Lords Sitting of 12 December 1977

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

ROAD SAFETY AND WHEEL SPRAY
Lord DE CLIFFORD: 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 in the last two years in dealing with the problem of sheets of mud and spray thrown up by multi-wheeled vehicles travelling at high speeds; and whether road users can anticipate some relief from this dangerous nuisance in the coming winter.
Baroness STEDMAN: My Lords, during the past three years extensive research into this problem has been carried out in collaboration with Southampton University. However, I regret that, despite earlier hopes, no effective technical way of reducing spray by vehicle modifications has been found. Spray-reducing road surfaces are being evaluated, but it is not yet clear whether they will be found suitable for general use. Even if acceptable, they could be introduced only gradually as the need for resurfacing arises.
Lord DE CLIFFORD: My Lords, while thanking the noble Baroness for that reply, may I ask whether she is aware that this is a most serious problem and only in the last 10 days three people have been killed through such sprays of mud being thrown up, and in bad weather there is scarcely a day when we do not hear police warnings about spray and mud on motorways and on other roads? In view of the danger involved, does she not think that considerably more money might be spent on this rather than on other forms of research?
Baroness STEDMAN: My Lords, I accept that this is a very serious problem. As far as transport is concerned, there are financial restrictions on us as on every other Department. We are carrying out experiments on nine different road lengths on different aspects of possible surfacing which might eliminate part of this problem, but much of it depends on the drivers. Speed is the most important factor in producing spray. The speed at which a driver travels determines the amount of spray thrown up. Most of it is thrown sideways and not behind, and it is a question of common sense on the part of drivers in bad weather.
Baroness EMMET of AMBERLEY: My Lords, is the noble Baroness aware that I have asked Questions on this matter for three years running and got no further, so that I gave it up? Is she further aware that lorries abroad have to have flaps on their wheels, which are not obligatory here, and that these flaps save a great deal of spraying from mud? I have tried over and over again to get this matter investigated.
Baroness STEDMAN: My Lords, there are problems even with mud flaps and mudguards. In wet weather mud flaps help; in dry weather they tend to overheat the tyres or help to do so. We are sometimes accused of not doing as much as others do on the Continent. But that is not our information. The only country of which we have any firm information is Sweden, where there are regulations on the detailed design and fitment of mudguards and mud flaps. The problem there is associated with unsealed roads and the wider use of studded tyres, and it is a question of trying to stop studs, rather than mud, spraying on to passing vehicles.
Baroness EMMET of AMBERLEY: My Lords, if mud flaps overheat tyres, does not the noble Baroness think it strange that they should be used in hot countries in Europe and not here?
Baroness STEDMAN: My Lords, we can only act on the advice given us, and at the moment the advice is that the problem cannot be solved by mudguards or mud flaps. It rests with the drivers—they should drive much more carefully and slowly in wet weather.
Lord THOMAS: My Lords, is it not a fact that a great deal of the onus of responsibility lies on the drivers of the following cars? If they kept a respectable distance behind, if they were properly equipped with screen washers and screen wipers, used their commonsense and did not crowd and telescope the traffic, would not this difficulty be overcome?
Baroness STEDMAN: Yes, my Lords; I could not agree more. That is the advice that we give from the Department of Transport.
Lord DOUGLASS of CLEVELAND: My Lords, is the noble Baroness aware that it is not always a question of the car overtaking the lorry; it is often the lorry overtaking the car? If restrictions were put upon the speed of the lorries I would guarantee a technically efficient mudguard would be produced. It seems to me that a louvred mudguard would overcome the whole heating aspect of this problem because louvred mudguards would direct more cold air on the tyres than they normally get without mudguards at all.
Baroness STEDMAN: My Lords, I accept that lorries also cause problems when passing cars, but, as far as speed limits are concerned, the police are empowered to use the speed limit signs on the motorways if they think that conditions are bad and that drivers are travelling too fast.
Lord BOWDEN: My Lords, is the noble Baroness aware that the cut in the maintenance grants for roads has been so dramatic that the situation is likely to get worse before it gets better, and that some roads—for example, in Dorset—will be due for resurfacing, on average, once every 3·75 years? This is the worst example in England, but some of the roads in Wales are worse still. When is it to be hoped that some improvement will be made in the grants for maintenance of motorways as well as ordinary roads?
Baroness STEDMAN: As soon as our economic position improves and we are able to increase public expenditure, my Lords.

IMMIGRANTS: DETENTION IN PRISON
2.41 p.m.
Lord BROCKWAY: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will reconsider the policy of keeping immigrants in prison for long periods while the Home Secretary decides whether they should be deported.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, every effort is made to keep to the minimum the time spent in prison by persons subject to deportation proceedings. But the reasons for long periods of detention are nearly always outside the control of the Home Office. A person cannot be deported while an appeal is pending. Prolonged representations may have to be considered. And there may be lengthy delays until documentation is provided by the authorities of the country concerned.
Lord BROCKWAY: My Lords, while respecting that Answer, may I ask whether it is not a denial of fundamental human rights that people should be kept in prison without a charge for these long periods? Is the noble Lord aware that a man was kept in prison for 347 days before being deported? Another man was kept in prison for 273 days and, at the end of that time, he was allowed to remain in this country. Surely this procedure can be speeded up.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, everybody agrees that it is a situation that we do not like. But the Home Secretary has to consider what is best for the community. When the Home Secretary initiates deportation proceedings for overstaying and orders detention, the person concerned will almost always have a history of flagrant disregard of immigration control. If such people are to be a liability to the community in the sense that they may go underground and the Home Office may lose sight of them entirely, it is necessary to have them in detention. My noble friend referred to somebody being kept in prison for 347 days. That is perfectly true. The person

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concerned renounced his citizenship and the exceptional delay was due to difficulties over the issue of a travel document by his national authorities. It was quite beyond our control and, as I say, was due to the fact that he renounced his citizenship and there were difficulties with his own national authorities. I will not refer to the second case—which again is true—because that was the subject of a Question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, and my noble friend replied very fully.
Baroness SHARPLES: My Lords, is it possible for the noble Lord to tell us how many immigrants are kept in prison each year?
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I do not know that I can give an exact number, but there were about 1,558 held up to 15th November this year in Prison Department establishments.
Lord BROCKWAY: My Lords, is it not possible to improve the conditions under which these people are held in prison for long periods? Is it not the case that, because they are not required to work, they are in effect in solitary confinement, some having only one hour's exercise a day and others two hours a day? Is it not possible to improve their conditions?
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, the conditions of people in custody are being considered all the time. It is not unlike some of the conditions to which normal prisoners are subjected. We have to face the fact that there are far more people occupying our prisons than the numbers the prisons were originally built to contain.
Lord BARNBY: My Lords, there may be cases of long detention, but is it right to assume that the individuals have the right to leave the country without remaining in detention? Secondly, if and when there are cases of deportation, is any attempt made to recover the costs of the hospitality?
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, the answer to the first question is, yes; and, in respect to the second question, no.
Lord SOMERS: My Lords, is it not true that it is an English principle of law that a person is innocent until proved guilty? If that is true, would it be possible for these people not to be imprisoned until they are finally proved to be illegal immigrants?
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, the two things are not on a par. A person is not detained until such time as the authorities are satisfied that either he or she had no right to be here, had overstayed a work permit or was in some other way in this country without documentation. In the circumstances, it does not seem unreasonable.
Lord BROCKWAY: My Lords, arising from the reply to the noble Lord, Lord Barnby, is it not the case that in a number of these instances the people have offered to return to their own country and pay their own fare, but, nevertheless, they have been kept in prison under these deportation orders?
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I am not aware of that. It may well be that my knowledge of these matters is not very deep-seated. I will certainly raise this point with my noble friend.
Earl ALEXANDER of TUNIS: My Lords, is it possible that the noble Lord could persuade officials in countries like Pakistan and India to make sure that people's papers are in order before they embark on flights to this country?
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, this is done so far as possible. We have representatives in every country; and, as noble Lords know, if anybody wants to travel abroad from this country a visa or some kind of authority is required. But it is not possible to force people who want to come here to go through that channel. A good many of them come here illegally.
Lord PARGITER: My Lords, in view of the fact that this appears to be a continuing problem, is it not possible to have a detention centre for these people rather than have them detained in prison?
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, we have a detention centre at Harmonds-

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worth, but it cannot accommodate more than from between 35 and 40 people. We are dealing with a much larger number of people.
Lord WYNNE-JONES: My Lords, is it not true that we get very disturbed in this country when we learn of the conditions under which citizens of this country are held in foreign countries? Is it not rather disturbing that we should find the same long detention being adopted in this country?
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, my noble friend is talking about conditions. I do not think that the conditions under which people are held in this country compare with some of the conditions we know exist in other countries. With regard to the length of time involved, I tried to point out that this is really beyond the control of the Home Office. As I said, it depends on a number of factors—on documentation, getting information and getting acceptance from other countries. It is sometimes difficult to get the other bodies moving as quickly as we should like.

CENTRAL POLICY REVIEW STAFF
2.51 p.m.
Lord CAMPBELL of CROY: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what tasks the Central Policy Review Staff are at present undertaking.
The LORD PRIVY SEAL (Lord Peart): My Lords, the tasks of the Central Policy Review Staff continue as originally envisaged when the unit was set up. The noble Lord will find these set out in Cmnd. 4506. The issues with which the CPRS is concerned, and the advice given, must generally remain confidential.
Lord CAMPBELL of CROY: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for that reply. Will the CPRS, which can make valuable contributions, concentrate in future on central policy, as was originally intended when it was set up? In the
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recent debate in your Lordships' House on overseas representation, most noble Lords who spoke with great knowledge and experience rejected the main recommendations of that Think Tank report. Has the Prime Minister's attention been drawn to that matter?
Lord PEART: My Lords, of course, the Prime Minister's attention has been drawn to it; but, after all, the noble Lord must remember that it was his Government who set this up. I see no reason why there should not be an examination of the Foreign Service. We had a very good debate here, and no doubt we shall, as a Government, take note of the views of noble Lords on this question.
Lord CAMPBELL of CROY: My Lords, to be more constructive and perhaps putting forward some helpful suggestions—since there seemed to be some matters on which the Government stand in need of some policy guidance—might the unit not be asked to consider whether the nationalised shipbuilding industry might in future give ships away free as good will gifts to Communist countries as an alternative to selling them for money? Perhaps they might also be asked to look into the ethics of recording interviews with members of the public for broadcasting as political broadcasts without informing the people concerned of the purpose.
Lord PEART: My Lords, the noble Lord asked a Question about the CPRS. I believe he is abusing his position with the questions he has asked now. I think it is totally wrong to attack an organisation in the guise of an attack on the Government over shipbuilding policy.
Lord CAMPBELL of CROY: My Lords, I was not attacking the organisation; I was merely making some suggestions about difficult problems which have to be considered.
Lord PEART: My Lords, I hope the noble Lord will regret what he said earlier.
The Earl of KINNOULL: My Lords, even if the contents have to be confidential, at least the subjects could be made public, could they not?
Lord PEART: My Lords, I accept that and I believe that this organisation, which was created following a policy decision of a previous Administration, can make a major contribution—
Lord CAMPBELL of CROY: My Lords, that is what I said.
Lord PEART: My Lords, the noble Lord should not ask questions sitting down. I believe that it has a major contribution to make.

MANUFACTURED FOODS: ECC REGULATION
2.55 p.m.
Lord MOTTISTONE: 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 is the latest position regarding the extension of the application of monetary compensatory amounts to certain finished food products beyond 31st December 1977.
Lord STRABOLGI: My Lords, a Commission regulation extending the application of these monetary compensatory amounts beyond 31st December 1977 for an indefinite period was published in the Official Journal No. 308 of 1st December. The Commission will, however, review the situation not later than 30th June 1978.
Lord MOTTISTONE: My Lords, while I thank the noble Lord for his Answer, may I ask him whether the Government opposed the regulation when it came up for discussion?
Lord STRABOLGI: Yes, certainly, my Lords. We strongly opposed the draft proposal when it was first presented to the Management Committee on 3rd November. We argued that the issue needed detailed consideration because of the risk to our exports of manufactured foods. As a result, the Commission postponed a vote until a later meeting to enable a review to be made. The Resolution was eventually put to the vote on 22nd November and, although opinion was divided, I regret to
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say that the result led the Commission to proceed with the proposal.
Lord SANDYS: My Lords, I wonder whether a copy of the Official Journal No. 308 is available in your Lordships' Library?—because these publications are sometimes difficult to obtain.
Lord STRABOLGI: My Lords, I will check the position and will see that a copy is put there if there is not one there already.
Lord MOTTISTONE: My Lords, taking the noble Lord on from his earlier answer, does he think it reasonable that, when there was a very doubtful vote, the Commission should in the first place have gone ahead with the regulation? Does he also think it reasonable that the Commission should have the power to do this when, as I understand it, the vote was very split, if I may use that expression, and when the majority were probably in favour of cancelling the regulation rather than continuing it?
Lord STRABOLGI: My Lords, certainly there was strong opposition, but not enough to constitute a negative opinion from the Committee. In these circumstances, the rules of the Community permit the Commission to go ahead without reference to the Council. I may say that any changes to these procedures would require major amendments to the Community's agricultural legislation and would not necessarily be in the interests of the United Kingdom overall.
Lord MOTTISTONE: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that those people in the food processing industry who are affected by this are deeply grateful to the Government for the efforts they have been making to find a rational solution to this problem?
Lord STRABOLGI: My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord.

ENERGY CONSERVATION
Baroness LLEWELYN-DAVIES of HASTOE: My Lords, with the leave of the House, my noble friend Lord Kirkhill will, at a convenient moment after 3.30, repeat a Statement on energy conservation.

FISHING VESSELS (ACQUISITION AND IMPROVEMENT) (GRANTS) (VARIATION) SCHEME 1977
2.58 p.m.
Lord STRABOLGI: My Lords, I beg to move that the Fishing Vessels (Acquisition and Improvement) (Grants) (Variation) Scheme 1977, which was laid before this House on 24th November, be approved. The scheme before the House today contains only one substantive provision: that is to extend for a further year the existing arrangements under which the White Fish Authority and the Herring Industry Board may make grants towards the capital costs incurred in the construction of new fishing vessels and the improvement of existing ones. These grants are financed by the Exchequer and, since March 1975, have been paid at a standard rate of 25 per cent. of approved costs of all eligible projects. The arrangements themselves have remained substantially unchanged since 1967.
Noble Lords will be aware of the many problems facing the industry today by reason of the extension of fisheries limits and the uncertainties in the Common Fisheries Policy both as to access to waters and to conservation. It might be argued that prudence would demand a stop to the building of fishing vessels at the present time. Past experience has shown that an arbitrary step of that kind can cause real social and economic hardships, particularly where many self-employed people are involved. Moreover, there would be an unfortunate impact on shipbuilding yards. In practice, the fishing industry is showing no tendency to invest in a grossly expansionist fashion. No large distant-water vessels are under construction or on order. New building has been at a relatively modest level in recent years and, of course, the statutory authorities are also required, as part of the scheme before us today, to examine every grant application in terms of economic viability and in relation to the overall needs of the industry. At the moment, both authorities are restricting aid to modernisation and such construction as will replace vessels lost to fishing for various reasons. So I think that there is little risk of imprudent investment being encouraged by this scheme.
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I should like to mention one special point. As your Lordships know, new vessel safety regulations are being introduced gradually with the express purpose of safeguarding the lives of those who go to sea. In some cases, there have to be modifications to the vessels after the safety checks have been carried out. The cost of these modifications is subject to aid under this scheme, which thus constitutes substantial Government assistance towards the safety of lives at sea. Expenditure under the scheme during the current financial year is expected to amount to about £5½ million, and the Government are making provision for comparable expenditure in 1978–79. Noble Lords will appreciate that such a level of expenditure means that, despite the many uncertainties which exist, the industry's own contribution towards its future efficiency is running at nearly £17 million a year. Clearly, the availability of grant is an important investment consideration for the industry. However, until the future structural requirements become clear, we think it inappropriate to eater into any long-term commitments. For this reason, we propose to continue recent practice and extend the arrangements for a single year only; that is, until the end of 1978. My Lords, I beg to move.
Moved, That the Fishing Vessels (Acquisition and Improvement) (Grants) (Variation) Scheme 1977, laid before the House on 24th November, be approved—(Lord Strabolgi.)
3.2 p.m.
Lord CAMPBELL of CROY: My Lords, the House will be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, for explaining briefly the reason for this order. I would say straight away that I advise the House to agree with this order, since it continues the present scheme for another year. It is timely, though, to consider very briefly the position of the British fishing industry today. It was almost exactly a year ago, on 16th December, that we had the Second Reading of the Fishery Limits Bill, and we managed to get it through both Houses before Christmas last year, in order that our fishing limits should be extended from 12 miles to 200 miles at the same time as the other principal maritime nations were extending theirs to 200 miles. It had been clear for some time beforehand—and the noble Lord,

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Lord Strabolgi, and I had been discussing it in this House—that the consensus that had been reached at the Law of the Sea Conference would lead to such a move even though the convention itself had not been signed.
Of course, it was the chief maritime countries acting together; Iceland had been trying to beat the pistol by unilaterally extending, and getting the advantages of doing so, before the other countries agreed to do it together. The United Kingdom industry has had to change and adapt during these recent years, as a result of the proposed change in fishing limits. We have lost a lot of traditional fishing in waters near the coasts of other countries, some in distant areas. But we still have important fishing—for example, off Norway, the Faroes and in the Barents Sea—which is not in the EEC's 200-mile zone.
In the past year, since that Act came into force, Russia, Poland and other countries outside the EEC which had fishing boats operating in the EEC zone have had either to move out of the EEC zone or to fish there by special agreement. But the British industry is still facing one great uncertainty, because the regime within the EEC zone has not yet been finally decided. The Ministers met only last week and it is clear that little progress has been made. The device has been used of "stopping the clock", as it is called, so that they resume on 16th January, but they still regard it as 47th December, with the same chairman and the same arrangements.
But no matter what the device, it is important that agreement should be reached and it should be an agreement which is satisfactory from the point of view of conservation. The EEC common policy, formulated when there were only six Members and when fishing limits were 12 miles, clearly has to be changed. There are difficulties because, to put it crudely, there are too many fishermen chasing a decreasing number of fish. Unless we are careful with effective conservation measures the EEC zone could be left with little or no fish at all.
So I would put four points to the Government. First, conservation is essential and the coastal State has the most important interest. We therefore
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support the view which has been taken by the Government, that there should be what is described as a dominant preference up to 50 miles within the EEC zone to be the property of the coastal State. The second point is that a quota system, by itself, has fallen into disrepute. It is not trusted by the fishermen and there have been mistakes and misunderstandings during the past months. I said that a year ago and I reinforce it now. All experience since shows that a quota system alone will not be observed and will not be trusted.
The third point is that industrial fishing should not be allowed to destroy quantities of edible fish, and by that I mean fish which could be destined for human consumption. So I would urge the Government to retain what is called the Norway pout box; that is to say, an area where fishing for pout by industrial methods is forbidden, because so many edible white fish are killed at the same time and not used for human consumption. By-catches—that is to say, the accidental catching of one species of fish when the intention is to catch another—must be carefully controlled.
The fourth point is that the Government should resist proposals which do not take account of the fact that about 60 per cent. of the present stocks of fish are in United Kingdom waters of the EEC 200-mile zone, and that the United Kingdom has lost more fishing elsewhere in other parts of the world, in more distant waters, than any other member of the EEC. The fishing industry is now united in a way in which it has never been in the past. In the past its interests have diverged. Distant water fleets have been interested in fishing as close as possible to the shores of other countries. Inshore fleets have had the opposite view and have wanted to keep foreigners away from our shores, particularly in sensitive areas. But now all parts of the industry are united and the Government will get full support from this Bench and, I am sure, from Parliament as a whole, if they work with care and consideration in negotiations with our EEC partners and take a robust attitude on the points which I have mentioned.
3.9 p.m.
Lord GLENKINGLAS: My Lords, I wonder whether I may add just a word

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or two to what my noble friend Lord Campbell so admirably said about the fishing industry as a whole. I welcome this order in so far as I hope that the bulk of it is meant to improve safety and, perhaps, to improve existing ships. Both of these objectives are at all times, but particularly at the present time, very valuable. With some knowledge of the Scottish inshore and middle distance fleets, I think it exceedingly unlikely that anybody in his senses would build new ships at the moment. The Minister suggested that there was possibly a lot of work for shipyards, but I rather hope that that does not happen, because only too often over the last 20 or 25 years I have seen valuable grants and subsidies given to fishermen who went to sea, found that the competition was too great and, thereafter, were in considerable financial difficulty. The situation today is certainly extremely grave, and I hope that both the White Fish Authority and the Herring Industry Board will look very carefully at any applications for new boats in relation to the number of fishermen who are chasing a very rapidly declining number of fish.
I agree wholeheartedly with what my noble friend said about quotas. I hope he is right—I have not the current knowledge to argue with him—that all fishermen are now acting as one single body. However, as a result of reading a certain amount of comment in the Press, I notice that the extremely efficient and go-ahead fishermen on the East Coast of Scotland tend to rush around, whenever they find there are no fish in their area, to the West Coast. I gather that a certain number of fishermen are also arriving in Cornwall and catching what the fishermen there thought were their fish. If all fishermen are working very closely together, that is fine. However, I am absolutely certain that if a lot of new vessels are added to the already very competitive and very much over-stocked number of fishing boats, the situation will be dangerous. I hope that the Minister will take note of this point.
Lord SHINWELL: My Lords, although the observations in detail presented by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, might be more appropriate to a general debate on the plight of the fishing industry, and in particular its future because of restrictions which have been imposed in
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recent months and years, nevertheless, many of his questions appear to be most pertinent and to demand an answer. When orders of this kind are presented to your Lordships' House, very often one is baffled because very little detail is furnished. One hesitates to intervene because one is not fully acquainted with the subject. However, I happen to have some knowledge of the fishing industry. Perhaps I might explain that many years ago I assisted in the organisation, for trade union purposes, of the fishing industry. Therefore I know a little about it.
What baffles me this afternoon about the presentation of this order is what might be regarded as a simple point, and it is this. It is my understanding—although I am open to correction—that as a result of the restrictions that have been imposed and because of the difficulties that appear to have emerged on account of the operations of the EEC in this context, not so many fishing trawlers are employed as were in operation a few years ago. One concludes from what I have just said, if I am correct in my understanding, that there are many trawlers disemployed. If that be so, one finds it difficult to understand why the Government should be spending grants to the tune, as I understand it from what my noble friend Lord Strabolgi said in his opening observations, of rather more than £5 million.
May I ask whether these grants are for the purpose of providing new vessels, or for restructuring old vessels, and whether inshore shipping vessels are brought into consideration when grants of this kind are made? Is it necessary to provide grants of this kind when so many trawlers are not operating at all? Are we just spending money as a kind of gesture to the shipping industry because of the plight in which it finds itself? If it is a kind of charitable dispensation, I understand it. If it is a gesture in order to mollify those employed in the fishing industry, either the employers or the employees, I understand it. But let us get the facts of the case and try to understand why we spend money. After all, we have a right to ask about expenditure, particularly when there are demands for a reduction in public expenditure. Perhaps I may be corrected in some of my observations if I have failed to understand what

