for working with patients who are paying a fee to the National Health Service. Again, surely this situation could be looked at, either by the Health Service or by the Commission. It cannot be an insuperable problem and it should therefore be dealt with.
Those who are against the Bill make specific points. The cost to the taxpayer is estimated to be £3 million rising to £20 million in 1980. The money coming in now to the Health Service as a result of pay beds is difficult to estimate, as has been pointed out, but it should be known that the chairman of an area committee told me with despair that four months' income from the private use of National Health Service beds would build phase two of his general district hospital. Can we afford to lose this money?
With regard to the desire for privacy and the right to chose one's consultant, and pay heavily for doing so, is it so very anti-social? It is a question of preference. Two Cowley workers on the shop floor at British Leyland commented to me on this subject. One man said that he was paying into the British United Provident Association because, "My old Dutch likes privacy and when she's ill she's going to have it". The other said, "My wife likes the gaiety of a public ward but I prefer privacy, so I will pay". Surely people have the right to choose.
I have touched on but a few points in a glancing way. The reality of the situation, contrary to what has been said, is that the Government and the doctors are looking at the Bill from entirely different standpoints. I would very much welcome a philosophical debate with the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, with perhaps a Prelate in the chair, because the noble Lord has described this as a moral issue. Is it really a moral issue? Is it not a question of political ideology, to which people are of course entitled? Cannot we be honest and say that it is not a moral issue but one of politics? It cannot be for economic or medical reasons or because it will greatly benefit the patient. It is hard to see how the patients will receive a better service from

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the doctors because 1 per cent. of pay beds are removed from the Service. Could it be that the abolition of pay beds is dictated by certain sectors, other staff, in the Hospital Service?
On the other hand, as the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, said, doctors are not political beings; they are not interested in politics. In medical policies, yes, but in politics, no. They are committed to their hospitals and the medical care of their patients, some might say so much so that in the past they have tended to be isolates, but I think that this has passed. Since the passing of the 1946 Act they have made the National Health Service work by putting in long hours and giving good service. Why else do people come to this country for medical treatment? I suggest that the doctors apprehend that the Bill is the first step along a road which will eventually threaten their freedom to practise as their professional skills dictate, and they fear the break-up of the spirit of the Service which has characterised it for so long. They foresee that eventually the patients could receive a poorer service. Medical practice will be dictated to by the bureaucratic machinery and eventually professional freedom will be eroded and the practice of medicine will be subservient to bureaucratic controls.
Upon what am I basing this statement? In a new hospital which I know there is no room for the doctors to meet together. Such a common room is essential to the doctor's trade, and to the service of the patient. It affords privacy for a doctor to discuss his cases with colleagues, to share his worries with friends, to receive advice and support from colleagues, and in it, instead of going home, he can wait for his patient to come round after an operation. Such a room enables doctors to work better. In a hospital that I know doctors have requested such a room to help them and have been refused on the grounds that, if they have a room, the cleaners should have one and, if the cleaners have one, the porters should have one. I believe that the cleaners and the porters should have one. I believe that the cleaners and the porters should have a room, though I do not believe that they need a room in order to do their work better. If they had one, they might be happier and more sociable. But the doctors need a room for the sake of the
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patients and I maintain that, in the building of hospitals, if we are going to say that we cannot afford a room for the cleaners and the porters and that therefore the doctors cannot have one, we are yielding to bureaucratic inflexibility.
Lord CASTLE: My Lords, can the noble Baroness indicate in what section of the Bill the building of hospitals and the provisions in those hospitals are provided for?
Baroness FAITHFULL: My Lords, the noble Lord knows the Bill as well as I do. I am talking about the future and about how the doctors see their future if the pay beds go out of the National Health Service and they lose their independence. That is what they are concerned about.
Secondly, I should like to mention the chairman of a Health Authority who wrote in October 1975 to the right honourable Barbara Castle asking why, in the Consultative Document on the separation of private practice from the National Health Service, Area Health Boards were not included in the consultations. Such lack of consultation by Whitehall gives cause for concern. It is such instances as these which concern the doctors for the future of the National Health Service they have served so well. Furthermore, they foresee a polarisation of the National Health Service and the private sector and, despite what is said, doctors care not only about the 1 per cent. of private patients but also about the 99 per cent. of National Health patients.
7.14 p.m.
Lord BROCK: My Lords, in discussing this difficult, unwelcome and poorly thought out Bill, I begin, like so many other noble Lords, by referring to the original arrangements of 1948 which recognised the great advantages that would follow from obtaining the cooperation of doctors in the organisation of the National Health Service. By arranging that some private practice was to be allowed in the NHS hospitals, it added to the efficiency of the Service by ensuring that doctors who wished to do some private practice were able to do so on a geographical full-time basis. This not only helped the doctors but also helped the patients and the National Health Service. So much has been written and spoken

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about this 1948 arrangement that I do not wish to expand upon it further, but it is necessary to emphasise how successful it was. It has worked much to the benefit of patients in the National Health Service. Indeed, in 1972 it was the subject of a White Paper in which it was decided that the advantages were so greatly to the benefit of the National Health Service that it should be continued. Now, almost 30 years after that start of the National Health Service, as the noble Lord, Lord Porritt, has emphasised, we are confronted with a Bill that seeks to alter this successful and honourable arrangement. However, when we examine the Bill carefully, we find that many of its contents are uncertain and that many things in it are ill-digested and have not been thought out to their logical conclusion.
We live in times of economic stress and it is certain that savings must be made and additional expenditure avoided, yet those who control our destiny do not seem to be aware of this. Take, for instance, the cost to the National Health Service of the closure of pay beds. It has been estimated that when we add to the loss in revenue from paying patients the extra cost of employing more consultants full time instead of part time, this will result in a loss of some £40 million a year. The Minister of State declares that this is far too large a sum and that this Department estimates the extra cost at only some £7 million to £8 million a year, and even that figure has virtually doubled over the last few weeks. It is very difficult to reconcile such a difference, but at any rate the Minister admits that he is aware that the closure of pay beds will result in extra cost. However, he thinks that it is worth it.
I find it difficult to accept a statement that at a time of financial crisis such as we are facing, any extra expenditure is justified, especially when there are so many things against it. It is characteristic of so many statements that are made in an attempt to justify this cruel and spiteful action. They can only be described as glib. Not only are such statements glib and even naive but, when one seeks to inquire into their full significance, one finds that they are far from complete—are, in fact, grossly incomplete and have just not been fully worked out. I should like to take one or two specific points and try to get a clear and logical amplification
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of what they signify. It is proposed that, initially, a thousand beds should be closed and that this number will steadily increase. I can understand how this will affect the total number of pay beds in a National Health hospital, but I just cannot get precise information about how this will affect private wings or blocks which are attached to the larger teaching hospitals both in London and the Provinces. Almost without exception, these were originally given by private acts of benevolence. An example is Nuffield House, which was given by Lord Nuffield to assist people of "moderate means".
I understand that Parliament has power to overrule any charitable request and, since 1948, has gathered all these private wings under the control of the Minister of State. I can understand that they should fall into his possession to continue as hospital accommodation within the National Health Service, but I do not see how the Minister can justify their closure as accommodation for sick people and their use for a different purpose such as offices. We have been told that this has been done at University College Hospital. Suppose that 10 per cent. of a private wing with 75 beds or rooms is to be closed: what is to happen to the seven or eight beds thus put out of action? Are they to be used as offices or store rooms or for some lesser purpose, connected in a feeble way with the care of patients, but in no way comparable to the way they have hitherto been used? Or are they to be neutralised and left to collect dust? These are important matters, and I can see no directive or explanation of what is to be done with this accommodation and what is to be its ultimate fate. How far has this been worked out in a serious and responsible way, having regard to the importance of our scarce accommodation for patient care?
There is another glib statement that is made in connection with pay beds, another bare statement that does not seem to have been worked out or even thought through to its conclusion. It is stated that British nationals, for whom these beds were provided by a act of charity or benevolence, may not use them as pay beds but that foreigners—that is, people from overseas—can do so. It is also stated that the fees that these overseas patients will have to pay for their treatment will be taken by the Government, and that

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the doctors and others connected with this treatment, often of a highly skilled and responsible nature, will receive no fee apart from their full-time salary. I ask; has the full significance of this step been carefully considered and has the resultant disorder and dissatisfaction that will accrue been fully thought through?
I am told that many of these overseas patients will be accepted under an arrangement between a foreign Government and the Department of Health, often a sort of package deal. This is largely conjecture as no precise information has been given. But I can foresee all kinds of difficulties in such an arrangement. Who, for instance, is to look after the investigation and treatment of the patients? Ordinarily the selection of a consultant or specialist depends on a personal arrangement and recommendation made by the patients' own doctor and results from his knowledge and consideration of the skill and achievement of the consultant. He advises the patient who to go to and the patient trusts him. At once we encounter a difficulty. If the patient's doctor suggests Dr. X to take care of his patient, is some administrator in an office going to direct him to Dr. Y or Dr. Z, as may well happen if Dr. X has heavy commitments?
Another thing, there must be a limit to what any doctor can undertake or be organised into doing. I think especially of those surgeons concerned with the more complex and generally more exacting operations, such as neurosurgery, hip replacements or open heart surgery. As I am more familiar with the circumstances, I take this last as an example. Not only the surgeon but the whole team work for many hours on an operation, say until well into the evening. But their involvement does not finish then. They must be alert and on duty for the whole night at least and often they have to do a secondary operation when things are not going smoothly. This period of anxious post-operative care may continue for two, three, or more days, and in the meantime one or more open heart patients have to be operated on. The sum total of effort over a week may be almost intolerable and virtually ruins any maintenance of family or social life.
In this matter I foresee that the limits
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of human endurance can be reached, and therein I see that a great deal of trouble is being laid up. It certainly impairs the efficient running of the National Health Service. In fact, it can lead to the dangers of refusal to work—something to be avoided at all costs, as the noble Lord, Lord Platt, has emphasised. I emphasise what an unsatisfactory state can be engendered by a Government directive not being thought through as it should be. Even the full-time academic who does not expect to receive a personal fee is going to object to being exploited to excess.
I am worried about the future of overseas patients. At present their reception and treatment brings much added prestige to Great Britain and this should not be allowed to suffer or to decline. It is, however, something that can easily be damaged if it is handled carelessly or without imagination. From a profit point of view alone—I mean profit to the country—it may not be significant. It is scarcely as important as the sale of aeroplanes, tanks or motor cars, but it does have its own intrinsic economic value. But even more important is the prestige factor. I think that we should be careful of not driving these overseas patients away from Great Britain to other European countries or to America.
I am also worried about the curtailment or cessation of out-patient facilities for the use of private patients, either from overseas or from this country. Great harm to patients can be done by interfering with the facilities and services they can now use. Let us remember that patients from this country have already paid for their treatment and deserve to receive it. They should scarcely be prevented from having it just because they have to pay a special private fee to the National Health Service for it. I think especially of the use of highly specialised equipment, such as for deep x-ray therapy, and of complex diagnostic procedures and the special investigation of neurosurgical and heart diseases, and of cancer in its many forms. Surely nothing should be done to prevent patients from using these facilities, whether they are foreigners or our own nationals. Arrangements can always be made so that their use of the special apparatus does not interfere with its use for National Health Service patients.

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I have tried to speak of certain features of the Bill that I think present dangers to our care of patients and are to be avoided. From the experiences of your Lordships' House during the past two to three weeks, in which you have been faced with a torrent of difficult and controversial legislation to be rushed through in a short time, a seems that there is little or no point in attempting to advance even reasonable contrary arguments and Amendments. They will only be brushed aside when the Bill returns to another place. It would be good if we could feel that good sense and reason would prevail, but there seems little hope that it will do so; it will be faced with blind and stubborn prejudice.
Lastly, throughout the many months that this sad business of private treatment and the National Health Service has been going on, there is one more feature that has impressed me very much. Somewhere about one half of the personnel of the National Health Service are full-time and are not engaged in private practice. One would have thought that this moiety would not be interested in the matter of its curtailment, impairment, and even its possible obliteration. It is, however, a remarkable fact that even the full-timers, especially the younger ones, have reacted very adversely to what is planned. They fear of course a complete loss of professional freedom. The medical profession are united in their distaste for it and have closed their ranks. Surely this is a very significant happening that cannot be ignored, and to ignore it is bound to lead to increasing trouble and unrest.
7.26 p.m.
Lord O'HAGAN: My Lords, I was born shortly before the National Health Service started, and therefore to somebody of my age the National Health Service is as much a part of the structure of Britain as your Lordships' House. I hope that during the ensuing stages of the Bill Members of this House who were Members of another place and remember the 1945 Parliament, will not be tempted to re-use their speeches from that era. I support the National Health Service fully; I believe in it; I wish it had more resources; I wish it could work better; and that is one of the reasons why I wish we were talking about that wider subject rather than about the limited area we are debating today,
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which is solely concerned with 4,000 beds—1 per cent. of the provision of the National Health Service.
I cannot claim to be an expert in this field. I feel rather similar to English Peers who intervene in a Scottish debate. One has a certain increased sense of one's daring in trespassing on the territory which is normally reserved for the specialist. But there are some points which the Bill raises which go beyond questions of medicine and go beyond the organisation of the National Health Service, and I should like to raise some of them. They are points to do with the liberty of the subject, the proper place of freedom under the law in our society, and they relate to the kind of considerations which my noble and learned friend Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone has been discussing, and I very much hope that I will not drive away the noble Lord, Lord Houghton of Sowerby, because I feel that they are some of the points which he found to be of interest during our deliberations on the Race Relations Bill.
I reject completely the attitude of the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, that there is some moral superiority in the stand of the Government on this issue. I do not think that compassion is the prerogative of any one political Party. I do not think that concern about the state of our society and provision for those who are ill or less fortunate is something which any political Party can seriously claim to monopolise or to command the right to speak about as if it did. I reject this. If the noble Baroness, Lady Lee of Asheridge, said that part of the reason for the Bill was the spirit of the age (and she meant particularly the concern of the ancillary workers—the cooks and the cleaners—who felt that it was unjust in 1976 that somehow the private patients should have special treatment, despite the historic compromise that had worked so well for so many years) then I say to her, and I say to the Government, that there is something else in the spirit of the age. There is an increasing distrust of the encroachment of the State. There is an increasing worry about the liberty of the individual to choose. There is an increasing anxiety that those who have been trained to do specific jobs are not going to be allowed to do them by the diktat of a minority Government which does not represent the whole country. My Lords, it is these libertarian and constitutional

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issues which I feel have a very real importance in our considerations of this Bill, and I am going to attempt to say one or two things about them, because I do feel they have a place, even if they do not at first blush seem to arise when one is looking at a Bill that deals with pay beds in the National Health Service.
My Lords, I do not think that the way that this Bill has arrived in your Lordships' House is satisfactory. It is alleged that it is part of a Manifesto pledge, and that may be so, but this Bill was not prepared by the Government. It is, if you like, the result of private practice. It was farmed out to somebody outside the Government to resolve a conflict which the Government themselves had not been able to resolve. It is no use the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, looking angry when I say that; it is true.
If we had a Bill of Rights or a written Constitution—and I am not saying that we should, but if we did—in which the rights of the subject were detailed and with entrenched clauses so that they were preserved, many of the anxieties that worry individuals and the professions would not arise. If doctors were allowed to get on with their work, and if their rights to do so were entrenched in a written Constitution, there would be no question of a Government's coming along and prohibiting their so doing. That may sound exaggerated and, of course, I do not want to attempt to undercut what other noble Lords have said about the importance of creating an atmosphere of trust. I hope that we, in our proceedings on this Bill at the Committee stage, will do what we can to improve it, but I think that when we are discussing the Bill on Second Reading we must look at the principles of the Bill, if it has any principles or can be said to have any principles, and we must also examine the principles behind the Bill. We must look at the reasons why we have the Bill at all and we must try to examine what we should do with the Bill in the context of its parentage.
My Lords, I have a special reason for intervening in this debate. It is that my wife and I happen to support a particular type of medicine which is not available on the National Health Service; it is homeopathy. In some countries, where the liberty of the subject is not as well
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entrenched as it is here, I should not be able to do so. I have a special reason, therefore, for wondering whether this Bill and the pressures which led to it are the beginnings of a process which will end up with the individual's right to choose the type of medicine he likes being prohibited. That is something that I feel we should take seriously, and it is not enough for those who do not think we should take this seriously to say that this is mere sabre-rattling and bogey-mongering.
In the Consultative Document that they issued in September, 1974, the Government sought to examine the reasons for the troubles that they were considering legislating about, and in paragraph 7 they said:
"The simplest way of resolving these tensions and controversy is to abolish private medicine entirely. To be effective this would require legislation specifically banning the practice of private medicine. Such an obvious solution has its strong adherents, though they are almost certainly a minority. It is perfectly possible to argue against any such ban while strongly disapproving of private medicine."
They went on to say in paragraph 8:
"It is the clear and openly stated policy of the present Government that it does not believe that private medicine is something which deserves the support of the State."
And then this is the sentence on which I wish to concentrate:
"The Government does not, however, believe it is desirable to express such a policy in the form of legislation designed to ban private medicine."
My Lords, how cautiously phrased that is! It does not say "We will never ban private medicine." It does not say "We think it would be wrong to ban private medicine." It simply says, "The Government does not believe it is desirable to express such a policy in the form of legislation designed to ban private medicine".
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, would the noble Lord give way? I covered that point. I made it perfectly clear when I spoke that the Government has no further plans to attack—if you like to use the word—private medicine or to ban it or to outlaw it. I should have thought that point was perfectly clear. I made the point very early on.
Lord O'HAGAN: My Lords, I wrote the noble Lord's words down. He said, "The Government has no plans to ban

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private medicine". He has repeated them, and I will refer to them in detail when I reach that point in my argument. Whatever the statements of the Government as a whole, there obviously are those inside the Government, and certainly inside the Labour movement, who wanted private medicine to be banned; and you have only to read the Second Reading debate in another place to see that there are members of the Labour Party who want private medicine to be banned.
The second quotation that I want to make—and I want to be fair to the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell; I will be returning to his argument after I have made my second quotation—is from a statement that the Government made in its Consultative Document of August, 1975. It justified the proposals in this Bill on the basis of their being promised in a Manifesto, but in this Consultative Document, published in August, 1975, the Government said:
"Quantitative control"
that is, quantitative control over private practice—
"was designed to ensure that private medical care would not be allowed to grow beyond that which obtained within and outside the National Health Service in March, 1974."
That was a statement that the Government made in 1975. That statement was not promised in a Manifesto, in either of the Manifestos, in 1974, yet that statement envisages, if you like, a freeze on the extension of private medical treatment.
My Lords, whatever the Government may say about having no plans to crack down on private medicine or restrict its growth, the fact is that in their Consultative Document in 1974 they did not promise to preserve private medicine and in their Consultative Document the following year they introduced a new restriction on private medicine which was not promised in either of their Manifestos. I trust the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell. I like him. I do not think he is a Trotskyist or reads the works of Che Guevara at night. I am sure that he enjoys Miss Redgrave's acting and is not a member of the Workers' Revolutionary Party. But I think that those of us who are concerned about some of the actions of this Government are concerned because we see a shift in the centre of gravity inside the Labour movement which is reflected in a
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shift in the centre of gravity inside the Labour Party and therefore, inevitably, inside a Labour Government. It is remarkable, and worth remarking upon, that no legislation of this sort came forward during the 1964 to 1970 Administration.
I do not wish to stand here and say that this Bill is the beginning of the end of Western democracy. I do not wish to make wild exaggerations, but I do wish to say to your Lordships that when we are examining this Bill in detail at the Committee stage we should be looking at it in the context of the strengthening and development of the National Health Service. Yes, of course. But we should also be looking at its consequences for the liberty of the subject, for the freedom of professions to practise in a free society and for its constitutional implications. Because whatever the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, may come and say here to us in the role of a slightly more substantial Ariel and then flit off again, he cannot commit this Government or the next Labour Government. Because of the sovereignty of Parliament, to which prominent members of this Government are always referring, no Government can bind a future Government, and the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, cannot bind the future Labour Government.
Therefore, my Lords, if we detect a shift in the attitude of the Labour Party and the Labour Government towards private medicine there is no use writing safeguards into this Bill. Only history will tell us whether our fears are justified. I hope that when we examine this Bill in Committee we shall be able to extract some more substantial commitment from the Government, some more firm and binding undertaking to which they can be held, that this Bill is not the thin end of the wedge or even the thin end of the Wedgwood Benn.
7.43 p.m.
Lord GISBOROUGH: My Lords, I was interested, when I read about the Royal Commission in October 1975, to see that public beds were not to be discussed in this Royal Commission. One could not help thinking that perhaps this was because the Government realised that there was no case for it and they would be frightened of the result. The demand for private beds is amply demonstrated by the number of people who

