Lords Sitting of 8 March 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 Oxford.

PRIME MINISTER: SPECIAL ADVISERS
Lord SHINWELL: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether any special advisers who were employed by the Prime Minister in the previous Administration are retained by the present Prime Minister.
The LORD PRIVY SEAL (Lord Peart): My Lords, the three special advisers who were employed in the office of the previous Prime Minister are still working there full-time. In addition, former special advisers have been employed from time to time on a fee-paid basis.
Lord SHINWELL: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that recently Mr. Haines was asked in a broadcast whether any of his erstwhile colleagues were involved, and the reply was in the affirmative? He was asked for the names and he refused to give them—and quite properly. Can my noble friend say what is the special advice that these advisers give to the Prime Minister? Can it not be contributed by members of the Civil Service, who are reputed to be the finest civil servants in the world?
Lord PEART: My Lords, my noble friend knows that there was an inquiry and a report—the Fulton Report—which recommended special advisers, and in this case they are the responsibility of the Prime Minister concerned.
Lord SHINWELL: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that, judging by results, it would be to our advantage to
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get rid of the special advisers as soon as possible? After all, we can judge only by results, and look at what is happening. Can we not rely on the Civil Service and be done with it?
Lord PEART: My Lords, I should point out to my noble friend, in relation to some of the people he has mentioned, that one of them was not a special adviser in any case; he was a temporary civil servant.

THE HOUSE OF LORDS
2.38 p.m.
Lord O'HAGAN: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they intend to abolish the House of Lords.
Lord PEART: My Lords, as my right honourable friend the Prime Minister has made clear, as stated in the Official Report, for 27th January, at column 1698, the Government are continuing to keep the position of this House under review. The Government will continue to assess the situation, and the need for change, in the light of events and developing opinion inside and outside Parliament.
Lord O'HAGAN: My Lords, does the noble Lord have the feeling that that sounds like a suspended sentence of death? Can he tell the House whether we can deduce from his Answer that the Cabinet do not share the enthusiasm of the National Executive of the Labour Party and Mr. Tony Benn for a Single Chamber Parliament?
Lord PEART: My Lords, the right honourable gentleman who has been mentioned was speaking for himself when he expressed his views, and the National Executive is not the Government. I have made my position quite clear on several occasions, as Lord Privy Seal and Leader of this House; I believe that this Chamber has an important role to play and a contribution to make, and it may well be that a time will come when we might want to reform some of its procedures.
Lord BLYTON: My Lords, we are not objecting to the Government keeping this matter under constant review, but does the Minister not think that the way in which the Government are treating the Lords is disgraceful? Councillors now get £16.50 a night expenses for staying in London; civil servants get £18.50. We who live in the Provinces are still on £13.50, and we have not had an increase for two and a half years. Is my noble friend further aware that this matter was sent to the Boyle Committee and that it is still boiling? We have not heard anything for years.
Lord PEART: My Lords, I do not know whether it is bubble and trouble, but all I can say is that that is another matter to which no doubt noble Lords will come on some other occasion.
Lord HALE: My Lords, can the noble Lord say on what terms Her Majesty was graciously pleased to dispose of the use of the Palace of Westminster separately as between the Lords and the Commons, and whether, in the event of the Lords being, abolished we shall be able to follow the example of the Serjeants-at-Law who, being abolished, sold Serjeants' Inn and divided up the proceeds.
Lord PEART: My Lords, my noble friend is really speculating as well.
Lord PLATT: My Lords, in view of the present state of the nation and the fact that the Government no longer represent the majority of the people, have Her Majesty's Government any plans for the immediate reform of the House of Commons?
Lord PEART: My Lords, I do not think that one should get into an argument about who represents the people. A General Election will finally decide that issue. The previous Election decided the issue, and now we have a Government and I speak for the Government. I can say no more than that.
Baroness EMMET of AMBERLEY: My Lords, could the Minister perhaps remind the right honourable gentleman Mr. Benn that somebody who once did abolish the House of Lords—Oliver Cromwell—found he could not do without it, and appointed 45 Life Peers?
Lord PEART: My Lords, I do not know whether that would be something which the present Prime Minister could do. All I am saying is that I believe in the role of this Chamber, and I believed in the original reforms, which were frustrated by a strange alliance of Right and Left.

CAPE COLOURED COMMUNITY AND THE FRANCHISE
2.43 p.m.
Lord INGLEWOOD: 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 representations they have recently made to the Government of South Africa to restore the franchise to the Cape coloured community.
The MINISTER of STATE, FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH OFFICE (Lord Goronwy-Roberts): My Lords, Her Majesty's Government have not recently made representations specifically on this subject to the South African Government. The Government have, however, on numerous occasions, made clear their total condemnation of South Africa's racial policies, which deny to the majority of her citizens basic human rights, including the right to vote.
Lord INGLEWOOD: My Lords, may I ask the right honourable gentleman——
Several noble Lords: No!
Lord INGLEWOOD:—the noble Lord—whether he would agree that progress can sometimes be made by taking one step at a time, and whether he does not think that there might be some advance if he suggested that this mistake in the late 1950s, when the Cape coloured were removed from the register, could perhaps be repaired and that that might have a more immediate effect than just lecturing and abusing South Africa, which Her Majesty's Government have now done for quite a long time and achieved absolutely nothing in return?
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, I hope the noble Lord and my noble friend will not deprive me of the title of "right honourable gentleman", even though he persists in calling me his noble friend. In answer to the supplementary question, it is not our policy to single out particular ethnic groups in our calls for a just and peaceful solution to the problems of South Africa, but I think the noble Lord's suggestion has the merit that we would all welcome advance against apartheid in any particular and in any direction, so long, of course, as the ultimate objective of an across-the-board advance is kept clearly in mind.
Lord PAGET of NORTHAMPTON: My Lords, can the noble Lord name any country in Africa in which anybody is allowed to vote for anybody except the Government?
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, I do not think that exactly arises from the Question put to me by the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood. We are addressing ourselves to a serious matter of how best to attain progress against apartheid in South Africa, which is a crucial country—some would say the most crucial country—in the whole of Africa.
Lord BARNBY: My Lords, may I ask the Minister whether he would not agree that both the original Question and the supplementary asked by my noble friend suggest interference with the internal affairs of another country? May I also ask him, since, as he is well aware, liberalisation is very much under consideration, or "in the works", as is said, in South Africa, whether he would not agree that too hasty an action with regard to the vote for the Cape coloured—which we all agree should have been restored long ago—might well jeopardise, or at any rate retard, dealing with the more difficult question of the urban, de-tribalised Bantu?
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, I do not think that, on reflection, the noble Lord would persist in thinking that to draw the attention of the South African authorities, or indeed the authorities of any other country, to basic human rights, which are essential to the wellbeing of their own people and,
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indeed, in the long term, to the peace of the world, is interference with their internal policies. As to his comments on the situation in South Africa, these are, as always, interesting but, as always, a matter for argument.
Lord BROCKWAY: My Lords, may I ask the Minister whether it is not the case that Her Majesty's Government have supported resolutions on apartheid at the United Nations, which resolutions include the restoration of the vote to the coloured community, and does this not indicate clearly world opinion on this matter?
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: Yes, indeed, my Lords. We have consistently supported the principle of the dismantling of apartheid in South Africa, as indeed we have supported all meaningful and practical resolutions directed against discrimination in any other country, in this respect, of course, the substantial purpose of the Question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, has already been part of our efforts in the UN and, bilaterally, in what we have said to the South African authorities.
Lord VERNON: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that the 2 million Cape coloured are more disadvantaged than any other group of people in South Africa? The Africans at least have their Bantustans, however inadequate they may be; the Cape coloured have nothing. They have no land, and they have been deprived of the vote, as my noble friend has said. In view of our historical responsibility for these unfortunate people, is there not a case for the Government making special representations to the South African Government on the basis suggested by my noble friend?
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, I think there is a case so long as, as I emphasised at the beginning, we keep firmly in mind that we do not single out any special interest, race, colour, religion or any other category for what might be interpreted by others as a discriminatory emphasis. Certainly there is a case. As to the rest of the noble Lord's question, I think he is substantially correct, to this extent at least, that in many respects the Cape coloured are more disadvantaged than even the black Africans. With

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regards to representation, for instance, it is true that they have only the bogus Representative Council, which has practically no powers; and, as he has said, they do not even enjoy the illusory advantages of the Bantustan principle, or even of the creation of a Transkei.
Lord HALE: My Lords, is the noble Lord not aware that when freedom was granted to South Africa it was granted on the express condition that within the shortest practicable period the franchise would be given to the African people, and that that assurance was repeated in the South African debate from both sides of the House and from both Front Benches?
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, it is a fact that the 1907 reforms, and the Act that accompanied those reforms, contained very strong entrenched clauses. I am bound to say that I know of no comparable enactments in which the strongest entrenched clauses of this kind have survived the fact of independence.

GOVERNMENT DEPARTMENTS: ORGANISATION
2.50 p.m.
Lord BOOTHBY: 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 would now agree that the amalgamation of a number of separate Departments of State, which were working efficiently, into several huge Ministries has proved to be a costly mistake; and in particular whether the Secretaries of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, and for the Environment, have had imposed upon them a burden which no single individual can hope to bear; and whether they will take immediate steps to remedy this unfortunate state of affairs.
Lord PEART: My Lords, in considering the allocation of ministerial responsibilities, which, of course, bears directly on the structure of Government Departments, the Prime Minister takes account of
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various factors. These would include, on the one hand, the range of responsibilities that a single Minister can reason ably be expected to discharge and, on the other, the organisational and operational advantages to be gained from grouping inter-related functions within a single Department. Noble Lords may take it that the Prime Minister intends to make no changes in the allocation of ministerial responsibilities unless and until he makes an announcement to that effect.
Lord BOOTHBY: My Lords, arising out of that Answer, is the noble Lord the Leader of the House aware that the recent departmental amalgamations have resulted in both a reduction and an increase in the bureaurocracy; that they have imposed far too heavy a burden on too few and far too light a burden on too many, and that an inquiry into the machinery of Government is now urgently required in order that the transaction of the volume of public business in the modern world may be carried out more efficiently and economically?
Lord PEART: My Lords, the noble Lord must know that it was a Conservative Administration that produced the White Paper, The Reorganisation of Central Government, in 1970. I have it here and I will send it to him. It was argued then by a Right-Wing organisation that this movement towards larger Departments would lead to greater efficiency. I do not think it imposes the strains implied in the Question.
Lord BOWDEN: My Lords, are not the Government aware of the fact that constant changing of the nature of large Departments of State—and, if I may, I will give particular examples: the successive transformations of what were once the Board of Trade, the Ministry of Aviation, the Ministry of Energy and the Department of Industry which have amalgamated and split several times—has posed intolerable burdens on those responsible for them to the extent that it has made it impossible for the people supposedly responsible for policy to devote any time at all except to matters of routine administration? It seems to me that this has been a source of great weakness in Whitehall since I first met it; it has been a cause of great anxiety and

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has imposed a great burden on the senior civil servants responsible. Cannot some steps be taken to prevent this?
Lord PEART: My Lords, I sympathise with the desire of my noble friend to see that no unnecessary extra burdens are placed on the heads of Departments and that efficiency should be encouraged and should not be frustrated. But I do not believe in the argument put forward by my noble friend. I remember that when I was involved in agriculture I believed that it was a good thing that we should have combined with Agriculture, the Ministry of Food, a larger Department, and that it would be better for policy and other reasons. I found no difficulties when administering it.
Lord AVEBURY: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord what organisational advantages have resulted from the amalgamation of Health and Social Security?
Lord PEART: My Lords, I think that we shall have to give it time before making a final judgment. I think it is important that there should be Committees in both Houses to watch carefully the procedure of Government. This is a continuing process and it is inevitable that there will be problems here and there.
The Earl of HALSBURY: My Lords, is the noble Lord the Leader of the House aware of the stricture by the noble Lord, Lord Beeching, delivered at an oration at the London School of Economics, that constant reorganisation at the top is a characteristic of a badly-managed industrial enterprise?
Lord PEART: My Lords, I never thought that he followed that advice for the railways.
Lord INGLEWOOD: My Lords, does the noble Lord believe that the old Ministry of Transport was happily at home in the Department of the Environment?
Lord PEART: My Lords, I think it was appropriate when it was part of it. It is not appropriate now.
Lord BOWDEN: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that this problem of successive reorganisation was complained
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about by a Roman Consul named Caius Petronius? I think that the tradition of constant reorganisation has been with us for far too long.
Lord BOOTHBY: My Lords, am I to understand from the noble Lord that the Government will not even inquire into the matter?
Lord PEART: My Lords, I think that there should be, and are, Committees of the House of Commons and the House of Lords which could make recommendations. There should be vigilance on this matter. I am grateful to the noble Lord for drawing attention to it.
Lord PANNELL: My Lords, will my noble friend look at this question again? Is he aware that the expenses of this House appear on the Vote for the Department of the Environment? Would he not agree that this was a very unfortunate juxta-position?
Lord PEART: My Lords, that is another question. We shall look at that.
Lord DERWENT: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that I am now asking the eighth supplementary question?
Baroness WARD of NORTH TYNE-SIDE: My Lords, is it not a fact that when the alteration was made it was made in order to ensure that the smaller local authorities would find it easier to appoint better and higher paid officials? Is it not a fact that, whatever the difficulties—and there are always difficulties in new arrangements—many of the smaller local authorities have been able to operate more efficiently because they have had more efficient officials?
Lord PEART: My Lords, I am afraid that the noble Baroness is on another question.

MERCHANT SHIPPING (SAFETY CONVENTION) BILL [H.L.]
Lord ORAM: My Lords, I beg to introduce a Bill to enable effect to be given to the International Convention for the safety of life at sea, signed in London on 1st November 1974; and for purposes

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connected therewith. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 1a—(Lord Oram.)
On Question, Bill read 1a, and to be printed.

SEXUAL OFFENCES (SCOTLAND) BILL [H.L.]
Lord BOOTHBY: My Lords, I beg to introduce a Bill to amend the law of Scotland relating to homosexual acts. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 1a—.(Lord Boothby).
On Question, Bill read 1a, and to be printed.
2.58 p.m.

AIRCRAFT AND SHIPBUILDING INDUSTRIES BILL
The MINISTER of STATE, NORTHERN IRELAND OFFICE: (Lord Melchett): My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. The Bill which comes forward for Second Reading today is an old friend, and I hope that I need not spend too much of your Lordships' time in introducing it. Following the statement made by my noble friend the Leader of the House last Wednesday, and the procedural Motion passed last Thursday, noble Lords will be aware of the Government's intention to propose Amendments to the Bill at Committee stage, to delete the 12 listed ship repairing companies from Schedule 2 to the Bill. On the basis of that intention, your Lordships' House has resolved that Petitions against the Bill should not be heard, and that the Standing Orders (Private Bills) Committee's requirements for notices about petitions to be published should be dispensed with. In other words, the Bill will now proceed quickly as an ordinary Public Bill, and the 12 ship repairers will be deleted.
I do not propose to dwell on the events which have led up to this decision, which the Government have taken with great regret. It has been suggested that the Government could and should have made
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this concession at the end of last Session. The position has changed in an important respect: the Examiners have reported that the Bill was hybrid in its ship repairing section. The Government were therefore faced with a choice. We could wait until the end of the Session, when the whole Bill would have passed on to the Statute Book under the Parliament Act and the whole summer would have been wasted in pointless hearings before a Select Committee (as the Examiners recognised in their report), or we could abandon the ship repairing sector, despite its grave problems, in order to get the aircraft and shipbuilding industries on to a firm basis now, so that they can come to grips with their pressing difficulties.
We had two reasons for resisting the deletion of ship repair. First, there was, and is, a strong industrial case for rationalising the ship repair industry in public ownership. I know that noble Lords opposite dispute that. They might not do so vigorously if they knew the pressures we have been under from some of the listed ship repairing firms not to drop ship repairing. As the Government Statement last Wednesday said, some of those firms will now seek to come into British Shipbuilders voluntarily by negotiation. Moreover, several of the vesting shipbuilding companies have ship repairing operations which will vest with them: and three of the 12 listed ship repairers now to be deleted are already publicly-owned and will be transferred by agreement to the new Corporation.
Our second reason for resisting the deletion of ship repair was a constitutional one. The elected Chamber had twice passed intact a Bill which this House sought to change in a fundamental way. Moreover the proposal to nationalise ship repairing was contained in two Election Manifestoes.
The position has changed because of the Examiners' ruling. We regret its effect on this Bill and more generally. The ruling leaves the general position on hybridity in an unsatisfactory and uncertain state. The implications for future legislation will have to be considered carefully and we are now doing that. But we have to deal with the here and now. The realistic assessment we had, with great regret, to make was that unless we deleted ship repair, the Bill would be

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this was a unique and unprecedented situation. They then dealt with this particular question by bringing in Amendments.
However, during the painful passage of the Bill through this House, the Government were repeatedly warned by an ever-increasing crescendo of voices from all sides of the House that the Bill was demonstrably hybrid on more than one count. They were implored therefore to remove the ship repairing section which was anyway objectionable and for which in our view no logical, convincing case has been made. Seen from this side of the House, the Government's reaction appeared to be a witch's brew of arrogance, obduracy and wishful thinking in the face of these suggestions. This attitude persisted throughout the "ping-pong" session which brought the last Session to a long-delayed and exhausted close towards the end of last year.
Small wonder, then, that there was consternation when the Bill was reintroduced in November, the Clerks sought to refer the Bill to the Examiners and when the leader of another place again suspended Standing Orders, notwithstanding all the previous protestations in May. Thus, it was inevitable under the doctrine of community between the two Houses that the Clerks would refer the Bill to the Examiners before our Second Reading here today.
I suggest that it is misleading—to use the kindest possible word—to allege that this House has used what Mr. Varley back in May light heartedly called a "diverting Parliamentary ploy" in order to filibuster or frustrate the passages of this Bill. This, incidentally, is only the 13th day on which this House has been considering this Bill, so in any case it has not been all that long-drawn-out an affair. On the contrary, I think it is proper to say that the House of Lords has prevented the Government from frustrating the Officers of both Houses when they seek to operate the constitutional safeguards de signed to protect the individual, acting alone or in association.
At this juncture I should like, if I may, briefly to try to lay a procedural ghost which I know has been haunting some noble Lords behind me, who felt that the bargain belatedly struck through the
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usual channels had somehow deprived some companies of their constitutional rights under the hybrid Bill procedure. I merely want to say to them that the advice I have received is quite clear: the only points that the Select Committee would have agreed to hear would have been those which alleged discrimination as between individual interests within a general provision in the Bill—in other words, those issues which raise the questions of hybridity.
I must also ask the noble Lord, Lord Melchett, when he comes to reply, to expand a little on what he meant when he talked about "examining the implications of the Examiners' ruling". Is he seriously suggesting that the Government are considering removing the constitutional safeguards which have been built into our parliamentary procedure? If he is, we should want to know about it and I doubt very much whether we should be very happy.
Lord HARMAR-NICHOLLS: My Lords, is the noble Lord saying that if we had not passed the Motion last Thursday there could not have been an appeal to the Select Committee by, for example, Vosper, who feel that their ship repairing operations come under hybridity? Is the noble Lord saying that in passing the Motion that we did, that we robbed them of their opportunity to take the necessary action?
Lord STRATHCONA and MOUNT ROYAL: My Lords, I could not possibly give an answer to that question, which is properly one for the Officers who advise this House. I would suggest that the noble Lord might put the question to them. Over two years we have been saying that the principal contention in this Bill was unnecessary at a time of national crisis under a minority Government. Was that not borne out two weeks ago when Mr. Kaufman announced that £65 million was to be made available for the shipbuilders under Part II of the Industry Act, which was passed by the last Conservative Government? On those policy issues perhaps we can again give Mr. Kaufman the last word, because it seemed to me he put his finger on the crux of the matter over the weekend when he is reported to have told shipbuilding workers in Glasgow that nationalisation would not

919
this was a unique and unprecedented situation. They then dealt with this particular question by bringing in Amendments.
However, during the painful passage of the Bill through this House, the Government were repeatedly warned by an ever-increasing crescendo of voices from all sides of the House that the Bill was demonstrably hybrid on more than one count. They were implored therefore to remove the ship repairing section which was anyway objectionable and for which in our view no logical, convincing case has been made. Seen from this side of the House, the Government's reaction appeared to be a witch's brew of arrogance, obduracy and wishful thinking in the face of these suggestions. This attitude persisted throughout the "ping-pong" session which brought the last Session to a long-delayed and exhausted close towards the end of last year.
Small wonder, then, that there was consternation when the Bill was reintroduced in November, the Clerks sought to refer the Bill to the Examiners and when the leader of another place again suspended Standing Orders, notwithstanding all the previous protestations in May. Thus, it was inevitable under the doctrine of community between the two Houses that the Clerks would refer the Bill to the Examiners before our Second Reading here today.
I suggest that it is misleading—to use the kindest possible word—to allege that this House has used what Mr. Varley back in May lightheartedly called a "diverting Parliamentary ploy" in order to filibuster or frustrate the passages of this Bill. This, incidentally, is only the 13th day on which this House has been considering this Bill, so in any case it has not been all that long-drawn-out an affair. On the contrary, I think it is proper to say that the House of Lords has prevented the Government from frustrating the Officers of both Houses when they seek to operate the constitutional safeguards de signed to protect the individual, acting alone or in association.
At this juncture I should like, if I may, briefly to try to lay a procedural ghost which I know has been haunting some noble Lords behind me, who felt that the bargain belatedly struck through the
920
usual channels had somehow deprived some companies of their constitutional rights under the hybrid Bill procedure. I merely want to say to them that the advice I have received is quite clear: the only points that the Select Committee would have agreed to hear would have been those which alleged discrimination as between individual interests within a general provision in the Bill—in other words, those issues which raise the questions of hybridity.
I must also ask the noble Lord, Lord Lord Melchett, when he comes to reply, to expand a little on what he meant when he talked about "examining the implications of the Examiners' ruling". Is he seriously suggesting that the Government are considering removing the constitutional safeguards which have been built into our parliamentary procedure? If he is, we should want to know about it and I doubt very much whether we should be very happy.
Lord HARMAR-NICHOLLS: My Lords, is the noble Lord saying that if we had not passed the Motion last Thursday there could not have been an appeal to the Select Committee by, for example, Vosper, who feel that their ship repairing operations come under hybridity? Is the noble Lord saying that in passing the Motion that we did, that we robbed them of their opportunity to take the necessary action?
Lord STRATHCONA and MOUNT ROYAL: My Lords, I could not possibly give an answer to that question, which is properly one for the Officers who advise this House. I would suggest that the noble Lord might put the question to them. Over two years we have been saying that the principal contention in this Bill was unnecessary at a time of national crisis under a minority Government. Was that not borne out two weeks ago when Mr. Kaufman announced that £65 million was to be made available for the shipbuilders under Part II of the Industry Act, which was passed by the last Conservative Government? On those policy issues perhaps we can again give Mr. Kaufman the last word, because it seemed to me he put his finger on the crux of the matter over the weekend when he is reported to have told shipbuilding workers in Glasgow that nationalisation would not