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it is all about, but if I am even remotely correct in my observations I think that an answer would be desirable.
3.16 p.m.
Lord STRABOLGI: My Lords, I am grateful to the three noble Lords who have taken part in this debate. I agree fully with the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, that this is a very important matter. He was quite right to extend the debate from the order which we have been considering. The noble Lord, Lord Glenkinglas, was perfectly right, also, when he said that the situation is extremely grave. I agree, too, with my noble friend Lord Shinwell that this is one of the most pertinent of problems and questions which is before us today.
I should like to say a few words on the general situation which has been raised, very properly, by these three noble Lords. Before doing so, however, may I answer the point made by my noble friend Lord Shinwell. The main reason for the order is because investment in new vessels has been at a relatively low level for three to four years, reflecting general uncertainties about future fishing opportunities and economic stringency. However, the improvement of existing vessels, especially as regards safety provisions, is a major justification for the continuation of the capital grants scheme.
With regard to the general situation, as noble Lords are aware, my right honourable friends the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and the Secretary of State for Scotland attended a special three-day meeting of the Council of Fishery Ministers in Brussels from 5th to 7th December. The Council had before it a number of proposals from the Commission on the Common Fisheries Policy, including proposals of quotas, access and conservation. My right honourable friends have already stated in another place, and I can repeat today, that the United Kingdom could not accept the quota and access proposals and that the conservation proposals were inadequate, although they had some good features.
With regard to conservation, the Government have once again emphasised to the rest of the Community that a
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comprehensive and fully effective programme of measures would be an essential part of a future Common Fisheries Policy. There may now be a somewhat greater readiness than heretofore among our EEC partners to recognise this point. However, it remains the Government's policy that a Community conservation policy, which must include measures to allow coastal Member States to safeguard the stocks within their sovereignty or jurisdiction, cannot be adopted separately from decisions on access and quotas.
The question of the division of resources is more difficult. The basis of our position is well known. The United Kingdom is the Member State which has lost most in distant waters and contributes most to the fish stocks in the waters of Member States. But the present Commission proposals do not take proper account of these factors and in the view of Her Majesty's Government these must be changed. I am glad to say that at the Council meeting on the 5th to 7th December there appeared to be a more widespread recognition that any quotas need to take account of distant water losses, and the general position of the United Kingdom appeared to be better understood, although our contribution is not fully recognised even now. The crucial questions of access and coastal preference were not fully discussed, but the Government's position on these points remains unchanged.
The Council has agreed to "stop the clock" and to meet again on 16th January, and the Commission has undertaken in the meantime to reconsider its present proposals. The Council also agreed that existing conservation measures should continue unchanged until 31st January. These include the standstill on fishing effort adopted during 1977 and all other measures, whether they are Community measures or national measures. This is important because it means that the present North Sea herring ban and Norway pout box will continue.
The Government have three important objectives for the revised Common Fisheries Policy. These are: to permit the industry, with good management, to adapt itself to the new situation arising from the move to the 200-mile limit; to effectively conserve and manage the

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fish stocks, to enable them to form a continuing economic asset for the industry and the nation; and to effectively manage fishing effort and enforce the regulations. In particular, the Government consider it essential that the revised CFP should adequately reflect the contribution made by the United Kingdom's resources to the Community total and the scale of our losses of fishing opportunities in distant waters. With regard to the proposed zones, we have made proposals to meet these requirements. Lastly, in May 1976 we proposed a variable coastal belt out to 50 miles; and in June this year we indicated our willingness to consider an alternative solution based on an eventually exclusive 12-mile coastal belt with a significant degree of coastal preference in our 12–50 mile belt.
The Commission's proposals take no account of these access requirements and, with the exception of the Irish Republic, other Member States have not been willing to discuss these proposals. We have also made proposals in regard to quotas. The Commission has analysed the losses suffered by Member States in third country waters and has shown that the largest quantitative losses have been experienced by the United Kingdom. The United Kingdom has lost some 250,000 tonnes of fish and is seeking compensatory quota allocations of the species that it has lost.
The Government consider that it is desirable to adopt Community conservation measures where possible in order to protect stocks throughout all waters under the jurisdiction or sovereignty of the Member States. Nevertheless, the Government attach great importance to maintaining their powers to introduce non-discriminatory conservation measures on a national basis when the Community is unwilling or unable to adopt the necessary measures. The alternative would be to leave stocks unprotected in the absence of any measures.
The noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, mentioned directed fishing. We attach great importance to two specific conservation measures: the ban on directed fishing for herring in the North Sea and the Celtic Sea and the prohibition on direct fishing for Norway pout, as the noble Lord mentioned, in a box off the North-East coast of Scotland.
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It may be asked, what is our policy for the North Sea herring? Our position on this is clear. We agree with the recommendations of the scientists that an extended prohibition on herring fishing in the North Sea is essential if the depleted stocks are to be preserved. The Government are firmly committed to an extended ban for the whole of next year. The existing prohibition has been carried forward to 31st January, as I said, pending further consideration by Ministers at the EEC Council in the middle of the month, at which the United Kingdom will continue to pursue the line which it has taken during the many meetings this year. I hope that that has made clear the Government's attitude on this very important matter.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

HOUSING (HOMELESS PERSONS) (APPROPRIATE ARRANGEMENTS) ORDER 1977
3.25 p.m.
The PARLIAMENTARY UNDERSECRETARY of STATE, DEPARTMENT of the ENVIRONMENT (Baroness Birk)The PARLIAMENTARY UNDERSECRETARY of STATE, DEPARTMENT of the ENVIRONMENT (Baroness Birk) rose to move, That the draft Housing (Homeless Persons) (Appropriate Arrangements) Order 1977, laid before the House on 24th November, be approved. The noble Baroness said: My Lords, this draft order is about machinery. It is to establish the arrangements that are necessary to settle matters if, or when, a dispute arises between two housing authorities as to which of them should accept responsibility for securing that accommodation is available to certain homeless people. Your Lordships may be aware of the contents of the report made in respect of the draft order by the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments. The points to which the Joint Committee draw attention are matters to which I would have referred anyway in introducing the draft order, and I will do so in the course of my remarks.
We are dealing with provisions introduced into the Bill in direct response to the wishes of Parliament. When the Bill was in progress considerable concern was expressed, both here and in another place, about the potential obligation on authorities to have secure accommodation for people who could demonstrate no reasonable connection with the

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area of the authority to whom they turned for help. Section 5 was therefore introduced into the Act to deal with this situation. This section provides that where an authority are satisfied that a duty arises under the Act to secure that accommodation is available for a particular homeless household yet they are of the opinion that no member of the household has a local connection with their area, but that a member of the household does have a local connection with the area of another authority and that no member of the household runs the risk of domestic violence in that other area, they may notify the other authority and the duty to secure accommodation may then transfer to that other authority.
I myself would hope and expect that most cases will be settled in just that way by agreement between the authorities. After all, the issues are essentially matters of fact. But the section goes on to provide that if any question has to be settled under Section 5, it is to be settled in accordance with the "appropriate arrangements" and that these are to be such arrangements as the Secretary of State directs. This draft order is about those arrangements. I may add at this point that the Act says nothing to require or suggest that the Secretary of State himself should be involved in those arrangements, but it does require that they are arrangements agreed by the associations of relevant authorities and enables my right honourable friend to bring forward arrangements of his own only in default of such agreement. He would not of course wish to bring forward arrangements which did not seem to him to be suitable, but the draft order that he has laid before this House gives effect to arrangements agreed by the associations and which he would wish to commend to this House.
At this point I should like to add my own tribute to the appreciation already expressed by my honourable friend in reply to a question in another place, by placing on record my own very warm appreciation of the contribution of the associations both in the development of the arrangements set out in the draft order we are discussing today, and also, secondly, in producing together what I may perhaps call a code of conduct for
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authorities for handling cases under Section 5—a code which they have already sent to authorities giving advice on detailed practical points, such as the detailed arrangements for making notifications about which authority should bear any cost of temporary accommodation.
What, then, the draft order does is to require the appointment of an "adjudicator" to determine any issue under Section 5. It leaves it open to the authorities concerned to agree a suitable person if the need arises; but it goes on to provide that if they cannot agree a suitable person themselves they should report the matter to the chairman of the relevant association. For example, where one of the authorities is a non-metropolitan district council, that authority would report their failure to agree an adjudicator to the chairman of the Association of District Councils. The chairman would then appoint an adjudicator who would be drawn from a panel appointed and maintained by the associations. When the authorities are both members of the same association then the chairman of that association will make the appointment; if they are members of different associations it will be for the two chairmen to agree who should be the adjudicator. In the highly unlikely situation that the chairmen could not agree, each will then nominate a candidate and the selection would be settled by lot.
The Joint Committee have suggested that these arrangements represent an unexpected delegation. They do not in fact represent delegation at all—and I believe that it was in the minds of Members both of this House and another place that the arrangements for settling disputes should be made by local government. I believe that that is right and is what Parliament wanted. I do not think there is any risk of bias. The associations see no risk that an adjudicator will favour one authority rather than another. They are currently discussing detailed arrangements for the proposed panel in the expectation that the draft orders will receive the approval of Parliament.
The associations are intending to appoint a small panel of people of standing and integrity who have a good understanding of local government and who will command confidence. Parliament entrusted

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the associations with the responsibility for agreeing the arrangements to be made, and surely Parliament will not now say that we cannot trust those same associations to appoint a fair-minded panel. I am reinforced by my knowledge that the associations are indeed producing guidance to give to adjudicators which ought to resolve any anxieties that may be felt about impartiality.
There is, of course, concern about the use of "lot". This is unusual, but it is not unique; I can mention two precedents which were in fact mentioned to the Joint Committee: one under the Representation of the People Act 1948, where after recounts there is an equality of votes between candidates either for Parliamentary or local elections; and another under the provisions of the Companies Act 1948 which deal with the question of which directors should retire. I very much doubt, however, whether a resort to lot will ever arise, nor do I see any danger that others will regard it as a precedent where suitable alternatives are available. It is only put in as a necessary long-stop. I expect that the associations' chairmen will be able to agree an adjudicator, and they regard that as their function. But, hypothetical though this case may be, we are advised that it is necessary to make some provision to cover a disagreement between the chairmen on this point, and that it should be a provision leading to a clear result that need not be disturbed unduly when the Act comes into force in all three parts of Great Britain.
We must remember that it may be necessary to resolve a dispute about the appointment of an adjudicator in a case involving the chairmen of associations in respect of authorities in England, Wales and Scotland. We had considered whether this could be a function of the Secretary of State. But we were advised that we could not specify in the order which Secretary of State this should be in the case, for example, of a dispute between a Scottish and a Welsh authority. We have considered other alternatives. The Lord Chancellor was considered and his office was consulted. But he has no functions in relation to Scotland.
The provision now contained in the order was proposed by the associations
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themselves as the best answer in the circumstances, and if the need ever arises they are content that their member authorities should rely upon the result of the lot in determining the adjudicator. There is, of course, nothing arbitrary whatsoever in the selection of the panel of adjudicators, all of whom will be people of integrity, or in the procedure that the adjudicator, once selected, has to adopt.
The order provides that the adjudicator's decision, whether he was appointed by agreement or by the chairmen, is to be binding on both authorities. We have, with the associations' agreement, sought to keep the procedure as flexible as possible. The issue indeed may be limited to a particular question of fact. It is for the adjudicator to determine how he should best proceed. This also has attracted comment from the Joint Committee, but I hope members of that Committee will understand my concern that the adjudicator should have regard only to matters that are relevant and proper. We must remember that during the course of a dispute the homeless household is, during that whole time, in temporary accommodation, anxiously waiting to know where accommodation is to be provided. Therefore, as far as possible, we want a quick and simple procedure, and not a great drawn out bureaucratic machine.
I appreciate the Joint Committee's concern about the opportunity for the household to participate in the procedure, and have indeed discussed that myself with officials in my Department, and the order contains provisions on this consistent with the main Statute. Parliament, let us remember, did not give the household a right of appeal in respect of decisions reached by the housing authority, nor did the Act give any right to make any representations where authorities agreed between themselves which should be responsible for securing accommodation under Section 5 without the intervention of an adjudicator. In the circumstances, I hope your Lordships will agree that the provisions of the order strike a very apt balance, by enabling the adjudicator to receive representations from any persons he thinks can help him, and by requiring him to take account of the representations of the authorities concerned, and to invite the household concerned to submit

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information—for example, about their circumstances and places of residence.
This order will apply in England and Wales only. The Act does not come into force in Scotland until 1st April 1978. The Convention of Scottish Local Authorities are being consulted about matters relating to Scotland. A fresh draft order with arrangements to deal with disputes with Scotland, and also disputes between English and Scottish or Welsh and Scottish authorities, will be laid before your Lordships' House in due course.
Therefore, my Lords, the draft embodies arrangements in response to concern expressed by Parliament; these arrangements have been agreed by the associations themselves. The draft order also embodies arrangements which enables disputes to be settled quickly and without unnecessary or protracted discussion. I hope this machinery will seldom need to be used, but it is necessary as a safety net. I commend the draft order to the House.
Moved, That the draft Housing (Homeless Persons) (Appropriate Arrangements) Order 1977, laid before the House on 24th November, be approved.—(Baroness Birk.)

ENERGY CONSERVATION
3.38 p.m.
The MINISTER of STATE, SCOTTISH OFFICE (Lord Kirkhill): My Lords, with the leave of the House, I will now repeat a Statement being made in another place by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Energy. The Statement is as follows:
Existing policies have contributed to energy savings approximately estimated to be worth some £2,000 million over the last four years. As was recognised at the London Summit meeting in May, energy conservation must play a major role in our future energy policies. I therefore set in hand a review of action to bring about a significant reduction in the future growth of energy demand, following recommendations made by my Advisory Council on Energy Conservation. Today I am announcing a substantial package of decisions.
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"First, the Property Services Agency will extend its existing programme in the civil and defence estates, at a cost of £5 million per year. This will make possible continued progress towards the eventual target of saving 35 per cent. of the fuel used at the start of the programme in 1972. This represents around £30 million a year at today's prices.
"Secondly, as part of a long-term programme for installing thermal insulation and heating controls in National Health Service buildings, it is planned to invest an additional £5 million in 1978–79 and £10 million in each of the succeeding three years.
"Third, as part of a similar programme in educational buildings it is planned to make available an additional £10 million in 1978–79 and £20 million in each of the succeeding three years.
"Fourth, the Government will discuss with local authorities the very substantial opportunities for energy savings in their non-domestic buildings, other than schools. We propose to make additional funds, of up to £7 million a year, available for the necessary staff to secure efficient energy management and for the installation of heating controls. The precise sums to be spent will depend upon discussion with local authorities.
"Fifth, the Government are launchign a 10-year programme to bring public sector dwellings up to a basic minimum standard of thermal insulation. This will involve treating over 2 million dwellings and will have major social benefits. Spending for this purpose will be made eligible for central Government housing subsidies. Provision is being made for expenditure over the next four years at an annual rate of £28½ million. In addition £2 million a year will be spent on improving the insulation of Ministry of Defence dwellings.
"The Department of the Environment has for some time been consulting outside interests on proposals for building regulations to prescribe thermal insulation standards in new non-domestic buildings, and regulations resulting from this consultation are expected to be made shortly. The Government have now decided on two further steps in this area.

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"Sixth, the introduction of building regulations requiring the provision of appropriate controls on heating systems is under consideration. The regulations would apply to the installation of heating plant in new non-domestic buildings and to its replacement in existing non-domestic buildings. A consultative document will be issued as soon as possible.
"Seventh, to promote efficient energy management in non-domestic buildings, a new Government advisory and training service will be set up. Half a million pounds a year has been made available for this purpose.
"Eighth, in addition the Government have allocated £4 million in 1978–79 and £5 million in each of the next three years to expand information and advisory services to industry.
"Ninth, the Government have allocated an additional £2 million in 1978–79, rising to £8 million in 1981–82, for an expanded programme of demonstration projects.
Tenth, more efficient motor vehicles could make a significant contribution to containing the growth in demand for oil for transport. The Government have opened discussions with the motor industry on possible targets for raising the average miles per gallon achieved by new cars and on methods of achieving those targets.
"Eleventh, the Government have allocated an additional half a million pounds a year over the next four years to an information and publicity campaign aimed at persuading motorists to see that their cars are well maintained and to drive in more economical ways.
"This reinforcement of our policies will require additional staff on energy conservation. In the Department of Enegry I am establishing a separate division, responsible solely for energy conservation. Conservation will now rank with the energy producing industries as an essential element in our energy policies.
"The measures I have described will involve additional public expenditure on energy conservation in the United Kingdom estimated at some £65 million (gross) in 1978–79, rising to over
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£80 million a year (gross) in the following three years. This will be spread over a number of programmes and will be financed as far as possible from savings elsewhere in those programmes, including in later years savings on energy consumption resulting from the investment made in earlier years.
"These programmes will take up to 10 years to complete and will involve expenditure, in the first four years alone, of some £320 million at 1977 survey prices. They offer satisfactory returns on the expenditure involved, even at today's energy prices, and they could lead to savings of up to 10 million tons of oil equivalent a year at the end of the 10-year period, worth some £700 million a year at current prices. They will also provide jobs in the construction industry. But energy conservation is not a matter for the Government alone. To achieve the potential savings in full will depend in large part on how far the private sector matches the steps we have embarked on in the public sector. Higher energy prices make conservation good sense for everyone.
"Our programme is a continuing one. We shall be bringing forward further measures in other areas, as and when necessary. We shall need to decide how far any further reinforcement of our policies should be achieved by mandatory measures, by fiscal action, or in other ways. However, the measures I have announced today represent an important stage in the development of our energy conservation programme. Despite Britain's ample energy reserves conservation is just as important here as in other countries less fortunately placed."
My Lords, that concludes the Statement.
3.45 p.m.
Lord CAMPBELL of CROY: My Lords, we thank the noble Lord, Lord Kirkhill, for repeating a Statement made in another place. From this Bench we welcome the Statement which the public and industry have been awaiting for some months. It deals mainly with the question of thermal insultation and control of heating in Government and non-domestic buildings. It is right that the Government should adopt policies to conserve energy and that, when those policies have been decided upon, they

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should be made fully known throughout the country. I am sure that the Government will meet co-operation generally throughout the country once the ideas, proposals and decisions are made known.
On the question of motor-cars, I hope that the Government will not lose heart from what appears to have been some failure in this area in the United States of America. After the 1973–74 crisis there was a move towards smaller motor cars, but I think that the idea of the family car in the United States is something which is very difficult to change. It is rather like asking Scots to give up whisky. However, I believe that it is different in this country and that, given encouragement, families and individuals will adopt petrol-saving motor-cars and smaller cars where they do not need the larger ones.
The question which will arise in the minds of the general public was raised towards the end of the Statement; namely, the Government's proposals concerning domestic buildings and the private householder. Nothing very much has been said about that, but we welcome the setting up of an advisory and training service which is the present suggestion in this area. I think that the public need every encouragement as regards saving fuel and it will save their own pockets if it is done properly.
However, in the last paragraph of the Statement it is said that mandatory measures are to be considered. I ask the Minister whether the Government can tell us of any plans concerning the domestic householder and the private sector, because there is a problem here. If it is thought that plans will be brought forward some time in the future—perhaps in two or three years' time—which will involve grants for insulation or for adapting heating systems, then the public may hold back and delay. On the other hand, if it can be made clear, either that if grants are available they will be available immediately, from the start, or else that advice, assistance and training as suggested by this new body will be available, then if everybody is given as much encouragement as possible the public are likely to go ahead straight away with the various methods of saving energy. Therefore, I ask the Minister whether
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the Government can at this stage say any more about the measures which are simply mentioned at the end of the Statement, but are in no way specified, relating to non-domestic buildings and heating systems.
3.50 p.m.
Lord TANLAW: My Lords, from these Benches we, too, should like to welcome the measures outlined by the noble Lord the Minister in his Statement. A number of noble Lords have been pressing for these over a period of years and I am delighted to see from the detail of this Statement the areas in which the Government are considering taking action. However, I seek clarification of one or two matters in the Statement, which may help everybody. For instance, does the basic minimum standard of thermal insulation, to which the noble Lord referred in the fifth paragraph of the Statement, refer to the existing standard or scales of thermal insulation?
It is very important for the building industry and, indeed, even for individuals, to know the Government's thinking as to whether or not they wish to raise the U values and the thermal capacities of buildings, or at least keep them in line with those in EEC countries which have a similar or comparable winter climate. I am not too clear about non-domestic buildings. Presumably that does not refer to industrial buildings. Are industrial buildings omitted for any specific reason? As a matter of interest, presumably the Palace of Westminster is a non-domestic building. I should be interested to know what the Minister has in mind for insulation here or, indeed, what he thinks the correct temperature should be for us to work in.
Finally, I want to take up a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, about the motorist. He referred to approaches made to the motor industry in order to achieve fuel savings through increased mileage per gallon. Does that mean that Her Majesty's Government are losing interest in exhaust emission controls, which, if implemented, must, I understand, on the latest technical advice, decrease the number of miles per gallon? Indeed, perhaps that would be helpful. I have no more to say and greatly look forward to hearing more of this subject at a later date.
3.53 p.m.
Lord WIGG: My Lords, I should like to ask the Minister two questions. Will he not agree that it is far better, in dealing with the British people, not to use words but to give an example? One that comes readily to my mind is that the Government should say that from 1st April next all Government cars which are bought for the purpose of conveying individuals will have a horsepower no greater than, say, 1,000 ccs. That would reduce the cost enormously; it would not detract from the convenience of those who ride in the cars, and it would have a quite remarkable effect on public opinion if the public knew that the top brass—be they civil or military—were going to ride much as the Government want them to.
Secondly, it will be in the recollection of many of us that some years ago a Government—I believe it was a Labour Government—moved over to a flat horsepower tax because they wanted to encourage the production of large horsepower cars for the foreign market. It is obviously true that for our own domestic reasons, and because the same policies will be required in other countries, a reversal of that policy would be highly desirable. I cannot expect the Minister to answer that question today, but will he recommend the Chancellor to come forward with an announcement—not necessarily in the next financial year, but perhaps the year after—that in future the horsepower tax will not be a flat rate, but that the lower the horsepower, the less will be the tax?
Baroness FAITHFULL: My Lords, there have often been debates in your Lordships' House on the insulation of the domestic properties of the elderly and the handicapped. Could the Minister say whether ultimately, there will be insulation in domestic buildings, and whether note will be taken in the first instance of the properties of the elderly and the handicapped?
3.55 p.m.
Lord KIRKHILL: My Lords, may I say at the outset of my brief reply to the remarks made in your Lordships' House, that I detect a general welcome from all sides of the House to the Government's proposals which I have outlined this afternoon. In specific response to the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, I
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would assure him that of course the Government have not set their face against mandatory or fiscal policy, but I think that I can say at this stage only that our policy for private dwellinghouses and the private sector is one of continuing evolvement. In particular we aim to encourage those energy-saving measures which are economic and which benefit the user as well as the nation. Therefore, in the Government's view the savings in the fuel bill should be sufficient incentive to the householder. As regards our policy to private householders, we wish to provide information on the costs of insulation and the financial savings that can be obtained. As to the latter part of the noble Lord's comprehensive question, I cannot this afternoon answer that clearly on behalf of the Government.
In response to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Tanlaw, I confirm that insulation is at present standard. I will note his point about the EEC level. I confirm that we mean "commercial"; we talk of "domestic"; we do not speak of "industrial", mainly because the findings of an examination that we have made so far suggest that industrial undertakings are observing energy savings in a quite substantial way.
I shall certainly pass to the appropriate Department the observation made by my noble friend Lord Wigg about Government cars and military cars. I shall examine the point he made about a possible tax amendment, which is at least a possibility for the future, and will pass that suggestion to the appropriate Minister.
3.57 p.m.
Lord SHINWELL: My Lords, if, as I understand it, the Minister has been explaining the Government's energy policy, I would regard it as very inadequate indeed. However, this is not the occasion on which to debate it. I have tabled a Question, to be dealt with after the Recess, on certain aspects of energy policy and I shall refrain from dealing with them now.
However, I should like to ask two questions. First, how much of the expenditure is to be involved in providing thermal insulation in existing premises, and how much in premises which are presumably under the authority or decision of local authorities—that is, residential property and new property? Is it not the

