Lords Sitting of 24 May 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 Bradford.
The Lord Swinfen—Sat first in Parliament after the death of his father.

TELEPHONE USERS' REBATE
Viscount MASSEREENE and FERRARD: 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 consider it would be more equitable to pay the £7 rebate proposed for telephone users' bills after 1st October on a percentage basis.
Lord WINTERBOTTOM: My Lords, it was for the Post Office to decide how the excess profits identified by the Price Commission should be eliminated. I understand that the method chosen is acceptable to the Commission.
Viscount MASSEREENE and FERRARD: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for that reply. Would he not agree that, in these days of computers, it should not be too difficult to allocate the monies to be repaid to telephone subscribers by handing back to all an identical fixed percentage of the charges incurred on their accounts in the agreed period? Further, would not the noble Lord agree that, owing to their obsession with the egalitarian society, this system should find favour with Her Majesty's Government? I should think that it would find favour with Her Majesty's Government.
Lord WINTER BOTTOM: My Lords, may I start with the last point first. In fact, it is more egalitarian to do it in the way proposed by Her Majesty's Government. If there is a general £7 rebate throughout the whole range of accounts, it is much more beneficial to the individual
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with a small account than to a major company with a large one. The reason why the Post Office chose this procedure is that the fixed sum has the advantage of being easier to administer. It benefits the private subscriber much more than the business user, since £7 would be a much higher proportion of the telephone bill, and it causes minimum disturbance to the longer-term financial pricing strategy of the Post Office.

EEC MEMBERSHIP AND FOOD PRICES
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 how far membership of the EEC is responsible for the rise in food prices.
Lord STRABOLGI: My Lords, because of the difficulty of predicting how prices for both imports and domestic products would have changed if we had remained outside the EEC, it is not possible to estimate the part which membership of the Community may have played in the rise in food prices.
Lord O'HAGAN: My Lords, could the noble Lord tell the House whether that means that the Government do not know, or does it mean that they now accept that the major reasons for the rise in food prices arise from causes outside the Common Agricultural Policy of the EEC?
Lord STRABOLGI: My Lords, it is very difficult to make accurate calculations on hypotheses. It is not possible to assess realistically the prices we might have to pay for food if we were outside the EEC. It is true that we might be able to buy consignments of food more cheaply from time to time, but we could not dictate the conditions on which supplies would be available in the longer term. We cannot judge the effect on prices if the United Kingdom were to enter the world market as a major purchaser.
Lord DAVIES of LEEK: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that if this Question were asked next January, when we have to feel the crunch entirely of increased Common Market prices, then there would be no doubt about the Answer? So why try to concoct a defence? Furthermore, may I ask my noble friend whether he is aware that the Lord's Prayer has 56 words, the Ten Commandments 297, the Declaration of Independence 300, but the Common Market Directive for the export of duck eggs has 26,911 words? Is not that the kind of thing that counts?
Lord STRABOLGI: My Lords, in answer to my noble friend, I think that the best thing I can do is to remind your Lordships that Mr. Jenkins, the Commissioner, recently said in public in a speech in this country, that since the begining of Phase 2 the United Kingdom food price index as a whole went up by 18 per cent. but products covered by the CAP by only about 9 per cent. on average. I find it difficult to comment on those estimates because I do not have the underlying calculations, but they are one estimate.
Lord SAINSBURY: My Lords, will not my noble friend agree that we do not, and cannot, grow tea in this country, we do not grow coffee, we do not grow cocoa, we do not grow soya beans, all of which are dependent on world prices and which no Government, either the present Government or a Conservative Government can control; that no Government is responsible for drought, and that it would be good for the country if members of political Parties did not play this dishonest price game?
Lord STRABOLGI: My Lords, I agree absolutely with what my noble friend, with unrivalled experience of these matters, has said. In fact, he has put it much better than I could have done.
Lord CAMPBELL of CROY: My Lords, following what the noble Lord said, quoting from Mr. Roy Jenkins, and following what was stated by the noble Lord, Lord Sainsbury, may I ask the Government to go further and make it clear that it is the steep fall in the value of the pound which has also made foodstuffs coming from outside the Common Market very expensive?
Lord STRABOLGI: Yes, my Lords. That, of course, is one of the factors, and the withdrawal of consumer subsidies is another.
Lord BLYTON: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that the price of vegetables coming from the Common Market this summer has been phenomenal, and that if the housewives had a chance to vote again they would vote to come out of the Common Market?
Lord STRABOLGI: I am not sure that that is necessarily so, my Lords. I usually agree with my noble friend, but on this matter I am afraid I do not. The recent CAP price settlement has of course had a effect on food prices, which have been kept to the minimum, and the cost of the green pound devaluation has been more than offset by the butter subsidy. In the period to April 1978, it is estimated that the settlement, with the transitional steps, will add about 1¼ per cent. to average food prices.
Lord BARNBY: My Lords, considering the variations in opinions that exist on this matter, and looking at my noble friend's Question as it affects meat, may I ask the Minister to recognise the variations that have occurred in the prices of beef and pigmeat in recent weeks? May I ask him to put in the Library graphs to show the variations of prices of beef and pig-meat over the last 18 months? May I further ask him to confirm that there are now around 30,000 tons of beef in cold storage in this country, and that, according to our Meat Marketing Board, intervention beef is coming into the country at 10p per pound less than the market price of fresh meat? Would he agree that that represents a loss to somebody of approximately £100 million?
Lord STRABOLGI: My Lords, in regard to beef, our premium system with intervention only as a fall-back will be continued not merely until July, as the Commission originally proposed, but for the whole of 1977 to 1978. We are confident that agreement will be reached in the course of the year that the premium system be retained permanently; I agree with the noble Lord that it is vastly better than intervention. The question of pig-meat has been complicated somewhat by the European Court of Justice, which

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ordered on Saturday that we should stop forthwith the temporary subsidy for pig-meat which we have been paying since January. I can tell the House that we are examining the implications of the Court's decision, and that my right honourable friend the Minister of Agriculture is discussing the new situation with Mr. Gundelach, the Commissioner responsible for agriculture, who is at present in this country.
Lord SHINWELL: My Lords, we are frequently being told that there is a higher standard of living in most of the countries of the Nine. Thus, the higher the standard of living the greater the demand on available production. Is that not one of the reasons for the higher cost of food and other commodities? Is it difficult for the Government to form an estimate?
Lord STRABOLGI: So many factors influence food prices, my Lords—variations in domestic and international supplies, the value of sterling and inflation of domestic costs including manufacturing and distribution costs—that it is quite impossible to isolate any one thread, for example membership of the Community, as my noble friend implies, and to assess the effect. It is doubly difficult in the case of membership of the Community because we cannot begin to make estimates without making assumptions about how we and other countries would be operating if we were not in the EEC.
Lord HAILSHAM of SAINT MARYLEBONE: My Lords, is not this ghastly flummery about this continued King Charles's head a horrible waste of time, and ought we not to get on to the next Question?
Baroness VICKERS: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone, for that suggestion.

FAR EASTERN POWs: MEDICAL TREATMENT
2.48 p.m.
Baroness VICKERS: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government
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what arrangements are being made for the care of Far East prisoners of war who up to date have received special treatment at Queen Mary's Hospital, Roehampton.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, physical check-ups of Far Eastern prisoners of war by specialists in tropical medicine are at present carried out on behalf of the Department of Health and Social Security at Roehampton, Liverpool and Edinburgh. The transformation of Queen Mary's Hospital, Roehampton, into a district general hospital, coupled with the retirement of physicians skilled in tropical medicine, has led my Department to consider alternative future arrangements for the continued use of Queen Mary's.
The Queen Elizabeth Military Hospital at Woolwich, which is nearing completion, is expected to have the necessary specialist resources to undertake the clinical assessments required. I must point out that discussions are under way with the Ministry of Defence about the possibility of making these new facilities available to Far Eastern prisoners of war when, as we hope, the hospital opens next July.
Baroness VICKERS: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for that Answer. On behalf of the trustees of the FEPOW Fund, of whom I am one, would he be kind enough to convey our sincere gratitude for the excellent arrangements at Roehampton, the work they have done, the number of people they have cured and the fact that over the years they have rehabilitated hundreds of men who were Japanese prisoners of war? May I also ask him to consider whether perhaps the Naval hospital in Devonport might be used for some of the treatment, because a great many of these ex-prisoners of war live in the West Country?
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, we are aware of the magnificent work which has been done in the past and is being done now at Queen Mary's Hospital, and we wish that to continue. We have had only three centres in the past, and it may well be that, by the nature of things, we can have only three centres in the future. However, I should not like to resume my seat without paying public tribute to the value of the work done by the noble Baroness, who is a trustee of the Far

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Eastern Prisoners of War and Internees Fund; we are very sensible of the contribution which she herself has made.
Lord REIGATE: My Lords, does the Minister recall that, when Queen Mary's Hospital was turned into a general hospital in the early 'sixties, a specific assurance was given by the then Minister that ex-Service needs would always have priority over any others?
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: Yes, my Lords; but I tried to point out that we are faced with certain difficulties, not least the retirement of physicians who are skilled in tropical medicine. The future pattern of Queen Mary's Hospital will be very different from what it has been in the past; it will be given over mainly to maternity and geriatrics, although there will be a wing there which, as the noble Lord knows, will deal with limbs, artificial limbs and so on. I think it is generally agreed by the Far Eastern Prisoners of War Association as well as by my Department that it could be profitably and beneficially sited at Woolwich in the new Queen Elizabeth Military Hospital.
Lord INGLEWOOD: My Lords, with reference to the last supplementary question, may I ask the noble Lord to tell us how far the preference for men in receipt of disability pensions is respected not only in these hospitals but in other hospitals under the control of the National Health Service? It is very important.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I do not question the importance of this, but it is far from the Question which I have been asked to answer in your Lordships' House and, in any case, I should have to take advice.

DISABLED DRIVER STICKERS: CONTROL OF ISSUE
2.52 p.m.
Baroness PHILLIPS: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what controls are exercised to see that
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stickers indicating a disabled driver are only issued to those entitled to display this sign in a motor car.
Baroness STEDMAN: My Lords, descriptions of persons eligible to apply for orange badges under the scheme of parking concessions for the disabled and the rules governing the issue of these badges are contained in the Disabled Persons (Badges for Motor Vehicles) Regulations 1975. It is the responsibility of local authorities to issue the badges in accordance with the regulations.
Baroness PHILLIPS: My Lords, I thank the Minister for her reply, but is she aware that many able-bodied people have been noted driving cars with these stickers at the back? This includes one who quite recently visited a house and nipped up on to the roof to do some repairing, thus not appearing to he very disabled.
Baroness STEDMAN: My Lords, from time to time we all hear of people who are not disabled driving cars with badges for the disabled. I deplore that because, when we have a scheme like this, we have to rely on the honesty and integrity of other people driving the car in question. It says quite plainly on the back of the disc when it is issued that the badge is for the use of the holder only; that it does not in itself confer any legal right to wait in places where waiting is restricted and that it should be displayed on the vehicle only while it is being used by the holder. One would hope that other people who are driving a car carrying such a badge would observe the ordinary traffic rules and regulations of the road and not take unfair advantage of facilities that are provided for the disabled.
Lord CHELWOOD: My Lords, is the noble Baroness aware, despite what she has said, that there is widespread abuse of this system and that this is recognised by a great many people? Also, will she say who is entitled to display one of these disabled signs and whether thought is being given to whether it should be an offence to display one if one is not, as a driver, oneself disabled or carrying a disabled person?
Baroness STEDMAN: My Lords, I would not, without further evidence,

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accept that there is widespread use of these badges by people who are not entitled to use them. Those classes of people entitled to use a badge are detailed in the regulations. They are fairly lengthy and, if the noble Lord will allow me to do so, I shall see that there is a copy in the Library or shall let him have the details. There would be rather a lot to read out. If people are found making use of a badge to which they are not entitled, they are liable to prosecution for parking offences. However, if your Lordships know of any such cases, the people to contact are the local authorities. It is they who issue the badges. They know the persons to whom the badges are issued and, if your Lordships think that badges are being used unfairly or illegally, you should take it up with your local authority, whose responsibility it is to issue the badge and to see that the regulations are complied with.
Viscount MASSEREENE and FERRARD: My Lords, is the noble Baroness also aware that many people put CD plates on their car who are not entitled to do so? I apologise for raising this point; I know that it is rather outside the Question, but I thought that I would make the point.
Baroness MACLEOD of BORVE: My Lords, may I ask the Minister whether she is aware that, if one travels on any of the major roads in this country, one sees that the number of cars with the disabled disc is growing enormously? Also, is the noble Baroness aware that it is very easy to give a disc to a friend who is not disabled in any way? Also, I gather that disability covers fields such as heart and lung conditions. I wonder whether the noble Baroness is aware that one can give away a disc and then apply to the local authority which will issue another? It is easy to say that one has lost the first disc. Can the noble Baroness also say whether it is stated on the back of the disc that the disc is not transferable?
Baroness STEDMAN: To take the last point first, my Lords, no, it does not say so. However, it says that misuse can lead to withdrawal of the badge. So far as the number of badges issued is concerned, I understand that a count which was taken last year showed that 200,000 badges had been issued to disabled people
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who complied with the disabilities laid down in the regulations. I hope that the practice to which the noble Baroness, Lady Macleod, has referred—that is, the practice of people handing on badges and then applying for another for themselves— is not prevalent. I hope the British public are not the sort of people who would do that kind of thing.
Lord PARGITER: My Lords, may I ask my noble friend whether these badges are numbered?
Baroness STEDMAN: Yes, my Lords.

EEC COUNCIL OF MINISTERS: JUNE BUSINESS
2.57 p.m.
Baroness LLEWELYN-DAVIES of HASTOE: My Lords, a Statement is being made today in another place about the business to be taken in the EEC Council of Ministers during June. I shall, as usual, arrange for the Statement to be made available in the Official Report.
Following is the Statement referred to:
"With your permission, Mr. Speaker, I will make a Statement about business to be taken in the Council of Ministers of the European Community during June. The monthly forecast for June was deposited yesterday.
"The Heads of Government of the Member States will meet in London on 29th and 30th June. It is too soon to forecast what subjects are likely to be discussed.
"At present nine meetings of the Council of Ministers are proposed for June. Foreign Ministers will meet on the 21st; Energy Ministers on the 14th; Environment Ministers on the 14th; Development Ministers on the 16th; Finance Ministers on the 20th; Agriculture Ministers on the 20th, 21st and 27th; Social Affairs Ministers on the 28th, and Transport Ministers on 28th and 29th June. There will also be a Tripartite Conference on 27th June of the Community with both sides of industry.
"At the Foreign Affairs Council on 21st June, Ministers will discuss preparations for the European Council; relations with the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance, Spain, Cyprus and Malta; and fisheries matters.
"It is expected that Energy Council Ministers will discuss the general energy situation including nuclear matters; coal, in particular import surveillance and encouragement of coal use in power stations; proposals for energy conservation; oil, including crisis measures and problems of the Community refining industry and promotion and protection of Community energy investment.
At the Environment Council, Ministers will consider Directives on the quality of drinking

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water, wastes from the titanium dioxide and paper pulp industries, toxic and dangerous wastes and a decision on exchange of information on the quality of surface water.
"Ministers at the Development Council will discuss EEC financial and technical aid to non-associated developing countries, food aid, and a Commission paper on rural development, agriculture and food production in the developing world.
"Ministers at the Finance Council will discuss preparations for the Tripartite Conference. They will also consider a draft banking co-ordination directive.
"Agriculture Ministers will meet on 20th and 21st June to discuss proposals for introducing more flexibility into the calculation of monetary compensatory amounts, the labelling of milk products, and matters affecting the balance of the Community wine market. They will also hold a special meeting on 27th June on the future internal fisheries policy and to decide on herring conservation measures after the end of June.
"At the Social Affairs Council the main subjects for discussion will be the review of the European Social Fund, and proposed directives on the education of migrant workers' children, illegal immigration and illegal employment and the harmonisation of safety signs at work. The Council will also receive a progress report on other items in the social affairs programme.
"At the Transport Council the main items on the agenda are likely to be the Social Regulation on Drivers' Hours and whole vehicle type approval. Ministers will also have a general policy discussion on transport issues.
"The Tripartite Conference on 27th June will have as its theme, Growth, Stability and Employment: Stocktaking and Prospects".

NORTH WEST WATER AUTHORITY BILL [H.L.]
Read 3a, and passed, and sent to the Commons.
SHREWSBURY AND ATCHAM BOROUGH COUNCIL (FRANKWELL FOOTBRIDGE) BILL
Read 2a, and committed to the Committee on Unopposed Bills.
FARRIERS (REGISTRATION) (AMENDMENT) BILL [H.L.]
Read 3a, and passed, and sent to the Commons.

CONSTRUCTION OF ROADS (TIME LIMIT) BILL [H.L.]
2.59 p.m.
Lord AVEBURY: My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now resolve itself into Committee on this Bill.
Moved, That the House do now resolve itself into Committee.—(Lord A rebury.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
[The Lord ABERDARE in the Chair.]
Clause 1 [Period for constructing roads]:
Lord AVEBURY Lord AVEBURY moved Amendment No. 1:
Page 1, line 12, leave out ("completed") and insert ("begun")
The noble Lord said: This is an Amendment to which I spoke on Second Reading, and I hope that it will meet with the approval of the Committee. Obviously, if works have been commenced during the five-year period outlined in Clause 1, it would be unreasonable to require that they be brought to a halt in mid course; and it would be extremely expensive as well if the contracts have been let and works have begun, suddenly to pull down the shutters and force the contractors to disappear off the site. Therefore, I have tabled this Amendment which replaces the word "completed" with the word "begun". I hope that this will meet with the approval of the Committee. I beg to move.
Baroness STEDMAN: As the noble Lord has said, this Amendment does exactly what he intended in his Second Reading speech. The effect is to preserve the powers to construct so much of the road as has been begun, instead of completed, which preserves the powers for that part of the road to which the scheme referred. It would not place a time limit on the construction that had begun, and the time limit is effectively transferred to the period between the date of authorisation and when the works begin. The Amendment improves the Bill by restricting the time limit to the period of the statutory processes, and, as presented, the time limit applied for the period from making the line to completing the road

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works. But I must advise the Committee that it still leaves the Bill applying only to motorways and not to the trunk roads or the local authority schemes.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 1, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 2 agreed to.
Clause 3 [Revocation of Schemes and Orders]:
On Question, Whether Clause 3 shall stand part of the Bill?
Lord AVEBURY: I am advised that Clause 3 is unnecessary, and the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman, confirmed this when we discussed it on Second Reading. I beg to move that Clause 3 be left out.
On Question, Clause 3 disagreed to.
Clause 4 agreed to.
House resumed: Bill reported with an Amendment.

ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE BILL [H.L.]
3.3 p.m.
Report received.
Viscount COLVILLE of CULROSS Viscount COLVILLE of CULROSS moved Amendment No. 1:
After Clause 7, insert the following new clause:
Oaths and affirmation.
. Any person who objects to being sworn shall be permitted to make his solemn affirmation instead of taking an oath in all places and for all purposes where an oath is or shall be required by law, which affirmation shall be of the same force and effect as if he had taken the oath.
The noble Viscount said: My Lords, when the House was in Committee I moved an Amendment on this subject, though I am bound to say that it did not look in the least like this, and the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor indicated that it was the first time that the subject had been discussed in Parliament—presumably since 1888 when the matter was put on the Statute Book—and that he would like to have the view of as many noble Lords, and others outside the House, as possible, because it is a matter that plainly is of interest to a number of people, as the short debate in Committee showed.
The point is a simple one, but let me tell your Lordships at once what it does not involve. It does not involve in any way either preventing people from taking the oath in court or putting any impediment in their way of doing so, nor does the Amendment make the smallest difference to the law of perjury, or any of the matters in that regard that are at the moment being looked at by the Law Commission. It is a very simple point and a comparatively short one, and it is this. Under Section 1 of the Oaths Act 1888 there is provision whereby those who do not wish to take the oath may instead affirm. The problem that has arisen is that the Statute as it stands at the moment does not just allow them to affirm as a matter of choice; it requires them to give reasons why they wish to do so instead of taking the oath. It requires them to explain whether it may be that they are unwilling to take the oath because it is part of their religious belief that they should not take an oath, as applies to people of certain religious persuasions, or, alternatively, they have to explain that they have no religious belief at all, and therefore they object for that cause.
When we were in Committee, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, gave a most striking example of an occasion where the most appalling miscarriage of justice arose out of the requirement to make this explanation. I hope that that is untypical, but in my experience I have discovered that there is, to say the least, embarrassment and, possibly, a somewhat startled look on everybody's face when the rigmarole has to be pursued of getting a witness to explain why it is that he does not wish to take the oath.
In Committee, I argued that it would be very much better if people who did not wish to take the oath should be given the simple option of affirming without having to give any reasons for it, and on the whole noble Lords who took part in that short debate were inclined to agree. Of course there is the point that if somebody who is perhaps embarrassed and feels awkward in the witness box anyway, is faced with this extra dilemma of having to explain why he wishes to affirm, he will simply take the oath and say nothing about it, although he does not believe in oaths at all. The Oaths Act makes sure that that is all right because it says that if you