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create another job for them. I could not have put it better myself my Lords: that is exactly what we have always said.
The best one can say about this Bill now is that it is a tiny bit less crazy than it was. At least most of the independent ship repairers will be left alone to get on with their job. We accept that the Government have removed the hybridity, as we urged them to do. I have to say, however, that I think it is the greatest shame that they have not been able to find the wisdom and the magnanimity, if that is the right word, to go one stage further and take out the whole of the independent ship repairing industry. They are now in an illogical position which defies common sense, and I have to warn them that if some of the prognostications of what is going to happen to those parts of the ship repairing industry which are left nationalised prove correct, and if they should prove unable to compete against their "freewheeling" brethren, that is not something we shall lightly overlook in the months to come.
Let us try to end this melancholy affair on a not-too-sombre note. The one institution which emerges with some credit from it is, I suggest, your Lordships' House. We can fairly claim that we have shown restraint, wisdom, statesman ship and a recognition of reality. We have been assailed from all sides and reviled by extremists for our efforts, often inaccurately and unjustly. Nevertheless we can face our critics and say with some pride: "We may be an illogical anachronism and we probably ought to be reformed, but we have done our duty by our lights, and this country would have been a poorer place without us."
3.16 p.m.
The Earl of KIMBERLEY: My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Strathcona, said, perhaps this Bill is not an old friend, and I should not like to say what many noble Lords might possibly call it. It has been an unhappy Bill from the date of its conception, and your Lordships are all too familiar with its very unhappy and chequered career. We on these Benches, along with many noble Lords and Members of another place, have opposed it for divers reasons, but I assure your Lordships that I am not going to resuscitate those reasons this afternoon. However, I will say that we on these Benches opposed it
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because we are against nationalisation, and we say here and now that we shall continue to oppose any other nationalisation plans or ideas that this Government may have in the future.
As I have said, I am not going into recriminations: they are entirely superfluous in the present circumstances. How ever, I should like to make one point—perhaps "re-emphasise" would be a better word—which the noble Lord, Lord Strathcona, mentioned just now. We feel, as we think do most noble Lords in this Chamber, that there may possibly be some people in Great Britain who think, completely misguidedly, that your Lordships' Chamber was responsible for the delay over this Bill. Those people may well not understand the hybridity issue, and I am sure that most noble Lords, wherever their Party allegiance may lie, including noble Lords who sit on the Cross-Benches, would welcome confirmation of that fact from the noble Lord, Lord Melchett, when he winds up for the Government. Yesterday, the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, said that most opponents of our joining the European Economic Community have now accepted the will of the British people through the Referendum. Indeed, several notable anti-Marketeers have now become Members of the European Parliament. The noble Lord, Lord Harris, said quite rightly that credit should be given to them for their democratic attitude and I, for one, agree with him.
That brings me to the ship repairers, who have been finally discarded from the Bill. May they now be left in peace to get on with their job, and may the back biting and any further snide allegations against them cease and the decision of Parliament be accepted with grace. As I have already said, we do not welcome the Bill but, for the sake of the two industries and in the national interest, we shall no longer object to it on principle and we shall undertake to use our best endeavours to facilitate its passage.
Finally, may I take this opportunity of wishing the noble Lord, Lord Beswick, and his colleagues all success with their venture—a success which British Aero space more than deserves and which will not be easy to secure. Likewise, if we are to have this Bill, may the British ship building industry prosper as well.
3.20 p.m.
Lord INVERFORTH: My Lords, my maiden speech last September was on the Second Reading of this Bill, and I hope that it is not my fate to be addressing your Lordships on the same Reading of the same Bill every six months. My noble friend Lord Inchcape, who is President of the General Council of British Shipping, is in the Far East on business, and in his absence I should like to inform your Lordships' House that British shipowners welcome the Government's decision to drop the nationalisation of independent ship repairing companies—a proposal which always seemed to us, as customers, to be misguided and indeed damaging.
The Bill's provisions for the nationalisation of shipbuilding are familiar to us all, and that perhaps allows us to spend more time today talking about the real problem of the United Kingdom shipbuilding industry, which is that, like all its competitors, it is capable of producing more ships than its customers either want or need. The Government have now acknowledged that there must be a contraction in the industry, and they are talking of a redundancy scheme. In addition, it is possible that the EEC will eventually produce proposals to the same end. Meanwhile, however, the order book is running down and the Government have set up a £65 million intervention fund to help United Kingdom shipbuilders quote competitive prices. There is no money in this scheme for British ship owners—the shipping industry has not asked for aid, and is not receiving aid—but we have assured the Prime Minister that we will do what we can to help. Already the General Council of British Shipping has written to its members suggesting what might be done.
It is worth stressing that British ship owners are by far the largest customer of the United Kingdom yards, and 72 per cent. of the tonnage on order in this country is for British registration. Indeed, British shipowners already have £600 million worth of ships on order in United Kingdom yards. Because British ship-owners are not looking for anything for themselves from this new intervention fund, we have welcomed the idea that it should apply to sales to foreign owners as well as to British owners. Thus we are happy for United Kingdom yards to win
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orders from Poland. It would, however, be intolerable if the Government put foreign owners—and Eastern bloc owners at that—at an advantage by comparison with British owners.
This is the basic theme of the British shipping industry—we compete against the world, and we must never be shackled with a competitive disadvantage. It is not good enough for the Government to say that they will give careful consideration to any similar orders by British owners. I should hope that the Minister would give a clear assurance that if, in future negotiations with buyers in Poland, Nigeria or any other country, concessions are offered, similar concessions will not be considered but offered to British buyers. If the Government do this, they will not only avoid criticism but also, perhaps, obtain additional orders, which is presumably the object of the exercise.
Your Lordships will appreciate that, against the size of the problem, the Government's new scheme is modest, and I have nothing against modesty. As Ministers have admitted, it is only an interim stage. It may buy time, but it will not solve the problem of surplus shipbuilding capacity. All over the world there is surplus capacity, and no amount of governmental or inter-Government aid will make that surplus go away. Indeed, if every Government try to buy orders then the situation will worsen, subsidies will spiral at the taxpayers' expense, and the problem of surplus will spread at an alarming rate from shipbuilding to shipping. The chronic over-tonnaging at present being experienced by the tanker section of our industry can easily be the fate of other types of tonnage, if the unnecessary building of ships is encouraged. Worldwide ship orders are at present low. If uncontrolled subsidies flood the world with ships, the normal re-ordering by established shipping companies will rapidly dry up and the plight of the world's shipbuilding industries will become even worse than at present.
There is no easy solution to the problem, but shipowners would urge the Government to seize the opportunity offered by this Bill to produce a national shipbuilding policy, which is based not on wishful thinking but on realities, bearing in mind particularly the undoubted strength which

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still exists in the British shipbuilding industry. As a customer of that industry, may I wish the Government well in their endeavours to create a shipbuilding organisation which is not only strong but viable, and able not merely to survive but to flourish.
It is perhaps timely that my company actually has a ship running her trials off the North-East coast today. She is the third of a series of ships being contructed for us by the State-owned Sunderland Shipbuilders Limited. When the fourth vessel of this series is delivered at the beginning of June, she will have the distinction of being the fiftieth vessel built for us at Sunderland. This simple statistic is much more meaningful than any expressions of praise. Let the last word come from our new ship, as I received the following message from Cullercoats radio just before leaving for the House today:
"'Streambank' trials satisfactory with all equipment and systems fully functional. First class vessel all respects. Master and officers send thanks to Sunderland Shipbuilders and wish the future British Shipbuilders good luck and success."
That is a message which all in British shipping echo. We want British ship building to be strong, competitive and successful.
3.26 p.m.
Lord SHINWELL: My Lords, I under stand that the noble Lord, Lord Selsdon, whose name appears on the list of speakers, is not present in the assembly and there fore it is my turn to venture to offer a few observations. In the course of previous debates, I mentioned that, in my judgment, nationalisation would not provide more employment. It would not create new jobs. The speech by Mr. Kaufman to Clyde Shipbuilders the other day is a complete vindication of what I said on those occasions. My experience of nationalisation is also a demonstration of the fact, which cannot be challenged on the statistical evidence, of that assertion.
Some years ago, we nationalised the coalmining industry at a time when 800,000 or 900,000 miners were in the employment of private owners. The industry was brought under public control. There are now approximately 300,000 mineworkers in the industry. Similarly with the steel industry and with others,
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and for obvious reasons. Indeed, one of the prime objects of nationalisation was to promote greater efficiency, to produce more with less labour, and that has occurred. It does not follow from what I have said, and what was mentioned on a previous occasion, that nationalisation possesses no advantages whatever. On the contrary, it seeks to free industry from monopoly control. It also provides many other advantages into which I need not enter, but they are well known to those who have studied the subject and who have profited from the experience of public control.
We are faced with a very simple issue. The shipbuilding industry of the United Kingdom is in the doldrums. Even before the First World War, when I first associated myself with the seafarers of the country, and naturally acquired some knowledge of shipbuilding, because the two industries are closely related, the shipbuilding industry was in a parlous state. It is worse now than ever, for obvious reasons. We were the greatest shipbuilding country in the world. We had the finest shipwrights and the most competent management. We made these contributions to other countries, which had only potential; they lacked experience. Those countries included Japan, West Germany and even some of the Scandinavian countries which had long experience of shipbuilding. We exported hundreds, indeed thousands, of our skilled shipwrights and marine engineers to other countries and thus built up a huge, efficient and viable shipbuilding industry among our competitors. We are now experiencing the results.
However, other factors were operating. The shipbuilding industry of the United Kingdom has never possessed a surplus of finance. It has been compelled constantly to borrow from the banks and to obtain from a number of Governments, not only from the Labour Government, the requisite finance in order to continue their operations. One of the prime examples is Harland and Wolff. For many years past it has hardly ever been out of financial trouble. It was a Conservative Government, not a Labour Government, which many years ago had to find the requisite finance to enable the world-famous Cunard Line to build the Queen Mary and the Queen Elizabeth—not the present but the previous ships.

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There has been a certain amount of controversy over procedure and also over the constitutional privilege of this Assembly to override or, to use a milder term, to revise decisions reached in another place. I do not want to embark on a discussion of that issue because, quite frankly, it does not affect the future of British shipbuilding, which is our concern. What is to be done about it?
Leaving aside hybridity and examination by the officials of both Houses of Parliament, we are faced with the simple fact that the Government, by arrangement with the other side of the House, have come to the conclusion that they can afford to set aside not the whole of ship repairing but part of it, some of which is absorbed in shipbuilding itself while some of it is of an independent character, so as to enable nationalised shipbuilding to proceed on a financial basis of £65 million. I am bound to say that this is a drop in the ocean when one considers the needs of British shipbuilding. In creating the organisation it may assist to provide the staff, managerial and otherwise—and very essential they are. But what financial cover they can provide for the ship owners, who have to buy the ships and who need the ships, and for the ship builders who have to build the ships is of a character which, quite frankly, appears to be horrific to those who understand the needs of United Kingdom shipbuilding.
How are we to face the formidable competition from Japan, West Germany, the Scandinavian countries and other countries in the Near and the Far East and elsewhere who are now engaged in shipbuilding with some measure of success? I ask that question, because every one of the countries which I have mentioned is, without exception, highly subsidised. I do not believe that there is a shipbuilding company in the world, whether in Japan, or in the United States, or elsewhere, that is viable without Government financial assistance. We have to face the fact that that has been our situation for some time and that we have not met with a substantial measure of success.
I say to Members of your Lordships' House, leaving aside the political implications, controversy and the like, that there is a paramount need to build up a viable shipbuilding industry in this country.
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We are suffering enough in the shipping industry itself, which is almost in the doldrums. It is faced with competition from the Liberians who engage in what are called "flags of convenience" and in ploys which are designed to confound British ship owners. We have been discussing these matters for many years, again not with any great measure of success, because we face formidable com petition. For example, questions have been asked recently by noble Lords on both sides of the House about the injection of Russian shipping. Why have the Russians succeeded where we have failed? They have succeeded where we have failed because they do not pay the kind of wages that we pay. And we do not pay as high wages as the Israelis or the Americans pay. All of these competitive factors are operating.
What are we to do with the £65 million? It will not help very much so far as ship owners are concerned. It may encourage them if they are satisfied that under nationalisation shipbuilding in this country will provide the facilities which will enable us to build more efficiently—or with anything but inefficiency. We are very efficient indeed on the technical and technological side. It may encourage ship owners if they are satisfied that under nationalisation shipbuilding in this country will have the facilities to enable ships to be built speedily and will not be subject to the excessive delays which apparently are peculiar to this country. There are difficulties elsewhere, but delays seem to be peculiar to this country. I am not going to impute blame to the shipwrights and others. Very often a ship is delayed in its construction because the components, without which a ship cannot be completed, are not available.
Moreover, there is one factor that seems to be disregarded in this country and an attempt has to be made to overcome the difficulty. The difficulty is that ships have to be built under cover. The Japanese have succeeded in building ships under cover, and other shipbuilding countries have met with some success. In this country, where the weather cannot be relied upon, inclement weather means that the construction of a ship without any cover is bound to be delayed. If the whole of the £65 million were to be devoted to providing cover in shipbuilding yards, it would be a more effective

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contribution than almost anything else. I mention it only as one of the factors.
If the Government had not decided to embark on nationalisation—I want to say this with the greatest respect to the noble Lord, Lord Strathcona and Mount Royal, and those who are supporting him who object to nationalisation, and I say it to the Liberals also—they would have had to rationalise the industry. They would have had to amalgamate the industry and to effect mergers, which would have created difficulties also. There is no guarantee that even amalgamation would mean that we could provide the facilities which, after all, require in the ultimate the assistance of the Government of the day. That is what we are embarking on now. We must go ahead with providing assistance, and there ought to be no delay. The ship owners of this country have to be protected, also. They want ships and they have to obtain them at the cheapest possible rate.
Finally, when we had the previous debates I said that shipbuilding in the future will be highly speculative. I said the same about the aerospace industry, although I may be wrong about that because I know little or nothing about the subject. However, I understand that there are difficulties in that industry, too. Shipbuilding is highly speculative, though, and we have to make the best of the situation. It requires the good will of ship owners, it requires the good will of those engaged in the industry—the management, the shipwrights and, I should like to add, the Clyde Shipbuilders. It is easy enough to "talk big", as they were the other day, and to say to Mr. Kaufman, "If a single person is made redundant by nationalisation you will be in trouble". That is not the way to talk. Their work and their lives depend upon it and their children depend upon it. There must be co-operation. Without that co-operation there will be serious trouble, and we are in enough trouble already.
I should like to say this also to those engaged in this subject, like the noble Lord, Lord Inverforth, who is an expert on it. So far as the ship owners are concerned, do not rush into this without prudence and caution. There are too many ships in the world anyway just now. There is a surplus of shipping. I happen
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to read, every other fortnight, a periodical called the Telegraph—nothing to do with the Daily Telegraph; I am sorry even to mention the Daily Telegraph because I do not want to give them a gratuitous advertisement at any time. It is the Telegraph, which deals with shipping affairs, so that one may get to know what is going on at the present time. We obtain contemporary knowledge. Ship owners must be careful, but with co operation and with good will and an acceptance by the other side of the House of something that appears inevitable whether or not they like it, we can make of this some success. That is the best that we can hope for.
3.44 p.m.
Lord MONSON: My Lords, the Government's decision to delete ship repairing from this Bill represents a great victory for justice, not because an efficient and versatile industry is being spared from the net of nationalisation, although no doubt that is a good thing it itself, but specifically because it obviates the distasteful prospect of private interests or individuals being "singled out by a public Bill for adverse treatment", to quote the words of the Examiners. But unfortunately another and even greater and more glaring injustice remains and, as the question of hybridity is not involved, in this instance, the Examiners are in no position to "defend the subject against selective ill-treatment"—to quote their words again. I refer, of course, to the confiscatory compensation terms being offered to certain of the shipbuilding companies which remain within the scope of the Bill. These terms, which are quite without precedent in the history of British nationalisation—if one may so put it—have far more profound implications than might generally be supposed.
To simplify the argument as much as possible, I do not propose to deal with those aircraft and shipbuilding firms which may well have valid grievances over the amount of compensation proposed, but where the element of confiscation is less than 50 per cent.; nor do I propose to deal with the refusal of the Government to take into account the premium invariably paid for control—over and above the stock market valuation—in transactions between willing buyer and willing seller, this

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point having been so ably expounded by the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, from these Benches and by the noble Lord, Lord Selsdon, from the Conservative Benches in our debates last year. Nor do I propose to expand on the unprecedented and in explicable refusal to grant roll-over relief on the reinvestment of the compensation monies (such as they are) which among other things will adversely affect future employment prospects in the parts of the country concerned, many of them being development areas. I want to concentrate instead solely upon the two companies that are by far the most unfairly, even scandalously, treated—Yarrow and Vosper Thornycroft.
But first I should like to put on record that I do not have, and never have had, one single penny invested in either of these companies, nor are the shares in these companies held in any of the portfolios which I manage. Nor, may I add, did either of these companies approach me for help in this matter. I wonder whether the average person has any idea of quite how scandalously unfair the compensation terms for these companies are? Vosper Thornycroft, for instance, by dint of hard work and by a great and successful export drive (so that exports now provide 90 per cent, of the shipbuilding subsidiaries' profits, to the great benefit of this country's balance of payments) has pushed up its pre-tax profits to £5·51 million for 1976. Yet the prospective compensation—assuming that the part is valued at less than the whole, which is usually the case—seems unlikely to exceed £4·2 million; that is, equivalent to scarcely more than nine months' (not nine years' but nine months') profits, at a price, incidentally, equal to less than one-fifth of the asset value. It should be noted that the return on capital was 25 per cent, and that surely demonstrates that the asset value has not been artificially inflated. The terms proposed for Yarrow are almost as bad.
Time and time again when we debated this Bill last year Ministers rose to insist that the Government proposed to stick by the compensation formulae in the Bill; in other words a notional share value during the reference period between 1st September 1973 and the end of February 1974. Time and time again the Ministers, often in the same speech, rose to say that the compensation terms would
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be fair. This is really an Alice in Wonder land state of affairs, because either the compensation terms can be based on values which were prevailing three and a quarter years ago or they can be fair; but they cannot possibly be both at the same time, except by some wild and unlikely co incidence.
It may be suggested that I am making a mountain out of a molehill and that however hard the Government's decision may be on small shareholders and the beneficiaries of pension funds which happen to hold these shares in their portfolios, it is something that cannot possibly concern the average person in this country. Nothing could be further from the truth. Once the precedent has been established, once confiscation is seen to have legislative blessing, nobody who owns any property at all can feel entirely secure in the future—and I am not just referring to shareholders.
Let us suppose that by some misfortune, the famous—or perhaps I should say the infamous—M.3 motorway ever comes to be built round Winchester, might it not be argued that because the building of that road (which after all has been on the drawing board for a great many years) was only frustrated by the long drawn out, pernicious, vociferous opposition of protestors, the people whose houses have to be demolished for the building of the motorway should be compensated at the prices prevailing in the 1960s?
Let us take the M.3 analogy just a little further. Consider a pair of semi-detached houses standing in the line of the motor way. The left-hand house was worth quite a lot of money five years ago, but the present owner has allowed it to deteriorate. It has not been decorated internally or externally; it is in an entirely shabby state and accordingly the market value is no more than £10,000. In contrast, the right-hand house, formerly derelict, has an owner who has expended love and care upon it, and has spent all his leisure hours with electric drills, paint sprays and so on, installing central heating, so that it is now worth all of £15,000. Might it not be decreed that the appropriate compensation for the at present less valuable left-hand house should be fixed at £9,000—less than the market value admittedly, unfairly less, but not to the extent of being confiscatory—and the compensation for the

933
right-hand house, which was worth so little five years ago, should be a mere £3,000? The £3,000 is proportionately equivalent to the compensation that Vosper Thorneycroft stand to receive; one-fifth of the true market value. It may be unlikely that this precise analogy will in fact occur; there are electoral considerations which will rule this out, if nothing else. But in theory anything is possible; 1984 is, after all, less than seven years away.
Property rights are not the only thing to be threatened by this part of the Bill. The efficient, dynamic and enterprising firms, mainly big exporters, are seen once again to be scorned and rejected in favour of the sluggish, static and inefficient ones. Dividend restraint is another example of this. Next it leads to greater uncertainty and demoralisation among investors, large and small, direct and indirect, and among businessmen and, just as important, aspiring businessmen, and it will certainly deter future foreign investment in this country. In an out-and-out Marxist country at least one knows exactly where one stands, depending on whether the country in question is still Stalinist, like Albania, or is slightly liberalised, like Hungary and Poland. The citizen knows that he is allowed to own a strictly limited amount of property, varying from nothing at all in one case to perhaps one house, a car, if he can afford it, and in certain countries a business employing no more than four people in addition to the owner and his wife. People know exactly where they stand, and therefore they can make their choice; either submit tamely, or take to the hills or emigrate, provided they can circumvent whatever Berlin-type wall is thrown around the country.
I am not suggesting for one moment that we have reached anything like that stage here, but paradoxically the uncertainty and demoralisation are even worse, intensified by such extraordinary and shocking actions as the declaration that promises made to short-service Fleet Air Arm and RAF pilots will not now be honoured. Thinking both of these pilots and of the compensation terms, if the Government are seen to be behaving in an unscrupulous and "crooked" fashion, what incentive is there for the private citizen to behave in a decent and honest manner, other than the negative one of the fear of being caught.
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Finally, my Lords, confiscation, except in times of grave national emergency—I do not think that it can be argued that this applies here—is in breach of our inter national obligations under both the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights and also the European Convention on Human Rights, as I have pointed out on more than one occasion before. What is the reason for the refusal by the Government to provide a more equitable basis for compensation, faced as they are with the obvious unfairness of these terms? Suspicious-minded people will see in this the hands of the Marxists, in whose interests it would be to acclimatise the British people to the idea of expropriation so as to pave the way for more in future. Other uncharitable individuals will suspect that there exists some sort of vindictive vendetta against these two companies. I prefer to think that their attitude stems from the obsession with saving face which characterises all Governments, and not just Labour ones; the desire not to be seen to be pushed into changing their mind. I have always thought this a most unfortunate tendency, as well as electorally disadvantageous, because the man in the street respects and admires politicians and Parties that admit their mistakes and declare their intention of rectifying them.
It may be that there are some people—not, of course, in your Lordships' House, but elsewhere—who are quite unruffled and unabashed at the charge that the compensation terms proposed are more appropriate to a Warsaw Pact country than to a liberal, free enterprise, Western democracy. Let me, therefore, give them some food for thought. From the researches that I have been able to make—and I confess that precise statistics are extremely hard to come by—it would appear that the prices being offered for these two companies are, if anything, less favourable than the prices at which many members of a certain minority group were forced to sell their businesses under the aegis of the National Socialists in the early and mid-1930s. The comparison stops there, of course, but even this limited similarity is surely one which any British Government would wish to avoid.
The irony of it is that Labour's record in this particular sphere of human rights is a good one, and worth living up to. For many decades owner-occupiers of