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case that expenditure on thermal insulation for old property, with a view to the conservation of energy, is much more expensive than it is likely to be on new property, when one starts afresh?
Secondly, nothing has been said by the Minister in his Statement—and indeed, nothing has been asked by either of the noble Lords opposite—about experiments in solar energy. Is it the case that the Government have been informed of experiments in solar energy which, although it is impossible to operate throughout all 12 months in any one year, can be operated at certain times during the year? Has anything been done about that? Is it not the case that recently there was an energy conference at which several Governments were represented—including our own—and that nothing was said about the possibility of developing solar energy, as is being done in the United States of America and being subsidised by the United States Government?
4 p.m.
Lord KIRKHILL: My Lords, I should apologise to your Lordships' House in that earlier I failed to answer the pertinent point put to me by the noble Baroness, Lady Faithful'. I do not have the reply with me. The Department of Energy is not my prime responsibility, although from time to time I speak for it in your Lordships' House. I do not have that information with me today, but I shall examine the point and certainly write to the noble Baroness when I have the appropriate reply.
My noble friend Lord Shinwell poses two questions to me. As to his second question, I cannot give a reply this afternoon. I shall look into the point he raises about solar energy, and if I can be of assistance to him in that regard I shall certainly communicate with him. As regards the first point he makes, can indicate that the Department of Energy has investigated the potential of savings in the private sector and the estimate is that just under 1 million tons of oil equivalent per annum would be saved if all private sector housing was brought up to a basic level of insulation; that is, tank jackets, loft insultation and simple draught proofing. This would compare with a saving of about 10 million tons of oil equivalent per annum which
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the present package envisages, but this is a more comprehensive programme which is being talked of.
If I can reflect on and refer to the question of local authority housing, because I do not have the figures for existing private sector dwellings, about two-thirds of all local authority dwellings lack basic insulation, and the Department of Energy considers that local authorities are unlikely to have the necessary funds available for this work. The Government have decided to allocate funds for the insulation of council dwellings to ensure that progress is made in an area where the Government themselves have a measure of public responsibility. I hope that that at least in part answers the question.
Lord IRONSIDE: My Lords, I welcome this Statement. In connection with the saving of oil and oil equivalent, could I ask the Minister whether the Government will look into the question of the application and use of electric vehicles in a more serious manner than they are doing at the moment, because this would be a valuable contribution to oil saving?
Lord KIRKHILL: My Lords, this matter has, of course, been raised frequently in your Lordships' House. The Government certainly have no closed view of the position. I am unable to say that it is under active consideration at this time.
Lord LEATHERLAND: My Lords, can my noble friend satisfy me about the proposal for the thermal insulation of hospitals? Is it not a fact that, whereas this might make the wards warm and the patients comfortable in the winter, it might make the wards far too hot and the patients for too uncomfortable in the middle of summer?
Lord KIRKHILL: Not, my Lords, if you live in the middle of Aberdeen, as I do.
Lord LEATHERLAND: My Lords, what about if you live in London?
Lord ERROLL of HALE: My Lords, could the Minister say why the Statement referred only to energy conservation by private motorists and did not embrace the

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whole of the transport field, including heavy goods vehicles and other forms of road passenger transport? While on the subject, what about some savings by aircraft, and also by British Rail? Why only the private motorists to be induced to save energy?
Lord KIRKHILL: My Lords, I was at pains to point out that we could not claim this to be a totally comprehensive package, nor can we say that it is a package fully binding for all time. It is an evolving measure. This is the stage at which we feel we can put these postulates before your Lordships' House. We are, in the meantime, engaged in conversation with the AA, the RAC, and other transport organisations. Matters are by no means closed at this stage.
Lord LUCAS of CHILWORTH: My Lords, while welcoming the Statement, may I ask the Minister, in connection with points 10 and 11 dealing with transportation, why is there no mention of any monies being made available for research into transportation energy savings? My understanding is that road transport takes up some 25 per cent. of total oil consumption in the United Kingdom, but that the industry itself is unable to foresee any substantial savings in consumption until at least 1985. That is a long way away. It is also my understanding that there is no research being undertaken outside the industry itself to shorten this time so that there can be an encouragement into road fuel savings rather than the discouragement that comes through fiscal policies. In other words, the easiest way is to raise the tax on fuel and down comes consumption; but in fact it should work the reverse way, and I heard no mention of developments in this field.
Lord KIRKHILL: My Lords, I can only reiterate that we cannot claim this to be the totality of everything we shall ever do, or are going to do, in terms of energy conservation. We claim it to be a significant and major first step. Priorities are always a factor, and the limitation of public expenditure commitment is also always a factor, but I take note of the noble Lord's remarks.
Lord STRABOLGI: My Lords, we have now had over 27 minutes on this Statement. It is a very important matter,
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but I am sure that it would be the wish of the House that we should now return to the Housing Order.

HOUSING (HOMELESS PERSONS) (APPROPRIATE ARRANGEMENTS) ORDER 1977
Debate resumed.
4.6 p.m.
Lord SANDYS: My Lords, I should like to thank the noble Baroness for explaining in such detail the Housing (Homeless Persons) (Appropriate Arrangements) Order which has been before your Lordships. As the noble Baroness rightly said, it is an enabling procedure which took into account the views of both your Lordships' House and another place and, as the principal Act referred to only reached the Statute Book a short time ago, it will be within your Lordships' recollection what took place as recently as July this year.
There were three principal problems which we attempted to solve in your Lordships' House when the Bill reached us from another place. First, there was the definition of those who were going to be entitled to be rehoused; secondly, and most importantly, deciding which authority had the obligation to rehouse—a matter which this order refers to; and, thirdly, the question whether those who intentionally made themselves homeless would disentitle themselves from being rehoused. This order is an attempt to find means of arbitration between the authorities and as the noble Baroness rightly commented, she felt that it struck an apt balance, with which we agree on this side of the House.
It is noteworthy that the Association of District Councils agrees with this order and, as the noble Baroness said, has taken a prominent part in the discussions. But I think that the local authority association which has had the longest experience of this type of activity is perhaps the London Boroughs Association, the members of which have been working an agreed code of practice among themselves for a number of years. I think that it is true to say that it is thanks to the active and co-operative participation of all the local authorities that this order has been enabled to be brought to your Lordships' House today.

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There are a number of matters to which the noble Baroness referred, most especially the appointment of the adjudicator. Almost every permutation has been thought of at this stage, and from this side of the House we believe that the arrangements as set out in this order are acceptable. It may be that there will be some further need for alteration but, as your Lordships will recollect, very wide powers were left to the Minister under Section 2(3) under which the Secretary of State may amend, or repeal, any part of the foregoing subsections. In view of this fact, we may no doubt expect further orders which will be attached to this particular Act of Parliament. Meanwhile, we note that a determination under this order shall be final and binding—two very important words—on both parties, and we welcome it from this side of the House.
4.10 p.m.
Lord HENLEY: My Lords, my noble friends approve of this order. The noble Baroness touched upon one point—the question of delay. I am not sure whether she is satisfied in her own mind that, in the event of delay—and delay in appointing an adjudicator, et cetera, is an example of what I mean—the homeless persons or families will be adequately housed during what might be quite a long interregnum.
Lord JANNER: My Lords, I should like to add a few words to what my noble friend has said. The association of local authorities to which she referred has gone into this matter very carefully, and, as far as I can see—and, as your Lordships will know, I have myself been watching the proceedings and taking some humble part in them in relation to providing accommodation for the homeless—it seems to me that the matter is one of considerable urgency at present, and that some method has to be discovered which will make it possible for the procedure to be carried out in a quick, suitable and satisfactory way. I listened very carefully to what my noble friend said, and it seemed to me that she covered the position most adequately and very well indeed. On behalf of the Association of Metropolitan Authorities, of which I myself happen to be an honorary officer, I should like to say that they are very anxious to do what they
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possibly can for the homeless people, and they feel that these provisions should be brought into effect as soon as possible.
Baroness FAITHFULL: My Lords, I wonder whether I may ask the Minister two questions. The first concerns the fact that it must be a tremendous responsibility for local housing authorities to house the homeless when they have not the adequate accommodation. Can she say what is going to be done by those local authorities who have not got the accommodation and who are now using bed and breakfast situations, which are very bad for families and also very expensive? Secondly, I wonder whether I could have some clarification on the following point. If a family becomes homeless in one area, then that area is responsible; but suppose that, from the point of view of social conditions, it would be better for that family to be rehoused in another area where there are relatives and friends, particularly in the case of the elderly. Under this order, would it be possible for the two authorities to come to some agreement?
4.13 p.m.
Baroness BIRK: My Lords, perhaps I may first thank the noble Lord, Lord Sandys, who spoke for the Opposition, for his support in this matter. I am very grateful, because he appreciates, as I think does everyone who has spoken in this short debate, the great need to get this under way as quickly as possible. I am delighted that the arrangements set out are acceptable to him; and he has pointed to, the fact that, if there is any need for alteration, that is possible. Also, of course, we shall be looking at it again when we look at the arrangements for Scotland, when Scotland comes into this in April of next year.
The noble Lord, Lord Henley, asked me about homeless families being rehoused should there he any delay. They will be in temporary accommodation—I think this was the point also raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull—and it may indeed be bed and breakfast accommodation, or whatever accommodation they have. It is for this reason that it is so urgent that we should go ahead with this draft order, so that, where there are disputes between authorities, there is a means of dealing with them.

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On the question of which authority should rehouse these people, we are assuming here that it will rest between two authorities—the authority where the people happen to have been living, either temporarily or with relatives, and the authority where they have more places of residence. What we hope is that in the vast majority of cases this will be capable of being sorted out between the authorities without need for the adjudicator and all the other things. As has been pointed out, we have been through almost every permutation and combination to try to ensure that every situation is covered; but, with the goodwill and help of the associations, which in their turn will have an influential effect upon the authorities which are their component parts, we are hoping that few cases will need the use of the services of an adjudicator, and I should like to guess that probably none at all will need the lot. I am grateful to everyone who has taken part in this very short debate for their constructive support and agreement. I believe that we should now approve the order so that it can come into force as soon as possible.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

SOCIAL SECURITY (CONTRIBUTIONS, RE-RATING) (NO. 2) ORDER 1977
4.16 p.m.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I beg to move that the Social Security (Contributions, Re-rating) (No. 2) Order 1977, a draft of which was laid before your Lordships' House on 1st December, be approved. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Social Services has carried out the review of National Insurance contributions which he is required to make each year under the Social Security Act 1975. He has had regard to the present level of the National Insurance Fund and the likely level of future expenditure from it, and in the draft order now before your Lordships he has proposed revised rates and levels of contributions from the 6th April 1978. I hope that in the years to come the 6th April 1978 will be seen to be a very significant date in the history of social progress in this country. This is when the Social Security Act 1975 takes effect, and employees will begin to build up for
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themselves on an earnings-related basis better provision for retirement, widowhood and chronic ill health.
An important feature of the new scheme is that there will be a partnership between good occupational pension schemes and the State whereby employees who are members of the occupational schemes may receive some of the new benefits from those schemes rather than from the State scheme. Thus, employees will build up for themselves greatly improved benefits, either entirely through the State scheme or by a combination of State and occupational pension provision. The new arrangements will mature in 20 years' time, and will then enable millions of employees to retire on more than half pay. These important developments in benefit provision had the general support of all Parties when the pensions Bill was before your Lordships' House in 1975. I hope there will also be general support for the draft order, which now sets out the contributions which will be levied for the first year of the new scheme.
The pensions Act recognised that contributions for employees who were not contracted out—that is, those whose rights to the improved benefits would be provided entirely by the State scheme—would need to be increased next year. The Act also provided for contributions of those who were contracted out to be at a reduced rate, in recognition of the responsibility for benefits which their occupational pension schemes had taken over from the State. The self-employed, unlike people who work for an employer, will not be covered by the new earnings-related pension arrangements. My right honourable friend has taken account of the different cover for benefits which these different types of contributor will have under the new scheme and has sought to set rates and levels of contributions for the next year which are fair to them all.
I will mention, first, the contributions for employees who are not contracted out of the State scheme. As I have indicated, there is statutory provision for their contributions to be increased from April 1978. The contributions may be set at rates which are not higher than 6·5 per cent. for the employees and 10 per cent. for their employers compared with the present rates of 5·75 per cent. for employees and 8·75 per cent. for employers. It

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has not been possible to set rates which are lower than the 6.5 per cent. for employees and the 10 per cent. for employers. Indeed, as the Government Actuary's report on the effect of this order shows, it is expected that, on given assumptions as to factors such as the level of unemployment and earnings, the National Insurance Fund will not quite break even in the year 1978–79. The deficit for that year is expected to be in the region of £25 million. The surpluses which have accrued in recent years make this deficit acceptable.
The upper and lower limits on earnings on which employees and employers pay contributions are also being raised for the coming year. They will then be £17·50 and £120 a week in place of the present limits of £15 and £105 a week. The effect is that a person who earns at least £17·50 a week will pay contributions on all his earnings up to £120 a week. These new earnings limits are not specified in the draft order because, under the pensions Act, they now are a matter for regulations. My right honourable friend has already made the regulations which are subject to the Negative Resolution procedure, but I must mention them for the sake of giving your Lordships a complete picture.
The new lower and upper limits are consistent with the requirements of the pensions Act, which is that they should be, respectively, about equal to and about seven times the amount of the basic rate of the retirement pension which, as your Lordships know, is at present £17·50. These changes mean that an employee who is a full member of the State scheme and who earns £80 a week (which is approximately the amount of average earnings for men employed full-time) will pay an additional 60p a week and his employer will pay an extra £1 a week. The maximum increase will be £1·76 a week for employees and £2·81 a week for employers and will be payable where employees earn £120 or more a week.
Increases at this level result, partly, from the increase in the percentage rate and, partly, from the increase in the earnings limit. As your Lordships will appreciate, increases in the limit result in people whose earnings are above the existing limits paying additional contributions from the start of the new tax
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year corresponding to the increases which lower earners face immediately they receive a pay increase in the course of the preceding tax year.
I will deal next with contracted-out employees. The pensions Act provides that employees and their employers will pay contributions which are initially at the rates which are 2·5 per cent. and 4·5 per cent. respectively lower than for other employees on earnings between the lower and upper earnings limit. Thus, on the first £17·50 a week of earnings—and I would remind your Lordships that I am referring to contracted-out employees—the rate will be 6·5 per cent. for employees and 10 per cent. for employers; but on earnings above that level, the rates will become 4 per cent. for employees and 5·5 per cent. for employers. As a result the contracted-out employee, for example, earning £80 a week will pay 96p a week less than at present. The maximum reduction will be £1·40 a week and will apply to a person earning £105 a week. These reductions relate only to contributions to the State scheme and do not take account of contributions at the occupational pensions scheme.
Your Lordships will wish to know whether there is to be any change in the rate of contribution payable by those married women and widows who retain the right to reduced contribution liability. The answer is that they will continue to pay the 2 per cent. of their earnings, subject, of course, to the new earnings limit, whether or not they are contracted out.
My Lords, I turn now to the position of people who are self-employed. If I may say so, this is a matter which I know from past experience concerns a good many of your Lordships. As you will know, the self-employed are not included in the new earnings-related pension arrangements although they will continue to be eligible for the basic retirement pension and other benefits currently available to them. My right honourable friend has given careful consideration to their position and has decided that, in fixing the level of their future contributions, it would be only right to take account of the changes being made for other contributors. If the self-employed had to continue to pay contributions on the present basis, this would

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seem unfair because employees who are contracted out and who, therefore, also get less than the full benefit cover of the State scheme, will pay reduced contributions under the new scheme. The new rates of contribution for the self-employed have therefore been calculated in the same way as those for the contracted-out employees; that is, by starting with the contribution payable for employees who are full members of the scheme and by reducing it to allow for the benefits which are not available under the scheme. As a result, the self-employed will pay lower contributions than they do now and they will be able to use this saving, if they so wish, to make extra pension provisions for themselves.
The draft order shows that the flat rate Class 2 contribution is being reduced from next April from £2·66 per week to £1·90 per week, a reduction of 76p. The rate of the earnings-related Class 4 contributions is to be reduced from 8 per cent. to 5 per cent. The lower limit of annual profits or gains at which a Class 4 contribution begins to be paid, is being increased from £1,750 to £2,000 a year. The upper profits limit is being increased from £5,500 to £6,250 a year, so that will be in line with the new upper earnings limit for employees. Because of your Lordships' concern in the past for the self-employed, may I give one figure. I have not selected it because it happens to be the nicest figure. I have been quoting the contributions that are going to be paid by employees earning about £80 a week—£4,000 a year. The self-employed person whose annual profits or gains amounts to £4,000 a year is paying at the present moment in contributions £318·32. From 1st April, he will be paying £198·80—a decrease in the year of £119·52. I mention this because at least my right honourable friend the Secretary of State has tried to be as fair as is humanly possible in matters of this kind.
At this point, I must add a further comment about the contributions of the self-employed so that there will be no risk of misunderstanding the future position. The substantial reduction proposed for next year is achieved, as I have already explained, by calculating contributions as for people who are contracted-out. However, contracted-out contributions can be expected to rise in
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real terms over the years. This is because the cost to occupational pension schemes of funding the pensions, which would otherwise be provided by the State scheme, will fall and it will then be right to reduce the extent to which contracted-out contributions are lower than full contributions. As contracted-out contributions rise progressively in real terms, so therefore will the contributions of the self-employed. However, let me make it quite clear that in our deductions—and I may be wrong—this is not expected to happen in the first five years. We expect it to be static, although there will doubtless be increases in Class 2 contributions rate, and the Class 4 profits limit, as a result of the rise in the general level of earnings.
I now come to the remaining changes which the draft order makes. First, the level of earnings below which a self-employed person can be excepted from liability for Class 2 contributions is being raised from £875 a year to £950. Secondly, the voluntary Class 3 contribution is being reduced to £1.80 per week in consequence in the reduction of Class 2 contribution to £1.90. Finally, I should like to mention something which is already established and not therefore in the order. This is that from April employees and the self-employed will not pay contributions for work done after they have reached the pensionable ages of 65 for men and 60 for women.
I have spoken at some length because this year the setting of the new rates and levels of contributions is of special importance since the contributions are those needed for the start of the new pensions scheme. In conclusion, all I need say—and there are Members of your Lordships' House who know this to be true—is that, in order to try to get the whole situation right, my right honourable friend has given a great deal of thought to this matter, and has seen a large number of people. As I say, a good deal of that consultation has gone into this order. I hope that, as a result, this draft order will commend itself to your Lordships and that you will pass it. I beg to move.
Moved, That the draft Social Security (Contributions, Re-rating) (No. 2) Order 1977, laid before the House on 1st December, be approved.—(Lord Wells-Pestell.)
4. 35 p. m.
Lord SANDYS: My Lords, the House will be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, for describing the order which is before your Lordships because the background to it is particularly interesting and significant in both political, inflationary, and pension terms and even in the thinking of the Government. It is a metamorphosis. Let us go back to 1973, when the Social Security Act was placed on the Statute Book by the last Conservative Government. That Act included provisions for a second pension which we believe to be a very satisfactory one.
One of the very first acts of the present Government when they reached office in February 1974 was to overturn the pension provisions of the Act of 1973. As I shall describe in a few minutes, it has had a very important result, a very adverse result, and a deeply serious result to all those who wish to benefit from the pensions scheme. The reason of course is this. The Act of 1973, which would have come into effect in 1975, would have meant that a three year start would have been made on building up those very desirable benefits which the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, described. I admit that they were not the same benefits but they were parallel and somewhat similar.
Unfortunately—and we believe it is very unfortunate—the Government decided to overturn the whole scheme. As everybody knows who has had involvement in the insurance field, the first thing one does not want to do in an inflationary period is to overturn an existing scheme because it means that all the machinery, the checks and balances, the updating procedures—and the benefits themselves—are thrown out of gear; and, to coin a phrase, one has to "throw six and start again" if the policy is changed. The Government did change the policy and they changed it in a somewhat dramatic manner because when the noble Lord's right honourable friend Mrs. Barbara Castle assumed office as Secretary of State, in her very first speech (to which my noble friend Lady Young and I listened in another place on 10th April 1974) she said exactly what she was going to do. The misfortune is that we have lost three years. The noble Lord may well say that the 6th April 1978 is going to be significant. It will be significant;
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but those who understand what has happened will wring their hands rather than ring bells on that occasion because they will realise the Government have changed their mind on the situation.
I should like to put it to your Lordships that the Government have passed through a metamorphosis in their thinking, because during the course of 1974—the first year of office of the present Government—a decision was reached to make variations in the Social Security provisions in the Social Security Amendment Bill of that year. A very interesting debate took place in your Lordships' House on 2nd December 1974 at which the noble Lord, Lord George-Brown (whose absence we regret this afternoon) said that he believed that the new levels of contributions were going to be intolerable. How right he was! The new levels of self-employed contributions were raised from 5 per cent. to 8 per cent. It is very significant that the Government have now come to the same conclusion as the noble Lord, Lord George-Brown: that it would be much better to revert to the original decision of the previous Conservative Government to have a level of contributions set at 5 per cent. We welcome this; we were right in 1973. The Government have come to the same conclusion in 1977 but, alas, those three years have been lost.
Many other matters will be referred to, but I should like particularly to comment on the situation regarding the accumulated surplus in the Government Actuary's report. We welcome, of course, the publication of that report which comes, as usual, at the same time as the order. I should like to put one question to the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell. He may not have the information beside him, but may I ask him whether he will bear in mind that a Written Answer to the same Question was given in another place on 23rd December last year as to what the surplus was? At that time, almost a year ago, it was stated that the accumulated surplus stood at £3,000 million. We believe that in April 1978, if we add the profits shown for this year, it would be £3,650 million. The significant point here is that this very large sum of money which is available within the insurance scheme appears to be used for one purpose only: the reduction of the public sector borrowing requirement.