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take an oath when you do not believe in oaths it is still a perfectly good oath. That is in Section 3 of the Oaths Act 1888. So there is not any harm done, but it tends, I should have thought, to depreciate the value of the oath—something which I for one would wish to prevent.
So this simple Amendment is devised merely in order to take away the requirement to give reasons for wishing to affirm, if that is what a witness or, indeed, anyone swearing a statutory declaration or something of that kind, prefers to do. It does no more than that, and it leaves open all the other points that the Law Commission may wish to report upon in due course. So there it is. The idea came from the Law Society, and since the debate in Committee the other day I have heard now from the Magistrates' Association, which has discussed the matter at one of its conferences, and the Association states that it is now in favour of the Amendment being made.
When we discussed the matter in Committee, the noble and learned Lord, the Lord Chancellor, said he was inclined to be sympathetic, though he would like further time to think about it. Of course I am entirely in the hands of your Lordships, who may or may not approve this comparatively minor change. But it seems to have the approbation of quite a number of people who are concerned with the conduct of justice, and therefore I hope that it commends itself to your Lordships. I am led to believe that this time it is, at any rate, technically correct. I beg to move.
3.9 p.m.
The LORD CHANCELLOR (Lord Elwyn-Jones): My Lords, it may be convenient if at this stage I were to indicate the view of the Government upon the Amendment. When it was considered in Committee, I expressed the view that it would have been at any rate more desirable if the wisdom of dealing with the subject matter could have been considered in a wider context—perhaps by a Committee with a larger presence than was the case on that occasion. Indeed, I think it might well have been wiser to precede any amendment of the Oaths Act by a more general debate, because the Oaths
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Act itself goes much wider than the context of legal proceedings and the administration of justice. That is indeed acknowledged by the noble Viscount's Amendment, No. 8, which rightly seeks to amend the Long Title of the Bill.
Perhaps I should add this. Although the arguments in favour of change are usually put forward, as they were so vividly by my noble and learned friend Lord Gardiner, in the context of the witness's oath because the main difficulties are felt there, the Amendment will of course apply wherever an oath is required by law. It will therefore cover, in addition to witnesses and jurors in legal proceedings, all those oaths which are covered by the Promissory Oaths Act 1868, such as the oath of allegiance; the official oath taken by a number of holders of official office; the judicial oath; and other oaths which could be given by way of illustration. So the proposal has many ramifications.
However, my personal view is that general approval has been given to the proposal. Since the Committee stage I have consulted, as best I could, with the judges. My conclusion is that the modified proposal which the Amendment makes would be welcomed by the Judiciary throughout the United Kingdom. As the noble Viscount has indicated, it already has the support, not only of the Law Society but of the Magistrates' Association, so I think one can safely conclude that those concerned in legal proceedings would find the Amendment an improvement. I certainly have had no representations to the contrary. Perhaps I should emphasise that all those who would prefer to take the oath will of course continue to do so; and, indeed, I would expect that that would remain the usual practice.
Perhaps I should make it clear that I have expressed a personal view today without being certain that all of my colleagues in the Government will agree with it, though certainly those concerned with the administration of justice do. So I cannot guarantee that the provision would receive firm Government support if it came under reasoned attack at a later stage. I do not regard that as a likely contingency; but, subject to that caveat. I myself welcome the Amendment and it accordingly goes forward with my personal good wishes.
Lord GARDINER: My Lords, may I respectfully support what the noble Viscount has moved and the degree of accord reached by my noble and learned friend on the Woolsack, who expressed the hope that his colleagues will agree with him. It has been said that the present situation is satisfactory because, of course, Christians take the oath and agnostics and atheists can always affirm, so what is wrong with that? But in fact both those premises are quite wrong. It is not true to say, of course, that all Christians want to take the oath. It was not until 1833, I think, that Quakers of the old Christian sect were sent to prison and submitted to worse punishments than prison for refusing to take the oath; and I well remember, when calling a respected clergyman of the Church of England as a witness in a case when defending Penguin Books, that he refused to take the oath. I believe some of the benchers of the Inns of Court viewed this with some disquiet, because he was Master of the Temple; but before he was Master of the Temple he had been principal of a theological college, and I think he knew his theological oaths. What he in substance said was, "It is very difficult in real life to keep all the Commandments all the time, but here is a very simple one, 'Thou shalt not swear on the name of the Lord thy God '. This we can all do, and every Christian ought to refuse to take an oath". So the first premise is quite wrong.
I think the second premise is quite wrong, too, although here I cannot prove anything; I can only appeal to the extensive experience of advocacy of the noble Viscount and of my noble and learned friend. But I am quite certain, after spending my life in the courts, that every day, in courts all over the country, agnostics take the oath. They do so because they do not want to make a bad start to their evidence, and they think it will look odd if they say they want to affirm, that it will upset the judge or that the jury will not like it. Some of them think that if there is a conflict of evidence the judge is more likely to accept the evidence of a witness who has taken the oath than of a witness who has not taken the oath, which I am sure, as I have told many of them, is quite unfounded; but that is what they think. So both premises are wrong.
It can lead to the difficulties which I exemplified at Committee stage of the
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Bill, and which I do not repeat; and, as I understand it—my noble and learned friend on the Woolsack will know this better than me—both the Magistrates' Association and the Law Society support the Amendment. The magistrates, after all, try 98 per cent. of all the criminal cases, as well as those within their domestic jurisdiction; and there are members of the Law Society in every case, both criminal and civil. If both those bodies concur (and they are not, if I may say so, notoriously Left-Wing bodies) this is a reform which I think we can safely achieve.
Lord HOUGHTON of SOWERBY: My Lords, I should have thought that 100 years after Charles Bradlaugh's heroic struggle to get into the House of Commons without taking the oath we should have had the position of affirmation much more generally acceptable than it is today, and more free of difficulty and complexity. When my noble and learned friend on the Woolsack began I thought he was going to say that, however desirable this small change in the law in relation to this Bill, it would he better to wait until we could do more. I am grateful to him for not pursuing that line of argument, though I must draw his attention to the report of his speech in column 497 of the Official Report of 16th May, where he is reported to have said:
"It is very interesting that when a Life Peer is admitted to your Lordships' House there is simply an oath or an affirmation, without explanation as to the use of the alternative method".
But unless my recollection is at fault, when I affirmed on entry to your Lordships' House I was required to say that, having a conscientious objection to taking an oath, I therefore did solemnly affirm. That was an explanation, surely. I deeply resented it at the time, and had I known what I was going to be asked to say when I came in I am not at all sure that I would not have turned back again. But there is an explanation which I think we might as well get rid of in this House as well as in courts of law.
My Lords, while on this difficult subject, may I refer to a case which I reported in connection with this Bill to the noble Viscount, Lord Colville. In a Crown Court case a child who was apparently in difficulties in taking the oath, because it had not been instructed on the existence of God, was stood down. The case was

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postponed for a period while this child could be instructed about the existence of God so that it could come back into court and take the oath.
I understand that that situation is not dealt with in the Amendment before your Lordships' House at the moment, and it probably does not come within the scope of this Bill; I do not know. But if that kind of case exists, it shows, again, that it is very difficult to get through life in courts of law or entry to the House of Lords without belief in God; and, although one can respect very deeply indeed those who have these convictions, provision must be made, surely, after all these years, for those who do not hold a religious belief but who nevertheless are as conscious of the difference between truth and falsehood as anybody else, and who, if they solemnly affirm that they will tell the truth, will be as much bound by that as are many people who take the oath. I hope that in welcoming this Amendment to the Bill and the change in the law in this particular context, we can look rationally at other instances in which similar problems arise and establish once and for all the right to make an affirmation without having to explain one's reasons for doing so.
The LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, in view of the question raised specifically by my noble friend, I wonder whether, with the leave of the House, I may indicate that the provisions of the Standing Orders in this House with regard to taking the Oath of Allegiance were changed this year—since the time the noble Lord took his oath. Now, under the Oaths Act, Lords who conscientiously object to the taking of an oath—and they do not have so to pronounce—may affirm simply by saying:
"I … do solemnly, sincerely, and truly declare and affirm that I will be faithful and bear true Allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, Her Heirs and Successors, according to Law."
That, so I am informed, is all that is now necessary.
The Lord Bishop of SOUTHWARK: My Lords, may I say from these Benches that many, if not all, of the Bishops, I am sure, will be only too happy to support the Amendment not only for scriptural reasons, where we are told not to swear
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by Heaven, but to let your yea be yea and your nay be nay. And what is more, some of the clergy have always preferred to affirm rather than to take an oath, perhaps because of what is said in Holy Scripture. But certainly among the more rebellious younger clergy, I find that whatever their views may be about oaths on certain matters, when it comes to taking the oath of canonical obedience to the diocesan bishop, they are most reluctant to take it.
Lord PANNELL: My Lords, I think that the noble Lord sitting on my immediate left was a trifle inaccurate in his reference to Bradlaugh. With regard to Bradlaugh, he had ideas as a militant atheist about taking the oaths but in the end, his constituency being disenfranchised three times, he was willing to take the oath; but the Conservative Party would not let him. That was the difficulty. It was only Speaker Peel on initiation who stopped the House from continuing to make a fool of itself. He called him straight up to the Table without the oath being administered at that time; and nobody made any difficulty.
I can only say that I have been a magistrate and a Privy Counsellor and I have watched witnesses in court and I have taken the affirmation here. On most of these occasions people have questioned the affirmation, as if somehow the oath was the "done thing" but that, somehow, I was suffering from some aberration. So I think it would be a good idea if we accepted the Amendment here today. I can remember the chairman of a bench of magistrates who wanted to refer to the Lord Lieutenant the question whether I should be allowed to sit. We get all sorts of nonsense of this kind. In the House of Commons you have a card from which you read the affirmation and there is no difficulty about it. I remember the occasion when my noble friend and I were initiated on the same day. I noticed the words that were administered at the time, saying, "Have you a conscientious objection?" But, having a trifle easier conscience than he had, I have never raised the matter since.
Lord HALE: My Lords, I will be brief. I intervene only to thank the noble Viscount, Lord Colville of Culross. He not only disposed quite correctly of my

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problem about cutting off chickens' heads but also was good enough to indicate to me where I could find Halsbury's Laws of England in the Library and where to find the Oaths section. I was a little shocked to find that that particular one was passed about 20 years before I became a Commissioner for Oaths, which was about 50 years ago. So there has been time for considering the matter.
I only wanted to reassure my noble and learned friend on the Woolsack that, if he will consult the most famous work of the Vice-Chancellor (in Volume I), he will find that in this House in 1820, arising out of the Bill of Pains and Penalties of Queen Caroline, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Erskine, who had occupied the seat which my noble and learned friend now occupies, said that he had an objection based on biblical grounds of a somewhat incomprehensible nature—something to do with the angel walking on the sea, an incident I do not recall in detail. He had specifically asked the Chief Justice of Common Pleas, Lord Justice Eyre, for his advice as to what was the proper course to take when a man objected to taking the oath. The Chief Justice said that the proper words for taking the oath were the words which the witness said would bind his conscience and that nothing could be more sensible and nothing could be better.
Therefore, I think we can say, after 157 years of further consideration of Lord Erskine's remarks, and with the help of the noble Viscount, Lord Colville of Culross, that we are making a step forward which has been adequately considered.
Baroness PHILLIPS: My Lords, I am one who has witnessed only too often the strange ceremony where the usher digs the witness in the ribs and says "Take the oath" and then, "What religion are you?" and I have watched the confusion creeping over the faces of the average witnesses who cannot even remember what religion they are—and one hopes the recollection will come before they are finally buried. In this situation one realises the sheer fallacy of the idea that these people recognise that they are bound by something they have sworn by Almighty God. I recall an occasion when the witness said he was a Plymouth Brethren which thoroughly confused the usher who picked up all the Bibles in turn and then returned
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to the first one. I have always waited in anticipation for a Chinese to demand that he break an egg; but in all the time I have sat on the Bench this has not happened. I think in this day and age we all recognise, sadly, that to swear by our Maker has very little meaning to many people. But the necessity of getting the truth is important and if they can affirm, then I think this is absolutely essential and I support the Amendment.
Lord SHINWELL: My Lords, it seems almost an impertinence to intervene in a debate in which prominent members of the legal profession are playing a part, but we are often instructed in this House to speak from experience—and that I propose to do in this brief intervention. It is now more than 60 years—in fact, it was in the year 1912—since I was involved in a case in which somebody was accused of attempted murder. The incident took this form, not in the court but outside before the court was arraigned. There was a strike and somebody who possessed a revolver fired it, I understand, at me. He missed and, unfortunately, killed somebody who stood beside me. It was said at the time that he killed the wrong man—but that is past history. It came before the court, and the situation almost tempted me to intervene in a debate which took place recently, in the Press if not in this House, about the alleged bias of members of the judicial profession. I do not think I should bring that in, but I am almost tempted to do so. The judge happened to be a man who had been appointed to the Bench for political reasons. It was at a time when a Liberal Government were in Office and a member of the legal profession named Anderson was promoted to the Bench. He tried the case with a jury. I was asked to give evidence because I was so much involved in the dispute which led to this. It was called attempted murder; I do not suppose it was premeditated or deliberate.
I affirmed, because in those days I had studied Darwin and H. G. Wells; not Charles Bradlaugh, he was an orator not a metaphysician or a scientist, and I came to the conclusion that I should not take the oath. But strangely enough it did not make very much difference. That is why I intervene today, because it does not seem to make very much difference how you change the law. One can change the

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law but not attutudes. Attitudes on the whole derive from beliefs and convictions which are difficult to amend.
The results of affirming were rather strange. I was immediately asked by the lawyer for the defence: "Why do you affirm? Is it not true that you are a Jew?". Of course that had nothing to do with the case. I had to explain that I was quite accidentally and fortuitously—it had nothing to do with me—born a Jew, because my mother was a Jewess. It happens that one is a Jew if the mother is a Jewess, although the father is not taken into consideration. That is a belief that is held among Jewry.
My affirmation had a profound effect on the case. The jury were obviously not of my opinion and disliked anybody who affirmed. It was unusual to affirm in those days. Even nowadays it is somewhat unusual and is regarded as such by those who sit on the jury. My Lords, what does it really matter if you affirm now? It depends on the attitude of the jury and perhaps on the judge. However free he may be of bias and prejudice and seek to be impartial, nevertheless it is an attitude of mind and it is not difficult to reject it when one is considering matters of this sort.
It seems to me that to amend the law and make it easier for those who appear in court, for whatever reason, to affirm greatly depends on the attitude of the judge and jury, and public opinion at the time which, as we know, changes frequently.
The LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I wonder whether I may intervene briefly. Perhaps I should have put earlier a manuscript Amendment, No. 1A as a manuscript Amendment to Amendment No. 1, which reads:
"At beginning insert—(". The following section shall be substituted for Section 1 of the Oaths Act 1888—").
The debate can proceed upon that, and if the noble Lord wishes to intervene at this point, I will move the manuscript Amendment shortly.
Lord FLETCHER: My Lords, I intervene for one moment to ask my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor a question which I have no doubt is very
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elementary and to which no doubt there is an elementary answer. As I understand it, the historic origin for requiring an oath in a court of law was that if a witness, having taken the oath, gave wrong evidence, he exposed himself to penalties of perjury which is obviously a serious offence. I understand that as a result of the Oaths Act or some other Act, the same consequences follow if instead of the witness in court taking an oath, he affirms.
The Amendment on the Marshalled List, as I understand it, is intended to go beyond the practice of taking an oath or affirming in a court of law because it relates to persons who take oaths in all places and for all purposes. As the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor explained just now, it therefore applies to the oath of allegiance, judicial oaths and various other oaths, in respect of which I assume the same consequences of perjury do not apply as would apply in the case of oaths taken in judicial proceedings. I want to ask the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor whether he is satisfied that the consequences of this Amendment have no adverse effects in that respect.
3.36 p.m.
The LORD CHANCELLOR The LORD CHANCELLOR moved, as an amendment to Amendment No. 1, manuscript Amendment No. 1A:
At beginning insert—
(" . The following section shall be substituted for section 1 of the Oaths Act 1888—").
The noble and learned Lord said: My Lords, it may be convenient ill now move the manuscript Amendment, which is a technical Amendment. The explanation is that Amendment No. 1 as printed on the Marshalled List does not insert the new section into Section 1 of the Oaths Act 1888 as a substitute for the existing section. That is what it should do. If the matter were left as it now stands there would be two conflicting sections in the Statute Book, Section 1 of the Oaths Act 1888 and the new section which will be inserted under Amendment No. 1 to this Bill. Accordingly, I beg to move Amendment No. 1A as a manuscript Amendment to Amendment No. 1.
Viscount COLVILLE of CULROSS: My Lords, may I reverse the roles for one moment and tell the noble and learned

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Lord the Lord Chancellor that I am inclined to accept his manuscript Amendment? I had thought that there might be another way of doing it, as there are several consequentials following upon this matter, which is merely to repeal Section 1 of the 1888 Act by way of a repeal Schedule. But I should think his method is at least as neat and will keep all the provisions as to oaths, including Section 3, in the same Act—at any rate notionally. So far as Lord Fletcher's question is concerned, there is not anything that he should be concerned about; if he were to look at the existing law he would see that it has been precisely and exactly reproduced, except for leaving out the provision which requires reasons to be given for taking the affirmation. This particular new clause will therefore have the same effect in the same places and on the same occasions as does the existing law, and no change whatever has been brought about by it.
I thank very much those noble Lords and the right reverend Prelate who have supported this Amendment. I am very glad that it has found universal favour in this House. Perhaps I may say something to the noble Lord, Lord Shinwell, and others who have been concerned about those who affirm and the effect that this may have upon juries and judges. I suppose there will be some communication which will go round the courts drawing attention to the fact that if this particular provision becomes law, it is no longer necessary for the usher to require that reasons be given where affirmation is chosen.
I should have thought that it might be possible that the essence of some of the things which have been said about the value of affirmations, when they are given, could be incorporated in that word of guidance. I do not know whether that appeals to the noble and learned Lord or indeed to the right honourable gentleman the Home Secretary who will be doing a similar job for the magistrates. It is a by-product of this debate that we have had, as it were, the affirmation of the affirmation as being something that should be taken as a matter of course and something which is not queried or looked upon in any way askance. I am very grateful for the reception of this clause; I hope it will, as amended, now find its place in the Bill.
On Question, Amendment to Amendment agreed to.
On Question, Amendment, as amended, agreed to.
3.40 p.m.
Viscount COLVILLE of CULROSS Viscount COLVILLE of CULROSS moved Amendment No. 2:
After Clause 10, insert the following new clause:
Appeals from the Crown Court as to costs.
1967 c. 80.
. Notwithstanding anything in section 10 of the Courts Act 1971, an appeal shall lie to the Court of Appeal, with the leave of that Court or of the judge making the order, from an order of the Crown Court, relating to trial on indictment, as to costs only, or in the exercise of the court's powers under section 76 of the Criminal Justice Act 1967.
The noble Viscount said: My Lords, within the last three years there have come before the courts two rather strange cases. Nobody ever tells the story of a case better than the noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning, Master of the Rolls, and this is what he said in December, 1974:
"There was a circuit judge trying a case in Nottingham. Everything was ready; everyone was there; counsel, court officers, witnesses and police. Many jurors had been summoned and were waiting at the back of the court. When the man was put up his counsel rose and asked for an adjournment. He said that a witness for the defence was so ill that she could not attend the court. He wanted to have her evidence taken before a magistrate so that her deposition could be used at the trial. The judge granted the application but he was very upset. He thought, from something he had been told, that the solicitors for the defence had been at fault. To add to it, they were being paid out of the Legal Aid Fund. So, to cut the story short, he made the solicitors personally pay the costs of the adjournment.
It was not, however, the solicitors' fault. I am sorry to say it appears from the record that it was counsel's fault. At any rate, it certainly was not the fault of the solicitors; there were a few hundred pounds involved and they wished to appeal, because it was not right and it was not fair.
A very great deal of research took place and everybody came to the conclusion that it could not really be done. But the Court of Appeal were not inclined to turn people away who wished to argue the point, and so it was in fact argued out in the Court of Appeal and full judgments were given. The Court of Appeal in fact came to the conclusion that they had no jurisdiction at all, and

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no more did any other court, to do anything about this. This is what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning, said at the end:
"In my opinion the circuit judge (sitting in the Crown Court to try a case on indictment) had jurisdiction to order the solicitors to pay the costs personally; but there is no procedure by which the solicitors can challenge the order in any higher court. This seems to me very unfortunate. But we can, I think, do something to remedy the injustice. We can express our views on the matter in the hope that what we say may be heeded by those concerned."
He then went on to suggest they could give an immediate, rather informal, relief to the solicitors because, as nobody appeared to be very keen on enforcing the judgment, they (the Court of Appeal) suggested that perhaps nobody should do so. Nevertheless, there it was and there was no jurisdiction at all in anyone to put the matter right. When the noble and learned Lord appealed to those who may be concerned in that, he was appealing to Parliament.
A slightly similar point arose a year earlier, and perhaps I need not go through the whole story. Three members of a family were tried at Newport Crown Court in Wales. They were all acquitted, and other prosecution charges were not proceeded with. They were legally aided, but the judge decided he wanted to look at the contribution that they ought to make towards the legal aid costs. After a good deal of to-ing and fro-ing, in which I think the judge thought they were not being very co-operative, he imposed on each of them a fairly large contribution order, in the terms of £7,000 to £8,000. The defendants thought that was unfair and they wished to appeal. They, too, found, having taken the matter to the divisional court on certiorari, that neither that court nor anybody else could do anything about it; there was no appeal of any sort or kind to anyone.
It seemed to me, as this has been drawn to my attention by the Law Society and has also been commented upon in some of the legal periodicals, that this was an occasion when Parliament ought to look at this matter because if the Court of Appeal is on record as saying some firm things such as I have read out, I believe that Parliament ought to be careful to try to put things right as soon as may be. The remedy that I have put down in this
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new clause looks rather complicated but it does in fact allow both those cases to be reconsidered by the Court of Appeal on appeal, but with one important proviso. Under the Amendment I have drafted, the person who wishes to appeal has to get leave. He has to get the leave either of the trial judge or, if he cannot do that, he has to get leave from the Court of Appeal themselves. As your Lordships will instantly appreciate, the point of that is that one does not want to have a mass of completely vexatious and frivolous appeals. This is a common device which attempts to stop that.
I do not suppose that appeals against orders for costs alone—because that is what this is— or legal aid contributions, would be all that common; but it seems very strange that one of the by-products of the Courts Act—which this is—has been the possibility of very real injustice being done to people who are appearing before the Crown Court without there being any possibility of them appealing. Even Crown Court judges can make mistakes. Of course they all try not to, and I do not suppose they do so very often; but even judges are fallible and the Court of Appeal are there to put these things right, but of course they need the power to do so. I hope this Amendment appeals to the noble and learned Lord and also to other Members of the House, although I shall not he in the least surprised if I am told that my drafting is wholly inadequate. I beg to move.
3.48 p.m.
The LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, this is not an easy matter; indeed, refusing facilities for appeals is not something that one readily lends oneself to doing. But I am afraid there are very serious difficulties standing in the way of what the noble Viscount has proposed. The chief obstacle to providing an avenue of appeal in regard to an order for costs is the difficulty the Court of Appeal would have in forming an opinion on the merits of the decision by the trial court. Where costs have followed the outcome—that is to say, where they have been awarded against a convicted defendant or in favour of an acquitted defendant—it can be generally assumed that the court's decision was right and that no appeal would be justified. The more difficult case arises—

