Lords Sitting of 8 March 1978

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

QUARANTINE COSTS AND VAT
Lord DE CLIFFORD: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government why quarantine costs previously zero-rated are now subject to VAT as from 1st January 1978 and whether all Ministries involved with quarantine were consulted before it was imposed.
Lord STRABOLGI: My Lords, the change in the value added tax position of quarantine services reflects changes in United Kingdom law which came into effect on 1st January 1978 following the EEC Sixth Council VAT Directive which is designed to harmonise the bases on which VAT is levied in Member States.
Lord DE CLIFFORD: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for that reply. Is it not a fact, however, that any big firms—for example, firms which import animals for experimental purposes, zoos and circuses—can absorb these costs in their expenses and that only private people are hit? And is there not a large number of Servicemen included among those private people for whom this becomes a very nasty, niggly addition to their costs?
Lord STRABOLGI: My Lords, VAT is a broadly based tax on goods and services in the domestic economy and is not confined to luxuries or less essential articles alone. To attempt to give relief to all essential goods and services would greatly complicate the structure of the tax and be contrary to our obligations to the Community. With regard to Servicemen, the charge became standard rated under the previous arrangements as soon as the Servicemen arrived in the United
782
Kingdom. Unless the Servicemen remained overseas for the whole of the six months' quarantine period, the quarantine charges would be apportioned between the standard and zero rates.
Lord GLENKINGLAS: My Lords, is the Minister not aware that any extra charge on the export of animals is serious for the people concerned, and does he not realise that, whatever the harmonisation system within the EEC may be, every other EEC country supports its animal export effort to an extent far greater than we do?
Lord STRABOLGI: My Lords, this is a charge on the import of animals while they are in quarantine.
Lord WYNNE-JONES: My Lords, can my noble friend say how much value is added to an animal while it is kept in quarantine?
Lord STRABOLGI: My Lords, not without notice.
Lord DRUMALBYN: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord whether there are many other instances when everyone has to pay VAT on an expense which they would not normally incur? Quarantine is compulsory and VAT is charged. Are there many other examples of this?
Lord STRABOLGI: My Lords, a fundamental factor is that quarantine services were taxable prior to 1st January, except in the special circumstances in which the person who placed the animal in quarantine—who was usually the owner, but not always—remained overseas during the whole of the quarantine period. That is the only difference now which the Directive brings about. With regard to other services which were formerly zero-rated for overseas residents and are no longer, two that come to mind are the storage of furniture in the United Kingdom and the training of bloodstock.

PUBLIC SECTOR INVESTMENT
2.40 p.m.
Viscount SIMON: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.

783
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether the statement made by the Baroness Birk in this House on 8th February (Hansard, col. 1108) that "there is no question of public sector investment replacing investment in private industry" means that no further proposals for nationalisation will be coming forward.
The PARLIAMENTARY UNDERSECRETARY of STATE, DEPARTMENT of the ENVIRONMENT (Baroness Birk): My Lords, this extract from my wind-up speech quoted by the noble Viscount was intended simply to reassure the House that the Government's plans for public sector investment—for example, through the National Enterprise Board—would not make it difficult for private industry to secure external funds for its own investment programmes.
Viscount SIMON: My Lords, I am much obliged to the noble Baroness for that reply. However, it still leaves me a little in the dark. I wonder whether she could explain to the House what type of action the Government are now saying they would not take which could result in public investment taking the place of private investment?
Baroness BIRK: My Lords, I do not think I can say what action the Government would not take which could result in something happening which was quite different from what the noble Viscount and I have been speaking about. I have said what action the Government would take. I cannot answer a question as to what action the Government would not take. This is tantamount to asking how long is a piece of string.
The Earl of LAUDERDALE: My Lords, could not the noble Baroness give us an assurance that there will be no further nationalisation?
Baroness BIRK: My Lords, I can assure the noble Earl that the Government have no plans to introduce further nationalisation legislation in the current Session of Parliament and that any future plans will have to depend upon the Government's legislative programme.
Lord CAMPBELL of CROY: My Lords, could the noble Baroness give the House any information about the Government's intentions concerning services? Can the noble Baroness give an assurance that the Government have no designs upon banks and insurance companies, the nationalisation of which has been described by a very high authority in the Labour Party as an albatross for that Party?
Baroness BIRK: My Lords, as the noble Lord has referred to banks, I do not think that I can do better than to repeat what my right honourable friend the Prime Minister said: that the Government do not intend to introduce legislation on these matters during the lifetime of this Parliament, and that he would not recommend its inclusion in the next Election Manifesto. This is still the position.
Lord BYERS: My Lords, the noble Baroness referred to banks. I believe that the Prime Minister referred to banks and insurance companies. Is that correct?
Baroness BIRK: Yes, my Lords.
Lord SHINWELL: My Lords, does my noble friend's declaration mean that the Liberal pact is now in jeopardy?
Baroness BIRK: No, my Lords, I do not think so. I am not quite sure what was the purpose of the noble Viscount's Question, but I am sure we are still quite good friends.
Viscount BARRINGTON: My Lords, when she said that there is no question of public sector investment, am I right in interpreting the noble Baroness's Answer as being that there is at present no question; that is, that no question had yet been raised? The impression left in some people's minds, as in my noble friend's, was that it would not be raised.
Baroness BIRK: My Lords, I think the noble Viscount answered the question himself, and if he did not it is another Question.

OSMOND REPORT
2.43 p.m.
Lord INGLEWOOD: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will give the date of the first irregularities listed in the Osmond Report on the conduct of the late chief constable of Lancashire, and the date of the first effective action by the Lancashire police authority in regard thereto.
The MINISTER of STATE, HOME OFFICE (Lord Harris of Greenwich): My Lords, so long as there was the possibility of an appeal by Mr. Parr, the former chief constable of Lancashire, against the decision of the police authority to dismiss him, it would not have been proper for my right honourable friend to seek detailed information on the allegations which were covered in Sir Douglas Osmond's report to the authority. Now that Mr. Parr has withdrawn his appeal, the authority has, at our request, supplied us with a copy of the report and has promised to supply a full account of the action taken by it in relation to the allegations covered in the report. When we have had a chance to consider these documents, I will write to the noble Lord.
Lord INGLEWOOD: My Lords, while I thank the noble Lord for that reply, may I ask him whether he is aware that by this Question I am in no way criticising the police or former chief constable, who has left the service? I am inquiring about the way that the police authority carried out their responsibilities. Can the noble Lord give me any idea when he may be able to give the House more information if I put down a Question?
Lord HARRIS of GREENWICH: No, my Lords, I cannot at the moment give any indication of a date when we shall have concluded our consideration of this matter. The situation is that, now that the former chief constable has withdrawn his appeal, it is proper for us to consider the report submitted by Sir Douglas Osmond to the authority. Previously it would not have been right for us to examine that report because Mr. Parr
786
might have exercised his right of appeal. This is a substantial document. It has now been received in the Home Office, and officials are now preparing an analysis of the document which will be considered by my right honourable friend and myself.
Lord INGLEWOOD: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord whether his Department noticed that the whole document was published in the Lancashire Evening Post on 25th February?
Lord HARRIS of GREENWICH: My Lords, I think it right to say that what purported to be extracts from the report were in fact published in a Lancashire evening newspaper.
Lord LEE of NEWTON: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that there is a certain disquiet in Lancashire about this issue, and would he agree that perhaps a little further investigation would not be amiss?
Lord HARRIS of GREENWICH: My Lords, I am aware of the anxieties that have been expressed in Lancashire and echoed by my noble friend Lord Lee of Newton. This has been a very sombre episode, in which a fine police force has seen its chief constable dismissed. There are, undoubtedly, a number of other allegations which have been made—allegations in no way connected with Sir Douglas Osmond's report—which are at the moment subject to investigation. This is a serious matter. It is regarded as such by my right honourable friend and myself. We will report to the House as soon as there is something to report.

DRIVERS AND THE DONATION OF VITAL ORGANS
2.47 p.m.
Lord MONTAGU of BEAULIEU: 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 some method could be devised to mark driving licences in some suitable way to denote the willingness of persons to give vital organs, suitable for

787
transplant, to hospitals in the event of death.
Baroness STEDMAN: My Lords, much as I sympathise with the noble Lord's underlying intention, I fear that this proposal involves problems of great complexity. We have, of course, considered with some care whether these could be overcome—in the context, in particular, of kidney donation, which is an area where we have been able to do a good deal already. At the same time we have reached the reluctant conclusion that at present there are overriding objections, both of principle and of practice, to taking a step of the kind now proposed.
Lord MONTAGU of BEAULIEU: My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for that Answer. Is she aware that this will lead to considerable disappointment to thousands of people in this country who wish to register their intentions more effectively in a more practical way? The noble Baroness mentioned overriding objections. Does this not show perhaps in this electronic age how very inefficient the computer at Swansea is if it cannot cope with such a simple problem, which can be coped with by other countries? Finally, may I suggest, since this computer cannot cope with it, that perhaps a way out might be some simple sticker which a driver could put on his own licence?
Lord STONE: My Lords, may I ask what shape it would take—heart, liver?
Several noble Lords: Order, order!
Baroness STEDMAN: My Lords, there are practical problems in marking a driving licence. There is not all that much space left on a driving licence for putting in extra marks at the moment. We have up to this time sent out kidney donor cards with applications for provisional licences, and we have run into some trouble with that: we have had complaints from people who assume that sending them a kidney donor card means: "Driving is dangerous; all drivers will get killed; please give away your kidneys. We have had quite considerable objections, particularly from parents and from young people themselves who are asking for their first driving licence. There are also problems because, now we
788
are on the computer, by the end of this year" till-70 driving licences will have been issued. This means that there is not going to be further application for a driving licence until people reach the age of 70. Therefore, a separate dispatch of any other donor cards would have to be made, with the necessary additional cost. There are certain practical objections, but it is something that I know my Department and the DHSS are looking into. I should have thought that perhaps more widespread information about where people could obtain cards to register organs they wanted to donate might be pursued more effectively than by marking driving licences.
Lord PLATT: My Lords, I am sure that the Government are aware that this is an extremely important problem, that people are dying for want of renal transplantations and that the main difficulty is the finding of donors. Does not the suggestion of the noble Lord, Lord Montagu of Beaulieu, provide us with a way out? Are we really to accept that there might not be room on the licence form for this information? Is that a reason for not saving people's lives? Finally, will Her Majesty's Government look into this particular question a little further and give us more cogent and convincing reasons why it cannot be done?
Baroness STEDMAN: My Lords, I accept most of what the noble Lord, Lord Platt, has said. However, as I have said, we have run into difficulties. We have received objections to sending out the kidney donor cards to people applying for provisional licences. What does not seem to be understood is that perhaps something like 50 per cent. of the people who drive, if they have an accident, would not have their driving licence with them and therefore any mark on their driving licence would not be of any use. There are more passengers killed in cars than there are drivers and, indeed, there are more pedestrians killed than the drivers or the passengers of cars. I sympathise with the intention behind the suggestion and I think that there is a need for the Departments concerned to get together and to see whether we can make more widely known the ways and means by which people can donate their organs. If other Departments were to approach my

789
Department, it is certainly something that we would look at sympathetically and would try to do something about.
Lord SEGAL: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that the suggestion of the noble Lord, Lord Montagu of Beaulieu, is likely to prove far more effective than the distribution of 15 million kidney donor cards which, I am told, has so far yeilded totally inadequate results? Would my noble friend also consider the suggestion that the number plates of cars be marked with some small symbol, such as a red cross or a similar sign, in the same way as the number plates of American cars proclaim the tourist advantages of each of the Federal States? In this instance, could not that system be used far more effectively in the saving of human lives?
Baroness STEDMAN: My Lords, I accept that we should look at all means whereby we might know whether organs may be used in the event of a fatal accident. However, as I have tried to explain, there are certain practical problems and certain problems associated with intrusion into the privacy of the person and so on. Therefore, I think that I must take the suggestions that have been made here today back to my Secretary of State so that we can perhaps look at the matter with the DHSS to see whether there are any other ways in which we can help. At present, we are not convinced that to deal with this matter by the use of driving licences is the best or most satisfactory way.
Viscount ST. DAVIDS: My Lords, would the noble Baroness—
The LORD PRIVY SEAL (Lord Peart): My Lords, I think that we have had a good run on this Question.

SECONDARY EDUCATION: PARENTAL CHOICE
2.54 p.m.
Lord BOYD-CARPENTER Lord BOYD-CARPENTER rose to call attention to the importance of preserving and fostering variety and opportunities for parental choice and for meeting the wishes of local residents in the organisation of secondary education,
790
with particular reference to direct grant and grammar schools; and to move for Papers. The noble Lord said: My Lords, in rising to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper and so to initiate this short debate, I hope that your Lordships will allow me to say how delighted I am at the number of noble Lords and noble Baronesses who have indicated their wish to take part in this debate. For that reason I shall curtail my own remarks as much as I can, as I am very conscious of the fact that we have only two and a half hours to debate this matter and that it is, of course, a matter of major importance to the debate that the noble Lord the Minister of State should have the fullest possible opportunity to reply.
My Lords, this debate like, indeed, most of us perhaps, has two parents. One is the recent indication given by the Secretary of State for Education and Science that her earlier and more generous intentions to come forward with provisions for strengthening parental choice in education now appear unlikely to be implemented. The second parent, as I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson, will already have apprehended, is the Answer he gave to a starred Question of mine on 15th November. I refer noble Lords to the Official Report for 15th November, cols. 503 to 509. In that Question I asked the Government, through the noble Lord, to include the question of selection in the consultations with local authorities which, in a Statement in July, the Government had announced that they were proposing to undertake on the basis of a Green Paper with education authorities, teachers, parents and others on the future of education. I hope that the noble Lord will not think me discourteous if I say that he gave me what I would describe as a somewhat doctrinaire reply. He took the line that the Government's policy was settled and he was not prepared even to consult local authorities on this issue.
I appreciate, as I think do all noble Lords, the Government's policy on selection. I personally regard it as a grave mistake, but I equally appreciate, and I think that the House will, that there is neither time nor opportunity in the course of a short debate to debate that great issue as fully as it should be debated. Therefore, for the purposes of this debate

791
I do not propose—I do not know whether my noble friends will—to challenge the generality of the Government's policy.
Indeed, the Government can pride themselves that their policy has now been carried a very long way. The official figures given by the Department of Education and Science indicated that, whereas 10 years ago only 14 per cent. of secondary school children were in comprehensive schools, at the beginning of last year that figure had risen to 80 per cent. The Government, therefore, for better or for worse have achieved a large measure of the implementation of their policy and they must, in due course, be answerable for that.
My plea, which I hope that the House will feel is more appropriate to a short debate, is for flexibility, understanding and moderation in the application of this policy in particular circumstances. I am particularly asking the Government to recognise two matters. First, that local circumstances and local needs vary from area to area in this country and it is wrong to assume that a system universally imposed throughout the country will meet the needs of all areas as well as it could. Secondly, I ask them to recognise that, whereas on the one hand I accept at once there are many areas of the country where the Government's policy is popular and accepted, there are, on the other hand, areas where it is thought to be profoundly wrong and its application is deeply resented.
The plea that I am making to the Government this afternoon is that they be a little understanding of this situation and not seek to impose island uniformity in a matter of this sort throughout the country and against a hurried timetable. Indeed, on the contrary, I ask them to be prepared to be helpful and moderate in the application of this policy in particular cases where there are circumstances and local wishes which, I suggest, they ought to take into account. That is what I want to urge on the Government as forcefully as I can this afternoon.
None the less, I should like to make one general comment which follows my acknowledgement that the Government's policy has gone a long way towards implementation. It has had one rather curious
792
effect. As a result of the application of this policy to the direct grant schools, which are mentioned in my Motion, and its application now to the controlled or maintained selective grammar schools, the present Secretary of State for Education and Science will go down in history as one of the great educational innovators of all time. On any calculation she will be responsible for the founding of more independent fee-paying schools than any educational administrator since His late Majesty, King Edward VI.
Whether that was the intention of her policy I do not know. It is a fact that to comfortably-off parents with children of average capacity the result is probably agreeable. They are given a wider choice of fee-paying schools, perhaps nearer to their homes. But the House will appreciate that the feelings of parents of modest means with gifted children may be very different indeed. When the Minister replies perhaps he would tell us, first, whether this was the intention of the policy.
There is a principle of law that a sane man expects the natural consequences of his acts. Under the Construction of Statutes provisions, which rather charmingly say that for the purposes of construing a Statute man embraces woman, presumably the same principle applies to a sane woman. Was this, to many of us, inevitable consequence of the policy foreseen and intended? If not, what do the Government intend to do about it?
By way of illustration of my argument, I shall take a certain amount of material from the Royal Borough of Kingston-upon-Thames. I do so not because I am in any position of authorisation to speak for that borough; that is done in another place by the very able Member of the House of Commons who now sits for that Royal Borough. Although I still have the honour of having a connection therewith as High Steward, I speak simply on my own account. However, as I think are the hopes and practice of this House, I find it convenient to rely on matters about which I have some knowledge—some actual practical experience.
As some noble Lords know, I was a Member of Parliament for that ancient Royal Borough for 27 years, so naturally