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insure themselves for health. Many people insure themselves privately out of their taxed income and they do it by choice. Some people perhaps have colour television, other people like to drink, others like to go betting and smoke; and some like to insure. It seems to me that there is no reason why the man who insures should be at a disadvantage to the man who drinks, which is what is happening. The Government virtually tell the squanderer that he will be in no way treated second to the provident man who has looked forward and tried to protect himself and his family by contributing to insurance. I suppose that this will be fundamentally disagreed to by the Party opposite.
As well as people having their own insurance arrangements, some firms pay for the insurance of their employees. I think it was extremely mean of the Government in April 1976 to make employees pay income tax on benefits received from insurances paid for by their firms. These health provisions contributed to a better relationship between employees and employers, which is a good thing: and it is essential for key personnel, as was brought out by the noble Baroness, Lady Lee. The noble Lord, Lord Goodman, rightly suggested that not too much attention should be paid to the campaigners against pay beds who themselves use pay beds. I should like to say that the number of well known politicians who go to pay beds are blatant examples of saying one thing and doing another. It is an extreme example of poor leadership. This sort of thing brings politicians into contempt.
The figures of numbers insured have been given several times. There were half a million in 1955 and these have doubled and redoubled to 2½ million in 1974. In addition, many people who are uninsured use private medicine. We know that no less than 38 per cent. of those who use the Nuffield Nursing Home are uninsured. Some 3 million people plus their families share 5,000 pay beds as well as the private sector. Some 11,000 people in 1974 used those 5,000 pay beds. Out of a total of 490,000, that is 1 per cent. and is really nothing.
In Hammersmith Hospital, which is typical, the pay beds are all in public
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wards. They are not particular beds; they are any beds. They can be one bed one week, and another the next. The food is all out of one kitchen and is described as equally bad for all. The fact that some of the beds are private pay beds in no way interferes with the patients there under the National Health Service. The noble Lord said that these beds take up facilities set aside for National Health patients; but this is not true. They do not in practice interfere at all with National Health patients.
The increase in the number of people who are insured is an encouraging trend. More and more people seem to want to have private medical provision. This includes many unions. The National Union of Seamen have agreements for some of their workers so that they can have private medical treatment. There is growing opposition to the Party policy within NALGO; although others in NALGO have been suborned to use their privileged position to file objections to new hospitals planned in their areas. Manor House Hospital is frequented by many trade unions. All this use in the private sector is a good thing because it relieves the strain on the National Health Service. The public demand for private medicine is expressed by the expenditure which many people pay out of their own pockets on insurance—even those who are violently opposed to the system. This expenditure which they are prepared to forego is rewarded now by the licensing controls over the building of new hospitals so that it will be difficult to put up any new private hospitals to meet the demand and virtually all increase will be stopped.
Government is surely meant to be by the people, for the people, and in this case including the people who are provident and wish to have private medicine. This Bill is regardless of the interests of people and the wishes of people; regardless of the interests of medicine and the interests of efficiency; and regardless of the interest of cost. It could be said that it is government by some militant unions for their political ideals. As for the surgeons, they need freedom to practise in the locations where they operate for their National Health patients. It is an enormous advantage for them to have their private patients in the same hospitals. If they have to go from one National Health hospital to a nursing home for their

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private patients, it seems to me that this travel represents extremely valuable time wasted. Furthermore—and I am sure this has been mentioned several times before—while at one hospital, they cannot deal with an emergency at another.
There is also the question of the duplication of expensive equipment which is unnecessary. By having plenty of pay beds in National Health hospitals you get better value from the doctors and from the equipment. The Government may say that they are not against private practice in private hospitals, but if there are no pay beds then the areas suffer and doctors will tend not to want to go to these areas. They do not like operating in nursing homes if this can he avoided. It has been said that in Scotland there are no pay beds, but conditions there are rather different. There are only three centres and they seem to get along without pay beds; they are used to the system. By and large patients are not referred to Scottish hospitals as they would he in England; therefore there is less opportunity for doctors there to gain the wide experience that they would in English hospitals.
Out of London there is less private practice and there will be greater pressure for consultants to be full time. This will make them more dependent on the National Health Service and also subject them to ever-growing union pressure. For example, one North-West consultant is at present suspended through union pressure as the result of a case where he found unexplained injuries to children in a hospital. The union took exception, with the result that he is temporarily suspended. A situation could build up where, to some extent, a consultant might put his own livelihood at risk through the threat of the unions and would have to weigh it up against complaining about conditions that might be detrimental to patients.
I am told that morale in the Hammersmith Hospital is the lowest it has ever been, and one assistant is going off to Canada in December. In another hospital in the North I am told that young doctors are "bolshie" and everyone is upset, and again one consultant is off to Australia. We have the continuation of a situation which was mentioned on 8th October in another place by the Secretary of State. She said that
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in 1976 106 consultants and registrars resigned from the Health Service to emigrate abroad. After December 1976 there will also be the freer movement throughout the EEC which will allow people to go at a faster rate if they wish. Junior doctors have accepted what they consider to be low pay on the assumption that they would eventually have some private practice, and they are upset that they will be unable to have a private practice. However, if some of the reassurance suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, is put into practice, this will go some way towards helping the situation.
As regards reward, in many cases without private practice there will be less reward. One consultant said that, just like dockers, they would work less like anybody else. However, the question of reward does not seem to be of high priority. Many of the salaries from private practice go into research. In the Hammersmith case, where consultants are part-time and get fees for private practice, they keep only 20 per cent. and 80 per cent. goes into school research. In some other hospitals consultants say that the amount they get from private practice rarely makes up for the difference between the health fees they would get from being full-time or part-time in the National Health Service.
The argument that there is queue jumping seems to be fairly strong and yet the Expenditure Committee in another place in March 1972 declared that the practice was only marginal and that there were other causes for the long waiting lists. If queue-jumping is the problem, surely it is only necessary to implement Clause 6 on common waiting lists. By proceeding with the whole Bill the Government are admitting that queue-jumping is not the real factor. It might appear that common waiting lists will solve the problem, but I am assured that no such policy will work because family commitments and other causes upset the waiting lists. In the North, and I expect also in other hospitals, queue-jumping is a myth; anybody who is ill gets in straightaway and there is no problem.
It has been suggested that staff resources would be released by the absence of pay beds and that 2,500 extra beds would be available. This is nonsense. The 5,000

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private beds would be available; but they would be at extra cost to the State rather than private patients—perhaps £3 million in the first year and £20 million in 1980. Of course the health authorities will have this made up by the Government, but it all comes out of tax. For instance in Teesside there are, at the moment, 20 pay beds and no private nursing homes. But at any one time there are about 200 empty beds, so the release of these 20 private beds would make no difference. They could merely remove the choice from the patient and from the doctor. It seems to us to be nothing but pointless political dogma.
There is much to criticise in the National Health Service, but pay beds are unworthy of criticism. To discuss them at all is a sad waste of time, energy and cost to the country, because they have very little effect in the National Health Service. The big demand for private medicine will be ignored. It brings in revenue, encourages the medical profession and serves a good purpose. Instead of the Government grousing about their countrymen who are provident and thrifty and look after themselves and their families by putting aside insurance, they should think constructively and try to build rather than pull down. The Health Service is almost paralysed for lack of money; staff feel themselves underpaid and casualty departments are abused. I am advised that, instead of going to their own doctors, many patients go to the casualty department.
For years the nation has been taught to think about public services; everything must be free. But, in fact, the Government pay and nothing is free, and people are just beginning to realise this. Everything has to be paid for out of taxes. When things appear to be free people take advantage. There is a limited amount of money and we are seeing deteriorating services, closing of hospitals and so on. I would prefer to see us going in the other direction and everybody having to pay when they go to hospital. Obviously many people would be unable to pay, but those who can should have to pay, perhaps for food or some aspect of hospital care. This would bring more respect to the services and less frivolous use; and soon the overall cost would be reduced and the service improved.
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Overall it would be cheaper, as a result, for everybody. With the situation as it is, with the hospitals closing and the shortage of cash, even though the idea of people paying may be unpleasant it may sooner or later be forced on the country. This is a dreary and pointless Bill. I do not think it creates; I think it destroys. The overstretched Service is now to be further hampered, not for medical reasons but purely for political pressures.
8.1 p.m.
Baroness ROBSON of KIDDINGTON: My Lords, first of all may I apologise on behalf of my noble friend Lord Winstanley for his absence. He has a surgery first thing tomorrow morning at Salford and he had to be on a train at 8 o'clock. The noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, said that she was the 15th speaker. I am number 19. Everything that can be possibly said in the Second Reading debate has been said. I want to make one or two general points and I will not keep your Lordships many minutes.
First, I want to welcome the fact that the Bill recognises the basic principle and the absolute right of members of the medical profession to undertake private practice. I welcome that because by inference it recognises the freedom of individuals to use their net income to insure for private medical treatment if they so wish. Much has been said about the danger of freedom, about the fact that a Government can legislate only for their own lifetime, and that there is no guarantee. I am not as cynical as the noble Baroness, Lady Young, or the noble Lord, Lord O'Hagan. I believe that the Government mean this at the moment, and that is all we can ever plan on. We have never had a Government that can commit the following Government. I welcome the fact that this Government have recognised that there is a need for private medical practice, for the freedom of the medical profession to practice as they wish, and for the freedom of individuals to make use of it if they want to. The removal of such a freedom is unthinkable in this country.
Having said that, I want to deal with three main problems which have been raised by the Bill and by the introduction of the Bill at this stage. First, I should like to ask the Government this. Why

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now? The noble Lord, Lord Platt, referred to the existence of the Royal Commission on the National Health Service. Yesterday they published their booklet The Task of the Commission. On page 6 it says:
"There are a number of important questions bearing on the relationship between the NHS and private practice which we shall have to consider. The most obvious of these is how far private health services help or hinder the task facing the NHS."
When this Bill was discussed on Second Reading in the other place, the Secretary of State said it was not possible to refer this question to the Royal Commission because that would mean that the issue would fester for two years to no purpose. I read on page 9 of the same document that was published yesterday:
"We would certainly not expect the fact of our existence to hinder desirable development, and the Health Departments have agreed that we should have an opportunity to make effective comments upon major developments at a formative stage."
It seems to me, reading that, that it means that the Commission could comment at any time during its life, and I believe that we should be legislating in a better manner if we listened to its advice before we rushed into the acceptance of a Bill such as this one.
Secondly, with such an overcrowded programme of legislation to get through, is there really time to examine thoroughly the clauses in the Bill in the time available to us? I do not believe there is. I think it is a serious Bill, one that should be given adequate time. One can also ask whether this Bill, or for that matter one to be discussed later tonight, is relevant to the economic problems that face us as a nation. There is one problem only, I believe, to which we as Parliamentarians should at the moment be devoting ourselves. That is, to get our country back on its feet, not to play about with minor matters which at such a time as this are not going to help to solve our problems. This Bill, and the one we are to consider next, do not help us in any way.
Now I come to my third point. I must declare an interest. As your Lordships know, I am involved in the administration of the National Health Service. I look at every bit of legislation that comes out relating to the Health Service to see whether it is likely to give me more finance so as to be able to run a better Service. Therefore,
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I look at this Bill. Is this Bill likely to enable the Health Service to run more efficiently, and thereby give us better value for money at a time of enormous financial difficulties for the Service? I do not believe it is for the following reasons. Many "guestimates" have been made in this House today about the loss of income that will ensue through the closing down of pay beds in National Health Service hospitals. They vary from between £3 million or £4 million and anything up to £7 million or £8 million in the first year. The overall loss in a full year has been estimated at anything from £20 million to £40 million.
Whatever the right figure is, the loss of finance is substantial. It is not only the loss of finance, because if we are going to use the beds released from the private section of the National Health Service in order to help us to reduce waiting lists, we shall need the equivalent amount of money from some other source—that is, from the taxpayer. As a regional chairman I know of the unlikelihood of the Service being able to acquire any more finance from the Treasury at the moment. Despite this, even by divorcing private practice from the National Health Service, the patients would still be there, and the beds have to be used. So it is inevitable that we shall need further money in order to keep them open.
I should like to mention a thought on the Bill regarding the 1,000 beds that are to be phased out six months after the Royal Assent of this Bill. I wonder whether some thought has been given to the fact that these might be used to increase the amenity beds that have been mentioned so often during this afternoon as being in great shortage. Another point that worries me is the additional cost of consultant cover in the major hospitals. Much has been said about the loss of time with the consultant having to move sometimes great distances from a private hospital to an NHS hospital. As long as private practice was within the National Health Service the cover of consultants could be much thinner because they were working in the private wing; they were on the premises. If I have a part-time consultant working six-elevenths or eight-elevenths for the Health Service, what am I going to do as a hospital administrator about the other five-elevenths or three-elevenths? Inevitably, the cost of running the National

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Health Service will have to increase because the doctors are not on the premises.
Something that disturbs me greatly is the loss of good-will money that comes from outside. A lot of that money comes from the private practice of the consultants, from the consultants themselves. I know many consultants who have all their fees paid into a research fund or a study fund for the hospital in which they work. Some of them have all their fees paid in, others support a research programme within their hospital.
If private practice is removed from the National Health hospital that research money will go somewhere else, and in the National Health Service we are certainly not over-flush with research money.
Something else that disturbs me in the discussion that has been taking place about private beds is that there seems to be a blanket discussion about private beds as such. But private beds vary enormously. There are some hospitals which have virtually a separate hospital, like University College Hospital which has a wing of its own which is literally a private hospital on its own. There are other hospitals where there are perhaps only two private beds stuck away somewhere in the hospital. There is a world of difference in how one should look at the problem of these two different types of provision and I am very concerned about a blanket phasing out. The job of the Health Service Board will be very strenuous indeed if they are to make certain that, if they have to be phased out, the right beds are phased out.
The only slight hope I see in the Bill itself is that through the setting up of the Health Service Board at least we shall not be jumping in tomorrow to abolish all the private beds in the National Health Service hospitals. It means that we are giving ourselves a certain amount of time. I hope the Government will agree that if after the period of six months, on the advice of the Health Service Board, they find that the scheme is not working out exactly the way they thought it would, they will have the courage to say so and we can come to a full stop before we destroy the situation altogether. I should also like to ask the Government to postpone the introduction of this legislation in order to enable us to listen
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to what the Royal Commission has to say and to enable us to put through some other legislation, and have our debate in the daylight hours without having to sit up all night. I believe that by waiting for the advice of the Royal Commission we shall in the end come up with better legislation.
8.13 p.m.
Lord SANDYS: My Lords, as the twentieth speaker in this debate it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Robson of Kiddington, who has just advised your Lordships of what I believe to be the kernel of the problem; that is to say, that the legislation should not be lying before us but that an issue should be laid before the Royal Commission. I have spoken with members of the profession, members of my own Party, members interested in the issue as a whole, and we have come to one conclusion: that the Government have made a totally fundamental mistake in introducing legislation long before that point in time when it was either desirable or necessary.
My Lords, to sum up, as I attempt to do in a few minutes from this side of the House, is a difficult task, but I have first of all the duty and pleasure of saying how much we appreciated the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Stone, on this occasion. On a previous occasion, only a matter of months ago, on the 3rd December last year, we had two very notable maiden speeches on the same subject; that is, the National Health Service, with special reference to the problem of pay beds. On that occasion the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of York and my noble friend Lord Kemsley both made maiden speeches, both of them uncontroversial—like that of the noble Lord, Lord Stone, this evening—and both of a commendable brevity. We hope that we shall hear the noble Lord, Lord Stone, on many future occasions, because as a general practitioner he brings great personal knowledge to a field where, in your Lordships' House, this matter of personal association with the subject is rated very highly when we address ourselves to a matter of this importance.
My Lords, I turn to the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, and I must confess that he chilled me throughout with his references. I take issue, to begin with, with his suggestion that private

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treatment and the demand for private treatment is generally diminishing, because I believe the truth to be closer to what my noble friend Lord Gisborough said in quoting the figures which he did most clearly to your Lordships, that over 3 million people in this country are privately insured. I believe the figure to be possibly even higher than that, because it is very often difficult to quantify the number of private schemes. No doubt he was referring to the principal schemes concerned.
Here I must declare an interest, because I am not only insured with the British United Provident Association but also with Private Patients' Plan. I must say immediately that I believe this to be not a matter on which to search our consciences. I am proud of the fact that through these two organisations we, as contributors, are investing in private patients' resources, in the case of BUPA in further hospital beds and equipment in hospitals in the country. I should like to associate myself especially with what was said by my noble friend, Lady Ruthven of Freeland, who speaks from a wealth of knowledge of the work of the League of Hospital Friends.
I do not happen to be a member of the medical profession but I have taken an interest in the past in work in this particular field through voluntary organisations, and I should like to say with humility, and certainly with a limited knowledge of the field as a whole, that I believe there is a lack of appreciation of work done in the field prior to the 5th July 1948. Over a period of literally many hundreds, if not thousands, of years our medical skills were developing, and we are heirs to what has been at times a slow, a gradual and a very difficult process of development of care of people in hospital. We should be intensely proud of what has been achieved in this country, and I say that from the point of view of one who visits overseas territories from time to time as one involved in charitable organisations concerned with medical care. Going to certain countries in the Third World seeing hospital facilities in developing countries, one can appreciate the extent to which medical research in this country has helped overseas territories. The staff and facilities have benefited those territories enormously.
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I come to the point where I believe that what has been said in this debate this evening is related almost entirely to the proposals of the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, and, in listening to his speech I felt, to use an expression used by my noble friend Lord Harmar-Nicholls, that it was a "healing speech"; it had a quality about it which raised us above the question of inter-Party warfare in order to examine the position of the Health Service as a whole. My Lords, the Goodman proposals are probably not acceptable to anyone. Nevertheless, they are a point of departure. His arguments, as deployed this evening, were particularly significant in this regard, because, if one may quote his words, the medical service must be guided by medical views. That is the centre of the problem so far as the profession is concerned. The idea of the professions being directed from bureaucratic and doctrinaire points of view, as was so clearly demonstrated in the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Porritt, is something so wholly unacceptable and so wholly foreign to them as to need no further explanation. It is liberty of choice which is so important here, and I felt, during the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, that between the lines freedom grew.
Everyone practising in the profession in this country has been very well aware of the deep suspicions which he and his colleagues have held that they have been squeezed at both ends. They have been squeezed by a feeling of apprehension, which has been displayed by many of my noble friends around the Chamber, and I think it is fully justified. I heartily agree with what my noble friend Lord Gisborough said about the exploitation of the good will of the profession, and I am sure that he weighed his words most carefully.
It is not much to make a small charge for a prescription, which our Party has done in the past, and that has laid a degree of responsibility upon the patient which is perhaps from time to time justified. We are speaking in the context—and a very important context it is in regard to the National Health Service—of the effect of inflation on the cost of a hospital bed. If we start from the point at which the pound was registered at a datum of 100, in October 1973—an important date—and project that forward three