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I should also like to put a second question. Was the Treasury—the Department which brought pressure to bear—suggesting that these reductions were made?—because we assume that that is the case. We believe, however desirable it is to accumulate these very large surpluses, that they should be devoted to the main purpose of the National Insurance Scheme rather than attributed to other matters within the Treasury remit. It may well be a matter which the noble Lord can explain very easily, but we should be most grateful for his guidance on this matter.
4.42 p.m.
Lord BANKS: My Lords, I should also like to thank the noble Lord, Lord WellsPestell, for the very clear way in which he explained the contents of this order. I should like to say at once that I very much welcome its content. Perhaps I might be permitted to make a preliminary observation. When we discussed last year's re-rating order, I drew attention to the considerable projected surplus in the National Insurance Fund to which reference has already been made, and I suggested either that contributions should be cut or benefits increased. I was told then that the accumulated surplus in the National Insurance Fund was only sufficient for three months' benefit. The implication was that the annual surplus could not be spent with safety. Now I see from the Government Actuary's report—and the noble Lord, Lord WellsPestell, has again pointed it out this afternoon—that a deficit of £25 million is projected for 1978–79. That is in spite of many imponderables; for example, the rate of increase in earnings, the level of unemployment and the number of employees who will be contracted out of the earnings-related scheme next April. However, I am not complaining and I am reassured by the fact that the figures for future contributions given in Table 3 of the Government Actuary's Report are estimated to give an excess of income over outgo throughout the period to the year 2008.
I am glad that the rates of contribution for employed persons by the employer and employee from next April are to be as originally forecast—because there was fear that they might be one-quarter per
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cent. higher on each side. I am glad that has not been found necessary. I welcome wholeheartedly the concession to the self-employed. In consultations I had with the Minister responsible for social security, as Liberal spokesman on the social services, I asked that since the self-employed did not receive earnings-related benefits and have a restricted range of other benefits, and since they will not benefit from the earnings-related part of the new scheme next April, they should have a corresponding concession. I suggested that the Government should contribute up to 3½ per cent. of earnings between the upper and lower limits, to match a similar contribution by the self-employed person towards a retirement annuity with an insurance company or friendly society. Three and a half per cent. from each side would have totalled 7 per cent., which is the same as the amount of reduction allowed for employees who have contracted out.
The Minister agreed to have the proposal carefully examined, and that was done. In the end, the Government decided that it would be better to give what is in fact a similar percentage concession to the one that I had suggested, simply by reducing the self-employed contribution. That has the advantage of involving no extra administrative cost, but it loses the incentive to save which my proposal provided. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, pointed out, the money freed by that reduction can be so used if the contributor wishes. It also has the advantage that the reduction is spread between the Class 2 flat rate contribution, which is helping the poorest, and the Class 4 contribution. I warmly welcome the reduction in the flat rate from £2.66 per week for a man and £2.55 per week for a woman to £1.90 per week for both, and also the reduction in the levy from 8 per cent. to 5 per cent. I have read with interest the Government Actuary's explanation of how those contribution rates are derived, and the noble Lord also made reference to those this afternoon. These are considerable reductions and a very welcome response to the representations which I and others made. I hope that the House will approve the order.
Baroness PHILLIPS: My Lords, I also should like to welcome the contents of this order. If I may say so, I thought it was

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a little ungracious of my noble friend from the Opposition Benches to suggest that the Government have had a change of mind. I would only remind him that during the time of the Conservative Government, when I had the privilege of sitting on the Opposition Front Benches where he is, I cannot recall any occasion when they had a change of mind in relation to social security, despite the pressures that we put upon them. Does the noble Lord wish to reject that? I think perhaps if he examines the matter he will find that it is so.
We have had a very limited welcome, which is rather sad, because it is not often that we have before the House a proposition that actually reduces contributions. I am sad to see that there are so few noble Lords here to commend the Government on this particular order. I would hope that the Press will give it banner headlines just as they would have if there had been an increase in the contributions. The fact is that there has been this concession to the self-employed which many of us, including noble Lords from this side of the House, advocated; and the Government have listened. I think we should congratulate the Government on that. This is a Christmas gift not only to the pensioners but to all contributors. We would like to give it a very warm welcome, and I hope that the word will go forth from this House.
4.49 p.m.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I do not think it is necessary for me to detain your Lordships for very long. I cannot resist saying to the noble Lord, Lord Sandys, that I was delighted to hear him refer to the "last" Conservative Government. This is rather good news, I think, for the country as a whole, although I am sure he is going to tell me privately that he meant the previous Conservative Government.
In the last three years, if the noble Lord examines this scheme very carefully, I think he will find that there are not many people who are going seriously to suffer as a result of the Government's change of mind. On this occasion and on previous occasions, the noble Lord has made a good deal of the 8 per cent. which the Government fixed for the self-employed
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to pay. But I tried to point out then—obviously, not very successfully—that there was a very good reason for it.
What we tried to do on that occasion was to assess the cost of the benefits which the self-employed were getting, and are still getting, bearing in mind that it was costing at that time, and is still costing at the present moment, both the employee and the employer a total of 14½ per cent. The self-employed were to be called upon to pay 8 per cent. and they were getting, and are still getting, retirement pension, widow's benefits, sickness and invalidity benefits, maternity benefits, child's special allowance and death grants. They are getting all of the benefits that everybody else gets, with the exception of three—normal unemployment benefit, industrial injury benefit and earnings-related supplement to benefits.
I do not want to be unfair about this, but, if one costs what they were getting, the 8 per cent. then and now is not an unreasonable figure. I do not want to say anything more, but I did not want your Lordships to go away thinking that the self-employed were being soaked, although we realise that there was very strong feeling in this House and elsewhere about the 8 per cent. But we made a sincere and sustained effort to try to do it on the basis of what they were getting, in comparison with what other people were getting and for which they were paying a great deal more.
I do not know that I want to say very much more, other than that the National Insurance must be a self-contained system, but the effect on the economy must be borne in mind. In present circumstances, and bearing in mind past surpluses, Government as a whole, including the Treasury, accept that there will be a small deficit. But as the noble Lord, Lord Banks, said very clearly, all this was done on certain assumptions—the assumption of the number of people who would contract out of the scheme, which I believe is going into a good many millions; the number of unemployed that there may be; the restriction which there will be and has been, on earnings; and one must have a fairly substantial working margin to meet eventualities which may arise.
As always, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Banks, for his contribution.

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I do not think that I need say a great deal, because the Secretary of State—and I mean what I say—has had the benefit of being able to discuss certain matters with the noble Lord, Lord Banks, and I know that the Secretary of State was anxious, so far as it was possible, to meet a number of these matters. But perhaps I may just repeat for the benefit of your Lordships that the Liberal Party, through the noble Lord, Lord Banks, proposed a scheme under which self-employed contributors who contracted with a life office for a retirement annuity would have their premium, up to a certain limit, matched by a State subvention allocated from their Class IV contributions.
The noble Lord, Lord Banks, was perfectly fair and pointed out the view of my right honourable friend, which was that there were two very considerable administrative difficulties—first, of staffing and, secondly, of procedures. I know that your Lordships have heard time and time before about this problem of staffing but more staff would be required to set up what would amount to individual accounts to prepare these issue vouchers, and it is probably a much more difficult process than many of us realise. There would also be technical difficulties flowing from the link with Schedule D tax; for example, delay in the agreement of earnings for tax purposes, adjustment of assessments and treatment of partners. We could see a good deal of difficulty and I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Banks, as well as your Lordships, will feel that perhaps the suggestion which the Government have made, and are asking your Lordships to accept in this order, really meets the situation, for it leaves the self-employed with a margin which he or she did not have before, which could probably be used for some kind of private insurance.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

NATIONAL COAL BOARD (RATEABLE VALUES) ORDER 1977
4.55 p.m.
Baroness STEDMAN Baroness STEDMAN rose to move, That the National Coal Board (Rateable Values) Order 1977, laid before the House on 23rd November, be approved. The noble Baroness said: My Lords, the order
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before the House concerns the rating of operational property occupied by the National Coal Board in England and Wales. Public utilities such as the gas, water and electricity supply industries, and the National Coal Board, are not assessed piecemeal for rates by valuation officers, like other occupiers, because the normal principles of assessment cannot be readily applied to each of their properties in turn. Instead, the Secretary of State has to come to a view as to how the rateable value of the whole undertaking should be determined, so as to give a value which is as close as maybe to that which would have been derived had the undertaking been rated normally. He has to take into account the views of the undertaking in question and those of the local authority associations, and, where there are differences of view he has, in effect, to act as independent arbitrator. In doing so, he is able to rely on the independent and expert advice of the Valuation Office of the Inland Revenue. The end product of all this is a formula for the rateable value of the undertaking which is laid down in a statutory instrument.
In 1973, it was decided to review the working of all the formulae used to value the various public utilities and industries and to make such changes as were necessary. It was thought that some of the formulae in use at that time had got out of line with the true values of the undertakings and that comprehensive updating was necessary. New formulae for several of the other undertakings have already been brought into effect. In some cases these have involved substantial increases in the rateable values of the industry in question to bring them up to date; in other cases there have been reductions or little change. The National Coal Board and the water industry are now the only two industries outstanding. The order before the House, if it is approved, will now introduce a revised formula for the coal industry, leaving only the water industry still to complete.
The order makes three major changes, together with a few minor and presentational ones. First, the value of deep mines occupied by the National Coal Board is increased to £11·5 million for the year 1977–78, compared with their present value of £6·8 million, which was derived from the current 1963 National Coal Board (Valuation) Order. This, we

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believe, fairly represents the total rateable value were it possible to assess each of the 300-odd colleries individually. Of course, as under the present order, the rateable value will vary with output in subsequent years.
Secondly, opencast mining is rated by reference to the amount of mineral extracted and a value per ton, known as the "tonnage factor". This tonnage factor is prescribed instead of being assessed, as is the case for minerals other than coal. The present tonnage factor as determined by the existing order is about 4·2p per ton, and the order before us provides for this to be increased to 12½p, giving a rateable value of £1·4 million at current output of 11 million tons. Thirdly, associated properties, as they are termed—and these are a defined list of some 415 properties which include railway lines, sales depots and the like—are taken out of formula rating and rated in the normal way.
As I have explained, the order before us is based on the existing 1963 order, but it might help noble Lords if I run through the main provisions and explain the changes that have been made. As noble Lords will have observed, there are one or two mathematical formulae in the order and I hope that these will not cause undue alarm. Surprisingly, they do, in fact, express in simpler form essentially the same concepts as were included in the previous order for updating and allocating the rateable value of the Coal Board's property.
Article 3 provides for the assessment by formula of mine properties and opencast workings and for the apportionment of values of properties which should be partly rated by formula and partly by normal rating principles. The only significant change is that associated properties—the ones which I spoke about on the defined list—will now be rated by normal methods. The 1963 order ties the rateable value of these properties—the railway lines, the wharves and so on which clearly contain no mineral deposits—to those of mineral producing hereditaments where the value is controlled predominantly by the value of the mineral deposits. The change is aimed at removing the anomalies which arise when there are changes of occupier.
Article 5 is the most significant part of this order. It sets the rateable value of deep mines for 1977–1978 at £11·5 million. As this represents a considerable increase over the current rateable value of £6·8 million, I will explain the reasons for this decision. The present value is derived from the total value of all the Board's mines as at 1st April 1962, updated in proportion to the value of other extractive hereditaments and to the output of coal. No account has been taken of the modernisation that has taken place in collieries, nor of the fact that production is now concentrated in half the number of mines. Yet a few efficient centres of production have a higher value than several less efficient centres having the same total output, and these changes in the Board's mines should be reflected in an increase in value. A study of a sample of the Board's mines suggests that this increase ought to be 15 per cent.
The simple comparison with the rateable value of other mineral producing hereditaments is weighted towards the annual rental value of sand, gravel and other aggregate minerals. It has not properly reflected the increased value of coal as a source of energy. In the period from 1963 to 1974, for example, the selling price of coal rose 140 per cent., whereas the weighted average price of other minerals rose only 82 per cent. How far this should be reflected in the value of coal mines is a matter of judgment, but, taking a conservative estimate, it was thought that the rateable value of the mines should be increased by 15 per cent. in respect of this factor.
A further increase arises from the results of the 1971 Mines and Quarries Valuation Order. This order provided for a reduction of that part of the rateable value of a mineral producing hereditament that represents the royalty value of the mineral, and coal mines secured a reduction of 39 per cent. of their rateable value accordingly. On further review it appears, however, that this reduction was too large, since a large proportion of the value of a coal mine lies in the shafts and machinery rather than in the coal itself. The reduction in value should therefore have been less—20 per cent. in fact rather than 39 per cent.—and it is proposed to put this right in the new order.
Having regard to these three factors, we have decided that the present rateable

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value of £6·8 million should be raised to £11·5 million for 1977–78. As I have already said, this value will vary with output in future years, as the present order provides, although this variation is specified by symbols and not in words.
I expect that noble Lords will be wondering what effect increases of this nature will have on coal prices. Although the extra rates will amount to around £5 million, rates form only a very small part of the National Coal Board's expenses. The increased cost per ton of coal from a deep mine will only be 3·9p. By contrast, the current cost of coal is typically about £16 a ton. That is less than one-half of 1 per cent.
The formula in Article 6 provides for the apportionment of the national basic rateable value between rating districts. The equation looks formidible but the principle behind the calculations is the same as under the present order. It is simplified by the assessment of a single national rateable value rather than one split between the old divisions. In effect, the formula provides, as under the present order, that some fraction of the rateable value is associated with the shaft and some with the mineral deposits which are worked. They may, of course, lie in quite another rating district.
Under the 1963 order, 60 per cent. of the apportionment was associated with the mine shaft and 40 per cent. with the value of the mineral deposits. Noble Lords may have noticed that the formula now refers to 75 per cent. and 25 per cent. I referred before to the decision in 1971 to reduce the value of the mineral element in the assessment of rateable values by half, and therefore the 40 per cent. should be reduced. The ratios should thus not be 60 to 40 but 60 to 20, or 75 per cent. to 25 per cent.
The other major change is that in the provision for assessing opencast workings, contained now in articles 9 to 14 of the order, the provisions here are somewhat more straightforward. Each working is assessed individually. Under the 1963 order, the tonnage of coal produced at each working in a year is multiplied by a "tonnage factor", which is calculated by a formula and is currently about 4·2p. The result is the rateable value. Rates are then levied in the usual way. The
1902
order before us provides for the "tonnage factor" to be increased to 12½p, to be comparable (after taking into account such matters as the scale of the operation) with figures which are derived from the assessments of coal sites being exploited privately.
While much of the order simply repeats the existing provisions, deciding the rateable values to be set by it has not been an easy task, as witnessed by the long time it has taken to do. We have sought agreement between the parties but this has not been possible, and I am aware not only that the Board has expressed the view that its rateable value should be lower, but also that the local authority associations have said that it ought to be a good deal higher. We have therefore sought a balance between these views, based on the disinterested advice of the Government's Valuation Office, with the sole aim of bringing the rates the Board pays into line with those paid by other industrial ratepayers. We believe that we have achieved this and I therefore ask noble Lords to approve this order.
Moved, That the National Coal Board (Rateable Values) Order 1977, laid before the House on 23rd November, be approved.—(Baroness Stedman.)
5.8 p.m.
Lord SANDYS: My Lords, the House will be grateful to the noble Baroness for explaining an intricate mathematical formula with her usual precision and technique. From this side of the House may I emphasise what the noble Baroness has said. Agreement was indeed sought but none was reached. I should like to express the case so far as the National Coal Board are concerned. The National Coal Board claim that neither the new valuation figure of £11.5 million nor the general rise of 15 per cent. in the National Coal Board's rates is justified. In their view, these figures bear no relation to reality today. In fact, to coin a phrase, they appear to be plucked from the air.
The reason why your Lordships are faced with the order this afternoon is that the Department of the Environment have accepted the chief mineral valuer's recommendation which was discussed but not agreed between the authorities concerned, the Board and the Government. First, it is appreciated that there

1903
are 415 properties taken out of formula rating, but these are of course still subject to their own revaluation on the normal basis and they are not agreed. In our view the chief mineral valuer has made a basic confusion between value and market price.
This story goes back quite a long way. The noble Baroness referred to as far back as 1963, but I will go two years earlier, to a debate in another place in the Standing Committee when the then Minister of Housing and Local Government, Mr. Henry Brooke—now, of course, my noble friend Lord Brooke of Cumnor—said this on the Rating and Valuation Bill.
"The clause would enable new systems of assessment to be brought into force by order if they were agreed between the local authorities on the one hand and the undertakings concerned on the other. There is no suggestion that obtaining the benefit of a formula method of assessment should be regarded as a privilege. It is not designed to enable the undertakings concerned to pay less rates than they otherwise would and it is not designed to impose on them a greater rate liability".
Further on in the debate he said:
"The points at issue will be purely technical because everything will be governed by the general statement I have made, namely that the new system must be agreeable to all concerned and must be designed neither to increase nor to diminish the total rate liability of the industry or the set of undertakings".
It appears that an undertaking was given by a Minister which was accepted and passed unanimously when it came to that particular clause. It is further pointed out by the National Coal Board in regard to their claim that the chief mineral valuer has over-rated the present value, that between the years 1964 and 1975 in real terms their rates were increased by no less a factor than 26 per cent. I think it can be said that there is a parallel between what has been said earlier this afternoon on a previous order, which was also concerned with the Department represented by the noble Baroness, namely, the housing of homeless persons order, in which all local authorities and the Government got together and reached agreement and produced an order which was satisfactory to all sides of your Lordships' House. The parallel I should draw is with this order, where no such agreement has been reached, where
1904
the Coal Board cannot possibly accept what the Government have in mind and the local authorities take a somewhat different view from the Government themselves. I ask the noble Baroness whether it would be possible to achieve a revision of what the Government have in mind.
5.14 p.m.
Baroness STEDMAN: My Lords, I note the comments made by the noble Lord opposite and I, too, have been looking up to see what the then Mr. Henry Brooke said way back in 1961. As I understood what he said, it was that the object of a rating formula was, as nearly as possible, to put the industry concerned in the same position as it would have been in if there had been no formula, and that the values were left to be determined in the ordinary way. This was our understanding of those assurances which were given by the then Minister responsible. But, quite obviously, there is still scope for considerable differences of view on what the total rateable value of an industry would be if there was not a formula. This is the sort of problem that we have been trying to resolve over the past months. It is not only the concern of the National Coal Board; the National Union of Miners are also working in harmony with the NCB and are complaining that we are rating their industry too high.
The purpose of the formula is to facilitate the making of rating assessments, not to cause the industry concerned to pay more or less in rates; or, if you want to put it another way, if the NCB pays too much in rates, it is unfairly being asked to subsidise other ratepayers, but at the same time, if it pays too little, then it is itself being subsidised by other ratepayers, which is not fair to them. Here I take some comfort from the fact that the local authorities complain that we have not rated them heavily enough. The NCB and the NUM complain that we are hitting them too hard and one tends to think that if both are squealing we may perhaps have got it somewhere near right. I take note of what the noble Lord has said; we will look at it and will see how it works as time goes on; but I hope the House will accept the order this evening.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

EEC: 50th REPORT—EXCISE DUTIES ON ALCOHOL
5.16 p.m.
Lord RAGLAN Lord RAGLAN rose to move, That this House takes note of the Report of the European Communities Committee on Excise Duties on Alcohol (COM(72)225) (Fiftieth Report of last session (HL 263)). The noble Lord said: My Lords, I have to say straight away that the scene has changed since this report went to the printers because the Commission have changed their tack. They wanted to get agreement among the Member States that Excise duties should be applied to only five products. They were mineral oils, manufactured tobacco, alcohol, beer and wine and they proposed what they called a "framework directive" which embraced a draft directive for harmonising the duty on each of those five products, plus the draft decision of the Committee which was set up to regulate the level of these duties. However, they found it much harder to get agreement than they had anticipated and they have now decided to tackle the products one at a time with nevertheless the same ultimate objective, namely a harmonised Excise taxation throughout the Common Market. They say that this harmonisation is long overdue, that all the different rates of duty distort competition, often severely, and that they hinder the free circulation of goods.
Just before I came into the Chamber this afternoon I was handed some comments on the Commission's proposals from the Scotch Whisky Association. I am sorry to say that I have not had time to imbibe all that they say in their memorandum although it appears to be full of information. But I see that in their conclusions they leave one in no doubt at all that they, at any rate, strongly support the Commission. They say that Scotch whisky faces widespread discrimination within the Community. They also support the Commission's proposals for credit in the payment of duty, which are better terms than they receive in the United Kingdom. But they are also strongly opposed to the Commission's present approach of endeavouring to obtain harmonisation of duties on spirits and fortified wines but leaving aside for the moment beer and wine, for they say that this will tend to enshrine the present inequitable pattern of taxation.
I think it will become a little clearer from what I am going to say later on why the Commission face a very difficult task, whichever approach they take, and they may indeed have to wait for monetary union before they can make any great progress at all. What they are trying to do is, first of all, to get agreement on the structures; that is, on the type of drink and the percentage of alcohol in it to which duty would apply, so that in time that will allow harmonisation of rates of duty. Your Committee decided that, although the Commission had changed their approach, they had not changed their goal, their policy, and that the subject was of sufficient interest and importance to be brought to your Lordships' attention in debate. It is all so intricate that when I came to ponder what I was going to say this afternoon to your Lordships I thought I might be in danger of making a speech that would never end.
Normally a subject like this would have come to the Sub-Committee on finance, but it happened that at the time this draft Directive came out the Agriculture and Consumer Affairs Committee, of which I was then chairman, had just reported on the Commission's proposal for a regime for industrial alcohol; this contained ingenious, but we thought unacceptable, ideas for helping to dispose of some of the wine surplus. It was hoped to be able to assist this by imposing what amounted to a tax on spirits. Just at that moment my noble friend Lord Brown said, "Do you realise that if the Common Market new Excise structures are agreed to, and the rates of duty are set by the Commission and not by our Chancellor of the Exchequer, the wine growers will try to get this Committee to favour wine at the expense of spirits?". It is indeed this fear which your Committee voice in their report. No doubt my noble friend Lord Brown will dilate upon that subject in a moment.
However, your Committee entirely exonerated the Commission from the charge that they embarked upon the harmonisation of Excise structures with any other objective in mind than to abolish fiscal frontiers. This purity of intention is demonstrated by the fact that, when the European Parliament—in a Motion which may strike a chord of sympathy among some of your Lordships—agreed