793
I have acquired a certain knowledge of the educational system therein. Let us take, first, the example of the application of the direct grant policy. There is a school called Kingston Grammar School, although it is somewhat misleadingly named because it was a direct grant school. It is rather curiously organised because its governing body was subject to the local authority—to the local council—as trustees of the charity. That school has now gone independent and as a result it is full and prospering; it is maintaining high standards and selection.
However, there is the difference that selection is now not only—though it is partly—on the intellectual ability of those who apply for entry but it is also limited by the length of the parents' purses. This does and must mean that a number of bright boys of humble homes—who for centuries would have been able to go to this school—are now, as the direct result of the implementation of the Government's policy, debarred from so doing.
However, the story does not stop there. In the same Royal Borough there is an absolutely first-class maintained and controlled selective grammar school—Tiffin Boys School. I hope that I shall not be charged with the terrible offence in these days of élitism if I draw attention to the fact that its pupils normally figure in the top half-dozen successful scholarship winners at Oxford and Cambridge. It is a school of that quality, and that fact illustrates it. It has been indicated that if the Government persist in applying the 1976 Act in this area this school, too, will go independent. Its high standing and high reputation will undoubtedly secure that it does so successfully, and the identical consequences will follow to those which have followed in connection with Kingston Grammar School; that is, it will flourish and maintain high educational standards, but, once again, the children of poorer homes will be debarred from an opportunity to go there.
Those are important questions relating to this area. I can at least claim to know the area. As I am no longer dependent on its votes, I can say, without appearing to be in any degree servile, that it is an area of very high intellectual quality, where a large number of the population are journalists, civil servants and aircraft engineers at the great factory that has
794
built the best military aircraft in this country from the Hurricane to the Harrier. There is a high intellectual level and an intense concern with education. When I represented this borough in another place a very large proportion of the queries with which I had to deal related to education. This reflected the intense interest.
As a consequence, ever since the comprehensive issue was raised it has been an issue of great local interest. Indeed, a very active pressure group was instituted in favour of proceeding to comprehensive education. None the less, at every Election—both Parliamentary and local—during the 15 years or so that this has been an issue, the Party which stood for maintaining the selective system has been successful. That seems to me to be very strong evidence of local wishes, whether expressed by parents, electors or ratepayers.
This afternoon I base a good deal of my argument on the fact that these are the wishes of those who live in that borough. If the noble Lord doubts that, I throw a challenge to him: why does he not hold a referendum? We hold referenda now on all sorts of issues. We hold referenda on whether we should disrupt the constitutional working of the United Kingdom and such matters. Why not hold a referendum on a local issue of this kind, for which, indeed, there is a precedent in the much more trivial matter of Sunday cinemas some years ago, when, as the House may recall, a referendum had to be held? Let us at least acknowledge that local wishes have a right to have attention paid to them.
Indeed, this goes a little further. Education is a locally administered service. What is the justification for involving local authorities in the administration of education, for still placing a substantial proportion of the cost of education on the rates, if the wishes of locally elected people and of their electors are simply to be ignored by central Government? I say to the Minister that he is putting the system under great strain; just as to use the force of law—to use the 1976 Act—to impose upon an elected body a duty to do what it and its electors regard to be wrong and retrograde, is to strain the machinery of law.

795
Noble Lords opposite have frequently warned my noble friends—with respect, rightly—of the dangers of using legislation in industrial matters if the legislation is carried to the point where people feel outraged by the application of the law. This does the law no good. It is a warning that I have heard from the Dispatch Box and it contains an element of justification. I should like to repeat it to the Minister. Is it right to use legislation of this kind to impose a system on an elected local body which it thinks wrong, which its electors think wrong and have consistently resisted for 15 years? It even goes a little further. I trust that the noble Lord will not feel that I am being in any sense polemical or partisan if I take this one stage further. If this were a newly-elected Government, supported by a large majority in another place and in the country, there would then be a strong case for saying that, however misguided their views, they must prevail.
No noble Lord would argue the position today. The present Administration have no majority in another place. After Ilford they patently have no majority in the country. They are not so much a lame duck Administration; given the many troubles they are in, they may well be described as a lame centipede. How long they will be there depends, I suppose, really on noble Lords on that Bench, but ultimately on the operation of the Quinquennial Act.
Is it not wrong for such an Administration to seek to override local wishes in this way? I am not arguing this as a matter of law, although the Statute, I believe, like so much modern legislation, is highly ambiguous. I am putting it to the House as part of the argument so often put in this House that we should endeavour, in matters of this kind, to operate by consensus; that one Party should not press its advantage to such extremes that another Party, on coming to power, is bound almost automatically to reverse it. If there ever were a subject to which that doctrine is relevant, it is surely the subject of education.
The ordinary child in this country, if he goes through the full schools course from five to, I am glad to say in many cases now, 18, will be at school through probably two or three Administrations,
796
if not more. If each Administration are to be driven radically to alter the system to comply with their no doubt perfectly genuine political views, the education of children will be disrupted and inconvenienced and the whole system will be less good than it should be.
THE MINISTER OF STATE, DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION AND SCIENCE (Lord Donaldson of Kings-bridge): My Lords, would the noble Lord let me ask this question: Is he seriously suggesting that, in the event, which is possible but in no way certain, of a change of Government, the incoming Government would change the system of education for something over 3 million out of something under 4 million children? It would be quite impossible.
Lord BOYD-CARPENTER: My Lords, the noble Lord says that it would be quite impossible. I would say in words once heard from the Liberal Benches in another place, "Wait and see." What I am saying to the noble Lord, and his intervention suggests that I ought to say it again because he does not appear to have apprehended it, is that it is wrong, in strongly felt matters of this sort, for the Government to press to a 100 per cent. conclusion in the closing months of this Parliament an advantage which has already given them 80 per cent. implementation of their policies. That is wrong, and it would produce just the sort of reaction which his intervention relates to, and which I would regret as much as he. That is indeed the point.
I therefore ask the noble Lord to consider moderation. Is there not a considerable advantage in retaining some variety of system so as to be able to compare the results; so that you can see in practice, whatever anyone's theory, whether one system works better than the other? This is an advantage which you forfeit if you impose a universal system without exceptions. Of course it is not sought completely to impose it without exceptions. There is an exception made, to which my Motion refers, for ability in music and dancing. These are agreeable occupations and, indeed, as the Minister for the Arts will agree, the English ballet is probably the best in the world. But are these really the most

797
important subjects in the world? Is proficiency in music and dancing self-evidently more important for our national future than proficiency in mathematics and science, so that in order to maintain a high standard in one you maintain selection but you must discard it in the other? I think that the noble Lord will see that the logic of his argument is very much weakened by the making of that exception.
Moreover, he is going against the experience of much of the rest of the world. In Russia, new selective schools for young people of high academic attainment are being opened. Within the last 48 hours, the Land Government in North Rhine/Westphalia, which was proposing a measure very similar to the Government's 1976 Education Act for turning the three types of school into comprehensives, has been forced to withdraw it. It is not merely that a system of selection is cherished in certain areas. It is also that it is not self-evident that it is wrong. It is not self-evident that the only acceptable system is one based on comprehensives. This is confirmed by foreign practice and indeed by the exceptions, to which I have referred, which the Government have made.
I hope that the noble Lord is in a more tolerant and flexible mood today than he was on 15th November. I hope that the Government will be prepared to go just a little bit slow on this. There is something rather suspicious in their emphasis that changes must be made by 1979. What is the significance of 1979? Is it perhaps that five years from October 1974 expire in October 1979? Why is there a need for this haste? It must leave a suspicion at least that there is some political motive.
I suggest to the noble Lord that the Government should play it a little more gently and with more understanding of individual needs, and that they should play it slower. You will therefore have much more chance of creating a policy which will last, which will not be reversed by a successor Government, and which will carry with it the goodwill of all concerned. I hope that the noble Lord will listen to this plea, and I hope, in the splendid words which Bernard Shaw puts into King Magnus's mouth in his wonderful play The Apple Cart, that the noble
798
Lord will accept the need for the evolutionary appetite rather than the day's gluttony. My Lords, I beg to move for Papers.
3.17 p.m.
Lord BEAUMONT of WHITLEY: My Lords, at this stage I do not know whether to offer the customary thanks to the noble Lord for putting this subject before us this afternoon. I fear that I shall not know until the end of this debate, because it seems to me that if we spend our time going back over the same old arguments on both sides, that we have exhaustively discussed and which are no longer really relevent, we shall have wasted our time. If, on the other hand, we can talk more about what positive ways forward we can find out of the problems which bedevil all secondary schools, and all secondary schools all over the developed world as it is, then this debate will have been worthwhile.
I do not intend to follow the noble Lord in his examination of the situation in Kingston-upon-Thames, partly because I am not so great an expert as he is on that subject, although I know a little about it, and partly because this is a short debate and I want time not only to hear the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge, who it is always a pleasure to hear on this subject, but I also wish to hear the noble Lord, Lord Belstead. I wish to hear from the noble Lord, Lord Belstead, how far Conservative policy agrees with what his noble friend has just said. I hope we shall hear from the noble Lord, Lord Belstead, a reply to the devastating exposé of Conservative educational policy by Dr. John Rae, of Westminster School, in The Times yesterday. In fact, I think we shall have a most interesting speech from the noble Lord.
At the moment we are bedevilled by two stereotyped points of view. The one looks back to the time when there were schools all of which knew what they were doing: good grammar schools, good secondary modern schools, and good technical schools; which turned out people for industry. Admittedly, a few people got in the wrong place but on the whole they worked very well; they produced very good education. Now, at a single stroke of the political hammer, or whip, the

799
schools have all been taken over by long-haired Communists who have completely destroyed the standards and the education that exists there. This, as we all know, is a caricature. It is a caricature because any of us who remember the education slums that a great many of those secondary modern schools were, many more of them and much worse than any except a handful of comprehensive schools in the inner city areas, will know that, whatever happens, we must not go back there again and that we have made enormous progress in education.
But equally I think that we are bedevilled by another stereotype, and that is the stereotype who says, "Comprehensive schools are the answer, not only to the educational but to the social problems of our time. All we need now is to go on to make them more and ever more comprehensive with more and more mixed ability teaching, in fact totally mixed ability teaching, and if we can possibly bring ourselves to do it, abolish the independent schools so that we have a completely comprehensive system, and then everything will be extremely good". That, too, of course, is absolute nonsense.
I am entirely in favour of seeing much more mixed ability teaching in the right places, in the right ways and with the right resources. After all, the ideal of the grammar school and of the comprehensive is the same in this area; in the sixth forms of both what is needed is pupils working independently with sufficient resources, at their own speed and at their own level. That is what is done in the best sixth forms of public schools and what is done in the best sixth forms of grammar and comprehensive schools, and to a certain extent that is what mixed ability teaching is. Of course there is bad mixed ability teaching; there is wrong mixed ability teaching in the wrong way and with the wrong resources, but nevertheless this would be an improvement.
But the main point is not that we now need a great deal more comprehensivisation, so to speak. What we must now do, having got a comprehensive system, is to find our way through to more improved schools which will give more satisfaction to parents. In so far as parental choice is concerned, there never has been much and there is not space for
800
very much. There has only ever been parental choice for those able to pay for it. Even in the old days of the 11-plus and selection it was not parental choice but whether one passed an exam, and not many who passed the 11-plus chose to go to secondary modern schools. There were a few exceptions, but not many. If that had not been the case one might have said there was a certain amount of parental choice.
Parental choice is always limited because there are only a given number of schools—there is more choice with smaller schools, and I am entirely in favour of that—and therefore, with only a certain number of schools, there is limited choice, and one kind of choice destroys another. For example, one of the reasons why there is a limited choice of schools for people in big cities today is that there is already one kind of choice because of the quite large number of sectarian schools—Roman Catholic or Jewish schools. To a certain extent that limits choice. If we go on in a multiracial State to have even more sectarian schools of one kind or another that will give one kind of choice, but it will mean a limitation on another kind of choice.
This question of parental choice is, I believe, nearly impossible to overcome. But there is something we can do—I believe it is the way forward—and that is to make schools, neighbourhood schools, more responsive to the neighbourhood. By all means let us make do with the schools we have and give more control—there are various way so doing that—but I know there is one major problem, and that is the problem of the deprived neighbourhood school in the deprived neighbourhood, with a shortage of middle-class parents and resources. But that problem will not be solved by pretending it is not there; it is there in any circumstances. With proper neighbourhood schools we can identify the problem and put in the resources where they are needed, and so work on the problem in the right place, which is not by jigging about with the education system for social ends—which I do not think works even if it were desirable—but by tackling the problem of the deprivation of the area itself, which is the only way of tackling it.
Finally, in putting forward the proposition that we must concentrate on more

801
responsibility on the part of schools to the parents and the neighbourhood, I have two or three suggestions to make about the way I see this moving forward. They are not in themselves—although parts of them are—Liberal Party policy, and I admit straightaway that not all of them have even been fully worked out, but I believe this is the way we must go forward. To begin with, we must go forward by cutting out much of the bureaucracy in the education system. We lose a lot of immediate control and responsiveness by the present system and increase the costs. I should like to see neighbourhood schools in the community serving the community and being responsive to the community. I believe we should give much less power to local education authorities and much more power to headmasters. Certainly, those headmasters should be governed, first of all by five-year contracts—as has been suggested by members of various political Parties—and they should be governed very much by local control, which can be started by the adoption as soon as possible of the recommendations of the Taylor Committee.
With that kind of situation, it is my belief that we might find a way of improving the standards of our education and schools—making them more acceptable and more responsive to the wishes of parents and probably helping (though this is an adjunct, and I repeat I do not believe in re-jigging education in order to affect society as such) and at the same time possibly building up our small communities in a way that is badly needed in this increasingly impersonal age. Those are merely a few suggestions which I put before your Lordships. I very much hope that in the course of this debate we shall hear many more and better positive suggestions and fewer returns to the old wrangles.
3.28 p.m.
Lord BELSTEAD: My Lords, we have my noble friend Lord Boyd-Carpenter to thank today for enabling us to ask a simple question: what do parents want for their children's education? I suppose parents who really care want above everything else that the schools should bring out the different abilities of their children to the full. I admit I do not think that people, when they talk about it, would put it like that—they would probably put it in rather more homely
802
phrases—but when they talk about these things I am sure their overriding concern will always be for what is best for the individual child, and surely that is right, and not only for family reasons.
It is fair to say that, since the war, slowly but with increasing clarity in recent years, people have come to realise that for this country the world has indeed changed. No longer are we the centre of a great Empire with immense trading advantages. We are alone and we have to face the bitter winds of economic reality. In their hearts, parents understand this. After all, the parents of today have been growing up or living through the period of change. But there is sufficient evidence—I do not think noble Lords will disagree with me when I say this—to show that parents still believe that a good education will enable their children to make their way in the world and, some will add, to do their bit for their country.
How has the education service responded to the faith which is placed in it? There is no question but that there are increased opportunities for pupils. At last more children are going to school before the age of five. Whatever problems it may have brought with it, the raising of the school-leaving age undoubtedly has improved examination opportunities. Let us also recognise the job which the teaching profession, over the last 15 to 20 years, has been doing at a time of sharply increasing numbers and very full classes in order to widen the curriculum for children of all abilities.
What is it, then, which prompted the Prime Minister 18 months ago in a speech which he gave at Oxford to question the direction in which education is going and to admit that industry complains of the grounding which some of its recruits receive? The noble Lord, Lord Beaumont of Whitley, will be delighted to hear that the answer was given by Dr. John Rae, headmaster of Westminster School, in his chairman's address to the Headmasters' Conference some six months ago. In that speech in essence Dr. Rae said that the world has changed but our education has not changed with it, that education pure rather than applied, remote from economic realities, a justification in itself, may have been appropriate for a great imperial Power but it was near to being