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years to October 1976, the decline in the value of the pound, I am assured on the best authority, is 100 to 56. Therefore, the cost of maintaining a hospital bed has very nearly doubled, be it in the private service or the public service. No wonder that the pressures on the Health Service, in maintaining our hospitals at the standard of efficiency which we all wish them to have, have been very great indeed. Therefore, it seems so totally illogical that 1 per cent. of the hospital beds—that is, the pay beds—should be at the centre of an argument which has lasted for more than 12 months, and which has caused a great deal of dissatisfaction for patients and acute anxiety for consultants, the medical profession, the nursing profession, the trade unions and all concerned. If it were not so sad, one would be justified in saying how wholly fatuous it is that this minute proportion of the beds being occupied within the Health Service should have been the cause.
I accept what has been said by noble Lords opposite, because they hold their views with deep sincerity. I accept what the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Coslany, said, and I am sure he will accept what I say, because I speak with a similar degree of sincerity. But I think the point—and this was put by many of my noble friends—is that we want to see the Health Service get on with the job, which noble Lords opposite also want. The statements in the Journal of the British Medical Association were fully deployed by my noble friend Lord Hunt of Fawley, in a very carefully worded speech, and I was glad that the former Secretary of State was listening at the time.
I should now like to turn to the very important question of investment in the Health Service. I believe that this is a matter around which we should project our thoughts, as being something positive and not a matter at which we should be eternally looking backwards all the time. It seems to me that there is in this country a rich fund of good will for investing in hospitals, and I believe that future Governments—I include the present Government, if they would only listen—would be very well advised to consider this point most carefully. The noble Lord, Lord Porritt, referred to the Health Service in Canada, and noble Lords will be aware that in that country there
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operates a community chest. It is a principle of Canadian fiscal law that those who choose to deploy part of their income towards the community chest are permitted certain benefits. I see nothing at all immoral in investing in a Health Service, be it for kidney machines or for any other purpose. In fact, I should have thought it was wholly to the advantage of the country concerned, and I believe there is a case for the Treasury to consider this matter most carefully.
My noble friend Lady Ruthven referred to the work done by the League of Hospital Friends and, far from setting this aside as, perhaps, an unnecessary interference, which certain hospitals may be a little inclined to do from time to time, I believe it is true to say that, in present circumstances, more benefit is received through the voluntary organisations than hitherto, partly because of inflation and the lack of resources within individual hospitals. It seems to me that the Government should be more receptive to the fact that individuals wish to invest, wish to leave money to hospitals and wish—if not to dedicate a whole hospital bed, because in present circumstances that is a very expensive investment—to endow part of a hospital bed. This possibility should he made available to individuals in this country, through our fiscal system. I was delighted that the noble Baroness, Lady Robson, referred to this point. She felt that in present circumstances the possibilities were insufficient, and I agree with her. I do not want to quote from every speech which referred to this matter, but the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, to whose speech we listened with great interest, said that the Bill does nothing to increase the resources in National Health hospitals and does nothing to reduce the waiting lists.
I feel that after 14 minutes I can draw my remarks towards a conclusion, as we have further business to consider this evening. But I do not want to do so without saying that I believe that the remarks of my noble friend Lady Faithfull were especially important. She wondered whether this is an ideological issue, a philosophical issue or a political issue, and she came to the conclusion, ultimately, that it is a political issue. I wholly agree with her, but I think it has strains of ideological and theological

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thought within it. Nevertheless, this is an issue which, prior to legislation, requires much more sensitive thought, and if only the Secretary of State and his advisers would consider the desires of the medical profession during a cooling-off period, when, as my noble friend and many other speakers suggested, the issue could be referred to a Royal Commission, that would give us a breathing space and would permit the suggestions of the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, and promoted by the Government into this Bill, to be set aside for consideration over a period of months. I conclude by saying this. On 18th October, The Times had this to say in one of its leading articles:
"None of the Bills before the Lords is vital to the national interest at a time of great economic peril. Some will be positively damaging; others will be irrelevant".
I agree wholly with those remarks.
8.30 p.m.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, the noble Lord should not believe all that he reads. I have listened to every speaker, with the exception of the noble Lord, Lord Auckland, and I apologised to him before he spoke. I pointed out to him that I would not be able to be in the Chamber during his speech. It seems to me to be quite pointless to say anything at this stage. The best thing that I think I can do is to sit down, because quite clearly the vast majority of speakers, certainly those who sit on the other side of the Chamber, did not pay the slightest attention to anything that I said in my opening speech.
Lord SANDYS: My Lords, may I say to the noble Lord with the deepest respect that I have also been sitting here throughout the debate. I listened with the closest attention to the noble Lord's speech and made continuous notes throughout, and I quoted them to him. I hope that the noble Lord will accept that.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: Obviously the noble Lord has not profited from the words of wisdom! It is quite clear that noble Lords on both sides who have spoken are still thoroughly and deeply entrenched in the views which they held when they came into your Lordships' Chamber. I do not object to that, but it seems rather pointless to spend a great deal of time trying to answer the various points which
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noble Lords have made, because whatever I say is obviously going to fall on to very stony ground.
The noble Lord, Lord Goodman, asked me to make a special point of apologising to your Lordships for the fact that he could not be here at the end of the debate. He has had to attend an important meeting, about which I know. It was imperative for him to be at that meeting and he begged to be excused. In the absence of the noble Lord, Lord Stone, I should like to offer to him my congratulations upon his maiden speech. It had all the advantages of a maiden speech in that it was not controversial, it was brief and it was very much to the point.
I am sorry that the noble Baroness, Lady Young, feels that the Bill is unnecessary and unwanted. It may well be unwanted by noble Lords opposite, but it is not unwanted by millions of people in this country. I am speaking mainly of the trade union movement and also of the Labour Party. Noble Lords have said that this is an ill-conceived and ill-timed Bill, but this is simply because they just do not know what is the position. We have been considering this matter for years, not months. So far as my Party is concerned, it has been a matter of principle for some years. I was reminded that at the last Election only 28 per cent. of the electorate voted for the Labour Party, although that gave us a Labour Government which presumably means that the Conservative Party obtained less than 28 per cent. of the votes. Is the noble Baroness, Lady Young, going to say that when there is a return of the Conservative Party as a Government on a minority vote they will not put into operation any of the matters contained in their Manifesto? Of course they will, because that is precisely the way we run matters in this country. I think I am right in saying that since the war no Government have been voted to power by a majority of the electorate. Although I am open to correction on this point, I believe that since 1945 we have always had a minority Government. Therefore, the Government that are elected must introduce their Manifesto. Consequently, it is quite pointless to say that the Labour Party had the support of only 28 per cent. of the electorate at the last Election.
The point was made, I think by the noble Baroness, Lady Young, and by a

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number of other Peers, particularly those connected with the medical profession, that this Bill does not enjoy the support of the medical profession. I never know what is meant by that term. I was at some pains to point out to your Lordships that the BMA sent a heavily weighted letter to consultants asking them whether they would accept the Goodman proposals or whether they wanted to resign from the National Health Service. That letter was sent to 12,200 consultants. How many of them said, No? In fact, 2,604 of them said, No. It is perfectly true that 42 per cent. did not return their ballot papers. Are we not entitled, therefore, to assume that 42 per cent. were not opposed to the proposals?
Lord SANDYS: My Lords—
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I am not going to be interrupted too often.
Lord SANDYS: My Lords, are we not entitled to suppose that the Post Office were unable to deliver certain of the letters because of incomplete records of addresses?
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, of course the British Medical Association may be so incompetent that over 5,000 of the letters went astray, but I do not believe that for one moment—nor does the noble Lord.
Lord PLATT: My Lords, surely the question that was asked was quite absurd. The question that was asked was whether consultants agreed with the proposals or whether they would resign from the National Health Service. The answer I should have given would have been that I did not agree with them but I would not resign from the National Health Service. So what? The letter was utterly useless.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, if one believes the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Fawley, it seems that the consultants are a very militant crowd and are ready to down tools tomorrow if you give them enough cause. If consultants are so militant, how does one explain that 42 per cent. did not reply and that 63 per cent. of those who replied were in favour of the Goodman proposals? Let us not misunderstand the situation; the consultants were behind the proposals. I believe that the speech made by the noble
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Lord, Lord Hunt of Fawley, was a mistake. I am on record on two occasions, if not three, as having congratulated the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Fawley, on the balance of his contributions in your Lordships' House, but the militancy that he displayed tonight was almost an incitement to strike, and it is not going to help the consultants, the medical profession or the Government who are trying to deal with a very difficult situation.
I would ask the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Fawley, as I would ask the noble Lord, Lord Porritt, and the noble Lord, Lord Brock, whether they could get up and, with their hand on their hearts, say that private practice is not going to be all the better for this Bill? Of course they could not do so and not one of them would get up and say so. They know jolly well that private practice is coming out of this a damn sight better than it is at present.
Lord BROCK: My Lords, may I stand up, put my hand on my heart, and say that I think that the noble Lord is wrong?
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, what I have said, then, has had the desired effect. I wanted to know what noble Lords were thinking. I know what two noble Lords think and I think I know what the third thinks.
Lord PLATT: My Lords, as one who has nothing to do with this question, who has no irons whatever in the fire and who has had oceans of paper from the BMA, all of which he has put into the wastepaper basket, may I say that I do not agree with what the noble Lord is saying.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I advise the noble Lords in question privately to have a word with the BMA. The noble Baroness raised a number of questions but I do not think that I can deal with all of them. The Government can fairly say that the Bill was given a Second Reading by a majority of 20. It does not get a majority of 20 as a result of its own members; it got a majority of 20 because they were supported in the Lobbies, certainly by the Scottish and the Welsh Nationalists, so it is not just only the Labour Party in the Commons that supports this. There is a wider support than just the Labour Party.
The noble Baroness raised a number of other questions which I should like to

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deal with. She mentioned—if I have it correctly—that the consultants have a right to sell their services (I think she said) in the market place. This is precisely what we are doing: we are creating a situation where they can sell their services in the market place. But let me make it quite clear that we do not regard the National Health Service as being the appropriate market place. Would the noble Baroness expect the plumber—I refer to the plumber because she mentioned the plumber—to sell his services in the market place and at the same time use his employer's facilities and equipment? That is what is happening today.
Baroness YOUNG: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord this question? If he does not accept my argument, does he accept the argument of the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, that it is essential that consultants should have the right to use the specialist equipment in hospitals for their private patients? That was the very point on which the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, has asked for extra assurances and on which there is considerable doubt in the Bill. If the noble Lord does not accept that, he is going against the spirit of the Goodman agreement; and if he does accept it he must accept my argument.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, we are prepared to accept—and we state so in the Bill—that in certain circumstances where there are no facilities available in the private sector, or in a particular area where special facilities are needed, they can use those facilities. It is very different from the sort of argument which the noble Baroness put forward about the right to sell one's services in the market place. There is nothing between us on this. All I am saying is that it is one thing to sell one's services in the market place and another to use your employer's gear and equipment in order to do the job. The provision of these special facilities is a concession which the Government, through this Bill, are prepared to make for consultants in certain circumstances on certain occasions.
I want to say only one other thing which relates to what the noble Baroness said. I think she said that the existence of pay beds attracts better quality staff. She does not really believe that. How does she reconcile that with Bart's, where there are no pay beds at all—or perhaps I
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ought to be more correct and say that there are six, but they are exclusively for overseas patients because, as noble Lords will know, their ancient Charter does not permit them to have pay beds and it does not permit them to charge. Is she saying, in point of fact, that there is an incompetent staff at Bart's?
Baroness YOUNG: My Lords, would the noble Lord like me to answer that question?
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: Yes.
Baroness YOUNG: My Lords, I do not think it is an incompetent staff at Bart's at all. As I indicated in everything I said, I am actually a great supporter of the National Health Scheme and those who work in it. All that I said in my remarks is that if you undermine the trust of the doctors and the medical profession you will get a worse system, and of that I am quite certain. I am not in any way denigrating the system as it exists, because I support it.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I want to go on to the point that was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Amulree, in regard to amenity beds, and he was not the only noble Lord who raised this matter. We are very concerned about (shall I say?) the inadequacy of the amenity beds at the present moment. We are not blind to the faults and the failures of the National Health Service and it is our intention that as more and more pay beds come into the National Health Service they will be used for amenity purposes, so that—and every one of us in your Lordships' House knows this to be correct—the National Health Service may be improved. I have spent many months as a National Health Service in-patient in a public ward, in a ward which specialised mainly in craniotomies, where I had an operation for a suspected tumour. I could have done with an amenity bed, and so could a good many of the others. One knows how important this is, and it is part of Government policy to try to do something about it when these beds become available.
The noble Lord, Lord Amulree, also raised a question about the private sector and the loss that we might suffer. The phasing out of the thousand pay beds, as I think noble Lords know only too well, means that the thousand are, in the

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main, the beds which were considerably under used, and the loss in the first year or so, if I may say so, is quite negligible. The higher figure that has been mentioned is not likely to be reached for some years. But one has to bear in mind that we are going to offer, for private practice to use, wherever it is required all over the country—and I do not want to go over all this again—facilities in National Health hospitals as and when they are needed because of certain emergency situations. We shall recover some money. I do not know how much, but obviously those facilities will not be provided free of charge.
A number of noble Lords have raised the question of the loss of revenue. There are sometimes things which are much more important than just the loss of revenue. A number of noble Lords have also raised the point that this is the wrong time, but most of your Lordships are too skilled in the art of politics not to know that no time is ever the right time. In 1945 we emerged a bankrupt nation; we had sold every pound of investment abroad; we had not a single pound. We had sold about £1,100 million of investments abroad in order to prosecute the war. We had not a penny. If we had waited for the right time to introduce a National Health Service we should never have had one. The time to do something is when, rightly or wrongly, it is considered to be the right time, it may be by this Government, it may be by another Government. if money is all that important, we might just as well have a whole chain of legalised brothels in this country from which we could draw a tremendous source of revenue. The fact is that many people realise that the price that one has to pay at times is probably not worth it.
I wanted to join issue with the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, but as he is not here I do not propose to do so. I hope the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Fawley, does not feel that I have treated him badly. I think he knows me well enough to know that even if I sound rather harsh there is never any venom in what I say. This is a Chamber where we have the right to say what we like, and in doing so perhaps we have to put up with a different point of view. I do not share his point of view at the present moment.
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My Lords, although, perhaps, noble Lords might not think I ought to be, having listened to the noble Lord, Lord Platt, I was gratified, because he brought an air of realism into the debate. I know the noble Lord has reservations, and it is only right that people should have reservations. It would be a disaster if we did not examine things very carefully. But I was grateful to the noble Lord for the contribution he made. The noble Lord, Lord Porritt, raised a number of matters about the action of the Government. The only thing I want to say is that the Government must always keep in the forefront of their minds what their major responsibility is and what their main priority is. To try to say what the main priority of this Government is is to repeat something that many of your Lordships have heard many times over the years; that is, to concern themselves with the health, wealth and happiness of the people of this country—and I say it quite unashamedly—from the cradle to the grave. This would be my answer, to some extent, to the noble Lord, Lord O'Hagan.
The Government have a responsibility for the wellbeing of people. I know that the noble Lord, Lord O'Hagan, will not disagree with me on this. We regard the provision of a National Health Service as an integral part of the service which this Government must offer the people. My noble friend Lady Lee of Asheridge dealt with this point. She said that as a Social Democrat—and that is what I claim to be myself—she regards the fact that in the Labour Party there are people on the extreme Left, on the extreme Right, and in the Centre, as no different from the position in the Conservative Party, who have people on their Left and people on their extreme Right—and, if I may say so, they have moved, in recent months to the extreme Right, or jolly near it. They have changed their emphasis, and some of us are terrified as to what might happen if they get into power next time. But this is the political set-up of every Party; they have people on the wings and in the centre. There is no difference. If you look at the behaviour in the other place of certain people whom you would regard as being on the extreme Left of the Labour Party, what have they achieved?
Lord O'HAGAN: Too much.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: They could, perhaps, have achieved a great deal more.