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terraced houses in working-class areas who were forced to leave their homes because of comprehensive redevelopment or slum clearance schemes, or because their homes were declared to be unfit for human habitation by virtue of their bedroom ceilings being 1½ inches lower than the statutory minimum or whatever, were awarded the most derisory compensation, scarcely more than site value, however, comfortable and serviceable their homes might be.
To its eternal credit, it was a Labour Administration that took steps to end this particular injustice by means of Part V of the Housing Act, 1969, which replaced the quite inadequate provisions contained in Section 30 of the 1957 Act. A Labour Government, in other words, stepped forward to put a stop to the virtual confiscation of private property, thereby effectively asserting that this sort of behaviour has no place in a Western democracy. However, if this Bill remains unamended, all the good work of this Government's forerunner will be reversed, overturned. It would be a tragedy for the people of this country if this were to happen, and even at this late hour I beg the Government to think again.
3.57 p.m.
Lord ORR-EWING: My Lords, I think we all welcome the noble Lord, Lord Melchett, back from his arduous duties in Northern Ireland; I am glad to see him looking so hale and hearty. I observe that his shadow grows no less. But I find that his arguments grow less and less convincing, and I hope that we shall not have to hear them for very much longer. I think he went slightly too far—this was a new one I think, and I have heard all his arguments—when he said that this was a "rationalisation" of the ship repairing industry. If we look at the ship repairing industry we find there are 90 ship repairers of all shapes and sizes. This Bill seeks, or did seek, to nationalise 12. Of those 12, three are already nationalised—and those incidentally are the ones in the worst trouble—three want to be nationalised, and six are going to be allowed to continue their prosperous future. We must be glad for small mercies. There is one among the shipbuilders which wants to have its ship repairing side made free and is not
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allowed to. So it is a strange sort of rationalisation that is going to affect different ship repairers in different packets all over our country.
The other argument which I thought was even less convincing was that we must go ahead with this because this was the will of the other place. I really must remind the noble Lord that this will was a little uncertain. On one occasion it was a tie; that was because one gentleman, I think on my side of the House, was taking a holiday in Corfu; I admire his taste but not his punctuality in returning. It seemed to us that in the other place there was no very distinct will observed at all. The majorities were slender; once a tie. When it was retried and the pairing system was made less manoeuvrable, shall we say, there was a majority of one.
Nor do I accept myself—and I think I am rot alone, judging from the columns of our national newspapers—that because something is in the Manifesto you must automatically charge ahead with it even though all the conditions under which it was put down have changed in the interim. I would remind noble Lords that it did not say "nationalisation" in the Manifesto, it said "take into public ownership". BP is in public ownership, and in fact the Government are trying to reduce the degree of public ownership because it plans to "flog" off a portion of it. The Government did not have to take 100 per cent. of all the aerospace and shipbuilding companies.
Nor do I ever accept that because you have got 39 per cent. of the popular vote, the great majority of whom have never read the Manifesto of any Party, you are entitled to go ahead irrespective of changed conditions and irrespective of a change in our economic situation. I would remind your Lordships that Hitler had more than 39 per cent. of the popular vote, and we all thought it was ghastly that he should be allowed to go ahead with everything that he included in his Manifesto; it was to the detriment of the world that he did so. Therefore, I am not greatly convinced under any of those headings with the arguments that have been advanced today.
This nationalisation Bill started life on 17th April 1975. It has been nearly 23 months before Parliament. Through out that time we have discussed it for only

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12 days, although it has been discussed for many more days in another place. It is sad for democracy how minuscule the number of Amendments tabled by the Liberal Benches, the Cross-Benches and our own Benches that have been accepted by the Government. The Government were elected on the ticket—and we saw this not just in small print in the Manifesto but it was widely publicised on television—that they stood for open government. It seems that it is open government but closed minds, and that is not to their credit.
I should like to reiterate what my noble friend Lord Strathcona and Mount Royal said. Within the period of 700 days that the Bill has been before Parliament it has been before this House for only 12 days. I hope that when the Minister replies he will give us credit that that was not due to delays in this House. No one could say that 12 days is a large slice of 700 days. The Bill has taken that long because of delays in other places.
Lord MELCHETT: My Lords, I should like to get that straight. Is the noble Lord saying that out of the total period of 700 days the Bill has been before this House for only 12 days? If so, I am not sure that he is comparing like with like.
Lord ORR-EWING: My Lords, that is why I particularly said "Parliamentary days"—700 elapsed days and the Bill has been discussed in this House for only 12, counting all the stages and the period of ping-pong between the two Houses. Therefore, in that period, we have not had the power to delay the Bill. The Bill has taken so long partly because it is a bad, muddled and unjust Bill and partly because the Government do not have the majority in the House of Commons to bulldoze it through, as they would like to do. Certainly there is not a majority in the country behind it.
Throughout the discussions of the Bill in both places—and I have read these debates fairly carefully—we have argued that under the 1972 Act it is perfectly possible to go ahead, and that we do not need to have all this extra nationalisation business. The Government could have proceeded under the 1972 Act and also through the National Enterprise Board. That has recently been made even more
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evident because £65 million has been given to the holding company to carry on with shipbuilding management.
Lord PARGITER: My Lords, the noble Lord has referred to the National Enterprise Board. I thought that the Conservative Party did not like the National Enterprise Board.
Lord ORR-EWING: My Lords, we do not like it because we do not think that it will do the job. However, it is there for better or for worse. Is it not better to use something that is in existence rather than to drag many extra organisations into the vortex of a bad thing? Those portions of the ship repairing or ship-building industry which it was felt it was desirable to nationalise could be taken over by the National Enterprise Board. If the Government can be spoke £1,400 million to British Leyland under the 1972 Act, how much easier is it to give the relatively small amount of £300 million or £400 million under the 1972 Act.
Lord PARGITER: My Lords, I thought that the Conservative Party was also committed to getting rid of the National Enterprise Board.
Lord ORR-EWING: My Lords, I have also mentioned the 1972 Act. It was under Part II of that Act that the last £65 million was given. It was under the 1972 Act initially that British Leyland was assisted. There is the power and the format. Although we may not approve of these organisations they do exist and could have been used if the Government had the will and wanted to get on. Why the sudden hurry to reach this agreement between our two Front Benches? I find this perplexing in view of the amount of time that has elapsed.
I believe that the Front Benches were asked to make a decision within two or three days. If that is so, it is surprising because the proposition has been trailed over the front pages of our national newspapers for a long time. We have read in the Financial Times, The Times and other newspapers that ship repairing would be omitted; then suddenly there is an approach through official channels and immediately the decision has to be taken. There should have been more consideration of both the pros and cons of making

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this arrangement—that would have been beneficial.
I also object to this procedure on constitutional grounds. The Bill has been declared hybrid. How glad I was to hear the noble Lord, Lord Shinwell, say that. The more we say it the better because it is not yet generally believed outside that the Bill was examined by two officials from the House of Commons and two officials from this House. It is sometimes implied that your Lordships made this decision and sat in judgment on the issue of hybridity. Noble Lords know perfectly well that that was not so. The Bill was found to be hybrid. Once a Bill is found to be hybrid by the Examiners all parts of the Bill are normally open for people to petition against, and a Select Committee is set up to receive the petitions and consider them. Every part of the Bill is open for consideration. None of us can know whether the Select Committee, which could comprise five or even seven Members of your Lordships' House, would have found it possible or in order to listen to some of these petitions.
We must give individuals and individual bodies the right to petition—that is inbuilt into our present Constitution. At a stroke they have been denied that right. There could be many people, particularly the 70 per cent. in the aerospace industry who are not organised in trade unions, who might wish to petition. They could have petitioned against that part of the Bill which sets up the participation machinery—industrial democracy as it is called—on the ground that it was unfair because it discriminated in favour of the 30 per cent., the trade unionists. I do not know whether that is in order. However, those people should have the right to petition. I see that the noble Lord is shaking his head.
Lord MELCHETT: My Lords, I am doing so on the basis of the remarks made by the noble Lord, Lord Strathcona and Mount Royal.
Lord ORR-EWING: My Lords, the remarks of my noble friend were very pertinent but I am not sure to which part the noble Lord, Lord Melchett, refers. I have said that I do not know whether the Select Committee would have found that this was in order—none of us can
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forecast that. We must seriously consider whether we are right in denying such people the opportunity to put their case to a Select Committee. Certainly some of the shipbuilders like Yarrow and Vosper Thornycroft were preparing a case to petition against the Bill. We have now denied them the right. They should have been allowed to petition.
I hear my noble and learned friend Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone, who is very learned in the law, making critical noises from the Front Bench. He was one of those who negotiated this deal and I am sure that he knows very much more about it than others. We shall take a serious turn if we deny people the right to petition under our procedure and Constitution. This would be a new format for a Bill which denies them their inalienable right.
Those at Vosper Thornycroft may say that they are being unfairly treated vis-à-vis some of their competitors. This certainly could happen as regards compensation, to which the noble Lord, Lord Monson, referred. This is not compensation; in some cases it is outright robbery. Those at Yarrow are to be paid, if we judge it correctly, one year's earnings. That is incredible. When one takes over a company one probably pays five years' earnings or sometimes even seven years' earnings. The good firms should have been compensated more generously; the bad ones should have been compensated much less generously. That would give rise to a much greater degree of fairness than is built into the Bill and this formula.
As I have said, your Lordships' House has earned a great deal of respect, particularly as regards the constitutional stand that it has taken in the last six months. It has been noted that we operated strictly according to the rules laid down for us and according to the power given to us by Mr. Attlee's Government in 1949. It is most unfortunate that, without remonstration, we seek to pass a Bill using a device which is very similar to that which Mr. Foot in the House of Commons tried to use and of which we were deeply critical. It may be convenient for us on both sides of the House that we act like this and do not delay further. It is certainly convenient to the Government, and certainly convenient to the House of Commons where they no

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longer have a majority. I wonder whether we do not do ourselves a disservice by eroding our constitutional powers in this manner. We are looked up to for our constitutional prowess and our integrity: this is how we are respected in the country now, and I think we are setting a very dangerous precedent which may well be quoted against us on some future occasion. In the House of Lords the convenience of a minority Government cannot, and must not, take precedence over our constitutional duties.
4.10 p.m.
Lord SELSDON: My Lords, in rising I am conscious of a certain feeling of déjà vu, or prévu, and on the moment critique I was absent. May I apologise to your Lordships' House and particularly to noble Lords opposite. As the noble Baroness, Lady Llewelyn-Davies, would know, things often do not go according to plan. Noble Lords opposite are well aware of their own administrative problems and, if I may, I will intervene for two and a half minutes, not on points of principle but on points of action. Noble Lords opposite will know how strongly we on this side of the House feel that the way to increase productivity or to regenerate industry in this country is not by acquisition but by creation and perhaps one should say a certain sense of freedom and incentives. But today we are faced with the situation whereby for one reason or another, the Government in power believe that a solution to the shipbuilding and aerospace industry lies in acquisition or nationalisation. The point we have made before is that it is obviously the duty of Government, if they decide that is the right thing to do, to do it as cheaply and as quickly as possible.
I have been criticised by my colleagues on this side of the House in previous debates where one urged that something should be done quickly, and while one does not approve of the way in which this is being done there is no doubt that Government involvement or public sector involvement in both industries is essential, although perhaps some of us would say not necessarily desirable. But what concerns me more than anything is that in the intervening months or years since this Bill was originally drafted the situation has changed beyond all belief.
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At the time the Bill was drafted there were many who believed that in the country we had already reached the bottom and people did not believe that we could continue to slide in the way we have. There are people who believe that we have now reached the bottom and that there is no way, economically, that the United Kingdom can go down. It may seem odd that the passage and the implementation of this Bill should be so critical, for we are faced with two points. There are those in this country who, for one reason or another, can create and produce and generate enthusiasm for Bills and there are those who car not. The interesting thing to me, and the question I pose to noble Lords opposite, is this. Why is it that all those people who surreptitiously, through innumerable corridors, urge that they should be taken over and that their liabilities should be passed on to the State are those who have notoriously failed before? And why is it that those who have done well and have demonstrated that with the right amount of Government support, or perhaps total independence, they can stand on their own feet, are opposed to nationalisation? My Lords, I hope in the interpretation of this Bill noble Lords will bear this question in mind.
4.14 p.m.
Lord CAMPBELL of CROY: My Lords, I hope that we are about to see the closing stages of the protracted proceedings on this Bill. The Second Reading of the Bill in this House took place in September, but it was first introduced in another place in April 1975, nearly two years' ago, and it has now spanned three Sessions of Parliament. At the beginning I will make it absolutely clear to your Lordships that we from this Bench thoroughly dislike this Bill. We believe that the proposals for nationalising the industries are damaging in the long term, damaging both to the industries and to the country's economy. As we have made clear on previous occasions, we accept that there is a crisis in the merchant ship-building industry, but we have pointed out that there are other ways in which this could be dealt with and indeed the Government within the last two weeks have agreed to start action under the 1972 Industry Act.

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But I must point out that the Parliament Act is hanging over this Bill during this current Session. Besides the Examiners' report, that is another major difference between our previous consideration of the Bill and our discussion today. The choice boils down to, first, delay and the whole Bill probably becoming law eventually under the Parliament Act; or a quick passage of the Bill now through Parliament, minus the list of 12 named ship repairing companies. The Examiners' report found that the Bill was hybrid in the ship repairing section and the Government now intend to remove that section and so remove hybridity from the Bill. They are not proposing to remove all the ship repairing from the Bill, and, like my noble friend Lord Orr-Ewing, I regret that, but they are intending to remove hybridity as a response to the finding of the Examiners.
I believe that we should recognise what has happened since 8th December when the Bill, reintroduced, came here from another place. The Bill has been dealt with by Parliamentary clerks and other officials and there has been time for two things: first, for the proper procedure to be adopted and, secondly, for the Government to have second thoughts. I believe that this is not a day for recriminations. The Government in the end have conceded, in accepting what a large majority in this House thought right in November; namely, that the ship repairing section of the Bill should be dropped. This is an occasion for a cool assessment of what has happened.
Some noble Lords have spoken of precedents and I think there is still some confusion outside your Lordships' House as to what has happened. The powers of this House are very limited. None the less they had enabled the truth to emerge and the truth to prevail—that the Bill is hybrid. Had it not been for the existence of this House there would have been no opportunity and no time for the Examiners to determine that the Bill is hybrid, contrary to the Government's opinion. The Government held their opinion very strongly but they were proved to be mistaken. Governments are not infallible and no blame attached to this Government for that. It is the same for all Governments and, since fallibility is a human weakness, noble Lords opposite will not mind my
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pointing out the Examiners' finding that the Parliamentary draftsman was given an impossible task. He was not given all the information needed in order to ensure that the Bill was not hybrid.
The Bill was in the Commons for a year and a half before we in this House were able to discuss it for the first time in September. We were then expected to pass it through all its stages within six weeks, though that time was later extended. In that first debate—I hope your Lordships will not mind my recalling this—it was I who happened to be the first person to raise the question of hybridity in the ship repairing section. On the 28th September, in col. 208 of the Official Report onwards, I pointed out that the 12 ship repairing companies named in Schedue 2 did not appear accurately to conform with the criteria in the Bill. If that was so, private interests in particular categories were not being treated equally. In those circumstances Parliament had devised the hybrid Bill procedure to enable affected citizens to put their cases in person. That procedure exists to protect the rights of the citizen to plead his cause and to be heard before a committee of Parliament.
Had the Government identified the Bill as hybrid at the beginning it would have followed a different course from the beginning. When I raised the matter at the end of September it was too late for the necessary procedure to be introduced within that Session. At the very end of the last Session the Examiners' proceedings and hybrid procedure could not have been introduced without the Bill's failing to complete its passage in time. As the ship repairing section was not a significant or essential part of the Bill, and as we on these Benches considered that the Bill would be better without it, we pressed Amendments to omit ship repairing. Had the Government then accepted our proposition they would have obtained the rest of the Bill last November.
Ministers rejected my advice last September, although it was being put help-fully, that the ship repairing section seemed hybrid. They did so in long Written Answers to me and to my noble friend Lord Colville. But it must have been study of those replies which caused the Public Bill Offices in both Houses to refer the Bill to the Examiners immediately on its reintroduction this Session. Revelation

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of the Government's interpretations of the criteria produced a prima facie case for examination. As a result, the four Examiners, two from the Commons and two from the Lords, determined that the ship repairing section was hybrid before any Peer discussed the Bill in this Session, far less voted upon it. There must have been much joy in heaven during this past week, for the Government are now accepting what they resisted four months ago.
For our part, we on these Benches intensely dislike the proposed nationalisation of the aircraft and shipbuilding industries. That is not the way to promote their interests or success. The Government have on many occasions referred to the plight of the merchant shipbuilders, who have been experiencing a very severe crisis owing to the worldwide shortage of orders. As noble Lords know, the British industry is not alone in this; other countries which build merchant ships are suffering too. At any time during the last two years the Government could have assisted their necessary restructuring using the powers and finance available under the Industry Act 1972. Only within the last two weeks have they decided to do so.
It is clear, and the Government have admitted this, that the industry must become smaller, with consequent redundancies, as a result of restructuring, whether or not under nationalisation. But the later remedial action is started, the more difficult the problems will be. In this situation, it was not surprising that most of the organising committee, including Mr. Graham Day the designated chief executive, decided to depart at the end of last year. They formed the nucleus of the proposed national corporation, British Shipbuilders; their patience must have been exhausted with the Government's mishandling of the Bill, culminating in the Cabinet's refusal in November, for reasons best known to themselves, to accept the Bill without ship repairing.
I hope Ministers will find ways of informing the House within the next few days how that organising committee is now to be reconstituted—because so many of its members have departed—if, as now expected, the Bill will arrive on the Statute Book within a few weeks. I have been inquiring from time to time—the noble Lord, Lord Melchett, will be
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aware of this very well—whether the Government have yet decided in what part of the country the headquarters of that organisation will be; it seems very late in the day not to have taken even that decision yet. Perhaps Lord Melchett will be able to tell us today or, if not, in the near future. I asked him on Second Reading in September and he said he hoped very shortly to be able to give us that information.
My noble friend Lord Orr-Ewing is right to express concern, as he did today, that the alternative course to what is now proposed by the two Front Benches should be very carefully considered. I can tell him that various courses have been very carefully considered by the occupants of this Front Bench because one does not lightly acquiesce in throwing away the opportunities that the citizen has once they have been won, even if a very large majority of those concerned have had conceded to them what they were asking for. But I ask Lord Orr-Ewing, and others who may think like him and who are equally concerned, to consider carefully the Parliament Act and its restrictions on the actions and options which are open to Parliament as a whole. I think Lord Orr-Ewing knows that I have myself been in the forefront of those trying to help the industries and particularly the companies he named; regarding compensation, for example, Yarrows, and, as far as the ship repairing industry is concerned, Vosper Thornycroft, concerning whom I moved the special Amendments which had been drafted in order to meet that company's unique position.
I am sorry that the Government preferred to remove hybridity and would not go further and take the ship repairing element which still remained in the Bill out as well; that would have meant removing 13 companies and not just the named 12. Since the Government put this proposal last week I have been examining every contingency in the coming months and I can tell my noble friend that I think the course we are now proposing is the best one for the industries as a whole and for the country.
The noble Lord, Lord Monson, also spoke about his grave concern, particularly about the compensation clauses. I will not go into the Parliament Act in detail,

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nor will I re-open the debates on compensation, which were very long in this House, and the noble Lords who took part in those debates spoke with great concern and knowledge. Lord Monson raised the possibility of voting against the Bill now on Second Reading in view of what had happened, or at any rate I thought he spoke as if he did not like the idea of the Bill getting a Second Reading. I would point out to him that the quirks which arise under the Parliament Act are such that, were this House to have a Division and decline to give the Bill a Second Reading, that would have the effect of activating the Parliament Act immediately and producing exactly the opposite result to what Lord Monson would wish; namely, the Bill, including ship repairing, would be available to the Government forthwith.
Lord MONSON: My Lords, I did not suggest that the House should vote against the Second Reading of the Bill. I was urging the Government to think again between now and the Committee stage.
Lord CAMPBELL of CROY: My Lords, I am glad to have given the noble Lord an opportunity to make clear what he was saying and it has given me the opportunity to point out the extraordinary contradictions that exist if one looks into the operation of the Parliament Act and considers the various possibilities. I have not today repeated the arguments against the Bill; we have heard them many times from various quarters of your Lordships' House. Nor have I repeated the arguments against the ship repairing section of the Bill. From what I have said about the history and handling of the Bill, however, I hope your Lordships will realise that I and my noble friends on this Bench consider it better to adopt the course now proposed by the Government in view of the effects of the Parliament Act, and to drop the ship repairing section in Schedule 2.
We prefer that course, rather than continuing the uncertainty, which is painful for the merchant ship building industry, and facing the probability that the Parliament Act would eventually cause the nationalisation of all the industries, including the 12 ship repairing companies. For these reasons, we hope that the
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House will accept now what has been proposed by the Government as the best course in the most unusual circumstances in which this Bill has returned to us.
4.31 p.m.
Lord MELCHETT: My Lords, I should like to follow the noble Lords, Lord Strathcona and Mount Royal and Lord Campbell of Croy and thus, hopefully, avoid going over all the ground that we covered at such length and so often in the previous stages of the Bill. May I say straight away how grateful I am to both noble Lords for the support that they have given to the arrangements reached through the usual channels about the deletion of the independent ship repairing firms from the Bill?
The noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, raised the matter of the headquarters of British Shipbuilders, which is, as he indicated, something that we have discussed on several previous occasions. However, as I readily acknowledge that I have not been able to give a satisfactory answer before and, I regret to say, I shall not be able to give a satisfactory answer today, I felt that it was a matter to which I should briefly revert. As the noble Lord himself said, several members of the Organising Committee of British Shipbuilders who were to have been appointed to British Shipbuilders will not now be joining the Corporation. In the circumstances, I understand that it was felt that, regrettable though I readily acknowledge this to be, a decision on the choice of location for the headquarters of British Shipbuilders could not properly be made without the benefit of the views of the new members of the Corporation after its formation. As your Lordships know, the headquarters will be in an assisted area with a tradition of shipbuilding, and I am afraid that all I can add to that is that an announcement about the choice of location will be made as soon as possible.
The noble Lord, Lord Strathcona and Mount Royal, asked me to elaborate on the Government's reaction to the Examiners' findings which I touched on briefly in my opening remarks. It may be helpful if I take this opportunity just to clarify what I said. Needless to say, the Government are deeply concerned about the Examiners' findings. It would not be seemly nor is it now necessary to