803
an anachronism for a trading State fighting alone for its economic existence. However, Dr. Rae went on to admit that one fundamental change in education had occurred in recent years, that turning from our role as a world Power the British had sought consolation in the pursuit of social justice, especially in education, and this had taken the form of egalitarianism. He said:
"Remove selection and you would produce an educational system for the new Britain where an élite was not needed but rather a sense of community and equality. How tempting that argument must have sounded, yet how irrelevant it has all turned out to be to our real problems".
In my view, how right those comments were! For in the real world of the 1960s and 1970s the truth of the matter is that the educational reformers shot the wrong fox. Instead of concentrating mainly on higher standards or different standards they pursued the quarry of selection over a period of some 20 years until at last, in the Education Act 1976, Her Majesty's Government claimed to have made the kill. No local education authority should ever select anybody for anything ever again, except for music and dancing. What an incredible solution to the economic and industrial problems which we face today! What a tragic error—incredible because if the Government genuinely want to raise standards and to put a new emphasis to standards they are less likely to succeed by insisting on the destruction of many good schools; tragic because authorities really should not and need not be coerced in this way because for many years authorities have been reorganising along comprehensive lines. They have been doing it flexibly with regard to local wishes, considerations which are very much in tune, if I may say so, with my noble friend's Motion which is before the House today.
Of course, authorities have had to proceed with considerable care because it has become increasingly apparent that if reorganisation is imposed without enough preparation there can be some fairly disastrous results: huge schools in a single block, schools which are too small to have viable teaching groups, split-site schools—just to mention three problems each of which has revealed its own particular difficulties. But because authorities have been able to avoid these ad hoc
804
arrangements only when finance is available they have had to proceed carefully, anxious when reorganising to try to create something better and not to lose very many of their best schools.
This is where my noble friend's Motion is so particularly relevant. But, speaking rather early in the list, all I can say is that I apprehend that there may be a different view put from the other side of the House. It may be that the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge, from the Government Front Bench will say that you cannot in any circumstances mix other schools with comprehensives. In the light of the most persuasive speech which my noble friend has given, I really must remind the Government Front Bench opposite that, as many local authorities can testify, experience does not bear out that assertion which I believe will come from the Government.
As my noble friend Lord Boyd-Carpenter has argued so forcefully, it runs directly counter to local authority responsibility. It might be a good thing if I reminded the House that when we last debated this topic on 10th July 1974 a Cross-Bench Peer, the noble Lord, Lord Redcliffe-Maud, referred to the opposing views on this subject. His speech was made just after local government reorganisation. The noble Lord, Lord Redcliffe-Maud, then said this:
"That is why I plead for the local education authority, as reconstituted, to be given the chance of sorting out the incredibly difficult problem of harmonising the inheritance of its predecessor authority, which in most cases local authorities have to do".—[Official Report, Vol. 353, col. 628.]
He went on:
"Let them have respect for those who did not vote for them, those parents who want to have something different from what the majority Party view in the authority may be. Most of all let there be no dictation from the Centre—either from the Government and the Department on the one hand, or from the Party political headquarters on the other".
I think that that was very wise advice, but the noble Lord might just as well have saved his breath. Just over a year later the Government abolished the direct grant schools and shortly after that introduced a Bill to force all local authorities into nothing but a comprehensive system.
What has been the result? The result has been that from Bolton to Kent, from

805
Yorkshire to my noble friend's own Kingston, in the West Country, in the Home Counties as well as in the capital, parents have gone on making it clear that they want to have some choice as to where their children are to go to school. If I may say so, I think those deeply held feelings are absolutely right. If, as the Prime Minister also said at Oxford,
"In today's world higher standards are demanded than were required yesterday and there are simply fewer jobs for those without skill,"
surely we would be well advised to put all our educational heads together, representatives of the maintained, the voluntary and the independent schools, their governors and those who are interested in them, and, in co-operation, try to plan our course for the future. The strength of our educational system lies in its diversity. Educational theory, if it is imposed from only one point of view, can often be poles apart from sensible practice.
For instance, I think it is very doubtful whether the effects of early specialisation are of advantage to young people in today's world, yet specialisation, often reaching right down the school to 14-year-olds, has been accepted theory and practice for many years. I have heard noble Lords with much more experience than I can possibly have speaking persuasively on this subject. This is something which comprehensive schools could do, and in some cases already have done, quite a lot to rectify. The emphasis on going into the social services for school-leavers and veering away from engineering or maths or applied sciences, which has certainly been a feature from time to time for school-leavers since the war, is hardly likely to meet our needs today. I venture to suggest that that is something which independent schools have been quicker off the mark to recognise.
Last year members of Her Majesty's Inspectorate expressed forthright criticism of the more disastrous attempts to impose mixed ability teaching which had been widely accepted and I rather think still is accepted by the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont, as being good practice. Unfortunately, we cannot rely on the Inspectorate as a source of all advice any longer, not because of its lack of expertise, which expertise is of course second to none, but because it is very heavily
806
understaffed—I believe about one-third so—and is under very great pressure. So I would say that, provided that we retain our experience of different kinds of schools and have people with different points of view, so are we more likely to keep our educational balance. Instinctively parents realise this; instinctively they distrust those who would put all our educational eggs in one basket. It is regrettable but true that distrust extends now to the policy of Her Majesty's Government.
Let me give one practical example of what the Government have actually been doing. My own local authority, Suffolk, began to reorganise schools a long time ago, before Circular 1065 was issued by the late Anthony Crosland which steered authorities towards reorganisation. Since then my authority has pursued its course, not always an easy task in its more sparsely populated rural areas, until, in 1973, the education committee asked a direct grant school of very old foundation, called Woodbridge School (which happens to be only a couple of miles from my home) to establish an entirely open sixth form for all girls and boys—I repeat, all girls and boys—from the surrounding comprehensive area. Thus, a school which has served its locality for centuries was able to continue to make its contribution, financial as well as educational, to the county system. The authority was enabled to make very good use of its resources, and excellent opportunities were available to all pupils.
About six weeks ago, using her powers under the 1976 Act, the Secretary of State issued a direction forbidding this arrangement to continue. I am really at a loss to understand the motives which persuade Ministers to drive schools beyond the reach of children. As my noble friend so graphically has said, the Secretary of State has done more to found independent schools than anyone has done for over 400 years. I must declare an interest. I am chairman of the Governing Bodies Association, and of course I am not sorry to see more independent schools. But I am terribly sorry to see this done with ill will. The fact of the matter is that the Government do not want to see an independent sector, and it does not seem to me that they recognise any advantage in encouraging the maintained and independent systems to run side by

807
side, the one benefiting from the experience of the other.
The voluntary aided schools would have done almost anything they possibly could to remain within the independent system. Many, including the denominational schools, have in fact been able successfully to do so. But when many excellent small voluntary schools found that they were to be consigned to the fate of the mini comprehensive, they felt that they would be selling their souls, and they, too, had to choose independence.
As for the direct grant schools—which the Motion of my noble friend specifically mentions, and which formed such a valuable bridge between the two sectors, and offered their teaching to children, wherever their parents lived and whoever they were—the grant aid system which made that work possible has, too, been destroyed by the Government. However, these schools have put forward a new system called assisted places, which will be a new scheme of national fee remissions simpler in form than the old direct grant system. I should like to make it crystal clear that the Conservative Party has accepted this proposal. Although priority will be given to the former direct grant schools, one of the advantages of this system, when it is introduced, should be the possibility of achieving a fairer geographical spread of these very popular schools.
My Lords, I started by asking a question. Now I should like to put another question to the noble Lord on the Front Bench opposite. Do the Government believe, as a matter of principle, that parents should have a major voice in deciding how their children are to be educated? Does the right to decide how a child is to be brought up belong to the parent, or does it belong to the State? When the noble Lord, Lord Butler of Saffron Walden, was drafting the 1944 Education Act, clearly there was going to be a tremendous post-war explosion in the school population. That is why Section 76 of that Act lays it down only as a general principle that pupils should be educated in accordance with the wishes of their parents. But population trends have suddenly changed. It is now forecast that by the end of the 1980s there will be a million fewer children in our schools, and although
808
this in itself will present some fairly formidable logistical problems, particularly for local authorities, it must give more opportunity for choice.
Last October it seemed that the Secretary of State intended to seize this opportunity. In a consultative document on school admissions Mrs. Williams stated her belief in a statutory requirement—that was the wording—that a child be admitted to the school of his parents' choice. But six weeks ago, speaking to the Society of Education Officers, the Secretary of State was reported as having suggested that "parental choice" was a misleading expression and should be replaced with" the expression of parental wishes." Perhaps the noble Lord will explain to me what the Secretary of State means, and why there is no legislation. I had understood from reading my newspapers last autumn that the Secretary of State's enthusiasm for parental rights was to be translated into a Bill for this Session. But the gracious Speech has come and gone with no hint of legislation.
The point is that the impending fall in secondary school rolls really presents a unique opportunity to give priority to parental choice, which so often stems from widely differing reasons. Invariably it has nothing to do with what is so very often suggested—whether a school is highly academic. Much more often it is found that parents go for a school because it is small or because it is large, or because it is strong in languages, or perhaps because they particularly feel that their son or daughter wants a good science department, or because a school is traditional, or experimental, or because a school is good with the backward, or with the gifted, or with the difficult—
Lord DAVIES of LEEK: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way in what I regard as a quiet, constructive speech. But I am worried that the word "academic" is bandied about all the time. Of course wonderful schools like Winchester, which taught the philosophy of Latin and Greek in the days when we could afford that wonderful philosophical discussion, forget that nowadays there are more youngsters than ever before in history at universities and technical colleges, studying pharmaceutical subjects and electronics. Consequently, we are

809
moving into a system where the artifacts of modern mankind need this specific kind of training, and I would hope that the same emphasis is given to the skill of the individual as is given to the academic ability of the individual.
Lord BELSTEAD: My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Leek, for interrupting to make that point which otherwise I would have missed. How right he is that the skill in vocational training should not be missed! But how right is it also that bringing on people who perhaps do not have many brains should not be missed. I remember that the first time I passed a public examination my headmaster reported that it was a triumph for teachers and taught alike. So I have every sympathy with those who manage to make their way.
What I have been saying to your Lordships is that very often parents are looking at a school to see not only if it is a good school for the very clever, but whether it will bring on their particular child who may be a little backward. In putting these points, I want to ask the Government whether we can have an answer today as to whether people are to be allowed to assess the merits of different comprehensive schools, and to choose which will suit their son or daughter best; or is that natural impulse to be suppressed under the terms of the 1976 Act, because it would, in the Secretary of State's rather forbidding words in her consultative paper:
"be in conflict with the comprehensive principle"?
I make no secret that we on this side of the House believe in more responsibility for parents. We have made this clear for over three years in what we have called the Parents Charter, in which we recommend amendment of Section 76, in which we express belief in parental governors, and in the desirability of schools giving information about themselves, in-chiding their examination records. I was interested to see three months ago that Mrs. Williams has in fact taken the advice offered by my noble friend Lord Elton, during the interminable debates on the Education Bill, that schools should have prospectuses; and that is certainly a step in the right direction.
I quoted the Prime Minister earlier, and in ending I do so once again. The Prime Minister said:
810
"To the teachers I would say that you must satisfy the parents and industry that what you are doing meets their requirements and the needs of our children."
I should say, to be fair, that the Secretary of State has responded to this. The steady improvement in staffing standards, the allocation of funds for better induction and in-service training (which is an extension, incidentally, of the work which was started by my right honourable friend Mrs. Thatcher), and the setting up of the assessment performance unit all go to the improvement of standards. But I am afraid that Government policy is marred, and fatally marred, by the Government's disregard of what parents may actually want. The Government can protest, as I think the noble Lord will, that this charge is unfounded. All I would observe is that when Ministers insist on a blanket system of comprehensive schools imposed from the centre, people know perfectly well that this cannot coincide with parental choice.
The trouble is, I believe, that this contradiction will become increasingly irrelevant to the needs of our country. In future people will look at what schools have to offer and they will expect to choose; at the way their schools are run, and they will demand to be involved; at the diverse pattern which is still the strength of our education system, and they will claim the right for their children to benefit from it. That is the way forward, and that is the effect of my noble friend's Motion today.
3.50 p.m.
Baroness GAITSKELL: My Lords, I should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, warmly for introducing this debate on education, but I wish it had been a full-dress, long debate, because that is what is needed on this subject. I want to thank him, too, for his most comprehensive Motion—one which encapsulates Tory philosophy about education. I say this because the noble Lord has mainly focused his Motion on direct grant schools, thus dwelling on a tiny minority of parents and children, most of whom are relatively privileged educationally and financially. I must say that I felt more sympathy with the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont, who stole two of my points, one about community involvement in education and the other about parents keeping in touch with teachers throughout the school curriculum.