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But the fact is that in this Party, and to some extent in the Conservative Party because we must acknowledge that they, too, have made their contribution to the wellbeing of the people, the emphasis is very different. We are not going to reconcile them. But this Government feel there is a responsibility to provide for the people in a certain number of defined ways. One of them is the National Health Service. If people want to buy health, we do not mind. We took the line in education that if people want private education, then the private sector must be separate from the public sector, and if they want to buy it, then they can buy it. We are saying precisely the same thing so far as the National Health Service is concerned. We feel it ought to be an all-embracing service for the people of this country. If there are people who want to opt out of it in the sense that they want to purchase health, medical services and medical attendance, we have no quarrel with that at all. But we say that there must be no misunderstanding, no confusion, no overlapping. The thing must be kept absolutely separate. That would be my answer to the noble Lord, Lord Porritt, who I do not for one moment think will accept it.
I want now to try to answer the noble Lord, Lord Auckland, who raised the question of the number of beds. I was out of the Chamber at the time, but I understand that he said that there would be 20 going out of a total of 56 in Cambridge. Each area, each hospital for that matter, has been considered very carefully. There are a number of private establishments in and around Cambridge. The acid test has been the occupancy of those 56 pay beds. It has been generally agreed that the pay bed situation at the moment would not be affected if they lost 20 of them. The noble Lord also suggested that the Bill was ill thought out, but I have dealt with that, even if the noble Lord is unable to accept what I have said. The fact is that over a very long period of time, we have given attention to this particular matter. If people say, "Why now?", my answer is, why not? There is no reason why we should not do it in this Session, or put it over to another Session.
The noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, wanted to know whether this was not a matter that should have been referred to
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the Royal Commission. I can understand people saying, "You have set up a Royal Commission. Why not refer all these matters to it?". It is a well accepted view in political circles, on the part of the Liberal Party, the Conservative Party and the Labour Party, that there are certain matters which are of considerable political significance, and the Party concerned must make their own decision. This is not a matter that should be referred because very often these are matters of principle. So far as we are concerned, this is a matter of principle.
Baroness FAITHFULL: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, for giving way for a moment. My point was that if certain detailed things that were clouding the main issue were to be referred to the Royal Commission, the main issue would be more clear. Some of the things are being referred—for instance, queue-jumping. I think another noble Lord said that no research had been done into this matter. I was asking for certain specific issues to be referred to the Royal Commission for investigation, in order to clarify later what the main issue of the pay bed situation was.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, again, this is a matter of viewpoint. We have considered that there is a function for a Royal Commission on the health services, and it is a pretty wide one. But we reserve the right—as any Government have the right to reserve—to take certain things out of the ambit of their consideration. We have put into the Bill matters which we feel are of extreme importance that must be dealt with. There may not have been any cold research into the whole question of queue-jumping but many of us—including the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, and the noble Baroness, Lady Young—know that it happens. It is a very simple thing these days for a person who needs an operation which is not essential, or at least not urgent, so it can wait for months. One noble Lord, a member of the medical profession, said he can go to a doctor who will pass him on to a consultant; the consultant will take a fee and then say, "Well, if you want it done now I can have it done". But there may be a dozen or more people in the same area with the same complaint who would like their operations done now, but because they

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cannot go to the consultant and pay a fee, they do not get ushered into hospital. That is what we mean—
Lord PLATT: My Lords, if the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, is referring to something I said, he has every right to do so. But the point I was making was that this Bill would do absolutely nothing to abolish the practice.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, that remains to be seen. We are saying that there is extensive queue-jumping, and everybody in your Lordships' House knows this to be a fact. We are hoping that as a result of this it will at least, if it does not do very much, draw attention to how we feel.
I do not think I need delay your Lordships longer. I have spoken for 29 minutes and I am conscious of the fact that I have not answered all the questions that have been asked. I take some comfort and consolation from the knowledge that if I stood here for two hours I would still make no impression on some noble Lords, and therefore it only remains for me to ask the House to give the Bill a Second Reading.
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

RENT (AGRICULTURE) BILL
9.1 p.m.
The PARLIAMENTARY UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE, DEPARTMENT of the ENVIRONMENT (Baroness Birk): My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now again resolve itself into Committee on this Bill.
Moved, That the House do again resolve itself into Committee.—(Baroness Birk.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
[The Lord HENLEY in the Chair.]
Clause 1 [Interpretation]:
Earl FERRERS Earl FERRERS moved Amendment No. 4:
Page 2, line 1, leave out paragraph (b).
The noble Earl said: This is consequential on an Amendment we passed the other day. I beg to move.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Earl FERRERS Earl FERRERS moved Amendment No. 5:
Page 2, line 30, leave out paragraph (b).
The noble Earl said: This, too, is consequential. I beg to move.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Earl FERRERS Earl FERRERS moved Amendment No. 6:
Page 2, line 35, after ("date") insert ("which shall not be before the expiration of a period of twelve months beginning with the date on which it is passed.")
The noble Earl said: This simple Amendment suggests that we put in the Bill a provision saying that the date on which the order bringing the Bill into operation shall be delayed for 12 months beginning on the date on which the Bill is passed. This is designed to enable local authorities and other bodies involved in dealing with the Bill an opportunity to arrange themselves and make provision for the liabilities which they will have under the measure. It is not intentionally a delaying Amendment. It is simply to enable those who will find themselves with increased duties and responsibilities under the Bill time in which to get themselves prepared for them, and I hope that it will meet with the Government's approval. I beg to move.
Lord JANNER: I regret that once again I must differ from the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers. If we delay the operation of the Bill when it is passed, we will actually be giving an opportunity to the very people to whom noble Lords opposite have referred as not the sort of persons who are the ordinary employees in this industry. If there is the sort of delay which noble Lords opposite are proposing, a person who wants to exploit the position will have an opportunity to take advice and turn out a tenant as quickly as possible. That is what it would amount to and I am sure that that is not the intention of the noble Earl.
Let me put it in very simple terms. If an employer goes to a lawyer and asks for his advice, and if that employer is the type of person who wants to turn out a

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tenant, the lawyer will tell him: "You had better apply to the court now and they will give a maximum of six months to the individual, and then he must go." I am sure that that is not the intention of noble Lords opposite. I am sure they do not want to give such people a chance to exploit the position in this interim period. I am talking about the very people who time and again have been referred to in debates on this subject, the unscrupulous, who I am sure noble Lords do not want to protect.
Such a delay would give them an opportunity to turn out tenants and I do not see why such an opportunity should be provided. If a man does not like his employee he will turf him out and that employee will have six months, and then he must go. That is the utmost the court can allow at the present time, and in my view the Amendment should not be accepted because, frankly, do not believe it would meet with the wishes of the Committee. Certainly it would not be acceptable to my noble friends or, I believe, to those who desire to see justice done. We want to ensure that an unscrupulous employer does not just turn out his employee.
Lord MIDDLETON: I am sure that my noble friends and I would have been absolutely at one with the noble Lord, Lord Janner, were it not for Schedule 9, which deals with transitional arrangements. I believe that the relative paragraph is paragraph 4(1), where I believe this arrangement would be handled.
The LORD PRIVY SEAL (Lord Peart): I had thought that other noble Lords would like to make a contribution at this stage and I wanted to hear the arguments. I do not believe that this is a simple Amendment, despite what the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, has said. I have heard the arguments about this and the principle that the implementation of the Bill should be delayed at least for a year after Royal Assent. However, as I indicated on Second Reading, there has already been a long delay in putting on the Statute Book a basic right for farm workers to security of tenure in their homes. Indeed, as noble Lords on both sides know, they have been campaigning for it since the beginning of the century. Of course, we were able in 1965 and 1970 to make a little progress and the present
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law effectively affords up to six months' security to a farm worker whose employment has ended.
But the problem has not gone away. The number of possession orders sought and obtained by farmers has remained at a high level. It is important that I should sketch out what is our approach. The noble Lord can try to knock down the arguments I am putting forward. The proportion of farm workers living in tied cottages has not decreased. If anything, it has increased. So, having reached this stage, the Government would need to be convinced that there were very strong reasons for writing into the Bill an automatic delay to implementation over and above the existing flexibility which comes from the appointed day procedure. Although, as I have said, I have listened very carefully, I have not yet heard arguments which would lead me to recommend to my colleagues that such a delay should be imposed. I should like to explain first of all an important reason of principle against writing in a long delay and then go on to deal with some of the specific arguments which have been advanced by people who wish to disagree with my point of view.
The essence of this legislation, as I have said, is security of tenure or, for the farm worker who has been rehoused by the local authority, security of housing. Early implementation is almost always a feature of legislation conferring security of tenure in the housing field. The Rent Act 1965 was brought into effect one month after enactment and for the Rent Act 1974 the interval was only two weeks.
The reason for such speed is that the longer the delay between enactment and implementation in a measure of this type, the greater is the opportunity for a landlord to try to regain possession on grounds which the legislation will remove. So far, I am glad to say, we have not detected any signs that farmers generally are seeking to use the provisions of the existing law to dispossess tied cottage occupants in advance of the legislation coming into force. That does not surprise me because I know that in general the farming community acts responsibly and that there are good relationships, and that, in most cases, farmers would not seek to deprive themselves of some of their best labour simply

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to avoid being subject to the Bill. Nevertheless, if a significant delay in implementation was opened up, as it would be if this Amendment were carried, a strong temptation would be put in the way of certain people who are not long-term farmers and who, for one reason or another, are thinking of leaving the industry themselves, to deprive their workers of a protection which they will enjoy if the Bill is brought into force on 1st January next, as we hope it will be.
I should also explain that, as is usual in legislation of this kind, the Bill will protect not only those who are given notice to quit after it comes into force, but also qualifying workers and their families who are in occupation but who may have already been given notice to quit and be subject to court proceedings. Once the legislation is on the Statute Book, we would think it right that the uncertainty of such people should be ended and that they should enjoy the new protection of the Bill as soon as possible.
Now let me turn to another argument which has suggested that local authorities will not be in a position to cope if the Bill is brought into force quickly because they are generally not prepared. I know that this argument will be raised and, indeed, it has been raised on previous occasions, though not as forcefully as I have heard it put. Some noble Lords argued for a lead time to allow local authorities to assess more accurately the impact which the Bill will have on the housing demand. I think that this seems to ignore two points. First, local authorities already have to cope with a substantial proportion of ex-tied cottage occupants who are the subject of possession orders. As I have said, there is no reason to assume that the overall demand for housing from farmworkers and ex-farmworkers will necessarily increase in any significant way. Secondly, the only effective way of measuring the effect of the Bill is to watch how it works in practice.
The impact on local authorities will depend not only on the number of applications, but on their decisions on them. In reaching these decisions they will take full account of any advice tendered by the expert committees whom the Bill proposes should assess the agricultural need and urgency of these applications. It really is
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not possible with the best will in the world to predict in advance how many applications will be made to local authorities, nor can anyone forecast with precision the overall burden of advice on agricultural need and urgency, let alone the ultimate decisions of the local authorities. A period of delay would just not help to establish the short-term effect which the Bill will have. Indeed, the more alarmist prophecies about its operation could well gain ground and spread unnecessary anxieties. Therefore, for all these reasons, both of principle and practice, I hope that the noble Lords will agree to withdraw their Amendments.
Viscount GAGE: I should like to ask the noble Lord a question in the interests of accuracy. He said that the number of possession orders has not diminished. Can he possibly split that up with regard to possession orders involving elderly people? As he knows very well, many housing authorities will not give an elderly agricultural labourer any priority unless a possession order has been made against him. I am sure that the noble Lord does not want to misrepresent the position, but there are a number of cases involving elderly people where the owner simply has to apply for a possession order, otherwise the applicant has no priority at all.
Lord PEART: I accept that; that was really one of the main points of my argument. This has been one of the worries.
Viscount MASSEREENE and FERRARD: I think the noble Lord said earlier in his speech that there had been great agitation from the majority of farm workers over many generations to end the tied cottage in system in agriculture. But I was of the impression that there had been an opinion poll taken among agricultural workers in England and Wales and that only 5 to 6 per cent. required this. I know that the Bill does not affect Scotland, but the farm workers' union in Scotland has said they they do not want it at all. Therefore I cannot understand why the Minister should say that the majority of farm workers have been agitating for this legislation for many generations.
With regard to eviction, the chief evictor is the State, because so far as I am

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aware the total number of agricultural tied cottages represent only about one-tenth of all the tied cottages in the country. The State owns the majority of the tied cottages and the State is the chief evictor.
Lord PEART: I do not want to curtail the noble Viscount's argument, but we have discussed this matter on many occasions and it has been discussed on Second Reading, and only the other day. But my noble friend Lady Birk will deal with this when she replies.
Lord MACKIE of BENSHIE: With respect to the noble Lord's argument, is it not extraordinary that farmers under pressure of what I regard as an excessively foolish and harmful Bill have not rushed to put anyone out? Does this not show, on the noble Lord's own evidence, that the Bill is wholly unnecessary? The noble Lord said that at present there was no evidence at all that farmers were rushing to take advantage of the present law—
Lord PEART: Perhaps I may intervene to reply to that point. I did say that and I said it for the reason that, generally speaking, there are good labour relations between the farmer and the farm worker. But there are cases of dispossession and the tied cottage is still regarded as an issue. But I believe that the industry is acting reasonably well and in a responsible way.
9.19 p.m.
Lord COLLISON: I am sorry to intervene again, but the noble Viscount, Lord Massereene and Ferrard, has again argued that farm workers do not want to see the tied cottage problem dealt with. I mentioned the other day that there must be something rather strange about this poll, because my own knowledge confirms that farm workers who are in the National Union of Agricultural Workers have for many years before my time as general secretary—indeed consistently throughout the years—moved and supported resolutions in their branches, in their county committees, and throughout the country, in the desire that the tied cottage be dealt with. Therefore, there must be something funny about this. I do not know what this poll is. I know the noble Lord opposite gave me some information the other day, but I am still convinced the information must be wrong. Either
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the selection of people who were asked to take part in the poll was one-sided or biased; I do not know, but I am quite sure that this argument is quite wrong.
Before I sit down, may I say that I support my noble friend on the Front Bench when he says that the solution of this problem is long overdue. And, without making any attempt at all to blacken the farmers of this country, because I know that most of them behave quite sensibly and reasonably when they get problems about people occupying tied cottages who are retired, or sick, or leaving a job, nevertheless, this long delay would encourage the unscrupulous ones. In every sector of the population you get some bad people, you get some bad eggs, there is a bad potato in every pile, and it to will give them an opportunity to try to move in before the Bill becomes effective in order to evict farm workers who would be protected by this Bill.
Lord SWAYTHLING: I believe that the noble Lord the Leader of the House referred to the number of court decisions in favour of eviction. I think that the noble Lord ignored the fact that the vast majority of these cases are done at the instance or with the approval or at the request of the farm worker, in order to enable him to get a house. I believe the actual number of evictions per year is almost negligible. I believe under 20 a year are actually evicted.
Baroness ELLIOT of HARWOOD: Speaking as a farmer, I say that nobody wants to evict a good farm worker; that is axiomatic. In fact, in the area where I live we have been employing the same families for generations. The reason why I think this Bill is in a sense out of date—the noble Lord, Lord Collison, is quite right, of course; the question of tied cottages has been on the agenda of the Agricultural Workers' Union for years and years, since I was a child—is that the situation is totally different now, for the simple reason that with the machinery and the new techniques the saving of labour in farming today is colossal and many old farms have masses of cottages which they simply do not use, because they do not want all those agricultural workers. They do want good agricultural workers, and naturally one wants in every possible way to house them as well as one can.

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If by mistake you get somebody who is useless and you cannot get him out, of course you are in a desperate position. But I think the reason why the situation is not nearly so acute as it was, say, 30 or 40 years ago, when Lord Collison himself was active in the Agricultural Workers' Union, is the new techniques in farming, the new savings in labour, the enormous amount of machinery and all the rest of it about which all noble Lords who are engaged in farming know.
Lord MIDDLETON: I am sure the noble Baroness is right. Things have changed. And I do not think the noble Lord, Lord Collison, is right in saying there was something funny about the poll. What happened about the poll was that the people who were questioned were questioned after the passing of the Rent Act 1965, the Agriculture Act 1970 and the Employment Protection Act of last year, which have transformed the situation as the noble Lord, Lord Mackie, said yesterday. The Battle of Waterloo has virtually been won, and I am sure that that is why you had this low poll.
The Earl of ONSLOW: On one small point—perhaps is a Second Reading point—can either the noble Lord or the noble Baroness confirm that eviction can still, in fact, happen even with this Bill?
Lord MONK BRETTON: May I ask either the noble Lord or the noble Baroness whether they have considered the possibility of the operation of this Bill, when it is an Act, to take place at different times in different areas; and whether they have considered the possibility of leaving the more difficult areas until later, because I think some areas have a much better chance of making this work than others. While this matter is being discussed it will be of interest to know what their views may be.
Baroness BIRK: I will first deal with this question, which is constantly arising, about the poll of the workers. The noble Lord, Lord Sandys—and this is rather a delayed apology—raised it on Second Reading, but in order to try to keep my winding-up speech short I did not answer then. I also thought at the time that it had been dealt with by the Parliamentary Secretary in another place and, knowing how assiduously the noble Lord, Lord
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Sandys, does his homework, I was sure that he had read the answer there. He returned to it again yesterday and I think then used it in the context of the workers showing that they were against this Bill. Now the noble Viscount, Lord Massereene and Ferrard, has raised it again. I think it ought to be cleared up, once and for all.
The first point is that the survey was carried out in July, 1975. That was long before the Bill was published, so they could not in any sense have been voting against or expressing an opinion about this Bill. The second point is that they were 300 workers out of a full-time workforce of 140,000. The most important point is that they were not—and I repeat "not"—asked the question: "Do you think that tied cottages or the tied cottage system should be abolished?" They were asked the question: "Do you think that there are any categories of workers who need to live in tied cottages to do their jobs?" The response to this was: 60 per cent. "Yes"; they did think that some people ought to live in cottages by their jobs. And 40 per cent. said "No". Out of that 40 per cent., 5·3 per cent. (that is, 16 people) qualified the answer by saying that they favoured the abolition of the agricultural tied cottage system—although they were not asked that question directly. This has been misrepresented to show that only 5 per cent. of farm workers favour abolition. The fact is that out of the 40 per cent., 5 per cent. felt strongly enough to make the point, off their own bat, that they favoured abolition.
It is worth mentioning that the Arthur Rank Centre themselves were not exactly pleased at the misuse of this survey by people who are against the Bill. In a letter to all the members of the Committee which considered this Bill in another place, the Warden of the Centre, the Reverend Peter Buckler, said:
"The Arthur Rank Centre completely support the main provisions of the Agriculture Bill. There is nothing in the Report which we published last autumn which does not support our present attitude towards the Bill."
In order to make clear how misleading is the use to which this poll results have been put, I have thought up an analogy. Imagine the response to a sample survey if people were asked: "Do you think the House of Lords serves the interests of efficient democracy?" Let us say that

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60 per cent. reply, "Yes" and 40 per cent. "No". Some of those who reply "No"—let us take 5 per cent.—add the rider that what they would like to see is the reform of the present House of Lords. I would suggest that it would be absurd and misleading if anybody then went around saying that only 5 per cent. of the people asked about the House of Lords favoured reform. It could be that if the question were put directly there would be huge dissent. We could say the same about farm workers and this Bill. I agree with my noble friend Lord Collison that it is time that this was spelled out and explained.
The noble Lord, Lord Swaythling, questioned the point about whether many were evicted at all. Fortunately the number of evictions is low, but I do not think that is the point. The point is, first, that there are any evictions at all under this system, and, secondly, that it is not the actual evictions that one has to get one's eye on, which is the part of the iceberg above the surface; it is the people who are also under the shadow of a possession order to which, under the present system, a farmer has to resort—we heard on Second Reading about the collusion that goes on about this—and, thirdly, the people who, because they are afraid and want to avoid the court proceedings which would take place as the result of an application for a possession order, get scared or move or try to get away before this occurs. These people are at risk so far as their security of tenure, their home and their living conditions are concerned.
My noble friend Lord Janner was right when he supported what my noble friend the Leader of the House said, that by delaying the starting date we should create just the position which we are trying to do away with at the moment. As regards the point raised by the noble Earl, Lord Onslow, the situation would be the same as it is under the Rent Act generally: that if there is a bad tenant and he refuses an offer of other suitable accommodation he can be evicted. It does not extend beyond the Rent Act, but in the same way as at the end of the road there are cases where there will be evictions, so there will be here; but the eviction would not be tied to the employment but to the tenancy.
The Earl of ONSLOW: Would the noble Baroness give way? If the ADHACs come in and advise that this particular house is necessary for agriculture, and the local authorities agree and the man still will not come out of the house, presumably this is tied to his employment and eviction will follow if, as we all admit, there is a very rare situation where these unpleasant proceedings have to continue.
Baroness BIRK: I disagree with the noble Earl. By then he has become a tenant and is then in the position of any other tenant so far as the Rent Act is concerned. It has then become nothing to do with his employment. If he is offered other suitable provision—and we come to this under Schedule 3: for instance under Case 3 where the rent is not paid, or Case 4 where there is conduct amounting to a nuisance—then he is subject to the same conditions and criteria as are other tenants under the Rent Act. This has nothing to do with his employment; that is the difference.
Earl FERRERS: I am bound to say that we have had quite a fascinating debate on the Amendment, an Amendment which I am slightly surprised to find was to discuss whether or not the provisions of the Bill should come into force forthwith or in a year's time. Then we got into a poll on reform of the House of Lords, which is spreading the net fairly wide. I am glad to say that did not come from my noble friends behind me, so that is some measure of satisfaction. The noble Lord, Lord Collison, said that he was quite convinced that the National Union of Agricultural Workers has always been in favour of this. I do not dispute that for one moment. However, he said yesterday that he did not want to get up on every Amendment. So far as I am concerned, I hope the noble Lord will not have any hesitation in speaking whenever he wishes. The views of the noble Lord are respected and welcome. If our Amendments do not accord with the noble Lord's views, I hope that he will not hesitate in putting his opinions forward. We do not consider that to be the slightest imposition. The only point that I made about this the other day—and I repeat it now—is that I know that the abolition of the tied cottage is the official union view. That does not mean to say every member of the union agrees with that; approximately 50 per cent. of