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that the best way to harmonise Excise duties on wines was to abolish them, the Commission decided to leave wine and mixed beverages alone for the moment, about which they had much disagreement, and to concentrate on the fortified wines where there is, they think, a good chance of getting agreement. Their proposed structure differs from the United Kingdom practice, in that, whereas we charge duty on fortified wines at a flat rate in two arbitrary bands, the Commission prefer treating a fortified wine as if it were a spirit and applying duty to it according to its exact alcohol content. This course seems commendable, if only because it is simple and easily understood. The United Kingdom structure just grew up and though it may be none the worse for having done that, I do not think it is well understood by the general public; the Commission's proposal seemed to us to be better.
If we abandoned our homegrown structure, we would be at the same time, abandoning the proof gallon as a measure of alcoholic strength, for which I, for one, would give much thanks, as I find it most confusing. We would be adopting what is known as the Gay Lussac scale, which sounds a bit romantic perhaps; it simply gives the percentage of alcohol by volume measured at a certain temperature; it is as simple as that. It is straightforward and we should know exactly what we are buying.
I should like to digress for one moment to take this opportunity of urging upon the Government that they should insist that all wine sold has its alcohol content displayed on the bottle, as is done in France. The old argument that people do not buy wine for its alcohol content may hold good for those who can afford the more expensive wines of certified origin, but it does not apply to the "plonk" trade. Certain good firms—including one in which a noble friend of mine who usually sits not far from here has an interest—are giving a lead in this matter. They are not ashamed of showing the strength of their wines, and if they can do it everybody can. If everybody were to do it, it would give the public confidence and protection from being sold watered-down rubbish.
Having digressed for a moment from the report, I turn to the Commission's
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proposals on beer. There are similar to the structure obtaining at the present time in Germany, where they drink more beer per head than we do, and are, I am told, just as discriminating. It has always seemed to me that this system of dutying in four discontinuous bands of strength of the final product is very much better than ours, once again for the reason that the consumer knows much more exactly what he is paying for and what he is getting. There are a lot of technical differences and difficulties to be worked on before agreement is reached throughout the EEC, and that will take a long time; but it seems to me an objective eminently worth pursuing. I hope our brewers will not allow our present tradition to deter them from co-operating.
Turning back to wine, which the Committee made the main subject of its report, I think for several reasons that here also it will be a very long time before agreement is reached on a common Excise structure and duty. For one thing, rates of Excise duty on wine and rates of VAT vary enormously throughout the Common Market. In this country over 50p of duty is charged on a bottle of wine, plus 8 per cent. VAT, and that amounts in total to about the same as is charged in Denmark. I guess that the United Kingdom Government and the Danish Government would be extremely reluctant to see any rates of duty lowered on alcoholic beverages. It is a lot of money that they get from alcohol.
To throw some light on this, I should like to ask my noble and learned friend Lord McCluskey whether he can tell me what percentage of gross tax revenue the duty and VAT on drink represents. The French charge hardly any duty on wine at all but they do charge a 17·6 per cent. VAT rate. Incidentally, Italy charges no tax at all, and Germany levies duty only on sparkling wines, and applies an 11 per cent. rate of VAT on wines as a whole. So one sees that there is this wide variation.
There will be enormous opposition among these countries to changing their excise duties, not only because it would go against their traditions but because the vineyards are large employers of labour and there are big financial interests in them. Any increases in rates in these countries will be seen by them as discrimination against wine producers, in

1909
exactly the same fashion as our spirits manufacturers saw the proposed EEC tax on spirits, which was suggested as a way of helping to reduce the wine surplus, as being discrimination against them.
If the Commission is right, and I believe that to be so, and it is necessary for the operation of a common market to harmonise Excise duties, there is a lot of hard talking to come. I think that the Commission's task will be made much easier if measures are, first of all, taken to reduce the wine surplus to a manageable size. Incidentally, I hope that we shall always manage to maintain a surplus of wine: a shortage would be horrifying. However, only if the surplus is reduced will the Commission be able to avoid the charge that it might manipulate, or might be open to pressure to manipulate, the rates of duty to ease the problem of the wine surpluses.
We tried to make the report informative without being prolix and I hope that readers of it have found that to be so. There are some gaps which, in retrospect, I should like to have filled, but as in the course of time we shall be returning to the subject we shall have the opportunity, I am sure, to revise it and fill it out a little more. Indeed, perhaps during the course of this debate some of your Lordships might indicate in what way that should be done. My Lords, I beg to move.
Moved, That this House takes note of the Report of the European Communities Committee on Excise Duties on Alcohol (COM(72)225) (Fiftieth Report of last session (HL 263)).—(Lord Raglan.)
5.32 p.m.
Lord BROWN: My Lords, I rise in place of the noble Earl, Lord Gowrie, who is unable to speak this evening. I understand that the noble Lord, Lord O'Hagan, will be following me. I hope that if his point of view differs from mine he will be generous to me if I raise one or two questions as he proceeds, but I do not know what his attitude will be.
I speak on these five Directives on the assumption that they will be followed—I do not know when—by other Directives. These Directives merely mean that the Government would have to change duties
1910
on wine, beer or spirits—according to the category in which they fall—by the same amount at any given moment. That merely means that one cannot dice about as between whisky and gin or as between one wine and another. However, there would seem little point to these Directives unless they are followed by other Directives, which are envisaged by the Commission, leaving the actual fixing of the rates of Excise duties on these categories to a committee based on a weighted majority. That seems to open up a very grave danger to this country. Therefore, I am here to try to persuade the Government to put up very stiff opposition to the passing of these Directives.
I have two main objections and I shall deal with the lesser one first, although it in itself is extremely serious; namely, that spirits like whisky and gin will have Excise duty levied on their alcohol content. As regards wines, the Excise duty will be based per gallon, or per continental measure, in three bands. In the case of fortified wines, where the percentage of alcohol is above 22 per cent., they will be taxed per gallon as though they are wines with up to 22 per cent. of alcohol, which almost inevitably means that the alcohol content up to that level will be Excise dutied at a much lower level than the alcohol in spirits. Moreover, alcohol content above 22 per cent. will be dutied at a rate between 20 and 50 per cent. of the rate which would be levied on all the alcohol in whisky, et cetera.
I do not know whether noble Lords have followed that but I have given them the data. It means that a drink like port or vermouth will be able to enter this country in competition with spirits, having paid a very much lower Excise duty if the second group of Directives come into force. As a result, I think that we shall find that those who wish to make merry on drinking wine or spirits will be able to do so very, very much more cheaply on fortified wines than on drinks indigenous to this country like gin and whisky. An entrepreneur's paradise is opening up. We shall see all sorts of special drinks, based on wine, but heavily fortified, coming to this country and underselling the traditional drinks which we produce here. That is an extremely serious measure of discrimination. That is my first argument.

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However, these Directives are much more serious than that. We are all aware that there is a wine lake in Europe. In the course of the next five, six, seven or eight years that lake will be much enlarged if Greece, Portugal and Spain join the Common Market, as I have no doubt they will. Therefore, it seems to me that the efforts to encourage the consumption of wine will be serious and continue for as long as the Common Market exists.
Within these Directives and those which I think will almost certainly follow, lies the ability of the Committee (to which I have referred) by weighted majority—which means that non-wine producing countries will always be outvoted—to keep the Excise duty on wines very low indeed in order to encourage consumption and the potentiality of keeping the Excise duty on spirits such as brandy, gin and whisky very high. Regardless of whether that happens, it is a very grave potentiality. I do not think that this House or the Government should willingly enter a situation with conditions under which alcoholic drinks produced in this country can be put in a gravely prejudiced position for the future. It may not happen, but I suspect that it will happen. I suggest that we should be quite wrong to pass Directives which let that happen in a situation where we would later be able to do nothing at all about it.
I am reminded of the deliberations by the EEC just prior to our joining the Common Market. They hastily rushed through certain provisions about fishing. Although protests were made at the time, we entered the Common Market without having these matters completely clear. Now, and despite the efforts of Mr. Silkin, I think that we are in the dirt. We did not take account of the potentialities. This is a not dissimilar case. I note that the Scottish whisky producers have said that they approve of these draft Directives. I understand why—at present the French Government are discriminating against whisky in favour of brandy. It seems to me that this degree of discrimination is, in any case, probably illegal but certainly outside the spirit of the Common Market and could be dealt with in other ways. However, even if this is the only way in which to deal with it, a consistency of duty in France for whisky and brandy is a very short-term and not a
1912
useful gain to put against the grave dangers of beginning the process of passing European legislation which will put us in a situation where the result will be ever-increasing imports of wine into this country and decreasing exports of whisky and gin from this country into Member States in Europe. It is a terrifying thought to me that, without thinking about it, we should put ourselves in that position. It seems to me that the Scotch Whisky Association is being extremely shortsighted in suggesting that these Directives should be hastened on their way.
There is only one proper basis for harmonising Excise duties on alcoholic drinks, and that is to base all Excise duties on the alcoholic content of those drinks—in bands, if you like. That is the only fair way. Any other way opens up the potentiality of the gravest sort of discrimination. By levying Excise duty on all alcoholic drinks—wine, beer and spirits—on the basis of their alcoholic content we would create a situation where we should be unable—as we are at the moment—to reduce the consumption of whisky by keeping the excise duty very high and at a lower level on wine. We should still be able to create that situation in the future by levying taxes of other kinds—perhaps VAT—on alcoholic drinks at different levels at the retail stage or in public houses. There is nothing to prevent us from doing that. However, it would be at our discretion here and not at the discretion of the Commission. That is the great difference between the two situations.
I am aware that at present the Excise duty on spirits is, per alcohol content, at a much higher level than on wine. We may want to keep it that way. We can do so even if these Directives are not passed. It would be on the basis of levying Excise duty on all alcoholic drinks on the basis of alcoholic content. That seems to me to be the only fair basis on which the Commission should proceed.
5.43 p.m.
Lord O'HAGAN: My Lords, while the noble Lord, Lord Brown, was making his interesting and complicated speech, which I followed as closely as I could, I was not wholly sure whether the kernel of his objection to the Committee to which

1913
he referred was that it was a management committee of the sort normally found in the Community. Am I right in thinking that the noble Lord was objecting to this Committee because it was similar to committees which manage other agricultural products in the Community?
Lord BROWN: My Lords, the noble Lord knows much more about these committees than I. My sole objection was that if this set and the next set of Directives go through, the decisions on Excise duty will be made by a body based on weighted majority, which would mean that we do not have the right to veto its decisions.
Lord O'HAGAN: My Lords, if that is so, I believe that the nature of this Committee is very similar to that of a management committee normally found in the Community's system of coping with agricultural products. I believe that the noble Lord, Lord Brown, has raised a most interesting point about the powers of such committees. I hope that this is something to which we can return; perhaps we could have a debate on it as the main subject of one of our EEC discussions because the role of these committees is most important.
I hope that the whole House will be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Raglan. As a former member of the Sub-Committee of the EEC Scrutiny Committee of your Lordships' House I am particularly grateful to him. I am particularly honest in my thanks for the clarity of his report, which has enabled me to study it and comprehend at least a part of this highly technical problem at some short notice. I think that your Lordships owe a great deal to this Committee. This particular report is an example of what the Committee does at its best. Community proposals coming from the Commission are technical, complicated, and sometimes almost labyrinthine. The reports from the Scrutiny Committee light us through the Community's darkness.
I am sorry that we do not have more contributors to today's debate. I hope that it is not out of consideration to the teetotal vote that the Liberals have abstained from appointing a spokesman, because I believe that this particular set, series or group of Directives, whether they
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have changed or not, as described to us by the noble Lord, Lord Raglan, are a good example of the increasing subtlety with which the EEC attempts to deal with highly technical problems that have a great deal of political content.
I am sure that the Sub-Committee is quite right when it paid tribute to the fair-mindedness of the Commission in attempting its draft on this most intractable problem. The Commission is learning. It is learning to be more responsive and this series of problems concerning the harmonisation of internal taxation for alcoholic liquors is something about which every citizen in the Community has a view and upon which every political Party must take a stance.
Therefore, whether or not there are major flaws and objections to the actual proposals contained in the Commission's document, I hope that your Lordships will share with me a feeling that the way in which the Commission is approaching this problem is an improvement on some of its more remote and didactic efforts which we have debated in the past.
As someone who has taken an interest in the progress of the Community, I hope noble Lords will agree with me that a proposal from Brussels which increases the likelihood of a more liberal and general supply of good alcoholic liquor at a reasonable price is something which we should be grateful to the Community for suggesting. Indeed, it is the sort of Common Market in which I think many people would not find too much to object to. Looking at this proposal from a purely national and British point of view, it is extremely likely that what has been suggested by the Commission would be of considerable advantage to the British spirit trade, particularly the whisky producers, because we in this country now command 60 per cent. of the production of such liquors.
The noble Lord, Lord Brown, had a series of highly technical objections to the proposed system of taxation, although he did not object to the goal towards which these Directives are aimed. It may be that his objections to the system are valid. Nevertheless, a new way of achieving the same objectives may be brought into being and I hope that the noble and learned Lord, Lord McCluskey, will be able to comment on the fears

1915
expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Brown, which appeared to differ somewhat from the fears of those involved in the industry themselves.
Another advantage which those engaged in these activities in this country would derive would be the proposed credit period for payment of Excise tax because there is no such credit under current British legislation. This is not a problem which can be solved quickly. The noble Lord, Lord Raglan, told us that even since the publication of this report the Commission have had further thoughts because there had been setbacks in the tackling of these Directives. But this is a subject to which the Community is bound to return, if only because of the increasing growth in the wine lake in other Member States of the Community. That wine lake is not just an issue which involves a surplus of alcoholic drink—which sounds something of which it should be hard for us to disapprove—it is, of course, a most intractable and complex social problem for all those who are engaged in the growing of the grapes for the wine who, in many cases, have little alternative employment available to them in the areas in which they live.
This is not a problem that will go away. It is something which the Community will have to tackle even if it is not in the form as laid down in these Directives. I hope that the noble and learned Lord, Lord McCluskey, can give us an up-to-date briefing on the exact stage which discussion in the Council of Ministers, or in the working groups in that Council, has reached. What is the current state of play? How near are we to seeing any one, or part of any one, of these Directives being implemented and put into practice?
The noble Lord, Lord Brown, raised one other issue that I thought was of great importance; that was the question of the enlargement of the Community by the membership of Spain, Portugal and Greece. I hope that the difficulties that may come when those countries, all of them or some of them, become full—and I mean full—members of the Community will not act as a deterrent to the solution of the internal harmonisation problems that are now being discussed on the basis of these Directives. Even if those countries do join they may have a prolonged
1916
transitional period, or something equivalent to it, and if we are to wait until all those countries have joined and are all full members of the Community before we attempt to do something about the internal taxation of alcohol within the Community, then we may be waiting for a long time indeed.
Lord BROWN: My Lords, I was not in any way suggesting that it should be dependent. There is a wine lake already of growing proportions—I think the noble Lord will agree.
Lord O'HAGAN: My Lords, I was not disputing with the noble Lord, I was not criticising what he said. I am coming very near to the end of my remarks. Apart from giving us the current state of play on these Directives, could the noble and learned Lord, Lord McCluskey, give us some inkling of the difference between the annual income that the Government derive from tax on wine and the annual income they derive from tax on beer? The difference between the two is probably fairly large, because although the taxation that we levy in this country on wine is in fact the highest in the Community per gallon, very little wine is consumed in this country as compared with the amount of beer consumed. I raise this point because I want to ask the noble and learned Lord whether what I am now going to suggest is wholly beyond the bounds of possibility. I do not want him to say, Yes, I just want him not to say, No.
This Government have suffered a great deal in the EEC because of their refusal to bargain in a gentle and reasonable manner. Therefore, we have had the JET project endlessly and needlessly delayed from coming to this country. Would it not be possible for the Government to consider a concession to other Member States on the lowering of taxation on wine as something which would help deal with the wine lake, be fairly popular in many quarters in this country, and show the sort of constructive give-and-take relationship which is needed in the Community? That is not a formal suggestion I am putting forward. What I merely want to get on the record is that we have a great deal to gain from the sort of proposals suggested in this report,

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and I hope that the Government will not be too inflexible about our present system of taxation when it comes to be negotiated.
As I think the noble Lord, Lord Raglan, suggested, we shall need to return to this topic as events take us on, and as proposals about the harmonisation of internal taxation of the Community on alcoholic drinks change and develop. I hope that we can return in perhaps a year's time or so to look at this subject, and I hope that if I speak on that occasion I shall have more notice than I have had today.
5.57 p.m.
The SOLICITOR-GENERAL for SCOTLAND (Lord McCluskey): My Lords, I rise from a growing paper mountain to meet the points that have been raised in this debate. First may I say what a pleasure it gives me to acknowledge the presence on the Opposition Front Bench of the noble Lord, Lord O'Hagan, and wish him a long—and very long—time in that position. It comes as no surprise to me to find him displaying an instant expertise in this matter, because the last time we crossed swords in this Chamber he was more "bitter" than "mild" on that occasion. Indeed we had a "spirited" debate, and the subject was the taxation of cider. With his knowledge of these matters and the EEC it comes as no surprise to me that he should instantly display a competence which leaves me gasping.
I think that perhaps my noble friend Lord Raglan should have declared an interest, as indeed I now do, as a home brewer in these matters. But as he did not, perhaps I need not go any further into the matter. One point has just been made by the noble Lord, Lord O'Hagan, and that was a mildly critical point about the Government's attitude in EEC matters. I think that must not go wholly uncorrected. As I understand it and as I think many people in this country understand it, the Government's approach in EEC matters is that we must fight as hard for legitimate British interests as other Member States fight for the interests of their countries. If that is sometimes represented by a hostile Press as being all bitter and twisted, then that is the fault of the Press rather than of the Minister who has been mentioned.
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I might mention one small detail. We are sometimes criticised in a different context—indeed there is a debate in another place at the present time—for delaying in the matter of direct elections. In a very related field here, the value-added tax sixth Directive, and the obligation of Community countries to introduce a harmonised system by 1st January 1978, we alone of the Community countries are able to do that. Therefore, we are not always at the back; we are sometimes in the front. It cannot be wrong to press ahead with pursuing our legitimate interests at the stage when these matters are being discussed.
To turn to the subject matter of this debate, the documents which are referred to in the Committee's report are the documents which represent the original proposals of the EEC Commission submitted to the Council in 1972. At that time, of course, there was six Member States, and their attitudes and interests in relation to the whole subject of this debate were perhaps slightly narrower than, and certainly different from, the attitudes and interests of the whole Community as now enlarged. Undoubtedly, the proposals which were then put forward contained a number of points which were of great concern to, and not wholly acceptable by, this country.
We were able to accept, and do accept, in principle, the harmonisation of the structure of Excise duties and the methods of control administration; but, as to the details, of course we had to look at them very critically indeed—and that is precisely what the Select Committee did. But, as your Lordships will see from its date, it was printed on the 26th July—that is to say, the 50th Report—and the very next day the Commission submitted a communication to the Council which led to a quite radical change, and that was the change referred to by my noble friend Lord Raglan.
Perhaps, invited as I was by the noble Lord, Lord O'Hagan, I might spend one minute trying to bring the matter up to date for those who are not familiar with what happened. At the end of July 1977 the Commission sent a communication to the Council. The purpose of that communication was to give a fresh impetus to the Council's examination of the earlier proposals, which had rather dragged since 1972. In essence, the Commission, while

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confirming their earlier stance on matters of principle, rejigged the proposal and altered their priorities. What they in effect did was to say, "Certain problems are not going to be solved swiftly; therefore, let us select those which can be dealt with more swiftly". They urged work to be resumed on the draft Directives and, in particular, the draft Directive, first of all, for harmonising excise duties on alcohol; secondly, the draft Directive for harmonising the structure of excise duties in relation to beer; and, thirdly, the similar Directive in relation to mineral oils—the beer and alcohol to be taken together, followed by the third one on mineral oils. That would then postpone the question of the Directive on wine and the other questions which are discussed in the Select Committee's report.
Something was said, too, about the forthcoming enlargement, or likely enlargement, of the Community. We would hope that it would be possible to solve some of these problems before they become even more complicated by the further enlargement of the Community. Your Lordships will see that what we really have, therefore, is a change in the whole package since July 1977. I would not say that matters have gone back to square one, but it is certainly true that there is a lot of talking yet to be done, as my noble friend Lord Raglan said, and there is still a lot of room for manoeuvre. The views expressed in this House and, indeed, in the Select Committee's report will be most valuable when the United Kingdom delegation has to discuss the details of these proposals at working group level in Brussels. Indeed, that is where the matter now rests, and the next stage is to resume working group discussion in Brussels.
There is a point which has been made which I should like to deal with at this stage because it arises out of that and a point made by my noble friend Lord Brown about unanimity and majorities. In the original documents, which have now been shelved as a result of the new initiative, it was proposed that there should be set up a committee operating by a qualified majority—and that, I think, is what my noble friend had in mind when he talked about the qualified-majority. First of all, that proposal has been shelved; and, secondly, in any
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event it is a proposal for a committee to deal with technical matters only, and, in relation to rates of duty and taxation, unanimity is still required and the proposal in the Directive was not any different from that. So I think my noble friend's fears on that account are, as one sees the present documents and the present proposals, not well founded.
In considering the discussions which have to take place in Brussels, of course, the views of the trades concerned will also be sought, and I think they might well, on balance, see some advantage in making progress in relation to alcohol and beer. I can bring your Lordships further up to date in regard to the attitude of the Scotch Whisky Association because they were good enough to send me today a copy of their representations before the Committee up-dated to take account of developments in and since July 1977. They made, and continue to make, strong representations against breaking up the package, and that is a representation by them which we shall certainly take into account when we go into our discussions. The United Kingdom Government are not committed to the new approach which the Commission proposed to the Council—the approach which is contained in the document R1966/77.
I would say only this in relation to what the Scotch Whisky Association submit to us, that we think—and I think they recognise this themselves—there still will be some advantage in proceeding with the Directive on alcohol, because if their prime competition comes from other spirits, like brandy, if one proceeds with the proposals contained in the draft Directive then there will be an equalisation of competition between whisky, on the one hand, and brandy on the other, throughout the Community, and that can only be a benefit. Secondly, the same Directive contains the proposal—it is now in Article 21—that there should be a deferment of the date when duty has to be paid. It is a deferment which works out at about two months. At the moment, as your Lordships know, when whisky comes out of bond duty falls to be paid at once. Under this proposal, the duty would be postponed for approximately two months.
Lord BROWN: My Lords, would my noble friend permit me to ask him a