811
As for this emotive phrase "parental choice", I wonder: for whom is this parental choice to be available? For how many? Can noble Lords opposite deny that for 80 per cent. of the population there is no parental choice at this time and that there was not a lot of parental choice before? I have no wish to detract from the good work done in some direct grant schools. I spent some of the happiest days of my life in an excellent one a very long time ago. Good work is done by some of these schools, where the pupils have been selected for their academic ability and, sometimes, for social and economic reasons, too. In our country at this time, are these the children who need fostering? Are they the schools as to which there is need to preserve variety and opportunity for parental choice? Are these—this tiny minority—the schools in question? What about, as I asked, the 80 per cent. of our children who have very little choice, or no choice at all?
I should like to see more credit given where it is richly deserved: to those good comprehensive schools where the children are not selected because they are already doing well; where their results are achieved in hard circumstances; and where the conditions are such that the pupils reflect, as the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont, said, the local community as a whole and not just the wishes of certain local residents. Because, in any debate on education when we are considering the results which have so far been achieved in comprehensive schools, we have to bear in mind that these schools, and particularly the teachers working in them, are involved in tackling some of our most intractable educational and social problems and in helping a great many disadvantaged children. At present, many of them are beginning to achieve respectable academic results. I am not going to say that our comprehensive schools are perfect, or that they do not need improvement. In a time of very great social and economic change, there are many problems where we have tried to change education; but, as I say, it is to these comprehensive schools that credit is due, and we should concentrate our support on them and not at all on the more privileged schools.
One would have thought that the arguments about the merits of comprehensive and direct grant schools, both at
812
the educational and at the political level, would by now have been thrashed out, for I believe they have reached a point of no return. For all that the noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, said, and for all that the noble Lord, Lord Belstead, said, I do not believe that the Conservative Party could begin to unscramble the changes in education that there have been at this point. It would be a disaster. I sometimes cut things out from the newspapers, but I am afraid I do not date them. However, today I came across a letter from Sir Michael Clapham, who said quite clearly in The Times that the definition of an educated person had changed over these last 30 years, and that we have to have a different approach to the idea of education, particularly with regard to industry. In fact, "learning for earning" was the phrase in the letter. I do not think the noble Lord, Lord Belstead, would find Sir Michael Clapham on his side; and I do not think that Sir Michael Clapham is a raging Socialist, either!
As I say, one would have thought that the arguments about direct grant schools and comprehensives would by now have been thrashed out; but, even today, as we know from the speeches that have been made, the lament of the middle classes for a resuscitation of past privilege is still heard loud and clear. I have never listened to a debate on education without hearing the word "sacrifice" being used by people who are mostly in a position to afford to make such sacrifices. There is also, today, a lot of talk, much of it uninformed, about a fall in academic standards when comparing achievements in comprehensive schools with those in grammar schools and direct grant schools. Comprehensive schools start with two handicaps, first, in areas where there are many disadvantaged groups and, secondly, in areas where there is a creaming-off of the more able children by the grammer schools which still exist. This makes comparisons in such places unfair to start with; and, when the social conditions are taken into account, such comparisons are absolutely unjust. For there is more to the comprehensive principle in education than a comparison of examination results, especially in areas where there is great poverty. However, recent educational reports continue to show better and more equal results as between grammar and comprehensive

813
schools. I do not know, but it does not look as if either the noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, or the noble Lord, Lord Belstead, has read these reports or has noted them, because neither of them mentioned them.
I am not going to go in for a great many statistics, but, of the children in England and Wales who left school in 1976, 83 per cent. had gained at least one graded result in the GCE and CSE exams in comprehensive schools. In 1975, the comparable figure was only 80 per cent. It was only a small increase in 1976, but, nevertheless, it was an increase. In 1971, before the raising of the school-leaving age, only 56 per cent. of the pupils gained one grade. But, as I said, I do not like dealing in statistics because it is easy to put our own personal gloss on these figures or even to give them a personal interpretation. I must repeat that there is more to comprehensive education than examination results. Nevertheless, I must mention one other survey, an important one, by the East Sussex local education authority, comparing the 1977 results in the GCE and CSE examinations. They were comparing five grammar schools and four fully developed—and I repeat "fully developed"—comprehensive schools in the area. The results obtained were more favourable (that is, higher) in the comprehensive schools.
As has been mentioned, the recent fall in the birthrate and the effect that this will have on the school population does offer us a very great opportunity to improve our schools—all our schools, and not just the direct grant schools or the grammar schools. I do not think that the noble Lord, Lord Belstead, mentioned improvement for comprehensive schools; although that is where most of our children are. We may then have a chance to achieve vastly improved teaching conditions in our comprehensive schools and the only way—I have always thought this and I must repeat it finally today—in which we can bring the education of most of our children—I will not say all of them, but most of them—to the highest possible standard is in comprehensive education. It will need improving; it may need great changes; but that is the only way. Otherwise, we shall continue to have the kind of divisive society that we have at present. We shall
814
not get an improvement in our industry and we shall not get a real feeling that we are one nation.
4.2 p.m.
Baroness ELLIOT of HARWOOD: My Lords, I think we are indebted to my noble friend Lord Boyd-Carpenter for raising this debate today. There are so many views on the subject of education that one could go on talking about it for hours and still not necessarily repeat what other people have said. But I think the debate today has been earmarked, as it were, for the very important matter of parental choice and, I would say, the influence that parents can have in schools and on schools when, as many parents do today, they take a tremendous interest in the schools to which their children go. We will not argue, because we disagree, on the subject of the destroying of the grant-aided and grammar schools. I passionately disagreed with that and I know that members of the Government are passionately on the other side; so we must agree to differ about that. But I am encouraged by the fact that I think there are opportunities in which we can still save some of the good and important opportunities which the direct grant schools have given—and, I think, could still give—if we do not have a total disappearance of these schools due to a total acceptance of comprehensive schools.
I do not dispute with the noble Baroness, Lady Gaitskell, that there are a number of excellent comprehensive schools. Of course, there are. I do not think that the Conservative Party would dream of making very extensive alterations where those schools are successful. What we object to is the fact that every school must be comprehensive. When people talk about the fact that the direct grant schools and the grammar schools cater only for selected people who can pay to go there, they ignore the fact that thousands of children, whose parents could not afford to send them to grammar and independent schools, were able to go because of the grant aid available.
I remember a fine speech by the noble Lord, Lord James of Rusholme—during one of the debates on the Bill that the Government put through about comprehensive schools—in which he said that in all the years that he was headmaster

815
of Manchester Grammar School, where there were some of the very finest pupils in the country, nobody but himself knew whether particular pupils were being paid for by the parents or by the State. The whole picture was one of complete equality for all the pupils and all the teaching. The question never arose of whether little John was being provided for by the State or little Andrew by his parents. What mattered was what they did, how they worked and the opportunities they took. That is why I think it is sad that that opportunity has gone and in its place, as my noble friend Lord Boyd-Carpenter has said, there is an increase in the independent schools where children who are going to them are going to them because their parents can pay, and children who cannot go because their parents cannot pay are going to miss this opportunity.
I must not argue this case. It is one that the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge, will condemn. I am going to say that I think it is a great pity. But it was the Minister of Education who made the suggestion that there would be some alteration in the scheme and that there was to be an Act of Parliament which I think my noble friend Lord Belstead referred to. At the moment, that seems to have been done away with; at least, there does not appear to be anything in the Government's policy which will make any alteration in the present system. I think that is a great mistake.
The noble Baroness, Lady Gaitskell, is right when she says that you cannot completely alter the comprehensive system. If, as I hope, we shall win the next Election we will not be able to wipe out every comprehensive school. That would be crazy. But what we can do and what I hope we do is to recreate a number of grammar schools and grant-aided schools and give special places, special opportunities and some finance to a wide range of boys and girls who, in another age, would have been able to go to such grammar schools as Manchester Grammar School. I hope that that is one of the things that we shall do. Certainly, it is in the Conservative Party's programme for education.
I should like to say a word or two about the qusetion of parental choice and opportunities which could still be available,
816
even under the present system, if there was more flexibility in the organisation of education to day. When I was the chairman, as I was for six or eight years, of a rural area education committee—and we had, of course, a very small population—the amount of choice between secondary schools and rural primary schools was not very great. But there were some schools which were geared more towards rural life which in that particular rural area was what the children were used to. We tried to send those children who had a rural background and who wanted to continue rural life to the secondary schools that were more geared towards rural life—and it worked well. Those who wanted to go into industry or into technical education of a different kind—for, of course, agriculture is a very technical subject—we did our best to send to the schools which were able to teach more on the industrial side; and it worked.
Again, we did our best to try to meet parents' choice. I think that one of the things that could be done is to do away—and we had to do this in this area—with this rigid zoning and to say that every child must go to the zone in which it is living. It may be that in some large industrial areas it is not possible to do very much else; but there is always some opportunity on the periphery of cities, if you have not got this rigid zoning policy, to arrange for children to go to a particular school if the more rural aspect of education is wanted for them. It could apply to comprehensive schools, too.
There are comprehensive schools which are slightly different, one from another. I do not think it would be difficult to make arrangements. Certainly in cities transport is not so difficult; it is more difficult in rural areas. But transport is not impossible to organise. I have seen arrangements made to transport children to schools which suit them better than the one next door to them. It may cost more money; possibly it does. The fact remains that one is repaid in the interest and amount of response from the children and their parents.
I should like to see parents playing a much more important part in the school set-up and in the education set-up than they do today. I do not mean by that that they are not playing a part, but it

817
could improve, it could get better. The increase in the parent-teacher associations is much to be encouraged. The increase in the school committees is another development. I do not know whether all schools have committees, but, in the area in which I worked, each school had a committee composed of some of the parents of the children as well as the teachers. It was small but it worked. It created great interest in the school. I should like to see that increased as much as possible.
I have not had experience of big comprehensive schools because where I worked, and also in Scotland, unless one goes to the big cities, one does not find the large comprehensive schools. But I still think that more parents could be members of governing bodies and have an influence in the every day working of the school.
I agree with Lord Beaumont of Whitley's remarks regarding neighbourhood schools. A much wider area is covered than by zoning, which is very restrictive. There have been many disadvantges in local government reorganisation, but one of the advantages is that the areas governed by one local educational authority are so big that there is not the problem of saying that little Johnny cannot be sent to a certain school because it is in another education authority, and therefore not being paid for by the education rate where the parents are living. In fact, the education areas are so much bigger that advantage can be taken by sending the children to schools where they would not have been able to go before because of the restricted area in which the ratepayers of any given area were actually financing education. But that is not an advantage unless parents are given a chance to say that they want their child to go to a school which is not in the zone in which they live. Possibly this is putting a strain on education authorities, but it can be done. When I think of the distances that children are taken by buses to schools in a rural area, surely it is not outside the bounds of possibility to arrange for children to go to other comprehensive schools besides the one near their homes. The local school might not be the one which gives the kind of teaching and education best suited to that particular child.
I ask the Government to take a more generous view of these arrangements and
818
see whether we can get people to care about the child and its parents as much as they care about just having an organisation down on paper, marked off in squares on a map, which is where one has to go. I am only talking about experiences that I myself have had. I know they are limited and I do not put this forward as anything for world wide acceptance, but it has worked. Nobody could say that Newcastle Education Committee was in a rural area. For some of the small towns in Northumberland they established a country school geared to operate for about a fortnight or three weeks at a time. Children came into the rural area and learned about forestry; they went on great walks and treks over the hills and through the valleys. This was in the borders of Scotland where I live. This proved a tremendous success. It was not the Roxburgh Education Committee which did this but the Northumberland Education Committee. There are now three of those rural schools where children attend for a fortnight or three weeks away from their own environment.
I believe that something of that kind could be developed elsewhere. It may have been developed elsewhere, for I am speaking about something that I personally know about; I do not know what has happened in Devonshire, Cornwall, or, say, Berkshire. These experiments with small populations are worth trying. They make for variety and give the children more interest. What is so devastating to me in the modern education system is that, while one lays on a whole mass of different subjects, unless one attracts the children's interest they become bored. Then they smash things up; they do not take an interest; they just have to be at school because that is where they should be by law. But it is not education in the sense that we all like to think of it: something that is with us for life and that interests us at all times so that when it is finished and over we are still learning.
I should like to see the education system in this country develop in the way I have outlined. I do not think that it can be done by simply laying down the law and saying that all schools and all arrangements have to be the same. I would cater for the specially gifted and interested child, not only because they may be musical or may be ballet dancers—which I love and am all for—but because

819
they could also be mathematicians or scientists and might have all the different interests which are vital today. One cannot do that unless the children are attracted; and I do not believe that one can do that unless there is a variety of schools and teachers. If one could achieve that, then one could do something for this country.
Having luncheon at home alone just before I came here, I turned on the radio at one o'clock, I heard a gloomy mathematical gentleman saying that he was horribly depressed by the children who are leaving school today and who do not understand the decimal system. They cannot add up ordinary figures. He asked what good they would be—especially the girls—if they went into stores or shops, or whatever. One always hears the bad news. That is something that always comes through in the newspapers and on the wireless. It may well be that this is not true; but I have heard lots of criticisms of the schools today and of children who are not proficient in the three Rs. That is not just the fault of the children, it is the fault of the system; we ought to have as much variety as we can. That is why I disagree with the noble Lord opposite and with his Party. They are not prepared to face the responsibility, the difficulties and the need for variety in education.
4.20 p.m.
Baroness STEWART of ALVECHURCH: My Lords, I must first declare an interest in this debate in that I am chairman of the governors of a comprehensive school. I listened with very much interest to the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, and I agree with him that local residents' views should certainly be given very serious consideration in the education field. In my experience, this happens. Most of the schools with which I have been associated have had active parent/teacher associations, the members of which not only meet together but hold public meetings and keep in close touch with other parents and the staff, and they are also represented on the school governors' committee. I think that one should bear them in mind, and noble Lords may perhaps agree with me that they should be consulted if and when changes take place—
Lord BOYD-CARPENTER: Here, here!
Baroness STEWART of ALVECHURCH: I think the main problem in the comprehensive school is to provide for a very wide ability range and to ensure that the intelligence of all young people will be extended to its maximum, whether it is merely average intelligence or intelligence of a very high degree. As a former WEA tutor, I know that a great many adults of high intelligence, certainly in the past, have left school without any qualifications whatever.
It was reassuring to hear from my noble friend Lady Gaitskell that in 1972 the percentage of school-leavers with a CSE or GCE certificate was 56 per cent. and in 1976 it was 82 per cent. In view of the many problems schools have had to cope with during the last few years, particularly with regard to immigrants, language difficulties and so on, that result is really a remarkable one. It suggests that in the near future the figure may well be not 83 per cent. but 90 per cent.
However, there is the question: Should children of high intelligence be educated with those of less intelligence? I am quite sure that they should, for the very good reason that there is no really accurate way of guaging the intelligence of human beings. I recall many years ago giving a test in an official capacity to a young man who hoped to become a pilot. I was asked to give him Cyril Burt tests and I put one question to him—I forget what it was—and he gave two incorrect answers. I said to him: "What would you do next?" He said:" I'd lie down and go to sleep." I think that summed up the meaning of those tests from his point of view, and if that is your feeling about them you were unlikely to do very well. I think that happens only too often. However, if you could provide young people, or even older people, with a really convincing reason for doing well in tests and persuade them that it will really help them in some way in which they want to be helped, the results would be very much better. So I would not myself want to rely on intelligence tests to decide whether pupils should go to this school or to that one.
One of the biggest problems that we have to cope with today in the comprehensive school field is the size of the school.