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the people employed in agriculture are members of the union and it cannot be said that that necessarily represents a total view of all agricultural workers. I accept that it is the union's official view.
The noble Lord, Lord Janner, was concerned that if we were to accept this Amendment, unscrupulous landlords—and I agree with him that there are unscrupulous landlords—would take advantage of this and would immediately try to prise out unsatisfactory farm workers. That is a correct view to take. If people were to do this, it would be totally unacceptable. As the noble Lord, Lord Middleton, said, this possibility is covered on page 62 at paragraph 4 where it says clearly in Schedule 9:
"Where before the operative date a court has made an order for possession of a dwelling house … the court may, on the application of the person against whom the order was made, rescind or vary the order in such manner as the court thinks fit …"
In other words, if a possession order has been made for a house against a person when the Bill becomes law, and before it conies into operation under the statutory order, the person who has had the possession order made against him may go to the court and say: "Please will you think about it again."
Lord JANNER: With the greatest respect, it is not as simple as that. If the order is made and the man is already ejected, it is too late to have it rescinded. That is what I am driving at. The whole point is that an order must be made for not longer than six months. Assuming the order is made and the Act does not come in for twelve months, the man is already out. That is the real point. The Leasehold Reform Act enables a person who has not obeyed an order but has stayed beyond the time that he is allowed, to have the benefit of that because the Act is retrospective in that regard. Here you cannot do this. The man will be out and there is an end of it. The court cannot make an order rescinding something which cannot be rescinded.
Earl FERRERS: I hesitate to conflict with the views of the noble Lord, Lord Janner, who is an expert in legal matters.
Lord JANNER: I am not an expert.
Earl FERRERS: This Schedule says that where before the operative date—that is the date on which the Bill becomes law as a result of the order, of the Statutory Instrument—the court has made an order, in other words since this has become law, a person may go back to the court and say, "This Bill has now become law. It is not operative yet. May I please stay?" If the person has already gone out of the house he cannot go back and say, "May I come back in?" The noble Lord was worried about an unscrupulous landlord trying to prise a tenant out as soon as this Bill became law and before it came into operation. In other words, after Royal Assent and the operative date. It is then that, as I see it, this paragraph 4 would operate. However, be that as it may, the noble Lord may like to consider this on his own and I certainly bow to his superior views.
Baroness BIRK: As I understand it, paragraph 4 of Schedule 9, which I think we are discussing, protects only people who are still in residence on the operative date. If we wait for the 12 months many will be forced to move out. I do not know whether the noble Earl has read that into the point. It is during the delay that if people are forced to move out they will not still be in residence and therefore they will have no protection.
Earl FERRERS: I have no doubt that the noble Baroness is well briefed on this, but I am bound to say that I cannot read that into it because what it says is:
"Where before the operative date"—
if this were in 12 months' time the operative date would be 1978. Where before 1978—
"a court has made an order for possession of a dwelling-house which on the operative date is subject to a statutory tenancy and the order has not been executed, the court may, on the application of the person against whom the order was made, rescind or vary the order …".
Perhaps the noble Baroness is right. I am sure she is. I shall not pursue this matter any further.
The noble Lord, Lord Peart, made it perfectly clear that the unions have been campaigning for this change since the beginning of the century and I know this fairly well. I am sorry if I appeared to interrupt the noble Lord when he was in the course of his speech but I was taking note of what he said and I smiled and turned to my noble friend and said,

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"That is a Department of the Environment brief". Somehow one seemed to sense it when it came from the noble Lord. But that was the only reason I smiled and not because I disagreed with what the noble Lord was saying specifically.
This Amendment was put down not to delay anything particularly; it was a genuine attempt to allow for the setting up of the ADHACs to take place and to give the local authorities who have to make provision for the responsibilities which will be placed upon them some time to make provision for that. That was the only reason I put down the Amendment. It was not for some scurrilous reason to upset the provision of the Bill. If the noble Lord feels that this would be an undesirable thing to do then I shall withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Earl FERRERS Earl FERRERS moved Amendment No. 7:
Page 2, line 39, leave out subsection (6).
The noble Earl said: This Amendment is consequential on Amendment No. 3 which we passed the other day. I beg to move.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 1, as amended, agreed to.
Remaining clauses agreed to.
Schedule 1 agreed to.
Schedule 2 [Protected Occupiers in their own Right]:
9.44 p.m.
Lord SWAYTHLING Lord SWAYTHLING moved Amendment No. 8:
Page 34, leave out line 47 and insert ("225 out of the last 260 weeks, 50 weeks of which have been for the current employer.").
The noble Lord said: This Amendment is moved because it is the widespread view of those engaged in the farming industry, which coincides I believe with the particular wishes of the National Farmers' Union the Milk Marketing Board and the Royal Association of British Dairy Farmers. It is widely felt that the two years qualifying period in the Bill is much too short and this Amendment substitutes five years in agriculture of which one year must be for their current employer; namely, the employer whose house they are occupying.
The last provision is essential and it is for that reason that I infinitely prefer this Amendment to Amendment No. 9 which
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stands in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, where it is not necessary for the worker to have worked for the owner of his service house for any definite period. In other words, under Amendment No. 9 a worker could work for two years in agriculture and then leave his job, where he possibly had a second-class cottage, obtain a job with somebody else who had an excellent house, and within a month he could give notice and seek to remain where he was, which I regard as wholly unacceptable. In view of what I have said, I trust that the Government will accept this Amendment as it would be wrong to ignore the feeling so generally held in the agriculture industry. I beg to move.
Earl FERRERS: I wonder whether it might be helpful if I spoke to my Amendment at the same time, because it is of a similar character. We want to get clear exactly what the situation is, because this is a very important Part of the Bill as it depicts who may or may not take advantage of its provisions. The Bill states that the only criterion which has to be met, in order to become a protected tenant under the Bill, is that one should have worked whole time in agriculture on any farm for two years. The Amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Swaythling, states that a person would have to work in agriculture for five years, one year of which should be with the current employer. The Amendment which stands in my name, and in the name of my noble friend Lord Sandys, states that a person would have to work for four years in agriculture, and for two years with the same employer. They are quite different points, but the common denominator running through them is the fence over which one has to get in order to obtain statutory protection under the Bill.
I believe that the Bill as drafted, with just two years in agriculture, is too loose and is inadequate, because it makes no stipulation whatever as to the length of time a person has to serve on one farm in order to obtain possession of the house in which he lives. In other words, a person who had been working in agriculture for two years could go to a new farm and within a week say that he wished to work elsewhere. He could then incur the provisions of this Bill, and by so doing could latch on to the freehold of the house of

1607
someone for whom he had worked for only one week. There may well be an argument for saying that if a man has worked in agriculture he should have the right to a freehold. But it is a different matter to say that a farmer or a landlord is under an obligation to forgo his freehold, possibly for a great many years, when a person has worked on his farm for only one week. That does not seem to be right.
There are two points which ought to be made clear. First, there is the qualifying period which a man must work on a certain farm in order to latch on to the freehold. As the Bill is at present drafted, a person may obtain the freehold from someone for whom he has worked for a very short period of time, and it is rather like saying that if you have worked for Sainsbury's for two years, you then have the right to latch on to the freehold of part of Tesco's. The connection between the two is extraordinary.
One of the other points which it is very important to deal with in the Bill is the protection of agriculture from what I described at Second Reading as the devious—that is, the person who, for one reason or another, has found it difficult to obtain good or adequate housing but who finds that by working in agriculture for two years he can latch on to somebody's freehold and obtain the freehold of a house simply by working on that farm for even a week or a year. I see that the noble Lord, Lord Janner, is smiling.
Lord JANNER: With the greatest respect, I was only smiling at the fact that the noble Lord was talking about freeholds. This person does not obtain the freehold; he obtains a statutory tenancy which is an entirely different matter.
Earl FERRERS: I quite agree. I forgot that I was speaking to a lawyer who is very specific about these matters, but the noble Lord, Lord Janner, knows exactly what I mean. The fact is that a person who finds that he can work in agriculture can take advantage of provisions which were designed for people who are not in the same category.
Lord JANNER: I did not intend to smile; it just occurred to me that this is how a layman talks about these matters. That is all.
Earl FERRERS: Thank goodness that there are laymen who talk in laymen's English and not always in legal language which is sometimes so very difficult to understand, as those of us who have ploughed through the Bill have found. I put it seriously to the noble Lord that it is not right at a time of housing shortage for agriculture to be seen as possibly a quick route to a local authority house or to a protected tenancy. If the provisions contained in the Bill are kept, it is perfectly possible that they can be used as a quick route to a local authority house or to a protected tenancy.
I believe that our Amendment is probably better than that which has been set down by the Liberals. I say this with the greatest humility and not because I have designed the Amendment; I have not. However, one can put down the axe almost anywhere. There is an infinite variety of places where one could say that this is the right criterion, but in the end it is a matter of judgment. To say that a person should have to work for five years is a long period of time. On the other hand, if a farmer is to forgo the right to his house, not only just for that person but possibly for that person's widow or dependant on a later occasion, it is perfectly reasonable that that farm worker should have worked for him for a period of time. The Amendment standing in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Swaythling, says that a farmer should have had that person working for him for a year. I believe that that is a perfectly reasonable request, but our Amendment is slightly different; it mentions four years, a more accommodating length of time which I believe the noble Lord, Lord Peart, will accept. The alternative is that he should have worked on that farm or in agriculture for two years.
It is a question of deciding which is the best Amendment and I am of the opinion that a compromise between the Amendment which stands in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Swaythling, and our Amendment might be the best course to adopt. As the Bill stands at present it is too loose. It enables people who should not have an automatic right to a house which does not belong to them to have a house on a farm which they may not have worked on for any length of time. I do not believe that the Bill should give them that right. I hope the noble Lord

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will think that this is a point worthy of discussion and of consideration.
Lord MIDDLETON: I know that the need for a period is accepted by the Government and in deciding the length of such a period they have come down between the National Union of Agricultural Workers' one year and the National Farmers' Union five years which is advocated by the noble Lord, Lord Swaythling. My own view is that the period of two years in the Bill is too short hearing in mind the dangers envisaged in the Consultation Document. Perhaps I may just quote from this excellent document. It says:
"All important, it will be essential for the legislation to distinguish between genuine, regular, full-time hired farm workers and anybody who might view a brief spell in that capacity as a short cut to assured housing".
I believe it to be too short, bearing in mind the need to keep within reasonable bounds the number of persons for whom the local authority are bound to provide housing in a period of housing shortage and economic stringency.
I think that in practice the five years—although I suppose it comes down to four years and four months if we add up the number of days—is too long, as was advocated by the noble Lord, Lord Swaythling, and I think that what conies in practice to three and a half years; namely, the Amendment tabled by the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, seems to be reasonable. As to the alternative qualifying period of two years with the same employer, which is what the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, is advocating—
Lord SWAYTHLING: If the noble Lord will permit me, I suggested one year with the same employer.
Lord MIDDLETON: I quite agree that the proposal made by the noble Lord, Lord Swaythling, is one year, but the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, suggested two, and that seems to me to meet another point that is referred to in the Consultative Document. Perhaps I may quote again:
"The Tavistock Institute sample disclosed that 42 per cent. of workers who had experienced the prospect of eviction had not then worked for more than a year with the employer concerned."
So the Tavistock Institute's finding indicates that many people find in the first year that they do not fit in to a particular farm job, but if they can achieve a year
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with one employer they are much more likely to settle down, either with him or in the industry. A worker who puts in two years with one employer can therefore seriously be assumed to be engaged in agriculture. The man described in the Consultation Document as taking a short cut to assured houring is much more likely to be a misfit, I should have thought, wherever he may find employment, and more likely to flit from job to job, and hence I see the need for a longer qualifying period in the industry. I think that a period of four years is just about right. It is a matter of balance; the Government have said what they think and where in their judgment it should lie; the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, has said where his should lie and the noble Lord, Lord Swaythling, has suggested a little longer. I believe that proposed by the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, is the right one.
The Earl of ONSLOW: There is a point which I think has not been raised so far. I believe that the agricultural colleges are finding it slightly more difficult than before to place the graduate worker or the skilled worker who comes from the agricultural colleges. This certainly applies in what might be called the luxury trades of the arboriculturists and the landscape gardeners, and it is beginning to apply to the skilled agricultural worker. There has also been another factor which on reflection is probably not as odd as it might seem at first, in that there has been a reaction among some people from monotonous, conveyor belt, mass production jobs, who think to themselves, "I would actually rather go and get a varied job in agriculture, even though the pay is less".
It seems to me that there are two sorts of people. One has the input of industrial workers into agriculture, or the children of industrial workers in agriculture, and the skilled pupil from the agricultural colleges, and those people, it seems to me, must be protected, because we who are privileged enough to be employers of agricultural labour need the best labour we can. Consequently, above all, we need to cherish them because, as I have said a million times in your Lordships' House, it is in our interests so to do.
If the misfit and the person who does not really like agriculture wants to get

1611
out of it is going to use this as a jumping-off place to crash the local authority housing list, that is wrong. Even with our Amendment, it would theoretically be possible for a young man to leave school at 16, go into agricultural work and be at the head of the local authority housing list by the age of 20, unmarried. Under the Government's Bill it is possible
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at 18 years of age. This seems to me not really right. Above all, we must try to weed out those who are not keen on agriculture, because what we want to do is to protect agriculture. If we protect agriculture, ipso facto we protect the agricultural workers. So I come back to my original point that they are our finest asset.
10.2 p.m.
Lord GISBOROUGH: I would support these Amendments. One has to remember that by and large, employees in agriculture are fairly static. Sometimes they work for a lifetime and even retire on the farm, so there is no great turnover in many cases. Undoubtedly there are some who go in and out of the industry because they do not like the people concerned; they do not get on with the boss, or, as in my case, they go into industry and try that out for a short time and then come back, or they find agriculture is too hard work, or there is one reason or another.
There is one thing which will crop up—it has done already in service houses and in many parts, and this will happen in the future. Where you have a farmer with someone who is no good (perhaps he is either a foreman or a worker) the farmer will give him a very good reference. The reason is quite obvious—because the worker takes the reference to his next job, the farmer employs him, and his original employer has got rid of him so rubs his hands. Once the had chap is in the house, he is there. One is talking about only a very small proportion, but the "baddies" do exist and should not be the responsibility of the new farmer to whom they have gone. Agriculture should be protected from this very small proportion of "baddies".
Lord COLLISON: There is a point which has been given deep consideration by everyone concerned with the industry, including myself, because I have to look at things from the point of view of an employer, Land Settlement Association—wise. The whole issue revolves around the understanding we have, and I think the unions have—although they said a year—that the industry needs to be protected against those people who come into agriculture just in order to get a house, and who do not intend to stay in the industry. Therefore, some qualifying period had to be written in.
I am satisfied, as are my colleagues, that two years is a proper qualifying period. A man does not go into agriculture thinking that in two years' time he will have a right to the tenancy of this cottage or that council house. He does
1614
not think that far ahead. A man who has been in agriculture for two years is an agricultural worker, is somebody connected with the industry and means to be so connected. I feel therefore that the two-year period is long enough.
As for the period during which an employee has been with one employer, that is irrelevant. We looked at this matter from the point of view of the wellbeing of agriculture as well as the wellbeing of the agricultural worker and we must remember that agriculture is an industry that contains a large number of employers and employees. The agricultural worker should be able to move freely within the industry in order to provide the service which he may have developed or improved, going from one place to another, and if one accepts that, then one is thinking of the service which a man can give to the industry. Thinking in those terms, the question of the length of time he has been employed by any employer, including the last employer, is irrelevant and therefore I believe that the proposal in the Bill is a proper solution to the problem, which I accept is a real one.
I agree that we must not have the situation where somebody can just come into the industry in order, after a few weeks or months, to gain possession of a cottage or have a right to the tenancy of a cottage or council house and I suggest that two years is long enough to show that he is a bona fide agricultural worker.
Earl FERRERS: I am interested in what the noble Lord is saying and especially in his remark that the length of time a person has worked on a farm is irrelevant. Would he expand on that? Clearly the unions are concerned for their individual members, in a similar way that agriculture contains many individual farmers. Does the noble Lord believe it is right for a farmer to lose the use of a house which has been provided for the purposes of that farm as well as for the purposes of agriculture simply because he has had somebody working for a few weeks or a month or so?
Lord COLLISON: No, and I am not saying that. Any agricultural worker who has had a long time in the industry may still want to move to another farm.