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and I imagine this is what the noble Viscount has in mind—where the Crown Court has refused to award costs to a successful defendant or has mistakenly, as the noble Viscount has indicated in the particular case affecting a solicitor, awarded costs against the solicitor.
The basis upon which an order for the payment of costs in favour of an acquitted defendant should be made is now set out in a Practice Direction made by the Lord Chief Justice on 5th June 1973. The substance of that Practice Direction is that where the court has power to award costs out of central funds (as it may do where the offence is indictable) it should do so in favour of a successful defendant unless there are positive reasons for making a different order. That is the general rule. Among the examples of such positive reasons are where the defendant's own conduct has brought suspicion on himself and may have misled the prosecution into thinking that the case against him is stronger than it really was, or where there is ample evidence of guilt but there was an acquittal on account of a mere procedural irregularity, or where the defendant is acquitted on one charge and convicted on another. The view has generally been held that these are fair and reasonable tests to apply.
The same tests can be applied to the question whether a defendant who has been legally aided should be required to make a contribution to the legal aid fund. But, I think it would be very difficult for a Court of Appeal to apply these tests, unless indeed there was a complete rehearing of the case, and not necessarily even then. If one can take the example of a defendant who is acquitted on account of a procedural irregularity, as in some of the breathalyser cases that have been tried, the trial judge who has ruled on the procedural irregularity will be in a good position, having heard all the evidence in the case, to know whether there was in fact ample evidence of guilt; but an appeal court could form an opinion on this only by going through all the evidence. If the ground of refusal is that the defendant has brought suspicion on himself by his own conduct, this would be even more difficult for an appeal court to assess, since so much depends on matters not readily ascertainable from a written record, such as the demeanour in court of the accused and his witnesses, and other indications of
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the kind which are perfectly plain to the trial judge himself, but not ascertainable in retrospect.
It is true that the trial judge might not apply the criteria in the Practice Direction, but apply some quite different criteria, and that if the judge gave reasons then a remedy by prerogative order ought, perhaps, to be made available. But if the trial judge gives his reasons, this may turn out to be positively harmful to the defendant; for example, if the trial judge were to be obliged to say in terms that, despite the procedural irregularity, there was ample evidence of guilt, that would indeed by very unfortunate to the accused. The judge would be faced with a choice of criticising the acquittal of a defendant, or of awarding him his costs out of public funds when it would be quite unwarranted to do so.
I recollect as an illustration of a, perhaps, improper conclusion of a case by a judge, that he said, after the accused had been surprisingly acquitted by a Limerick jury, "You leave the court without a stain on your character, except that you have been acquitted by a Limerick jury" It would not be a very satisfactory conclusion. The noble Viscount, Lord Colville, has referred to the perhaps rather special case in which defence solicitors were ordered personally to pay the costs occasioned by an adjournment, which the trial judge considered to have been necessitated by a fault on their ow part. He has reminded your Lordships of the conclusion of the Court of Appeal, that they had no jurisdiction to hear an appeal against this order, although they thought that the trial judge had made a mistake which amounted to a denial of justice.
The question of whether costs may have been wasted by the failure of a solicitor or counsel to conduct the proceedings with reasonable competence and expedition, and therefore that the costs thrown away should be borne by that solicitor, is now covered by two practice directions, one relating to costs from central Government funds, and the other to legal aid. They were made in February this year. These provide that the right course, in such a case, is for the judge to specify as precisely as possible the matters which appear to raise this question, and I to draw these to the attention of the taxing

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authority. If the judge has done this, the taxing authority is required by the practice directions to afford an opportunity to the solicitor or counsel concerned to make representations in relation thereto, and may also consult the judge. Although, therefore, this is not a formal appeal procedure, I hope the noble Viscount may think that it has dealt with the substance of the problem and now seems to be working satisfactorily.
So that, in view of these serious practical difficulties and the practice directions of the kind that I have mentioned that have been introduced to deal with the situation, I hope the noble Viscount may feel that, the matter having been raised in this way, it may not be necessary to press the Amendment which he has moved.
3.55 p.m.
Viscount COLVILLE of CULROSS: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord for that full and reasoned response to this Amendment. I am bound to say that I am afraid I did not know of the practice directions, and I am very glad to hear of them. I certainly would not intend to press this matter, but it occurs to me that most of the practical difficulties of which he has made so much are exactly the same as apply in civil litigation, and that one would have almost exactly the same problems arising in, for instance, a witness action in the Queen's Bench Division, or indeed in any other civil forum, which, so far as I am aware, has never prevented questions of costs going to the Court of Appeal where the whole matter has been resolved perfectly satisfactorily. So I suggest to the noble and learned Lord, although I appreciate that there are differences between civil and criminal procedures and courts, and also that we are dealing with public money and funds other than those of the parties concerned, that there are also similarities.
Since Administration of Justice Bills come along from time to time, I would earnestly request that he should ask his Department to note this as being an area which may not have been entirely satisfactorily resolved under the legislation of the Courts Act, and it may therefore be that further thought will in due course have to be given to it. But I certainly
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would not wish to take the matter any further today. It may, of course, be that those in another place who see the report of this debate will have their own views upon it, and I certainly would not wish to indicate one way or another what might happen there. But as the noble and learned Lord has said, we have had an opportunity to ventilate this matter, which has evidently upset the Court of Appeal and the Divisional Court for the lack of their own jurisdiction. So that, for this afternoon, I should like to leave it there if I may, and I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
The LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Viscount and I will certainly give him the undertaking to examine this matter further.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 14 [Right of audience in county courts]:
3.57 p.m.
The LORD CHANCELLOR The LORD CHANCELLOR moved Amendment No. 3:
Page 9, line 28, leave out ("solicitors' employees") and insert ("persons in relevant legal employment").
The noble and learned Lord said: My Lords, with this Amendment it may he convenient to consider Amendment No. 4. During the Committee stage of the Bill, the noble Viscount, Lord Amory, moved an Amendment to this clause. The purpose of the Amendment was to enable designated categories of employees, who are not employed directly by solicitors but in the legal departments of local authorities, a right of audience in county courts. Although I accepted that Amendment in principle, I felt that his draft did not achieve the right result, but I undertook to deal with the matter on Report.
These Amendments carry out that undertaking. They will enable a right of audience to be given not only to employees of solicitors in private practice, but also to persons employed by local authorities, or other corporate bodies, or by the Crown, to assist a solicitor in the conduct of litigation. I place great importance, as does the noble Viscount, upon the maintenance of proper professional standards, and upon the fact that the public interest in maintaining

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those standards should be safeguarded. That is, I think done by the requirement that a person exercising a right of audience must be assisting a solicitor, and therefore will be able to act only while under the supervision of a solicitor. Accordingly, I have been happy to redraft the noble Viscount's Amendment and I hope that it now meets his wishes in regard to the point that he raised. My Lords, I beg to move.
Viscount AMORY: My Lords, since I have seen the noble and learned Lord's Amendment, I have not had an opportunity to consult with the authorities who were concerned with the wording of the provision as it stood. So far as I can see, the Amendment which the noble and learned Lord has brought forward exactly meets and covers the kind of cases that I mentioned when I moved my Amendment. The individuals I was thinking about were those who certainly would have a senior on the same staff of the authority, who himself or herself would be fully legally qualified. Therefore I should like to thank the noble and learned Lord very much for the trouble he has taken and say how gladly I welcome his Amendment.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
The LORD CHANCELLOR The LORD CHANCELLOR moved Amendment No. 4:
Page 9, line 32, at end insert—
("( ) In subsection (1) above, relevant legal employment "means employment which consists of or includes giving assistance in the conduct of litigation to a solicitor whether in private practice or not.").
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Viscount COLVILLE of CULROSS Viscount COLVILLE of CULROSS moved Amendment No. 5:
After Clause 16, insert the following new clause:
Interest on County Court judgments.
. The following section shall be inserted after section 99 of the County Courts Act 1959—
"99A.—(1) Every judgment debt shall carry interest at such rate percent as may be prescribed from the time of entering up the judgment until it is satisfied, and such interest may be recovered under Part VI of this Act.
(2) Section 44(1) of the Administration of Justice Act 1970 shall have effect as if there were inserted therein after the reference to secton 17 of the Judgments Act 1838 a reference to this section.".
The noble Viscount said: My Lords, I am afraid that this is another new point,
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but perhaps one which is worthy of consideration by the House. Your Lordships will remember that this Bill pursues a course, which has been going on for a long time, whereby the financial jurisdiction of the county courts is increased. Indeed, I think we were told at an earlier stage that the job has now been completed. The whole of the process of increasing that jurisdiction, as inflation rolls forward, is now contained, with the addition of this Bill, in regulation-making powers that the noble and learned Lord can exercise from time to time without any further need for legislation. So there are now very substantial sums of money which can be involved in litigation in the county court. In particular, noble Lords will see that in the Admiralty jurisdiction of the Bill the sum of £15,000 is involved.
The House will know that if you are a litigant and you bring your action in the High Court when the subject matter is within the financial jurisdiction of the county court, you are liable to be in very grave trouble because you will not get your costs, even if you win, on the High Court scale. You are liable to be told that you will be given costs only on the county court scale. There is, therefore, a grave financial penalty in going to the High Court when you should have gone to the county court.
If, on the other hand, you win in the county court and the sum involved is fairly large, there is one little difficulty. Under the Judgments Act 1838 there is a provision whereby interest is payable on judgment debts after the decision has been made. The original figure was 4 per cent. In Section 44 of the Administration of Justice Act 1970 powers have now been taken to alter that percentage by Statutory Instrument. I am bound to say that I do not know what the percentage is at the moment, but I should think that it is higher than 4 per cent. If it is not, it ought to be.
This is the remedy for the successful litigant who finds that his defeated opponent is still not all that anxious to pay the sum which has been adjudged due by the court. Unfortunately, however, this provision does not apply to the county courts, and never has. Therefore, when we put up the jurisdiction of the county court and penalise the person who, if the matter is within the county court's juris-

1195
diction, goes to the High Court instead, we also penalise him in the opposite direction, because we do not provide for any interest to be payable on the judgment of the county court judge. It is in order to put that right—and I feel fairly sure that it ought to be put right—that I have brought forward this Amendment. I beg to move.
The LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, again I am afraid that beneath the apparent simplicity of the noble Viscount's Amendment there lurk a large number of difficult practical problems. Although it may one day be possible to go some way towards meeting the point that the noble Viscount has raised, with which I confess I am in sympathy, I do not think that it will ever be practicable to allow interest on all county court judgment debts. The Payne Committee on the Enforcement of Judgment Debts examined the problem carefully and fully and reported in 1968 as follows:
"We are of the opinion that [creditors] ought to recover interest on county court judgments exceeding, say, £100. Very difficult questions arise, however, with regard to the calculation and collection of interest on small judgments, especially when paid by instalments and we think this problem requires detailed examination. It should, however, be deferred until after changes in the substantive law relating to interest on contracts has been studied and revised to bring it up to date with current thought".
The question of interest on debt has been referred to the Law Commission and I hope to receive their report during the course of this year. I venture to think that it may be wise to follow the advice of the Payne Committee: to wait upon the conclusions of the Law Commission on interest on damages and other kinds of debt which they are considering and then perhaps to return to the matter. I believe that we should do so, because a point of substance is raised in the Amendment.
Perhaps I can briefly mention some of the difficulties—they are not fanciful ones—which are involved in interest on county court judgments. First, a large number of judgment debts in the county courts are ordered to be paid by instalments. That does not apply in the High Court. This immediately poses a problem about the calculation of interest. Is the amount of interest to be calculated on the original amount due or on the balance remaining
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on a particular date, such as the issue of execution, or is it to be included on a monthly, weekly or even daily basis until payment? I am advised that it is very difficult to devise a system which is sure to be fair both to debtor and creditor in those circumstances. Moreover, we must remember that interest is payable to a creditor by way of damages for keeping him out of his money. Should it then be recoverable where the court has itself granted the debtor the indulgence of payment by instalments because he is unable to pay the full amount at once?
Secondly, there is the question of who should calculate the interest. It would impose a considerable burden on the court staff to perform this service on all the small debts payable through the county court; and yet, since the debtor is usually unrepresented, it would hardly be satisfactory to leave the calculation to him or to the creditor. But although money due under judgment is usually paid through the court, it is sometimes paid directly to the creditor and the court may have no knowledge of a particular payment. Therefore the court may not be in a position properly to calculate the interest due at the time when execution issues.
These are some of the practical difficulties which I am advised stand in the way of the proposal and which were acknowledged by the Payne Committee. I do not think it would be right to try to deal with them in the context of this Bill, but I readily acknowledge that the matter does need to be examined further. Certainly I undertake that this will be done, particularly in the light of the anticipated report of the Law Commission. Accordingly, while I am grateful that the problem has been raised, probably it is too difficult and controversial to attempt to deal with it in this Bill, which we hope will achieve its passage without the necessity of a Second Reading in another place.
Viscount COLVILLE of CULROSS: My Lords, once again I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord for having given this matter the thought which I am glad to find he also agrees is its due. I entirely see that there are difficulties about some of the problems that the noble and learned Lord has raised. I should have thought, however, that some of them could be avoided by placing a lower limit upon the size of the judgment debt that

1197
would start to attract interest. This could no doubt be changed from time to time by regulations as inflation sweeps forward.
Also it occurs to me, not having, I am afraid, studied this with anything like the care which is its due, that there may be something to be said for the judge himself identifying cases where he thinks that interest should be paid. Therefore, there would be a certain amount of discretion whereby the problem of instalment payments could be avoided without at the same time letting off the debtor who is adjudicated as being due to pay a large sum all in one piece, because plainly in those circumstances it is unfair to the successful plaintiff to be done out of his money and also not to receive interest on the period during which the defendant has not paid.
If the noble and learned Lord is saying, as I believe he is, that the Law Commission either are looking at, or will look at, the whole question of the machinery whereby interest on judgment debts can be dealt with in the county courts, then of course I am happy to await the report from the Law Commission. But I was not entirely sure whether in fact the Law Commission were doing that at the moment or whether they were looking at cognate matters and that the matter would have to go back to them for this particular point to be examined again. After all, if the Payne Committee did not come to any conclusions upon it, somebody will have to do so and if the House would give the noble and learned Lord leave to say one more word about this matter I believe we should be enlightened. I should be glad to know whether he could say anything on this point.
The LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I am not sure that I can go quite so far as to undertake that the Law Commission are considering the whole machinery for the assessment and enforcement of payment of interest on damages. They are reporting on interest and damages and the other kinds of debt, but I confess that without notice I cannot say how far their inquiry will go into the matters we are considering. I would expect that they would enter upon the substance of the problem, and certainly in the light of this discussion I shall draw the attention of the Law Commission to the problems which have been identified here and encourage
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them perhaps to enlarge the scope of their study and work if it does not already embrace the problems raised by the noble Viscount in this Amendment.
Lord HALE: My Lords, I should like to say to the noble Viscount, who is never discourteous and I certainly would not accuse him of that, that I was the only undistinguished member of the Payne Committee which was presided over by Mr. Justice Withers Payne, a most courteous, cultured and, to some extent unfortunately, the most patient person, because we sat for four years and we had the present Queen's Remembrancer coming in with the speech of Charles James Fox and conversationally it was almost like the Mermaid Tavern nearby. Four years of solid work went by and whenever I have had the privilege of seeing any members of the Payne Committee they have complained that their work has been to some extent ignored in the process of legal reform.
They have been somewhat submerged, and although the laborious programme for county courts has been adopted—and I am told it is working well in respect of the elaborate and carefully considered procedures brought forward by the Payne Committee—there are some other matters which I hope will be looked at again. At any rate I can say that the utmost care was taken on that Committee, which was my last performance. I had been on the County Court Committee 20 years before under Mr. Justice Jones, but because of the nature of the membership of the Payne Committee an enormous amount of work was put in and an enormous amount of energy expended, and by many of them a good deal of brilliance was shown.
Viscount COLVILLE of CULROSS: My Lords, if I may have leave to continue with the speech I was making a moment ago, the last thing that in any circumstances I would wish to do would be to be discourteous to the noble Lord, Lord Hale, or to any of his colleagues on the Payne Committee. I certainly do not think that I said anything that would have given that inference, and if I did, I at once withdraw it. What I was pointing out was that it seemed that the Payne Committee themselves had not gone into the difficulties—or, at any rate, all of the difficulties—which have now been identi-

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fied by the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor, let alone suggested what should be the solutions.
What we have now had promised—and this I am very grateful for—is further study of this matter so that when the Law Commission look at the substance they may also look at it against the background of the machinery whereby the substance would be dealt with. I do not really think they could produce a completely satisfactory solution to this if they did not follow through the administration in the county courts of any particular reforms that they were proposing to the noble and learned Lord in due course.
The noble and learned Lord has been very generous and has gone a long way towards helping me on this. I am grateful to him and we shall look forward in due course to the results of the labours and to see what legislative chance we may have to put them into force.
The LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, again, as I said before, I am not quite sure of the whole context of the Law Commission's study but I will certainly invite them to consider the points that have been raised today. I usually find them most receptive to such approaches.
Viscount COLVILLE of CULROSS: My Lords, I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 17 [Register of county court judgments]:
4.17 p.m.
Viscount COLVILLE of CULROSS Viscount COLVILLE of CULROSS moved Amendment No. 6:
Page 11, line 4, leave out from ("words") to ("such") in line 5.
The noble Viscount said: My Lords, I do not know whether the noble and learned Lord might consider that we could speak to his Amendment No. 7 at the same time as this, because it is all on the same subject. I am afraid it is a return to the question of the register of judgment debtors. Noble Lords who may have followed this matter at previous stages of the Bill will know that there is prepared and held a register of those who fail to pay
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the debts that they are adjudged due to pay by the county court within 28 days of the judgment if the sum is £70 or more. Although this is a very ancient procedure, and indeed the sum of £10 was fixed—and I hope I get it right this time—in 1852. it has never been changed since.
On the other hand, I have suggested to the House before that whatever may have been the original purpose of this register it is now found to be an extremely useful procedure whereby credit reference agencies can compile lists of bad payers. It is widely used in the retail world and, indeed, there is tremendous reliance placed upon it by the whole of the credit industry. I hope it is not an impertinence on my part to say this, but it seems to me that it is possible that, although the noble and learned Lord's Department has, as I know, been in discussion with those who are avid users of the list of debtors that proceeds from this particular register, they have not anticipated that there was going to be a Bill at this particular juncture this Session in which reforms were going to be made. We all know that perhaps this has come forward because of the demise of other legislation, and they have not had a great deal of time to discuss with the noble and learned Lord's advisers the implications of what he wishes to do.
In the Bill as it stands the noble and learned Lord is of course providing for two things. One is to raise the limit of £10 which I mentioned to £50, and his Amendment now suggests that it should go back to £30, whereby anybody who owes £30 or more after 28 days goes on the register. My Amendment—although I understand that yet again I have the drafting wrong—was intended merely to keep the £10 for the moment and provide that it could be altered in either direction by regulation at some later stage when further consultations have taken place. There will, of course, be provision for regulations anyway, because that is in the Bill as well as the £50 provision.
What I am really asking the noble and learned Lord is this. Will he consider one further look at this matter, because I am told by those who say that they are voicing the views of the whole of the credit industry and some extremely important retail organisations, and incidentally are supported by the official consumer protectors in this country, that this has not

1201
been fully thought through. I am told that if the limit is raised, say, to £50 it will involve enormous numbers of people, who thereby, although bad payers, do not appear on the register, to obtain credit and then to run into debt.
I am told by those who are in the front line in this that the result of this will be that inevitably it will put up the price of all those goods and services which are obtained at the moment on credit because the people who do pay will have to bear a number of bad debts of the people who do not pay; and the reason why the people who do not pay do not do so is that they were given credit when they should not have been, because the noble and learned Lord has increased the figure to £50 and therefore they have not been spotted. So the argument goes.
The noble and learned Lord says—and I entirely understand the point—that it is a very expensive process, not only in terms of cash but in terms of staff. But, as I mentioned in Committee, I am led to believe that there is a certain amount of willingness on the part of those who use this register to make payments, possibly even in addition to what they are already being charged, for the information that the register contains because it is so extraordinarily accurate and so extraordinarily useful to them.
What I am, therefore, putting to the noble and learned Lord is this: he will have in the Bill a new power to make regulations which he has never had before, and this gives him a flexibility which did not previously exist. I expect him to use that power to make regulations in due course. All I ask is whether he would be prepared to take out the figure for the moment until there have been further discussions with those using the register, because they feel very strongly about it and they forecast the kind of results that I have indicated.
I am not suggesting the noble and learned Lord should not change the matter. I am simply trying to ensure that we do not move away from £10 until we have a workable scheme to put in its place. With the greatest respect, although £30 is probably better, I do not think that it is necessarily the answer. I think there is a case for a further look at this, preferably in conjunction with the users
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of this information. Therefore, I hope the noble and learned Lord will not close the door altogether to something of that kind. I beg to move.
The LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, the noble Viscount has indicated that the purpose of his Amendment is to leave the figure of £10 in the Statute as the amount which requires a judgment debt to be entered in the register of county court judgments if it is not satisfied within 28 days, but to add the power for the Lord Chancellor to alter the figure of £10 by regulations made by Statutory Instrument.
The Amendment in my name, Amendment No. 7, reduces the figure of £50, which is now in the clause, to £30, providing, therefore, for an increase of from £10 to £30 in the present provisions, in order to bring them more into line with the reality of the position. As the noble Viscount has pointed out, the figure of £10 was adopted as long ago as 1852. The £50 basis, which I originally suggested, was not, therefore, thought to be an excessive increase in the light of inflation. In view of the difficulties that have been put forward today and after the Committee stage, I have suggested the compromise figure of £30.
The difficulty here, of course, is that there is a certain conflict upon this matter between the views of the credit reference industry and the Government. The fact that a person has failed on one occasion to pay a debt of £10, or even £5 or less, is a matter of interest to someone who is thinking of extending credit to him on a later occasion; that I do not deny. But it has never been thought right to impose on the Government the burden of keeping a register of trifling debts. Therefore, a reasonable balance has to be struck between the need to provide information about those who default on their obligations under judgment debts and the need to keep the burden of maintaining such a register within proper bounds. I do not think there is a figure which can be claimed as absolutely right; it is a matter of judgment.
I am informed that analysis of the judgment debts now entered on the register shows they are divided as follows: 26 per cent. are for sums between £10 and £30; 17 per cent. are for sums between