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go over that ground in great detail in respect of this Bill. So far as the Bill is concerned, the findings created a new situation and we had to deal with that situation. However, in the Government's view, the findings raise serious issues for the future. As I have said and as the Government's Statement last Wednesday made clear, the Examiners' findings leave the general position on hybridity in an unsatisfactory and uncertain state. We are therefore carefully considering the implications for future legislation. I hope that noble Lords will accept that, throughout, we have acted in good faith over hybridity and on the basis of the best factual information and legal advice available to the Government.
Lord HARMAR-NICHOLLS: My Lords, I feel that the noble Lord is perhaps being deliberately ambiguous about this. What is unsatisfactory about the Examiners' report? They were asked to report whether or not the Bill was hybrid in order to retain the rights of certain individuals and companies. They reported that it was hybrid. What is unsatisfactory about that from the Government's point of view except that it cuts across what the Government wanted to happen and that they refused doggedly to send it to the Examiners to have it cleared in good enough time for them to have dealt with it earlier? What is unsatisfactory? To leave it in that ambiguous way is not at all satisfactory to me.
Lord MELCHETT: My Lords, if the noble Lord had allowed me to finish, I should not have been in the position of leaving it in what he calls an "ambiguous way". I did not say that the findings were unsatisfactory: what I did say, as the noble Lord will see if he cares to study Hansard, was that the Examiners' findings left the general position on hybridity in an unsatisfactory and uncertain state. As I was saying, it was the Government's belief that, according to the precedents and previous rulings on the facts as we knew them, the Bill was not hybrid. On matters of fact and legal interpretation, the Examiners found in the Government's favour in all the many cases raised except one—the Westminster Dredging Company, one thousandth part of whose turnover is in ship repairing. The Examiners recognised the absurdity
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of this and it is sure to raise problems for legislation in the future.
On the question of the turnover criterion for ship repairing, which the Examiners found not "germane" and therefore a further cause of hybridity, the Government are concerned that the Examiners' approach to what is "germane" may well make it exceedingly difficult in future legislation, not just nationalisation legislation but also other Bills which might risk hybridity, to find criteria which it will be possible to advise with any degree of certainty will not be found hybrid.
This is not a simple matter of whether individual subjects should or should not have a right to plead their cause; the whole hybridity procedure is about the balancing of individual rights against the wider public interest. It has hitherto been recognised that nationalisation measures are, in the wider public interest, not appropriate to Private Bill procedure. The Examiners' findings leave the subject in a state of uncertainty. That was all I was attempting to say when the noble Lord, Lord Harmar-Nicholls, intervened.
Lord HAILSHAM of SAINT MARY-LEBONE: My Lords, this is really very serious indeed, because what the Examiners really said, if the noble Lord will study again the beginning and end of their report, was that, by any rational criteria, this Bill was an obvious candidate for hydridity but that, because the rights of the subject had been so far eroded that they were compelled to decide on trivialities and arid details, they none the less held that it was still hybrid. However, it was plain as a pikestaff from the beginning and end of the report that, but for the way in which the rights of the subject had been eroded by successive readings, the Examiners would have regarded this as obviously hybrid.
I look upon this as a matter of the utmost seriousness. What the noble Lord, on the instructions of his colleagues, now indicates is that he will erode the rights of the subject still further if he can and destroy the reality of the subject's rights. I must warn him that he will have bitter opposition from this side of the House.
Lord MELCHETT: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord for

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his lengthy intervention, but that was not what I said. Again, if I may ask him to read what I said in Hansard, he will see that I merely said that the Examiners' findings left the position slightly unclear and in an unsatisfactory state. If the noble and learned Lord will look again at the Examiners' ruling I believe that he will find that they themselves make it clear in their report, particularly in the final paragraphs, that they regard the position as unsatisfactory. That is all I was attempting to say to your Lordships' House.
Lord HAILSHAM of SAINT MARY-LEBONE: My Lords, the only reason the Examiners regard it as unsatisfactory is because they say that the hybridity procedures
"were designed by both Houses to ensure that the subject should have a right to plead his cause before them if he could show that their legislation would put him to greater disadvantage than it would put his fellows."
In other words, Parliament has been careful to protect the individual from the majority, from the power of the State or, if you prefer it, from the power of the Government. The Examiners go on to say that the only unsatisfactory part is that,
"As we have indicated above, the rulings of Mr. Speaker King and his predecessor, Mr. Speaker Clifton-Brown, have, we think, almost completely lost sight of the fundamental purposes of the hybridity rule."
If the noble Lord's unfortunate intervention in this matter means anything, it means that the Government intend to erode the rights of the subject still further and these rights the Examiners have said clearly have already been eroded too far. If the noble Lord did not mean that, perhaps he will explain to the House what he does mean.
Lord MELCHETT: My Lords, it clearly does not mean that. As I have said, I suggest that he should look again at my remarks in Hansard. If I may say so, he is getting rather excited about something over which there is absolutely no difference between us. If the phraseology which I used when he was listening to me led him to believe that I was saying what he suggests I was saying, he was mistaken, and I can give him that assurance. There really is no difference between us. All I was attempting to explain was a phrase in my
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opening remarks which the noble Lord, Lord Strathcona, asked me to elaborate on. No more than that. If I may say so, the noble and learned Lord has no justification for reading into what I said something rather more exciting and disturbing than was intended.
Lord HARMAR-NICHOLLS: My Lords, will the noble Lord give way?
Lord MELCHETT: My Lords, I have given way several times on this point and the noble and learned Lord interrupted me at considerable length. I was now intending to turn to another matter, and so I should prefer at this stage not to give way, if possible.
The noble Lord, Lord Orr-Ewing, spoke about the convenience for various Parties of the arrangement that had been reached between the usual channels. He mentioned in particular the convenience for both Front Benches that he could see in this arrangement, the convenience to the House of Commons, and so on. The noble Lord did not mention the convenience, and indeed the vital interests, of the industries affected by the Bill and all those who work in them, and I think that that might have been a consideration that was very much in the forefront of all those who were involved in coming to the agreement that has been reached.
The noble Lord, Lord Inverforth, made an extremely constructive and helpful speech. He may remember—and I think that we referred to this in the past in the course of consideration of the Bill—that he and I first met when I opened the Pallion yard of the State-owned Sunderland Shipbuilders, to which the noble Lord referred in his speech. My noble friend Lord Shinwell may be interested to know that this yard is the most modern covered shipbuilding yard in the world, and I am happy to say that the yard is fulfilling its promise as one of the most efficient and modern in Europe.
I was delighted to hear what the noble Lord, Lord Inverforth, had to say about the ship that has just been delivered to his company. I can certainly, and gladly, give the noble Lord an assurance that the Intervention Fund which he mentioned will not be used to place United Kingdom shipowners at a disadvantage compared with overseas customers. I am very grateful to the noble Lord for his good

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wishes and for his helpful statements, and once again I should like to pay tribute to the good will being shown by the British shipping industry to the British shipbuilding industry.
I am sure that, whatever our differences over this Bill, I shall be expressing the views of the whole House when I give our good wishes for the future to the two industries and to all those who work in them. Our aim is, and always has been, to see a strong and successful British shipbuilding and British aircraft industry.
Baroness WARD of NORTH TYNE-SIDE: My Lords, before he sits down, will the noble Lord explain, on the question of compensation, why the original arrangements for compensation, introduced when the coal mines were taken over, have not been introduced in this Bill? My recollection is—and I have lived a very long time—that the compensation and the methods used when the coal mines were taken over were considered very satisfactory, even by those people who were against nationalisation. Why under this Bill is compensation not to be based on the same scheme, with the same people examining it, so that there would be less injustice in the compensation schemes offered under this Bill? The noble Lord has not really mentioned compensation at all, and that does not suit me. I want to know why the same system is not going to be used in this case.
Lord MELCHETT: My Lords, as I have now been sat down for some time, it might be appropriate for me to refer the noble Baroness to the appropriate place in the Committee stages of the Bill when this particular subject was gone into at some considerable length and when the analogy with the compensation terms when the coal industry was nationalised was discussed at considerable length by those noble Lords who were taking an interest in the Bill at that stage.
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

CONSOLIDATED FUND (No. 2) BILL
Brought from the Commons, endorsed with the Certificate from the Speaker that the Bill is a Money Bill within the meaning of the Parliament Act 1911; read 1a.

LEGAL ADVICE AND ASSISTANCE (FINANCIAL CONDITIONS) (No. 2) REGULATIONS 1977
4.44 p.m.
The LORD CHANCELLOR (Lord Elwyn-Jones)The LORD CHANCELLOR (Lord Elwyn-Jones) rose to move, That the Legal Advice and Assistance Financial Conditions) (No. 2) Regulations 1977, laid before the House on 15th February, be approved. The noble and learned Lord said: My Lords, the two sets of regulations which I am about to invite your Lordships to approve are connected with each other, and with leave I will introduce them together. The Legal Aid (Matrimonial Proceedings) Regulations restrict the grant of legal aid in undefended divorce proceedings in England and Wales. The Legal Advice and Assistance (Financial Conditions) (No. 2) Regulations increase the upper disposable income limit for legal advice and assistance from £35 a week to £42 a week, in this way making advice and assistance more widely available. They are both regulations which I have made under the Legal Aid Act 1974, but which require the approval of each House of Parliament before they can come into operation. They have already been approved in another place, and they now come before your Lordships.
My Lords, these regulations form the final stage in the implementation of my plan, which I first announced in the House in June of last year, to extend so-called special procedure and restrict legal aid in undefended divorce cases. I explained the proposals fairly fully then, but I hope that your Lordships will bear with me while I recapitulate them briefly. The first and major consideration is the overriding need to control the growth of public expenditure on civil legal aid, which has been rising rapidly in recent years. It increased from £11½ million in 1971–72 to £34½ million in the current year, 1976–77. In five years it has thus trebled in money terms and something like doubled in real terms. The Government decided some time ago that this increase could not be allowed to continue, and the White Paper on Public Expenditure, published last February, therefore announced that, by adjustments in the scope of the scheme and other economies, the Government intended to keep expenditure on civil legal aid level in real terms after this financial year. At the same time,

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the White Paper envisaged that expenditure on legal advice and assistance (as opposed to the whole of legal aid for court representation), and on legal aid in criminal cases, would continue to rise in real terms, and be allowed to rise.
Although my paramount objective is to curb public expenditure in this field, there is another consideration which I have very much in mind. I am well aware of the need to improve legal services, and in particular to make the financial conditions of legal aid more generous so that more people can qualify. If possible, I should also like to establish a few more law centres in the areas of greatest need. Resources for these desirable purposes can be released only by reducing expenditure on other legal services. Fortunately, a measure is at hand which by a reform of divorce procedure offers the prospect of making the necessary reduction in the growth of expenditure on civil legal aid without, I believe, loss of necessary legal services to the public. At the same time it offers a fair, though I admit not certain, prospect of also releasing some further resources for desirable improvements.
The main step involved is the extension of the "special procedure". This amounts in most cases to postal divorce, to all types of undefended divorce cases. Under the special procedure, where the registrar is satisfied that an undefended case is straightforward, a decree is granted by the judge without the parties having to attend a hearing in open court. Special procedure already applies to some classes of undefended divorce proceedings, and, as the Solicitor General put it in another place it,
"combines economy with humanity. It has rendered it unnecessary for thousands of people to appear in court and join publicly in the dissection of their dead marriage. It has also reduced the cost of proceedings in a major field of litigation, whether the cost is met by legal aid or by private funds"—[Official Report, Commons, 15/7/76; col. 1134.]
The Matrimonial Causes Rule Committee has now made the necessary amendments to extend the special procedure to all remaining classes of undefended divorce with effect from 1st April of this year. This means that the special procedure will now be available in cases brought on the "unreasonable behaviour"
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ground and where there are children of the marriage under the age of 16. I should, however, make it clear that this will in no way diminish the rights and protections which the law confers on wives and husbands, and on their children. In particular, in every case where there are children under 16 the judge will continue to be bound by the statutory requirement to satisfy himself, before granting a decree absolute, that the arrangements proposed for the children are satisfactory or the best that can be made in the circumstances. He will normally do so by asking the petitioner to discuss the proposed arrangements with him informally in his private room.
My Lords, the effect of these changes which have been made is that in the vast majority of divorce cases which are undefended the court will grant a decree without a hearing in open court. It follows that there will be no need for legal aid for representation at such a hearing. Accordingly, legal aid can be withdrawn from the decree proceedings in all but a few cases. Legal advice and assistance will continue to be needed so as to provide the litigants with all necessary help and guidance in connection with the decree proceedings. Full legal aid will also continue to be needed for the ancillary proceedings concerning children, maintenance and property, which in most cases nowadays are, frankly, the only areas in which the issues arise. Nevertheless, the abolition of the hearing in open court on the decree, and the consequent restriction of legal aid, can be expected to lead to substantial savings in public expenditure.
The special procedure having already been extended, the two sets of regulations now before the House are designed to make the corresponding restriction of legal aid and extension of legal advice. The Matrimonial Proceedings Regulations provide, in effect, that full legal aid is no longer to be available in any undefended divorce cases which are brought under the special procedure. Regulation 2 provides that legal aid, as opposed to legal advice and assistance, may be given for the proceedings leading to the decree only where the case is defended, or where it is heard in open court (which may occasionally happen where there is some technical or evidential difficulty), or where the applicant suffers from some physical or

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mental incapacity which makes it impracticable for him to proceed without legal aid.
Regulation 3 provides that full legal aid will continue to be available wherever necessary in all cases for ancillary questions, which I have mentioned, concerning maintenance, property and the arrangements for the children. It also provides that legal aid will continue to be available for applications for leave to present a petition for divorce before the expiration of three years from the date of the marriage, for, as I expect your Lordships know, a petition may be presented in those circumstances, within three years, only where a judge is satisfied that the case is one of exceptional hardship suffered by the petitioner or of exceptional depravity on the part of the respondent. Legal aid will also continue to be available for an application for an injunction, or for the purpose of making or opposing any other application, or for satisfying the court on any other matter, which raises a substantial question for determination by the court.
In thus restricting the grant of legal aid for the decree proceedings in undefended cases brought under the special procedure, it has never been my intention to deprive divorcing couples of the advice and assistance which clearly are so necessary at a time of great personal stress and anxiety. I thought that I had made this clear last June. Nevertheless, I have received a number of representations against my proposals based on the misunderstanding that I had proposed to withdraw legal advice and assistance as well as legal aid. This is not the case, and the Financial Conditions Regulations now before your Lordships will help to ensure that all necessary help will be given to litigants who are in the unhappy position of seeking divorces. Under the statutory advice and assistance scheme, the solicitor will be able to provide all the necessary preliminary advice to his client, undertake negotiations with the other spouse on the various matters to be settled, draft the divorce petition and its necessary supporting documents and advise his client how to present them to the court and obtain the decree.
In order to ensure as far as possible that those who would formerly have been eligible for legal aid will in future be eligible for advice and assistance, the
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Financial Conditions Regulations increase the upper disposable income limit for legal advice and assistance from £35 a week to £42 a week, in that way bringing it into line with the corresponding limit for legal aid. That is all that they do, and I hope that I may confidently assume that this increase in the scope of the advice and assistance scheme will be welcomed in all quarters of the House. I have also taken two other steps to ensure the continuing availability of necessary legal services in undefended divorce, which I ought to mention to complete the picture.
The first also concerns legal advice and assistance. Under the Legal Aid Act 1974, the solicitor cannot give advice and assistance in excess of £25-worth of work without the approval of the area committee of the Law Society. Hitherto, prior authority has had to be obtained in every case to exceed the £25 limit. However, I have now modified this requirement by other regulations, which are not before the House, which have enabled me to authorise the Law Society to notify solicitors in advance that approval will be given for work to be done up to £45-worth in undefended divorce cases where the work includes drafting the petition and supporting documents with a view to obtaining the decree. The £45 in itself is not an absolute ceiling. As at present, there will be no particular financial limit on the work which can be done where the area committee is satisfied in advance that the work is necessary. But the decision to allow up to £45-worth of work to be done in these divorce cases without prior authority will, I believe, save time and expense, both for the solicitor and for the legal aid administration. It will also indirectly, but significantly, help the clients.
My Lords, the other point which I should mention concerns court fees. At present, the court fees of divorce litigants who are legally aided are paid out of the legal aid fund. The effect of restricting legal aid, if no countervailing measures were taken, would be that the litigants would normally have to pay the court fees out of their own pockets. The fee on presenting the petition is £16, and on issuing a notice to proceed is £10. Plainly these are amounts that we could not require all litigants who are eligible for legal aid to pay. I have accordingly amended the Matrimonial Causes Fee

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Order so as to provide that the fees shall not be payable by litigants in divorce cases who are receiving supplementary benefit, family income supplement or legal advice and assistance. The existing discretion to remit court fees in any other case where to require payment would cause hardship will also continue.
My Lords, I apologise for describing these regulations at such length, especially in view of the importance of the matters for discussion which are to follow, but as they form part of a plan which aroused a good deal of interest and some initial controversy in the legal profession, I thought it right to give a full explanation. They have been prepared in close consultation with all relevant judicial and professional authorities, including particularly the Law Society, which administers the civil legal aid scheme. Indeed, I should like to pay tribute here to the help which the Law Society have given in preparing the implementation of my proposals. My Advisory Committee on Legal Aid has examined the whole scheme in detail, and in their 26th Annual Report they concluded that in all the circumstances the restriction of legal aid in undefended divorce on the lines I propose is the only acceptable course.
In conclusion, my Lords, these regulations are part of a scheme which offers the best prospect of bringing expenditure on civil legal aid within manageable limits without damage to the public, and the only hope of releasing resources to make improvements in legal aid where they are most needed. The regulations are the result of long and careful consideration and consultation, and I commend them to the House.
Baroness EMMET of AMBERLEY: My Lords, may I ask whether——
Lord HAILSHAM of SAINT MARY-LEBONE: My Lords, the noble Baroness may not do so at this stage. The Question must be put before anything else is done.
The LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I venture to think that the noble Baroness was going to use the well-known formula, "Before the noble and learned Lord sits down…" Let us not dwell too much on technicalities. If the noble Baroness would like to intervene I shall gladly give way.
Baroness EMMET of AMBERLEY: My Lords, I should like to ask the noble and learned Lord whether this raising of the allowances from £25 to £45 would help in this particular instance. One is naturally concerned at the great increase in cost of legal aid. I am always interested in it. I heard of a Crown Court the other day where there were 18 adjournments, which is where a lot of the money goes. Would this extra £45 help, before it comes to the court, to reduce that figure?
The LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I think that the provision I have made would be helpful in that case. If the noble Baroness has a particular case in mind perhaps she will let me know. I am sorry that she has got me and herself in trouble with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham. Perhaps he will forgive us both in the fullness of time.
Moved, That the Legal Advice and Assistance (Financial Conditions) (No. 2) Regulations 1977, laid before the House on 15th February, be approved.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
5.3 p.m.
The Earl of MANSFIELD: My Lords, according to my recollection, the noble and learned Lord moved the Legal Advice and Assistance (Financial Conditions) (No. 2) Regulations but I think he has spoken to everything on the Order Paper which does not affect the noble and Learned Lord, Lord McCluskey. Perhaps it would be convenient if I do the same, and possibly go one further step by saying that I shall not bother the noble and learned Lord, Lord McCluskey, because, as I understand it, the regulations applying to Scotland bring that part of the United Kingdom into line with the rest of the country so far as these particular provisions are concerned.
Baroness PHILLIPS: My Lords, may I intervene? If we are to be precise in the Motions before the House, may I say that I do not think that the noble and learned Lord referred to the order concerning the judges. The noble Earl has just said, "all the orders".
The Earl of MANSFIELD: My Lords, if we are to be really precise, I am not "learned". The "Number of Judges" refers to Scotland; and I was being

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precise. There is no doubt that when the noble and learned Lord, last June, announced the extension of the scheme originally propounded by my noble and learned friend Lord Hailsham and which has been described as "Post Office divorces" over a rather wider field—that is to say, in cases where, for instance, there are children of the family under 16—there was, I will not say "uproar" but considerable disquiet in a number of circles. They were not only legal circles but also included a number of worthy organisations who have the care and welfare of persons who find themselves in these unpleasing circumstances when their marriages break down. It is fair to say that that disquiet was not allayed until probably after the turn of the year. I think that the proceedings in another place and the very full account which the noble and learned Lord has given us this afternoon of what the regulations are trying to achieve will, to a large extent, allay whatever fears may still exist.
Taking the Matrimonial Proceedings Regulations—because they are really at the heart of the issue—I think the fears were that either a potential petitioner or a respondent (in fact, either of the parties to a marriage which has broken down) could, so it appeared at first blush, find themselves possibly without the advice or assistance of a solicitor at probably the one time in their lives when they need it most. It was that which caused the disquiet.
It is, I think, a matter of satisfaction, first of all, that the £25 limit is to be in certain circumstances raised to £45. It should be remembered that even if the advice which is given goes beyond that limit, it can be extended if the appropriate legal aid committee is consulted. If a person who falls within the financial criteria is in need of legal assistance, either as a petitioner or possibly, more importantly, as a respondent—and it may be that the noble and learned Lord did not mention that—he or she can get all the assistance they need always provided the local committee are satisfied that they need it. That, I think, is an advance.
So far as the actual regulations are concerned, as I appreciate, Regulation No. 2 is perfectly straightforward. I assume that subsection (2), the type of situation which is envisaged where a petition is directed to be heard in open
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court, would be some sort of case where there may be doubt as to the domicile of the petitioner or whether the court was competent to hear the petition at all. I do not know; and perhaps the noble and learned Lord will reassure me on that point. So far as the Matrimonial Proceedings Regulation is concerned, it is vital that at any stage in proceedings where it is necessary for a court to do more than merely pronounce the marriage to be at an end, to dissolve it, the petitioner or respondent should be able to obtain legal assistance.
There is an interesting provision at the end of the Legal Aid (Matrimonial Proceedings) Regulations which says almost everything that anybody could want to hear. It says:
"…for the purpose of making or opposing any other application, or satisfying the court on any other matter, which raises a substantial question for determination by the court."
The efficacy of that provision will depend entirely on who ever it is who has to decide whether the question for determination by the court is substantial. One wonders who is to be the person who makes that decision and what the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor proposes to do, hopefully, to ensure that whoever does exercise that discretion exercises it in what I might call a benign fashion; because it is really the last reassurance which may be needed (if any is needed) that the position of people who are the subject of broken marriages is being cared for; but it could be detracted from if a rather hard line were to be taken by those who decide it Subject to what I have said—and I have raised only two very small points—I would imagine that this is a matter which we could say has now been successfully resolved.
5.10 p.m.
Baroness PHILLIPS: My Lords, we are all grateful to the noble and learned Lord for presenting these three orders to us, and of course we would all agree with the idea behind them; namely, to control public expenditure in legal aid and, indeed, simplify regulations. The noble and learned Lord explained everything very satisfactorily. I have only one or two reservations. He said—I think I quote his words correctly—that he was instituting a few more law centres. Since the regulations come into effect fairly soon, I