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He may find the conditions on the next farm intolerable or he may not be able to get on with his employer. In that case he may have to do something about it. It is not simply a question of somebody coming in with the idea of getting a house. In the case of a long-term agricultural worker, whether he has been in agriculture for two or 20 years, he is a long-term agricultural worker and the possibility of being able to move from one farm to another is most important, and protection should go with that man.
Viscount MASSEREENE and FERRARD: Noble Lords may be interested in my experience, even under the present legislation. I have known a farm worker take a job, move into a house on a Saturday and give notice at the end of the following week, having got a job in a factory nine or 10 miles away. He is in one's house and nobody likes evicting. Certainly I would never like to evict anybody and I have never done so. Nevertheless, he is in one's house and even under the present Act if one wants to evict him then, with the log jam in the courts, he is there for eight or ten months anyway. For this reason I strongly favour the Amendment standing in the name of my noble friend Lord Ferrers because I think that two years is too short a time. One is bound to come across Smart Alecks—
Several noble Lords: Oh?
Viscount MASSEREENE and FERRARD: I did not notice my noble friend Lord Home of the Hirsel in his place and I assure him that that remark was meant for the few unscrupulous farm workers who will take advantage of this short period as a short-cut to obtaining a rent protected house or council house.
Baroness ROBSON of KIDDINGTON: I should like to say a few words from these Benches in favour of the Amendment. I feel that it is tragic that we should have to legislate for the exception, but that is what we are doing. The whole of this Bill is legislation for the unusual, hardly existing, bad farm employer, just as the present proposal is aimed at the hardly existing bad farm worker with whom the farmer might get landed. It is tragic that
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we should have to go through this procedure of legislating for either. I should like to defend our Amendment. I have nothing against the noble Earl's Amendment, with its period of four years as against five years. What worries me about that Amendment, however, is that it has the word "or" in it and that the other qualification is two years with the same employer. I believe that the Amendment means that one can either qualify by working for two years with one employer or by having been four years in the industry.
Under the provisions that are being set up we are in honour bound to protect the local authority, which could be landed with a person after two years. After two years, as long as the worker has stayed with the same employer for that time, he could have the right to a council house. If one compares the length of time that such a person might have to be on a local authority list against even the hardship of working for two years for one employer, it is clear that there is still a slight risk in this. I therefore prefer our Amendment.
Lord PEART: I believe that I should intervene here. I am sorry that the noble Baroness, Lady Robson, regarded this Bill as dealing with something which is exceptional and unusual and felt that we should not do it. The simple fact is that there have been abuses; otherwise, there would never have been all the agitation there has been over the years. This is the reality. Farm workers feel strongly about this matter. We have just heard from the noble Lord, Lord Collison, who was a distinguished farm leader and president of his union and who, from practical experience, was able to tell us on Second Reading about some of the difficulties.
I will not say that all is bad and gloomy. I have paid tribute to the good relationships between farmers, landowners and farm workers. We are dealing only with small cases. After all, most of our legislation on other matters deals specifically with abuses, even though they may be small abuses, so I believe that we are right to press forward. However, I accept that there is an important argument about the length of period that has been mentioned. The Liberal Party take a

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different view from that of the Conservative Party. Indeed, the noble Lord was quite right about the Consultative Document: it said that this must be carefully considered, and he was right to stress it. I do not believe that there is any political issue here, whatever position we come to. I take the view that it is fair that there should be a qualifying period of service for workers who are to benefit from the security of housing which the Bill's provisions would afford, to ensure that people do not see a brief spell of work in agriculture as a short cut to that security. Noble Lords have accepted this in principle. We are only arguing here about the difference of period.
I was rather interested in the state of agriculture as described by the noble Earl, Lord Onslow, and in some of the difficulties in placing trained personnel and skilled workers in the industry. He spoke of the pressure that we get and the pressure which may come from a movement from the industrial areas. That has always been so but, in the end, it is for the farmer himself to decide who his employee is to be. He will make the decision. He will judge the worker's skill and whether he is qualified, so I do not feel that we should worry too much there; but I agree with the noble Earl that it is an interesting problem and, naturally, should be taken seriously.
We have decided on two years, taking account of consultations which we have had with both sides of the industry. There has been considerable consultation on this matter, as the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, and others know. I think that two years is a reasonable period in which to prove one's bona fides. Incidentally, two years is also the period suggested by the Association of District Councils, which is the body intimately concerned with the realities of rehousing agricultural workers. I should not say, generally speaking, that that association would decide on the matter for political reasons. From its experience—and, after all, it is very important in this matter—the association has come down on the side of two years, with which we agree.
The arguments which I have heard, and those which I have seen in the farming Press in recent months, have not shaken me in my conviction that two years in the industry is quite long enough to sift
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out the genuine farm worker from anyone who might be tempted to use the Bill as a quick step to assured housing; or to use the dramatic words of the noble Earl, Lord Onslow, virtually to jump the queue or to crash into the queue, as he described it.
Both these Amendments would have the effect of leaving a farm worker under a cloud of insecurity about housing for longer than we consider right, since insisting as they do on the one hand on one year's service with a current employer, and, on the other, on two years with a current employer where a worker had less than four years' service in agriculture, I think the scope for abuse by a bad employer is considerable. We want to encourage ambitious young workers, and here I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Collison, about the need for mobility. It is not a bad thing that these workers get ambitious and want to move, or wish to gain other experience in a particular field of agricultural practice. An ambitious young worker, let us say with less than four years' service, and less than two years with his current employer, who wishes to take a better job with greater prospects with another employer, must, under both these Amendments, forfeit his eligibility for housing security until he has been with his new employer for one or two years, or has clocked up his four years as the case may be.
There are many reasons why workers leave farms and seek to move on. Some of the reasons are domestic—and this has been mentioned and argued by noble Lords on Second Reading and the other day. The reasons may relate to changes in the farm business; and others, as noble Lords who are connected with the industry know, reflect ambitions, as I said earlier, to progress up the promotion ladder; or there is a desire to gain experience in different sectors. All this is a good thing. I believe that the Amendments, by making it harder to qualify under the Bill, would have an adverse effect on such movement, and, I suggest, would bite particularly hard on young workers, perhaps with young families—we have to recognise this—at an early and critical stage of their careers, at precisely the time when they might expect to be relatively mobile.
Furthermore, every farm worker who has yet to complete his qualifying period

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is constantly aware of the possibility of his employment being terminated before the period is up, and I believe that both Amendments would extend this unease. I know that noble Lords do not want to achieve that. They feel that their case is reasonable. I am thinking here of the Liberal Amendment, although the Tories criticised it. Although I believe that there is a difficulty here, I think the Amendment runs counter to our objective in the Bill—
The Earl of ONSLOW: Will the noble Lord give way? Surely the argument about the anxiety of the qualifying period applies whether the qualifying period is 20 minutes or 3,000 years?
Lord PEART: That is a very strange hypothetical case or argument. We are dealing here with the realities of two years, which is what I have suggested and with what is in the Amendment, which I assume the noble Earl supports as a good Conservative—although I now understand that he is not a Party Member. Perhaps the noble Earl supports the Liberal Amendment. I still think that what is proposed runs counter to our objective.
The Earl of CAITHNESS: Would the noble Lord give way? If you are a reasonable farm worker, you have nothing to fear after six months' work on a farm under the Employment Protection Act. Does that not allay a lot of the fears that the noble Lord is concerned with?
Lord PEART: I do not think it helps security of tenure, which is what we are arguing about. The noble Earl mentioned six months, but I do not think that answers my main point. After all, we are anxious here to uncouple the farm workers' housing from their employment in certain circumstances. I regret, therefore, that we cannot accept these Amendments and, in view of the unfortunate effect they would have, I hope noble Lords opposite will agree to withdraw them. There is no political issue in this matter.
Lord SWAYTHLING: First, if the noble Lord, Lord Collison, is so keen on mobility, I wonder why he is so keen on this Bill at all? I think the Bill is a
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hindrance to mobility. Apart from that, I would say straight out with reference to this Amendment, that we are quite agreeable to four years as suggested by the Amendment of the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, but we are very insistent that it is essential to have one year on the farm of the man who is going to lose his cottage, the man who is the present employer. Therefore, I would ask whether we cannot alter our Amendment at the moment to four years and have it in those terms. I do not want to waste too much time, but on the Road Traffic Act some years ago I moved an Amendment that a motor driver should have seven days in which to produce his licence. The Government said that if I altered it to five days they would accept it. Straight away I said that I would alter it to five days and the Amendment was passed. Am I entitled to say that we will accept the four years, with one year with the present employer, and press the Amendment now? Because if I am not I feel I should like to press the Amendment as it stands and alter it to four years on Report stage. That would safeguard the question of one year in the present employment.
Earl FERRERS: May I come to the point which the noble Lord, Lord Swaythling, has just mentioned, that he would be prepared to accept our Amendment of four years provided it was coupled with his stipulation of one year on the farm? Probably the tidiest way to do this would be for the noble Lord to withdraw his Amendment and for us to withdraw ours and come back with an Amendment which possibly will suit everyone—I hope it will be agreeable to the noble Lords opposite—at the Report stage? That would be easier than getting ourselves into a legal tangle with manuscript Amendments, which I dare say can be passed but—I was going to say there is no urgency about this. I appreciate, however, that there is great urgency for the Government to get their business through. If we could get this specific provision in the Bill I should have thought the best way to do it was at Report stage.
I should just like to comment on one thing which the noble Lord, Lord Peart, said. I accept that he put forward his views why the Bill should remain as it is. Of course, there is a balance to be drawn.

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I do not say that our Amendment is absolutely correct or that the noble Lord is correct either. There is a balance. Equally, there is a balance between the right of the farm worker to have security of tenure on the one hand, and the ability of the farmer, with the cottages which are at his disposal, to farm adequately, on the other hand. Then there is the encouragement or incentive for farmers to build cottages for workers. There is a balance to be drawn. The only thing the noble Lord, Lord Peart, did not say at all, and it is something I think, with respect, he should address his mind to, is why a farmer should find himself losing the right to the occupancy of a house on his farm by a person who, under this Bill, has no qualification of length of service on that particular farm to enable him to lay claim to the house. The noble Lord did not comment on that, and I think it is right, because there is a balance to be drawn here. I do not know whether he wishes to comment on the point. Perhaps he does not. Very well.
Lord PEART: I would always wish to respond to the noble Earl. I agree that there is an argument about getting the balance right. I understand the worries on this. But to come back to the main argument, I do not want to get involved in a discussion about procedure and how to deal with this. That was a matter for the noble Lord and his friends in the Liberal Party. My point of view is this: we must stand by the two years.
The Earl of ONSLOW: May I ask one question, speaking solely for myself? As my noble friend Lord Ferrers has said, he has not really dealt with the question of the period on one farm. The whole of the argument between Lord Ferrers and Lord Swaythling has been a little like God and Abraham bargaining over Sodom and Gomorrah: Peradventure, Lord, we have three or four years or whatever it is. I shall now venture to produce another peradventure. Peradventure the noble Lord, Lord Peart, might be tempted to accept two years and a one-year qualifying period on one farm. I would hope that we could all agree with that. Everybody would be happy.
Lord SWAYTHLING: I should say that the phrase "everybody would be happy" is not correct. Certainly we should not be happy with two years.
Lord COLLISON: There is talk about there not being a balance. I want to restore that balance. We are not talking simply in terms of the agriculture worker who has been in agriculture for two or four years or what-you-will. We are also talking about an agricultural worker who may have been in the industry for 20, 30 or 40 years and who may in his last employment run into difficulties within the year. I do not want to expand on that, but it is a point which must be taken into account when we are talking about balance.
Earl FERRERS: I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Collison, for drawing that to our attention. He is right. There is a balance and that particular person certainly deserves consideration. If our Amendment were accepted he would come within its ambit because he would have done the four years. On both these Amendments there is no question of the fundamental aspects of the Bill being altered over this; we accept this. We are trying to see what is the right qualifying period. I think the Government have the period wrong. I hope that we shall be able to come to some arrangement. If the noble Lord, Lord Swaythling, were to withdraw his Amendment, I would withdraw mine and see if we could put down a more suitable Amendment on Report. I should have thought that would be the tidy thing to do.
Lord SWAYTHLING: There is the question of the definition of "tidy". My definition of it in this case is that we should press our Amendment, which I hope the Conservative Benches would support. If it is passed, they would then have the opportunity to alter the five years to four years on Report. I should like to see the Amendment in this form with the "one year on the same farm" in the Bill as soon as possible. Therefore I should like to press our Amendment.
Lord PEART: I am suprised because I thought the Conservatives did not support what is proposed by the Liberal Party.
Lord GISBOROUGH: I am not prepared to support this Amendment. I take the remarks of Lord Collison about the length of service as being very important. I think that having the "or" in is now much more important than I at first realised.
On Question, Amendment negatived.
10.30 p.m.
Lord SANDYS Lord SANDYS moved Amendment No. 10:
Page 35, line 41, at end insert—
("Provided that dwelling house is not in qualifying ownership if it is the only dwelling house on an agricultural unit available for occupation under a contract of employment in agriculture.")
The noble Lord said: In this Amendment we are dealing with a different situation altogether. Here we are concerned with the holding on which there is a single agricultural cottage. First, I would draw your Lordships' attention to the large number and variety of agricultural holdings in this country and indicate that this Amendment does not specify any particular area of ground to which it refers. We are concerned with the holding on which there is a single dwelling-house, so we turn in our definition to Part I of Schedule 2 and under the Dwelling-house in qualifying ownership we reach the point where this Amendment applies. In paragraph 3 of the Schedule the terms of qualifying ownership are set out. I will not repeat these as it would be tedious. After the end of paragraph (b) we have the Amendment which reads, and I quote:
"Provided that dwelling house is not in qualifying ownership if it is the only dwelling house on an agricultural unit available for occupation under a contract of employment in agriculture."
In other words, this Amendment disapplies the previous parts of paragraph 3. Here we have a situation in which an owner has an enterprise. Perhaps that enterprise is concerned with no buildings at all, but is a small area of land, or it is concerned with an enterprise contained in a single large building—and I have in mind either some special technical equipment, perhaps hydroponics or something of that
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sort cultivating a particular crop, or an enterprise which will demand the presence of one worker in a single dwelling-house on this particular holding. There is no room for manoeuvre; there is no second dwelling-house, so that the employer is unlikely to be able to draw upon another source of employed labour.
There is a special difficulty here, because the Bill as drafted makes no special provision for a small or relatively small enterprise. One must recognise that there are a large number of small holdings in this country. Some are statutory small holdings owned by local authorities, and we understand that they are excluded from the purview of this Bill. In this Amendment we seek to exclude those other small holdings not in the ownership of local authorities. These are in a particularly difficult position where the employer has remarkably little room for manoeuvre so far as the employee is concerned and is placed in a predicament where, if he makes a false choice, or if he falls out with the employee or the employee with him, there is a situation which would be the reverse of satisfactory. There is a situation which seeks redress, and therefore I beg to move the Amendment.
10.35 p.m.
Lord PEART: The effect of this Amendment would he to deprive a considerable number of workers and ex-workers of protection. It would seem from the information available that something under 16,000 farms have only one cottage occupied by whole-time workers. Where there is more than one cottage on a farm, but only one occupied by a whole-time worker, it is not possible to judge whether or not any of the remainder are available for occupation by an agricultural worker. From the figures that are to hand, the safest lesson to be drawn is that the Amendment can have the effect of removing protection from 16,000 people. Though there may be some overlap with the 17,000 or so dairymen and stock men who were removed from the Bill yesterday, this means really a further substantial erosion of the number of those who are intended to benefit from the security of tenure afforded by the Bill. This is not acceptable to the Government.

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The arguments which allege that farming enterprises with one tied cottage will be specially vulnerable once the Bill is in operation, seem based on unwarranted conclusions. They pre-suppose that the re-housing duty to be placed on local authorities will not work so far as such farms are concerned. No doubt there will be ample opportunity to debate this issue again but in the light of our debate yesterday, I hope that noble Lords will agree to wait until we reach the Amendments on Clauses 29 and 30 before discussing yet again how the local authorities will respond to their new obligations.
In the meantime, the Government cannot welcome an Amendment which assumes that the Bill will not work, and which seeks to exempt a considerable number of genuine workers and ex-workers from protection. I hope this will be accepted by the movers of the Amendment.
Baroness YOUNG: I should like to support the noble Lord, Lord Sandys. He is knowledgeable about this matter and has quoted some specific cases. I take the point of the noble Lord, Lord Peart, that there are 16,000 such cases in the country. I should like him to explain in some detail how he sees this part of the Act working out. The duty to re-house is placed firmly on the district council in question. Suppose it is unable to re-house? What is the farmer who has only one cottage to do, and what is the local authority to do if at that moment it cannot re-house? How does the noble Lord see this working?
Baroness BIRK: The noble Baroness is extending this again to the general housing point. If I may come back to the Amendment, the way the Amendment is phrased is as follows:
"… if it is the only dwelling house on an agricultural unit available for occupation under a contract of employment in agriculture".
This could mean that a farmer could have several cottages on his land and for various reasons (he might sell or let them, or even keep them empty) decide that only one should be designated for agricultural use. I am sure that the noble Baroness must appreciate that this can lead to a grave abuse of the whole Bill. It knocks it once again.
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You cannot leave this very wide definition in the Bill. As my noble friend the Leader of the House has said, under 16,000 farms have only one cottage occupied by whole-time workers. What it would do, if one is dealing with cottages where there are workers, is that it would withdraw security from a very great number of people. The noble Baroness comes back once again to the point: what happens in this particular case? What is happening at the moment? We are again getting the picture as though the moment the Bill becomes law, all the tied cottages will immediately be vacated and everybody will fall as a burden on the local authorities.
If people are evicted as a result of possession orders under the present system, I hope that nobody will argue—and I should be very much surprised if noble Lords opposite were so to argue—that these people should have no right to be rehoused. They still have to be rehoused and are being rehoused by local authorities or are finding other ways. Many people will he moving away with the job. We heard a great deal yesterday about the dairy herds. Yet we know very well that in most cases where the stockman moves, he moves to another place and there is a house for him because somebody else has moved on. That is not a problem that arises in any case. Any of these dents arc in fact going to knock away the whole purpose of the Bill which is based quite simply on security of tenure.
Somebody raised the point that on many farms there are a number of cottages standing empty. I think it was the noble Baroness, Lady Elliot of Harwood, who pointed out that, due to the increased technology in farming and also travel, there were many empty cottages Both these arguments cannot be put: that on the one hand there are cottages that are empty, and on the other hand there is only one cottage. The definition is extremely vague, because it does not necessarily mean that only one cottage on a farm will be used for agricultural use. Incidentally—although this is not a point on which I rest—the drafting is faulty, because the term "agricultural unit" is not a term that is used in the Act.
I am sure the noble Baroness is aware that if this Amendment is accepted it would again erode the whole purpose of

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the Bill. I am aware that perhaps that is part of the motivation of the Opposition in moving these Amendments, but quite enough of the Bill has been eroded already and like my noble friend I obviously will have to resist this Amendment.
Baroness YOUNG: I am sorry that the noble Baroness should feel that I am bringing in housing every time, but local authority housing is a central feature of the Bill and she must accept that it will inevitably come up at intervals. The case I was arguing was not the same as that of my noble friend Lady Elliot of Harwood. I did not hear her argument yesterday, but I understand from the noble Baroness, Lady Birk, that the point at issue was when a farmer had a number of cottages, a number of which were empty. The whole point of this Amendment is that it applies to a farmer with only one cottage. I would draw the attention of the noble Baroness to the fact that although we keep talking about security of tenure for farm workers, no local authority tenant has security of tenure. They are the one group of people who are excluded under the Act.
Lord SWAYTHLING: The noble Lord the Leader of the House said that this Bill would affect 16,000 farm workers and 70,000 dairy workers were excluded yesterday.
Lord PEART: 17,000.
Lord SWAYTHLING: I am grateful for the correction. I should have liked to suggest to him that the vast proportion of those 16,000 one-cottage farmers would be either dairy farmers or livestock farmers, because I do not think there are many farmers, neither dairy nor arable, who have only one cottage for a farm worker.
Earl DE LA WARR: I seems to me that the Government are failing to deal with all aspects of hardship. The whole point of this Bill is to avoid hardship on the part of the agricultural worker. On this side of the House we have demonstrated that we have great sympathy with that point of view. It is quite clear, in spite of what the noble Baroness has suggested, that there may be a wicked fellow who gets rid of two of his houses
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so that he has only one house available, but what the noble Lord, Lord Sandys, is referring to is the farmer who really only owns one cottage. Consider his case. Let us say that he is a dairy farmer with 70 cows, calving in the winter, and he has one man who is a milker, and that milker leaves him. He can do nothing about it. And who is left to do the milking?—that man alone. Who is left to do the calving?—that man alone. That is the situation which I am sure this Amendment is all about. I want to support it, because I believe that it must be pointed out to the Government that it is in cases like this that the hardship on the farmer is just as great as the hardship on the employee. So I ask the Government to take into account the fact that this is a very special case and something which they should consider carefully in the light of the almost intolerable burden that may be put on the farmer who has to look after his stock alone for seven days a week.
Lord COLLISON: The Opposition yesterday ravaged the Bill by excluding dairy farming and stock farming, and this is another attempt to ravage the Bill further by excluding all those single cottages on a farm. My noble friend the Leader of the House has made the necessary point and there is not much more to be said, except that the Opposition ignore the fact that if there is a single cottage on a farm and that is required for the proper working of the holding, it will carry a high priority both with the advisory committee and with the local authority who will be asked to make their best endeavours to find alternative accommodation.
No one has pretended that in the odd case—and I say "odd case" quite deliberately—a problem might not arise for a farmer, but, as I tried to explain yesterday, it is a balance of suitability. It is a balance between the interests of the farm worker—his security, in social and humane terms—and the possible occasion when a farmer is inconvenienced. To my mind, the balance is unquestionably on the side of the farm worker, on the side of the Government and on the side of the Bill. Therefore I repeat that if the Opposition carry this Amendment they will be further ravaging a Bill which has already been ravaged far too much.
Lord SANDYS: I am grateful to my noble friends who have spoken in favour of this Amendment, and I am particularly grateful to my noble friend Lady Young who has, quite rightly, extended the debate into the area of public sector housing, because that is what this is all about. It is all very well for the noble Baroness, Lady Birk, to say that the stockman can move on to another farm where there is a house for him, but so often there is not and that is our main problem. The problem will be difficult to resolve this evening, and I accept the noble Baroness's point in regard to the words "agricultural unit". I accept that the drafting is not satisfactory. We were in difficulties over this point, because we wanted to find a term which would cover a holding which did not necessarily include land. In those circumstances, it seems advisable for me to withdraw the Amendment this evening, but I should like to give the Government notice that we may return to it with another Amendment at Report stage. I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Earl FERRERS Earl FERRERS moved Amendment No. 11:
Page 37, line 28, leave out Part II of the Schedule.
The noble Earl said: This Amendment is consequential on Amendment No. 3, which we moved into the Bill yesterday. I beg to move.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Schedule 2, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 2 [Meaning of "relevant licence" and "relevant tenancy"]:
10.50 p.m.
Earl FERRERS Earl FERRERS moved Amendment No. 12:
Page 3, line 34, leave out subsection (3).
The noble Earl said: I should be very grateful if the noble Lord, Lord Peart, or the noble Baroness, Lady Birk, or whoever is to reply to the Amendment could explain exactly what is meant by Clause 2(3). It says:
" For the avoidance of doubt"—
I am never quite certain why words like these are put into an Act of Parliament,
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although I suppose there is a reason because it insinuates that there obviously is a doubt—
"it is hereby declared that meals provided in the course of a person's employment in agriculture do not constitute board for the purposes of paragraph (b) of section 2(1) of the Rent Act 1968".
I am not clear exactly what is the effect of that subsection. Therefore I put down the Amendment which the noble Lord, Lord Peart, will be delighted to know is only a probing Amendment. The provision of meals has frequently been part and parcel of agricultural life. Very often young men are taken on as farm students to work on farms where they are provided with board and lodging as part of their remuneration. They have never enjoyed any security of tenure, which may be a good or a had thing; they have lived in the farmer's house and been paid so much per week and the farmer has given them hoard and lodging as well.
As I understand it, subsection (3) gives security of tenure to these young men and I should like to ask what is the position of three different cases. I told the noble Baroness that I should ask her this question and I hope that she will be able to provide an answer. First, what happens in the case of a young man or student who has gone to work on a farm where the farmer has said, "I will give you a room and also your food"? Does that young man now have security of tenure of the room in which he lives? If he should decide that he has had enough of farm work and that he wants to go and work at a local garage, does he have security of tenure of that room? Secondly, what happens in the case of the farmer who lives in a large farmhouse and who has decided to make the back part of it into a flat and to put into it either a young man or a student to whom he says, "I will give you your meals"? Therefore the young man or student goes for his meals into the farmer's house. Does the young man then have security of tenure of the flat, even if he gets bored with working on the farm and goes to work in a garage?
Thirdly, what is the position in the case of a young man who goes to work on a farm and is put into an empty cottage but who, because he is unmarried, is invited by the farmer to take his meals