1203
£30 and £50, and 57 per cent. are for sums over £50. If, therefore, your Lordships approve the figure of £30 suggested in the Government Amendment, 26 per cent. of the judgment debts registerable at today's value would be removed from the register, as opposed to 43 per cent. which would have been taken out by my figure of £50.
I venture to think that what I have proposed in Amendment No. 7 represents a fair and reasonable compromise. Frankly, if we leave the figure of £10 as it stands, I do not think that further discussions will be conclusive. We have had many over the years. If we accepted the noble Lord's Amendment, I fear that all that would happen would be that shortly I would be bringing before your Lordships a regulation raising the figure, and the debate would be renewed. I am concerned, as all Government Departments are or ought to be, to reduce the amount of staff and administrative work which falls upon Government Departments more and more heavily as the burdens of Departmental responsibility seem to increase. This would be a modest proposal aimed at making some contribution in that direction. I hope, accordingly, that the noble and learned Viscount will be disposed to accept the compromise as a fair solution to the problem that he has raised.
4.29 p.m.
Lord AIREDALE: My Lords, I can see merit in allowing the credit industry to have the limit as low as they would like, provided they are prepared to pay the cost of keeping it at that low limit, and the whole of the cost of keeping it between that low limit and the limit which would be applied if the credit industry were not contributing towards the cost of keeping the register.
The LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, may I make one comment in regard to that? I do not think I can fairly claim that my objection to what is proposed is based upon the costs aspect, because the charges can be increased to cover the costs. The problem that concerns me departmentally is that it does nevertheless mean administrative work in every county court; more staff have to be employed. That is the difficulty.
Lord HALE: My Lords, I know there has been a lot of legislation, since the Payne Committee sat, which has complicated or altered the situation. At that time we were faced with a position in which the credit industry—and I do not for a moment deny that there are highly respectable firms in the credit industry—largely consisted of people who, by brutal threats and by intimidation and so on, having bought up old debts at four shillings in the pound, constituted a very considerable part of the plaintiffs in the small debt court.
I do not know whether or not I am reactionary in this; I know I am very lonely. I never could see why we should have judges and courts to collect small debts, or indeed why it was the business of the community to regulate these simple little transactions between individuals. I never could see why giving widespread credit was to the human benefit. I never believed in the economists—who now do not believe in it themselves—who said that credit was part of the development of a stable economy. I always thought passionately that if there is one example of one law for the rich and one law for the poor—that is not a phrase which I particularly like; it works one way in one case and another way in another case—it was the fact that in my day, so long as a man had sense enough to run up debts of over £50 and could borrow £5, he could go bankrupt and be relieved of all his anxiety. I know very little about the law, and I confess it. However, I was in an official receiver's office in 1917 and I learned the ropes of bankruptcy law as it then existed.
I have a very—I was about to say "elaborate" but that word could perhaps be discourteous—well-prepared manuscript from Burton the tailors, to whom I used to go as a customer when my expectation of life justified the continued buying of clothes. It is a very good document and is extremely well prepared. To my horror it quotes some passages from the Payne Committee Report in support of their views. I congratulate them on its preparation and they are entitled to have it treated with respect. However, unfortunately I disagree with it. I cannot go much further in that direction.
What is the position today? Today Burton the tailors may refuse to supply

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a pair of trousers on the strength that a man still has a judgment on his coat. We read in this morning's issue of The Times about the noble Prince who went to Harrods and bought two mink coats at £2,000 each, one for himself because he feels the cold, and the other for his lady because she is the sort of person who looks extremely well in a mink coat—and I do not doubt it—and promptly went bankrupt. That is the situation. If we have the misfortune to run into debt, we should run into debt for a large sum. Fifty years ago my lecturer told me, on the strength of the case Rex v. Beard, that he did not advise me to get drunk but that if I was going to use that case as a criminal defence, I should get dead drunk.
Much as I dislike disagreeing with my noble and learned friend on the Woolsack, I regret that he has yielded to—I shall not use the word" clamour"—debating pressure in this House and has altered the figure from £50 to £30. I do not propose to dwell upon it, but I do not believe that it is a particularly necessary service of a Government to help a credit industry. We should consider the merits of the matter without helping the collectors.
Viscount COLVILLE of CULROSS: My Lords, I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Hale, will forgive me if I do not follow his argument into some of the wider aspects of this matter. After all, it is one of the glories of your Lordships' House that sooner or later we always receive good advice on almost everything. We are grateful to the noble Lord for some of his remarks.
I very much agree with the noble Lord, Lord Airedale, on this. It is my hope that some method will be found whereby not only the subject matter that is at present the source of the payments that are charged for the entries in the register, if they are given to someone else, but also some proportion of the costs of the administration staff should be looked at to see whether they can be passed on.
I entirely understand what the noble and learned Lord says about compromise. I, too, seek a compromise. However, what I am afraid of is this—and perhaps it is that I am not in a position accurately to judge the threat. I remember when I was at the Home Office the business about
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privacy. The Consumer Credit Act now provides that one can go and look at any register which has an adverse comment against one and can put it right. That was what we discussed the other day. However, I am told that if the official register—the one that is prepared under the auspices of the noble and learned Lord—is not considered to be sufficiently full for the day-to-day purposes of those who require credit references, they will have to revert to some other means. The important thing about the official register is that its accuracy is proverbial and a mistake has hardly ever been discovered, except the one that Esther Rantzen found on the television. However, apart from that no one has ever found a mistake. The other methods of compiling information of this sort are nothing like so reliable. They require a good deal of chasing around and tittle-tattle in the pub, the corner shops and the homes of neighbours. All sorts of malice and mistakes creep in and inaccuracies can be found.
Of course, everyone whose name appears in one of the registers compiled in that way will also have the opportunity to put the matter right under the Consumer Credit Act. However, if one can avoid it, one does not wish to have masses of inaccurate registers being compiled, as I believe used to be the case before the credit agencies turned to the Government's own central figures. It is from that point of view I want go get it right. I appreciate that it is a matter which also troubles the mind of the noble and learned Lord.
I believe that there is still room for a little further discussion on the matter. There is no necessity for him to say anything further at this stage, but I hope that he will not close the door to a little further discussion with those who have put this case so strongly to me. I see that he is nodding his head very slightly but perhaps sufficiently to be reported in the Official Report. If he would do that, I feel that we may have achieved as much as we shall achieve in this House in view of the rather short time-scale that we have had on the matter. I hope that the matter need not be considered closed. I shall not look his £30 gift horse in the mouth this afternoon. I beg leave to withdraw my Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
4.38 p.m.
Viscount COLVILLE of CULROSS Viscount COLVILLE of CULROSS moved Amendment No. 7:
Page 11, line 5, leave out ("£50") and insert ("£30").
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
In the Title:
Viscount COLVILLE of CULROSS Viscount COLVILLE of CULROSS moved Amendment No. 8:
Line 4, after second ("to") insert "oaths and affirmations and to").
The noble Viscount said: My Lords, this Amendment is consequential. I beg to move.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.

ROAD TRAFFIC (SEAT BELTS) (No. 2) BILL [H.L.]
4.39 p.m.
Lord WIGG: My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. The purpose of the Bill is set out in the Long Title:
"… to confer power to make regulations requiring the wearing of seat belts in motor vehicles on motorways."
Clause 1 of the Bill makes it an offence to drive or ride in the front seat of a motor vehicle without wearing a seat belt, subject to exceptions which will be prescribed by the Secretary of State. This offence will be a summary one, punishable by a maximum fine of £50 or a fixed penalty of £6 which may be imposed under the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1967. Clause 2 provides for the regulations first mentioned to be subject to the Affirmative Resolution Procedure, as would be any further regulations which extend compulsion to the back seats, for instance, or to classes of vehicle in which the wearing of seat belts has been voluntary up to that point.
A similar Bill was debated in this House two or three weeks ago and was lost by a quite narrow majority. I listened to almost every speech that was made in the course of that debate, and I have read Hansard since that time. I found myself at the time, and since, in almost complete agreement with the main point that was made by the noble Lord, Lord Balfour of Inchrye, who perhaps I may describe complimentarily as the principal opponent
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of the Bill inasmuch as he moved the Amendment. What he said on 26th April at column 420 was:
"I am not against seat belts. I use one myself on an open road; but let me confess that I do not use one when travelling from my house to your Lordships' House."
I confess that I am in exactly the same category. I use my seat belt, and insist upon a passenger, if I carry one, using the seat belt, when I go up the M1 or M6 to my home.
I have had three accidents which involve me and the use of seat belts. The first occasion was when I was going to Haydock Park races on a very foggy day. I was bumped into by a car which hit the rear of my car, threw me forward and I bumped my head. That accident convinced me that on the motorway the danger is the multiple accident where one car hits another, and so on. This comes about very often in foggy conditions, or perhaps even as a result of a major accident in which people are perhaps travelling too fast and they cannot stop. That was lesson number one. I realised that if I had had a seat belt I should not have been injured.
The second occasion was outside your Lordships' House. I came to the "In" sign to turn left, stopped because the traffic warden was stopping me, and I was hit again in my exhaust pipe by a bus, which did considerable damage to my car. It knocked me out, and I remained semiconscious until I was attended by a noble Lord who sits on the Liberal Benches, Lord Amulree, and after a glass of water and in a short time I was all right, but I realised that it had made me lose control of the car. On the third occasion I had a passenger. This was not in London and it was not on a motorway. There was a slight skid, I hit the back of another car, and my passenger got badly knocked about, and would not have been knocked about had she been wearing a seat belt.
I beg Lord Balfour's pardon; I referred to him earlier on when I thought he was here and he was not, but I referred to him in complimentary terms. As I understood it, he was not against seat belts, and he wore a seat belt on the open road, but in coming from his home to the House (which is my position) he did not, and his objection to the Bill was the principle of compulsion. It was put very well by

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the noble Lord, Lord Lucas of Chilworth. He said that what he wanted was the right of decision. He called it his personal right to make a decision.
In thinking about what could happen after Lord Balfour's Amendment was carried, I thought the situation should not remain there and that the House should further consider it, albeit on a somewhat narrow basis in terms of principle; that is to say, to face up squarely to the fact that there were those who, like the noble Lord, Lord Balfour, were not against seat belts, used them themselves, but the noble Lord thought, as did the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, that the decision ought to be left to the individual, and the individual ought to be free from compulsion.
The first point I make is that the Bill I am introducing today deals only with motorways, special roads, so you can please yourself whether or not you go on the motorway. That is the first choice you have. You can go on the motorway. If anyone argues that there is any compulsion if you go on the motorway, of course there is. You cannot stop on a motorway; you cannot make a U-turn on a motorway; if you are driving a heavy vehicle you cannot drive in the fast lane. This is part of the price paid for the privilege of travelling at high speed on a road specially constructed for the convenience of motorists.
Surely in the age in which we live those who, as it were, march under the banner of liberty, or I should prefer the Saxon term "freedom", know that it also carries with it the obligation of paying something for the privilege that one has. Privilege and obligation must surely be balanced. Therefore, if one has the privilege of going on a motorway, of driving unrestricted at a speed of 70 miles an hour, surely this is not a high price to pay. It is not, as some of the opponents to Lord Avebury's Bill seemed to think, that it was the individual who was free to say "Yes, I will wear a seat belt" or, "No, I will not wear a seat belt", and the consequences would be borne by that individual, or that individual's passenger. That is only part of the story. I can only assume that those who say that, do not drive a motor car, or do not drive very often on a motorway. Obviously the slightest accident on a motorway, the bump in the back which drives a driver's head on to a
1210
windscreen if only for a split second, puts into danger the cars by which he is surrounded.
It is clear that one of the great dangers on a motorway is not only the danger that may come because your own tyre may blow, or that you may make an error of judgment; if the other fellow even on the opposite track loses consciousness, or makes a mistake, a whole host of people (not merely the individual who has made a decision not to wear a seat belt) whom he does not even know, or know about, will pay the price of that failure to face up to a duty which all of us owe to our fellow men if we have the very special privilege of travelling on a motorway.
I tried to think about this and to see how it was possible to get round the objection in principle on the issue of compulsion. I thought if it was confined only to the motorway, then in fact we should be able to let people have the choice. For example, those who travelled on M1 need not go on M1; they could go on the A5, a perfectly good road, if they wanted to. But when they got on the A5, they would not be free from restrictions. They would run into innumerable restrictions as regards speed; they would have to stop at innumerable traffic lights; and they would go through built-up areas. All this is as much a restriction on the right of the individual to do what the heck he likes with his own, as it would be if you say to him, "You must not go on the motorway unless you and your front seat passenger wear seat belts". Just as you have that restriction, so you have comparable restrictions; if you get on the motorway, you must not stop, or you must not make a U-turn.
I do not think I can usefully carry the argument much further than that. Everything to be said for or against was said during the course of that debate, and the only supplement I would make to what was said then or to any thoughts in my mind appears this morning in The Times. In an article which was obviously specially commissioned because of the issues involved, The Times medical correspondent, under the heading—
"Why Britain cannot afford not to use seat belts"
writes:
"Are the British really more pig-headed than the Germans?…If the use of seat belts were made

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compulsory in Britain next year we could expect 13,000 fewer deaths and serious injuries. No other country has found an alternative way of persuading a majority of motorists to wear belts; no other country has encountered real difficulties from legal compulsion, and all that have tried it have found it effective. The time has passed when theoretical objections can claim respectability: the Britiah are not unique. We cannot afford this continuing, avoidable waste of human potential from each generation as it reaches adult life"
Obviously, if this Bill is passed, confined as it is to motorways, the lives it will save and the injuries it will prevent will fall short of 13,000. On the other hand, if this limited Bill compared with what was enshrined in the measure proposed by Lord Avebury, becomes law, we could see after a period of a year what the position is. We should have some reliable statistics from which to discover, for the first time and beyond a shadow of doubt, what really is the effect of wearing seat belts.
I appreciate that there can be two objections. One is that concerning the power of enforcement. Those who use motorways, particularly the M1, would see from time to time raised platforms on the side of the road for the use only of the police. Two policemen perched in a car could observe vehicles passing in both directions, and if they saw some body driving or his passenger not wearing a seat belt the car number would be taken. I hope the policy to be followed would, in the first instance, be to issue a warning, because we are sensible people, even though some of us pretend we are not. If the power of persuasion were used, as the police use the power of persuasion in connection with road traffic offences, slowly and gradually we would find out the exact position. If, at the end of a year, it was found that the claims which had been made, both in the debates in this House and in the Press, were wrong then one would hope that the Government would put the matter right, because nobody wants to encumber the Statute Book with unnecessary legislation.
We must face the fact that in almost every other civilised country that has introduced the compulsory wearing of seat belts, starting with Sweden, the results have been to push the argument beyond any shadow of doubt; that is, that the wearing of seat belts saves lives and prevents injuries. I concede that it will happen that the wearing of a seat belt
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will cause an injury that would otherwise not have occurred, but the balance of the argument—I claim no special knowledge —points irresistibly to the conclusion that the House would be wise to take this very limited step of introducing the compulsory wearing of seat belts on motorways, in the hope that, if the problems are handled gently and carefully, the results could be properly ascertained and we should be bringing ourselves into line with every other civilised country. I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Lord Wigg.)
4.55 p.m.
Lord MOWBRAY and STOURTON: My Lords, a month ago everybody in this House assumed that the seat belts issue had lapsed, at least for this Session. That view was also taken by the newspapers, which headlined their reports with the words "Clunk-click Bill dead" or similar phrases. However, we all reckoned without the noble Lord, Lord Wigg, who is to be congratulated very much on his ingenuity in resurrecting the matter and bringing it forward once again for our attention.
We heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman, during the previous debate that while she and her honourable friend sympathised with the measure, it was unlikely, given the pressure of Parliamentary business, that it would become law this Session. A month having elapsed, presumably that applies a fortiori to Lord Wigg's Bill. I hope not. Despite that, I feel that the noble Lord is to be congratulated on raising a most important issue of great social concern. I also believe that the form of his Bill may provide the opportunity for a compromise measure in that the more limited proposals he is putting forward may prove less contentious and more generally acceptable than the Bill introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Avebury.
Though I gave Lord Avebury my full support and though I regret deeply that your Lordships decided not to proceed with his Bill, I feel it is certainly desirable to seek the maximum degree of consensus on this measure, and it may be that, given the deeply divided feelings on this issue, Lord Wigg is offering us an easier way forward. But before coming to discuss Lord Wigg's Bill in detail, I would ask

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your Lordships' indulgence while I consider the various arguments that have been raised in our debates on this issue.
We do not often have the opportunity to discuss the esprit d'escalier of such matters, but Lord Wigg has given us this opportunity. It seems to me that on the last occasion three main arguments were adduced against these proposals. The first was that it was an instrusion on personal liberty; the second was that it would be unenforceable; and the third was that in a significant number of cases the wearing of seat belts could aggravate the consequences of an accident. Now, as regards enforcement, the problems here are much less under the present Bill. I shall deal with them when I come to consider the Bill in detail but I do not think that they require much general treatment.
On the vexed question of personal liberty, as I said in our previous debate, most noble Lords will already have reached a conclusion. Philosophical discussion is always stimulating and enjoyable but rarely produces a change of mind on fundamental issues. I do not think that the Queen's highway is a suitable theatre for the indulgence of self-expression. I believe that there are more urgent aspects to the issue of individual freedom than the road traffic law. There are many areas where the power of the State has increased and is increasing and, as we all know, should and must be diminished. To roll back bureaucracy and free private citizens from Government gloom brought about by State interference and direction is a most urgent political task which faces us all today. However, I believe that driving is an activity that must be carried out within a very tight framework of rules and regulations. Previous statements that I made about personal liberty do not apply in this case. The appalling casualty rates on our roads are such a blot on our claim to be a civilised society that we must do everything possible to reduce them. It would seem to me that cutting road casualties is the most urgent task we face in the whole field of transport policy.
In our previous debate, I dilated on my experience at the Ministry of Transport and on the view of my right honourable friend Mr. John Peyton. I can absolutely assure your Lordships again that he, who had ministerial responsibility for road
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accidents, was really oppressed by the weight of the responsibility involved in this measure. It is also my conviction, based on the evidence from every country that has compulsion, that there is no single measure in the field of road traffic law which would have so immediate and dramatic an effect on the casualty figures as the introduction of compulsory seat-belt wearing. I cannot see beyond that argument.
I imagine that, as the noble Lord, Lord Wigg, mentioned, we shall all have been impressed by Dr. Tony Smith's article in The Times today. He asks whether we are really more pig-headed than the Germans, more emotional than the French and more bloody-minded than the Australians that we should disregard such a law. I feel that we can all answer that question for ourselves.
The question of statistics brings me to the other main argument used against the Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Avebury. The contention is that, in a significant number of cases, the wearing of seat belts can lead to more serious injuries. Everyone who heard the previous debate must have been impressed by the width of anecdote called into play on either side. Of course, nearly all those anecdotes dealt with hypothetical circumstances: a man might be trapped in a car through wearing a seat belt, but had he not been wearing a belt he might have been killed outright or have lost consciousness and thus remained trapped in the car. I believe that we have to take a statistical view of this matter, and all the statistics show overwhelmingly and without any ambiguity that one is safer with a seat belt than without one.
I know that many noble Lords are exceedingly unhappy about this cold, statistical view of personal safety. I believe that there is an explanation for their unhappiness. One of the most horrifying things about air travel which I think is at the root of many people's uneasiness regarding it is the sense of complete powerlessness. There is nothing whatsoever that the pasenger can do in an air crash. He must give himself absolutely entirely to fortune and the skill of others. We none of us like to think of ourselves as tossed hopelessly on the sea of chance and circumstance. A passenger in a motor car is at least close to the action.

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He can see and understand everything that is going on and he harbours the illusion that he will be able to exercise some influence over events. I believe that it is for this reason that some of your Lordships reacted with such aversion to a solely statistical view of road safety.
I can only repeat that all the evidence in the countries which have introduced this measure is so overwhelming as to the latter's beneficial effect that there can be no doubt that one is in all circumstances safer in a seat belt. After all, a road accident happens in a flash. There is absolutely no time for the driver and the front seat passenger to take a decision whether or not to wear a scat belt according to the specific circumstances of the accident.
One other matter was raised during the debate on the previous Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, seemed at times to be saying that we should abbreviate our discussion on this matter in the light of debates in another place during the previous Parliamentary Session. I am afraid that this is the one matter on which I find myself in disagreement with the noble Lord. There is some resistance among noble Lords to making seat belt wearing a measure of compulsion. There is also resistance in another place to compulsion, but this only mirrors deeply held feelings among large numbers of people throughout the country. If the Bill is introduced, its success will depend upon the co-operation of the motorist. The law and the penalties for breach of the law will not, of themselves, be sufficient to produce that co-operation. I believe that we shall only ensure maximum cooperation if it is widely understood that we passed this Bill into law only after the fullest debate and discussion.
To turn to the Bill itself, it seems to me that there are two reasons which make it an entirely satisfactory and acceptable measure and one which I hope will commend itself to those of your Lordships who would not support the Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Avebury. First, it is already the case that levels of seat belt wearing are higher on motorways than on other roads. Undoubtedly, the noble Lord's Bill would raise those rates still further. I believe that every motorist sees the sense of wearing a seat belt on
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the motorway. The objection that the noble Lord, Lord Wigg, and I do not like the idea of putting on a seat belt to go from Warwick Square to the House of Lords will not apply—in case your Lordships do not know, that is where we both live. Secondly, no one is forced to travel on a motorway. Indeed, many drivers positively seek out attractive side roads in preference to the more soulless stretches of motorways. The motorist who steadily and conscientiously refuses to wear a seat belt will always have an alternative route, and, therefore, a further source of conflict between the motorist and the police will be avoided.
In our previous debate, I spoke enthusiastically about the French system, in which seat belt wearing is compulsory only outside built-up areas. I believe that the noble Lord's Bill is a step in this direction and I commend it heartily to your Lordships.
As always, I was impressed by the eloquence of my noble friend Lady Macleod the other day, but nothing she said shook me in my view that a measure to bring about seat belt wearing is the single most beneficial piece of legislation that we in this House could pass. The Bill will, I hope, become the thin edge of the wedge. I hope it will command general acceptance. I know that if it is passed into law, the effect on the casualty statistics would be so valuable as to convince all but the most diehard sceptics, and I believe that it will lead the motorist a long way towards the full acceptance of the seat belt as an integral part of his driving. I commend the Bill to your Lordships' House.
The Earl of CORK and ORRERY: My Lords, I should like to ask my noble friend for a small piece of clarification before he sits down. I refer to what he said about the enormous reduction in accidents on motorways which would be brought about by the wearing of seat belts. I thought that he said earlier that on motorways practically everybody already wears seat belts. How, therefore, could the accident statistics be so greatly reduced?
Lord MOWBRAY and STOURTON: My Lords, where accidents on motorways occur, if seat belts were worn those accidents would not be greatly reduced. Let