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am a little concerned whether we are going to give a great deal more work to the county court officials, and whether they are ready for this.
To the ordinary layman, the forms with which they are presented in any civil or, indeed, criminal litigation are always rather frightening. This was where legal aid and the solicitor were so invaluable. I am sure that the county court officials will be helpful. I am a little concerned that maybe we are ahead of this in that they will suddenly have a great avalanche of work. Will they be prepared for it, my Lords? We know that the noble and learned Lord is a humane and compassionate man and will recognise that this is a situation in life, among others, where one needs help, advice and sympathy. Therefore, I hope that he will bear this in mind when considering the implications of these orders.
5.12 p.m.
Lord HAILSHAM of SAINT MARY-LEBONE: My Lords, as my noble friend Lord Mansfield has dealt with the matter so fully, I do not want to prolong this debate, except for one or two matters. I will tell the noble and learned Lord frankly that I am not wholly reassured by what is being done. I should like to tell him, roughly speaking, why. Obviously in so far as he is shifting in effect from legal aid during the divorce proceedings to legal advice and assistance before them, I do not suppose that many people would unduly quarrel with what he is doing. Of course in itself that does not save any money. Legal aid and advice before the proceedings begin, on the assumption that the divorce is of the postal, undefended or unopposed kind, is very important because that fact will determine whether the right issues are formulated to the court, whether the petition is going to be opposed—and of course if it is opposed he is not saving any money at all, because legal aid continues to apply—and whether the right issues are going to be brought forward after the hearing.
If legal advice and assistance is going to be given on a scale which is adequate to ensure that not an undue proportion of new defended divorces appear on the scene, and the right issues are brought
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before the court at, during and after the hearing, no one is going to complain. But if in fact that is going to take place I question how much money the noble and learned Lord is going to save. If, on the other hand, he is going to skimp on that stage, then he is going to find that more divorces are going to be opposed because the wrong points are made and because litigants in person have a tendency to ask for too much from their opponents—especially when they are embittered spouses—and he is going to find that the scheme is going to be wasteful of judicial time and not a particularly money-saving device.
I was concerned by what seemed to me to be his very easy assumption that it is a good arrangement for a circuit judge or a High Court judge, whoever is trying the case, to have a private interview in his chambers with one of the spouses, or perhaps both, without the assistance on either side of legal representatives. My experience of divorce proceedings is that legal advice in that conversation is almost always productive of time saving, and ensures that justice is done far better than anything else. A judge left to himself to have a private conversation with one of the litigants is not always likely, especially if his list is crowded, to identify the right points or to see that the right answer is given. These applications in chambers involve very difficult questions, even where the matter is not opposed, as to the rights of children who are not before the courts and not able to speak for themselves in a great number of cases, and as to the rights of women who are not always very good judges of their own financial requirements at the moment at which divorce is obtained. I have doubts as to whether this is humane, necessary or advantageous.
I am more than confirmed in my doubts when the noble and learned Lord frankly concedes that one of his objects in saving the money is to set up a number of new law centres. I am not opposed to law centres as such, but he is taking away money from something where the need has been established for something which is necessarily discriminatory, because the new law centres will be in only a very few areas of the country and will not be generally applicable to the community as a whole. If one is going to save money, the method which is generally

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applicable and in force should be kept and the new experimental and discriminatory centres—at any rate in their first stages discriminatory—ought to be held over until the time when the financial situation is easier. I believe his priorities are wrong. I know that this order is going to be passed. It would be utterly wrong for this House to vote against a set of measures of this kind; it would throw the business of Government into confusion if one did so. But I must say to the noble and learned Lord that I realise he has probably acted under pressure from the financial authorities in the Government, with whom I also have sympathy, but I do not at the moment go along with what he is doing.
5.17 p.m.
Lord MORRIS: My Lords, I am confused about paragraph (ii) of Regulation 2; namely, about who may direct the petition in undefended divorce or separation and in what circumstances, and who may submit a prayer that such a direction be given. Similarly, I feel very strongly that the noble and learned Lord's heady reasonableness hides what I believe will be the horror that will result from these new regulations. Let us assume that a woman goes along in an urban area to a busy solicitor in order to obtain a divorce and is handed a lot of complicated forms. I have seen these forms and they are complicated. Let us suppose that she discusses these in the local "boozer" with her friends and then sends them back to her solicitor. The solicitor will probably hand them over to an articled clerk saying, "Deal with these". The forms will probably be sent back to the court improperly or erroneously filled in, and pieces of paper will be going back and forth for a very long time. I am certain that it will confuse the situation. Similarly, will the court officials be properly geared to handle the petitions as and when they come flowing into the courts?
5.19 p.m.
The LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I am grateful to your Lordships for what has been on the whole a welcome response to these orders, save for the qualifications which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone,
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has indicated. I assure him and other noble Lords that we have entered into most careful and prolonged consultations with all concerned with the carrying out of these proposals. The judges registrars and the officials of the courts have all assured me that they think that this "package", if I may so describe it, is a workable one and that it will be saving in public expenditure, which is of course one of the main objects of the whole exercise. I can assure those who still have their doubts that we believe that this "package" will not effect hardship or difficulty to those who are in the stressful period of seeking and bringing divorce proceedings.
I was asked some specific questions in a helpful speech from the noble Earl, Lord Mansfield. As to the circumstances in which a case would be directed to be heard in open court, I think the noble Lord himself identified them—cases, for instance, where the registrar was not satisfied, on the petitioner's affidavit, that she was entitled to a decree at all or, for example, as I think he suggested, where there was an unresolved question of the domicile, or where in a behaviour case the registrar might not be satisfied that the acts complained of amounted to intolerable conduct. That is the kind of circumstance that would result in the proceedings going to open court with full legal aid.
Then with regard to the provision in the general terms of Regulation 3 and the culminating words, of course the decision as to whether legal aid would be granted would fall to be made by the Legal Aid Committees of The Law Society; but The Law Society may, and often does, express general views about when it should be granted and I would expect a reasonable liberal interpretation of those words which provide so much discretion. I am extremely grateful to my noble friend Lady Phillips for her expression of reasonable satisfaction with what I have suggested, knowing, as I do, her intense personal concern for the welfare and happiness of all concerned in this field. I have had discussions personally with representatives of court staffs and registrars and they have satisfied me that they can cope with the additional work that will arise. I believe they will be able to cope. I do not think the burden on court staff will be affected a great deal by the additional procedures which I have indicated.

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We are supplying a booklet for the guidance of petitioners in person, an explanatory leaflet, a specimen form of petition with notes for guidance and notices which the court will send to the petitioner, telling her at each stage of the proceedings what to do next. We are reasonably satisfied that those pro formas, plus the assistance the parties will get from the officers of the court, should enable them to cope satisfactorily.
On the question of savings, to which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham, referred, I believe there will be a substantial saving of money because the very simplification of procedure with which we are concerned here reduces the amount of legal services which need to be rendered. The lawyers will need to do less, even though they provide all the necessary preliminary advice and assistance, so there should be a corresponding reduction in costs. As I have said, I hope the savings will be such that not only shall I be able to make a significant contribution to the reduction in public expenditure—which I apprehend the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham, would enthusiastically support—but I would hope, also, to be able to save a little to raise somewhat the level at which legal aid becomes available, and for the setting up of a limited number of law centres in areas of the greatest need where they can render the greatest service.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

LEGAL AID (MATRIMONIAL PROCEEDINGS) REGULATIONS 1977
The LORD CHANCELLOR The LORD CHANCELLOR rose to move, That the Legal Aid (Matrimonial Proceedings) Regulations 1977, laid before the House on 15th February, be approved. The noble and learned Lord said: I should like, if I may, formally to move the second set of regulations which are my responsibility; namely, the Legal Aid (Matrimonial Proceedings) Regulations 1977.
Moved, That the Legal Aid (Matrimonial Proceedings) Regulations 1977, laid before the House on 15th February, be approved.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

LEGAL ADVICE AND ASSISTANCE (SCOTLAND) (FINANCIAL CONDITIONS) (NO. 2) REGULATIONS 1977
5.27 p.m.
The SOLICITOR-GENERAL for SCOTLAND (Lord McCluskey)The SOLICITOR-GENERAL for SCOTLAND (Lord McCluskey) rose to move, That the Legal Advice and Assistance (Scotland) (Financial Conditions) (No. 2) Regulations, 1977, laid before the House on 15th February, be approved. The noble and learned Lord said: My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper. In view of the noble Earl's notice of intention not to speak separately on the Scottish regulations, and because he is quite right in saying that the purpose of these regulations is to raise the upper income limit of eligibility for legal advice and assistance in Scotland, so as to keep it the same in both jurisdictions, I shall confine myself to a formal moving of the Motion. I beg to move.
Moved, That the Legal Advice and Assistance (Scotland) (Financial Conditions) (No. 2) Regulations, 1977, laid before the House on 15th February, be approved.—(Lord McCluskey.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

MAXIMUM NUMBER OF JUDGES ORDER 1977
Lord McCLUSKEY Lord McCLUSKEY rose to move, That the draft Maximum Number of Judges Order 1977, laid before the House on 15th February, be approved. The noble and learned Lord said: My Lords, I rise to move the Motion standing in my name—the last one on the Order Paper. This order deals solely with Scotland and is made under Section 1 of the Administration of Justice Act, 1968. That Act fixed the maximum number of judges in the Court of Session at 19 but provided that that maximum could be increased by Order in Council, subject to prior approval by Resolution of each House of Parliament. The number was in fact increased to 20 at the end of 1972, and the purpose of my Motion is to secure the approval of this House to a further increase.
The background to this Motion is the continuing increase in the volume of work

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entering the Court of Session and the High Court of Justiciary: that is the Criminal Court. The indications are that this trend will continue. In the Court of Session the number of civil actions initiated has increased by fully 45 per cent. since 1972. Much of the growth is attributable to divorce actions and these, following the coming into operation in Scotland on 1st January of the Divorce (Scotland) Act 1976, are likely to show further substantial increases, particularly if the experience in England and Wales following their comparable legislation, which became effective in 1971, is repeated to any degree in Scotland—as we expect it to be.
As to criminal work, all the Judges of the Court of Session in Scotland are also Lords Commissioners of Justiciary and are responsible for the whole of the original criminal work of the High Court in Edinburgh and on circuit and for the work of the Court of Criminal Appeal. There, too, there has been an apparently inexorable upward trend in business, both in the number of trials and the duration of hearings. The effect may best be illustrated by the number of working days on which judges have had to be provided for High Court duty on criminal cases. In 1972 the total number of "judge days" was 478; in 1976 it had risen to 598—an increase of some 25 per cent. I think I can say it is not just a question of pure numbers, because as the volume of work increases there is a geometrical rather than an arithmetical progression in the difficulties of making the necessary arrangements, especially in relation to criminal business.
It is worthy of note that this substantial increase in business has largely been absorbed hitherto without producing an unacceptable level of delay. This has been possible only through skilful reorganisation by the Lord President of the Court of Session and his colleagues in making the working arrangements in the Supreme Courts better, and in making more efficient use of judicial time. But recently it has become apparent that saturation point has been reached. At the present level of business, strains have become evident and there is little or no room to cater for the further increase which now seems to be imminent. Indeed, because of the need to employ Inner House judges—that is, appeal judges—on Outer House work, it has often been impossible to have both
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Divisions of the Inner House sitting at once, although there is a continuing body of civil appeals; and sometimes, when Inner House judges are also engaged in the disposal of criminal business, it has not been possible to form any Division in the Inner House for appeals at all.
The position is further affected by the need to allow for the many extraneous duties undertaken by the judges in the exercise of their public responsibilities. The Lord President and the Lord Justice Clerk have, among other responsibilities, special extra-judicial responsibilities in Europe and in Scotland. Most of the other judges act as chairmen of or participate in public tribunals, commissions, and committees of many kinds. One, for example, is the whole-time chairman of the Scottish Law Commission. Another is chairman of the Employment Appeal Tribunal, which at the moment occupies about half of his time. Yet another judge is heavily occupied in a comprehensive review of criminal procedure, which has been in operation for some years and still has further substantial areas to consider. Without going into detail, other judges are involved in work of this kind. Indeed, the judges render a great public service outwith their formal duties on the Bench. The complement also has to allow for absences through sickness or other emergency, and recently such contingencies have resulted in the cancellation of allocated business.
There has undoubtedly been an improvement in recent years in the organisation of work both in the Court of Session and in the High Court—the criminal court. I can assure your Lordships that the Lord President and his colleagues, who are responsible for this, are anxious to make further improvements if these can be identified, but we have now reached the point where I have no alternative but to recommend the present order to the House. I must, however, underline that the present aim, shared by the Lord President, is to make only one additional appointment immediately. Allowing for this and the possibility of further reorganisation, it may be unnecessary for some considerable time to fill the second post which the order would allow. That would be dependent on experience and a demonstrable need for such a second post. My Lords, I beg to move.
Moved, That the draft Maximum Number of Judges Order 1977, laid before the House on 15th February, be approved.—(Lord McCluskey.)
5.33 p.m.
The Earl of MANSFIELD: My Lords, it behoves me, I believe, to gang warily in this respect because, for the benefit of the noble Baroness, Lady Phillips, in this connection not only am I not learned; I am not even qualified. So with that little stricture in mind, I preface my few remarks. There is no doubt about it that when this order was debated in the other place it aroused no little fury, one might even say contumely. Indeed, the matter was pushed to a Division, so ferociously was it fought, and the Government managed to win through only by the casting vote of the Chairman. I have therefore considered deeply what we should do about this matter in your Lordships' House, but I think that on this occasion—and I say this for the benefit of the noble and learned Lord, Lord McCluskey—we will be able to fulfil our public duties without necessarily pressing this matter in the way that it was pressed in another place.
I went along to the Library when this matter first came to my notice to see what was the personnel position North of the Tweed and I found that, so far as advocates are concerned, the number of advocates in Scotland is rather fewer than the total number of members of the Bar at the Liverpool local Bar. I do not say that in any sense of denigration; there is nobody who has more admiration than I for the quality of Scottish advocacy and, indeed, judgeship. I draw this parallel only to show that it is a much smaller and, dare I say it, more cosy world than perhaps we know of in England.
One of the matters which occupied a considerable time in the other place was the fact that, apparently, the Scottish Court of Session does not sit on Mondays and certain of my honourable friends there regarded this as a thoroughly idle and dissolute hangover from the last century. In those days, all Scottish judges of the Court of Session were landed gents and it seems that they took Mondays to get from their estates to Edinburgh, in order to commence their judicial duties on Tuesdays. Nevertheless, it is fair to say that
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the Lord Advocate did not produce any very pressing argument as to why the Court of Session should not now, in the last quarter of the twentieth century, commence to do its work on Mondays, and I wonder whether the noble and learned Lord, Lord McCluskey, might be able to put up a rather better performance in that regard. I am very well aware that a few judges sit on Saturday mornings for two hours to hear undefended divorces, but I am not sure that that is quite the same thing, and one wonders whether the best use is being made of judge time.
The point of these remarks is not entirely frivolous. In the last clutch of orders we were helping the noble and learned Lord, possibly, in the opinion of my noble and learned friend, to be what I might call penny-wise. Are we now sanctioning the noble and learned Lord, Lord McCluskey, and the Secretary of State for Scotland to be pound foolish, by allowing an increase in the establishment of judges beyond the Tweed from no fewer than 20 to 22? What does the noble Lord think is the cost which will fall on the shoulders of the taxpayer through this increase? May I also just say this? In England we have been used for very many years—certainly, since the days when I started to practice—to undefended divorces, at least, being heard by county court judges who are perfectly able, sitting as special commissioners, to discharge that function. I should be the very last to say that Scottish law must follow English law. Nevertheless, divorce law in Scotland is moving along the same track.
The new Act, which I believe comes into force on 1st April—the noble and learned Lord will correct me if I am wrong—will bring Scotland into line for the first time, and will produce a much needed reform over the breakdown of a marriage and the consequent divorce. But has any thought ever been given to undefended divorces being tried, for instance, by sheriffs who seem to me to be very excellent judges in their own sphere? Is it necessary for the equivalent of a High Court judge to hear undefended divorces, especially when such matters as, what we call in England, collusion and so on will not enter into the sphere of things after April? I hope that I have not done more than enter one or two caveats on what is proposed in this order. Subject to that, I am quite sure that the noble and learned

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Lord, Lord McCluskey, can satisfy us that this extra expenditure is well merited.
6.39 p.m.
Lord McCLUSKEY: My Lords, the number of advocates is smaller in Scotland and, undoubtedly, that leads to what friends would call a more cosy atmosphere, and to what others would describe as a somewhat incestuous atmosphere. May I just demonstrate that it works in this way? I had the duty of conducting what turned out to be the longest criminal trial in Scotland since the outbreak of the Second World War. It lasted for 18 days, which was exceptionally long. But I think that, partly because of the organisation of our business and the manner in which we work, we get through our work rather more swiftly than our colleagues South of the Tweed.
In relation to the remarks of the noble Earl about a thoroughly idle and dissolute hangover from the last century, I think that the Member who drew attention to these matters was the one who succeeded the noble Lord, Lord Home, and who is an expert on these matters. He drew attention to the fact that the court does not sit on a Monday. The Court of Session has never sat on a Monday, except perhaps in emergencies. It sits on Saturday mornings when five to six judges hear, as the noble Earl mentioned, a number of divorce cases. The criminal courts do, of course, sit on Mondays. The matter has come up for consideration many times over the years. The Faculty of Advocates and practitioners generally are strongly opposed to the court sitting on Mondays. There are many difficulties in the way.
I should not like noble Lords to believe that the court could not sit on a Monday, but it would bring fewer benefits than might be imagined. It would be less easy to introduce the change than might readily be thought. Certainly we would be bound to lose Saturday mornings, which are extremely convenient for the hearing of divorces, particularly for people and witnesses who cannot readily attend during the week. As I say, it would be extremely unpopular with practitioners. Mondays are used by that same small body of advocates in Scotland to attend sheriff courts and tribunals, to sit as chairmen of tribunals and also to consult and prepare for the cases which they deal with
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on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays. In these circumstances, I do not think that there would be many supporters for such a change in Scotland. Comparisons with England are perhaps too liable to mislead. In any event, the noble Earl will be aware, as we all are, that the Royal Commission on Legal Services in Scotland is considering, among other things, the structure of courts and general arrangements for the supply of legal services, and it will no doubt take these remarks into account.
In relation to divorce, may I say that the new Act has been in force in Scotland since the beginning of the year. So far only one divorce has come before the courts but there is expected to be a substantial number in about two months' time. Of course, the question as to whether divorces should be heard in the sheriff court has been argued over many times. The short answer at the moment is that the sheriff courts have enough business to handle and could not handle the 13,000, 14,000 or 15,000 divorces that they would be liable to get if divorces were sent to the sheriff court. My Lords, I hope that the considerations which have been put forward have been adequately answered. On the matter of cost, I should say that the cost of one additional judge, including his salary and the salary of his clerk but all before tax, is some £30,000.
On Question, Motion agreed 10.