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question? Is it not possible to cause the French Government to treat whisky and brandy, so far as Excise duty is concerned, in the same way under other rules of the Common Market, rather than resort to these Directives as a means of correcting that situation?
Lord McCLUSKEY: My Lords, I think my noble friend raises an important point. Under Article 95 of the Treaty there are provisions which might well be invoked, and the method of invoking them would be for one body, one person or one interest to take infraction proceedings against the French. But, of course, not everyone in the Community is entirely guiltless; everyone lives in a glasshouse, to some extent. There are two possible approaches. One is that everyone starts infraction proceedings against everyone else, and the whole thing becomes bogged down, to the delight of lawyers in Luxembourg; the other alternative is to proceed by agreement to draft Directives and try to solve the problem in that way. As at present disposed, the Government would like to proceed by way of Directive rather than a lot of bitter litigation.
May I turn briefly to the matter of the beer Directive? We have a system at the moment whereby the excise duty is calculated in relation to the worts; that is to say, before fermentation. Other countries, in particular Germany, have a different system whereby the duty is exigible at the time you have an end product, a beer. The proposal in the draft Directive on beer is to shift to the German system. That system is one which United Kingdom brewers are tentatively inclined to regard favourably. There is no fiscal reason why we should not move to it, although it involves some complicated calculations in order to ensure that there is no substantial loss of or increase in revenue. It was suggested in a recent report of the NEDO Sector Working Party on brewing that we could move to such a system, but these are matters which have to be discussed further with the trade interests involved before an acceptable arrangement can be concluded.
I was asked particular matters, and I think I should try to reply to them. First, my noble friend Lord Raglan asked me specifically the question as to
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what percentage of the total taxation is represented by the duty and, I think, the value added tax on wine and spirits. It is in fact 3.9 per cent, of the total taxation revenue.
My noble friend Lord Brown spoke of the competition between whisky, on the one hand, and certain wines on the other, I do not know that the Scotch Whisky Association has made much of that particular competition. I think, as I said a moment ago, that the principal competition is between one spirit, whisky, and another spirit like brandy rather than between whisky, on the one hand, and certain wines on the other. But we shall certainly take account of what the noble Lord said when we discuss these matters further with the Scotch Whisky Association.
I think that, in general, the Government approach is that, in view of the change in stance by the Commission, we need to go back to our trade associations and our various interests and re-discuss these matters with them; and we need to try to keep the initiative going at Brussels as soon as may be in order to achieve some advance in bringing these matters to a conclusion. We would also, in principle, endorse what the Commission has said: that one must keep in mind, at least for the medium term, the introduction of the framework directive and the other directives which are the subject of this report. However, I think that tonight I can go no further than to say what I have said.
I can certainly assure the House that the Government and those advising them will be grateful for the points that have been raised and will take them into account. There is one matter that I omitted to reply to. I have now been supplied with the information. It is this. The United Kingdom revenue from tax on spirits that I was asked about is said to be £790 million; from beer, to be £785 million; from wine, to be £234 million and from British wine to be £35 million. British wine is the old name for what is now known as "made wine"— which I spell for your Lordships: m-a-d-e. Made wine is wine produced from an imported must which is then fermented and which may have alcohol added. Unless there is any other point which your Lordships may feel that I have not answered, I do not think I can assist the House further.
6.2 p.m.
Lord RAGLAN: My Lords, I should like to give my congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord O'Hagan. I know very well that he was given only a few minutes' warning to step into this breach. I handed him some papers, but the noble Lord had read the report already and that gave him an advantage, one might say, over somebody who had not read it. I thank him for his remarks about my Committee and I should like to take this opportunity of thanking him for the contribution he made to the committees before he moved on. I congratulate him again on the tour de force which he managed to pull off this afternoon at such short notice.
My noble and learned friend Lord McCluskey is right. I am a home brewer and so I know more about wine than people who are not. I am at the moment in pursuit of a very good recipe for barley wine of which I was given a bottle the other day and which caused my wife to retire to bed rather earlier than she otherwise might have done. My noble and learned friend Lord McCluskey said that the Government are not committed to this idea of splitting up the package and are not taking a stance on it at the moment. Might I suggest that it does not matter very much whether the package is split so long as one only tries to reach agreement on structure and is avoiding the question of rates of duty for the time being. It might be easier for the Commission to take these matters one at a time so that they can concentrate on them, rather than to bring them to the Council, the European Parliament and to Member States in one big dollop.
I omitted to question my noble friend about the revenue raised from beer. I have done some quick arithmetic and I think that the total revenue raised from Excise duty on wines, spirits and beer is about 7 per cent. There is 3·9 per cent. from spirits and wines and a huge quantity from beer. We are dealing with a sensitive area so far as the Chancellor of the Exchequer is concerned; that was the only point that I wanted to make.
My noble friend Lord Brown wanted the Government to put up a stiff opposition to these series of Directives. He alleged that the Excise duty could be weighted heavily against spirits. Indeed,
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we said that in our report. It may be helpful to your Lordships if I say that on page XIII of our report we give the present rates of duty on alcohol obtaining in this country. This shows that the tax per gallon of pure alcohol in respect of spirits is £47 and that on fortified wine (at 22 per cent.) is £20; so that the tax on the alcohol contained in fortified wine is at present less than half that of the tax levied on the alcohol in spirits. That is perhaps the reason why wine mixtures are becoming so popular. If you mix wine with any kind of spirits and import it, there is less duty to be paid than if it were spirits—and you get more "kick". The Government may have to act in that respect. But I think that from what my noble and learned friend Lord McCluskey said about the way in which we hope to reach agreement over the method by which the duties will eventually be levied by the Commission, we shall be able to manage these in such a way that no one beverage will be discriminated against in favour of another.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

CAMBODIAN REFUGEES IN THAILAND
6.20 p.m.
Lord ELTON Lord ELTON rose to ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to assist refugees from Cambodia Kampuchea now held in camps in Thailand; and what is their response to the pressures that have compelled over 142,000 refugees to flee to Thailand from adjacent Communist countries since the spring of 1975. The noble Lord said: My Lords, I returned last month from a journey in South-East Asia in which I visited Thailand and in particular the province of Prachin Buri and a refugee camp in Aranya Prathet. This camp is about 330 kilometres to the east of Bangkok and about four kilometres to the west of the Cambodian border. It is as a result of what I discovered in my travels that I put down the Unstarred Question which is now before the House.
I must confess to your Lordships that, although I have spent the last two days trying to reduce the length of what I have to say, I shall continue for a longer time than I should like at this time of night. Those of your Lordships who may prefer to read my words in Hansard are welcome to do so without giving offence. Much

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of what I have left out is available in the report that I have written on the journey and the rest I will try to abbreviate.
The camp contained a population of 7,000 refugees, although it had been built to house only 4,000. The numbers therefore had doubled since it was constructed, but the sanitary arrangements had not been extended. Moreover, the water supply, which was supposed to make them work, failed almost from the start. I will not describe to your Lordships the conditions that result in a wide area of the camp; I can only say that they are a considerable threat to the health of the camp population.
The failure of the water supply was not only in that district area but also for all purposes. The boreholes had been sunk to a depth which was well below that of the water table, but the table, none the less, was too low for the pumps to lift the water to the tanks. The only source of water therefore in the camp is from hand-dug wells made by the refugees themselves. They have now reached about the maximum depth at which it is safe to use such methods, and they are in any case approaching bedrock. The best informed opinion I could get on the spot was that the supply would last for a further five to five and a half weeks. That was on 15th November. It takes very little arithmetic to show that, unless things are changed, the supply of water will probably run out somewhere about Christmas Day. I inquired from the United Nations High Commission for Refugees whether the situation had changed. I received the reply from Bangkok this morning that it had not, in connection with either the water supply or the sanitation, though confidence was expressed by the Thai authorities that something would be done very soon.
What does this camp look like? Across the countryside, as you approach it, it looks extraordinarily like a concentration camp, but this is a misleading view because the water towers (which are sadly empty) look exactly like watch towers; but it is surrounded by a high ring-fence. The only exit from the ring-fence is through a tall wire gate and that is guarded by an armed militia man whose business it is to keep not only strangers out, but the refugees in. This is a new facet of the policy and I will return to it.
The voluntary organisations within the camp—for whom I have the highest regard and to whom I will refer again—had, with some difficulty, persuaded refugees to start growing vegetables in a largish area. Unfortunately, when the 3,000 extra refugees came in the only place in which they could build their houses from bamboo and straw was on the vegetable fields in which the crops had not yet been harvested. Employment in the camp otherwise for gain is virtually non-existent, though there are handicraft efforts going on which should be warmly encouraged.
The only object of existence in the camp is to survive until eventually—you hope—you are resettled, either in Thailand or in a third country. That hope has for so many been deferred for so long that they are now in danger of sinking into a fatalistic apathy. Thus it was that what I saw was a community deprived of both liberty and purpose, composed of people who had lost not only their homes and all their worldly possessions, but also many of their closest friends and relations, and quartered in conditions in which at any time disease may triumph over medicine. That so many of these unfortunate people have retained their dignity and a good morale speaks worlds of the work of the voluntary organisations and also of their own qualities of endurance. I must speak with great enthusiasm of the work of the voluntary agencies and also of the United Nations High Commission, whose field officer I met there and who pursued his duties, as did the others, with an efficiency, perception and compassion which were all that were required—and, indeed, since these people were all Britons, I think your Lordships have reason to be proud of your fellow countrymen.
Let me now turn to the conditions from which the Cambodian refugees have fled. In speaking on this, I rely not only on the information generally available to all of us, which I have been studying in detail both before and after my visit, but also on interviews I conducted with 25 of the refugees who were Khmer speakers. I spoke to them through an interpreter who was wearing a uniform of the Ministry of the Interior, which is responsible for the camp; but I also spoke to two or three people in English and half a dozen in French, directly, without an interpreter.

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The latter had not been selected but came to me out of interest and of their own free will. What is more, they spoke to me not within earshot of any official or indeed, for the most part of, anybody else.
May I then give a brief account of the country that used to be called Cambodia. On 17th April 1975, after a bloody civil war, Phnom Penh fell to the Khmer Rouge. Their first action was to destroy the old name of the country and replace it with a new one, Kampuchea. This act of destruction and change was symptomatic or symbolic of the whole philosophy that was to guide the rest of their campaign and continues to do so. It had already been outlined by one of Kampuchea's three deputy Prime Ministers, Mr. Ieng Sary. Its aim was the total destruction of every link, whether human or institutional, with the capitalist past of Cambodia and with virtually the whole of the rest of the world. The next step was taken in the zone that had been controlled by the Lom Nol Government until the end of the war. It was to turn the entire urban population, and that of the larger villages, out of their homes and on to the street. Somewhere between 3 million or 4 million people appear to have been involved in mass migration and resettlement. They were formed into labour units and communes and worked in conditions of slavery. This is borne out by the carefully researched writings of Père Francois Ponchaud. He reports that some were harnessed in teams of six or eight to pull the plough like so many cattle. Some of the many refugees whom he interviewed still bore the marks of the yoke to bear out their testimony.
Control of these settlements was given for the most part to three representatives of the Khmer Rouge, and their power was absolute. They alone have the right to perform the marriage ceremony; they have a power of life and death over the hapless people in the settlement. They have the sole right of life and death over the population and, according to the testimony of very many people, execution is the penalty for disobedience. They have for this a chillingly Orwellian phrase. They call it: "Being sent to the Higher Organisation".
The next phase was the deliberate elimination of all who did not fit into
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the system or had any connection whatsoever with the old Administration, and of their families. The lowest estimate I have so far come across is from the same Francois Ponchaud. It is a cautious one. It has been carefully researched and was made right at the beginning of 1976, only 8½ months after the fall of Phnom Penh, since when many more lives have been lost. His estimate was 800,000 and it is very widely regarded as a gross underestimate. The lowest current estimate last month was just over 1 million, and the highest just over 2 million. My own view, for what it is worth, is that the truth lies within those last two figures.
Your Lordships may say—and I would understand it if you did so—that I am being unduly gullible and that my corroborating witnesses, having been rendered destitute, homeless and bereaved by the Khmer Rouge, are hopelessly partisan. So be it. We have another witness: he also is highly partisan, but both his interest and his complicity render his authority unimpeachable. His name is Kheu Samphan, and he is another of the three deputy Prime Ministers of Kampuchea. Some time after the fall of Phnom Penh he gave an interview to a reporter named Stephen Grouess working out of New York. That was subsequently picked up and quoted by William Buckley Junior in the International Herald Tribune on 14th September. In the course of that interview he said to the reporter:
"In five years of war more than a million Cambodians have died. The actual population of the country is five million; before the war it was seven million".
The journalist asked: "What happened to the other million?" That question annoyed Samphan. He said:
"It is incredible, the way in which you Westerners preoccupy yourselves with war criminals".
I scarcely think it is necessary to say more.
That is the terror from which the refugees have fled and from which they continue to flee. It has a great similarity, I would say in passing, to the terror by which the Jacobin Party ruled France in 1792, right down to the concept that all virtue and all authority rest only within that part of the population which belongs to the party and is actively in revolution, and to the concentration of the power

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of that authority in the grasp of a handful of small groups of what they call répresentants en mission, with the power of life and death over the population.
Aranya Prathet, the district in Prachinburi which I visited, borders immediately on Cambodia. The border itself is disputed and skirmishes are frequent; but we are not only looking at skirmishes. On 28th January, an estimated force of 300 troops, armed with automatic weapons, grenades, mines and, some say, rocket launchers, seized and held three villages. When they left, they left 34 civilians dead behind them. I have seen the photographs. One of the victims was a pregnant woman and another was a child of three, who was in fact her child. There have been at least two more large-scale attacks since then. One took place the day before I arrived, and 50 villagers were taken from their fields and fishing nets and shot, according to the reports then current.
I think it is fair to mention, in this very delicate situation, that there does exist an elaborate series of publications undertaken by an organisation called The Committe of Patriotic Kampucheans, operating in Waverley, New South Wales, which has only recently come to my notice. They have applied what would appear to be a very sophisticated critique to discredit the evidence of Father Ponchaud. Also, they have written up an elaborate, lengthy and highly circumstantial account of the whole history of Thai-Cambodian relationships, including frontier disputes. It has all the marks of careful research and at first it commanded my respect; but then I came to the passage relating to the refugees and specifically to the district which I had visited. That was the only passage I could positively check, and I found that in each of three particulars on which I could have given corroboration, either from my own experience or from the figures published by the United Nations (which are not in dispute) it did not coincide with either. On balance, therefore, I am inclined to reject the evidence of these publications. Incidentally, it was because of the violence starting to escalate in January that the 3,000 refugees who are extra to the 4,000 originally in Aranya Prathet were moved into the camp from billets in the surrounding countryside which they had previously occupied. I think that that
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was a prudent move on the part of the Thai Government, which one may not complain about.
May I then look at the arrangements which the Thai Government have made for the refugees in the past and what has now replaced them? They have set up a series of camps for the different nationalities coming over their borders. The arrivals are screened by the military, and supposed trained subversionaries, of whom there have been a number, have been weeded out and are dealt with under arrangements I am not familiar with. The remainder—the vast majority—then go into these camps and the Government receive from the United Nations a subvention of 25 cents per day for each of them, in return for access to the camps and the refugees.
The camp gates were open; certainly, the one I went to had up to that day been open so that 250 children could go, at a nominal bus fare, into a local village to get free education every day. But that stopped on 15th November. From that date, new camps which have been built are designed to receive the majority of the refugees and they will not be open as of now, to the United Nations for inspection. That is still subject to negotiation, and I would ask your Lordships to bear in mind that the Thai Government is a new one, that the situation is a rapidly developing one which is difficult to cope with, that there is no tradition of security of tenure of civil servants in Thailand and that therefore the Civil Service will not act without instructions from the Government. In fact, the Government were being sworn in the day I was there. There may be reasons for this hiatus and I hope it will be overcome; but in the meantime the policy is for all arrivals to go into military camps for screening. The assumption is that they are not refugees but illegal immigrants following an improved economy rather than people fleeing from a vengeance behind them in their home country. Those camps are specifically for refugees, or "illegal immigrants" as they call them, who are to be repatriated as soon as guarantees of safety can be got from their parent Governments. I shall not pursue the likelihood of such a guarantee being honoured. I think some of your Lordships will be familiar with the alleged fate of 26 who were thus repatriated to Cambodia, which I believe

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to have been fatal. Moreover, in the shopping arcade next to my hotel, I happened, before I went to the camp, to pick up a little news sheet which set out in specific detail the regulations under the current immigration Act. These regulations imposed a fine of 10,000 baht, which is something over £2,000, or two years' imprisonment, or both, on anybody either assisting the refugees without informing the authorities or failing to turn them over to the authorities, or failing to inform on anybody else so doing. Therefore it seems that they mean business.
Before your Lordships condemn the Thai Government as inhumane, will you please allow me o put this matter into proper perspective? In our country, because of the media's instinct for a good story and their concentration on the particular, we are very apt to think that the principal refugee emergency in Indo-China is represented by the boat people from Vietnam. That is in fact not the case. I have the United Nations figures for the end of October: the total of the boat people in Thailand at that time was 2,311. The total from Cambodia was 15,106, but the figure which casts a gigantic shadow across the whole statistical table is the 75,633 from Laotia. At the time of my visit, they were still coming at the rate of 2,000 a month. If you add those figures together and put with them the figure of those refugees who have already been resettled in other countries by the United Nations—they amount to about 47,600—you get a total of 142,000 refugees or more. That is the figure which I quoted and that, may I remind your Lordships, does not include the very large number of people who came over immediately before the census started in December 1975. These were the people who fled before the fall of Phnom Penh and the people who got out shortly afterwards. Nor does it include those who came over the borders in a clandestine manner and melted into the countryside—there are, I know, a number of those—nor does it include the uncounted bodies of those boat people who set sail for freedom in frail cockle shells and never made it to the shore.
This is an enormous problem for the Thais to cope with, and they ask themselves whether it is altogether right that three
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years after the emergency officially ended they should still be faced with this problem. Moreover, they say that the Thai-Laotian border is the scene of a traditional tidal migration in pursuit, first, of good harvests and, secondly, of good economies. Thirdly, they say that therefore these people are not looking for safety but rather for some of the free tickets which 10,500 of their compatriots have already got to the United States, where they think that life will be better.
Moreover, the Thais are facing this problem at the end of a season when the rains have partially failed and the rice crop is reduced—and both food and exports depend on rice in Thailand. Moreover, they are in a delicate situation as a result of the change of régime, they are under frequent military assault on at least one of their borders, and, on top of that, a seemingly endless flood of migrants come into their country to depend upon their succour.
If some of your Lordships think that their policy is inhumane, I challenge you to say what our own policy would be, if we ourselves were faced with the same pressures on a proportionate scale. What, indeed, has it been, what is it now, towards those who wish to immigrate into our country for reasons which, if less pressing, are none the less real? Therefore, let us look at what is being done to help them. I have spoken already of the voluntary organisations. I shall select one—because I went to only one camp—the Project Vietnam Orphans. Living on an annual income that would not keep an English working man alive for a couple of months in this country, they have made a very real contribution to camp morale. They have built with local materials an education centre in which there is a classroom, a generator, welding equipment, a forge, a carpentry shop and facilities to paint in oils and watercolours.
This is immensely valuable to camp morale. It gives a sense of purpose and a means of qualifying oneself for resettlement. Every day, they distribute milk to all the 2,000 children under 12 years of age; and, incidentally, they use Common Market surplus dried milk for the process, which we ought to welcome. In the process, they visit every family once every four days and can identify cases of malnutrition and other diseases. They also

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teach two hours a day in foreign languages. Their work is beyond praise. There are other agencies there from other nations, but I must not weary your Lordships much longer.
What is the solution to the problem? At present, the Thais can see only resettlement in third countries as the only practicable alternative. A great deal has been done already and 47,500 have been accepted for resettlement. Incidentally, of those 22,000 or more went to France, 21,000 went to the United States, 1,400 went to Malaysia under an admirable scheme run by Perkim, under the presidency of Tunku Abdul Rahman, 1,300 to Australia, 400 to Germany and 180 to Norway. What the Thai Government will not at present contemplate is a resettlement on any significant scale within their own country, for a number of reasons.
The first is political difficulty locally. The second is a fear that any largely successful scheme will simply increase the flood coming over, and that they will be swamped by it. But I think that if that flood is ever stemmed, it would be reasonable to look at making an offer to them of a feasibility study to open up some of the interior of the country for cultivation, with a road funded through the United Nations. This should not be imposed, but it should be offered.
There are other initiatives which we can take. For a start, we must get the world by the ears and condemn to the international community the atrocities that are being committed in the name of Communism in Kampuchea. The United Nations Human Rights Commission is the proper forum for this and I should like to see our people ensuring that Kampuchea is on the agenda at the next meeting. If any countries try to block this, they will stand condemned before the world by their actions.
Secondly, the whole problem posed by the refugees may be so huge as to be insoluble, but let us proceed one step at a time. We can do something. Just now I read out a list of the number of refugees accepted by some third countries. Your Lordships will notice that Norway, with a population a fraction of our own, has taken 180. Our own score so far is 94. The total allocation agreed by Her Majesty's Government in a letter dated
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22nd January is only 116. We should do no harm to ourselves, and an incalculable kindness to the individuals concerned, if we were to increase it. Could we not perhaps even double it? So small an extra number would not rock the boat. And speaking of boats, the boat people in Thailand number only about 2,500 and a modest contribution such as this would actually have a visible effect on that problem and might be imitated. We should be in a stronger position to suggest an expansion programme to others, if we were expanding our own.
Thirdly we should press the United Nations for an increased budget allocation to UNHCR. I am very glad to see that we have, in fact, increased our subvention by, I think, £55,000 this year which is to be welcomed. Fourthly, we should recognise the outstanding work done by the voluntary agencies and the fact that they, being non-bureaucratic and non-statutory, are not tied by bureaucratic procedures and can respond very swiftly, and in a flexible and imaginative manner, to emergencies which need to be quickly met. I think that we ought to capitalise on this characteristic, and I suggest that the Government might look into the possibility of giving grants in aid to specific approved schemes. Again, the approval would have to be given very quickly, and you would need a body comprising not only representatives from all the voluntary agencies concerned, but also from Government. As it happens, such a body already exists in the Standing Conference of British Voluntary agencies for aid to Refugees—now to be known as the Standing Conference on Refugees—and I think that it should be investigated as a means of injecting some specific Government help.
Before I mention the fifth initiative that I have in mind, may I ask your Lordships to consider for a moment the wider implications of all this? If you stand back from the map, you will see that what we are witnessing is a little fringe of human debris, being pushed forward by the endless advance of a Red revolutionary tide flowing westwards and southwards through Indo-China. The next country, the dam at which this tide is now lapping, is the border of Thailand. Thailand is a founder member, and a large one, of the ASEAN

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group of countries which include Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines. That has a market of 230 million people and the estimated increase of GDP per head per annum is 4½ per cent. It is a challenging and a staggering opportunity for our own industry and exports. It is very much in our interests to increase the economic base of that community, as well as the justice with which the wealth within it is distributed.
This organisation, the Association of South-East Asian Nations, is set up as the mirror image—slower to develop and later established—of the European Economic Community. We joined the European Economic Community in order to be able to make a visible, a real and an effective impact on the politics and economics of the world. Is this not exactly what the EEC was built for? Is this not exactly why we joined it? Can we therefore not have a closer liaison between the two communities, an identification of interests, which will be enormously for the benefit of both?
We also have an overseas development Ministry. I think that we want to beware of trying to catapult a principally rural, mainly traditionalist community, such as exists in Thailand, into a modern industrial society. Neither their social organisation nor their philosophy are suited to this. But they live by producing rice. It is possible enormously to increase both their productivity and the numbers employed in the effort. They also have a thriving industry for handicrafts and for making small, light industrial products. I commend to your Lordships' notice the work of various organisations which are already facilitating the distribution of these products; in particular, Aid to the Artisans, incorporated in America, which acts in association with museums and Trade Crafts, a publication which tells one all about outlets in European countries.
I think that those five initiatives, in conjunction with the feasibility study of a road, are not a great breakthrough. They are not an enormous stride forward in charitable terms. I think that they are the least that we can, either out of naked self-interest or for mere shame, undertake ourselves. That is why I have asked this Question, and that is why I shall listen with the closest attention to the Minister's reply.
6.50 p.m.
Lord GLADWYN: My Lords, last Saturday was Human Rights Day and was duly celebrated by the Secretary-General of the United Nations and the President of the General Assembly. Mr. Waldheim observed:
"The protection and promotion of human rights is now among our most urgent priorities. All Governments must rededicate themselves to this purpose".
M. Lazar Mojsov, the President of the Assembly, echoing these admirable sentiments, went so far as to claim that there had been "significant progress" in the 29 years which had elapsed since the Universal Declaration was adopted, but he noted that unfortunately we were faced with what he said were "mass and flagrant violations" of human rights, notably in respect of apartheid and
"in certain strongholds of colonisation, oppression and foreign domination",
all of which, in his view, should be eliminated. Nobody seems to have referred to the sad fact that in addition to South Africa, basic human rights are now, in varying degrees, repudiated by no fewer than three-quarters of the 150 members of the United Nations, or that the behaviour of some of them, notably Cambodia and Uganda, with Vietnam and Laos apparently not far behind, is barbarous beyond belief.
To say, in such circumstances, that progress is being made is really rather insufferable. Presumably M. Mojsov holds that the achievement since 1948 of independence by some 80 States validates his contention. But however desirable such independence may have been—and I certainly do not deny that it was—the undeniable fact is that, by and large, human rights were much better maintained by Colonial Governors than by present-day Presidents. As things are, indeed, professions of faith in human rights by many such rulers and their representatives in New York is nothing less than a rather grisly charade.
The question is, what, if anything, we can do about it? I am afraid that the answer is, not much. Reliance on any action by the United Nations is obviously hopeless. The majority there will continue to suppress any attempt to protest against the denial of human rights in those countries, other than some which