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me also make quite clear what I expressed in the debate a few weeks ago. I have the firm belief—it is a personal belief, I hasten to add—that most of the accidents caused through not wearing seat belts involve people on journeys that are not merely within built-up areas. This is a matter of personal belief. If you knew that you were going on to a motorway you would put on your seat belt when leaving your house, before you get to the other area. This Bill will make many people wear seat belts in other areas than motorways because they know that they are going on to a motorway. I think that that is really the simple answer.
5.12 p.m.
Lord AVEBURY: My Lords, I have to begin by apologising to the noble Lord, Lord Wigg, and to the Minister because a long-standing engagement prevents me staying to the end of the debate. I warmly support everything that the noble Lord, Lord Wigg, has said in moving the Second Reading of the Bill, and I hope that your Lordships will see fit to continue with a measure that, as the noble Lord explained, is rather more limited than the one I introduced a few weeks ago, but nevertheless will be of great value in starting a reduction in the carnage on our roads. I think that noble Lords should take note of the comment made by Dr. Tony Smith in the article which has already been quoted twice, that doctors and nurses who see the results of road accidents are left in no doubt as to the protection given by belts.
I wish that some noble Lords and noble Baronesses who opposed the Bill which I moved a few weeks ago would take the trouble to go into the casualty departments of some of our major hospitals and discuss this matter with the staff there. I wish that the noble Baroness, Lady Macleod of Borve, and my noble friend Lord Kimberley, would talk to casualty officers, would discuss the matter with the sisters who have to cope with accident victims who are being brought in every day, not only from motorways, but from trunk roads and ordinary roads all over the country. I have in mind, for instance, people with bones sticking out of their legs, or with appalling scars all over their faces. The noble Baroness and my noble friend could then reflect that on many
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occasions the consequences of the accidents which are visited in such a dreadful way on the victims are a direct result of their failure to wear seat belts. My noble friend and the noble Baroness know this perfectly well. The evidence is absolutely overwhelming, and I was glad to note in the previous debate that very few of your Lordships denied the validity of the statistical evidence which has accumulated in vast quantities from Australia, New Zealand, France and many other countries where seat belt wearing has been made compulsory.
There is very little new to be said on the subject this afternoon, and we cannot, I suggest, derive any great benefit from rehashing the debate we had last time. I would say only that the vote on it was so small that it was probably unrepresentative. If, as the noble Lord, Lord Mowbray and Stourton, suggested we want to obtain the maximum degree of consensus on the subject, we should refer back to the public opinion poll which was conducted by an extremely reputable organisation on behalf of the AA and which found that the majority of the citizens of this country were in fact pro a measure of compulsory seat belt wearing. I think that with the passage of time and with the accumulation of the additional evidence to which I have referred, one would probably find, if that exercise were repeated, that an even larger majority of people would be in favour of legislation on even broader lines than that introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Wigg.
Of course, there are some people who would always be opposed to any legislation, particularly to safety legislation, on the grounds that it is an infringement of individual liberty. They will say that, in accordance with the principle enunciated by John Stuart Mill, no interference is warranted by the State in the conduct of an individual where he is going to cause harm only to himself and not to others. But the noble Lord, Lord Wigg, in his speech has answered that. He has shown that the loss of control of a vehicle by the driver is very frequently a factor which causes serious danger to other people on the roads; that when a person lets go of the steering wheel as a result of loss of consciousness, perhaps through a blow on the head, his vehicle may continue onwards and cause many further casualties,

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whereas if he were wearing a seat belt he would be able to arrest the vehicle and prevent that occurring.
The noble Lord, Lord Mowbray and Stourton, has summarised the objections which were raised last time, and I do not intend to repeat everything he said. I say only, in connection with the anecdotes, of which we heard so many last time, that I sincerely hope that people will not take refuge in that kind of argument. Anecdotes are, in fact, a substitute used by people who are incapable of reasoning and of looking at the evidence as it stands. They must produce stories which they generalise, and then pretend that there is an inferential connection between an incident which happened to them, and which may have been wholly exceptional, and the circumstances of road accidents as a whole.
Indeed, even my noble friend was guilty of this in referring to a conversation he had with his son, who happens to be a policeman. He said that his son told him that he was against legislation of this kind because the police already have enough to do. The police may have enough to do, and we know that they are under-staffed, but with great respect to my noble friend, I think that it is not a very good argument to produce to your Lordships' House that because on policeman says he does not believe that a certain Bill would be enforceable this is the attitude of the police force as a whole. I should myself prefer to consult a recognised body, such as the Police Federation, and from the evidence we have I must repeat that the Association of Chief Constables, though not formally on record, has a majority in favour of legislation, that the Police Federation believes that it is a good idea; and that is certainly the view of a majority of the police forces.
There are still some people who say, "Where is it all going to end?", as the noble Lord, Lord Lucas of Chilworth, did; if we once accept a Bill of this kind, which involves some minor reduction of individual liberty, albeit in the interests of safety and health, then there will be further examples of infringement which Governments may introduce. The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, regaled us with a list, which as I saw it. was completely unconnected with the subject matter of the Bill. I believe that if we are to have a self-denying
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ordinance on legislation, and limit the extent to which Governments impose fresh rules and regulations on the people. such rules and regulations as they still have to impose should be designed to benefit the welfare of people as a whole, should be designed to improve health and safety and that if Governments were to concentrate on things of that kind they would become more popular in the eyes of the people.
This brings me to the last point I want to make, my Lords. I am still in disagreement with the noble Lord, Lord Mowbray, in the argument about whether we should give another place the chance to continue with the Bill which was interrupted by the timetable in 1976. I specifically said last time that I did not make any constitutional point on the need for this House to vote for a Bill which had some fairly close resemblance to the one which was interrupted in 1976 because of the pressure on Parliamentary time, but I do believe that if there is to be talk about the representation of the views of the public on a matter of this kind we are not the ones who should have the last word. So I hope that, in spite of the fact that your Lordships rejected a Bill very similar to this by a small majority a few weeks ago, your Lordships will now allow the elected Chamber the opportunity to express an opinion on a matter which is of great interest to the whole of the British public.
5.21 p.m.
Baroness MACLEOD of BORVE: My Lords, it is only 16 sitting days since a Bill embracing the principle of compulsion for everybody on all roads was refused a Second Reading in this House. The noble Lord who has introduced this Bill is known for his derision of this House, and I submit that to bring such a Bill as this before your Lordships again degrades the procedure of the decision of the House on the Second Reading of a Bill. Of the many reasons for not agreeing to this measure, that of compulsion has in the past won the most support, and it was principally for that reason that noble Lords rejected it on Second Reading on 26th April and previously rejected, at Report stage, an Amendment to the Road Traffic Act in 1973.
My Lords, nothing has changed in the last 16 days, except that there was a

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report in The Times on 9th May which stated that there were 10 fatal or serious accidents on the motorways for every 100 million miles travelled in 1975, compared with 32 fatal or serious accidents on other roads outside built-up areas. It has always been known that there are fewer accidents on motorways and more within a few miles of the destination. I also submit that, on motorways, this law will he practically impossible to enforce. I have never yet seen, as the noble Lord, Lord Wigg, apparently has, police parked on the raised parts of a motorway. Although I am perfectly well aware that there are many such raised parts, I have never yet seen a police car watching road vehicles. Noble Lords have previously given their views on the principle of compulsion, and have voted against it. Many of them are here now, and do not propose to reiterate all the arguments this evening. Neither do I, my Lords. The hour is late. I hope that this House will reject this Bill overwhelmingly.
5.24 p.m.
Lord LUCAS of CHILWORTH: My Lords, given the fact that the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, deplored the use of anecdotal examples as arguments against this Bill, and indeed against his own, I am surprised that the noble Lord, Lord Wigg, should in the early part of his speech introducing this Second Reading resort to this tactic. In fact, of course, Lord Wigg's speech was not really very realistic, in the narrowness within which he attempted to introduce his Bill; because, as my noble friend Lady Macleod says, the statistics show—and, if we are to believe my noble friend Lord Mowbray and Stourton, the statistics are allimportant—that there are more accidents on suburban and urban roadways than on motorways. The dangers and the eye-catching headlines on motorway accidents arise out of the enormity of individual accidents, and it is my belief that these accidents could be vastly reduced by totally different measures, notably engineering; and the recently-publicised accident at Newport Pagnell strengthens this point of view.
Lord MOWBRAY and STOURTON: My Lords, may I—
Lord LUCAS of CHILWORTH: My Lords, there is little time and I can see that
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if I an not careful I am going to be drawn into precisely the same argument as that into which I was drawn only 16 working days ago. So, if I may continue, I am sure that my noble friend, with his experience, will find—
Lord MOWBRAY and STOURTON: But, my Lords, my noble friend used my name. My noble friend introduced a false argument which I never made. My noble friend said that I had complained that there were more accidents on the suburban roads. This is a line which I have been deploring, and I really do object to the noble Lord Lord Lucas, who is a very great friend of mine, using this argument. I have been asking, and I go on asking, the Road Research Laboratory, the Government, to try to get the answer. The question is: is the fact that accidents take place in built-up areas really because they are local journeys, or are they part of longer journeys; people going out of a built-up areas on longer journeys, or people coming from outside areas into built-up areas? I do object, my Lords, to having my words twisted like this, because the view I have been advocating—and my noble friend knows perfectly well that I have been saying this—is the French system; that is, seat belts outside built-up areas, and not t'other way round. So when I hear my noble friend saying this, he must accept from me that I do not want to upset his speech but neither do I want to have my words twisted.
Lord AMULREE: My Lords, I should like to mention that speeches are supposed to be addressed to the House, and that individual Members are not supposed to have private conversations together. It seems a most extraordinary way to conduct our business, and I hope Members will not continue in that kind of way.
Lord LUCAS of CHILWORTH: My Lords, I think that, if my noble friend reads very carefully what I said, he will see that, in reference to the noble Lord, Lord Wigg, talking about the number of accidents on motorways, what I said was, "The statistical evidence—and it was my noble friend Lord Mowbray and Stourton who introduced statistical evidence—will show that there are more accidents on suburban and urban roads than on motorways" That is what I said, and that is what I mean. My noble friend introduced the statistical evidence, not I.

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I was referring to the Newport Pagnell accident, and was saying that there are other ways of reducing the toll on motorways. There is no doubt, of course, that Lord Wigg's Bill is accepted by my noble friend on the Front Bench as the thin end of a wedge; so we then enter, at some future time, the whole realm of argument and discussion that we had 16 working days ago, when we rejected Lord Avebury's Bill. So really it is quite wrong to say that this is something new. Indeed, this is not something new: this is something old, dressed differently. The noble Lord, Lord Wigg, said, "But there is no compulsion"—and he said that I was one of those who argued against this compulsion—" because if you do not want to go on the M1 you can go on the A5". The answer to that, of course, is purely and simply that you can jump out of the frying pan into the fire. Again, the statistical evidence proves the volume of accidents per passenger mile travelled in each of the two types of road. I do not think that the noble Lord, Lord Wigg, has a point here.
I am saddened also that, at this late stage in discussing this matter, we should use such terms as "the appalling casualty rates". Our casualty rates have lessened year by year by year on all classes of motorway, in all classes of motor vehicles. Again, may I remind the House that the noble Lord, Lord Wigg, referred to heavy commercial vehicles travelling down the fast lane of a motorway. I am not trying to nitpick on this, but there is no fast lane on a motorway; there is an overtaking lane; and commercial vehicles have the safest (and increasingly safer) accident record as the years go by. Again, statistical evidence will prove it and it is in the recently published transport statistics.
These arguments can go on and on. The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, reminded me that I asked where it is going to end. My Lords, where is it going to end? This Bill is a device to circumvent the wish of your Lordships' House 16 working days ago. I trust that noble Lords will resist the blandishments of such an exponent of the art of Parliamentary procedure as the noble Lord, Lord Wigg, and of my noble friend Lord Mowbray and Stourton—to whom I would not wish to cause any offence whatever in my arguing with him as to what he and I said.
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Obviously, the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, has a tremendous interest in this. He quoted, for the third time in three speeches, the article in The Times. If your Lordships are going to be misled by an article of this nature quoted out of context and put into a different context in that the noble Lord, Lord Wigg, specifically mentioned the 13,000 deaths and serious accidents which would be saved as a result of wearing seat belts, how can he bring out this argument when his Bill and his proposals—presumably, as the Bill is currently written—are contained only in the narrow sector of the motorway roadways and the reduced number of accidents in those roadways. I urge your Lordships to resist the temptation to give this long drawn out business yet another Second Reading.
5.34 p.m.
Lord MONSON: My Lords, the argument advanced by the noble Lord, Lord Wigg, in introducing his Bill is ingenious and even seductive, but I urge you not to succumb to temptation. The noble Lord maintains that under the Bill as drafted the wearing of seat belts would effectively be voluntary and that compulsion will not be involved at all. This is rather like an official in the South of Ireland banning a novel, and defending himself against the charge of unacceptable censorship by explaining blandly that anyone who wanted to read the book in question could always take the night ferry to Liverpool, or the train to Belfast. The fact is that motorways nowadays, whatever may have been the case 10 or 15 years ago, are an integral part of the road network of Britain. If you are heading towards certain major destinations and hope for proper direction signs, and want to have a meal. and to buy petrol—and I wonder whether noble Lords are aware of how many petrol stations have closed on those roads which have been superseded by motorways—there is no alternative to motorway travel. Many journeys, and specifically those on the Great North Road, are almost impossible to undertake (unless you are accompanied by a navigator who is a skilled map reader) without travelling on a section of motorway for at least part of the journey. Some of us have the suspicion, and I am sure it is an unworthy one, that the supporters of this Bill do not visualise that compulsion will he confined to motorways for ever. If that is the case, then

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this relatively innocuous-seeming and only semi-restrictive Bill, if enacted, would be a springboard for something far more coercive.
My Lords, there are three fatal flaws in this Bill: I use the term "fatal" after due deliberation. The first is self-evident. When we last debated this matter four weeks ago, examples were given by a number of noble Lords of a total of no fewer than 16 people whose lives were saved specifically because they were not wearing seat belts or who were killed because they were wearing seat belts. When I use the figure of 16, I exclude all the cases mentioned in which there were any doubts, or where the evidence was at third-hand, or where inadequate chapter and verse was given. I also exclude cases mentioned in the Commons from both the Labour and Conservative Benches last year, as well as those cases cited by many of us in this House during the two debates in 1974. The total of 16 therefore is all the more impressive when you consider, in view of this small sample, how many such cases there must be in the country as a whole.
I do not know how many of the incidents then cited here took place on motorways: I have not asked the noble Lords who cited them originally. But I know that if a law such as the noble Lord, Lord Wigg, proposes had been in force in August 1966, I should not be in a position to brandish again today a letter from a lady who was thrown, together with her husband into the back of an estate car when it was struck by another car travelling on the M6 motorway near Birmingham, so that they escaped with minor cuts and bruises; because if they had been wearing seat belts as the result of compulsion, they would have both been killed, according to the testimony of motorway police—given that the front portion of the passenger compartment of their car was crushed flat. Merciful escapes like this must run into hundreds or thousands.
Notwithstanding this, I would not disagree with the noble Lord's contention that more lives would be saved than lost by the more universal wearing of seat belts; but with one proviso. The proviso is that the frequency of accidents remains static. Unfortunately, I believe that under compulsion they would not remain static. And this brings me to the next fatal flaw.
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This relates to those long stretches of ordinary dual carriageway interspersed or punctuated intermittently by short stretches of road built to motorway standards, as on the Great North Road near Doncaster and between Biggleswade and Hatfield, travelling South.
Unlike the M1, where access points are clearly marked, it is all too easy to find oneself on a stretch of motorway without realising it. What is the hitherto legally un-belted driver to do in the circumstances? He has four choices. First, he may remain in. the outer lane, or central lane, travelling at 70 miles an hour, steering the car with his right hand and struggling with his left hand to pull the belt across his shoulder and slot it into the centre slot. His second option is to swerve as quickly as possible into the slow lane in order to try to execute the same manoeuvre at 50 mph. His third option is to pull on to the hard shoulder and fix his seat belt while the car is stationary. But it is illegal to stop oil the hard shoulder. The fourth option is the one which I suspect would be adopted in practice by most drivers. It is to drive at the maximum legal speed, even though that speed may be well above the speed at which the motorist in question normally drives, so as to minimise the statistical chance of a policeman spotting he was not wearing a seat belt. Each and every one of these courses is fraught with danger.
The final and most serious flaw is this. Four weeks ago, on April 26th, when this was last discussed here, the noble Lord, Lord Mowbray and Stourton, suggested (in column 435) that the non-wearing of belts was caused by, "indolence and inertia". There may be a little truth in this where town driving is concerned, where the total journey time is short. But it certainly does not apply to motorways where much longer journey time are involved and the time spent in buckling on a seat belt is not so time-consuming in relative terms. If a person chooses not to wear a seat belt on a motorway, there is good reason for his action (or inaction). I hope that the noble Lords, Lord Wigg, Lord Mowbray and Stourton and Lord Avebury, will realise that I am doing them the credit of arguing on their ground. I am not, on this occasion, talking about personal freedom, but the practical objections to this Bill.

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I accept that for millions of drivers buckling on a seat belt either makes no difference to their standard of driving or positively improves it. Those of us who are opposed to this Bill wish them well and perhaps some of us secretly wish that we were like them—but we are not. All we ask of them is that they in turn acknowledge that there are equally millions of drivers for whom buckling on the belt has the opposite effect. At the risk of being accused of being anecdotal—though there is nothing wrong with anecdotes providing they are accurate and truthful—I always buckle on my belt when travelling as a passenger on a long journey, whether on motorways or otherwise. The moment I do so, I feel suitably safe and secure. Accordingly, my eyelids droop and I sink into a pleasant doze. These are precisely the opposite reactions to those one needs if sitting in a driver's seat of the very same car, where it is vital to be alert, observant, comfortably and properly seated (without being overconfident) and, above all, free from the distracting emotions of irritation or anger.
There is unfortunately a tendency among the bureaucratically-minded to suppose that all human beings are simply part of one great statistical entity. The fact is human beings are infinitely variable in shape, size, temperament and psychology. Only the individual himself is capable of knowing, from his intuition, common sense and, above all, own experience, what suits him best regarding his driving.
Motorways, safe though they may be statistically, require very much more application and care on the part of motorists than do minor roads, where one can potter along at 30 or 40 miles an hour, or even pull into the side if one feels fatigued or sleepy. In order to drive really safely on a motorway, the maximum degree of alterness, anticipation and calmness, combined with an equable temper and good judgment of distance, together with quick reaction, are needed. A law which however well-intentioned it may be—and I accept that it is wellintentioned—would in practice bring out the reverse qualities in a sizable proportion of drivers, accentuating discomfort, bad temper, slow reactions, drowsiness, overconfidence or all of these in combination, must be throughly misconceived. For that reason, I urge your Lordships not to give this Bill a Second Reading.
5.43 p.m.
Lord KINNAIRD: My Lords, last year we debated whether the Sikhs should be compelled to wear crash helmets when riding their motor-bikes. I felt so sorry for the Sikhs who had sat in the Public Gallery until 3.45 a.m. patiently waiting the verdict, that I decided in the name of freedom to speak up on their behalf. The verdict on that occasion was, No. This year, as other noble Lords have reminded us, we have already debated at length the compulsory wearing of seat belts. The answer again was, No. Yet, within no time at all we have this Bill prematurely thrown at our heads.
Today I am not necessarily concerned with seat belts, but I am concerned with how we go about our business. It is not so much what we do as the way that we do it. If it can be shown that the contents of this Bill are worth your Lordships' further consideration, we should not allow ourselves to be hustled in this untimely way. I do not agree with the noble Lord who has just sat down who said he was sure that the intention of this Bill was good. I doubt it. Until I feel happier about the true purpose behind this Bill, and am convinced of the wisdom of the content of the Bill, I will vote against its Second Reading.
5.44 p.m.
The Earl of KIMBERLEY: My Lords, when your Lordships threw out the last seat belts Bill, I hoped, as did many other noble Lords, that would be the end of the whole charade for a certain time, as the noble Lord, Lord Kinnaird said. Alas! the noble Lord, Lord Wigg, has seen fit to present us with a Bill on very similar lines, and all the same arguments can be advanced in its favour, and all the same arguments can be put against it—and one can now add a few more against it. I must make one remark to the noble Lord, Lord Wigg: if your car gets hit in the rear, you go backwards and not forwards through the windscreen. The most important reason, as your Lordships know, why this Bill differs is, as the noble Baroness, Lady Macleod of Borve, said that there are far fewer accidents on motorways than on other roads. Secondly—and this does not need repeating, but I am going to do so—it is a law which, as a result of applying to motorways is

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even less workable than it would have been before, because there are fewer police on motorways than there are in towns.
The noble Lord, Lord Wigg, has every right to introduce a Bill, but it seems to me a great pity, with so many other matters of much greater importance to be debated, that we have to consider this matter again within 16 days. If one wants to go into statistics, there are three times as many people who die of lung cancer in a year than are killed on the roads, but no Government would dare to make smoking illegal. As I said last time, and in a paper the other day, there are too many people today claiming some divine right to try to order our lives about by telling us what is and what is not good for us. Practically every day a small piece of the freedom of choice of the private citizen and of his liberty is removed either by bureaucracy or through these so-called "do-gooders".
Lord PARRY: My Lords, would the noble Earl give way? I should be very grateful if the House would consider one piece of legislation which was accepted and has been almost universally praised; that is, that which cut down speed; people accepted the need to have speed limits reduced and there was an immediate improvement in all accident figures as a result. Is it fair to impute to the people who are supporting this Bill this afternoon any improper intention when such evidence is available?
The Earl of KIMBERLEY: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord. I was not trying to impute bad intentions; but experiments, as we have known, with speed limits have a horrible habit of not remaining experiments but becoming permanent. I ask noble Lords whether it is right that one person should be condemned to death as a result of wearing a seat belt if that person, through not wearing it, would have lived? It is voluntary for people to do what they choose. The anecdotes which my noble friend Lord Avebury said about me and other noble Lords were not anecdotes. I know three people who are alive today through not wearing a seat belt. All three would be dead today if they had been wearing one. We would have medical exemptions by the hundred thousand. I would get one
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for claustrophobia. People would get one for fear of fire. We have already an overworked and underpaid police force and it is not right that the police should be burdened with another useless and unworkable piece of legislation.
5.49 p.m.
Viscount MASSEREENE and FERRARD: My Lords, when a very young man, long before the days of seat belts, I took part in some motor racing. I know of two people who would not be alive today if they had been wearing seat belts, this was during racing. I do not want to boast, but I have driven over a million miles and, apart from scraped mudguards, I have never had an accident. I admit that many times I have had to take some extremely fast avoiding action. I have nothing against seat belts. I agree that in frontal collisions they may often save serious injury. What I do not like is a Government order which may result in somebody being killed: for instance, when wearing a seat belt in a car which catches fire or which crashes into a river. My Lords, if you are making a Government order, you must be as sure as is possible not to kill people by so doing.
That is my first point. When seat belts can be made with an instant release mechanism I should certainly like them made compulsory. Until that is done, I shall vote against their use. However, it is rather doubtful that I shall be here to take part in the Division this evening: it depends how quickly we get on, and my speech will be fairly short. If you are involved in a frontal collision and are not in a seat belt, you can hurl yourself out of the way of the steering wheel and so avoid serious injury.
I should like to make a remark about the freedom of the individual. I am all for the individual having his freedom curbed if, by so doing, you avoid inconveniencing or damaging other people—for example, the MOT tests for cars, driving tests and so on, and of course speed limits. My noble friend Lord Kinnaird talked about the use of crash helmets. But one cannot compare them to seat belts, because to wear a crash helmet is completely for your own good and, by wearing one, you may not necessarily be burned or drowned. Indeed, to wear one could actually save your