HOMELESS YOUNG PEOPLE
5.43 p.m.
The Lord Bishop of LONDON The Lord Bishop of LONDON rose to ask Her Majesty's Government what action has been taken by them to implement the recommendations of the Government Working Group on Homeless Young People, published in August 1976. The right reverend Prelate said: My Lords, in asking the Unstarred Question standing in my name, I am all too well aware of the restrictions which are placed upon me by the nature of this short debate and the necessity, therefore, to be highly selective in the issues which I seek to raise. If, therefore, I disappoint some of those who share with me a like concern about the plight of the young homeless, because I have omitted this or that aspect of the

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problem, I would assure them that I have done so only because of the limitations of the Question and the nature of the discussion. I hope that other noble Lords will fill some of the gaps which I have left.
I want also to say from the outset that I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, is to reply to my Unstarred Question. His personal concern over homelessness is well known. The outcome of this debate will, I hope, give him further encouragement and justification to ensure that action is taken to remedy a problem which we all know is of great personal concern to him. My Unstarred Question asks what action has been taken to implement the recommendations of the Government Working Group on Homeless Young People. Resisting the temptation to initiate a wide-ranging debate on the urgent and complex nature of homeless ness, I shall endeavour to restrict myself to the terms of this Unstarred Question.
The Report of the Government Working Party was published in August 1976. In answer to a Question which was tabled in this House by the noble Lord, Lord Janner, on 11th October 1976, the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, replied that Government Departments were examining what could be done to help homeless young people, short of incurring additional expenditure, and were going to consult with local authority associations. The House was told that five Government Departments were involved and that a considerable amount of work would be entailed. The noble Lord was not at that stage in a position to say when they would report or what recommendations could be implemented. That was five months ago. Since then there has been no information of progress and no indication as to what will be done, save for a letter from Mr. Deakins, the Joint Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department of Health and Social Security, addressed to the Campaign for Single Homeless People. Hence this Unstarred Question, which asks Her Majesty's Government to tell us what has been done since last October within the restrictions of expenditure, for it is the conviction of many experts in this field that there is a great deal that could and should be done which will cost little or nothing.
I refer first to the most important issue, that of accommodation. In her important review of the situation, Needs and Provision for Young Single Homeless People, Sarah Waugh points out that the needs of young, homeless people, complex as they are, should be made the responsibility of local government as part of a comprehensive housing service and that the confusion regarding statutory responsibility for the homeless young is a major difficulty in the way of those agencies that want to tackle the problem. There is a no-man's-land in which, unless they are in care, young people over 17 are nobody's responsibility. This is a serious and dangerous state of affairs, since the consequences can so easily be expensive and socially disruptive.
I hope, therefore, that the Minister may be able to tell the House that vigorous action is being planned on a number of fronts. First, that maximum use is being made by local authorities, and through the agency of housing associations, of short-life property. Secondly, that accommodation unsuitable for families or which is hard to let, such as upper storeys of tower blocks, or city centre flats, or flats which are too noisy for families but unacceptable for the young, is being made available. Next, that vacant private sector housing is by agreement through the local authorities made more readily available for young homeless people.
Next, that restrictions on council house tenants and mortgagors to take lodgers should not be as unnecessarily severe as they are at present. Next, that lodging schemes operated by local authority lodging officers and other agencies should be set up. Next, that restrictions on multi occupation should not be so severe as to discourage conversion or maintenance of this form of tenure. Next, that more short-stay hostels should be provided and that the Housing Corporation should be encouraged to give help in this respect.
Perhaps at this point I may be allowed to particularise since I am specially concerned about this type of accommodation in the centre of London. At this moment there are two projects which present great possibility and which could so easily be lost by reason of lack of funds. One is the YMCA building in Endell Street at the top of Shaftesbury Avenue. The

977
YMCA will not need it when they move to their new buildings in Tottenham Court Road in a short time. It presents excellent short-term and long-term accommodation. The building is in the hands of the Official Receiver and could be obtained for a comparatively low price. I am assured that if the capital could be found for the purchase of this hostel, the YMCA would be able to manage the general running costs and the building could be used for emergency and for short-stay accommodation. It would be a shocking thing if this building, so well suited for the purpose and on an unrivalled site, were to be lost and I hope Her Majesty's Government will take direct responsibility to ensure that that does not happen.
The second project ready here and now to be grasped is the Methodist Church training centre buildings in Birkenhead Street just across the road from King's Cross, St. Pancras and Euston. Here again are premises admirably suited for short-term accommodation for young people. Can we, I ask, expect concern and help from Her Majesty's Government in obtaining and equipping these admirably suited buildings? It is in situations such as these that voluntary agencies are taking the initiative and they look for, and they feel that they have not received from Her Majesty's Government, the encouragement that they would welcome. Should such opportunities be lost it would be a terrible reproach to us all. Finally in the area of accommodation I would ask Her Majesty's Government if they have encouraged the sharing among social service agencies of the metro-political counties of the funding of accommodation for special purposes, for in this way the cost of young people's hostels could be shared and minimised across county boundaries.
So much for accommodation itself. The Working Party's Report also makes a number of other recommendations which would not be costly, and I ask briefly what is being done about them. What action has been taken over recommendation 26 regarding the matching of employment and accommodation? It seems that there is a lack of knowledge of the pattern of mobility of young people. We cannot really get to grips with a housing policy until we know the relationship between job and housing. Has anything been done to study this aspect,
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and have regional economic planning councils been involved in it?
In recommendations 21 and 23 the report refers to the service which local supplementary benefit offices can provide, so I ask whether the staffs of these offices have received sufficient instruction about the places to which homeless young people can appropriately be referred so that they may get proper guidance and encouragement, and are there guarantees that the voucher system is being employed to protect young people without encouraging them to go to places where they will be persuaded to think of themselves as part of a permanent or semi-permanent homeless scene.
Recommendation 24 refers to the importance of bringing the schools into the process of preparing children for the dangers ahead in this area. One of the most important elements in the whole situation is to dissuade young people from coming into the great urban centres, and to teach them that they will not find their salvation there when they arrive. Such information, coupled with training about the rights of young people in the realm of housing and welfare, would do nothing but good and I hope we may hear that action has been taken.
While on the subject of education I should like to draw the attention of the House to recommendations 12 to 20 regarding the safeguards so clearly necessary in the light of the Gleaves case. It may be that if we are able to see the programme "Goodbye Longfellow Road" on ITV tonight we shall be alerted still further to the needs for safeguards. I hope Her Majesty's Government will be able to assure us that action is being taken in this area of the problem, and especially that local authorities have been invited, as recommendation 13 suggests, to appoint senior officers to deal with personal information about those engaged in work with young people; that recommendation 18 is accepted, which suggests that there should be consultation with local associations with a view to issuing guidance on good practice in hostel management; that recommendation 19, that the social services departments should arrange for the visiting of commercial hostels, is accepted: and recommendation 20, that any public or charitable body which is asked for assistance by an organisation

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should examine and re-examine the credentials of applicants before providing assistance.
Finally, I come to the vexed question of information. On this point the report was quite specific. It said, in paragraph 11 of its recommendations:
"We have invited the Voluntary Services Unit of the Home Office to consider making a grant for the establishment, by a voluntary group, of information services at Euston railway station and Victoria Coach Station."
The noble Lord, Lord Janner, on 11th October, and I, on 20th December last year, pressed the Minister to persuade British Rail to help more effectively and enthusiastically in the provision of this essential service. In answer the Minister was able to give little encouragement or hope.
On 20th December I asked a similar question and was told by the Minister that British Rail had agreed to provide facilities for making information leaflets available. He added that there were Citizens' Advice Bureaux at St. Philomena's Hostel and the Friends House, all nearby, and a car patrol service. My information is that there has not been a Citizens' Advice Bureau outside Euston Station for some time and that St. Philomena's and the Friends House do not advertise an advice service. The car patrol has been discontinued since it was not proving effective, and I am told that British Rail has not agreed to make leaflets available at their information centre at Euston or elsewhere. I should be grateful for any information the Minister may have, for no doubt he is aware that the voluntary bodies were told early in the negotiations that British Rail would not negotiate directly with them, and consequently negotiations have had to be through the good offices of the Department of Health and Social Services and the Voluntary Services Unit.
I must confess that I was much disappointed by the reply given to a Written Question which I tabled on 17th February, when I was told that the £56,700 needed for the information booths could not be provided from the £317,000 still available to the VSU for distribution within the current financial year. I was not able to be in the House yesterday when the noble Lord, Lord Janner, asked his
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Question but I have read, also with profound disappointment, the reply which the noble Lord had to make. I hope that Her Majesty's Government will appreciate that nothing can replace the personal contact and advice such as would be provided by information kiosks staffed by trained and informed personnel: and I hope that Her Majesty's Government will acknowledge the anger which has been generated by the continued insensitivity and stubbornness shown by British Rail towards those who are trying to alleviate a very real social evil.
I apologise for taking so much of your Lordships' time, but I feel justified in doing so because we are here dealing with a situation which is fraught with danger and the possibilities of great personal suffering. Unless we deal more effectively with it we shall lay upon our society an even greater disruption than it knows today. We believe that at little or no expense many of the recommendations of the report could be implemented. I trust that in answer to my Question the Minister will be able to assure the House that more vigorous action will be taken.
6.1 p.m.
Lord SANDYS: My Lords, your Lordships' House will be grateful to the right reverend Prelate for putting this Unstarred Question today at such a very timely and appropriate moment. The right reverend Prelate has referred to part of the background to the report, and I hope that it will be further appropriate if I go into a little greater detail, because, of course, your Lordships who are taking part in this debate today are those who took part in the debate on a very important Unstarred Question brought before your Lordships' House by the noble Lord, Lord Soper, on 25th June 1975. I may say that the noble Lord, Lord Soper, has constantly reminded us of this particular question, as indeed have the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London and many of his right reverend colleagues.
My Lords, at the heart of it is the basic paradox to which the right reverend Prelate referred, the paradox that housing authorities are encouraged to have a basic responsibility for the homeless but they have no duty. The duty lies, of course, with the social services department. Over the years this basic problem has

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been reviewed in surveys and studies and reports, and perhaps one of the more valuable reports produced over the last six or seven years was the Greve Report produced in 1971. That report underlined the fundamental value of the responsibility for housing the homeless resting with the housing department and not with the social services department.
My Lords, the right reverend Prelate has referred to the whole problem of housing young people. Of course, it is the case that rather more than 35 to 37 per cent. of the problem lies in London, and the right reverend Prelate so rightly referred to the situation in London. But it is not the whole position. The problem covers the country as a whole, the large centres of population. In previous debates we have looked at other cities. It is difficult to leave out of account the problem which was thrown up in the 1971 Census of 676,000 empty houses. It is also difficult to leave out of account the Government's Yellow Paper, The Review of the Rent Act, the Consultation Document produced recently. At the heart of it lies not only the basic paradox but also the particular problem of letting accommodation, in the private sector as well as the public sector.
The right reverend Prelate referred in detail to the recommendations, and I should like to refer to specific recommendations which he mentioned, although perhaps in a little greater detail than he did. If I may refer first of all to better use of accommodation, to which this report rightly gives special emphasis, I should like to refer to the paragraph which relates to the removal of unnecessary restrictions on lodgers in houses occupied by local authority tenants. In paragraph 2.13.5 the problem is written off in one sentence. It goes so much deeper than that. I do not think, with due respect to the body reporting on this subject, an accurate reflection was given in that one sentence of the very real complications involved.
Let us suppose that a house is let under a scheme which is becoming increasingly popular—that is the North Wiltshire District Scheme—a house which is owned by a private institution or person and is let through a local authority. The tenant for that property would be selected by the local authority, and in 90 per cent. of
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cases probably approved by the individual or institution owning it. If this recommendation is put into effect, the local authority is asked to relax the restrictions on lodgers. Let us suppose that in a particular case the tenant thinks it would be a good idea to encourage two lodgers to move in: two lodgers do move in, and shortly after that two more lodgers with their sleeping bags accompany them. This is a basic difficulty; it is one which the vast majority of potential private landlords, both in London, and, I may say, throughout the country, recognised the moment that the 1974 Rent Act reached the Statute Book. It is not a lack of willingness to let. It is lack of willingness to let in sensible circumstances. Itis the background which we must consider.
The next problem to which I must refer in regard to better use being made of existing housing is the recommendation in paragraph 2.13.8 that planning authorities should relax unnecessarily restrictive criteria for the conversion of large dwellings into smaller self-contained units. How often have we gone into this question? I suppose most recently in the Unstarred Question put down by my noble friend Lady Young on 24th February. It was also dealt with in some depth by another noble Lord. The problem is one of considerable difficulty. We are here dealing with the question of the 1965 building regulations and their application in conditions which were not even dreamt of 11 years ago.
My Lords, I believe, we on this side of the House believe, and I expect many of your Lordships would agree, that circumstances today would not permit of the suitable implementation of those building regulations. Why is this so? Very largely on grounds of cost, but also on grounds of experience. Since 1971 building costs in this particular field—that is, the conversion and repair field—have risen by no less than 140 per cent., and this is so large a factor that it must be taken into account.
I in no way suggest that the fire hazard has become less, and indeed in approaching the problem of converting dwellings, either into self-contained accommodation or into some other form of use, this must surely be one of the first considerations. One must also consider previous reports in this

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field. Surely, in this context the Culling-worth Report, dealing with Scotland's older houses and the fire hazard in that particular sphere, should be recognised. Nevertheless, I think there is a case for the Department of the Environment considering a review of the regulations and their relaxation in an amended form.
My Lords, one must return to the question, so aptly underlined by the right reverend Prelate in bringing forward this Unstarred Question, of the reduction of the number of housing units available in London. I am informed—and I think this is a reliable figure—that it has been reduced from a factor of 750,000 units before the 1974 Rent Act reached the Statute Book to less than 150,000 today. What has happened? One most significant factor has been the disappearance all over London and our major cities of those small postcards stuck in windows of houses or corner newsagents saying, "Room to let". There is a very real lack in the availability of housing and it is surely the fact that this lack led to the report which, of course, gave rise to our debate today.
Even if one went to these potential landladies and offered them copies of the many speeches of the noble Lord, Lord Janner, they would be totally adamant, saying that they were not willing to let their houses for two excellent reasons: first, the great difficulty of getting rid of an unsocial tenant and, secondly, the potential risk of violence. I am entirely convinced that their grounds are very strong and nothing has led me to believe that the situation has changed one whit since the report was published last year.
We have looked at the review of the Rent Acts and I should like to revert to the previous Green Paper on homelessness which was published by the Department of the Environment in 1975. I refer to paragraph 19 on page 4 where the Government say:
"The Government are anxious to avoid a legalistic approach to homelessness."
One may agree entirely with that point of view, but when one recognises—and this has been recognised in every debate—that the first need is a simplification of the Rent Acts, one surely cannot today cast aside the absolute necessity for a consolidation Act. I know that the report,
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which is the substance of this Unstarred Question, does not mention a consolidation Act; nevertheless, this is one of the fundamental needs in bringing about a satisfactory change. Perhaps I might end by quoting the Chinese proverb, that the way to calamity is paved with good intentions.
6.13 p.m.
Lord AMULREE: My Lords, I should like to support the right reverend Prelate who has tabled this Unstarred Question and also the report on which it is based. The lack of accommodation for single people has increased since the end of the war. After the war there were quite a number of Rowton Houses around. Two have certainly gone—the one at Mount Pleasant and the one at Hammersmith. I believe that three are now surviving. I do not know what number have been destroyed. It is extremely difficult to discover the total number of the young homeless. All sorts of people have made various attempts to reach a figure but it is very difficult. I have been in touch with a place in Soho called Centre Point which dealt with about 2,000 teenagers last year. That gives noble Lords some idea of the substantial number involved.
We have been told that the suggestion was for services to be centred on Euston because that is near St. Pancras and King's Cross stations. The reason is similar to the reason for building the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital in its present location—so many women come to London via these large termini and therefore could reach the hospital fairly easily. The hostels in that part of the world, which have been mentioned, are very unsatisfactory. St. Philomena's, which is in Eversholt Street and next door to the power station, is run by the Trish community for Irish girls. It has 20 beds but at present is shut due to reconstruction. The Royal Scottish Corporation told me that they had opened a similar hostel in Bina Gardens which, as your Lordships may know, is in Kensington, quite a long way from Euston. The Citizen's Advice Bureau, at the corner of Marchmont Street and Tavistock Place, again is quite a long way from the station. It is not at all easy to find because Marchmont Street changes its name twice before it gets to Euston Road, so if one is told to go to Marchmont Street one cannot find it.

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Friends House can be most kind and helpful but it is not their job to advise on accommodation and matters of that sort.
I agree with what has been said about the extraordinary attitude of British Rail. It was suggested that a kiosk might be set up on the station, which could be staffed by six trained personnel at an annual cost of between £23,000 and £31,000 a year. One appreciates that British Rail is in considerable financial trouble, but even so the sum of £31,000 a year in order to carry out an extremely valuable and precious service does not seem to be all that high. The situation at the Victoria Coach Station is far more hopeful. It has two full-time staff who deal largely with people coming from Scotland.
There is something to be said for the suggestion that houses which it is proposed to demolish but which are not in too sub-standard a state should be used as temporary residences for the homeless. It is always dangerous to put people into unsuitable premises, but there are certain degrees of unsuitability with which we might cope. I agree with both the right reverend Prelate and the noble Lord, Lord Sandys, that advantage should be taken of changing the regulations so that those in council houses may, if they wish, let rooms. The most vulnerable time when the young come to London is probably in the first four weeks during which what money they have will be spent, when they will not have work, and may not have accommodation. One must realise that they are not an homogenous group; they may be totally different people. Therefore the accommodation available for them must, up to a point, be varied.
I turn to the country at large. It would be agreeable and proper if our large towns had accommodation for single people because for the young to leave the family is quite different from leaving the family town. If they wish to leave the family and be independent, they should not be forced to leave the town where they have been brought up. When we debated the National Assistance Bill in 1946 or 1947 I raised the point about what would occur when the umbrella of the Poor Law was finally taken away. I do not hold any brief for the Poor Law. Its administration could be harsh and
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unpleasant. But some of the people who administered it were extremely good and it provided a universal umbrella of some sort. I was assured by the Minister who replied to my Question that there was no need to worry about this because the situation would always be taken care of by the National Assistance Bill when it became an Act. One final point, my Lords. If you are going to have hostels the warden has to be carefully and well chosen because it is probably upon his advice that the future of the young persons coming to London and to his hostel will depend.
6.21 p.m.
Lord SOPER: My Lords. I thank my noble friend for raising again this imperative question. I agree with him that much more should have been done, and it is a melancholy reflection that sine my noble friend Lord Janner raised the question last autumn there has been no consultation with the local authorities. But two things have happened which can form a not unsuitable text. One is that Mr. Reg Freeson in another place on 26th November indicated that it was the purpose of the Government—and this will particularly interest the noble Lord, Lord Sandys—to bring the responsibility for homelessness firmly and squarely upon the shoulders of the housing authorities in local government rather than the social services. I believe that very soon a Bill will be introduced by Mr. Rossi in another place which confirms what Reg Freeson had to say and indicates that the purpose of the Government is to put the responsibility on the shoulders of the housing departments.
That is a text not unsuitable for this reason: that in that Bill it will still not be regarded as of priority that the responsibility for housing single homeless people will take its place alongside the responsibilities for housing families and old people. It is my suggestion to your Lordships that until and unless the young homeless are regarded as a priority class, they will not sufficiently receive the kind of help to which they are entitled. That brings me immediately to my great disappointment with the Consultative Document, the Working Group's pronouncement. I found they were very quick to pass over any attempt to define, or at least to describe, the particular

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group, the young homeless. May I add a number of reasons for which it seems to me they are in a peculiar and particularly vulnerable category and in fact demand this priority. I hope the Government will recognise that they have as much and in some respects more entitlement to be regarded as of a first charge than even those who are elderly—and their need is obvious—and families whose need is equally obvious.
As the noble Lord, Lord Amulree, has just said, the group about which we are being invited to think this afternoon is not a homogeneous one, but there are certain characteristics which belong to it today which are distinguishable and ominous. It is a group within which there is a much higher rate of delinquency than any other homeless group. I cannot give particulars and data but after long experience in this field I am convinced that this is so. They are obviously a group which come under the general designation, so often used as an "in" word, of alienation. They are a group in which there is a higher percentage of racial tension, and for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that there is nothing more disturbing to a young Pakistani youth or a young Indian—rather more perhaps than the more tribalised youths which come to us from Africa—than that they will find within their own family a tension and a division as between the habits and the ethos of that family and the conditions which they find in a city like London. I have knowledge of many of these youngsters with darker skins than mine whose problem is accentuated by the fact that they are regarded in the first instance as dangerous; that they fall into the alienation category more easily and are much more difficult to reclaim into any sort of society. I believe that this racial tension is very considerable, is growing, and in places like Brixton as elsewhere is of very great importance to those who would look upon youthful homeless people as having a particularly dangerous condition at least for the community as a whole.
Furthermore, this is a group of people of whom I might make the strange comment that the drought last summer had something to do with it. Let me explicate that extraordinary statement, but I am sure it is true. A great many young people
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of both sexes became habituated and conditioned to living what they regarded as "rough", because "rough" was fairly smooth during that time and they became accustomed to a way of life which has now become much more difficult and very much more unpleasant in an unusually wet winter. They have become detribalised in the sense that they are accustomed to a way of life now which is very difficult to reclaim to the kind of society to which we would think they would more fully express themselves. For those and other reasons, I am convinced that unless we regard this group as of priority status we shall not be in any position adequately to deal with the problems that they raise and indeed to assuage the troubles in which they find themselves.
Already there has been evidence, very properly given, of the resentment that many of these homeless young people feel, because as they travel abroad in the great cities they find themselves confronted with innumerable notices of houses to let and to be sold and they do not need to be convinced, as I am afraid some other people need to be convinced, that quite apart from the building of new accommodation there is a tremendous amount of accommodation in London which with fairly small expenditure could, at least for short-term occupation, be recovered, particularly when the short-term attempt to provide some new kind of accommodation in rebuilding is much more unlikely in the present economic stress than it was say two or three years ago. The short-life accommodation is abundant and would be much more quickly available if only the Government would take the proper steps, in some cases by self-help, to see that this accommodation is made available to those who need it.
May I commend to the Government the evidence that comes from London and Quadrant Housing association of the way in which this particular effort can be advantageously and successfully undertaken. Reference has already been made to the walk up accommodation, the hard to let accommodation. Many of these youngsters are not dispossessed of a great deal of happiness if they have not got a garden or if they do not live in the kind of situation of which proper requirements are set for those who would let

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them to, shall we say, families or young people in other kinds of community life. There is a great opportunity for the use of this hard to let accommodation and it would not be disadvantageous, as in the Camden experiment, to think that many of those youngsters would respond to the opportunity of a bit of "do-it-yourself" if they had at least the carrot, if you like, of some kind of regular occupation—because many of them are unemployed—and still better accommodation which at least would give them a place to lay their heads at night.
There is yet another aspect of this problem; that is, the provision of some kind of regular hostelry on the part of voluntary associations. I know a bit about this and it is only fair to put into such conversation as we are undertaking today certain comments. There can be no doubt at all that the provision of hostels for homeless youngsters is a precarious and costly exercise. In the hostels for which I am responsible the life expectancy of a colour television set is about six weeks; after that it is "whipped", and with all the precautions that can be taken it is impossible to prevent wholesale thieving.
I do not make that statement with any stomach; I record it as a lamentable fact, a fact that underlines two things. The first is the way in which many of these youngsters can and do exploit the voluntary services that are offered to them. The second—the Working Party was well aware of this—is the way in which they can be exploited. I therefore make some suggestions with regard to hostels. I am satisfied that the Working Party is right in refusing registration as if it is peremptory; I do not think it would work. However, I believe it is necessary for there to be a much closer relationship between the setting up of such hostels and responsible public bodies which can advise and in some cases superintend, if for no other reason than to adopt the old principle "no subvention without representation". It is clear that very few hostels could prevail for any length of time without public money of some kind to help them. If that money is forthcoming, then I believe that those who provide the money should find access to the workings of those hostels, and in the cases of which I have personal knowledge we have representatives from public bodies on
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our committees and we would welcome others.
What we are confronted with in the world at the moment is a lack of the society about which I will not dilate at this point in the debate, except to say that if the argument is that we cannot afford the kind of public money which will provide housing for those people who are homeless and particularly youngsters, then in my view that kind of economic argument is bad. I was delighted when I first heard Bach's music described as celestial arithmatic or mathematics—I cannot remember the exact phrase—and I believe there is a celestial kind of economics. I am satisfied that it is not a question of whether we can afford the necessary resources to provide homes or at least lodgings for those youngsters who are homeless. We cannot afford not so to do, for the total result will be an impoverishment of the whole society in which we live. What scares me almost as much—I say this with considerable hesitation and after long thought—is that I believe there is a moral deteriortion in a great many young people today. One of the causes producing that situation, lamentable as it is, is their lack of any sense of belonging, and one cannot belong unless one has somewhere to live.
Lord PLATT: Before the noble Lord sits down, my Lords, may I ask him whether the phrase for which he was looking was "the celestial logic of Bach", and was that not written by the late Lord Brain?
Lord SOPER: I accept that, ray Lords, so long as the noble Lord is in favour of Bach.
6.35 p.m.
Baroness VICKERS: My Lords, I am glad of this opportunity to take part in the debate and I congratulate the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London on his choice of subject. I wish also to join with him on the question of the building in Endell Street. I believe that it could be bought for about £100,000. It is an admirable building which I understand would accommodate about 40 people. I have been to see it and I hope that we may get some help today—if the Government cannot help, then perhaps the