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with the farmer's family? Does that person then have security of tenure of the cottage? So far as I can see, he does.
I ask this question because I understand that if a person who lives in a town happens to own several houses and lets out rooms or flats in those houses, the people living in them have security of tenure, as protected tenants, under the Rent Acts. But if, as sometimes happens, there is a row of houses, with three or four in a row, the landlord may use them rather like a guest house and say, "I will provide you with food", and the occupants of those houses accept meals from the landlord, and as I understand it that excludes those people from security of tenure. I am not quite sure what the requirements are to exclude the tenants from security of tenure—whether you have to give them full board or just a meal, whether you have to give them breakfast, or whether indeed you just have to give them a bowl of cornflakes.
I am equally not at all certain whether it is sufficient for the landlord to say, "I have given you a bowl of cornflakes"; in other words for the landlord to satisfy the obligation to provide the food, or whether the tenant has actually got to consume the food. The tenant may well say, "I don't want to consume your lousy cornflakes, because if I do I shall no longer have security of tenure".
In the Rent Act of 1968, to which this subsection refers, Section 2(1)(b) says:
"A tenancy is not a protected tenancy if under the tenancy the dwellinghouse is bona fide let at a rent which includes payments in respect of board, attendance or use of furniture."
A tenancy is not a protected tenancy if in the normal circumstances of housing you give people board or you give them food. But I think this subsection in this Rent (Agriculture) Bill is very much tighter than that which applies in the Rent Act 1968, because as I read the Bill it gives security of tenure to those people who happen to be given food, and the question which I shall be glad if the noble Baroness is able to answer (and I did not give her very much notice of this) is what happens to the young man who lives in the farmer's house and is given food; what happens to the young man who lives in a flat—does he have security of tenure?—and what happens to the young man who is put
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in an empty cottage and also receives food? Does he have security of tenure of that cottage? I beg to move.
Baroness BIRK: I am grateful to the noble Earl for having given me notice, which he very kindly did, of the specific examples he was going to raise on this Amendment, but perhaps I may briefly deal with the main principle behind it. He quite rightly said that Section 2(1)(b) of the Rent Act 1968 provides that tenancies bona fide let at a rent which includes payment for board—for instance, where the landlord provides breakfast or other meals for the tenant—are excluded from protection. While this exclusion is easy to apply, for example, to the letting of a room in a guest house, the noble Earl is quite right when he says that it is far harder to apply in the field of agricultural employment, where the farmer may commonly provide meals for his workers as one of the benefits of their employment, whether or not they are housed by him. Therefore this subsection declares that "board" does not include meals which are provided in the course of employment.
As I pointed out, the exclusion is relatively easy to apply to Rent Act tenancies but of course it is harder to apply in the case of agricultural employment, and because it is unlikely, but not impossible, that the courts might hold that such meals constituted board we thought it was sensible to include subsection (3) so as to remove any doubt. It would certainly be contrary to the intention of the Bill if acceptance of meals while on the job—and this is different from getting full board—were to deprive an agricultural worker of protection. It is very often convenient, not only for the worker but also for the farmer, for meals to be provided in that way.
Perhaps I may now turn to the examples given by the noble Earl. In the case of the worker which the noble Earl cited as having full board and lodging in the farmer's house and with just a room, not a self-contained flat. as I understood it, there would be no protection under this Bill. For the worker with the self-contained flat in the farmer's house there would also be no protection under the Bill. But when we come to the worker with a separate cottage who would be

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receiving full board, if it was full board, and thus much more than the worker getting only his lunch or supper, then probably there would be no protection. But in this case I think I should prefer to write to the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers. I should be grateful also—I will read what he has said in Hansard—if he could be quite specific as to what he means by receiving full board, because there is a difference between having the odd meals and having full board. I believe I am right in saying that there would not be any protection, but I ought to be absolutely sure before I commit myself.
Earl FERRERS: I do not wish to interrupt the noble Baroness, Lady Birk, but I was going to interrupt to ask her what she meant by full board. I defer to the noble Lord, Lord Janner, with the usual humility in that I was slightly loose in my phraseology when speaking, but I referred to the man's being given board when I meant being given meals. I am not sure whether "board" means lodging inclusive or exclusive of meals. But in all the three cases which I gave to the noble Baroness, I wanted to know whether the provision of meals of itself, irrespective of any furniture or anything that might be in the room or the house, brought them within the ambit of subsection (3). From what the noble Baroness says, subsection (3) does not in fact give the security of tenure to people either who have a room in the house or who have a self-contained flat. The noble Baroness expresses a certain amount of apprehension as to whether that would apply to persons in the cottage, but my point is that if they do not have a protected tenancy, either in the room or the self-contained flat, I do not quite see what subsection (3) means. I thought it meant, to avoid doubt, that they did have security of tenure.
Baroness BIRK: Subsection (3) is to avoid doubt that if they are getting the odd meals, which would not normally apply in any other tenancy unless it was a specific arrangement with bed and breakfast and was meant to come under the excluded protection area, having meals as a farmworker did not exclude that worker from protection. That is why it has been spelt out.
Baroness YOUNG: May I try to clarify a point? I was glad to hear the
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noble Baroness confirm that if a farm worker has a room in a farmhouse or a self-contained flat within a farmhouse he is not a protected tenant. I should have thought that this brought him in line with the tenancy agreements under the 1974 Rent Act in which a distinction was drawn between those who share with the resident landlord and those who do not. Therefore, I should have thought that in those two particular cases, whether or not they had meals did not in fact apply. When the noble Baroness is writing to my noble friend Lord Ferrers perhaps she would confirm that point. Far he it from me to explain the Rent Acts, but I should have thought that in the other case where accommodation is separate the 1968 Rent Act would apply if in fact this subsection (3) was not written into the Bill. We want to know whether what I am saying is correct. Perhaps the noble Baroness could send me a copy of the letter she sends to my noble friend. It might be worth while looking again at the drafting of this subsection, because it does not seem to me that it is very clear.
Baroness BIRK: I will do that with pleasure. The examples I cited were with board, with meals, because those were the examples given by the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers. It seemed preferable to do that rather than to go into the ramifications of the Rent Acts. However, I should prefer to write, because although the noble Earl was kind enough to give me notice of his intention to raise the matter he did so only shortly before the Committee met, and I want to be sure that I have it right.
Earl FERRERS: I am grateful to the noble Baroness and I agree that I did not give her much notice. I thought it was quite a simple point and that it was only I who was stupid enough not to be able to understand it. I am delighted to know it is not that simple. Perhaps the noble Baroness would be kind enough to address herself to several matters when she writes to me. I think she said that if people had odd meals, that did not exclude them from protection of tenancy. I understand that to mean that if one has an occasional meal here and there, that does not exclude one. But if one has a regular meal, does that exclude one? And what constitutes a regular meal? Is it breakfast every day, the

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farm worker making his own provision for lunch and dinner, or is it necessary to have full board, all meals—breakfast, lunch and dinner? This may seem a small point but I do not think it is, and I hope the noble Baroness will consider all those points when she writes to me. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 2 agreed to.
Clause 3 [Protected occupiers in their own right]:
11.7 p.m.
Baroness BIRK Baroness BIRK moved Amendment No. 13:
Page 3, line 41, leave out from ("person") to ("a") in line 42 and insert ("has, in relation to a dwelling-house").
The noble Baroness said: I will, with the pet mission of the Committee, speak at the same time to the following Amendments: Nos. 14, 15, 16, 18, 19, 20, 31, 87, 93 and 94. The Committee will be glad to hear that this series of Amendments removes redundant wording describing the licence or tenancy held by a protected occupier under the Bill. I assure noble Lords that they are drafting Amendments designed to make the Bill more comprehensible and do not in any way alter the sense of the measure.
Baroness YOUNG: I am grateful to the noble Baroness for explaining that this series of Amendments is designed to elucidate the Bill; anything which does that will be very helpful to us all. As I see it, the intention of the Bill is to draw more tightly than either the 1968 Act or the 1974 Rent Acts the protection given to agricultural workers. It seems that at each stage that is the effect; and, as I understand Clause 3, it paves the way for Clauses 24 and 25, the net effect being to give increased security of a protected tenancy not only to the widow or widower as the case may be, but to members of the family and to people occupying the house. Would the noble Baroness clear up that point?
Baroness BIRK: The Amendments in this series do not really deal with the subject matter; they deal with redundant wording and are therefore drafting Amendments. They do not affect the question
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of succession, to which we shall come in a later Amendment, or alter anything but the wording. Nothing is altered, and even the exclusion—dropping the words "exclusive occupation"—in Amendments Nos. 13, 14, 15 and 16 does not alter the sense, because the protected occupier must have a relevant licence for occupancy. This has already been described in Clause 2(1) as being a licence or tenancy for exclusive occupation. I took that as an example because it happened to be one that struck me when I was going through this and it really is extra verbiage. It is not the sense of it, nor does it alter anything in the nature of the security of tenure; it really is a question of unnecessary words and of trying to clarify what is very difficult to understand.
Baroness YOUNG: I am very grateful to the noble Baroness for that explanation and I should have said earlier that I was grateful for the notes on clauses which have helped to elucidate the Bill. I apologise for not saying that earlier on. If I have understood the clause correctly, it defines a protected occupier and the protection in this clause is qualified by Clauses 24 and 25. So far as I can see, it extends to certain sub-lettings by the tenant, but we shall come on to debate that at a later stage. It seems to me surprising, in view of all the concern expressed by the district councils over this matter, that the degree of protection should be greater in the present Bill than it is under the other Rent Acts.
Baroness BIRK: I am sorry that I misunderstood what the noble Baroness said earlier. It is not tied to the other Rent Acts. What this does is to bring in people who, so far, are not protected under the other Rent Acts. I am sorry if that was not clear, but that is the purpose of it. It is not to make it any tighter. It is to make it tighter than it was before for the people who will be covered by this Bill, but not tighter than for those who have been covered up to now by the Rent Acts.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
11.12 p.m.
Baroness BIRK Baroness BIRK moved Amendment No. 14:
Page 4, line 8, leave out from ("person") to ("a") in line 9 and insert ("has, in relation to a dwelling-house").
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Baroness BIRK Baroness BIRK moved Amendment No. 15:
Page 4, line 17, leave out from ("who") to first ("a") in line 18 and insert ("has, in relation to a dwelling-house").
On Question, Amendment a greed to.
Clause 3, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 4 [Protected occupiers by succession]:
Baroness BIRK Baroness BIRK moved Amendment No. 16:
Page 4, line 42, leave out from ("widow") to first ("a") in line 43 and insert ("has, in relation to the dwelling-house ").
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Baroness BIRK Baroness BIRK moved Amendment No. 18:
Page 5, line 13, leave out from ("persons") to ("a") in line 14 and insert ("has, in relation to the dwelling-house ").
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Baroness BIRK Baroness BIRK moved Amendment No. 19:
Page 5, line 18, leave out from ("who") to first ("a") in line 19 and insert ("has, in relation to a dwelling-house ").
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 4, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 5 [Statutory tenants and tenancies]:
Baroness BIRK Baroness BIRK moved Amendment No. 20:
Page 5, line 42, leave out from ("of") to first ("he") in line 43 and insert ("his licence or tenancy ").
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 5, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 6 [No statutory tenancy where landlord's interest belongs to Crown or to local authority, etc.]:
11.15 p.m.
Earl FERRERS Earl FERRERS moved Amendment No. 22:
Page 7, line 1, leave out subsections (2) and (3).
The noble Earl said: Noble Lords on my right seem to have become faint hearted and are not moving any of their Amendments, but I intend to move this
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Amendment. Here I find myself, curiously enough, again in sympathy with the noble Lord, Lord Janner, because he was saying yesterday how really essential it was that there should be no exceptions to the Bill, that if we were to have a Bill to give agricultural workers protected tenancies there should be no exceptions to it. That argument I can quite understand, and the noble Lord argued quite vigorously in regard to one of our Amendments which did not include some exceptions. I wondered what he thought about this part of the Bill. Here we have agricultural workers who are in tied cottages given protected tenancies unless they happen to be cottages owned by the council of a county or a district, the Greater London Council, the council of a London borough, the Commission for the New Towns, the Housing Corporation, a development corporation, a housing trust and so forth. I wonder what is the rationale behind a Bill which seeks to give protected tenancies to a whole host of people where they are in the hands of private landlords, but not where those houses are in the hands of public corporations.
It may he said, as I think the noble Lord, Lord Peart, said last night on an Amendment in relation to the Forestry Commission, that it can be understood that the Forestry Commission will, I am sure, go along with what are public Bills. I suppose that the same answer will be given to this Amendment, that we will be told that, after all, county councils are very responsible bodies, and that the noble Lord will be quite sure that they will go along with the general practice of Acts of Parliament. Quite frankly, I do not think that that is good enough.
If protected tenancies are to be given to people, they ought to be given whoever the landlords are. I was particularly interested in this set of exceptions because we have heard—the noble Lord, Lord Peart, referred to this again this evening—that one of the justifications of the Bill has been that there have been a great many court orders for possession in relation to tied cottages, and the noble Lord was very glad that not many of them ended up in evictions, but nevertheless court orders for possession were common. But we all know that there are far more of them than we would like there to be. We all know, as has been stated already this evening and on other

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occasions, that one of the reasons for court orders for possession is simply because the existing law demands it. To get a local authority to accept the housing obligation one has to have a court order for possession.
I asked the noble Baroness, Lady Birk, in a Question for Written Answer how many court orders for possession were against agricultural workers in tied cottages, and the answer, in 1975, was 1,268. When I asked the noble Baroness what were the numbers of court orders for possession granted against tenants of local authorities, housing associations, and New Town Development Corporations, the answer was not 1,268, but 29,105, which is a simply colossal number. Yet these are the very bodies who are to be excluded from the Bill; these bodies who have, in one way and another, requested court orders for possession totalling nearly 30 times the number of those in agriculture, are the bodies who are to have houses in which agricultural workers are to be placed and are to live.
The Government say that they are going to exclude these bodies from their responsibilities under the Bill. I cannot understand why they should have that exclusive right. If the argument of the noble Lords, Lord Janner and Lord Collison, that agricultural workers should have protected tenancies, is to be valid, I think that that protection should be given not only in the private sector but in the public sector as well. I beg to move.
11.20 p.m.
The Earl of CAITHNESS: I rise to support my noble friend. I believe there is a growing feeling throughout the country that the greater the amount of legislation that is passed through Parliament, the more the private person is being discriminated against. There are these public bodies listed and such people as the Greater London Council, the housing corporations, the Commission for New Towns, et cetera. I think they should all be treated on the same basis to alleviate some of the fears which are brought into people's minds by increased legislation.
Viscount MASSEREENE and FERRARD: I, too, should like to
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support this Amendment. My noble friend Lord Ferrers, being far more polite than I am, said that he did not understand why the occupants of the houses of the various bodies listed here, the State, the Government and so on were not going to be protected under this Act like the agricultural workers on private estates or farms. My noble friend knows the answer but he is too polite to say so. The answer is Party dogma, "Big Brother". There is no other excuse for it at all.
My noble friend read out figures about court orders made in favour of these public bodies. There were 28,000-odd, I believe. The figure for agricultural cottages under private ownership is, in comparison, absolutely infinitesimal. You can almost count the numbers on one hand. It amazes me how a Government, without a majority of the electorate, can have the nerve to try to force this through. It is iniquitous. Presumably they will force it through; but I only wish the public could understand what they are doing. The Government as landowners or landlords are very much more severe than are private owners of houses. Therefore, I support this Amendment strongly; but I very much doubt that it will be accepted—for the reason I have given, that it is Party dogma.
Baroness BIRK: I am sorry to disappoint the noble Viscount. It would make it more interesting and exciting if this were the reason. But it is not the reason at all. There is no Party dogma about this. The reason why these bodies, which include the Crown, and the other bodies in Clause 6, have been exempted is because they are exempt from the Rent Act 1968, and it would be inconsistent if this part of the Rent Act code alone would apply. There is no question of special status so far as agricultural workers are concerned because, in practice, we intend they should be protected within the scope of the Bill. That will be the effect of the extra-statutory arrangements at present being devised, which will ensure that the exempted bodies have access to housing accommodation as do the farmers under the Bill. This is where it applies to agricultural workers. We are getting the full information on this.