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life. So I do not see the noble Lord's argument there. It is quite another matter when we come to the compulsory wearing of seat belts; you may be killed because you are wearing one. As my noble friend Lord Kimberley said—he is a Liberal but I can still call him my noble friend, despite the Lib-Lab pact—there are three times as many people killed through smoking as die on the roads, but the Government do not forbid us to smoke. One might as well talk about the numbers of people who die after falling downstairs —I am told that thousands do, but the Government do not compel us all to live in bungalows! I could quote your Lordships many similar instances, but I shall not do so.
I sympathise with the noble Lord, Lord Wigg. His Bill is far milder, of course, than that of Lord Avebury; it does allow certain types of individual to opt out of the wearing of seat belts, and it is restricted to certain roads. So I agree that he has a point there. But I am rather afraid of "thin end of the wedge" Bills. I have always been highly suspicious of them and I am rather afraid that this is one such Bill. I end by saying that I cannot vote for this Bill. Until we get an instant release seat belt I would not vote for making the wearing of seat belts compulsory. However, when we do get such a belt, I shall vote accordingly.
5.53 p.m.
Lord MOTTISTONE: My Lords, I always wear a seat belt, particularly on motorways, but this Bill appals me. I did not take part in the earlier debate because I had another engagement and I thought it was obvious that sense would prevail. I was appalled at the way the voting went on that Bill. Perhaps one or two other people may have thought the same as I did; and that was why the Bill was lost.
I shall not bore your Lordships with all the details because we have not a great deal of time, and most noble Lords who have already spoken have made the points that I had intended to make. However, I should like to mention two or three. The first is that people have said the Bill is unenforceable. Of course, that is not true; but it is not enforceable fairly. That is the problem. A great
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deal of the trouble behind an enactment of this type, which tries to impose a restriction or tries to force people to do certain things on a countrywide basis without the resources to back it up—and God help us if we had enough policemen to make this enforceable fairly!—is that it does not become fair. So I would suggest to your Lordships that it is most important to identify the kind of Acts of Parliament or regulations which try to do too much with, as we have heard from many noble Lords, a rather minimal return.
The next point I should like to mention, is one which has been very ably expressed by my noble friend Lady Macleod; namely, the fact that the noble Lord, Lord Wigg, has chosen for applying these suggested regulations the one section of roadway in the country where accidents are lowest in number. It would seem to me there are two implications about this. One is—dare I put it in this way?—that there is a certain lack of sincerity here; and the other is that you are forcing people such as the noble Earl, Lord Kimberley,—and I know of others who would share that view—who would not find himself able to comply because of claustrophobia. I may say that the same would apply to my elderly mother. You would be forcing those people to motor off the safe motorways and on to other, less safe, roads. It seems to me that this is an absolute negation of what the Promoters of this Bill really want to achieve.
Above all, my Lords, this is a question of attitudes. As I say, I always use a seat belt, except possibly for very short journeys which would not be affected by this Bill. Certainly I always wear a seat belt on motorways. My attitude has been changed over a period of about ten years, since the mid-1960s, because that is the period for which the system has been going. I am sure that if statistics were to be produced—though they might be difficult to find now—it would be shown that increasingly, year by year, more and more people use seat belts. I think it is wholly good that it is now compulsory for every car to be fitted with seat belts and a car cannot pass an MOT test unless they are fitted. But the point is that one must let attitudes change at a reasonable rate. I was director of the Distributive Industry Training. Board for many years. I had the major task of persuading the retailers

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of this country that there was some good for them in systematic training. I could see, and all my colleagues and friends agreed. including the retailers themselves, that this was a 15–20-year task, because one was dealing with an attitude of mind.
The noble Lord, Lord Kinnaird, brought in the question of crash helmets for Sikhs. Forgetting the Sikhs for the moment, I remember that in 1940 it was compulsory in the Royal Navy for a dispatch rider to have a crash helmet. I suspect it was the same for the other Services and, indeed, for the public service generally. Crash helmets did not become nationally compulsory until 25 or more years later. I suggest to your Lordships that what we are talking about is roughly the first ten years of this cycle and that we have a period ahead of getting people used to it. When we get to the stage when the numbers of people who are not using scat belts because they find it sensible are what you might call "the unreasoning fringe", then is the time to introduce this sort of legislation, but not before.
5.59 p.m.
Earl HOWE: My Lords, batting No. 11 on the list of speakers before us, it is my duty to the House to be brief, and that I shall certainly be. I was interested to hear my noble friend Lord Massereene and Ferrard refer to his motor racing activities. I think I am right in saying that he finished in third place in a British car at Le Mans. He therefore speaks, at least in part, with some knowledge and authority.
This Bill is an unsatisfactory compromise to try to squeeze through some kind of compulsion. I have said more than once that compulsion in this instance is ugly, offensive and, in my opinion, unenforceable. I cannot see many drivers of heavy goods vehicles and articulated vehicles wearing seat belts. I do not know whether the noble Lord, Lord Wigg, intends them to come into the category that should wear seat belts on motorways, but I cannot see them doing so. A large percentage of drivers of vehicles involved in shunts in fog on motorways realise the danger of being crushed in the cockpit. If they are to be exempt, then the whole point of compulsion for drivers seems to collapse at once.
In any case, research has shown, through publicity and propaganda, that
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more drivers and passengers are wearing seat belts on motorways at this very moment, without being compelled to do so. Cannot the noble Lord understand that the non-motorway road by its very narrowness, in comparison with our motorways where there is far more room to manoeuvre, carries a far greater risk of injury and accident? I said that I would be brief and I fully intend to be so. Therefore, I hope that noble Lords will reject this ill-considered Bill, and wisely leave to the individual driver and passenger the choice whether or not to be strapped into a motor vehicle.
6.1 p.m.
Lord DE CLIFFORD: My Lords, I also will be extremely brief. I cannot support this Bill, as the noble Lord, Lord Wigg, will probably understand. But I should like to raise a voice in protest at the fact that this House should be asked within 16 days to consider this matter again. This is the third time that the principle of this Bill has been produced, but to have it produced again within 16 days is rather making a mockery of your Lordships' House. I cannot think that it would be right to make motorways the place to introduce the compulsory wearing of seat belts. I have always understood them to be the safest roads in the country and, although I personally use them to an absolute minimum, I believe that it is the wrong place and the wrong time to introduce compulsion.
6.2 p.m.
Lord BALFOUR of INCHRYE: My Lords, may I detain the House for three or four minutes, because, after all, I was the mover of the Amendment in 1974, and of the one 16 days ago, which defeated the principle of compulsion. I was unable to put my name down on the list today, but I feel that I am entitled to speak, and I think that perhaps the House is entitled to know my views.
My view remains as it was. I do not think it is the function of a Government or of Parliament to commit people to safety or to condemn people to death. That must be an essential decision of the individual, as it has remained in the greatest motoring country in the world, America, which has not been mentioned by any of the advocates of compulsion.

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There is one further constitutional aspect of this Bill, which I would submit to your Lordships. I admire very much the political subtlety of the noble Lord, Lord Wigg, in encircling the principle of compulsion. But if this Bill was given a Second Reading and went to Committee, it would be possible for some enthusiastic adherent to the principle of compulsion to "pussy foot" up the back stairs, as I would term it, with an Amendment to omit "motorways" and to substitute "all other roads." We should therefore be back voting in Committee on what we have rejected on Second Reading, which I do not consider politically right or just for this House to contemplate.
Lord MOWBRAY and STOURTON: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, I should like to ask him to reconsider those extraordinary, emotive and stupid words which he has just used. He talked about condemning people to death through wearing seat belts. I have never, in all my born days, heard anything so unrealistic as what the noble Lord has just said.
Lord BALFOUR of INCHRYE: My Lords, the noble Lord ought to cultivate not quite so serious a view. I used the expression "quietly going up the back stairs to move an Amendment", and it is not illogical to do that. The House is being faced with an issue which it has already rejected. I repeat that I would hate to see somebody—maybe someone already has it in mind—"pussy footing" up the backstairs to put down an Amendment which would nullify what we did 16 days ago.
Lord WIGG: My Lords, may I put this to the noble Lord, Lord Balfour? There is a simple way out of the difficulty. If he thinks that—and other speakers on the other side have hastened to impute motive—I do not mind. I have had all that is coming and I can still deal with it. If the noble Lord will put down an Amendment to this Bill, assuming that it gets a Second Reading, to limit it for what period he chooses, I will support that Amendment.
6.5 p.m.
Baroness STEDMAN: My Lords, it was exactly a month ago that we debated a Bill tabled by the noble Lord, Lord
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Avebury, to make the wearing of seat belts compulsory on all roads in this country. That Bill was denied a Second Reading by the narrow margin of two votes. I should like to congratulate my noble friend Lord Wigg on introducing this Bill, while we are still warm on the subject, that would enable compulsory wearing to be introduced on special roads only. Special roads are roads which are subject to motorway regulations; that is, roads which are designated as motorways or A(M) roads.
I do not propose this afternoon to repeat all the arguments I advanced a month ago in support of the principle of compulsion. The Government supported the principle of that Bill and the Government support this one. I said then that the compulsory wearing of seat belts on all roads would save about 1,000 lives and over 11,000 serious injuries each year. If compulsion is confined to special roads only—as this Bill proposes—the direct casualty savings would be very much reduced. The Department of Transport estimates that if all drivers and front seat passengers in cars and light vans wore their belts on motorways, about 50 deaths and 300 serious injuries would be avoided. You will see therefore, my Lords, that compared with the total potential savings from compulsory seat belt wearing this Bill would generate only a small part.
This is for two main reasons. First, as has been said by many of your Lordships this afternoon, motorways are relatively very safe roads. They account for about 8 per cent. of the total vehicle mileage on all roads, but for only a little over 1 per cent. of all accidents. The percentage of accidents on motorways that are fatal or serious is higher, as your Lordships would expect, than in the case of accidents on other roads. However, putting these two factors together, the fatal accident rate on special roads, measured in terms of vehicle distance travelled, is only about 40 per cent. of the rate of all roads. So we start with the fact that special roads are relatively safe roads. The second reason why we should not expect dramatic results from the proposals contained in this Bill is that the rate of voluntary wearing of seat belts on special roads is already higher than on other roads. It is estimated that nearly 50 per cent, of drivers on special roads already wear their belts voluntarily, as compared with

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an average of about 30 per cent. on all roads. Nevertheless, my Lords, every life saved is worth while and I believe that we should not deny ourselves the opportunity that this Bill offers us. I have already said that I do not intend to repeat all the arguments on the principle of compulsion, but I should like for a moment to consider some of the practical implications of this Bill.
Like its predecessor Bill introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, this Bill seeks to create a power under which regulations could be made to introduce compulsion. The first regulations—applying the power to the occupants of the front seats of cars and light vans—and any subsequent amendments extending their application to other seating positions or other vehicles, would be subject to the Affirmative Resolution procedure. This House would thus have an opportunity to debate them, and there would be no "pussy-footing" up back staircases. Subsequent amendments which did not extend the application of the regulations would be subject to Negative Resolution. Compulsion would apply only where the fitting of seat belts is already compulsory which, at the moment, is most cars registered since 1965, light vans registered since 1967 and some three-wheelers.
Provision would be made for exemptions—for example, where a doctor thought the wearing of a belt by a patient was undesirable, or where a driver's short stature gave rise to difficulty in operating controls if a belt was worn. Exemptions for reversing and for delivery roundsmen, which would be necessary if compulsion were applied on all roads, will not be necessary if it is confined to special roads. The Government would consult widely before settling any details about exemptions.
The direct effect of the Bill would be a saving of perhaps 50 lives and 300 serious injuries on motorways each year. However, it may also encourage those who set out on journeys, only part of which are on motorways, to wear their belts on the whole of their journeys where otherwise they would not, and thereby have a wider beneficial effect. If enacted, the Bill would also serve to demonstrate that compulsory seat belt wearing law can be made to work in practice.
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There are some small deficiencies in the Bill as drafted, but I hope that the House will give it a Second Reading. As I have indicated, for their part the Government support the principle of the Bill. However, I cannot guarantee that for a measure of this kind, introduced at this stage in the Session, time will be found for it to complete its passage through Parliament without the complete co-operation of the Members of both Houses and of both sides of both Houses. Nevertheless, I commend the Bill to your Lordships and hope that it will be given a Second Reading.
6.12 p.m.
Lord WIGG: My Lords, I shall not detain your Lordships for more than a few minutes, but one or two points must be made. I think it was the noble Lord, Lord Kinnaird, who suggested that the Bill had been hurled and thrust at noble Lords and that they were being hustled into making a decision. A number of noble Lords who are opposed to the Bill, and everything connected with it, regard it as a constitutional outrage. It is very odd that it should be regarded as a constitutional outrage to move the Second Reading of a Bill for which I have not attempted to do any canvassing. I have not asked any noble Lord to vote for it. I have simply discussed the Bill with those who wanted to discuss it with me. Although I had some practice in that art in another place, over the years I have been singularly unsuccessful in canvassing, because the speakers today, except for those on the Front Bench, have been opposed to the Bill. However, I cannot congratulate them upon the logic of their arguments.
Apart from the question of it being a constitutional outrage, it is not the same Bill. Indeed, there was some disagreement, and it looks as though the lobbying was not quite so effective as it might have been. While some speakers said that it is the same Bill, others said that it is milder. It is a different Bill. I have used the same wording, where appropriate, but the principle is quite different. The principle of compulsion applies in only one case.
If anybody inspired me, I should turn to the noble Lord, Lord Balfour of Inchrye, and say that he did. When I

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listened to his speech and read it, I came to the conclusion that his practice is very similar to my own. The noble Lord may remember that in his earlier speech he said he would get a van to take him to the Carlton Club so that he would not have to use a seat belt. The noble Lord also said that he used his seat belt on the open road but not going to and from the House. Like other speakers, if I intend to drive on the M1, invariably I put on my seat belt when I leave my flat in the middle of London so that gradually I acquire the art of wearing the belt before reaching the motorway.
I regard this Bill as part of an educational process. It will encourage British people to do what every other civilised country in Europe has done. One of the reasons why the United States has made no progress is their federal system of Government, because it is not easy to get a measure of this kind through Congress. It was difficult also in Australia, but once they had the cake and had bitten into it they found that it worked and the opposition has dwindled. This is exactly what I believe would happen here.
I know perfectly well that motorways are safer. They are roads which have been specially built for motor traffic. On the motorway you still have to obey some rules—as, indeed, you have to obey rules on any other road. However, you can clearly please yourself whether or not you drive on the motorway. I think it was the noble Lord, Lord Mottistone, who used a most extraordinary argument. If one of my children had used it when he was younger, I should have slapped his bottom and sent him to bed. The noble Lord suggested that if anyone were persuaded to drive on the A5 as opposed to the M1 it would be an adverse mark against the propositions of the Bill. If anybody chose to go on to the A5 instead of on to the M1, that would be his deliberate decision. When he got on to the A5 he would very quickly find that he was subject to much more restriction than on the M1. There is only one speed limit on the M1, whereas there are goodness knows how many speed limits on the A5—certainly between London and Stafford. Therefore, regarding the argument that one increases the danger by putting a choice in front of people. I put that choice in front of people
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because I understood that this was the major objection which ran through the earlier debate. The noble Lord, Lord Balfour of Inchrye, said, "Away with statistics"—
Lord MOTTISTONE: My Lords, perhaps the noble Lord will give way, since he has attacked me directly. I am intrigued that the noble Lord would smack his daughters on the bottom for arguing with him, but perhaps that can be taken as it goes. I wonder whether the noble Lord will accept the fact that if his Bill goes through, effectively he will be saying to people, who for some reason do not want to wear a seat belt or will not wear one, "You are not allowed to drive on motorways". In saying that, the noble Lord is condemning them to go on to more unsafe roads. That is a fact.
Lord WIGG: My Lords, in the first instance, I shall not be saying anything. The Secretary of State, after consultation, will be saying that. This is an effective safeguard. Powers are being given to the Minister to bring in orders which require an Affirmative Resolution and, later on, a Negative Resolution. The Minister will consult all kinds of people and say to them—just as he says to them now— "If you want to stop and start, you must not go on to the motorway. You must go on to the A5. If you want to go on to the motorway you must wear a seat belt." There are restrictions, whatever you do, so you can make your choice. If you wish to go up the A5 and stop here and there, you can do so, but if you go on to the M1 you cannot make a "U" turn and stop. Also, by these regulations you will have to wear a seat belt.
If certain Members of the House believe that there is a sinister purpose behind the Bill—that this is the thin edge of the wedge, or up the hack stairs, or some cosy way to deal with it—please may I ask them to disillusion themselves, because that is not my intention—far from it. Because of the increase in motor traffic, I believe that the case for the wearing of seat belts is absolutely irresistible. I cannot get away from the fact that the decision which we take will be on the conscience of each and every one of us. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Balfour of Inchrye, that if noble Lords vote for this Bill there will be a risk. The noble

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Lord made the point perfectly fairly. It was also made by the noble Lord, Lord Monson, although quite how you defeat a general case by taking one individual case out of the blue I do not know.
Without any shadow of doubt there is a risk that if people wear seat belts which are difficult to release, as my own is, they may find themselves involved in an accident in which they would not otherwise be involved. I entirely agree on that point. But the overwhelming mass of evidence points to the fact, repeated in The Times this morning and repeated by the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman, tonight, that if the Bill put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, had received a Second Reading and had found its way on to the Statute Book, within the next 12 months some 12,000 to 13,000 people would either be alive or would have escaped major injury. That fact must be faced fairly and squarely.
On the other hand, if this Bill gets on to the Statute Book those of us who voted for it must accept what the noble Lord, Lord Monson, and the noble Lord, Lord Balfour of Inchrye, have said, that people will be injured and others will die who would not be injured or would not die if the Bill had not been passed. It must always be a question of balance. Traffic is increasing; it goes faster; it is more and more difficult to drive and it requires greater and greater skill, but if a person driving on the M1 loses consciousness for a split second there will be a pile-up. In my view, the pile-up on
the motorway is wholly and solely due to people losing consciousness through damage to their heads caused by hitting the windscreen. That is why, having listened to the previous debate, I have introduced this Bill, which is less severe and which gives people a choice and removed the essential element of compulsion.
I repeat the offer which I made to the noble Lord, Lord Balfour; if your Lordships give this Bill a Second Reading and the noble Lord, Lord Balfour, or anyone else, cares to table an Amendment limiting the duration of the measure to whatever period they choose—a period during which we may have a trial—I will certainly support it. But I think we must now face up to the consequences of not passing a measure of this kind, because inevitably if your Lordships reject the Second Reading tonight it is absolutely certain that a considerable number of additional people will die or will be severely injured and I, for one, cannot face that. I thank your Lordships for staying for this excellent debate and I hope very much that you will give the Bill a Second Reading.
6.23 p.m.
On Question, Whether the Bill shall be now read 2a?
Their Lordships divided: Contents, 62; Not-Contents, 86.

CONTENTS

Ardwick, L.

Halsbury, E.

Ritchie-Calder, L.

Auckland, L.

Hanworth, V.

Rochester, L.

Aylestone, L.

Harris of Greenwich, L.

Rusholme, L.

Bacon, B.

Hill of Luton, L.

Shackleton, L.

Banks, L.

Jacques, L.

Shinwell, L.

Blyton, L.

Killearn, L.

Stamp, L.

Bradford, E.

Lee of Newton, L.

Stedman, B.

Brockway, L.

Llewelyn-Davies of Hastoe, B.

Stone, L.

Brown, L.

Lloyd of Hampstead, L.

Strabolgi, L.

Byers, L.

Lovell-Davis, L.

Strang, L.

Champion, L.

Masham of Ilton, B.

Swansea, L.

Clifford of Chudleigh, L.

Meston, L.

Taylor of Mansfield, L.

Collison, L.

Mowbray and Stourton, L.

Trefgarne, L.

Cooper of Stockton Heath, L.

Noel-Buxton, L.

Vaizey, L.

Davies of Leek, L.

Norwich, Bp.

Wallace of Coslany, L.

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

Parry, L. [Teller.]

Wells-Pestell, L.

Falkland, V.

Phillips, B.

White, B.

Gisborough, L.

Ponsonby of Shulbrede, L.

Wigg, L. [Teller.]

Goronwy-Roberts, L.

Popplewell, L.

Wigoder, L.

Hacking, L.

Porritt, L.

Wilson of Radcliffe, L.

Hall, V.

Rhodes, L.

NOT-CONTENTS

Alexander of Tunis, E.

Glenkinglas, L.

Rankeillour, L.

Allerton, L.

Grey, E.

Rochdale, V.

Amory, V.

Hale, L.

St. Aldwyn, E.

Amulree, L.

Hood, V.

Saint Oswald, L.

Avon, E.

Hornsby-Smith, B.

Salisbury, M.

Balfour of Inchrye, L.

Howe, E.

Sandys, L.

Barrington, V.

Hylton-Foster, B.

Segal, L.

Belstead, L.

Kimberley, E. [Teller.]

Sempill, Ly.

Berkeley, B.

Kinloss, Ly.

Sharples, B.

Bledisloe, V.

Kinnaird, L.

Somers, L.

Boothby, L.

Long, V.

Spens, L.

Brougham and Vaux, L.

Lothian, M.

Strathclyde, L.

Colville of Culross, V.

Loudoun, C.

Strathcona and Mount Royal, L.

Cork and Orrery, E.

Lucas of Chilworth, L. [Teller.]

Strathspey, L.

Cottesloe, L.

Lyell, L.

Swinton, E.

Cullen of Ashbourne, L.

Lytton, E.

Terrington, L.

Daventry, V.

Mackie of Benshie, L.

Teviot, L.

de Clifford, L.

Macleod of Borve, B.

Thomas, L.

Drumalbyn, L.

Massereene and Ferrard, V.

Tryon, L.

Eccles, V.

Maybray-King, L.

Tweedsmuir, L.

Elliot of Harwood, B.

Merrivale, L.

Vivian, L.

Elton, L.

Monson, L.

Wakefield of Kendal, L.