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voluntary organisations could get together in this matter—in order to make some use of this building.
I was interested in what the right reverend Prelate said about booths in stations. For many years, when I was chairman of the British Vigilance Association we ran, in conjunction with International Travellers' Aid, booths at both Victoria and Liverpool Street stations; in those days they were designed particularly of course for au pair girls and others coming from overseas. Once we had joined the EEC that activity was not really necessary. I cannot understand why there is now any objection to having such booths. The only thing that worries me is what the report says about the cost because when we ran them the cost was not anything like that suggested.
I may be rather critical, but I assure the Minister that I am not being critical of him. He is in a very difficult situation and I know from experience that he has this problem very much at heart. I know he would do everything he could if it were in his hands alone. In a Parliamentary reply to a similar Question mentioned by the right reverend Prelate, he referred to the Answer he had received; the one I have in mind, which was given to the other place, was much longer and much more definite. Part of it read:
"The Government are not committed to the acceptance of these recommendations but consider it desirable that they should be fully discussed".
We seem to have discussed this on more than one occasion. It went on:
"They will have to be considered carefully by the Government in consultation with the local authority associations and other interested bodies. In view of current economic circumstances, and the Government's call for restraint in local authority spending, there is little prospect of early implementation of those proposals which would require additional expenditure, but in the consultations particular attention will be paid to what can otherwise be done to help homeless young people."
That was a most depressing view from the Government. However, there is in the report one hopeful suggestion at page 56, item 6, to the effect that the Housing Corporation should consider increasing the allocation of finance to hostel and other accommodation for single young people.
I have the report with me and I am rather depressed because on page 14 it says:
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"This has been a year of change for staff, and one of debate on how best to improve and develop arrangements for negotiations and consultation. A Joint Consultative and Negotiating Committee was established during the year to provide a forum for discussion as a possible step towards more formal arrangements and negotiations."
It seems to me that we are to do nothing but discuss and that no action is to be taken. Something I should like to see and something that is in the report's recommendations—I believe this could be implemented without extra expenditure—is Recommendation 2(e):
"Planning authorities should relax unnecessarily restrictive criteria for the conversion of large dwellings into smaller self-contained units."
That could be carried out quite easily.
Returning to the report of the Housing Corporation, what worries me is the money they are spending. I have mentioned that they have had a change of staff and it seems that 363 of the staff are paid on average £4,000 a year. I understand that not one house has been built and in my view if the Corporation were to disappear tomorrow that would hardly affect those doing that work, except that it would relieve other workers in the housing sphere from the pressure of bureaucracy. Unfortunately the figures for 1976–77 are not known. Perhaps the Minister can say what is the cost of the Corporation's move to its very palatial offices in Maple House. That question should be answered because it is worrying a great many people.
I suggest that more use is made of the National Association of Voluntary Hostels. I say that because since 1962 that body has placed 67,000 persons in 11,000 hostels, an extremely good job of work. I should like to see it operating as a policy and policing body and also as a coordinating body with other hostels. When I suggest the Association is, so far as I understand it, the one organisation that really goes round seeing whether the hostels are the right type for the young people. After one visit to Gleave's hostel, no more placings were made and I understand—and the right reverend Prelate has already referred to this—that there is to be a programme concerning NOVO on television tonight. Since August 1975, the National Association of Voluntary Hostels has not had them on its list. I should like the Minister to state whether

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he can give the organisation official powers to visit and make reports to him. I believe that this would be very helpful.
I was rather disturbed by the point of view put forward on a Question yesterday by the noble Lord, Lord Boothby, who suggested that some of the stations might be patrolled by people wanting to get young persons of either sex for undesirable purposes. I should like to say that, though this may be true, it is not the reason why young people come to London, and I should like to point out one or two things in their favour. As may be known to the Minister, I am a trustee and also help to run what is known as the London Centre. To take one part of the work, because I have not had the opportunity of getting hold of all the figures, out of 14 people at the Centre, 12 are working.
I should like to know what is the policy of the Government for the future because centres like mine want to prepare their policy. We hope to produce 11 more hostels by 1980, and we should like to have some indication whether it is worth our while to go on working on these lines and whether we should get in touch with other centres to find out where the new hostels should be placed and what ratio needs to be provided for the different sexes. As I understand it, a short while ago there were five boys needing accommodation to every one girl but the ratio has now changed to three to one. Perhaps the Minister may have some further details.
I should like also to join in the congratulations to Sarah Waugh on the publication of her excellent document Needs and Provisions for Young Single Homeless People up to the Age of 25 Years and the Needs of Mobility of Young People for Jobs. The Department of the Environment has said in Circular 18/74 that homelessness is concerned with the needs of those who are literally without shelter or likely to lose in the immediate future what shelter they have. The noble Lord, Lord Soper, has mentioned the Private Bill dealing with the housing of homeless persons and I absolutely agree with him that this will not be any use for the type of person we are talking about today because I gather that it is primarily for the elderly, the disabled and pregnant women. There is another Bill which
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rather worries me as far as the creation of homelessness is concerned. This is Part II of the Criminal Law Bill. The law of trespass, with the fine of £1,000 or six months' imprisonment for those guilty of adverse occupation of residential property and those who perhaps squat illegally, will increase the number requiring hostel accommodation.
I should like to consider for a moment those who are in need. First, we have the unskilled. It is the unskilled who cannot get employment at the present time. Then there are the emotionally unstable. Then, as mentioned by the noble Lard, Lord Soper, there are those overseas persons who are permanently settled here. I should like to see—and I believe that this has been mentioned by the Secretary of State for Education—far better career prospects put forward by careers officers in schools. I believe that they need a much better and more thorough training. The unskilled need really good counselling because not enough preparation is made for the very dramatic moment when they leave school and leave their families and go out to work. We are living in an age of competitive industry and I believe that too many young people, expecially girls, are orientated by the schools towards professional jobs, instead of doing manual work or taking up apprenticeships in, say, engineering and hairdressing.
I believe that the emotionally unstable must be sorted out before they leave school because we find that these are a large number of our clients when they come to the big cities. With regard to the overseas young people, they have a particularly difficult time because their parents were mostly brought up in their countries of origin with a very different outlook in regard to family life. They have lost what is known as the "extended family" system, which is very unfortunate. Naturally, if they live in this country, it is difficult to keep that which they had in their own country. Also, when one gets girls who have been brought up in the Moslem religion, they now want to be far more independent and I regret to say that in a great many cases—or perhaps that is exaggerating and I should say, in a large number of cases—young girls leave home because they cannot accept the strict authority of the parents which they would have had in their own country. There we have what is known as a "split

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family". I gather that 53 percent, of those using night shelter between April and November 1970 came from split families. One thousand nine hundred and fifty one (9 per cent.) had criminal records. Three percent, were mentally or physically in danger because they had health problems and 2 percent only were there because they were taking drugs or alcohol. Those are the real reasons for homelessness.
I want to finish by making one other point: what happens when these people leave the hostels? I try very hard to see that, when they have a job, they make some savings in order that they can eventually go to live on their own. But what is needed are bedsitting rooms for the single person. There is an organisation called Abbeyneld which does this for the elderly. They have a room with their own furniture and a place to cook. We also have one hostel which will do this for the disabled and we have a lounge where they can all meet and, in the case of the disabled, if they cannot cook any more, their cooking is done for them. I want to encourage the young people to save their money to buy some furniture, but they must have somewhere where they can go. Coming back to Endell Street, I think that this would be a very good place for them to go and pay some rent. I am sure that there are similar problems in Liverpool, Birmingham and Manchester which I shall not go into today.
I was glad that somebody mentioned the idea that council tenants could take in some young people, particularly elderly council tenants who do not want to leave their homes or the district where they have many friends but who have too much accommodation and are very lonely. I should like to have a register of landladies and landlords who might take in young people. In Plymouth, we did this for the elderly and it worked extremely well, with many people taking the elderly into their homes. If there is a register, if they have difficulties somebody can go and help to sort them out. May I end by thanking the young people who, I feel, have done more than anybody else to bring this matter to our attention; that is, CHAR. I have attended their meetings and I should like to congratulate them on their persistence in trying to find some way of
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improving the life of those who are probably the same age as those who are doing this excellent job.
6.49 p.m.
Lord JANNER: My Lords, I approach this subject from an angle which I hope other Members of the House will appreciate; namely, the extreme importance of this problem. I hope that I shall not upset my noble friend Lord Wells-Pestell too much if I say that I believe that, if he were not placed under certain restrictions from other directions, he would feel precisely the same as other noble Lords who are speaking on this subject. I say this in consequence of my knowledge of his deep interest in the problem itself and in social problems generally. I should like to thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London for having taken the opportunity of bringing this subject forward this evening and for the admirable way in which he presented the case and dealt with the problem itself, although this deprived some of us of an opportunity of saying much that he himself said. But that is not unusual with the right reverend Prelate. He covered the ground extremely well and put the problems as most of us would have desired to do.
When I was at the memorial service to Anthony Crosland yesterday I heard something which, in view of the effect it had upon me, I thought it might be useful to repeat in this debate. When the Dean of Westminster was referring to our late lamented friend and colleague he said this:
"We recall his passion to advance a more just and equal society, his unfaltering desire to raise up the under-privileged, to care for the less fortunate"—
I want to underline the next phrase:
"and to harness the resources of the State to this end."
We are living at a time when we are dealing with priorities, with the use of such funds as are available, and we are giving priority to such problems as we think are of the highest importance. I think that the subject with which we are dealing this evening stands high in the list—very high indeed—because it affects to an enormous extent the future of young people. We have already heard how young people can become criminally inclined, how they can

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lose their sense of being part of the whole of our people.
I believe that the question of the cost cannot be considered in a cold and impassive manner, as a piece of arithmetic, in disposing of the funds available in the Treasury. It is too deep a matter of concern for cold, hard calculation in terms of monetary consideration. Of course, we all know that funds are not available to the extent that we should like for all the causes in which we are interested, but I would repeat that this is an important cause when it comes to the consideration of funds. In the past we have heard answers to the effect that something costs so much, or that it costs too much. The question is asked what can be done without spending money, but quite rightly consideration is given to steps that can be taken without incurring undue cost. I want to emphasise, however, that that is not the main consideration in a case of this description. Whatever other problem arises for which funds have to be made available, I believe that this particular problem should take a very high priority.
I want to mention one other point here. I was a little sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Sandys, thought it necessary to introduce the question of the Rent Acts in this matter. This is not the time that I should like to enter into a disputation on whether or not the situation which we are discussing is the fault of the Rent Acts. I have my own views about that, and in passing I can say only what I have said before. I think that the reason why people do not allow their places to be rented is that they have been frightened by the kind of propaganda that has gone forward. Many people have been frightened by the manner in which the Rent Acts have been presented to them, so causing a deterrent which arises from the unfortunate way in which a case has been presented—
Lord SANDYS: My Lords, I think that I must remind the noble Lord, Lord Janner, of what he said on 24th February, as reported at column 463 of the Official Report. He said:
"Blame the person who fixes the rent, blame the tribunal, but do not blame the law."
This is a dispute between us, and it would be unprofitable to continue it.
Lord JANNER: That, my Lords, is why I am spending only a few moments discussing it. Perhaps one day the noble Lord and I will be able to get together and I will try to explain my view regarding this question.
I think I can agree that young people are almost totally dependent on the private rented sector at present, and those who become homeless are those least desirable to landlords and landladies. The private sector is shrinking, and the supply of good landladies is diminishing. Therefore the number of young homeless is increasing. There is a disproportionate number of the unacceptable who have already been referred to—the unskilled, the unemployed, the emotionally unstable and, unhappily, some of the coloured people. Those most at risk, in my view, and I think in the view of the Committee which investigated the matter, are those young people who wish to live independently and to make their own way, but who cannot afford to do so with the present scarcity of single accommodation. They move from place to place, become disillusioned and restless, and tend to form a hard core of drifters who are vulnerable to evil elements in society. They require special social support—and I want to emphasise this—for their resettlement in the community.
Council houses are largely offered to families and the elderly, and owner-occupation is largely out of the reach of young people, so provision for hem falls largely on the voluntary sector. There is a special need for night shelters such as Centrepoint and St. Anne's, Soho, but these cannot function adequately without follow-up accommodation. Many voluntary organisations provide hostel accommodation, but hostels, too, need the backup of more permanent on-going bedsitters or shared flats. The Stonham Association, for example, named after a former and revered Member of this House, runs widespread hostels for the single homeless with special needs, who require a stable period of social support as a basis for resettlement in society. All too often, when they are ready to leave the hostel there is literally no place for them to go to. They have to stay in hostels longer than they need to do, while those who are in urgent need of hostel support have to go without. When we are considering the question of the cost, I would respectfully

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suggest to my noble friend that considerations of this sort have to be taken into account.
The most urgent need of the single homeless today is for bed-sitters—and I agree with the points which have been made—or single units, and the voluntary sector is concerned to provide them. Housing associations are being widely frustrated in this aim, I would point out to my noble friend, by the present policy of the Housing Corporation of limiting housing grants to stress areas. There are local voluntary groups all over the country concerned about single homeless persons, particularly the young, which would embark on such projects in co-operation with housing associations, like Stonham, if only the funds were available in their area. It is very sad that the largest cuts in the housing programme for 1977–78 have fallen upon housing associations. One-third of all the cuts of £180 million has been obtained by a major reduction in housing association programmes, yet they are responsible for little over 10 per cent. of total housing expenditure. This 10 per cent., however, is significantly related to the needs of the poorest and most vulnerable, and it is they who will be directly hit by the damage to the housing association movement.
It is indicated that, as unemployment has increased, so has homelessness also increased, particularly among young people who leave home in search of employment. It has been observed that at Centrepoint (to which the noble Lord, Lord Amulree, and I think one other speaker have already referred) young people from provincial areas of unemployment have been able to find work in London but no place in which to live. There are numerous voluntary agencies which are seeking to provide social support for people with special problems and are co-operating with the statutory agencies involved, but it is painfully clear that, however dedicated their endeavours may be, their efforts at promoting social resettlement are largely dissipated without the provision of a residential back-up.
While the provision of emergency accommodation such as night shelters, day centres and crisis centres is such a valuable contribution to the voluntary sector, the
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authorities should never allow this provision to be a substitute for the real need, which is for long-term accommodation. For example, the Centrepoint night shelter in Soho renovated a large and dilapidated house which was one of several standing empty in a row owned by the GLC, and converted it into shared flats for young men who had slept at the shelter but had nowhere to go. It is a scandal that so much of this local authority property is standing empty and derelict while there are so many voluntary associations which are only too anxious to put them to good use in this way. An example of what can be done by a flexible and co-operative local authority is that in 1975 a voluntary group providing short-life community housing was housing 72 families, 50 couples and 132 single people in property it had renovated in the Borough of Camden.
My Lords, there are other aspects of this subject. I do not want to detain the House much longer, but there is the question of ex-offenders who at the present time are being housed in order to allow them to have some kind of opportunity to get back into normal life. Many of them could leave the organisations providing that kind of housing if there were opportunities to take up housing accommodation elsewhere; and, in turn, that would provide an opportunity for young people who have offended and who need the kind of protection that these organisations give in order to enable them to come back into ordinary life.
The problem is a very serious one, and I have asked Questions about it. I have had replies which, I am sorry to say, are not satisfactory. In particular, in the case of the one that I asked only yesterday, the idea of not making provision for people at railway stations is, in my opinion, a disgrace. That is an opportunity which should not be missed, and what we have heard as resulting from that opportunity not being taken should really have stirred all of us, on whatever side of the House we may sit, into ensuring that action is taken. I hope that my noble friend will see to it that, instead of the matter being delayed again, as it has been since October, we have proper consideration given to the position, and that adequate protection will be given to these young people who will eventually become the men and women of our nation.
7.8 p.m.
Baroness MACLEOD of BORVE: My Lords, there is a great deal of homeless-ness in this country today, but due to the initiative of the right reverend Prelate we are fortunate in being able to discuss the young homeless tonight. This is a late hour, and I shall not keep the House long. It seems to me that the young homeless fall into four or five categories. There are the unemployed; the single who have left home; the one-parent families, of both sexes; and the alcoholics or drug addicts. Last Wednesday I had in front of me in a juvenile court a woman of 23 who had three children. She could not find anywhere to live, and she had no money with which to provide any accommodation for her three children. She was being thrown from my borough back to where she came from, a big city in the Midlands; backwards and forwards, from the housing authority to the social services. Nobody wanted her, and nobody wanted her children. The only way, it seemed, that she could get accommodation for her children was to put them into the care of the local authority, and that we had to do.
Most of the agencies working with young people which are worried about the number of homeless in our areas today are very worried about the girls from the immigrant families, as has been mentioned. It is estimated that there may be 1,000 second generation immigrant youngsters drifting in London; and a great proportion of them are girls. My noble friend Lord Sandys mentioned the Rent Act. I must mention it, too, despite what the noble Lord, Lord Janner, has said. From what I have been able to discover, not all homelessness, but some of it, is the direct result of the Rent Act; for there is so much less accommodation available in London because people will not let their bedsitting rooms and will not let their flats because they are terrified of not being able to get the youngsters out.
Lord JANNER: My Lords, I agree that people are terrified. The point is why they are terrified. Is it not because this kind of thing has been greatly stirred up and people themselves do not understand the possibilities open to them to get their tenants out if they want to?
Baroness MACLEOD of BORVE: My Lords, I agree; but surely we are all hoping that there will be an alteration of the Rent Act. I think that that will be helpful, because it seems from all the inquiries one makes that the fewer and fewer bedsitting rooms and fiats being available is the direct result of this Rent Act.
Before 1939, a long time ago, there were over 300 statutory reception centres up and down the country. In 1961 there were 33 and in 1963 there were 25. Now there are 21 centres with beds for 2,500 men and 90 women; but nobody may stay in these centres for more than three nights. One noble Lord referred to the Rowntree houses which had 2,000 cheap rooms. Those, as we all know, no longer exist. The problem today is difficult to quantify, as noble Lords have said, but I have a survey brought out by Crisis at Christmas this year which took the year 973 when there were 8,000 young people sleeping rough, of which 20 per cent, were female. Twenty-five per cent, came from Scotland, 18 per cent, from the North of England, 13 per cent, from the Midlands, 13 per cent, from the South and the remainder from the London boroughs. I, in company with other noble Lords, have asked Questions about the problems of homelessness and about what is being done as a result of the Working Party report.
It seems to me that too many people are not doing enough. We have been told that five different Departments are contributing to committees which are sitting on this problem. I suggest that it is about time that those Departments got together and stopped passing the buck from one to another. If you are young and far from home and have very few friends except those with whom you are squatting or sheltering underneath a bridge, it is cold comfort to know that despite what the noble Lord in person does and tries to do—and I pay tribute to all that he does—nothing, apparently, is being done.
It is very easy if one sees the young people around to become emotional on what is a very difficult subject. I should like to suggest to the Minister that there should be appointed an overlord who would weld together the work of all the agencies and their representatives; who would weld together the work of the Ministries, of the voluntary societies and

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of the local authorities until we have some body which can find out what the policy should be and then implement it forthwith. Despite the fact that it might cost money, I do not see that we are otherwise going to get anything except buck passing.
It is high time—and I agree with the other noble Lords who have mentioned this—that the Government got their priorities right and looked after the young people of this country. I also think there should be more hostel accommodation in the big cities, because so many young people have run away from home. If they have somewhere to run to, without catching a train to London from Birmingham or Liverpool or Manchester, then perhaps they would not run as far as London and perhaps then we should not have the juvenile delinquency that relates to homelessness and the juvenile delinquency that relates definitely to their having no roof.
This is a difficult subject. It is an emotional subject, or can be so. I beg the Government to treat it with the utmost urgency because our generation needs to see that young people are looked after. As I believe the noble Lord, Lord Soper, said, they are the future, and they are blaming us and blaming the Government—all Governments—for not taking this situation seriously enough. I beg the noble Lord to do all that he can to implement parts of this report.
7.17 p.m.
The Earl of LONGFORD: My Lords, I certainly echo the last words of the noble Baroness and beg the Government—and I know the noble Lord himself personally needs no begging—to treat this matter with even more earnestness than hitherto. A famous man whose name escapes me—somebody may supply the omission—asked to speak after Edmund Burke, contented himself with observing, "I say 'Ditto' to Mr. Burke". Someone may be able to tell me who it was; it might have been Goldsmith. But I resist the temptation, the House will be sorry to hear, to say, "Likewise" and sit down. I must just say a few other things; but I want to endorse strongly the lead given so effectively by the right reverend Prelate and to back up many of the other speakers. In particular, I should like to support
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with a great deal of feeling the insistence by the noble Lord, Lord Soper, that the Government should give strong encouragement to the inclusion of young homeless people in Mr. Ross's new Bill.
The Government are said to be supporting this Bill. For our purposes, for the purpose of this debate, they are not supporting it—up to now, at least. Perhaps we may get more encouragement tonight. They have not given any evidence of supporting the inclusion in the Bill of the young homeless, as pressed for by the noble Lord, Lord Soper, and others. In criticising the Government, I do not want to seem to be paying an indirect compliment to the Opposition which might be beyond their desserts. There is no reason to suppose that they would include this in their proposals. The noble Lord, Lord Sandys, was not heard to say anything on this matter, unless one missed the point. It is not a question of one Party or another; but of all Governments and of those in authority whatever Front Bench they happen to be sitting on, here or elsewhere. That is the first point: that we must ask and press the noble Lord who is speaking on behalf of the Government to say whether the Government favour the inclusion in Mr. Ross's Bill of the young homeless people who are our particular topic this afternoon.
My Lords, other noble Lords have spoken from their own long and direct experience and I will say a few words from mine. I am one of those who helped found the New Horizon Youth Centre in Soho, now in Macklin Street, Drury Lane. I have spoken to the young people who do the work there and who run it—for I am just the chairman, which is, as we all know, the least important thing you can be except being the president, as I have heard the noble Viscount, Lord Amory remark before now. I am in close touch with our centre and I asked the young people who run it to give me a brief example of the life story of someone who is homeless. As has been remarked by more than one speaker, there was an infinite variety of young people.
One cannot say that one person exemplifies the lot; but, my Lords, let me give you one short story on which to focus our thoughts. One young boy of 19 years of age came to London from