821
However small it may be—and by the standards of a comprehensive school 400 pupils would be regarded as "small" —you do need to cover the whole educational range. You need to have science laboratories, art rooms, assembly halls, and so on; and it is vastly expensive to provide all that young people require in a small school. For that reason, I am afraid that some schools are too large. I hope there will be a very considerable reduction in the size of schools in the years to come and I also hope most sincerely that if there is a change of Government—and may I say that I do not anticipate one—our comprehensive school policy will continue.
4.25 p.m.
Lord AUCKLAND: My Lords, I would agree very much that it is a pity we cannot have a full day's debate on this very important topic. It would be counter-productive to try to unscramble legislation which has gone democratically through Parliament, and yet at the same time we have to face facts as they are and try to see in proper perspective what has been happening and what is likely to happen in the education system.
It so happens that, like my noble friend Lord Boyd-Carpenter, to whose opening speech we all listened with interest, I have some experience of schools in Surrey. My two daughters went to one of the City of London schools in Surrey and later to a famous grammar school in Epsom. That particular school is now in the process of going comprehensive. I did not have time before this debate to consult the school, but in fact there are in Epsom two outstanding secondary modern schools, one for girls and one for boys, which inter-link quite considerably. I have been in very close contact with those schools and their activities since the late 1950s.
My elder daughter is now at a teacher training college in Nottingham—I believe it is now called the Trent Polytechnic. Be that as it may, she is now doing her final year for her diploma, which we naturally hope she will get, and she has had fairly considerable experience of teaching during her practice in a comprehensive school of 1,800 pupils in the city. She has made no secret of the fact
822
that she has enjoyed it and has found it stimulating; but she takes the view, as many do, that there is room for the comprehensive school and the secondary modern school to work side by side, at least in a number of areas. What she will eventually do when she qualifies completely remains to be seen. Obviously she will face the same difficulties as do many contemporaries in teacher training colleges because of the present shortage of vacancies.
The people most involved here are the parents, the teachers and the pupils, but it is of course very much dependent on the relationship between parents and teachers as to how pupils will work out in the last analysis, whether they are at a private school, a secondary modern, a comprehensive or whatever you like. I certainly think that the most important thing is for the parents and teachers to be able to consult properly, and particularly in the case of a child who has difficulty in a certain subject which is vitally important. Given reasonable notice, obviously, and an appointment, it is important that the parents and teachers concerned should be able to meet and discuss in a practical, calm and collected manner what is best for the child. I believe that the noble Baroness, Lady Stewart, put her finger very firmly on the problem of the size of school. I do not think that that necessarily goes only for comprehensive schools either, although I believe that, with some of the split siting and so on, this problem may well apply more to comprehensive schools.
It so happens that some years ago one of the headmistresses at the girls' school in Epsom which I mentioned a moment ago, went to America at Government expense with six other headmistresses, to study the American system of education. She went out full of the joys of comprehensive education, but she came back very disillusioned with that method. There is not time in the course of this short debate to go into the reasons for this, nor would I necessarily wish it to be a drum with which to bang the comprehensive school system. But the real worry is that, with the vast size of some of the schools and the lack of planning which, due to hurried legislation, has gone into this subject, there could well be a long period of time before we see the easy communication between teacher and

823
pupil, and teacher and parent, which is necessary.
It is always difficult to try to decide on the optimum size of a school, because this must obviously depend on the area in which people live and on the needs of local people. At present, we have a number of expanding new towns, and I wonder whether, if he has time in the course of this debate, the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson, can say something about places such as Dawley, Milton Keynes and other areas which will clearly expand. Clearly, there will be a large number of children in these places, so what provisions are being made for both children and teachers in towns of that kind, to which people will move out from places such as Peterborough? I name just one example, but in the context of this debate it is an important one.
This being a short debate, I conclude by saying this. Clearly, the Government have made up their minds on this legislation, and what a future Government do is not the subject of this debate. But what must never be forgotten is that the high standards of education which this country enjoys must be preserved, and anything which causes them to deteriorate will fall on the heads of any Government involved.
4.35 p.m.
Baroness FAITHFULL: My Lords, we are all grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, for moving this Motion today. I am eighth on the list and everything that I intended to say has already been said. Nevertheless, I say to the Minister that I propose to repeat it, on the basis that if you speak long enough, hard enough and strong enough it may percolate one day.
A state of transition is always difficult. It will take a long time for the comprehensive schools to build up the tradition and stability achieved over a long period by a number of modern secondary schools—perhaps, not all—by grammar schools, by direct grant schools and by schools with a long history in the private sector. Already, some comprehensive schools which have been in existence for some time are well on the way to establishing an acceptable identity within their community, although even now, as has been said by other noble Lords, the
824
schools are still too big and create difficulties for both teachers and pupils.
I should like to touch briefly on a very real dilemma. Education departments, on the one hand, are seeking to establish the comprehensive school system in the area of their authority, which involves a managerial exercise carried out by administrators working under the education officer. To achieve this means a certain amount of imposed organisation. On the other hand, there are the parents wanting to meet the needs of their children, and also wanting responsibility for deciding which school their child should attend. The rub comes when what the parents want for their children does not accord with the local authority's plan of schools in the area of their authority, and the parents cannot afford to send their children to an independent school. In these circumstances, I wholeheartedly support the noble Lord, Lord Belstead, in his suggestion that there must be a period of very real flexibility.
May I mention the matter of the gifted child with a particular aptitude? I know of one case of a boy who is brilliant at maths, whose mother went to her local school to which she had been told to go by her local authority. She asked for a list of the teachers and their qualifications, but there was no one on the staff qualified to teach maths. When she asked whether she could send her child to another comprehensive school in a not very big town, she was told that she could not. This mother is a person of ability and resource, so she applied for a grant from a voluntary organisation. They would give her only 50 per cent. of the fees, so she then applied for a post herself which means working overtime on two evenings a week and one week-end in four. But this means that she cannot provide all the care she would like for this boy and her other children.
I know that the Minister of Education in another place has called on local authorities to allow parents an element of choice, but, as has been said by other noble Lords, this has to some extent been contradicted by experience. In fairness to the comprehensive schools, I should say that I have been in touch with the National Association for Gifted Children and that, although they tell me many parents are still asking for advice about

825
a school for their gifted children, they consider that the standards in the comprehensive schools are rising and that there is an appreciation of the needs of the gifted child.
I would also touch on the children who, under the Education Act 1944, cannot, and should not, be deemed maladjusted, but who need a particular type of what I might call social education, where the home circumstances are such that the children need special care. I refer to the child whose parents are separated, the child who is of a nervous disposition and the child who has, living at home, one parent who is mentally handicapped or ill. These children often need a small school providing an environment of a size which they can tolerate. When faced with a large comprehensive school, they retreat into themselves and do not mature or develop emotionally, nor do they always benefit educationally. For such children, surely there must be an element of choice.
Then there is the area of family responsibility. It is often said these days that families expect everybody and everything to be at their disposal and to have things done for them. Are we to blame? Do we take from parents their parental rights and responsibilities? If we do, can we blame them if, later on in life, they expect the State to care for them? We have sown these seeds in the early life of the child.
There is also the question of loyalty. This is a quality—dare I say it?—which is at a low premium these days; or perhaps I should say that there are difficulties because there are divided loyalties. A child needs to feel that his parents and his school are working together. If parents are forced to send their children to schools which, reasonably or unreasonably, they are not in tune with, it is certain that those parents will find it hard to inculcate in their children a sense of co-operation and loyalty to the school to which their children have been forced to go.
Turning to the second part of the Motion, I support the principle of meeting the wishes of local residents in the reorganisation of secondary education in their areas. I agree with the principle, but I cannot see how it can be done in practice. As the law now stands, the comprehensive principle must be applied. I feel that I
826
must say this, because I am quite sure that before the Minister finishes his speech he will use the words "comprehensive principle".
Lord DONALDSON of KINGS-BRIDGE: My Lords, the noble Baroness is quite right.
Baroness FAITHFULL: My Lords, if parents do not agree with the comprehensive principle, all they can do is to raise money to allow their local grammar schools or direct grant schools to continue as grammar schools and direct grant schools. This is exactly what those schools have done. Many of the old, established grammar schools—Bradford Grammar School for one—continue to function outside the State system and, therefore, outside the comprehensive principle. May I suggest that the continuation of these schools outside the State system will result in far greater division in education. My only wish is that some of the recommendations which were made years ago in the Fleming Report could have been implemented, whereby direct grant schools could have been brought into the State system and grammar schools would not have been lost to the State. It seems that the present law is making for greater division in education rather than a comprehensive State system which allows for choice and meets the varying and diverse educational and emotional needs of children.
4.43 p.m.
Baroness EMMET of AMBERLEY: My Lords, I am very glad of this opportunity to support my noble friend Lord Boyd-Carpenter on this very important and difficult subject. I was vice-chairman of the West Sussex County Council Education Committee for six years and I know how difficult it is to put parental choice into effect. However, the fact that it is difficult is no reason for not trying. May I take up two points which have been made by previous speakers. The noble Lord, Lord Beaumont of Whitley, said that we should go not back but forward. I agree with the noble Lord. The noble Baroness, Lady Elliot of Harwood, said that we need variety, and I could not agree with her more.
To illustrate what I want to say, may I reminisce for a few minutes about my

827
own educational background. My parents had free choice, and the result was indeed variety. From the age of six to the age of nine I attended classes in Sweden and had an Italian governess. From the age of nine to the age of 12 I went to the German High School for Girls in Hamburg, I was given the worst mark in the school called the Haaken, of which I am still very proud because I refused to sing "Deutschland fiber Alles" at the morning assembly. Then I went to the Lycée Molière in Paris and subsequently to an educational pension in Switzerland.
At that stage my father, who wished me to go to university, decided that I must come to school in England in order to pass my university entrance. I had learned a little arithmetic according to the metric system, so when I reached my English school I had to start all over again. It speaks highly for the teachers in that school that within a year I had got through my arithmetic and algebra for the Oxford entrance. I am sorry that such teachers are not to be found everywhere; if they were, we should not be having the trouble that we are having now. The importance of the education that I had was that it taught me languages. By the time I was 12, I spoke Italian, French and German as I spoke English. I believe that languages should be an important part of the education given in our schools.
That brings me to another point. Now that we belong to the EEC, I believe that we ought to take the question of languages very seriously indeed, and that parents should have not only the choice of schools in this country but the choice of schools abroad by means of exchanges, with European children coming to attend schools in England. Only by educating the younger generation shall we really become Europeans. Such exchanges will add to the variety that children need in their education. I am very sympathetic towards the 15 and the 16 year-olds who have been in the same school for the last five or six years and who are fed up. They need change. This would be one way in which to ensure variety for them. I do not believe that we can attach too high a value to it.
We do not want mass production. We do want variety, and with imagination that variety can be provided. However,
828
if we are absolutely hide-bound by the comprehensive principle we shall fail to do what is so important in education. Again I owe a great deal to my parents, because they taught me to use my eyes. I was sent to a studio to learn to draw and to paint. They taught me to use my ears. I was brought up to hear a great deal of music. I was taught to use my legs, and for two winters I trained with the Russian ballet. Finally, one must be taught to use one's hands. They represent the most wonderful instrument ever given to man. Every child should be able to use his or her hands in a particular way. In my case, I concentrated on painting. Those are various ideas which have occurred to me and which I believe are relevant to this debate. I hope that in his reply the Minister will pay particular attention to the question of languages and school exchanges.
4.48 p.m.
Lord SOMERS: My Lords, as I am the last Back-Bencher to speak in this short debate I must confine myself to a few remarks, with my eyes on the clock. The debate is on parental choice and I shall try to confine my remarks to that subject. If there has ever been one fallacy which is greater than others it is that all children or, for that matter, all human beings are exactly alike, or should be exactly alike. Every human being and every child is an individual, and who should know that better than the child's parents? It seems to me that the element of parental choice as to the type of education a child child should have is essential.
I am not against comprehensive schools; I am not even against the comprehensive principle. As the noble Baroness, Lady Elliot of Harwood, has said, certain comprehensive schools are excellent. The great mistake which has been made in the case of many of these schools relates to the implementation of that principle. Some of the comprehensive schools are much too large, with overfull classes. Having been a schoolmaster myself, I know what that means. But comprehensive schools do not supply everything. There is no doubt that other types of school would give to parents a much greater chance to send their child to a school that would develop the child's character to the utmost.

829
For instance, a child may have some particular talent. He may be very musical; he naturally wants to go to a school where music is very strong, where there is an extremely good musical standard. Or he may have a great sense of public life. He ought to go to a school where public service and that kind of thing is accentuated. He will not, on the whole, find those specialisations in schools as general and as large as comprehensive schools. After all, why is selection such a bad thing? It seems to have become a dirty word with the Government at the moment; but, after all, we exercise it in all sorts of other ways in public life. I cannot imagine that the Prime Minister in appointing his Cabinet avoids any form of selection whatever.
Lord BOYD-CARPENTER: My Lords, it looks rather like it.
Lord SOMERS: Well, my Lords, I will leave that to the noble Lord who is to reply. Naturally, in all sorts of specialist activities one is selected for one's ability. I cannot see that there is any inherent wrong in selection.
Another point, which was raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Gaitskell, was the fact that the educational system as we have known it has been riddled with the class principle, class privilege. Nothing is more untrue. Even 20 years ago class privilege had completely disappeared. I taught at a public school, but there was certainly no distinction about class there.
I think that the comprehensive-principle school—in other words, the type of school that achieves what comprehensives were meant to achieve most satisfactorily—is the direct grant school. I know a certain amount about direct grant schools as my wife has taught in them for most of her life. There you have a school which gives a very high standard of education. It is small enough to allow for good specialisation in certain branches, and it gives to children of very humble origin the chance to have the same. I think that the Government in abolishing the direct grant schools were really fighting against their own interests. It is the greatest tragedy in the world for our educational system that they have done away with these schools, which had an excellent educational standard. My Lords, I shall not speak for too long
830
since others have said practically everything I wanted to say. But I do re-emphasise that it is no use trying to pretend that all children are precisely the same, because they are not, and nothing that any Government devise will ever make them so.
4.45 p.m.
Lord DONALDSON of KINGS-BRIDGE: My Lords, we have had a very interesting debate. It has been distinguished by five speeches from noble Baronesses which is a very high proportion of the total, and three of them, I am glad to say, were the only support I got during the afternoon, except from the Liberal Benches. The noble Lord who opened this debate is a very experienced and skilled Parliamentarian. He was in fact made a Privy Councillor 13 years before I became a politician, so I do not expect to refute him as well as I would if we were speaking from equal experience. He exercised the skill of a Parliamentarian in making his speech sound extremely moderate, and also in saying that he was going to deal only with one small aspect of the whole subject. But, as I suspected, in the end we find ourselves—and I think every speaker has, in a way it is inevitable—re-running the 1976 Act which we spent nine days debating in this House, I am amazed to discover that I myself made nearly fifty speeches in the course of our discussions. The House will be glad that this afternoon I am going to make only one, and that, by the constraints of our experience, cannot be very long, so that is all right as far as it goes.
My Lords, the basic point here is that nobody on the Labour side wanted to damage any schools. The Labour position was that the comprehensive principle, which the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, said I should refer to, could only be established if certain changes were made. Anybody who has been round comprehensive schools—and I have been round quite a lot and talked to the people in the area—will know very well that not one of those teachers, not one of those headmasters, think they can run the best sort of comprehensive school, dealing with all the abilities of the children presented to them, if the best are creamed off. That is the issue. That is why it is impossible to discuss just parental choice or just this or just that. There

831
would be no difference between us if we thought others could do what we are trying to do without inflicting changes on the old tripartite system.
I should like to make a quotation here:
"Our educational system is now principally a comprehensive one and is likely to remain so in the future … Our aim must be to reform and mould the system of comprehensive schools in a way that will reproduce the best of the grammar school tradition in this new setting … Comprehensive schools are here to stay. We must take the new organisation, improve it where necessary, but above all we must make it work".
These are not my words. They are taken from a booklet Better Schools for all written by the honourable gentleman Mr. St. John-Stevas and published just before Christmas. Their realism and moderation are something which I find very helpful and in modest contrast with some, though not all, of the things we have heard today. Mr. St. John-Stevas went further. He also wrote:
"There is no question of our seeking a return to the tripartite system … The problem … is not how to unscramble comprehensive reorganisation already carried out. It is how to ensure that comprehensive schools really do work for the bright, average and below average child".
And he summed up his approach, with a touch of characteristic effrontery, by claiming that:
"the Tory Party, with its practical and reforming approach to education, is the comprehensive school's best friend".
My Lords, I appreciate that. I speak quite seriously in appreciation of what he said, and I think it is in opposition to one of the things the noble Lord said when we had an exchange. I will not follow that up. I do not believe myself that the Tory Party, in the unexpected event of its winning the next Election, would really start pulling things down. I give them credit for better than that.
Lord BOYD-CARPENTER: My Lords, would the noble Lord allow me to intervene? In order to be comprehensive in his summary of Mr. St. John-Stevas's views, would he also add that the same honourable gentleman has indicated the intention of a Conservative Government, when it comes, to restore the direct grant schools?
Lord DONALDSON of KINGS-BRIDGE: My Lords, the noble Lord,
832
Lord Boyd-Carpenter, has already added it, so I do not think I need say it. If he tells me that that is the case, then I entirely believe him.
We believe, as Mr. St. John-Stevas does, in the potentialities of the comprehensive system. We believe it is capable of giving the best possible education to the whole range of children, and is in many cases already doing so. But we do not believe that it can do this if the brightest children are creamed off and educated elsewhere; and that is why we are well on the way to abolishing selection at 11-plus, which action I think nearly everyone today believes to have been right, even though the noble Lord, Lord Somers, does not. I think that few people on either side of the House want to go back to selection at 11-plus.
We must look ahead and to the future. There has been a tendency to concentrate on the privileged minority of pupils and to neglect the equally important interests of the 80 per cent. who used to attend secondary schools. The loss of parental choice which we have been discussing today applies only to the 20 per cent. who were attending direct grant or grammar schools. We have long believed that for the talents of all pupils to be developed to the full a non-selective pattern of secondary provision was required.
It is now 13 years since my old and much missed friend, Tony Crosland, set out in Circular 10/65 the policy, and it is nearly 18 months since the comprehensive principle was embodied in legislation. If we look realistically at the question of opportunities for parental choice we can make no mistake about it—the tripartite system offered 80 per cent. of the parents virtually no choice at all. Selection, at the age of 11, attempted to determine each child's educational needs at too early an age and involved a restriction of opportunity and reduced expectations of the large majority of children who were not allocated to grammar or other selective schools. There was very little option as to the school attended and the possibility of transfer at later ages was minimal.
It really is absurd to suggest that the introduction of comprehensive education has reduced choice in terms of educational opportunities. There is no question of academic education not being available within the comprehensive system. Indeed,