Emmet of Amberley, B.

Morris, L.

Walston, L.

Exeter, M.

Mottistone, L.

Ward of North Tyneside, B.

Faithfull, B.

Mountgarret, V.

Willoughby de Broke, L.

Ferrers, E.

Napier and Ettrick, L.

Wise, L.

Feversham, L.

Newall, L.

Wynne-Jones, L.

Foot, L.

Nunburnholme, L.

Young, B.

Gainford, L.

Platt, L.

On Question, Motion agreed to.

Resolved in the negative, and Motion for Second Reading disagreed to accordingly.

RENT CHARGES BILL
Brought from the Commons; read 1a, and to be printed.

CODE OF PRACTICE: COLLECTIVE BARGAINING
6.32 p.m.
Lord WALLACE of COSLANY: My Lords, I beg to move that the draft Code of Practice on Disclosure of information to trade unions for collective bargaining purposes, a draft of which was laid before the House on 3rd May, be approved.
The need for legislation requiring employers to provide more information to trade unions for collective bargaining has been one of the persistent themes in British industrial relations over the past decade. This theme runs alongside the development of ideas of democratic behaviour in general, and has remained a common element in the legislation of both Conservative and Labour Governments. Thus, the Employment Protection Act's main provisions on the subject
1244
first appeared in substantially their present form in the Industrial Relations Bill 1970 and subsequently in the Industrial Relations Act 1971. Yet, despite the consensus that disclosure, and indeed democracy, is advantageous, it is generally acknowledged that at the present time most company practice in this respect is at best varied and uneven, and at worst non-existent. The key finding of a 1975 survey carried out by the British Institute of Management, for example, was that only about 25 per cent. of United Kingdom companies regularly disclose information to unions on general performance indicators and future plans. Actual or proposed legislation now exists in the field of pensions and health and safety. But, so far as collective bargaining generally is concerned, there is clearly a need for a code of good practice. The Government have delayed the implementation of the Employment Protection Act's disclosure provisions to allow for its preparation. I am, therefore, very pleased indeed to move this Motion for approval by your Lordships.
In order to gain the maximum degree of co-operation from both sides of industry, and thus to facilitate the smooth working of the Act's provisions, the Government entrusted the task of preparing the Code to the Advisory Conciliation and Arbitra-

1245
tion Service. I shall now refer to it as ACAS; I hate these short descriptions, but noble Lords will now understand what ACAS means. ACAS is now the expert body in the field of industrial relations. It is independent of Government and it is supported by both sides of industry. When drawing up a Code under the Act, ACAS is, moreover, required to publish a first draft for consultation and to consider the comments made before submitting a draft for the approval of Ministers and, subsequently, of both Houses of Parliament. These procedures have been followed in the preparation of this draft Code. It thus represents a consensus of the views of the two negotiating parties, and for that reason I believe it will be far more valuable than a set of recommendations drawn up by a third party.
The draft Code is divided into seven sections. The first two sections give the legal framework and the details of the Act's requirements. The third section gives advice on what information should be disclosed. The fourth section gives guidance on the Act's restrictions on the duty to disclose. The fifth and sixth sections list the responsibilities of the two negotiating parties, and the seventh recommends the setting up of joint arrangements on a systematic basis. The Act requires employers to disclose to the representatives of recognised independent trade unions, information which it would be in accordance with good industrial relations practice to disclose and without which those representatives would be, to a material extent, impeded in conducting collective bargaining. The draft Code says that there could be material impediment particularly if the information requested would influence the formulation, presentation or pursuance of a claim as well as the conclusion of an agreement. In determining what is relevant, negotiators are to take account of the subject matter and level of negotiations and the issues raised during them, and the size and type of companies.
The Code rejects the idea of providing a comprehensive "shopping list" of items to be disclosed as of right. It points out that both the relevance of the information and the depth, detail and form of its presentation will depend on the scope of the specific bargaining involved. Examples are listed under the following headings: pay and benefits,
1246
conditions of service, manpower, performance, and financial; but it is an important qualification that the Code emphasises that they are neither exhaustive nor intended as a check list.
The section on restrictions concentrates on the reference in Section 18 (1) (e) of the Act to information whose disclosure:
"… would cause substantial injury to the employer's undertaking",
and provides helpful examples of the type of information which this provision might cover. Such matters as cost information on individual products, detailed analysis of proposed investment, marketing and pricing policies, and price quotas or the make-up of tender prices are listed as being capable of leading to a loss of customers or supplies, or impairing a company's ability to raise funds. The other restrictions in Section 18 of the Act are self-evident, and I will not touch on them further.
In the section on trade union responsibilities unions are enjoined to identify and request information in advance of negotiations, and to say as precisely as possible why they consider it to be relevant. Two small but important provisions are added as a result of consultation, recommending, first, that they keep employers informed of the names of authorised representatives, and, second, that where several unions are recognised requests should be co-ordinated so far as possible. The recommendations to employers are that their general approach should be as open and helpful as possible. They should meet requests as soon as possible and pay attention to form and presentation. A refusal should be explained and be capable of substantiation. Finally, the draft Code recommends that negotiators from the two sides should endeavour to arrive at a joint understanding of such matters as the information likely to be required, its availability, form, presentation and pattern over time. They should also agree procedures for resolving disputes on disclosure.
Noble Lords will be familiar with the earlier draft, published for consultation last July, so I should say a word about the changes which have been made. I understand that ACAS received a total of 142 written submissions. Many of them indicated general agreement with many aspects of the draft. Their criticisms were

1247
constructive and the draft has been modified to meet them as far as possible. The Code now sets out the legal framework in detail at the beginning, together with the Employment Protection Act provisions grouped together rather than scattered throughout the text. The arrangement of the remaining material has also been improved. The text itself is generally more precise. There are several new provisions: paragraph 2 which defines the Code's scope; paragraph 12 which emphasises that the list of items is not prescriptive; the provision in paragraph 16 that trade unions should justify their requests for information; paragraphs 17 and 18 on trade union responsibilities to keep employers informed of the names of authorised representatives and to co-ordinate requests from several unions; a footnote on Stock Exchange requirements, and paragraphs 22 and 23, which replace the more formal concept in the earlier draft of information agreements.
The draft Code, if approved, will have a status equivalent to that of the Highway Code. It will impose no legal obligation on an employer to disclose any particular item of information. The Act simply provides that the guidance contained in the Code should be taken into account by employers in their responses to requests for information by trade unions. If a complaint about non-disclosure is made to the Central Arbitration Committee, that body is also to take into account any provisions in the Code which appear to be relevant to the complaint.
To my mind, the Code constitutes a helpful aid to the Employment Protection Act's provisions on the disclosure of information for collective bargaining purposes. It sets out clearly the main responsibilities of negotiators and provides guidelines for determining what information should be provided. It is now for the House to judge. If both this House and another place approve the draft, the Government will bring it into force, together with the Act's provisions on disclosure, after allowing a month or two for both sides of industry to become familiar with the recommendations as approved.
I have no doubt that together the Act's provisions and the Code will lead to more
1248
informed and objective collective bargaining, and this alone could in time help to transform the industrial relations climate. No one is saying that "disclosure" will be a panacea. One of the reasons it has been a relatively non-controversial subject in the abstract is that people have different motives in supporting it. Each side believes it will improve industrial relations to its own advantage. Practice is uncertain; "disclosure accounting" is in its infancy; the complex network of levels and practices in bargaining will not itself lead to neat and tidy development. Disclosure will not make the pluralist nature of the system disappear. Nevertheless, in effect the parties are being invited to pursue a new style of collective bargaining. It is a style which flows naturally from participative management. It is an international trend and it is crucial to the sharing of decision-making—democracy—in industry.
I submit this draft Code for the approval of the House and I trust that approval will be given without dissent, because in my view this is a very important, albeit not a major, lead to better feelings in industry and an improvement in the system of collective bargaining. I beg to move.
Moved, That the draft Code of Practice on Disclosure of information to trade unions for collective bargaining purposes, laid before the House on 3rd May, be approved.—(Lord Wallace of Coslany.)
6.46 p.m.
Lord LYELL: My Lords, on behalf of all Members of the House I should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Coslany, for introducing this draft Code and for explaining it so well. It seems that the noble Lord understands it very well and, as a result of his efforts, I believe that the whole House has a much closer understanding and insight into the contents, which are both important and detailed, of this Code.
The noble Lord can be assured that everyone shares the belief that good communications are vital for good industrial relations. That, of course, was recognised very early on, even by Donovan; and this particular precept was found in the document, In Place of Strife at paragraph 48. It is worth recalling that the Code would have fitted very well into Section 56 of the Industrial Relations

1249
Act 1971, as indeed it does into the Employment Protection Act 1975 at Section 6.
We on this side of the House are committed to the principle of disclosure. Nevertheless, we are of the opinion that disclosure should be limited to matters of legitimate concern among employees and management. I should like to ask three brief questions—they might even be rhetorical. First, would the commercial interests of the company be adversely affected by any aspects of the Code? Secondly, is it not possible that the Code will be used to extract and to obtain information which could be collated and then used for purposes which would be very far removed from collective bargaining, even in its broadest sense, and even as set out in the Code? Lastly, will the confidentiality be maintained? I believe that this last precept is absolutely essential as the employment of many—even of thousands—could hang on confidential information which is in the possession of the employer or which could be obtained by him.
It is, indeed, pleasant that some notice seems to have been taken of the comments and criticism which followed the publication of the first draft of the Code. We believe that four aspects are especially noteworthy. First, the provisions of the Act are far more clearly explained and are very easily understood. Secondly, a clear balance is expressed between the duty to disclose and the restrictions on disclosure. Thirdly, the word "relevant" is much in evidence. I think that it appears six times in four paragraphs and, indeed, is very useful and an added benefit. Lastly, the original draft seemed to many to be a mite lopsided in favour of the employees. But certainly everybody, even on the management side, feels that the Code is more balanced. There are individual blemishes, but we certainly believe that the version of the Code now before us is a considerable improvement on the first draft.
The problems of small businesses are also of concern to the whole House. Perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, could explain whether he thinks that paragraph 10 will be sufficient to protect the interests of small businesses which may—and, indeed, I believe will—find it hard to obtain information which the trade
1250
union negotiators might see fit to request. There could possibly be quite sharp disputes between what might be requested and what the small business might be able or feel it relevant to disclose. It could and, indeed, should be that the subject matter of negotiations would be drastically different from the larger businesses or companies. Nevertheless, there is a risk that this important Code will have gone through your Lordships' House without adequate discussion and perusal. It is reasonable to suppose that flexibility will appear in all talks, both in this House and throughout business and industry generally.
Coming to some minor details in the Code, paragraph 19 presents a small problem. As is recognised in paragraph 19, the use of information is of paramount importance. I know of much essential information which causes difficulties to management and indeed to outsiders, let alone to employees. I believe that this paragraph could, with benefit, be included after paragraph 23, since the use of information is in no way one-sided. The trade union negotiators will come under pressure to declare their intentions which are, as the Code indicates, relevant.
I should like to quote a comment from the Dairy Trades Federation which, as noble Lords may be aware, represents many small, scattered dairies. I believe that many of them are highly unionised. In relation to paragraph 19 the Federation has this to say:
"To this end, we consider Clause 19 to be quite inadequate and incorrect in assumption that the trade unions alone should deal with the necessary information effectively. We urge a change of principle to ensure that employers and trade unions share a responsibility to develop understanding on the part of employee representatives where a programme of disclosure is planned".
Lord WALLACE of COSLANY: My Lords, is the noble Lord referring to paragraph 19 in the Code?
Lord LYELL: My Lords, paragraph 19 in the Code that I have. I think it is the same one: Code of Practice 2.
Lord WALLACE of COSLANY: My Lords, paragraph 19, as I have it, says that a trade union should review existing training programmes, et cetera.
Lord LYELL: My Lords, if the noble Lord would read on to the last part, it says:
"to understand and use information effectively".
It was this use of information that many of us felt—and this was one small example—should be a communal concern; not just of concern to the trade unions but, above all, to management and to everyone concerned with the business.
Then there is the vexed question of paragraph 11, and in particular sections (iv) and (v). Here confidential information will come into the hands of trade union negotiators, and any tiny breach of this confidentiality could cause disaster to the firm's commercial interests. I do not think that this is extravagant language at all, because there is a great risk when one is dealing with confidential information. Even many employers are loath to allow information beyond the hands of a limited number of people.
When trade union negotiators are entering this field I believe that they will recognise that they are playing with something that could be explosive and dangerous. I certainly consider that in almost every case the trade unions and their negotiators will show a responsible attitude, but there is still this risk, and it is right that trade union negotiators and, above all, employee negotiators should recognise this.
In section (v) the mention of "transfer prices" is, to my mind, a trifle risky. It is a trifle dangerous since the provisions of paragraph 11 seem to us to be in the nature of a shopping list. I think the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Coslany, was suggesting that it would not necessarily be taken as a minumum list; but we believe there is a risk that when one looks through here, and then one sees the saving hits at the end of "other relevant information", it may be taken as a check list, a minimum list of requirements.
The transfer prices, or other complex financial information that may be required, are dangerous, in that there is some information that could not possibly be of interest to trade union negotiators who are fixing wages and conditions, and this could become available to them with the added risk. I believe that there is a grave lack of awareness that financial information is a matter presenting great
1252
difficulty not merely to employees but also to management. That is why I believe there is all the more reason that paragraph 19 and, above all, some of the provisions of paragraph 11(v) should become a matter for joint discussion and joint training.
In conclusion, this Code is a compromise, but we believe that it represents something that all of us in this House, and outside, desire. We believe that it should be given a fair run, with the reservation that there are these major risks of breach of confidentiality that I mentioned; and there is a possibility that people may be keen on using various aspects of the Code with the attitude, which I might use to the noble Lord who has just left the Chamber—the noble Lord, Lord Wigg—of a barrack room lawyer. I hope that that will not be the case. But I think that he would understand and the House would understand. In all branches of industrial relations, here and elsewhere, co-operation will come about but only as a result of mutual trust and confidence. We believe that this Code goes a long way, if not the whole way, to help this attitude of trust and confidence, and that is why we would support the Code, and thank the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, for explaining it so well.
6.56 p.m.
Lord ROCHESTER: My Lords, we on these Benches would also like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Coslany, for the clear way in which he has explained to us this draft Code of Practice. It stems, as has been said, from the provisions of the Employment Protection Act. I am bound to say that our feeling is that this Act has contributed to the widespread feeling that there has been an excessive amount of legislation in the industrial field in recent years. Indeed, I recall, in the debate on Second Reading of the Employment Protection Bill as it then was, speaking on behalf of my noble friends, and saying that the ordinary British manager could be forgiven if he wondered whether he would ever again be able to concentrate his attention on what should be his prime task of producing and exporting the goods and services on which the future of this country depends. However, this is not the moment to criticise the provisions of the Act.

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At the Second Reading we welcomed Clause 6 of the Bill which authorised ACAS, if I may use the same term as the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, to issue Codes of Practice containing practical guidance, among other things, concerning the disclosure of information by employers to trade unions for collective bargaining purposes. That remains our general position. Indeed, looking back there may be many people, for all I know including members of the Government and trade union leaders, who now wish that more attention had been paid, more emphasis placed on Codes of Practice rather than on legislation in the industrial relations field. For my part I am sure that there are lessons to he learnt from this for the future.
The reasons why we on these Benches favour disclosure of as much relevant information as practicable to employees and their representatives, whether or not those representatives are trade unionists—and I do not want now to dwell on that distinction—are that in recent years as a nation we have suffered greatly from militant industrial action to obtain higher wages and salaries regardless of the damage that this has caused in industries that are profitable only marginally, if at all.
We have also suffered from the belief that employing organisations will usually survive, if only because the Government in the last resort will step in, and we have suffered from mistrust of employers and a lack of understanding of the need for businesses to earn a surplus if they are to remain viable. For that reason we welcome very much paragraph 20 of the Code which says:
"Employers should aim to be as open and helpful as possible in meeting trade union requests for information".
Indeed, we go further and suggest that it is up to employers gratuitously to offer that information in appropriate cases. Beyond that, we should like to see trade union representatives making use of information they receive in this way not simply for collective bargaining purposes—and here I very much agree with the noble Lord, Lord Lyell—but in joining with management in the training of shop stewards to give them a better understanding of what might be called the economic facts of industrial life.
1254
With that in mind, we welcome also paragraph 19, which says:
"Trade unions should review existing training programmes …".
Of course, a key section in the Code is paragraph 5, which, as the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Coslany, said, states:
"The information to be disclosed is that without which a trade union representative would be impeded to a material extent in bargaining and which it would be in accordance with good industrial relations practice to disclose for the purpose of collective bargaining".
It is perhaps a pity that in defining what is in accordance with good industrial relations practice, more explicit reference is not made to the criterion of what is actually done by companies generally recognised to be exponents of good industrial relations, rather than to relevant provisions of the Code, since those provisions are based largely on clauses of the Employment Protection Act which, in some cases, particularly those relating to information that might be financially sensitive—Lord Lyell referred to this—were the subject of a good deal of controversial discussion when this subject was debated during the passage of the Employment Protection Act.
Paragraph 15 states:
"The burden of establishing a claim that disclosure of certain information would cause substantial injury lies with the employer".
Paragraph 20 makes it plain:
"Where a request is refused, the reasons for the refusal should be explained as far as possible to the trade union representatives concerned and be capable of being substantiated should the matter be taken to the Central Arbitration Committee".
What happens thereafter will of course depend on how far arbitrators show a realistic understanding of employers' difficulties. But in the end, as the very last section of the Code appears to recognise, success in achieving the avowed purposes of the Employment Protection Act—that is, in promoting an improvement in industrial relations—will be measured not by the quality of arbitration, for which the Code provides in the last resort, but on the extent to which employers and trade unions, in the words of paragraph 22,
"… endeavour to arrive at a joint understanding on how the provisions on the disclosure of information can be implemented most effectively".
It is because we on these benches fervently wish to foster this spirit of joint endeavour

1255
in British industry that we, too, are prepared to give our general approval to this draft Code of Practice.
7.6 p.m.
Lord DRUMALBYN: My Lords, the main purpose of this Code should in my view be to ensure that a true and fair state of the company's affairs is presented to the employees, in just the same way as it is presented to the shareholders. It may not in all cases be exactly the same information, although many companies circulate their reports to the shareholders; it may be that the reports to the shareholders will contain more than they do now and that the reports to the shareholders and to the employees will become more and more similar. Be that as it may, the main thing is that the employees should get a true and fair statement and be able to understand it.
There should be confidence between the two sides that it will be explained fairly and honestly, which I am sure is the intention in all cases, and that the employees on their side will not use the figures selectively to suit their own cases. it is this that has caused employers in the past to be reticent about the information they have passed; they felt that they were being asked for particular items which could be selected and used in evidence against them, so to speak. That is what we want to get away from and I think the Code gives us a fair chance that we shall.
I do not think we can expect very speedy results from the Code; it is a question of getting experience together in working for the health, prosperity and survival of the companies concerned. If we can get a common purpose there, then of course everything will work out quite easily. I should be surprised if employers were to refrain from giving all possible information that is not sensitive from the Stock Exchange point of view. What they are concerned about is that all the information given is used and understood. If it is used and understood, then it will be possible for the two sides to be talking together instead of talking against each other. That is the importance of this document.
The Code seems to give an entirely fresh approach, an approach which, perhaps inevitably, was rather absent
1256
when the Act was passed, when it seemed that new burdens were being placed on the employer and in some cases burdens which would be very difficult to bear. It seems to me that the Code removes that impression and, in doing so, it performs a very useful purpose. It is not the case, in my view, that employers will be unwilling to give information which can serve the common purposes of the company—from the point of view of the shareholders and the employees—and indeed, in the long run, of the national interest.
It is for those reasons that I welcome the Code. It gives an earnest for the future of the way in which industrial relations can he improved and of the way attitudes on both sides of industry can come together in a way that has not been possible in the past.
Lord CULLEN of ASHBOURNE: My Lords, I want to ask only one simple question. I entirely agree with the remarks of other noble Lords who have spoken about this Code. My only worry is whether the short footnote about the Stock Exchange Listing Agreement is really adequate, and whether it should not have been put slightly more strongly into the Code. We do not want insider trading troubles.
7.11 p.m.
Lord WALLACE of COSLANY: First, my Lords, may I say that I am very pleased indeed at the generally temperate reaction from noble Lords. I think that noble Lords have captured the ideal behind the Code. It is, of course, to achieve a better and fairer system of collective bargaining and to put an end to some cases of what I can only call nonsensical industrial strife.
A number of points have been raised to which, in fairness, I should reply. The noble Lord, Lord Lyell, was concerned as to whether commercial interests would be affected by the Code. That is a matter for the employer; he must have regard to his commercial interest before he discloses information. In any case, if the trade union is not satisfied that it is getting enough information, the matter can go to arbitration. I do not believe that commercial interests will be affected by the Code.