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have violently Right-Wing Governments, where they are being most flagrantly violated and will continue to make use of the crusade against South Africa as a means of diverting attention from even greater scandals. Nor is it much good our lecturing foreign Governments like a governess when we lack any ability to rap them over the knuckles if they misbehave. Only the Americans could do that if they wanted to, which is perhaps doubtful for reasons which are evident enough.
We can, indeed, try to set an example by our own behaviour. When and if we may have occasionally, and to a very limited extent, in the face of a state of rebellion, to suspend certain human rights, we can make some allowances for other otherwise well-meaning and democratic Governments which may be in a similar plight. If, for instance, the West German Government have to introduce, as they may, special measures to cope with the Baader-Meinhof murderers, we ought to recognise the necessity of such a step. It is, in any case, against this deplorable background that I approach the situation recently investigated by the noble Lord, Lord Elton, to whom all our thanks are due for bringing it up for debate today and for his splendid efforts on behalf of the flood of wretched refugees.
It is clear that what is happening in Cambodia is not only a major outrage in itself but, if we may believe the noble Lord, Lord Elton, potentially a danger to the maintenance of international peace and security. How should we react, therefore, to this particular scandal? Well, despite what I have just said, I believe that the behaviour of the Red Khmers is so exceptionally frightful that we should not hesitate to condemn it publicly, whether in the United Nations or elsewhere. Here I agree entirely with the noble Lord, Lord Elton. Perhaps it will not do much good, but at least we can try to mobilise such international indignation as we can.
The practical steps that we can take were outlined by the noble Lord, Lord Elton, in his admirable speech, and from my limited knowledge I agree with all of them. That is the only thing that we can do in a practical way. We must also recognise the very difficult situation in which the Government of Thailand find themselves. We may have to make some excuses for
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them if they do not act always in accordance with what we think is absolutely desirable.
Also I think that we must do our best to back up with money and by other means the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the various voluntary agencies operating in this field, some of which were referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Elton.
We must also, somehow or another, try to encourage—back up, if you like—the Thai Government, perhaps from an economic point of view. It may do good. The more secure they feel they are, the less they will react in an unfortunate way and the better it will be for us all. I cannot imagine anything that might be more in the collective interest of the European Economic Community than some kind of support for Thailand and a common policy of aid to refugees, as recommended by the noble Lord, Lord Elton. I hope that the Government spokesman who is to wind up will accept that point and try to persuade the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs to raise this matter without delay in the Council of Ministers of the European Economic Community.
Surely the great political objective is, by one means or another, to see to it that the calamity which has overwhelmed Cambodia does not now overwhelm the neighbouring country of Siam, thus justifying those who, from John Foster Dulles onwards, favoured the so-called "domino" theory, whereby Communism had every prospect of engulfing the whole of South-East Asia if, for any reason, the Americans had to abandon the struggle in Vietnam.
In the few remaining minutes of my speech may I, in this general connection, subject your Lordships to just a few reflections on the apparently increasing tendency of the human race, in default of great wars, to tear itself to bits behind the scenes—homo homini lupus, man is the wolf of man. Why has this happened? Some people say it is the result of population pressure and of food supplies not keeping up with the surge of population. I do not believe that to be so. The effect of population pressure may result in an enormous number of people just dying in starvation areas. I do not believe, for instance, that there was any shortage

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of rice in Cambodia when the Red Khmer came into power. It was not therefore a question of food supplies.
No, my Lords, it is much more likely that the appalling massacres of recent years, such as Hitler's extermination of the Jews, Stalin's purge of the Kulaks and now the apparent liquidation of one-fifth of the entire population of Cambodia are, as often as not, the result of some obsessive and fallacious ideology. There was, after all, no objective need for any of these fearful happenings. The first was attributable to a mad philosophy of race, not dissimilar in essence from that which may ultimately result in some kind of disaster in South Africa. The last two were an effort, in effect, to apply to a local situation certain crude and undigested doctrines of Lenin; namely, to put it very briefly, that society can be reformed and progress made towards an ideal future only if, in response to a kind of historical necessity, a group of intellectuals, allegedly representing the proletariat, violently overthrows an existing régime and maintains itself in power by ruthlessly suppressing any section of the population which may stand in its way—the end, of course, invariably justifying the means.
I have heard it suggested, I believe in the Press, that the leaders of the Khmer Rouge—a few peasants who had managed to get some education in Paris where apparently they had absorbed some popular Leftish doctrines—were persuaded that only by totally eliminating what they conceived to be the "bourgeoisie" could any progress be made. So when the régime collapsed and the opportunity arose as a result of the civil war and the disappearance of American aid, they did just that. To have exhibited any humanity in the process would, to their closed and rather infantile minds, have been an unpardonable concession to the woolly liberal thinking. Therefore they had—as I believe one of them confessed to a foreign sympathiser—to "clean up the towns" in their phrase; in other words to murder up to about 1½ million of their own compatriots. It only shows what a little learning at the feet of some Left-Wing professor can in practice achieve.
The moral is that people should somehow be warned that extreme and violent
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philosophies, whether of the Left or of the Right, are equally poisonous and equally self-destructive. It is no good thinking that we ourselves are totally immune from the virus in this country. Violence is increasing here at much the same rate, I fear, as disillusionment with politics and contempt for politicians. It will need real leadership, and perhaps some new political and industrial philosophy, if we, too, are not to fall victims to a new nihilism, embodying a rejection of all the values enshrined in the great Declaration that we celebrated last Saturday. No man, my Lords, is an island. Unless we get closer to our democratic neighbours in order to forestall it, and unless we can induce our young people to see the real calamity inherent in certain philosophies, we may ourselves in the long run be in for grave trouble. In short, my Lords, the end can never justify the means.
7.2 p.m.
Baroness VICKERS: My Lords, I should like sincerely to thank the noble Lord, Lord Elton, for his interesting report and also his initiative in studying this tragic situation. I shall be interested to learn from the noble Lord, Lord Goronwy-Roberts, what action the Government have taken or are contemplating taking in regard to refugees in Thailand. I want particularly to discuss the latter part of the Question with a view to making some suggestions. As the noble Lord said, everyone will be grateful to Malaysia for the action they have taken, and also I think to Indonesia and to Thailand. In particular, the noble Lord mentioned Tunku Abdul Rahman, who is known for his compassion. He actually adopted two Malay leper boys some time ago in order to try to encourage others to do likewise. Perhaps we might ask whether some of the 4,247 refugees now awaiting resettlement could go either to Sabah or Sarawak, which are not Muslim dominated and are not very highly populated.
I am grateful also to the representative, Mr. Jean Heidler of the UNHCR in London, and in particular for the information he gave me regarding those trying to escape in small boats. I am also grateful for the action taken by Amnesty International and would like to congratulate them on winning the Nobel Peace Prize. It was sad to read in The Times on Saturday

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that the information on political prisoners in Cambodia—
"perhaps the worst offender of human rights in the world"—
is practically unobtainable. The noble Lord has certainly helped with that tonight.
In the information I have received there has so far been no mention of the International Red Cross, which has done spendid work in many countries; and I should like to relate my experience in Indonesia in 1945–46 when they were there for nine months or more and really helped the situation. When the Japanese conquered the Dutch East Indies, as Indonesia was then called, they interned thousands of people. For example, in Batavia, now called Djakarta, there were four camps, in one of which there were 10,000 women and children. All in the camps naturally wished to be returned either to their country or to the various islands where they lived. But Lord Louis Mountbatten (as he then was) asked them to remain where they were and said that we would arrange special ways of getting them out of the country or getting them resettled. The problem was that, as your Lordships know, the Indonesian revolution had started and they were being killed. Of course, a great many persons were scattered in Java and the other islands and it was difficult to get at them, so the process took a long time. When the Indonesians declared their independence, many Dutch were in camps and had to remain there; and others of mixed races were interned by the Indonesians because they were considered to be pro-Dutch.
With some Swiss representatives of the International Red Cross and the Indonesian Red Cross I went to Central Java to meet President Sukarno who was still resident there and he agreed that those in camps should be visited and asked to sign a paper saying that they would be faithful to the State. They would then be given protection and would later be freed. Those who wanted to leave the country would be taken out and would be rehabilitated in the country they wished to go to. I know from one visit alone that 75,000 came out and arrangements were made for the others. It was done by collecting these people in certain places; those in camps were easy, but with those who were still at large it was not so
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easy. However, information was given to them that if they went to a certain point and remained there they would be taken away to safety by—in this case—the RAF flying aircraft into the interior. They were then flown to the ports; some were flown straight to Singapore and some were taken by ship to Holland or Australia.
I must here pay a tribute to both the RAF and the Royal Navy for the work they did. I admit that there were delays in the action and it took about 14 months to finish the job, and for myself I had to try to persuade all those of mixed blood to stay as I felt they would be unhappy in non-tropical countries. One knows what has happened, for example, in regard to the Amboinesians in Holland and the trouble they have experienced there. The Indonesian Government kept their word and, so far as I know, the then internees who remained in Indonesia settled down well. I have been back several times, once at the kind invitation of the Government, and I have never received any complaints.
I should like to suggest that the International Red Cross or any other organisation which is acceptable should be allowed to interview those who feel they cannot remain and, instead of having to go off in small boats and in other undesirable ways, they should be taken by arrangement to an agreed staging place from whence they could be officially transported. I hope that suggestion will be considered.
It would be advantageous to the countries concerned to get rid of the dissidents: it would give those refugees concerned a chance to get settled officially in a country desirous of having them. I understand that 27 countries have been approached and I only hope that when people are moved out of their country the family unit is not too broken up. It is far better to keep them together, if possible.
I believe my suggestions are in line with the scheme proposed for consideration by Governments; today I wanted to show that, given goodwill by Cambodia and others concerned, and patience by those waiting to leave, especially if they are willing to go into a temporary camp until they can be transported (as was done in Indonesia) it would be advantageous to all concerned. Without meaning to criticise in any way the work of the 22 relief

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organisations, it seems to be rather a lot of organisations; I do not know what co-operation they have, but perhaps the noble Lord will be able to tell us. I think it is advantageous to have one direct plan. Perhaps Indonesia might be asked to have a temporary camp in Sumatra with food and services provided by the United Nations and the refugees should be confined to the camp, because they spread about if they are not looked after. They could wait there until a country willing to take them can be found. This has worked very well up to date in other refugee organisations.
The Thai embassy produced an excellent document called Turn Not Your Eyes Away and I should like to give all possible praise to the Thai Government for doing a first-class job particularly, as the noble Lord has said, in the field of rehabilitation. There is difficulty in regard to illegal entrants and those not loyal to Thailand. Therefore, it will be better, if they genuinely wish to leave their country of origin, that they should be resettled in countries where they can have no further contact with Thailand. I gather that the difficulty is that quite a number of them go back over the border and return to their country probably as spies. On 12th November 1977 the Economist said,
"The buck stops everywhere."
We now have this excellent debate, in which we can see that the buck does not stop here. I think that the time has come for an effort to be made to help the Thai people, and to realise also that Laotian mountain tribesmen and others cannot be expected to settle down in alien West Sussex.
I understand that from 15th November onwards Thailand's attitude to the Indo-Chinese refugees, under a new agreement concluded with the United Nations Organisation, is to be that stricter measures will be taken against those who enter Thailand illegally. It is very difficult for the Thai Government to decide who has entered in this manner if they just slip over the border. These are the people who need special interrogation, to see whether they are truly illegal entrants or whether they have simply entered as so many do in Berlin over the Berlin Wall. Those who came into Thailand prior to 15th November 1977, will come under the
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financial support of the United Nations Organisation. The Minister in Thailand said that Thailand had done its best to get third countries to assist Thailand to repatriate some refugees to their country. He pointed out that Thailand had tried to get the displaced persons out of Thailand, and to discourage them from coming to Thailand either by land or sea. However, for humanitarian purposes, they had been provided with food and temporary shelter before being sent out of the country. What more can a country like Thailand do?
I gather there has been sufficient money for settlement. There is an amount of 14,350,000 dollars at the moment, which will include help for education, resettlement and self-reliance projects. I should like to suggest that some arrangement might be made on similar lines to what was done in Indonesia. I think this is fairly practical. It was not easy in Indonesia. When I was going in, the General in charge of British troops said to me. "If you disappear we are not going to send any troops to find you". The International Red Cross were far more practical. They made me sign a document saying that if I disappeared my family would not claim compensation. It was the first time I knew I was worth something.
I hope that we may be able to get something done on these lines. I am quite certain that, if the International Red Cross or other people were to approach them—after all, we have radio and so on to put it over to people in these countries, which was not possible in 1945 in Indonesia—they could get the refugees organised into groups and get them to come out, for the benefit of both the refugees and the country concerned.
7.14 p.m.
Lord TANLAW: My Lords, I think it is very fitting that so soon after Human Rights Day on Saturday we should be focusing our minds on a mammoth human rights situation such as described by the noble Lord, Lord Elton, this evening. Some noble Lords may have been aware that Amnesty International had a carol service in Trafalgar Square on Saturday. In that congregation there were many young people, there were churchmen, committed Christians, those, like myself, who have relatives detained

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trial-less in some far distant land. All of us listened and were comforted by some of the words the noble Lord, Lord Soper, spoke. He spoke with great simplicity and sincerity about the problems of human rights in countries far away from these shores.
Whereas it is possible to focus the mind or direct one's concern to one individual or even a few individuals about whom one has knowledge, it is virtually impossible to feel, understand or comprehend the situation of the numbers of human beings in the kind of distress which the noble Lord, Lord Elton, has described to us today, and this is only in one part of the world. My noble friend Lord Gladwyn expressed some of the helplessness that I certainly feel, and I know it has been felt by other noble Lords who have spoken—What can we do?
The noble Lord, Lord Elton, has set out in his report, and indeed in his speech this evening, possibly the most practical and sensible things that can be done at this time, and I wish to give him all our support from these Benches. He made mention of the voluntary agencies and one should underline the work which they are doing. We should give them more financial assistance where it is possible, and more recognition of the work done by this small and dedicated band of individuals in very difficult circumstances. The noble Baroness mentioned one agency which is operated by Tunku Abdul Rahman in Kelantan. The work he is doing deserves recognition. I think it is perhaps unfortunate that official circles in other parts of the peninsula cannot share with the Tunku his concern for human rights and the constitutional principles on which he founded the State of Malaysia.
On the wider issues which were touched on by my noble friend Lord Gladwyn, and which the noble Lord, Lord Elton, expressed with the general phrase "the domino theory", I only have two points to mention in the context of this debate. To follow on from what my noble friend Lord Gladwyn said, it has perhaps been overlooked that in Cambodia the revolution was an agrarian one, but there was a feature in it which I think I have never read or heard about before, which was the division between those Cambodians who lived in the country and those who lived
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in towns or in large villages. This revolution, in my view, could not have succeeded on ideological principles alone. I have a suspicion—I can only have that, as I am not familiar in depth with this part of the world—that if in areas with large rural populations the economy, that is, the village unit, breaks down to an extent which offers no future for the younger sons, these people look towards the larger villages or towards the towns; they see that some of the prosperity remains there and does not come out to the villages. This point has been mentioned time and again in the context of aid-giving agencies and support for South-East Asia or the developing countries.
I believe that this revolution, which was both mindless and bloody, could be repeated in Thailand, in Malaysia, or in Indonesia, or indeed in any country with a large agrarian population whose economy has gone wrong, or which has been repressed to the extent that they are desperate. It has already been mentioned this evening that Thailand may be an area that is vulnerable to this kind of revolution. Let us hope not.
There is another factor at work here, which is the hereditary system in which land is carried down from one generation to another. At each death of the landholder the land he possesses is distributed among his sons. After each generation the divisions get smaller and smaller. It is my feeling that in areas like Thailand, possibly in Indonesia, these parcels of land have been reduced to a very small acreage indeed. They are nearing, or have already passed, what is subsistence level. When this present generation dies and these lands are subdivided yet again, I have a suspicion, a suspicion only, that the seeds of another agrarian revolution may have already been sown.
As regards land tenure and the future of land tenure, the villages and rural areas of not only Cambodia—it is already too late there, as we have heard—but Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia will perhaps be the biggest centres of explosion in South-East Asia within a very short time. Again I have a sense of helplessness as regards what can be done. I know that there are problems of land tenure in certain parts of Sarawak, and, I think, Sabah. I do not know because I have no direct knowledge of Indonesia, but the pressures of

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population, plus the factors which I have already described, will again add to the possibility of eruption of people who do not see a future at all.
We have heard from the noble Lord, Lord Elton, what can happen and, indeed, has happened, to a country where the rural economy has broken down. It could happen again and again in South-East Asia unless the aid, the prosperity and, indeed, the bourgeois outlook to which reference has been made, manages to permeate and succeeds in permeating the rural areas which we have discussed.
7.22 p.m.
Lord GRIDLEY: My Lords, in following the noble Lord, Lord Tanlaw, I hope that he will forgive me if I do not make any specific comment on what he has just said. I found it extremely difficult to follow his arguments and, having been a civil servant in Malaya for 30 years, I cannot conceive that there can be any reason why there should be any trouble over land tenure or agrarian reform or how they have any bearing on the present situation in Cambodia.
I am sure that on whatever side of the House your Lordships may sit, we are all grateful to my noble friend Lord Elton for not only his speech but the information he has obtained first hand by his visit to a disturbed area in South-East Asia. First of all, I want to deal with what I consider to be the terrible situation arising in Cambodia. For, if that situation did not exist, quite obviously the grave difficulties which face Thailand in the settlement of its refugees would not then be the matter under consideration tonight. Basically, I want to get back to the origin of the trouble and comment on Cambodia.
When the noble Lord, Lord Elton, states, as he has done, that out of a population of 7 million inside Cambodia a conservative estimate gives the liquidation, under the present régime, of 1·5 million to two million inhabitants in a space of three years, I begin to wonder whether the world will ever come to understand the sanctity of human life, man's spirit and that conduct of affairs which should govern the attitude of men in their dealings with one another. So, in reading the noble Lord's report on his visit, my mind was cast back to a trial which opened in
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Singapore on Monday, 18th March 1946, which was to bring to justice certain individuals who had perpetrated crimes on all fours with those crimes which today have been, and are still being, perpetrated by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. That trial in 1946 was, in essence, to establish a code of conduct to be followed in the future by which men would respect the sanctity of life after a war and even in peace. However, that seems to have been forgotten in the present instance of Cambodia.
That trial in 1946 was before a military court. The object was to bring to justice certain individuals who had no respect for civilised law, life or a compassion for mercy. It was a trial to establish the guilt or innocence of men charged with causing the death, by torture, of 15 of my compatriots who were taken out of Changi Gaol into Singapore for interrogation, during which they were tortured. Who was the president of that court? The president of the court hearing that case was none other than Lieutenant Colonel S. C. Silkin, who today occupies the position in Her Majesty's Government of Attorney-General.
Mr. Silkin acquitted a number of the accused but some were sentenced to imprisonment. However, eight were sentenced to death. In passing the death sentence Mr. Silkin had various things to say to Colonel Sumida Haruzo at that time head of the Japanese Kempetai— Gestapo. This is relevant in considering the situation which now exists in Cambodia. I quote only a part of his speech. He said:
"If, as I believe, Colonel Sumida, some of your victims made their sacrifice in the hope and belief that what they stood for would not die, let this be their epitaph, that they died for an undying cause".
He went on:
"To those of us who survive falls the supreme task of establishing and maintaining that higher morality between nations and of supplanting the rule of force and fear by the rule of law".
My Lords, I repeat:
"supplanting the rule of force and fear by the rule of law".
In view of the atrocities perpetrated by the Khmer Rouge within Cambodia at present the civilised world cannot remain silent. I support my noble friend and all other noble Lords who have spoken, in

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the hope that a statement of condemnation will be issued by Her Majesty's Government against the nefarious régime within Cambodia and the opinion of the civilised world will be mobilised against it. To remain silent would be a betrayal. It would be contrary to our principles to remain silent and, as has been suggested by other noble Lords, I think that some condemnation should emanate from the United Nations.
Before I leave this point the noble Lord, Lord Elton, in his excellent report and in referring particularly to the situation on the Thai-Cambodian border, said:
"Escape routes from Cambodia when discovered are marked by the heads of those who have attempted to use them, set up on stakes such as used to adorn London Bridge in the Middle Ages".
I can quote something earlier than the Middle Ages, and the barbarity that seems endemic among certain races, because I was taken out of gaol in 1942, which was not the Middle Ages, and shown heads stuck on poles in a similar manner to which the noble Lord has drawn attention. It was stated by the Japanese who spoke to me that they were the heads of those who had listened in to allied broadcasts and who, in consequence, had been executed. So customs which seem to be endemic in certain parts of the world die hard. I have made those comments to reinforce what I consider to be the accuracy of the noble Lord's report.
I notice that my noble friend Lord Elton appeared to be anxious that we should be sympathetic towards Thailand. For many years I served in the North of Malaya on the Thai-Malayan border. I would say that on the whole the Thais are a very lovable race and are a race who want to remain at peace. That is their problem. I can understand that they are deeply worried by what is going on in their country at present. For many years the peace which they enjoyed in Thailand was brought about by the strong metropolitan Powers of Great Britain administering Malaya, and France, which was then in what is commonly known as Cambodia, or French Indo-China. So the Thais were able to manage and govern their own affairs protected by two strong Powers, and I think that it was the only country in that part of the world at that time which for very many
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years—in fact all of the time—ran its own Government.
Suggestions have been made tonight about what we should do and how we should help the Thais in Thailand. Let us treat them with respect, sympathy and tact and do all we can to help them. In the last war I happen to know that their intelligence services were of great use to us in our war against the Japanese.
I am not surprised that the Thais are deeply worried by the refugees crossing their borders from Cambodia and even from Laos. There is always the danger of subversive infiltration in that part of the world, particularly because of the very thick jungle which exists, and it is comparatively easy to infiltrate. It must be worrying to the Thais when this emanates from people who might be acting on behalf of the Khmer Rouge. If I understood my noble friend Lord Elton correctly, he was unable to discover with any certainty whether all of those people had nefarious activities and emanated from the barbarious régime, although quite obviously some would be escaping from the tyranny to which they had been subjected.
As I think the noble Lord, Lord Tanlaw, pointed out, all this is dangerous to the existence of what has now become known as the "domino" theory. The existence of these problems in Thailand ought to be of great concern to the Governments of Malaysia, Singapore and even Australia, whose interests are paramount in the area and which dominate that particular part of the world. However, it does not mean that what is happening in that area of South-East Asia is not of tremendous consequence and fraught with dangers to all of us in the civilised world.
My noble friend Lord Elton made various suggestions for the resettlement of refugees in Thailand with assistance to the Thai Government, but he found that the official policy of the Thais was to repatriate all refugees who could not be settled in third countries to the homelands from which they came, albeit to exercise that decision humanely. I can understand that view and would merely observe on that point that in view of the Japanese attack in 1941—when Siam was invaded for the attack on Malaya and the Thais were forced to become an ally of Japan whether they liked it or not—in retrospect