833
in many areas, choice has been enhanced because children are now eligible to enter a range of schools, regardless of their ability or aptitude.
The claim of freedom of choice offered by direct grant grammar schools in any case is frankly spurious. Such schools were by no means spread evenly over the country so that accessibility to places was more a matter of geographical fortune than universal fairness. That, to some extent, is always true of all groups of schools. Indeed, there is a sense in which it is true of the comprehensive schools too. The direct grant and grammar schools offered no freedom of choice to children who failed the 11-plus; nor did the schools significantly improve the opportunities for working class children to obtain a good education, as is sometimes claimed. In fact it was usual to find a very heavy weighting of children of professional and managerial parents and very few children of unskilled workers, even among the places taken up and paid for by local authorities.
There was a very full debate in the other place on the direct grant grammar schools shortly after the regulations to phase out direct grant were introduced by the Government, and I do not propose to go over the ground in detail today. We made perfectly clear in our Manifesto for the last Election our commitment to ending the system of direct grant and grammar schools. The divisiveness and unequal educational opportunity which the system envisaged was actually subsidised from public funds and was particularly objectionable. In return for opting out of the maintained system, parents—even those with high incomes—were rewarded with a reduction of fees, which were in any case subsidised by a capitation grant averaging £100 per annum per student. Of the 170 direct grant schools concerned, over 50 have now come or are coming into the maintained system as comprehensive schools—many of them are Catholic schools—and the remaining two-thirds have mostly opted for independence.
The noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, had some legitimate fun over my Secretary of State creating more private schools than anyone else.
Lord BOYD-CARPENTER: My Lords, since Edward VI.
Lord DONALDSON of KINGS-BRIDGE: My Lords, I did not catch what the noble Lord said.
Lord BOYD-CARPENTER: My Lords, to be fair, my historical recollection is that that is the situation only since Edward VI. He, proportionately to the size of the national economy at the time, was probably on an equality with the noble Lord's right honourable friend.
Lord DONALDSON of KINGS-BRIDGE: My Lords, the point is that it is a perfectly legitimate Parliamentary point to make. However, it has no meaning. Essentially the question was: Were we going to behave in a dictatorial way or were we going to leave as much freedom as we could, having made the changes we thought were necessary? The Secretary of State agreed that if people did not want to accept what we thought was right they would not be bludgeoned into it. The only point was that the State would not pay for them to do something different. They were left absolutely free to become independent. We were criticised for that by the other side, but I think it was absolutely right to do so. I am not the least ashamed of the creative abilities of my Secretary of State.
I believe that with the changes we have made we have widened the range for the vast majority of our children. May I remind the House yet again that in many areas the transition has been effected in an orderly way regardless of whether a Labour or Conservative Council has been in power. Comprehensive education is the normal pattern of secondary provision for over four-fifths of pupils in England and comprehensive schools represent three-quarters of the educational establishments in this country and are to be found in all but one local education authority—and the noble Lord knows very well which one that is! At present, over 3 million children out of a total of under 4 million are in comprehensive schools.
May I also remind the House that the Government's policy is not, and never has been, outright opposition to the grammar schools as such, but to the selective system. Like the honourable gentleman, Mr. St. John-Stevas, we believe that the traditions and experience of the grammar schools need not be lost but can be preserved in the comprehensive

835
system, and in a certain number of cases certainly are being preserved. I would stress that because some good schools have changed their character, it does not mean that their fine traditions and academic standards have been lost in the comprehensive schools that have succeeded them. Reorganisation presents a greater challenge to all concerned to provide adequately for the full range of ability.
Having made clear, I hope, that far from apologising for the Government's achievements in this major development of national education, I am extremely proud of them, let me go on to describe some of the difficulties which are, of course, real enough. I have listed a number, but I shall not be able to list them all. I think the whole question of education bristles with problems, and will continue to do so whatever system we adopt. After all, we are dealing with nearly 4 million children and their parents, and though they are all made in God's image they present it in varying ways. There will always be complaints, and some at least of them will be justified. We are satisfied that we are on the right road, but the difficulties are obvious and must not be brushed under the carpet. I should like to look at one or two of them. However, before doing so I should like to make one or two comments on what has been said during the debate.
I have already said that I do not agree with the noble Lord, Lord Somers, about selection, and I certainly do not agree that there has ever been the faintest suggestion in Labour Party policy that all children were, should be or could be, equal. So I differ from the noble Lord on both those points.
I was fascinated by the achievements of the noble Baroness, Lady Emmet of Amberley, particularly in shouting down her German colleagues. I hope that it will not be necessary for her to do the same to us. However, over the question of languages and the exchange of children, I think that both suggestions are interesting. The Secretary of State has already spoken about the importance of languages in comprehensive schools where they are more fully dealt with than they normally have been in the other schools, and the exchange of children is a most interesting idea which I shall discuss with her.
836
The noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, quoted a case of a mathematician which I found it extremely difficult not to feel bad about and I shall look at it. It seems to me to be just the sort of thing that should not be happening and I think that there were probably local problems. I am glad that she admitted that the standards for gifted children are rising, because this is an important matter.
The noble Baronesses, Lady Stewart of Alvechurch, and Lady Elliot of Harwood, both spoke about parent-teacher associations. My noble friend said that we already have these and in a very large number of schools they are working very well. From listening to the noble Baroness, Lady Elliot of Harwood, I had the impression that very little was being done anywhere about this, although I do not think she meant it. I think that a great deal is being done. A large number of comprehensive schools are run in the most friendly way in conjunction with the parents and with every attempt being made to meet the parents' wishes.
My noble friend Lady Gaitskell refuted, I thought effectively, the suggestion that, as opposed to the old system, standards were falling in comprehensive schools. I do not think that one should make too much of statistics, but it is perfectly clear that we cannot go round saying that standards are falling. I do not think it is true. Whether the opposite is true—which it may be—remains to be seen.
I have a long note on the issue which the noble Lord, Lord Belstead, raised about Woodbridge, but I shall not read it because time is running out; I shall write to the noble Lord about it. He also spoke for a major voice for parents and he asked about a Bill. A Bill for the next Session may, hopefully, be in the list. We shall perhaps have the opportunity to discuss it when it arises. I do not know what is funny about it. I am astonished that noble Lords should laugh at the possibility of an Education Bill in this House. It seems to me to be desirable in every way and I am unable to react in the way noble Lords apparently expect me to.
I found the positive thoughts of the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont of Whitley, very helpful. I wish that we had had

837
altogether more of them. If only we could stop fighting over the few remaining anomalies and get together to make this system work better, we could do a very great deal of good.
I think that I have time to deal quickly with the most important problem that has been discussed—it is the only one for which I shall have time; namely, the question of parental choice. It is perfectly obvious that from the point of view of any parent some say in where one's children go to school is absolutely fundamental. On the other hand, it is perfectly obvious that in any State-run education system—and this is a State-run education system—whether comprehensive or not, the local authorities who are responsible for giving and ultimately for paying for this education, must have some say in who goes where. There is absolutely no way of avoiding it.
The Secretary of State has made it clear that it is her intention to introduce legislation, which we have mentioned, on school admissions as soon as the Parliamentary timetable permits, and I have said this may be in the next Session. I think it would be helpful if I say something about the way we envisage parental preferences between schools being reflected within the comprehensive system, not least because this topic has attracted a good deal of attention recently. Every local education authority is faced every year with the need to allocate places in its schools to the new generation of pupils. Different authorities have developed different approaches to this problem. Some, for example, work on the basis of a group of primary schools feeding each secondary school; some work on the basis of nearness to the parents' home; some invite parents to express preferences among all the schools within the authority and then distinguish between these preferences on criteria, such as the proximity of home to school.
For the great majority of children their nearest school is the school which they will naturally attend and which their parents will wish them to attend, and most parents accept the places offered to them. However, a small minority are not satisfied, and of these something of the order of 1,000 a year complain to the Secretary of State. This must be seen in relation to some 700,000 children moving every
838
year into secondary education. I think that 1,000 is a lot and is too many, but it is not a big proportion of the total. Some of these parents are so determined that they keep their children at home, sometimes for a school term or even considerably longer, rather than accept a place at any school other than their favoured one. Parents who do this are in breach of their statutory duty, but because of an anomaly in the law, which the new Bill will put right, they may in the end stand a better chance of achieving their wishes than other parents who are unwilling to act unlawfully or to disrupt their child's education in this way.
Another difficulty is that the effects of the fall in the birthrate, which began in the mid-1960s, are just beginning to be felt at the ages when pupils transfer to secondary schools. I agree with my noble friend Lady Gaitskell that in a sense this is an opportunity which I hope we shall be able to grasp; but it is an opportunity which depends, like so many other things, on money. Six months ago, when things were rather worse than they are now, my Secretary of State said that she would not lower the levels but she was unable at the moment to improve the ratios until the financial situation eased. I hope that we may see some changes of that kind before very long, though I cannot speak of that with any certainty.
Authorities will need to be able to run schools at less than their physical capacity so that they can plan rationally to make the most sensible and efficient use of their resources during this period of falling school rolls. This in itself may give rise to objections from parents and some parental complaints may indeed be inevitable. But we hope that authorities will consult the parents fully in reaching such decisions. I believe that most authorities do this. I do not say that the system never goes wrong; I do not say that some may not be a little dictatorial; but my impression is that most authorities take the very greatest trouble to do this. However, it is extremely difficult.
The Secretary of State also intends to include in her legislative proposals a more general provision on the expression of parental preference in school admissions procedures, to which the noble Lord, Lord Belstead, referred. Wherever possible parents should have the right

839
and the opportunity to express any preference they may have for one school rather than another, and local authorities should be obliged to take those parental preferences into account as far as is reasonably possible. This does not mean, however, that all local education authorities should adopt identical procedures. Clearly, there must be local variations to meet local circumstances, subject always to the comprehensive principle. Where an existing mechanism already gives parents the sort of opportunity I have described, and allows parents who are dissatisfied to have the decision reconsidered locally, there would be no need to change the existing procedures. What the Secretary of State's proposals would do is to extend to all parents the opportunities already available to many, and I am sure that this will be generally welcome.
I have time to deal with one more point; namely, the question of resources, the ever-present question of money. During our long debates on the Bill what worried me more than anything else was the suggestion that the change to a comprehensive system would be impossible in some cases because there simply was not enough money to do it properly. This has been referred to today. As I said at the time, there was already a total school building programme of over £100 million a year, and a further £25 million was being injected into it during that year for comprehensive development.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer announced in the House of Commons on 26th October last year a programme of construction work in 1978–79 to relieve unemployment in the construction industry. Authorities were informed that about £17 million will be available as a second special programme to assist comprehensive reorganisation. As well as helping authorities who are anxious to complete reorganisation, it is hoped that the allocation will assist others who are claiming that lack of building resources is making progress towards reorganisation more difficult to adopt a more constructive approach. An announcement of the allocation will be made shortly.
I have answered one of the noble Lord's questions. I think he also asked me in his Motion whether the Government were intending any changes in the procedure.
840
The answer is, No, they are not; but it is not the case that 1979 is a year based on electoral prospects. That year is a year to be seen in contrast with 1982, which was the year proposed by the council in question. I want to refute that suggestion. This is not a game. May I end by saying that in the course of my going about the country I have seen a fair number of comprehensive schools and I have been deeply impressed by the dedication of the staff, by their enthusiastic belief that they are working on the right lines, and by their absolute acceptance of the impossibility of running a really good comprehensive system without the changes we have had to make. I know we are under the shadow of an Election and there are deep differences between us, but I ask that we should accept, as Mr. St. John-Stevas has, that the system is potentially good and has come to stay, and that it is our duty to work together for its improvement.
5.21 p.m.
Lord BOYD-CARPENTER: My Lords, in the two minutes that remain before I ask the inevitable leave to withdraw the Motion, I want to do only two things: first to say that the noble Lord's agreeable manner concealed somewhat the fact that apparently the Government still under, as he put it, the shadow of an Election, are proposing to insist on a very early change to a full comprehensive system in areas where such a change is against the wishes of parents, electors, and the local authorities concerned. He gave no justification for that arbitrary action. He said in another context that he did not want to be dictatorial. I would ask him to reflect whether anything could be more dictatorial than that.
Secondly, he said that he was not ashamed that two-thirds of the direct grant schools had gone independent. With respect, I think he ought to be ashamed, if he reflects on the number of children from humble homes who had every chance and expectation of going to these splendid schools until this Government intervened to deprive them of that chance. The Motion is formally for Papers. If it were in another form I would not seek to withdraw it. However, I recall when the late Lord Woolton was Leader of the House, and not being very interested in the procedure, he once

841
accepted a Motion for Papers for the Government and the consequent dislocation in Whitehall of the attempt to discover Papers that could be provided for the noble Lord who raised the Question imprinted itself deeply in my memory. The Government are in sufficient mess already for me not to want to add even this modest addition to their troubles. Therefore I beg leave to withdraw the Motion for Papers.
Lord DONALDSON of KINGS-BRIDGE: My Lords, the Government are very grateful.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

CRIME PREVENTION
5.23 p.m.
Baroness PHILLIPS Baroness PHILLIPS rose to call attention to the work of crime prevention, with particular reference to the work of crime prevention panels; and to move for Papers. The noble Baroness said: My Lords, when I realised that a law and order debate had been tabled for the week before my own, despite the fact that mine had been on the agenda for a very long time, I felt that any discussion this afternoon might be in the nature of an anticlimax. Sadly, the interview which was given to the Press last weekend by the Assistant Commissioner of New Scotland Yard brought our debate today again sharply into focus. One is forced to the conclusion that crime is always topical.
What is crime? When I looked up the dictionary definition, as always one can do, I selected my own definition for this afternoon's debate. Crime, we learn is, a violation of the law. I would not suggest for one moment that your Lordships need reminding that there is crime, but I will simply repeat the figures given last weekend for the metropolitan police only. In 1977 there were 568,952 indictable crimes in the metropolitan area. For theft and auto-crime (which is now the rather delightful name given to those who steal cars) there was a greater percentage increase. There were 13,378 assaults as against 12,000 the year before, and there were 12,415 violent thefts—again an increase—and 174,000 auto-crimes. The police strength rose a matter of one. I am not certain whether that
842
was a male or a female, but it seemed to go up one in a year.
I would ask your Lordships to consider why we should prevent crime. It is at least reassuring to realise that the majority of people never commit a crime. The very size of our police force suggests that. If everyone in their lifetime committed a crime of even a minor character, we should certainly need a much larger police force. But the well-behaved are constantly and increasingly having to suffer on account of those who break the law.
I will cite a very simple example. For example, if I were a supporter of Leeds United football team, which I am not, as I support Fulham—I shall probably be the only supporter eventually—I would find it distinctly unpleasant and irritating to have to look at my game of football throught an iron cage simply because of the behaviour of a certain number of violent hooligans. When I recently went to a large supermarket I saw, sadly, the turnstiles had returned. In the women's organisations we sought for may years to get the turnstiles removed from the lavatories. Turnstiles are inconvenient, often dangerous, and distinctly, I would say, a retrograde step, but who is to blame the shopkeepers? When one goes on an air trip these days one has to be searched and questioned. If you go into certain new estates no telephone kiosks are provided, and there are not even seats in railways stations any more. These are small examples of where the well-behaved and the law-abiding are constantly being put at risk and inconvenienced because of the actions of those who break the law.
Prevention is always better, and usually cheaper, than cure. The prisons are already bursting at the seams, and they cost £200 million a year. But prevention is equally very difficult, if not impossible, to evaluate. Who knows what one has prevented? How do we prevent crime? I would say, first, that it must be seen never to pay. I am afraid our newspapers are constantly filled with the life stories, or at any rate the highly imaginative accounts of what were the life stories, of various criminals, for which they receive very large sums of money. That is one way in which crime can certainly be seen to pay. I would say it must never be glorified. One sometimes feels that the