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Liverpool a year ago. On the face of it, he was neither better nor worse than lots of other people. He soon spent the money that he brought with him on bed and breakfast accommodation. After a few days of sleeping rough he came to our New Horizon Youth Centre. The staff tried to help him find accommodation but the resources available to them were either full or had waiting lists. The young man spent weeks moving from night shelter to lodging house, sometimes sleeping rough and sometimes spending the night in cafes. He soon lost sight of any plans to get a job. Because of his lack of accommodation, he was unable to obtain any work that lasted, and the few casual jobs he had did not enable him to pay for any accommodation that was at all secure. A year after his arrival in London he no longer has any personal possessions. His health has deteriorated and repeated failure to get out of the West End has destroyed his confidence and he feels that he has no future. We in the New Horizon Centre are sure that this particular young man's present circumstances would be totally different and infinitely better if accommodation had been available to him on his arrival in London. He is one case among many; that is the kind of person that we are talking about this evening.
I do not want to deal with the main points which others have treated so effectively, but I should like to touch on one topic that the noble Lord, Lord Soper, and others referred to; that is, whether we can afford these facilities. I was glad to hear him quote my old friend Lord Beveridge. When Beveridge was asked whether we could afford the so-called Beveridge Plan, he said, "We cannot not afford it". In a deep sense that is true. If we look into this matter in terms of a balance sheet, we can give a further answer. We were told by the noble Lord, Lord Soper, and other speakers that in many cases it is a very uninviting prospect for landladies to take in homeless young people. It may be an uninviting prospect now, but it would be a much less inviting prospect when they are asked to take in the same people a year later. Those people will be permanently damaged unless accommodation is found for them. If the colour television vanishes after six weeks now, then if those same people are housed in that accommodation in a
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year from now the colour television will vanish in a week.
We must realise that we are laying up a terrible legacy for ourselves or for the community. I do not know whether it is right here to distinguish between our own community self-interest and the interest, the life story, the fate and human destiny of these young people. One cannot distinguish, because I believe in this world that if you do harm to individuals, you almost certainly damage the community. You may ruin the community. I am sure that in the end we will pay for this in every sense, moral and economic. It cannot be economy in any sense that has any meaning to try to skimp and save on these homeless young.
One final matter, my Lords. I should like to return to the matter of information booths which has been referred to by more than one speaker. I am sure that most noble Lords will agree with me—and I am sure that in his heart the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, will agree with me, because he is the most compassionate of men and is also very knowledgeable in this field—that it is a scandal that these information booths should not be set up at Euston station and Victoria coach station. Many of the young people that we have seen in recent months at the New Horizon Youth Centre have money when they arrive in London. If they receive advice and information immediately on arrival, the money can be spent on permanent accommodation rather than on beds in hotels, when the money vanishes very quickly.
My Lords, we have a Minister who would like to take the right action. I can only hope that this debate will help him to do so, and I hope that this combination of strong feeling and first-hand knowledge will enable him to say to his colleagues, "You cannot go on depriving these young people of their human rights".
7.26 p.m.
Baroness GAITSKELL: My Lords, I feel deeply grateful to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London for his Question to the Government, and for his moving, informative speech. I intervene humbly, not the least bit knowledgeable on this subject. I have learned more in

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this debate from the speeches tonight than from practically any other debate I have attended.
I must confess that those five little words, "What action has been taken?" make my heart sink, because I know that action costs money, and there is not much of that about these days. This report on the homeless young is a rather good one. Its recommendations are relevant and none the worse for being obvious. What is less obvious and even mystifying is the way that a convicted criminal, such as Mr. Gleaves, who inspired this report, was able to build up an edifice of such wickedness because of legal timidity—I can call it nothing less.
My Lords, I will be brief and touch mainly on the information services, which, after all, should not be too costly. The problems of the homeless young are not difficult to diagnose or analyse. The fact that we have no statistics of their numbers or their ages shows this. The Housing Act of 1974 for the first time said that hostels were entitled to a housing subsidy. This report stresses the overriding need for hostels for short-term accommodation for the young homeless, first, to prevent them from coming to London and then, when arriving in London—where large numbers of young people come with nowhere to go—for them to get help. Apart from the need for social worker support, the funding of short-stay hostels as housing projects is crucial. Here the management costs are inevitably high because they require good staffing, and the only way of getting funds for them is from the voluntary organisations.
I should like to concentrate on the need for giving young people information about existing hostels, and as much publicity as we can give them. Here one of the obvious and cheaper ways of giving in-formation is in the last two years of their school life. Though 70,000 copies of a very good information leaflet were distributed to voluntary youth organisations, it is known that many young people who move to London will be unprepared and in need of advice and guidance. Despite this, a Camden Council study suggests that at Euston, King's Cross and St. Pancras the need for information and advice was not met. Such information services could be conducted from any
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small mobile unit: I suggest a van, a kiosk, a booth, or, let us say, a bus at the Victoria bus terminal, where the office could be upstairs and the waiting room downstairs.
For the prevention of such atrocities as were committed by Mr. Gleaves, conventional wisdom should be by-passed. Rather, help and advice should be given by teachers during the last two years at school before children go to work. The career services, together with further education and training establishments, should be mobilised and given directives to help the homeless young. All that should really be part of teacher training and not involve immediate cost. Finally, life after school can be well described on television. When we consider that out of the 750,000 children who leave school every year, 300,000 receive no further education and training, it is little wonder, my Lords, that the young seek adventure, romance and the glittering lights of the big cities.
7.32 p.m.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I am going to resist the temptation extended to me by the noble Lord, Lord Sandys, and the noble Baroness, Lady Macleod, to deal with the Rent Act, I shall not do that because I want to keep this debate non-political so far as possible and I should not be able to do that if I dealt with that aspect. But I am stung into action by the noble Baroness, Lady Macleod, who said that in this particular field we are discussing tonight nothing is being done. I am now going to establish that a good deal is being done.
The right reverend Prelate did at least confine himself to the matter of the wording of the Unstarred Question and, quite rightly, drew attention to the fact that something like five or six months had elapsed. I do not say that the right reverend Prelate said that nothing had been done, but that we do not know the Government's intentions with regard to the Working Party's report. Your Lordships all know there are five Government Departments represented on the Working Party and the report represented a part of their deliberations, along with those of representatives of a large number of other organisations. We do live in a democracy—let us be profoundly thankful for that—and for five months five Departments involved, with a large number of

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people in each of them, have been discussing their individual responsibilities. People may laugh about this, but if one has been in Government, as a number of your Lordships have, one will know that it is not easy to come to some meaningful consensus in a period of five months.
However, having said that, may I say that the Government have studied very carefully the recommendations of the Working Party and, if it does not come as a shock to noble Lords, the several Ministers concerned are at the present moment considering a draft Consultation Paper. I hope it will be possible to start discussions on that with local authority associations in the very near future—and I mean the very near future. If somebody wants me to put days or weeks to that, I cannot; but there is now a Consultation Paper for the purpose of discussing with local authority associations not only the problem itself but how best to deal with it.
I want to say something about what is being done at the present moment in this particular field. When people talk about "small expenditure", there is a lot of small expenditure. Let me remind your Lord-ships that the latest White Paper on public expenditure provides for a continuing level of public expenditure on housing from all sources of £4,200 million—I repeat, £4,200 million. We are spending an enormous amount of money on housing. I am not suggesting for one moment that that is all to be used for the benefit of the homeless or homeless young people; but there are a large number of married couples—middle-aged and elderly couples—who are homeless and who have to be provided for by the State.
I recognise that a serious problem is involved, and it would be idle not to recognise that fact so far as the young homeless are concerned. I should like to take this opportunity of paying tribute for the tremendous amount of work which is being done by voluntary organisations, not only here in London, where they are doing a magnificent job in the West End, but all over the country. Indeed, the plight would be a jolly sight worse if we did not have the benefit of their expertise and guidance and the work they are doing.
The publication of the report has itself stimulated local interest, and has expressed
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a great deal of concern over the problems of the homeless young. We have sent copies of the report to all local authorities, and my Department, the Department of Health and Social Security, has received a large number of requests from individuals and organisations all over the country—and indeed, from as far a field as Australia. Even before publication, a conference was held in London, as the right reverend Prelate will know better than I, perhaps, by the British Council of Churches. That conference was attended by representatives of voluntary organisations, central and local Government, and by Members of both Houses. As a result of that, a very eye-catching report, if I may so describe it, was published and commended to the Churches for consideration.
In Liverpool, Newcastle, Manchester and Birmingham groups have been looking at the problems of homelessness in their cities. I am not suggesting that is being done for the very first time, but I think it now has added emphasis. These initiatives have been taken largely by voluntary organisations. In London, the final report of the joint London Boroughs' Association with the Greater London Working Party on Accommodation for the Single will be considered by the appropriate committee of the London Boroughs' Association and the Greater London Council w thin the next few days. It has also been considering the needs of homeless people in London.
I do not want there to be n is under-standing about what (albeit probably not enough) is being done. I have re: erred to the initiatives being taken by Voluntary bodies in setting up a group to consider the problems of homeless people, and some of your Lordships may have seen an article in The Times about a month ago which suggested that the Government were not able to offer any financial help to alleviate the serious difficulties faced by voluntary agencies. I welcome this opportunity of putting the record straight.
The Working Group's report drew attention to various Government sources of finance which are available, and which have been available to voluntary organisations for a very long time, and I hope it will be helpful if I mention some of these sources. The Working Group first referred to the role of the housing

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associations. I am advised by the Department of the Environment that housing associations have been able to undertake a wide variety of projects to meet the problems of single homeless young people. As well as ordinary small flats, there are projects such as that run by the Sandford Co-operative, where purpose-built cluster flats are managed on co-operative principles. I am trusting to memory now, but I believe that it is in Lewisham. Beacon Hostels currently have three projects in the Tower Hamlets area to provide accommodation similar to that which we associate with the YMCA and the YWCA. Some associations make short-life accommodation, in London and elsewhere, available to young people, many of whom would otherwise have been homeless.
I want to answer most, if not all, of the questions put to me by the right reverend Prelate, because I think everyone will agree that not only did the right reverend Prelate crystallise this matter, but he covered the problem which most, if not all, of the speakers saw today. I can assure the right reverend Prelate that the Government attach considerable importance to the better use of the existing housing stock. We feel as concerned about it as the right reverend Prelate himself. Since coming into Office, initiatives have been taken to direct available resources within the municipalisation programme to areas of housing stress. Priority has been accorded to local authority acquisition of properties which have been standing empty for at least two months in areas where there is a serious overall shortage of housing, or where the acquisition would relieve homelessness. Priority has also been accorded to the acquisition of properties for conversion into use as hostels. Local authorities have had the power to charge up to the full rate on empty residential property. Nearly all the London boroughs have taken advantage of this which, in the long run, helps the problem. I know that, in a sense, this may make only a small contribution, but nevertheless it is a contribution.
Some of these issues have been considered in the review of housing policy which has been undertaken by my right honourable friend, the results of which he expects to announce before long. The question of
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management by local authorities of their own stock, to ensure that the number of vacant dwellings in their ownership is kept to the necessary minimum, is to be considered by the Housing Services Advisory Group within the Department of the Environment. The code of guidance to be issued to local housing authorities, in conjunction with the new legislation on homelessness, will encourage local authorities to make the fullest use of property within their ownership, especially short-life property.
All these initiatives will play their part in meeting the concern expressed by the right reverend Prelate, and because it is an important issue that he has raised, and the Government share his views, my right honourable friend is adopting what, for want of a better phrase, might be called a "belt and braces" approach, for, in addition to the initiatives which I have described, the Department of the Environment is at an advanced stage in the preparation of a comprehensive circular of guidance to local authorities on the range of measures available to them for securing that the housing stock in their area, whether publicly or privately owned, is utilised to the full. I hope that I have at least said enough on that to assure the right reverend Prelate and others that we are aware of the position, and are not being complacent in regard to this matter.
Not all voluntary bodies which try to help homeless young people are expert in the technical aspects of housing, and co-operation with a housing association can provide the property which will be most valuable. Reference has already been made by one or two noble Lords to Centre point, a member of the West End Co-ordinated Voluntary Services, which has a small hostel where homeless young people can stay for a few months till it is ascertained how best they can be helped. An association is building a short-stay emergency hostel for the group, and the Brent People's Housing Association are providing flats for permanent accommodation. Similarly, the Special Projects Unit set up, as many of your Lordships will know, by the Notting Hill Housing Trust and Paddington Churches Housing Association have worked with the ethnic minority self-help groups, whose clients are homeless young people, to provide short-life accommodation and a group hostel.

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There is great scope for further co-operation of this kind. Under the Housing Act 1974, registered housing associations can apply for grants towards the capital costs of housing projects. Finance is provided, in the first instance, by a loan from the Housing Corporation or the local authority, and a housing association grant is paid when the scheme is completed in order to reduce the out-standing loan to a level that can be serviced from the estimated net income over the life of the project. The Housing Corporation will be considering, in the light of the report, whether its allocation of funds for hostels and housing for single people should be increased.
But let me put a figure to what the Housing Corporation is, in fact, doing. It is providing approximately £100 million a year in loans approved for single people of working age. This is not chicken-feed. Something is being done, and let us make no mistake about it. Assistance is avail-able towards the running costs of existing schemes, through revenue deficit grant and hostel deficit grant. Exceptionally, an annual deficit grant may also be given to a new project which has been approved for capital grant. Associations are norm-ally expected to contain running costs within certain limits for housing management and maintenance. However, it is accepted that projects for homeless young people may have—and very often do have—higher costs, and the Department of the Environment is prepared to pay grants towards such projects, even if the expenditure is above the normal limits. If the level of the management expenditure is such that the project cannot be regarded as being simply to provide housing, a grant may be available towards the housing costs, provided that there is continuing finance from another source to meet the excess management costs which must be regarded as welfare expenditure.
Baroness MACLEOD of BORVE: My Lords, can the noble Lord tell me how much of the £100 million is for young homeless?
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I cannot break it down. I am saying that this amount of money is provided as loans approved for single people of working age. One cannot break this down, but the fact is that young homeless people do benefit as a result of it.
Lord JANNER: My Lords will my noble friend agree that the housing association cuts are out of all proportion to what they should be in order to meet the requirements to which we are referring?
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: No, my Lords, this is not true at all. When one says "out of all proportion" one has to define what one means. The Government are not being ungenerous. Of course, there is not a single enterprise operating in this country today that could not be improved if there were more money. Where a voluntary organisation maintains centres for purposes similar to those for which reception centres are maintained by the Supplementary Benefits Commission, under paragraph 4 of Schedule 5 to the Supplementary Benefits Act 1976, the Commission have powers to make contributions from their funds. Grants are being paid to three organisations which are catering specially for young people—that is, St. Giles in Camberwell, Centrepoint in Soho, London, and St. Basil's in Birmingham. I am speaking about the Supplementary Benefits Act 1976. We have already given £73,000. Other projects receive grants, too, if they are taking in young people.
So far as my own Department, the Department of Health and Social Security, is concerned, under Section 64 of the Health Services and Public Health Act 1968 that, too, provides a further source of finance to voluntary bodies which are concerned with the homeless. Grants are made to the national voluntary organisations which function in the social services field, normally to meet head-quarters' expenses. For example, the Campaign for the Homeless and Rootless which has been referred to tonight—CHAR—and the National Association of Voluntary Hostels are already grant-aided by the Department. Not only are these two organisations grant-aided but so are a considerable number of others. In the year 1975–76 we grant-aided hostels to the extent of £142,720, and it goes a significant way towards meeting these situations.
The Department of Education and Science makes a limited number of grants for experimental projects which are of national significance within the context of the Youth Service. There are two projects

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in the Birmingham area involving homeless young people, and these two projects receive grants in consequence. The first project ran for 18 months and ended in March of last year. It involved the use of YMCA furnished flatlets as short-term accommodation for local homeless young people for whom on-the-spot counselling services were provided by a full-time, experienced YMCA centre leader. The second project, which terminates soon, has attempted to follow up and evaluate the effect of the support and counsel received by those who use the shelter known as the Boot Night Shelter, which is part of St. Basil's, to which I referred a moment or two ago. The Home Office probation and after-care department may also provide deficit finance under arrangements first introduced in 1965 for hostels which reserve places for offenders. One has to recognise that some of the homeless young people are offenders, and a good deal has been done for them.
Finally under this heading, I must refer to the grants being made by the voluntary services unit of the Home Office. The unit is making grants in excess of £66,000 to voluntary organisations which are offering help and service to youngsters arriving in Central London without proper preparation. I do not want to deal with the matter that I dealt with yesterday. The right reverend Prelate said that he has read what I had to say and that he is very disappointed with it. I accept that criticism. Some of us find ourselves in the position of not being able to say some of the things that we would like to say.
Several Noble Lords: Hear, hear!
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, noble Lords misunderstand me. I meant that some of us wish that we were in a position to say that we could do so much more. The right reverend Prelate referred to certain things that I said involving the CAB and two other organisations. Although I did not come here intending to say it, I want to take this opportunity to say that I am sorry—I want to be careful about this because noble Lords will appreciate the difficulty I am in—that I was put in the position of referring to facilities, namely the Citizens' Advice Bureau, which is just outside Euston Station, St. Philomena's, and Friends
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House, which I subsequently found did not exist. If noble Lords will allow me to leave it there, I hope that they will do so.
Baroness VICKERS: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord whether he will consider my idea of the English Tourist Board putting up in the meanwhile a large poster containing this information? I put the question to him yesterday and I did not get an answer.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, if the noble Baroness does not mind me saying so, I do not want to pursue yesterday today. The noble Baroness made the point. No point is made in your Lordships' House in respect of anything with which I am dealing without my doing something about it, even if I do not succeed in the attempt. Whenever I have given an assurance that I will communicate things to my right honourable friend I have done so, as certain noble Lords know.
Regarding the information services to which the right reverend Prelate and a number of other noble Lords have referred, as I said yesterday, very careful consideration has been given to the question of having a booth. It is common knowledge that British Rail refused to have a booth on the concourse. I think it is common knowledge, too, that the lodge which they offered is a considerable distance away from the concourse and that it is problematic whether it would serve any useful purpose. Even if it did, one has to face the fact that a booth at Euston Station would cost something like £35,000 a year. The question of Victoria Coach Station was raised. A booth there would cost something like £28,000 a year. I understand that consideration is still being given to the matter.
When representatives of the voluntary organisations in the West End met at the Home Office on 21st January of this year, there was a discussion as to how best the needs of young people travelling to London could be met. The representatives of the voluntary organisations went away to consider how best those needs could be met and they have been given to understand that the Government will be only too happy to explore and consider any plan, or plans, that they may devise. In fact, they went away having been told

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that, notwithstanding the fact that the Government are providing £66,200 to those organisations, they are prepared to offer another £10,000 if it will help in some way.
I want to say a word about accommodation before coming to the question put to me by the right reverend Prelate. However important other parts of the report of the Working Group on Homeless Young People may be, I think nearly everyone would agree that as with other homeless people the main need is the one that has been put forward tonight; namely, accommodation. In 1975 we asked local authorities to concentrate new production increasingly on dwellings suitable for small households and we have issued design advice for single person housing. The Housing Corporation have also increased the proportion of their budget devoted to single people of working age and in the first part of this year, 1976–77, about 10 per cent, of their spending was in fact on this particular group.
The right reverend Prelate was good enough to give me some indication of what he was concerned about. On the short life property, I have tried to deal with the subject, even if it was an inadequate reply. The right reverend Prelate wanted to know whether accommodation which was unsuitable for families and which is hard to let could be made available. I have gone into this matter and the only thing I can come up with at this stage is that the Greater London Council are undertaking a pilot experiment whereby they are advertising in the newspapers all the accommodation which is available, and I understand that they are making it perfectly clear that it is for single people or young couples. This may prove to be a very satisfactory way of dealing with it. At this stage the Greater London Council do not know, nor do we, but it seems to me to be a positive way of making known to people who need accommodation that this kind of accommodation is available. The right reverend Prelate wanted to know whether vacant private sector housing could be made more easily available. The only thing I can say is that the Rent Act review which is being undertaken by the Department of the Environment will be examining this very point, but when there is likely to be a pronouncement on it I cannot say.
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Another question dealt with the possibility of amelioration of restrictions on council housing tenants and mortgagors to take lodgers. My information is that the Ministers in the Department of the Environment are in fact locking into this. I think it is possible. I would not put it any higher than that, but I think it is possible for the Government to give some guidance on this matter to local authorities. But when we are speaking about mortgages, I think the bulk of them came from building societies although I imagine that that does not mean to say that they in turn cannot be approached if the Government take a view on it. The important thing is that this matter is recognised and is being looked at.
Another question was whether lodging schemes operated by local authorities could be set up under the Housing (Homeless Persons) Bill, to which reference has been made; and I do not want to say anything about it except that the Government support it. If that Bill becomes an Act of Parliament there will in fact be a duty on the local authority to advise End assist young people. This is again a local authority matter, and if and when the Bill becomes an Act then the usual guidance would be issued by the Government as to the best way of implementing it. The next question was whether restrictions on multi-occupation could be made less severe. Again, the Government feel that local authorities should not impose unnecessary restrictions on multi-occupation so long as the amenities are adequate. We share the concern of the right reverend Prelate.
There were one or two other matters. The right reverend Prelate drew mention to Endell Street and the Methodist Church Training Centre in Birkenhead Street. With regard to the question whether the Housing Corporation can find more money for short stay hostels for homeless young people, in the time available to me it has not been possible to make a comprehensive inquiry from the regional officers of the Housing Corporation. But, so far as the Corporation headquarters are aware, no project of the type described in recommendation 4 of the Working Group has yet come forward. When such projects do come forward the Corporation will give them very sympathetic consideration in the light of the detailed proposals.

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Coming to Endell Street, I have tried to get as much information as I can. The surveyors at the Housing Corporation have inspected the property and the Housing Corporation will shortly discuss with the London Borough of Camden to what use the property might best be put in the light of housing needs.
I am almost ashamed to mention the next point. The right reverend Prelate asked what was happening to the Methodist Church Centre in Birkenhead Street. So far as I have been able to ascertain in the time available, neither the Department of the Environment nor the Housing Corporation has any knowledge of these premises. If the right reverend Prelate feels that he could let me have a note about them, he knows I shall be only too glad to pursue this matter and will let him know what can be done.
The right reverend Prelate raised the question of whether there could not be a sharing by social service agencies across the Metropolitan counties in order that the cost might be minimised. Sharing the cost of hostels for groups with special need is one of the points we shall be discussing with the local authority associations. In the last analysis it is a matter for local agreement that there are no statutory obstacles to this kind of cooperation. The report was able to point, in paragraph 2.29, to the scheme operated by the London Boroughs Association, whereby the cost to social service departments for funding hostels for drug addicts is shared between all the London boroughs. When circumstances permit, we hope that other authorities will seriously consider similar schemes.
I have not even dealt with all the questions put to me by the right reverend Prelate and certainly I have only been able to touch on a number that have been raised by other noble Lords. I do not think I should take up more of your Lordships' time. I have spoken for far too long, but this is a very important subject and whatever subjects I have to deal with always seem to me to be in a field of real significance. I merely want to express the hope that your Lordships feel that the debate tonight has been useful, that it has not fallen wholly on stony ground, that the Government are not so inactive as some noble
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Lords think, but that a great deal is being done. I shall follow my customary practice of reading Hansard tomorrow and, if I have avoided any important questions—and if so it has not been intentional on my part but due to lack of time—I will deal with them in the usual way by writing to the noble Lord concerned.

BRITISH TRANSPORT DOCKS BILL
Examiners Certificate that no further Standing Order is applicable; Ordered to lie on the Table.