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the Thais have every reason to be worried about any refugee who may settle in their area today. That probably explains their present lack of enthusiasm towards the suggestion of a resettlement of refugees in the area. I would think that in any discussions we have with them, or which other Governments may have with them, it would be very difficult to change their views on this. But certainly, as my noble friend has suggested, the position should be explored.
As regards resettlement in Malaysia of any large number of these refugees—and I do not understand some of the things I read in the Press about Malaya being rather touchy about certain things at present—a great deal of tact would be necessary in our approach to that Government. They still have Communist infiltration on their Northern borders which, although contained, is nevertheless a running sore, and I am doubtful whether the Malaysian Government would easily accede to any large-scale resettlement of refugees. Nevertheless, I feel that an approach in a friendly manner should be made to them.
Other noble Lords have spoken about the activities of Tunku Abdul Rahman and, therefore, I shall not repeat what has been said. However, there are most serious and dangerous problems in this area which cry out for a solution at this particular moment in time. The longer it is before we face them, the more dangerous they become and the longer they remain unsolved. For myself and from my experience in the areas in which these dangers exist, I have made my own comments in this debate on the problems as I see them, but I have not covered all the important issues, for time does not permit. Obviously, there is a need to improve the condition of the existing refugee camps in Thailand and to render assistance to the Thais in securing this. It is obviously desirable that the refugees should be allowed some gainful employment from these camps in husbandry or the planting of vegetables, because for a refugee to have time on his hands must be thoroughly demoralising. With respect to Her Majesty's Government, I would suggest that all these matters need their urgent consideration and the consideration also of the other Governments in South-East Asia who are affected.
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Under the colonial system the peace that many enjoyed, the prosperity, the standard of living and the friendships that grew up between ourselves and the indigenous populations, not only in the countries in which we had a direct responsibility but in many of the other adjacent countries, received a blow in 1941 by the Japanese attack. But the principles for which we stood remain and we are remembered for them. Above all, the goodwill towards us is still there. Therefore, in any of our dealings in these great difficulties that goodwill remains and our influence is still very great.
In conclusion, I would merely remind the House once again of the words of Mr. Silkin, our present Attorney-General, to which I referred at the outset of my remarks when I spoke of that higher morality between nations in supplanting the rule of force and fear by the rule of law. I ask the Government to give an undertaking to consider carefully the points raised in this debate and those made by my noble friend Lord Elton, and then initiate action which cannot wait. Although war is not imminent in that part of the world, we have there all the ingredients which could lead to war. I hope that in these circumstances we do our very best to remove the dangers which exist. This has been a serious debate and we may have to have another debate on the issues which have been raised.
7.38 p.m.
Lord GORE-BOOTH: My Lords, I am sure that all Members of your Lordships' House who heard the noble Lord, Lord Elton, opening this debate must have been greatly moved—indeed, rather shattered—by his first-hand account of what he saw in Thailand. If one has had some experience of voluntary work in less developed parts of the world, one sees something of the symptoms which he so vividly described, but the particular case of these enormous numbers of people coming over the frontier and having somehow to be housed by a country which is not rich in resources, or in what I might call intense administration, must be somewhat overwhelming.
I had not intended to speak quite so politically as most of your Lordships, but none the less I feel that the debate gives the opportunity of saying one thing

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which I know the noble Lord, Lord Elton, feels, and has written elsewhere, about the views we hold on Cambodia. Most of your Lordships must get very tired of being told how iniquitous the Salvadorians, the Argentinians, and the Chileans are, and so are certain things which they do; but it is time that, even if they are not here to hear the debate, they should read what has been said about Cambodia. There you now have, at the end of the day, a highly repressive Government living with at least one million shadow graves and having adopted that odious system invented in East Germany by which, if you try to get out of the country and the Government do not want you, they shoot you. This is what it is like, and it is time the whole world appreciated the nature of that place.
In this I do not wholly differ from the noble Lord, Lord Tanlaw, because some of the developing countries have indeed retained what one might call provocative land ownership systems far too late in the day. On the other hand, this is not wholly true in South-East Asia where some countries, notably Burma, have, in a curious way, dealt with these matters peacefully over the years, and it may also be true that Indonesia's experience has made this question less actual than it would otherwise have been.
What I tried to do, and shall try to explain as shortly as I can, was a little thinking on what it was within our power to do about the present situation. I put what I have to say in two categories: practical compassion and money. On the matter of practical compassion, of course, the voluntary agencies can play a great part, and I am sure—if I may speak without authority on behalf of them—that there will be great pleasure among the agencies which are working in that part of the world at the appreciation which has been shown of their work on all sides of your Lordships' House. It is a very arduous task that they take on, and, from what one has seen of it, our young people particularly exercise a gallantry, endurance, and cheerfulness in this work which is difficult to believe until you see it. I know that your Lordships appreciate that, and they will be grateful.
Of course there exists here one of the paradoxes of the situation. As the Thais have said in their time, "Of course, we
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don't want to make our country too comfortable for these people because our object is not that we should retain them being looked after by your voluntary societies; it is that they should vacate our country and go elsewhere". There are reasons for the Thais doing this. The first is because they have an extensive rather than an intensive system of agriculture and cannot, without a revolutionary change, make more room in their own country.
Secondly, there is a real fear in Thailand of the powerful military neighbours to the East of them. After all, there is a tradition of hostility over frontiers between Cambodia and Thailand and this could always be translated into practice if the Thais do anything which they and their enemies feel is too provocative. So, again, the good work that is done in Thailand is, in some sense, an embarrassment unless it can be followed up by action on the part of the rest of the world.
The situation that we have, and as many of your Lordships have decribed it, is ominous. It is ominous because, unlike, for instance, the situation when Soviet tanks crushed the Hungarian Revolution in 1956, there is no way out. Hungarians who thought quickly enough could get across into Austria and be welcomed. There is nowhere to which fleeing Cambodians, Vietnamese and Laotians can go except Thailand. Therefore, their country is under very great pressure indeed, and it is extremely important for the rest of the world to discover, if it possibly can, some way of relieving the pressure. I do not feel totally pessimistic, although I am enormously anxious about it, if only for the reason that I should think that the flow will probably diminish if only as a result of measures taken by the Communist states of what was Indo-China.
Now, I come to the money aspect of this question, because unfortunately refugee and displaced person situations cannot be dealt with without money in a rather special sense. What I think those of us who come new to refugee situations do not always realise is that money is not just something which is needed to get people out of somewhere and settle them somewhere else. For instance, I have seen one statistic produced by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees which puts the matter like this: over two

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years, a sum of £2 million was spent on various refugee and displaced person activities by the United Nations' High Commissioner. Of that almost exactly two-thirds was spent on refugees awaiting a definite asylum—a durable asylum is the technical phrase. Therefore, what we have to think of is not only the possibility of getting someone to accept refugees, it is the enormous expense of the maintenance of these refugees until such decisions are taken. One's conclusion from that—if I may reach a conclusion in advance of summarising any conclusions—is that anything that any of us and any of the countries who sympathise in this situation can do to reinforce the finances of the United Nations' High Commissioner is directly relevant to our success in getting refugees into new and permanent asylum.
We can be encouraged in our efforts to do this for one particular technical ground; that is, that we need not think of the United Nations' High Commissioner being subject to all the ebb and flow of opinion and doctrine in the United Nations Assembly. The High Commissioner has a great degree of autonomy in this matter, so, if we do help him in this situation he will not be hindered and obstructed by the kinds of resolution that come out of a highly charged Assembly, which was probably at the time it passed them thinking of something else. In that respect at least, there is an important agency at work—and the noble Lord, Lord Elton, paid tribute to its efficiency also—trying to persuade the Thais not to give in, not to start the ghastly process of repatriation, but to be patient while all of us, if we can, try to persuade ourselves that we can accommodate more people in the rest of the world.
In this respect, the noble Lord referred to some figures. It is enormously to the credit of the United States that they now accommodate over 160,000 Vietnamese in their country. One may say that they have a certain special responsibility, and this is true, but it is none the less an extremely generous gesture for a very large country. The French also have a good record based, of course, on the fact that the official language in Indo-China was French, so France has opened its doors to people from that part of the world.
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We too have moved, shall we say, although 116 is not a very large score. We might manage to do a little better. But, really, I would put the case on the very much broader ground that, given the background to what has happened, the free nations of the world ought somehow or other to make a more conscious and a more co-operative effort to see if they cannot increase the numbers which, so far, if they have not been content to restrict themselves, they have felt themselves compelled to keep to. This is really the message which I feel comes from this rather shattering report.
Of course, if the rest of the world is more generous in future than it is at the moment then all our nations will become that much more multi-cultural. I am sorry about that word, but I think your Lordships will understand what it means. I cannot see the world enduring without that happening. After all, we have accepted it here, in spite of what the National Front may try to say; and the French accepted it long ago. It is not a purposeful policy; it is a thing which happens—and who can say with confidence that the world will ultimately be the worse for it?
So what I hope Her Majesty's Government will be able to tell us they are able to do is to think on these lines; and, in the meantime, perhaps we can do two things specially. The first is this. Can we perhaps do a little more to take advantage of the existence of multilateral organisations—starting, of course, with the EEC—to see whether a more corporate effort could not be exerted to help the Thais? Can we finance the United Nations High Commissioner's activities more richly and, in general, think out ways and means in which the Indo-Chinese (I hope your Lordships will forgive the obsolete expression, but it helps to describe those who come from the whole area) could be accepted in other countries, always bearing in mind that some of the mixtures of culture simply would not work but that others possibly would?
The second thing that I hope Her Majesty's Government will be able to do in any case is possibly to increase our subscription to the United Nations High Commissioner's Office. It is not fashionable to speak of increases in expenditure, and I am fully conscious that in this matter

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I am being a little paradoxical. None the less, with even £100,000 or £200,000 more, the High Commissioner could proceed more quickly and more widely, and then at least we should not have the feeling, which I felt your Lordships quite understandably had throughout this debate, that we are helpless. I think we are helpless to influence the major policies of the future in that area. That, I do not see that we can do. Certainly, we cannot reverse the political tide which has overwhelmed Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam; but perhaps we can, in a limited way, at least afford comfort to and provide a home for rather more of these refugees than we have yet, as a world, been able to do and thereby also, as a secondary effect, assure a prosperous and peaceful future for Thailand.
7.54 p.m.
Baroness ELLIOT of HARWOOD: My Lords, we have had a most interesting debate, and I think that almost everything which can be said about this subject has been said. In that case, perhaps I ought not to speak at all, but I have been deeply involved in questions affecting refugees for such a long time, and I was so much impressed by Lord Elton's report and the moving way in which he put over the whole subject, that I feel I want to add a very few words to what has already been said. I agreed so much with Lord Gladwyn when he pointed out that here we were, celebrating Human Rights Day with a wonderful speech in Trafalgar Square, knowing full well—those of us who study these matters—the ghastly things which are happening in the area in the Far East that we have been talking about. This must make all our consciences feel very anxious and disturbed, because it is something about which we are really all concerned. I read in an article in the Economist the following passage:
"It is much better to draw a line under history and to regard today's refugee problem as only the latest in a long line of migrations from tyranny. As such, the responsibility for alleviating it belongs to every country which claims to be concerned about human rights."
Every country, my Lords—and all the speakers this evening have spoken about the many countries that we should like to help.
I still think that it is fundamentally the first charge on the High Commissioner
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for Refugees and the United Nations. The High Commissioner has a great standing in the world. As the noble Lord, Lord Gore-Booth, has said, the High Commissioner can do things which put him in a different position from the wrangles, debates and discussions that go on in the General Assembly. He has freedom to act and to work, and we all know how remarkable many of the High Commissioners have been. I think the last High Commissioner, Sadruddin Aga Khan, has been a very remarkable High Commissioner and has done a remarkable job.
What Lord Gore-Booth said about money is, of course, the key to the whole thing, and the only contribution that I can really make on this stems from my experiences back in the years 1959 and 1960, when the whole United Nations and the whole world joined together in a great appeal for World Refugee Year. I have in my hand, my Lords, the final account of the United Kingdom's appeal for World Refugee Year, which raised more than I think had ever been raised for any great international or national appeal. We started out with the idea of getting £2 million. We raised £10.5 million in a little over a year. We raised just under £10 million in one year, and then another £1 million came in because it was already all planned. My Lords, I think that if people really realised all that has been said today by your Lordships in this House about the things they have experienced and know and understand—Lord Tanlaw, with his long experience; Lady Vickers, with her experience; and Lord Gore-Booth—things might be different. All these things are not known to the British public; they do not know about them.
I well remember, in World Refugee Year, thinking at the outset, when I was invited to be chairman of the appeal and was asked to raise £2 million, that it would be quite impossible to do, because the British public would not understand about refugees. We did not have a great many refugees in this country, and no problems like the present-day. I was wrong. The response all over the world was terrific. Perhaps it would be more difficult to do today; I do not know. The result of this appeal was to clear all the camps in Germany. That was the

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main appeal at that time because it was the aftermath of the war; and that is where the refugees were. Today, they are further afield. Nevertheless, I think that if the delegates from the United Kingdom, in going to the United Nations, could do what the delegates did in those days and persuade the United Nations that this is a subject which they could well put on their agenda in order to raise really huge sums of money to give towards the administration and help of the High Commissioner, so that he can get into the countries in question and really help, then that would probably meet with a very much better response than people think today.
It is difficult for us here. We all of us know what our financial situation is, and I fully understand that it is very difficult for our Government to give large sums of money. But on these occasions the British public and the public all over the world respond to appeals if they are worldwide. I should not be surprised if the High Commissioner were suddenly to find that he had some hundreds of millions of pounds which he could devote to this work; because I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Gore-Booth, that it is only through the work on the ground that we are really going to be able to tackle this terrible problem.
I should like to add my words of support to the voluntary organisations who are working in these countries now. It is incredible the number of people who devote their lives to work of this kind. When it comes to organisations like Christian Aid, Oxfam, Save the Children Fund, the International Red Cross and UNICEF, all those organisations have had such experience in this matter and they have been doing it for years. They did it after the last war and they have been doing it ever since. They have such experience that, if more money was available, they would be able to increase their work far more economically and with greater experience than anyone coming from any other form of administration. I would add my pleas to those who have spoken in favour of the voluntary organisations and of giving them more money.
My Lords, to me, it is terribly depressing to think that, after all these years and
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after the great efforts made, this is still going on and we still have these appalling conditions in countries where, year by year, things get worse instead of better. I echo the words of the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, when he was talking about the influence of a few people who are very extreme and who can get the ear of, perhaps, not very well-educated people and influence them en masse. I believe that that is all too true. It is one of the things that we ought, all of us, to try to fight in any way we can, not by extremism but by wisdom and by tact and also by education, provided the education is of liberal kind.
I am sure the Government are sympathetic. In all my experience, Governments have been sympathetic toward refugees in giving what they can. I am sure that this Government are no exception but I would suggest to them that there is something to be said for trying to get, through the United Nations, a great appeal throughout the whole world for more money for what we want to do. It is only by money, by backing up the organisations on the ground, by appealing to people on humanitarian grounds, that we shall really make any inroads into this problem. I am sure that out of our debate today some publicity, some knowledge, may spread through the United Nations, and that this will be of assistance to the Government and, above all, of assistance to the people working in these countries.
8.4 p.m.
The MINISTER of STATE, FOREIGN and COMMONWEALTH OFFICE (Lord Goronwy-Roberts): My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Elton, deserves the gratitude not only of your Lordships' House but of a much wider audience for having initiated this debate and for having done so not only with a remarkable speech but on the basis of direct experience of the region and the peoples for whom he spoke so movingly. We are grateful to him and we are also grateful to those who have taken part in this debate.
The noble Lord described a state of affairs stemming from the recent upheaval in Indo-China which reasonable men and women can only regard as appalling. He compared them to the Jacobin excesses of two or more centuries

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ago. I would agree with him that they are of Jacobin or even Hitlerian proportions and character. How many innocent people have perished at the hands of these new rulers or have died unseen while trying vainly to flee, we shall probably never know. What we do know is that here and now, years after the revolution whose leaders claimed to seek a better life for their peoples, countless numbers are willing to incur great risks in a search for the basic elements of a civilised life or even to survive at all. Even the discomforts and the dangers of a refugee camp, the conditions of which we have heard described so graphically tonight, are found better by these thousand of people than the prospect of returning to countries which are now in the grip of a despotism far more brutal and ruthless than any which preceded it—countries which were formerly renowned for their gentle civilisations.
The noble Lord referred to Cambodia, particularly, where the régime's barbarism towards its population is abominable by the standards of any age. A number of those who took part in the debate—in asking the question, what can we do?— have said, among other things (I will come to the other things in a moment) that we must condemn what is happening, especially in Cambodia, in Thailand, as a result of the Cambodian atrocities.
I can assure this House that Her Majesty's Government not only condemn without measure what has happened and is happening, but also are preparing to do so even more strongly in the near future. I, myself, have condemned in this House these Cambodian atrocities as long ago as May 1976; and my honourable and right honourable friends have, similarly in another place, expressed Her Majesty's Government's abhorrence at the behaviour of the Cambodian regime.
Our concern has been made known directly to representatives abroad and our representative to the Third Committee of the United Nations Organisation has repeated our views there. Noble Lords may recall that, as a further indication of our attitude, the Government acted on 24th October to inform the Cambodians that we no longer intended to appoint an ambassador to their country. We now propose to take a further action in condemnation and exposure of these practices
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at the next meeting of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights; that is, in February 1978. I believe that a colleague of mine in the other place informed Members there that we were considering this.
I am able to tell this noble House tonight that we will raise the matter in the Human Rights Commission, and I hope some at least of our friends and allies will support us in our action. The noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, asked us to invite our friends and allies particularly in the Nine to do so. I hope they will. We have already approached them and we will approach them again; but we will go ahead, whatever number support us in this matter. Indeed, we have gone further than most countries to condemn what is happening in Cambodia—and our colonial connection with that part of the world is not as close as that of some others.
We must recognise, of course, that the leaders of this régime care little for the concern felt abroad that their behaviour has aroused, and that there is very little we can do to assist the people who are forced to continue living inside Cambodia. However, there are others, by their scores of thousands, who have escaped, and the British Government are well aware of the burden which the Government of Thailand have incurred, through offering succour to these refugees. According to the figures that I have seen, as many as 88,000 of these unfortunates may now be in Thailand, and these include some 73,000 Laotians, some 14,000 Cambodians and about 1,000 Vietnamese; but many others, of course, have moved through Thailand for resettlement elsewhere.
The Thai Government has made considerable efforts at great cost to itself to supplement the great work of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. I was glad to hear tributes paid in the course of this debate to Sadruddin Aga Khan, with which I and the noble Lord opposite me would wish to be associated most warmly. For 10 years he has dedicated himself to this work of helping the refugees of the world. He has now indicated to the Secretary-General of the United Nations that he wishes to lay down this particular burden, and I have no doubt he will pick up other equally heavy burdens in a cognate connection. We were all delighted to see the terms in

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which the Secretary-General accepted his resignation and thanked him for the great work he performed in this field.
The High Commission for Refugees, the World Food Programme and, as we have heard, a number of voluntary agencies—some of them in association with Governments in South-East Asia—have been active and effective in this field. I join with those who pay tribute to the voluntary associations—a number of them were named here tonight. One could add to the list, of course, Whatever enormities are perpetrated against people in this and other areas of the world, it is always a fact that these magnificent men and women come forward in the work of rescue and succour.
I am glad to say that the British Government have—as have successive British Governments, of course—contributed generously in support of these efforts. To take our performance in the most recent years—because the noble Lord wished to direct our attention to this—we pledge £350,000 for the 1977 regular programme of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Part of this covered activities in South-East Asia, and this year we have pledged a further £350,000, and for next year £400,000. Additionally, in June of this year the Government contributed a quarter of a million pounds towards the High Commissioner's programme for providing additional material assistance to refugees and displaced persons in Thailand and other countries which received refugees, many of them from Cambodia. This was a special effort to help their resettlement. Moreover, my right honourable friend the Minister for Overseas Development has decided, subject to Parliamentary approval—which I have no doubt will be forthcoming—to increase this contribution of a quarter of a million pounds to three-quarters of a million pounds.
I hope that we may agree that these regular contributions together with these special substantial contributions are not only worthwhile in themselves but give tangible effect to the concern in this country for what is happening in South-East Asia. Additionally, my right honourable friend the Home Secretary has agreed to admit to this country refugees from Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia—
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that is to say, people who have had previous connections with the United Kingdom. He has also agreed that Indo-Chinese already here, who do not want to return to their country of birth, will not be required to do so. In response to the international appeal by the High Commissioner for Refugees on behalf of the "small boat" refugees from Vietnam, the Government have agreed—as we have heard—to accept a quota of 116. That quota is now nearly filled and we are considering what further measures may be taken.
We have, as we have also heard, traditionally set a good example to other nations in the assistance that we have given to refugees from all parts of the world. We shall not fail to do so in the future; but the scale of the present problem is such that its solution must be an international one. It is for this reason that so much of our effort has been aimed at assisting the international agencies as a Government, assisting the High Commission and, indeed, as individuals and organisations in our country, responding wherever the call has been made by the voluntary organisations.
The noble Lord, Lord Elton, in his most moving address, proposed a number of initiatives which the Government could take to help deal with the problem of refugees. I have shown already that we are taking action in many of the areas to which he has referred. We have been foremost among those who have condemned events in Cambodia; we propose to take the lead in the Human Rights Commission in a few weeks' time. Secondly, we are increasing our support for international agencies to bring relief to refugees in Thailand and elsewhere. Thirdly, we are considering what more we can do to assist with resettlement. I take very much on board the suggestion that we might look at the possibility of increasing our reception of refugees.
We have, of course, done a great deal of this in fairly recent years, and while I join with others in expressing admiration for the performance of other countries, they have had a connection with this part of the world which we have not had. And in those parts of the world where our connection—colonial and otherwise—has been closer than theirs, I think our receptivity to displaced persons has been

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perhaps a little greater than theirs. It varies according to circumstances and to historical connections.
Nevertheless, we are considering what more we can do to assist with resettlement. We shall not fail to consider the further points which the noble Lord has raised and which have been raised by others, notably by the noble Lord, Lord Gore-Booth, and by both the noble Baronesses who spoke. I very much welcome what has been said by the noble Baronesses and the fact that they stressed the importance of the voluntary contribution. It is the duty of Governments to contribute, for example, to the international agencies set up by the United Nations. It is an obligation on individuals to respond to the call of organisations which try in a voluntary way to provide the money, the manpower and the womanpower to assist refugees in every part of the world. So, my Lords, in stimulating Governments, let us also encourage individuals.