843
Great Train Robbers were heroes when one reads accounts of their exploits, forgetting the unfortunate man who suffered paralysis and death as a result of their activities.
I think we must never sympathise with the perpetrator of a crime. For every crime there is a victim. I will again take a simple example. As magistrates we are constantly hearing the sad story of the boy who steals cars. "He only steals cars", they say. What about the boy, who is a working-class boy, who has saved up all his money and bought the car for his convenience? Is he not to be considered? Is he not to be thought about when we are talking about this kind of offence? Serious crime must always carry the certainty of detection. This is the section of police work to which more and more highly-sophisticated apparatus is being applied.
Prevention is everybody's business and society gets precisely the law and order it deserves. Even in our Prayers in your Lordships' House we say, "Prevent us, Oh Lord, in all our deeds", which is the "going before", the preventing of crime. While we seek to discover motivation, we must cease always explaining away the reasons for committing crimes.
Society is the cause of the crime, we are told. The mother particularly comes in for it—she either loved the boy too much or she did not love him enough, or was she frightened by a horse? I think Shakespeare put it succinctly when he said:
"The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars but in ourselves …".
The sooner we recognise—as most human beings recognise now—that we have free will, that we all experience temptations and difficulties, and that we should not always yield to them, the better.
Who tries to prevent crime? I suppose that, strictly speaking, one could include in this section anybody who cares about people: anybody who promotes leisure activities or who works for and with young people, anyone with youth facilities, all the societies—the wonderful ones like the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children—and the Churches, and of course the Ten Cornmandmants are the best preventors of crime I have
844
heard in a long time; if only we kept them we should have no problem at all.
The vast and increasing armies of privately employed security personnel—those dealing with espionage and all those preventing crime in industry whether it be on the retail front, with which I am concerned, or generally—are all part of prevention, although perhaps we should look carefully at this aspect. There are more people—I think double the number—employed in the private security industry than there are uniformed policemen. While I am not suggesting that we should not have private security, private armies bear some measure of responsibility and should be accountable to the community. There are groups like the one with which hare the privilege of working in the retail set-up to prevent thefts from shops, a vast crime, though a particular one. About £500 million-worth of goods were stolen from the shops in 1976, for which you and I, the honest people, have to pay.
Then we come to the most important section in the prevention of crime, the police force. I notice that my noble and learned friend Lord Gardiner, in his very interesting contribution to last week's debate, quoted the eminent criminologist Sir Leon Radzinowicz. I quote him describing this section of the police force at work:
"How are the various functions of the police evaluated nowadays? The elite, in the eyes of both police and public, are the detective branches, the wide-ranging regional crime squads. The most advanced modern technology must be engaged to centralise, sift and transmit information to overtake the modern criminal … The crime detection rate of the police gains further weight from the fact that it appears, at least superficially, the easiest way to evaluate in objective terms … the work of our police force. Detection rates become the touchstone in judging police achievements, whether for forces or individuals. The role of the police "—
and this is the important point—
"as public servants and peacekeepers has been the least researched, the least measured and the least regarded of their functions. Yet it accounts for many more calls for help, many more encounters between police and public and much more of the time of the ordinary policeman".
In this connection I would refer specifically to the crime prevention panels. I found it very interesting that, when I added this to my Motion, various noble Lords withdrew from the debate because they said they had not heard of them,

845
but that seethes to me to strengthen the reason for this debate. These panels were set up ten years ago by the Home Office through a recommendation of the Standing Committee on Crime Prevention, on which I now have the honour to serve. There are now 140 panels in England and Wales and there are only six police forces without them.
What is their task? It is to persuade the public to help the police and to try to change people's attitudes and behaviour in relation to the prevention of crime. It sounds simple enough, but it could not be a more difficult or wide-ranging problem. Who are the members of the panels? Naturally they are headed by the policeman who is the crime prevention officer, and they always include—they may include some of your Lordships; I hope they do—those who are concerned with community problems; local councillors, voluntary social service representatives, head teachers, employers of labour, leaders of industry and commerce, representatives of organised labour and so on. Their finances come through the Police Fund and although most forces do not want central Government to control this, there is a feeling that more cash could be allocated through the authority.
What do the panels do? It would take a long time, longer than I want to spend this afternoon, to tell noble Lords all the things they do. To begin with, they have many imaginative projects for the young, with schools and youth groups, because juvenile crime is surely the most serious matter with which we must be concerned. They have campaigns which involve thousands of children, competitions, badges; in one area they organise a holiday camp and they have sponsored walks and sports. They warn smaller children of some of the hazards that may beset them. They establish street agencies to help the elderly, to warn and support them, and they watch over crime patterns at local level. They tackle various individual sections of the community; for example, they make motorists security conscious and back up retailers in their fight against the curse of thieves, who are of all ages, of both sexes and from all classes. These are the people who take "self-selection" rather literally and then plead temptation, marital frustration, physical indisposition, misunderstanding and numerous other reasons which I
846
could elaborate—and that includes the lady who stole a salami sausage and pleaded that she took it for sentimental reasons because it made her think of Italy. There seem to be no end to the reasons advanced for theft.
The panels prevent vandalism and they have run some extraordinarily imaginative projects which have paid off handsomely. The panels mount massive publicity campaigns to try to bring home the fact that crime is an anti-social offence against the whole of the community. The Crime Prevention News is issued quarterly by the Home Office and it contains some very inspiring, examples of community crime prevention; in other words, these are the activities of the goodies as opposed to the rather horrifying activities of the baddies which we always seem to see in our newspapers and on our television screens. Working with crime prevention officers—I now have the privilege of doing this—are the police who make up the community relations sections where, again, they work particularly with young people as their prime concern.
I promised before this debate that I would not harass or blame the Home Office because, in my view, this is a subject which is the responsibility of us all. It is certainly not a matter of Party politics. However, I would plead—I am making only a small plea, my noble friend Lord Harris of Greenwich will be pleased to hear—for some more public service advertising about crime prevention. At present, the Health Council, which is funded by the Government, is enjoining us all to be healthy—not to eat too much, not to drink too much, to walk, even to jog, and certainly we all know what we should do about smoking. Of course it is a little ironic that these public service advertisements come in between rather colourful advertisements advising that if' you drink more you will have a great life, and if you eat more you will undoubtedly be the best kind of mum. Nevertheless, there is an attempt to make us healthy. We are told by public service advertising to save energy. I am never quite sure why the Government think we do not have to pay for it, and why we would not save it anyway. We are told to take fire precautions; we are told, when it suits the affairs of State, to save water.
But what about crime prevention? The Metropolitan Police are in the middle of a

847
Beat Crime '78 campaign, but I would suggest that a call from the Government to the nation would be very impressive and would carry a great deal of weight. NACRO—the organisation for the resettlement of offenders—speaking about crime prevention said—
"It is essential to make crime less easy and less attractive but it is also essential to examine why people do certain things and try to think of ways to stop them doing it".
No one would dispute that, but I would say that it must be possible for ordinary citizens to go about their business without hindrance, both by day and by night. It must be possible for property to be protected and for little children and the elderly to feel safe and secure. Matthew Arnold said:
"Nations are not truly great solely because the individuals are numerous, free and active but they are great because these numbers, this freedom and this activity are employed in the service of an ideal higher than that of an ordinary man taken by himself".
It must be possible to balance the liberty of the subject against the rights of the community and this is our goal. My Lords, I beg to move for Papers.
5.42 p.m.
Viscount LONG: My Lords, first I should like to congratulate the noble Baroness on giving us a very fine rundown of the problems affecting our society and for placing this Motion before us this afternoon. I think she is extremely brave to take on her own Government and she skated extremely well so that there will be no problems with her noble friends going for her in any way at all. Of course after the debate of last week regarding law and order, instigated by my noble friend Lord O'Hagan, I would say that all of us must get down to the "nitty-gritty" of upholding law and order.
As it appears to us all, the criminal has really never had it so good. He is now on the increase, up to 15 per cent. The police are undermanned and fully stretched in all their activities. I believe that some 9,000 officers are short not only in the country; 4,000 are short in London. With all the different fraud cases and drug smuggling cases, surely they must be very stretched in their activities when they have to go to a big demonstration somewhere in London. Whichever way we look at it
848
the subject of crime is moving at an ever-increasing rate and I believe that we are falling behind in our duty in not recognising the seriousness of affairs.
Perhaps for a moment your Lordships could cast your minds back to what I believe to be the grass roots of the problem. I believe that once a child leaves its parents and goes to school, with the problems which parents find with inflation and money, the over-excitement that the Welfare State is to take over, responsibility is allowed to pass from the parents of the child to the schools, to the education authorities. This is where it begins, because when the child comes home very often the parents are not at home but at work. Children no longer have the feeling of that love which they had just before they left the home. They hang around waiting for Mum and Dad to come home from work just for their tea or supper, and in that time mischief is afoot. I believe that crime today can only start at this end, at school. I do not believe it is fair to point a finger at the schoolteachers who have to administer the education and the discipline and when they ask for parents to come and have the character of their boy or girl explained to them the parents invariably are too busy because they are at work. There is also the lack of open space for children. At certain ages they are restless; hence if they have not got something to do, such as a football to kick, the first thing they will do is to pick up a stone and a few glass windows will go by the wayside. From there we lead on to mugging, and so it goes on.
I believe that somewhere within this bracket crime begins. Let us make it clear that today we have a very well-trained and sophisticated criminal. He comes from the Welfare State, trained at school if his parents are not about. He knows his machinery, he knows his whereabouts and he also knows that there are no police about on the beat. Crime has become very easy, and it is becoming easier. So how do we go about it? The problem is urgent. All of us are talking about it; the public talk about it and do not want to know about it. Where do we go from here? Crime prevention cannot be dealt with at the touch of a switch; that is an impossibility. What can happen is that by this debate and by encouraging others in the long term we can prevent a certain amount of crime, though not all

849
of it. If we can do that over a period of years, we can achieve but a fraction.
I believe that education can play the major part in the start of a child's life. I believe that the meeting of parents and teachers and police in the schoolroom for lectures, even once a month, can do good. I believe that the schoolteacher can get at the child if politics leave the schoolteacher alone so that the schoolteacher can discipline that child. If the child has no discipline, he is on the way to crime. We all know that in one way or another. I am not against the cane. We heard last week of certain of our noble friends who had quite a number of doses of it, and they seemed to be quite well and quite disciplined in your Lordships' House. It never hurt them, but it brought them to their seats. I believe that education is your number one, with parents and police being called in, and the lectures that are already given must be kept up in every way.
We pass legislation in this House, in Parliament, and we hand it over very gently and cunningly to the police, whereupon the next moment we snipe at the police. We tell them that we do not like them because they put a parking ticket on our car. We are at them all the time. Therefore, I feel that it is time that Parliament boosted the morale of the police in every way. We should stop this sniping, and we should for once consider the job of the police. You and I, my Lords, pass legislation, and then the police have to carry it out. They have to deal with the criminal, whoever he or she is, and as I have already said, the criminal is now very sophisticated.
As I said in a recent debate, I believe very firmly that the police should be paid properly for the job they do. Their job is to uphold law and order, and to protect every man, woman and child, enabling them to go about their duties throughout this country at any time of day. I believe that the police should be paid properly. I want to ask the Government whether they know how many police officers have been injured this year or within the past year. It has been brought to my attention that certain police officers are injured at night without this being recorded, and it is time that we knew about these men, who are in a very
850
dangerous front line, and who are generally beaten up by the younger generation.
I believe that it was the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, who said that the system of the policemen on the beat was the best way to counteract crime. I firmly believe this; I always have done. Today, young policemen will not go on the beat, or for them to do so is regarded as being unproductive in one way or another. In the old days the policemen on the beat knew where crime was going to start, and sometimes he knew roughly what time it would start—
Lord INGLEWOOD: My Lords, if the noble Viscount will allow me to interrupt, I should like to point out that surely the average young policeman in this country likes nothing better than being out on foot. The only difficulty is that there are not enough of them to allow them to be employed in that way. I should not like the impression to be given that policemen will not go out on foot.
Viscount LONG: My Lords, I apologise if I have given the wrong impression. I quite agree that the police are undermanned. I have probably used the wrong term regarding this. But I must say that when a young policeman, or any other young man, is asked to do a job he does not like night work as much as day work. That goes for society as a whole.
I turn now to the role of the public in this matter, and this is where I believe there has been another breakdown. The public do not want to know, unless it affects them. The tragedy is that where there has been an incident the public may read about it or hear about it, but very often they will not come forward to help the police. I believe that the public must be shown, through public relations, through the media, that their attitude to crime must be improved, and that they are needed as, perhaps, witnesses, and indeed to help keep down crime as a whole.
I now wish to refer to the panels mentioned by the noble Baroness. She said, I gather, that they were set up by the Home Office 10 or 11 years ago. Not many of us realise the work going on behind the scenes involving these panels. I note the great assembly of people involved here—trade unions, industry, and so on. I should like to feel that we will all hear