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That leads on to the question of confidential information. The two matters are lined up one with the other. So far as confidential information is concerned, the problem is probably somewhat exaggerated because, let us face it—and not all noble Lords will be very strongly in favour of trade unions as a principle—the unions have always recognised that issues may be confidential, and a union may be prepared to allow confidential information to be restricted to a few representatives and with limits on reporting back. Where a union is not prepared to do this, the employer will be able to refuse to give the information if he can show that it will cause substantial injury. Procedures for dealing with commercially sensitive information can be worked out in joint agreements as recommended in the Code. So this is a question of mutual trust between the unions on the one side and the employer on the other. I do not believe that there have been cases of serious leakages of information gained by trade unions in the course of negotiations.
A very important point was raised on the position of small businesses. So far as small businesses are concerned, where disclosure infringes directly on a small company there is a safeguard provided by Section 18(2)(b) of the Act itself. This rules out the provision of information that would involve an amount of work and expenditure out of all reasonable proportion to the value of the conduct of the collective bargaining concerned. I believe that that would cover that point.
As regards joint training, there is a point of difficulty. It has been claimed that training should be a joint responsibility. But the training of union negotiators must ultimately be the responsibility of the unions. The Code recognises that. I have some experience of the facilities available for training union negotiators and, of course, when we talk about union negotiators, we are usually talking about professional union negotiators. Quite a number of unions have training courses at colleges and other schemes and some, including the Transport and General Workers' Union, have available university courses for their officers. Their objective is to have their officers trained at Oxford.
There is nothing to stop individual unions or, for that matter, the TUC from
1258
co-operating with managements in training programmes. It is implied that management has an educational role, as indicated in paragraph 21 of the Code on the presentation of information. There is nothing to stop management co-operating with unions which are willing to have management co-operation, and I believe that it would be a good thing. However, the unions already have very extensive training schemes. If noble Lords would like further information it can be provided. One does not become a professional negotiator these days without considerable experience and training. For the union's sake, let alone that of its members, they must be capable, professional people in every sense of the word.
I can see that there is still a little anxiety over the question of the sensitivity of information given. The noble Lord, Lord Cullen, referred to the Stock Exchange. Representations were received from the Stock Exchange and ACAS recognised the problem. The reference is put in as a footnote but, footnote or not, it is part of the Code. There is no argument about that. The problems associated with price sensitive information were gone over at length and several times during the passage of the Employment Protection Act. A number of Amendments were put down, some of which were rejected and some accepted. There is no point in dwelling upon that again, but I shall briefly repeat the Government's reasons for rejecting special conditions in the Act. They apply equally to the Code although it refers to the problem and gives guidance on examples which could cause substantial injury.
Some employers are already voluntarily disclosing a considerable amount of information to unions, as the noble Lord, Lord Rochester, pointed out. They have not found price sensitive information to be a problem. There have been no insider scandals involving trade unionists. This was a point of worry that one or two noble Lords have raised. On the rare occasions when information judged to be price sensitive is to be legitimately disclosed to trade unionists—that is information which would not be likely to cause substantial injury on commercial grounds but which would meet the test of material impediment—there is nothing whatever to prevent the employer from informing the shareholders, the

1259
Stock Exchange or anyone else. Furthermore, he can inform them before informing the trade unions. The assessment as to what is or is not price sensitive can only be made by the board. Therefore, the Code has done all that is necessary in the footnote at the bottom of page 5 referring to the Stock Exchange. The Stock Exchange concern that employers should consider any obligations which they may have under the Listing Agreement is met. It is in the Code although it is in a footnote.
I do not believe that there is any further point that can be made now except to thank noble Lords for the interest they have shown in this debate. It is unfortunate that there was no debate in another place. Somewhere, something in the machinery went wrong, but at least your Lordships have had the opportunity of a debate, and, in so doing, have probably set an example to another place, though had better not go into that. I thank noble Lords for all the assistance I have been given.

EEC: FOREIGN POLICY
7.19 p.m.
Lord BANKS Lord BANKS rose to ask Her Majesty's Government how they reconcile the development of a common foreign policy for the European Economic Community with separate representation of the United Kingdom and the other larger members of the Community at a series of Summit Meetings of the leading industrialised nations. The noble Lord said: My Lords, I have, of course, been prompted to ask this Question by the treatment meted out to Mr. Roy Jenkins at the recent Summit Meeting in London of the Heads of Government of seven leading industrialised nations, including the United Kingdom. However, the Question goes much deeper than that particular issue. There is plenty of room for argument as to how the European Economic Community will develop. There are those who want a federal Europe—a European union with a European Government; and there are those who want a Europe des patries—a close alliance of independent nations. I incline to the former and I suspect that the Government incline to the latter. But whichever
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of these two solutions we chose, or any solution perhaps in between the two, those who supported Britain's continuing membership of the EEC in the referendum campaign two years ago were agreed that if the nations of the EEC were to exercise any influence in the world, it would only be by standing together and acting as one. There was general support for a common foreign policy, and I understand that the Government are fully committed to the development of a common foreign policy.
In the efforts already made to that end there have been both successes and failures. So far as the successes are concerned, we think of the united stand at the Helsinki Conference, and of the fact that at the most recent General Assembly of the United Nations the nations of the EEC voted together on 80 per cent. of the occasions. But we think, too, of the failures; the failure, for example, in the case of the recognition of the NPLA Government in Angola, and the disarray over energy and over the common fund for commodities. But sincere attempts have been made at co-ordination, and that is good so far as it goes; it is good, but it is not enough. Mr. Tindemans, the Belgian Prime Minister, in his report on European union said this:
"European union implies that we present a united front to the outside world… The European identity will not be accepted by the outside world so long as the European States appear sometimes united, sometimes divided."
I wish to repeat that last sentence because it seems to me that it is at the root of the matter:
"The European identity will not be accepted by the outside world so long as the European States appear sometimes united, sometimes divided."
Mr. Tindemans went on to speak of the obligation to reach a common point of view, and of the obligation on the minority to rally to the view of the majority once the decision had been taken; and he suggested that the Community ought to speak with one voice to, for example, the United States of America, through one delegate or one nation. Certainly a common foreign policy would seem to imply speaking with one voice to the rest of the world. It implies a Community view rather than a British view, or a French view, or a German view.
The question I am asking is whether the Government agree with that. Do they accept that this is the principle which we

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should accept, even if, to begin with, we must limit the fields or the issues where it is applied? If they do accept that principle, then I think we are justified in asking them how they reconcile such a view with the separate representation of the United Kingdom, Germany, France, and Italy at the series of Summit Meetings at Rambouillet, Puerto Rico, and London. Separate and partial representation for the EEC nations seems to contradict the idea of a common foreign policy, and it is clear that the smaller nations do not like it. They wanted Mr. Jenkins, as President of the Commission, to be present at the Summit Conference, at least to represent their interests. I know that the French Government were largely responsible for the most unsatisfactory treatment of Mr. Jenkins, whereby he was only reluctantly invited to part of the conference, and not permitted to speak at the subsequent Press conference. But I do not think that any of the major EEC powers concerned can escape a degree of responsibility.
A Belgian Foreign Ministry spokesman was quoted in the Guardian on 21st May as saying:
"The briefing our Foreign Minister had from Dr. David Owen, as President of the EEC Council of Ministers, was inadequate. The Dutch, Danes, Irish, Luxembourgers and ourselves will also want to raise wider questions of how these Summit Meetings are to be held in the future and our demand that the European Community should be fully, not as in London partially, involved".
But even if Mr. Jenkins had been present throughout the conference, this would not necessarily have produced a common foreign policy. The Community even then would still have been very much an ancillary to a meeting of independent Powers.
The Seven propose to establish a secretariat, a formal structure to monitor the decisions of the London Summit. The Five excluded EEC nations are naturally exceedingly concerned about this. For them it raises this question: Is it really possible to have some members of the Community—and the biggest and most powerful at that—independently represented in a formal organisation of the Seven, and still to hope that the EEC can speak with one voice to the world? Must we not rather work towards the time when, in all the major world discussions on the great issues of the day, the European
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Community exploits the full potential of its influence by speaking with one voice through one delegation? I look forward to hearing the reply to these questions by the noble Lord, Lord Goronwy-Roberts, and to hearing his exposition of the Government's reaction to them.
7.26 p.m.
Lord ELTON: My Lords, the House should rightly be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Banks, for raising this important and somewhat complex question this evening. I do not want to prejudge the answer to it that I would recommend by saying at the outset that in Europe we do not yet have, and will not for many years have, a common interest in all areas of foreign policy. Nor can we expect, as the Tindemans Report (from which the noble Lord freely quoted) suggested we might, to subordinate national to international interest overnight, and until that subordination takes place the time really is not ripe to make agreement on all issues of foreign policy legally mandatory upon all the Nine Members of the Community. Whether there are areas within which we can in practice do so voluntarily is another matter, to which I shall revert.
What is clear is that since one man cannot with one voice simultaneously express a multiplicity of views, we cannot as yet appoint a European Foreign Secretary. To do so, it would be necessary to proceed by majority verdict on countless issues. That may be feasible on the large and general issues upon which the framework of a policy may rest, but it is not feasible as a means of responding to all the mass of developing situations which Foreign Ministers habitually handle. Whether or not it was an acrimonious process, it would be too slow, and a common policy would therefore either go by default or proceed at the expense of the confidence of the Member countries in their common representative. To ask for a single representative to voice a common view before either the means of, or practice in, generating such a view has been attained, seems to me to be premature. The appointment of such a person would not result in the generation of such a view. It would merely serve to draw attention to its absence. The problem therefore is in part a problem of the level of responsibility and the level of decision which would be borne by the Minister when he came to be appointed.

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If that alone was the import of the noble Lord's Question, I think it would deserve a rather short answer, but I appreciate that it is not; I appreciate, indeed, that it is precipitated, as he put it, by the controversy over Mr. Jenkins's presence at only part of the recent London economic summit. While his part-time attendance was not altogether satisfactory, I think it was understandable. We have to take on board that, after all, his function was to represent not the whole of the Community, but those Members of the Community not already individually represented. One can quite understand the disquiet that this has caused among those of the Community who were not represented, particularly as there is the prospect of a secretariat being established for the Seven and because this is in precisely the area of economic endeavour which is central to the operation of the Community, and also an area to which the Tindermans Report directed the best efforts of the Community to evolve a common policy.
My Lords, I do not believe that that, either, is the chief import of this Question. What it presents us with is an opportunity to look into the whole matter of the desirability and the means of developing a common policy for European foreign relations. That we can on occasion achieve it is beyond doubt. The noble Lord has alluded, in fact, to the percentage of votes which were cast in unanimity by the Members of the Common Market in the United Nations. I work it at 83 per cent.; he works it at only 80 per cent. We have only to look at the Lomé Convention; an agreement between the EEC and 49 African, Caribbean and Pacific countries—an admirable example, and one in an area which the Tindemans Report, again, recommended as ripe for mandatory agreements on policy.
The announcement of agreement preparatory to the final CIEC meeting in Paris is another example of successful co-operation in the area of the new international economic order. One cannot help wondering whether a contributory factor to this success was not the failure of our own, rather retrograde, attempt to get separate representation at the conference that is about to conclude, and whether our representative would in fact have sung the same song as the representatives
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of the other Community Members at Paris had one been appointed.
There is in fact a large area of consensus on foreign affairs already extant in the EEC; and at the United Nations, on 30 occasions, the country holding the Presidency of Europe spoke on behalf of all Nine Members of the Community in the period to which the noble Lord alluded, which I take it was the 1975–76 Session. None the less, opportunities are being missed. One of the strongest appeals a mediator can make is to the economic interest and political aspirations of the parties in a confrontation.
Cyprus is immediately adjacent to mainland Europe. It falls within the geographical area within which, as Mr. Tindemans rightly said, it is imperative that we concert our policies. Yet what has been the specifically European contribution to the solution of the crisis in that beautiful but riven island? It seems, so far as I can make out, to have been limited to an expression of good will towards the efforts of Mr. Clifford, the United States envoy, when he took a hand in the affair. Since then, Mr. Denktash and Archbishop Makarios have met and raised our hopes, and their deputies have differed and parted, and the island is no less riven than it was before. Yet the Community has agreements, not only with Cyprus itself but with Greece and Turkey as well, and Greece is actually proposing herself for full membership of the Community. What a waste of the political leverage with which to set the wheels of conciliation in motion, and of the economic oil with which to smooth their progress! On Palestine, too, which is not very far from there, we have maintained, as Europeans, a notable silence. There is no evidence that Ministers or their representatives meet with anything approaching sufficient frequency to bring about a harmonisation of policy in these and many other areas.
My Lords, we are now approaching the Belgrade meeting. At that critically important conference, the nations will sit in judgment upon the workings of the Helsinki Agreement. and in consequence upon each other. In the eyes of a large part of the world, two conflicting ideologies will be weighed one against the other. Much concrete benefit, not all of it publicly acclaimed, has flowed from

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Helsinki. There have also been flagrant violations of the spirit, and possibly of the letter, of the agreement. The whole area of the review will be fertile ground for Soviet propagation of divisions between the members of the European Community. Many of us would like to know—and I hope the noble Lord will tell us—what steps are now being taken in preparation for this testing time to harmonise the views and integrate the approaches of the Nine to the conference. As Tindemans said in a passage immediately before the one which the noble Lord, Lord Banks, quoted:
"The development of a détente policy in Europe presupposes that all those with whom we negotiate recognise the European Community as an entity".
We have proved unable to achieve this in the realm of defence, which is the other side of the same coin. It is all the more important that we should achieve it in relation to détente.
My Lords, another major issue which is about to come before us is the meeting, which some of us expect to be the penultimate one, of the Conference on the Law of the Sea, described aptly by The Times as "a minefield". Within two months the means of disposing of an uncounted volume of wealth of mineral resources may be complete. It is no exaggeration to say that the financial wellbeing and economic strength of the whole world system may depend upon decisions taken within the next year or 18 months in this field. One would like to be confident that the members of the Community have a common assessment of the opportunities, of the risks and of the path which they ought to follow. We shall soon see, my Lords.
There is an oddity about procedure at the moment in that the country holding the Presidency of the Community for the time being provides the administrative services for arriving at and implementing a common policy. This I believe is known as the Davignon procedure; but the Presidency changes every six months, and the administration must rotate with it. It would be better known, in my view, not as the Davignon procedure but as the Carousel procedure. There is, indeed, a real danger that peripatetics will become the fatal disease in the Market. What with the European Parliament lumbering to and fro between Luxembourg and
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Strasbourg, and the putative European Foreign Office flitting from capital to capital, the Community is in danger of looking more like a restless aviary than a solid political oganisation.
My Lords, I say the "putative" Foreign Office because I understand that there is no actual staff or body of files. It is merely the responsibility that rotates, and not the personnel. This would seem to me to be even more of a real obstacle to efficiency. It would seem to preclude the establishment of a supportive and expert staff or secretariat, genuinely impartial between the interests of Member countries. But such a staff is greatly to be desired. We have all too recently seen the very divisive effects which even a suspicion of partiality in a Minister or a Commissioner can have. Merely by acting as a yardstick with which Foreign Secretaries could measure their own attitudes, this secretariat would provide a very useful service to the Community. Few people fear the growth of bureaucracy with quite so much fervour as I do, but I feel that we have here scope for progress with the development of a small, permanent and effective staff.
For the rest, my Lords, it is important that we should extend the practice of developing general policy guidelines within which Member countries are free to pursue their own interests and policies. As we do this, we shall become increasingly aware of the value to us of the support of other Member countries for our initiatives, and they, reciprocally, will welcome our support for theirs in areas in which we are not principally concerned. This should become second nature to us, and will hasten the day when we can finally agree. to speak in all things with one voice. Sadly, that day is not with us yet, but the day is at hand for an intensification of co-operation and communication. On Cyprus, on the Lebanon, on Palestine, on Belgrade, on the law of the sea, on countless areas of great importance on which there is no time to dwell, such as the whole of the question of Southern Africa, Europe should have but one view and one voice. We joined Europe to give strength to our friends and ourselves, and stability to the world. We ought to go about that business now with far more vigour. The time, I said earlier, is not ripe for the appointment of one man to voice our views, but it is ripe for us to start to hasten towards that day.
7.39 p.m.
The MINISTER of STATE, FOREIGN and COMMONWEALTH OFFICE (Lord Goronwy-Roberts): My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Banks, has once more placed the House greatly in his debt by initiating this useful debate on an extremely important matter. It is, of course, a developing question, as I consider the noble Lord, Lord Elton, explained in an admirable passage of the excellent speech to which we have just listened. The Question put by the noble Lord, Lord Banks, covered a number of related fields and it may be helpful if I were to say a few words about each of the individual elements before giving an answer.
The first part of the noble Lord's Question refers to the
"development of a common foreign policy for the European Economic Community".
The development of a common foreign policy affects both economic and political issues. In so far as the latter are concerned, the views of the Nine on various international issues of a political nature are co-ordinated in the political cooperation machinery. This deliberate and structural harmonisation of the foreign policies of the Nine Member States of the European Community falls, however, outside the scope of the Treaties. It is, therefore, not a matter for the EEC, as such, although, where appropriate, representatives of the Commission attend such meetings. Thus it is the Nine, and not the Community, who discuss, for example, current political problems in Africa. And it is the Nine who coordinate their votes at the UN General Assembly and make common statements of policy there.
So far as economic issues are concerned, broadly speaking some fall within the exclusive competence of the Community, and some do not but are, nevertheless, of concern or interest to the Community. The agenda at the Downing Street Summit covered items falling under all these headings. The major difference between the Downing Street Summit and previous Summits was that, for the first time, Presidents of the Council and Commission were invited to represent the Community and to participate in discussions of matters falling within the competence of the Community. This followed agreement by the Heads of
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Government at the European Council in Rome in March which referred to the North/South dialogue and negotiations about multilateral trade as two examples of matters falling within the Community's competence, for the discussion of which the Presidents of the Council and Commission should be present.
Thus, at the Downing Street Summit it could be said that the participants were exactly matched to the agenda. The ordering of the agenda also reflected this. On the first day matters of wide concern falling generally outside the Treaties were discussed; while, on the second day, matters of close concern to the Community and those falling within its competence were discussed with the participation of the President of the Commission, Mr. Jenkins, and the Prime Minister in the dual role of the United Kingdom representative and as representing the President in Office of the Council.
I should like to turn now to the noble Lord's Question on how Her Majesty's Government might reconcile the development of a common foreign policy for the EEC with separate representation of the United Kingdom and the other larger Members of the Community at the three Summit Meetings which have so far taken place. The achievement of a common foreign policy which was referred to in the report on European Union by the Prime Minister of Belgium in 1975 is something which in its fullest sense will take a considerable time to achieve. It would require unanimity of view both on matters falling under the Treaties and on those matters of a more purely political or strategic nature which fall outside them. This clearly is a long-term process.
So far as the Downing Street Summit was concerned, a step forward was taken by the attendance, for the first time, of representatives of the Council and Commission. The United Kingdom warmly welcomed this. We also, in our capacity as President in Office of the Council, ensured that those matters in which the Community has a close interest were discussed within the Community beforehand so that the Member States who participated at the Summit were able to do so in the full knowledge of the views of their colleagues who did not. The

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non-participants were also aware that it was not the intention that specific decisions should be taken at the Summit. The Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary personally gave his Community colleagues a full briefing on the morning after the Summit. I understand they greatly appreciated the briefing he so personally gave them.
To sum up, therefore, I would suggest that the process of achieving a common foreign policy, which is a long-term one, has not been set back by the attendance of Member States at these meetings. Indeed, for the first time at these Summit Meetings, the Community has been present—not for all the meetings but for a substantial part of the discussions: and very effectively so, I might add. Their attendance as Member States reflects current realities within the Community. I would suggest that the attendance of the Commission and of the Presidency represented by my right honourable friend the Prime Minister at the last meeting, was, indeed, a step forward, which indicates the progress to which the noble Lord refers—and it does represent progress rather than the reverse—towards a common foreign policy which is the agreed objective of all Nine Members of the Community including the United Kingdom. I would regard the way in which the Community was represented at this Summit as a further instance of the Community's voice being heard at the highest level on the most important economic issues of the day. This accords with the long-held United Kingdom view that the Community should be an outward-looking organisation playing a full and distinguished part on the international stage.
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Elton, put a specific question to me: what is being done to harmonise the policies of the Nine with regard to the Belgrade meeting? During the British Presidency consultations on preparations for Belgrade in the Nine have intensified. They have expanded with regular meetings being held within the framework of the political co-operation machinery. The CSE Working Group has been meeting at intervals of every three weeks under the direction of the political directors. The Government attach considerable importance to these consultations and will continue to co-ordinate their policy closely with the Nine in the run-up to Belgrade. I have
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no doubt that there will be a similar close co-operation, and, indeed, co-ordination, among them when the review meeting, in fact, begins to hold its regular sessions from September onwards.
The noble Lord, Lord Banks, specifically referred to the role of Mr. Roy Jenkins at the Downing Street Summit. I have made my own views known at this Box about that. We were very pleased indeed that he was enabled to attend for the sessions which he attended. Had it been possible, we should have liked him to have been present at more meetings than that. However, while the United Kingdom's view was perfectly clear, it was not at this stage shared by every Member of the Nine.
The first day, as I said, was devoted to a wide-ranging discussion of the international scene, including the world economic situation. Mr. Jenkins was not present. The second day included coverage of trade, North/South dialogue and energy, excluding non-proliferation. Since these were matters falling within the competence of the Community, or very close to its competence, Mr. Jenkins was invited to attend as representing the Presidency of the Commission. Our own Prime Minister represented the President in Office of the Council. Similarly, Mr. Jenkins attended a number of social functions which were of importance in his capacity as head of the Commission.
I hope that the noble Lord, whose informed enthusiasm for the cause of European progress is so well known, will not regard the Downing Street Summit as anything but a step forward towards the full attainment of the kind of co-ordination and co-operation that he and the rest of us seek. The fact is that the European Community as such were not represented at all at previous Summits at Rambouillet and Peurto Rico; but on this occasion a compromise was reached at the European Council in March whereby the Presidents of both the Council and the Commission should represent the Community in the discussion of those items which fall within the Community's competence. That is a step forward.
Admittedly, it does not take us as far or as fast as the noble Lord, Lord Banks, and others, should like. However, here I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Elton.

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We must build on the realities. Speaking personally—and I think I speak generally for the Government also—the progress in co-ordinating policies, certainly on the political side (that is, more prescriptively on the foreign policy level) has been greater than I anticipated it might be, say, three years ago.
When one looks over the past three years, one sees that the strikingly encouraging feature of the Community is the considerable amount of co-ordination that has been achieved, not on everything and not always, but it is most encouraging. I have said before from this Box that those who have reservations about certain aspects of the economic arrangements of the Community should take heart on the undoubted progress already made in the political direction by Members of the Nine acting as a Community.
Lord ELTON: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down (which I am happy to see he has not!) may I ask him to amplify a little of what he said about the preparations for Belgrade. He used a technical phrase and it was not clear whether he was talking about meetings every three weeks of staff only. This is a highly political matter. There is likely to be a highly political attack upon our own position from those of a different persuasion, and there should be political preparation for this as well as the research and diplomatic preparation that obviously will have to be undertaken by staff members. Am I right in assuming that this also is or will shortly be taking place? It would be very reassuring to he told that.
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, I can give the assurance about the frequency of the meetings of the CSE Working Group of the Community, which is one of a large number of Working Groups usually defined as Territorial Working Groups. The CSE Working Group is an important addition to that list. It has been meeting at intervals of every three weeks under the direction of the political directors. We attach considerable importance to these consultations and will continue to co-ordinate our policy closely with the others of the Nine in the run-up to Belgrade. I have no doubt at all that those three-weekly
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meetings will continue; I would not be surprised if they were not increased in regularity and number between now and June when the preparatory consultations begin in Belgrade, and up to September when the plenary sessions begin. I hope I have clarified that point.
As to the importance of this matter, I entirely agree with the noble Lord. We propose to go to Belgrade with our friends and partners in a spirit not of recrimination but of constructive assessment of what has been achieved so far. and what conceivably can be achieved in the future in the interests of co-operation and security in Europe. For this purpose, we are very closely consulting among ourselves in the Nine through a special working group which I have just described. My Lords, the machinery within the Community for co-ordinated thinking and effort relative to CSE is a good example of how far politically the Community has moved in the past few years.