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We are aware that where this applies to agricultural workers, so many of the tied cottages—and we went into this on Second Reading—apply to other industries. For all the reasons we discussed on Second Reading and on our Amendments here, what we are discussing applies only to agriculture at the present time and not to other industries. What is going to happen in the future so far as the other industries are concerned is for further consideration. We have now asked the Association of District Councils and the Association of County Councils to collect figures on the number of agricultural tied cottages owned by the district and county councils. So far we have not got those figures but we know that they cannot be very significant. It is extremely unlikely that the other bodies mentioned in this section will own any agricultural tied cottages since they are not by their very nature engaged in farming. They are included merely to achieve consistency with the 1968 Rent Act from which these bodies are similarly exempt. This is just to keep in line with the Rent Act; but I must stress that, as this is a Rent (Agricultural) Bill, we are concerned merely with the agricultural workers.
The Earl of CORK and ORRERY: This Bill is attempting also to exclude forestry from these provisions.
Baroness BIRK: That Amendment was moved yesterday. Forestry is now out of the Bill for the time being.
The Earl of ONSLOW: The noble Baroness made one rather complicated point, which is why I wanted to intervene while it was still clear in my mind. I think I still have it. She said that extra-statutory arrangements were being made to bring these bodies which are excluded into line with the Bill. Is it not an infinite waste of time to exclude them from the Bill and to make extra-statutory arrangements? Why cannot she make a statutory arrangement which is included in the Bill?
Lord JANNER: I suppose I am called upon to reply.
Several noble Lords: No, you are not.
Lord JANNER: I was beginning to wonder whether I remembered the Act or
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not. My recollection is that the 1968 Act (which I have not got in front of me) has certain exceptions; therefore this is not an exception to an exception. There are exceptions in other Acts.
The other point I would like to make is that I just cannot understand the enthusiasm which prevails on the opposite Benches against the Bill, that they should be so anxious eventually to bring more people into the Act.
Earl FERRERS: To be fair; we want to be consistent, just as the noble Lord was saying yesterday.
Lord JANNER: With the greatest respect, are you not asking to bring more places under protection rather than less? Where is the logic of it? You should be delighted that certain exceptions are being made. Do you mind looking at the bodies referred to. Are they all Labour bodies? One noble Lord says that this is Party dogma. But look at the exempted list: the Greater London Council, the Commission for New Towns, the Housing Corporation. Are they all Labour institutions? Of course not. It has nothing to do with Party dogma. There is no dogma; it is following exactly the precedent that has been set for the protection of people under the other Rent Acts. I hope my—I nearly said "noble friends"; I think they are—friends opposite will not press this, in view of the fact that this is contained in other Acts.
The Earl of ONSLOW: I think there is just one brief point which must be made to the noble Lord, Lord Janner. All we are asking for is that very long established Anglo-Saxon tradition of equality before the law. That is the first point. The second point is that just because he quotes the 1968 Act as a precedent—and several people have been known to criticise that Act, and that is all I will say on that—two blacks, with the greatest respect, do not make a white.
Baroness YOUNG: The noble Lord, Lord Janner, has tempted me to enter into this debate because we have argued on housing on so many occasions. I have taken the precaution of bringing with me the 1968 Rent Act, so I can tell him that the Acts are identical and the

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groups of exceptions are the same in the Rent (Agriculture) Bill as they are in the 1968 Act. Of course he spins a very good tale. We always enjoy listening; all that Welsh oratory comes out and we realise that he is quoting Lloyd George before we know where we are.
If we get back to the Bill at hand, the fact is the Government are completely inconsistent. The object of the Bill is to give security of tenure to farmworkers. This may be a very worthy aim. They will get their security of tenure while they are tenants of a farmer because the Government have so legislated under the 1968 Act to give security of tenure to tenants of private accommodation, and they legislated under the 1974 Act for security of tenure to tenants of private accommodation which is furnished. As soon as the tenants move out of the private accommodation into council accommodation, they no longer have security of tenure. There are two groups of people in the country: those in private accommodation who have security of tenure, and those in local authority accommodation who do not. The Bill says it excludes; and it excludes vast numbers of houses in this country. As a rough and ready guide, approximately 31 per cent. of the houses in this country are council houses, for which there is no security of tenure. It is at least arguable that far from giving more security, it actually gives less. I find that ironic. I hope that the noble Lord may feel that perhaps there is some inconsistency on his side, and at least we would be saying on the specific cases of the agricultural workers that they might as well have the security of tenure that they would have had as private tenants.
Lord JANNER: The local council is responsible to the inhabitants of that area and consequently they have to answer for any eviction. There is a difference. What the noble Baroness is saying is that we are following exactly what has been done in the past, and therefore we ought not to do it.
Earl FERRERS: The noble Lord said that councils are answerable for any evictions. To whom are they answerable?
11.34 p.m.
Baroness BIRK: May we come back to
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the Amendment? We seem to have wandered away from it. The purpose of the Bill is to disassociate a whole area of employment from security of tenure. The noble Baroness points out the lack of security of tenure in council houses. There may be a lack of security of tenure, but it is not tied up with employment. That is different. It is tenancy. The noble Baroness is aware that it is a commitment of my Party that security of tenure should be given to council house tenants. Although a Bill like this, we consider, should have priority over that, nevertheless, this is a commitment. My noble friend Lord Janner is absolutely right when he says that this Bill is following all the other Rent Acts in these exemptions and this Bill is certainly not the place to start dealing with something which is an entirely different subject from the tie up—and I come back to it—of employment and tenancy which has existed up to now and which we are getting rid of in this Bill.
In addition, I stress that even in these areas which are exempt we are now in consultation over sending out circulars which will then cover the few cases where agricultural workers are involved or where there are farmers who have taken houses or have rented farms from one of these bodies. But this is to do with the agricultural worker; it is not to do with council house tenants per se or exempted bodies which have been exempted under other Acts.
The Earl of ONSLOW: Would the noble Baroness please answer my point? If she is instructing councils through circulars to make sure that the provisions of this Act—and that is what I understand her to say—apply to local authority agricultural workers, is it not infinitely simpler and infinitely cheaper not to go to the sweat and the "aggro" of sending round circulars but just to put it in the Bill? Then we go back to the situation of equality before the law.
Baroness BIRK: It has nothing to do with equality before the law. You could not put it in the Bill in that particular way. Perhaps it could be put in the Bill but it would be an extremely complicated way and would not be able to take care of any of the unusual cases or exceptions. What we are doing is consulting the local authority associations

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and the other bodies who are listed there before we send out the circular, in order to ensure that there is parity of treatment between the agricultural workers who are housed and employed by district county councils and so on and other workers in the private sector. Quite frankly, at this particular time and dealing with these particular bodies, this is by far the best way to do it.
The Earl of CAITHNESS: Could the noble Baroness tell us what are the exceptions with regard to agricultural workers that will apply to these people that do not apply to private landlords?
Baroness BIRK: What we are trying to do is to bring them into line where there are agricultural workers. It has been pointed out by my noble friend Lord Janner—and I am sure that noble Lords are very well aware of it—that most of the bodies are not basically agricultural employing bodies. They are not. And that is what this Bill is concerned with. Where at the edges they come into this then this is where we are going to take action; not in the Bill, but through extra-statutory methods which means by guidelines and by circulars.
Earl FERRERS: That has been a fascinating discussion. I am bound to say that I have always admired the legal profession enormously and my estimate of their standing has gone up a great deal this evening because last night we had the noble Lord, Lord Janner, arguing with immense fervour that we must have no exceptions at all to this Bill and yet this evening here he is arguing with equal fervour that we must have these exceptions because it is consistent with all the other Bills.
Lord JANNER: It is not an exception.
Earl FERRERS: The noble Lord is being prevailed upon by his Chief Whip not to get up, so I will try not to provoke him any more. Then we had the noble Baroness, Lady Birk, saying it is part of the commitment of the Labour Party to give security of tenure to all local authority tenants and in the same Bill she is removing that security of tenure from precisely those people to whom she said it was her Party's wish to give it. However that may be, I find the argument that this is a good thing
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to put into the Bill because it was in another one before, a fairly fragile one. It ought to stand on its own. I believe that I have seen the same words in the Agriculture (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act, which the noble Lord, Lord Collison, will remember; and he will have time to refresh his memory next week about these provisions. We put down an Amendment to remove exclusions from that Bill, and we suddenly discovered that about 30,000 others were covered by local authorities and so on.
The argument then was that it is all right to exclude these people, because they are very responsible people and they will keep to the law. Of course, these are totally responsible bodies, but I should have thought it was right, if you are legislating for such things as security of tenure, to legislate in a uniform manner and include all those people who will have security of tenure, whether they are under private landlords or local authorities. However, it is not a point over which I wish to put my head in any noose. I merely wished to raise it because it seemed so extraordinary to have this exclusion. I am very grateful to the noble Baroness and others who have taken part, because the debate has thrown up some pretty funny answers about inconsistencies. I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
On Question, Whether Clause 6 shall stand part of the Bill?
Baroness YOUNG: I should like to ask one question. I was very interested to hear the noble Baroness, Lady Birk, say that it is part of her Party's policy to introduce security of tenure for all these groups of tenants who are listed here. But I should like to ask her how, if security of tenure is to be given to everybody who is a private tenant—which is presumably the intention—the Government expect to get mobility of labour which, as the noble Lord, Lord Peart, said, is one of the objects, in order to get efficient agriculture?
Baroness BIRK: First, I did not say to all the bodies listed here; I said to tenants of local authorities. Secondly, even people in council houses move. It may come as a surprise to the noble Baroness, but the whole country does not stay

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static, whether people are in private or public residences. They move to change jobs, as well as for other reasons. So I do not think we shall have the country in a state where it is completely run down and everybody is absolutely stationary, because of this Bill.
Baroness YOUNG: I will not take up the time of the Committee by arguing whether or not many people in council houses move. But I hope that the noble Baroness will not think that I am talking off the top of my head. I have had considerable experience of local government and council housing. The point about tied accommodation, and particularly council housing, is that it is difficult to move, because if you go to a new area you are always at the bottom of the list. I am only saying that the object of this exercise is to help get efficient agriculture, which I thought everybody wanted. So we ought to look at the question of mobility in the country, which is a very serious matter indeed, and I cannot see that this provision makes the position any better.
Clause 6 agreed to.
Clauses 7 and 8 agreed to.
Schedule 3 [Grounds for possession of dwelling-house subject to protected occupancy or statutory tenancy]:
11.44 p.m.
Lord BURNHAM Lord BURNHAM moved Amendment No. 23:
Page 39, line 21, at end insert ("or
(c) temporary accommodation including a mobile home which would not qualify under sub-paragraph (a) or (b) above, provided that a local authority has accepted an obligation to provide alternative accommodation in accordance with section 30.").
The noble Lord said: This is the first time that I have ventured to move an Amendment in your Lordships' Committee, and I do so with very considerable diffidence. But I am working on the basis that, whether or not we like it, we are going to get a Bill of this nature as an Act of Parliament, and if it does not work it will be very expensive for the farmer, for the farm worker and for the consumer, who has not been much thought about so far. My Amendment deals with Case I in Schedule 3, which is
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the case where a court has discretion to give possession of a house when alternative accommodation is offered by someone other than a housing authority.
In the context of the Bill the offer of alternative accommodation is most likely to come from the farmer himself, although it may well come, where the farmer is a tenant, from the superior landlord. In the case of large estates, whether privately owned or owned by institutions, it is probable that most of the farm workers who leave their employment will be rehoused under the provisions of Case I, to the great relief, no doubt, of the local housing authority. But it will be much more difficult for small farmers who do not own or rent surplus houses on or near their holding. The consequences to any farmer, large or small, of being unable to house a key worker in the right place will be at best expensive and at worst disastrous.
Noble Lords heard at Second Reading, and probably in Committee, that the time needed by a housing authority to provide alternative accommodation is likely to vary between six months and three years. The object of my Amendment is to make it easier for the farmer on his own initiative to reduce these delays without hardship to the departing employee and with considerably less worry to the housing authority concerned. Paragraphs 2(a) and (b) of Schedule 3 require that the tenant should be offered a separate dwelling on a protected tenancy under the Rent Act 1968, or the equivalent. If these conditions can be met, the court will make an order and everybody will be happy, but the case I have in mind is where it has been generally agreed that possession of a house is needed in the interests of agriculture, but the housing authority, with the best will in the world, is unable for the time being to provide a house. It could well be that either the superior landlord or a friendly neighbour would have a dwellinghouse which he normally let as holiday accommodation. A let on this basis, which is provided for under the Rent Act, would not give the security required by paragraphs 2(a) and (b). The owner would almost certainly be unwilling to grant a statutory tenancy because, if he did so, he would forfeit any opportunity of regaining possession for a very long time, perhaps 50 years. He is very likely in the present climate to wish to keep open the

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option to sell the house, not immediately but at some future time, with vacant possession. On the other hand, he might be perfectly willing to let it for a matter of months or even years if he knew that he was not losing it for ever.
That is the first purpose of my Amendment. Also, it is conceivable that accommodation could be offered which did not constitute a separate dwelling under the Act. I have in mind, for example, accommodation over a shop which was not needed by the shop tenant but which the landlord, for obvious reasons, would not normally allow to be sublet, because if his shop tenant left he would be faced with a sub-tenant to be removed and all the complications that would follow.
My whole concept has a certain amount in common with what I believe is called the North Wiltshire scheme, except that it is applied to a much greater extent by the individual rather than by the local authority. The North Wiltshire scheme, which if I understand it I much admire, is a voluntary act by the local authority. However much I have been able to think of it, I cannot see any means of compelling local authorities to adopt a scheme of this nature through the Bill. But though an intelligent and conscientious local authority can well produce a scheme of this nature, nobody will have more incentive to look for alternative accommodation than the farmer principally concerned.
I believe it to be a fact that no incoming worker will apply for a post unless he has assurance of immediate accommodation on a permanent basis. The farmer thus stands to lose a considerable sum of money if he is unable to obtain possession of the dwelling-house. One certainty which I think I mentioned on Second Reading is that, if possession of a dwelling-house for a key worker cannot be obtained reasonably quickly, somebody is going to live in temporary accommodation or agriculture will suffer very severely. It seems to me that it is generally more appropriate that the outgoing worker should suffer the inconvenience rather than the incoming worker.
Your Lordships will note that I have included in the wording of my Amendment the words "including a mobile home". I have done this because I think a good mobile home can be wholly
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satisfactory on a short-term basis. I should like to remind your Lordships that the court has discretion. In the whole of Case I, it is up to the court to decide whether accommodation is suitable, and therefore they would be not only within their rights but it would be their duty to turn down an unsuitable caravan. I should like to suggest that in the case of a couple without children, or a single man, a good mobile home would be a perfectly satisfactory solution; but if the Government, for reasons of their own, have set their faces against caravans, the inclusion of the caravan concept is not part of the spirit of my Amendment. The object of the Amendment is to make it possible for the farmer to obtain possession of his house by moving the worker into suitable temporary accommodation approved by a court, and the court could approve the temporary accommodation only if they already knew that the housing authority had agreed to house the worker in the long term. So, if it were necessary to drop the mobile home, it would not in any way destroy the spirit of my Amendment. I beg to move.
Lord STANLEY of ALDERLEY: As I understand it, Schedule 3 gives us a chance to try to be constructive in making this Bill work. I am not at all happy that it will work anything like as well as the noble Lord, Lord Peart, and the noble Baroness, Lady Birk, try to tell me that it will. Indeed, if I look at their faces I think they have doubts, too.
Lord PEART: We are worried about the time.
Lord STANLEY of ALDERLEY: I hope very much that the Government will consider very carefully the principle of temporary accommodation as put forward in this Amendment by my noble friend Lord Burnham. May I suggest that this temporary accommodation should, in particular, be allowed to be used by the housing authority should they have no permanent accommodation to offer. I am not sure that the Amendment is correctly drafted, and I am sure my noble friend would be quite happy to have it altered. Indeed I know it is not correctly drafted from the particular aspect of the local authority, but I should be more than happy for the Government to take it away and consider it, provided

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they take on board the principle that at times it will be necessary, in the interests of farming, to have temporary accommodation.
Before the noble Baroness or the noble Lord replies, I must remind him or her that this Amendment is put forward as a constructive method to help keep the farm working. I cannot stress too strongly, although I fear that the Government have not yet managed to get the message, how important it is to have particularly stockmen on the farm, and if they leave, to have them replaced very quickly. I do not think the Government have got this message at all. It is not practical for the noble Lord to say, "Don't worry, it will do the farmer good to have to milk his own cows". It may do me good, but it will not do the cows any good, and it certainly will not do the milk cheque any good. It will put up food prices, and the housewife will complain. This is a point that the noble Baroness has not taken on board at all. This Amendment could help.
This Amendment offers a possible way out of the problem. I have not yet heard from the Government any other way out. Timeliness does matter, and I hope that the Government will consider it and will not reply that it does not fit in with the spirit of the Bill. If it helps to produce food more cheaply, and if it is in the spirit of helping a man work more efficiently, that is more important to this country than anything else at the moment.
Baroness BIRK: I think it would be better if I rose to give the Government's attitude on this. It is getting very late. I know a great deal has been said, and a great deal more could be said, but frankly, the core of the matter is quite simple. I have great sympathy with what noble Lords have said. I was looking doubtful earlier because for one awful moment I had forgotten the name of the noble Lord and I was trying to catch his name into my head.
On the face of it, this is a very attractive proposition where it is workable. I accept that. I also have great admiration for the work in the North Wiltshire scheme. But it does not answer the problem of security of tenure which we are
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here dealing with. This Amendment would mean, in spite of its good intentions, that once the local authority accepted they had an obligation to provide alternative accommodation for the occupier of a tied cottage, the farmer would be able to force him to move into temporary accommodation which might qualify as being reasonably suitable under the other criteria set out in Case I of Schedule 3 to which the noble Lord referred. But in this temporary accommodation, the occupier would have only limited security of tenure. This is really the whole core of it. This is why I must ask the Committee to resist the Amendment, not because of the motivation behind it, not because I do not see that noble Lords are trying to find a means of dealing with this difficult accommodation problem, but because it would mean that once the ex-worker had been forced to change his residence, he would be faced with precisely the sort of insecurity the Bill sets out to remove, and for this reason it renders the Amendment unacceptable. I hope noble Lords will accept that, and will not press the Amendment. I hope they will realise that it is for this reason. We heard a great deal on the last Amendment about consistency, but this would really be inconsistent with the whole spirit and basis of this Bill.
Lord BURNHAM: I should like to thank the noble Baroness who clearly understood the purpose of my Amendment, which was to make the Bill work. But with regret I have to say from what she has told us that the object of the Bill is in no way connected with the performance of agriculture. It is connected with providing security of tenure which is a desirable object. My Amendment took account of this, because the man was going to get security of tenure, but the noble Baroness is concerned with providing security of tenure at all costs. I am afraid I cannot see any purpose in pursuing the Amendment and, therefore, beg leave to withdraw it.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Baroness LLEWELYN-DAVIES of HASTOE: It being the bewitching hour, this might be an appropriate moment to move that the House do now resume.
Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.
House resumed.

COMPANIES (No. 2) BILL [H.L.]
Returned from the Commons agreed to with Amendments; the said Amendments to be printed.
METHODIST CHURCH BILL [H.L.]
Returned from the Commons agreed to with Amendments; the said Amendments considered and agreed to.
LICENSING (SCOTLAND) BILL
Reported from the Public Bill Committee with Amendments and Bill to be printed as amended.