851
a great deal more about these panels, because I do not think that any of us know as much as we ought to know about them.
I come now to the question of the punishment fitting the crime. Here we have the real "nitty gritty." Today the criminal has got it far too easy, and it is time that he was adequately punished for what he has done. Many criminals come out of prison extremely fit only to go back into crime and to do a better job than the last time. We should now support the argument which was put up last week for the "glasshouse". I believe that every prisoner upon entering prison should go into a special "severe" wing for a few months during which he would have no television, no luxuries and would have to use only cold water. After experiencing that, a prisoner would say that he did not want to be in that special wing again. At present I believe the deterrent is not there.
I have probably said enough. I could say that the cane is ideal for the children, and that it must not be abolished. I think that politics must be kept out of the schools, so as to allow the school-teacher to deal with the youngsters, many of whom are playing truant far too often. If we take action in this regard, we could stop crime advancing in the 16 to 17 age group. If parents, church leaders, and school-teachers could get together with the police, I believe that much more could be done, and we could stop the rot which is taking place at the moment'
5.56 p.m.
Lord AIREDALE: My Lords, I must apologise for appearing to speak out of turn. Somehow, my name failed to negotiate the usual channels. I agree wholeheartedly with the noble Viscount when he says that the feeble members of the public are far too ready to pass by on the other side. We must be careful net to overlap too greatly the excellent debate we had last week, but like the noble Baroness, I could not help being reminded of a point made forcefully in that debate by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, when he said that the one thing which does not lead to crime prevention is swingeing sentences. This point was illustrated most graphically by Hugh Phillips in his very scholarly work entitled The Thames About 1740. in which
852
he points out that when the thieves were being publicly executed at Tyburn, for stealing perhaps no more than a bunch of ribbons from a draper's store, pickpockets would for certain be at work in the crowd which had gathered to watch the executions.
The noble Baroness said that crime prevention is everybody's business. It certainly is, and I suppose that it begins where the swag is, whether it is in a house, a factory, an office, or a shop. Lord Chief Justice Goddard used to speak with great authority upon crime prevention, as would be expected from one who used to spend his weekends reading the papers for a long list of criminal appeals which came up every Monday morning in what was then called the Court of Criminal Appeal. Lord Goddard used to ask why people, when they went to bed or went away, did not lock the inside doors of their homes as well as the outside doors. If that were done, then with a bit of luck the intruder would be confined to the one room he had broken into. Furthermore, he would be compelled to leave by the window, which he does not enjoy; he much prefers to walk out nonchalantly through the front door.
There is one further refinement which is necessary. It is not sufficient merely to lock the door. Resourceful thieves have a little gadget which they can insert into a keyhole from the other side, grab hold of the end of the key, and turn the key in the lock. Therefore, the key should be either removed from the lock, or, at least, left loose in the lock, so that any attempts to grab hold of it with an instrument from the other side will merely push the key out of the keyhole on to the floor.
Our ancestors, who were not fools, used to provide their windows with stout wooden shutters on the inside, which had a twofold effect: they kept the warmth in and they kept the burglar out. I am bound to say that, in these days of grant-aided improvements, I should like to see an arrangement whereby anybody who sought to fit shutters to his windows was given a grant to do so of up to half the cost if he was prepared to meet the other half. I do not think there is much hope of that at the moment, because I understand that you cannot get an improvement grant for any kind of insulation except in very

853
exceptional circumstances; but I have a suspicion that Government Departments tend to work in watertight compartments, and that if only the DOE and the Home Office could come together and consider the dual advantages of shutters inside windows then perhaps, between them, they would manage to persuade themselves that grants for this purpose really are worth while.
When it comes to mugging, what about the state of our street lights? I drive nightly through a new development area on the outskirts of one of our East Midland towns, and I would bet you anything you like that this evening I could take you to a point on one of those roads where there is splendid modern sodium street lighting but where a section of that lighting will not be working and there will be a pocket of total darkness. Of course, this is a heaven-sent state of affairs for the potential mugger. I have no doubt that, if an old lady is mugged there this evening, the lights will be working tomorrow; but one does not want to see tragedy happen in order to achieve that result.
The reason for this happening was all too evident this morning. When I drove through the same area at eleven o'clock this morning, there were two sets of sodium street lights shining brightly in broad daylight. The motorist who does not light up his car does not get very far before the police are down on him like a ton of bricks—and quite rightly so, too. But one wonders whether it is not time that the police were enabled to come down like a ton of bricks upon the local authority official whose job it is to see that the time-switches on the sodium street lighting are effective and working properly, because that contribution to road safety and to crime prevention is just as important as the motorist's contribution, which he is made to perform in no uncertain fashion.
Finally, shoplifting. I think there are two kinds of shoplifters. First, there is the lady who shoplifts a reel of cotton. She is a visitor to Britain; she turns out to be an African princess with £425 in her handbag; and one does not have much sympathy with her. But, secondly, there is the hard-pressed housewife, trying very hard to make both ends meet financially. She, I think, is entitled to say to the supermarket manager, "Lead us not
854
into temptation". In this connection, I should like to mention the practice, which seems to be quite common in supermarkets, of erecting inside the entrance a great barrier of attractive goods on shelves from the floor to the ceiling, thus compelling customers to walk right to the back of the store and right round the store, past all the attractive goods, before being able to get to the checkout and out of the supermarket.
I should think there must be a good many cases of people who, having a shopping list, could, if they were free to move about in the store (as they are, of course, free to do in many supermarkets), just go to the shelves where they know they will find the things they need. In this way they would not be compelled to go past all these attractive goods. There must surely have been cases where shoplifting could have been avoided had that policy been adopted: perhaps somebody more authoritative than I could approach the supermarkets about this particular practice, which seems extremely undesirable. I must apologise for a very miscellaneous ragbag of suggestions, my Lords.
6.5 p.m.
Lord HAYTER: My Lords, I suppose that if, for 45 years, you have served a family company making locks and safes, and that company has been working for about 160 years, you have to declare an interest in a debate on crime prevention; and I am the first to admit that if everybody was honest I should be a very poor man. I have also been, recently, the chairman of the British Security Industry Association, and it is about that, in particular, that I wanted to speak this evening. It was indeed confusing to have the debate last week on law and order. There was a commentary on it in one of our industry magazines, which said, I thought rather wittily:
"Have we not a situation where society, having failed to protect the individual, recommends him to look after himself, so that honest men now live behind bars whilst many criminals go free?"
On this analysis of crime prevention, my thoughts might differ slightly from those of previous speakers but not very much. I think crime prevention can spring from the criminal legislation and its enforcement (and we have talked about

855
that); it can spring from education and the country's traditions (and the noble Baroness, Lady Phillips, has in particular mentioned the very valuable crime prevention panels); and it springs (nobody mentioned this in the debate last week, and it has been mentioned only peripherally tonight) from the various physical and electronic devices that exist in the security industry. There, we are talking about a huge range of products, from the simple lock on your gardener's shed to the sophisticated cash dispensers and cash-carrying trucks in the banks of this country.
I wonder whether your Lordships would accept from me three axioms. The first is that all security costs money, because in a perfect world there is no need for it. The second is that all security is proportionately better if built in at the time the building, the shop or the prison is put up, rather than added to it at a later date—and the noble Lord, Lord Airedale, referred to that point. The third is that all security means inconvenience, without any exception at all. You cannot have a secure front-door lock without the inconvenience of having to get out your key, put it in and use it. So why do the public buy any form of security? Usually, of course, it is a matter of bolting after the horse has gone. We reckon that three out of every four safes in this country are 30 years old; and if it is your safe, or possibly your neighbour's, that is successfully attacked, then you think about buying another one.
Secondly, you might be influenced by the insurance company. This is so today much more than it was when I was a young man, when in a very rich house I once found a woman's pearl necklace kept in a bathroom cupboard—but it was insured. That was all that was necessary: it was insured. The insurance companies have become very aware of some of these problems, and I have no doubt have perhaps inconvenienced some noble Lords if they have had a multiplicity of valuables in their homes. But I think the insurance companies must move further downstream and apply to the house of the average man in the street some of the recommendations in the way of security. Thirdly, of course, the public buys security on the recommendations of the police, and particularly the crime
856
prevention panels of which the noble Baroness, Lady Phillips, has been talking.
Supposing, then, you have decided that you are going to buy something, how do you know what to buy? How do you know what is a good safe or a bad safe, a good alarm system or a bad one? The answer to that, curiously enough, is also 10 years old. The British Security Industry Association was set up just then. We have 63 members, covering 90 per cent., by volume, of the turnover of the industry. We have 32,000 employees in the marketing and servicing side. I am not counting anything on the manufacturing side.
In this industry there are four sections; and the one which I think may be of interest to your Lordships more than any other concerns alarms. This industry has grown dramatically. So much so, that in the last three years 20,000 new alarms have been put in in each of those years. In fact, there are about 350 alarm companies but—and this is the but—of those, only 100 are what are called approved installers. Some six years ago there was set up an association called the National Supervisory Council for Intruder Alarms. No influence is applied to this by the security industry. It was set up by the insurance companies with the consent of the Home Office and other interested bodies. That council is the body which approves installations. They have the power to go in at any time, with the owner's consent, to inspect these alarms.
My Lords, you end up with 100 approved installers and 53 of these happen to be in the security industry association that I was telling you about. There is no need for me to tell your Lordships that there are two different kinds of alarm. There is the audible alarm, the one that goes off to the neighbours' annoyance if it is not properly set up; and there is the secret alarm which goes back either to the police force or to the central station. Again, this causes great annoyance if it is not efficient. There are two points there. The first is the question of key-holding. It is absolutely essential in the interests of crime prevention and in the interests of the public that there should be a proper key-holding system for that alarm or that building. In the case of a company, that means that you probably do it using a warden system

857
and, in the case of a private individual, you trust a co-operative neighbour. The second point is that anyone can invent an alarm system; it is the easiest thing in the world. The difficulty is to make it go off when you want it to go off and not to allow it to go off when you do not want it to go off. And that costs money. Unless there is some quid pro quo from the insurance company in relation to that extra expense involved in getting a good alarm system, you will have the problems of the false alarms which have been referred to.
An analysis of this was made by Loughborough College some four or five years ago in the Birmingham area. There were four causes of false alarms and they were equal in number, 25 per cent., roughly speaking, equal. First, the wrong type of system had been put into a place; second, there had been bad servicing. My industry would have to accept responsibility for both. Third, the user had made a mistake which set the alarm off—and that is common. Fourth—and perhaps it is not as prevalent today as it was then—was a Post Office line fault running from the alarm system to the central station.
We have mentioned the question of wardens in connection with alarms. These are two other sections of the same industry. One is the guard and patrol angle, hiring a warden to guard and patrol and prevent crime; the other is the transport of cash. In these days, very few companies would put at risk their own employees to get cash from the bank if the figures involved were of great consequence. The other advantage of wardens is that not only can they prevent crime but they can also detect fire because—and I do not know whether your Lordships know this—the best fire detector is the human nose. If you have a warden on the premises, he can spot that quicker than any form of fire detection. I should add on the transport side—and you read about it so often in the papers—the great work that is done by the cash carrying companies. Is it not extraordinary that only about 20 years ago if £20,000 was lost in a cash-carrying episode, that would have made headlines? Nowadays, a small paragraph covers a quarter of a million pounds taken from a badly-run cash transport organisation.
The fourth section—and I do not want to devote any great time to this today—
858
is that of safes and locks. The difficulty is that you never know what you have bought until the safe or lock has been attacked. It is a curiosity of this industry throughout the world that most of the safe-making companies are over 100 years old. I do not know quite what the explanation is. Maybe it is because they are honest and trusted. What you are doing if you are selling locks and safes—and I should love to have the noble Lord, Lord Airedale, on my staff; for he is an excellent lock salesman—is just to push the burglar next door. It is an anti-social device. So long as you get the right lock or right safe in your place, what happens next door, many people say, is not your responsibility.
Running through this whole industry is the question of employees and the probity of employees, the private armies that the noble Baroness referred to. That is a big issue. I make two points there. First, it is very rare for these employees to run foul of the police because, obviously, they are the first to be suspected. Of course, each company in the association that I have been talking about takes great care in choosing the people who work for them. The other point—and it has not been mentioned recently in this country—is whether there should be a form of licensing either for the industry or for the individuals. It so happens that the Home Office is not very keen about it and, certainly, the industry is not keen about it. It would be clumsy and there would be a number of loopholes. It has been done and is now in force in New Zealand but the issues are so much smaller there than here. I should like the Home Office and other bodies to think about a charter for the British Security Industry Association and to make sure that it becomes a professional body, with its acknowledged standards and ethics improved, to look after this aspect of the business.
I just note, on the matter of the police, that our industry's relationship with them is excellent. Like other speakers, I have the greatest admiration for the work they do, not only in their ordinary work of detection and in a preventative role; but — and this is the point which has been touched on but without quite the emphasis I am putting on it—more and more police are now finding that they have got to concentrate their limited resources on public order duties and the investigation of

859
serious crime. This is due to the diminution of numbers which has been already referred to; but you can get an instance of what I mean from a recent article in the Financial Times saying that the police are no longer in a position to give insurance companies particulars of a burglary loss. They have not enough police to get around; and so from them it falls on to other bodies to prevent crime in the context in which I am talking. I think that that comes from a much closer alliance between the industry and the insurance companies.
The director general of this association says that no one wants to pay for crime prevention until they are forced to do so; but a financial advantage or an inducement can work wonders. I feel that the real backing of insurance companies for companies and individuals who buy the right kind of security, whether alarms, safes, locks or cash carrying—and not just an alarm but approved alarm, and not just the physical product but the right one for the job—is that if the insurance company sees that the company or the householder has done that, then they should give to the company or individual an adequate rebate on the premium for the insurance for playing their proper part in crime prevention. If there is anything in the three points I have made: a charter for the association, closer links with the insurance company in really making them insist on good physical and electronic devices; and, thirdly, giving adequate rebates on the premium, then I think three things would happen: we will be raising the standards throughout the whole industry—and, if you are worried about that phrase "private armies" then so be it, we must raise those standards—we also will bring a realism into the insurance world, with happier results for them; and, above all, we would be lightening the load on the police and bringing peace of mind to the public who take these matters so much more to heart.
6.20 p.m.
Lord INGLEWOOD: My Lords, I am afraid that I cannot give you as many tips on the anti-burglar front as the noble Lord who has just sat down. But I can say that I had reason to buy a small safe over the past year; it happens to have his family firm's name on it and it has not
860
been broken yet! I should, however, like to add one thing to the various protective devices that the noble Lord mentioned, and it is the cheapest of them all. That is putting a floodlight on the front of your house, my Lords, and maybe one on the rear, especially if there are easy approaches for any malefactors.
I am very glad that the noble Baroness raised this question again. Of the different branches of policing, preventive policing is the Cinderella, but I believe that it is coming into its own now—and not before time. For most of us, preventive policing implies public co-operation—that is, co-operation in the task of helping in the "probability of detection". I think that those were the words which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, used in our last debate. And is a very appropriate day for us to be debating this subject because last Friday in Cardiff the Prime Minister referred to this when he opened a police station, and I am glad to quote some of the things he said and to support them. There were some other sour things he said over the week-end about which I am not so enthusiastic, but when he was opening this police station he said:
"But I want to emphasise that the police cannot do the job of protecting us on their own. They need active help from parents, teachers, community leaders, social workers—every member of the community has a part to play if the tide of crime is to be rolled back. I know that the police rely on this kind of support in their work and I am sure that it will be forthcoming".
Those are very good words at this time and I am particularly pleased to have read them to you because I tried to say the same thing in our debate last Wednesday.
If anything is obvious about policing today it is this need for right minded people to help the professionals so far as they are able. Much police work is so skilled and so exacting that it is beyond any but the professionals; but much is not so exacting. It needs some training but that is not beyond most of us; even people of our age who are reasonably fit, and those who are younger, too. It needs common sense and experience of handling people. If such people volunteer to help the police, they must be given a welcome.
I hope that the police will feel that our recent debates here have been of help in enlightening the public about some of their problems because the public know

861
all too little about the difficulties the police are facing today. The police are amusingly and curiously suspicious about all and everything they lump together and call "politicians", and that covers nearly everyone in the public service who does not wear a blue uniform. As I say, their job is not well understood by the majority of our people and the two pages which appeared in the Daily Mail last Monday, must have been an eye opener for most of the readers of that paper. How bare the cupboard is when it comes to finding PCs and WPCs available for patrol duties at night! That story is not peculiar to that area, which I think was Vine Street. It could be repeated almost anywhere in any large town on many nights.
In conversation the other day, a friend living in the Clapham neighbourhood was speaking to me about the number of petty thefts in the neighbourhood, which are unfortunately going up, and not only during the school holidays but even on half holidays, and there are worse crimes such as breaking and entering. He was saying, too, how unhappy and unpleasant it was to notice the growing reluctance of people to come forward and tell the police what they had seen because in many cases they were frightened. The area in which this is happening is spreading across London. My friend said, "Why cannot we be given a lead as to how we can help the police?" He said that there would be many people who would respond if only the appeal were skilfully made. That was the situation reported to me in Clapham. I doubt if it was exaggerated and I am sure that something similar could be found in many other areas and not just in London.
Following up, I should like to say how glad I am that the Home Office appears to be giving such a good lead in this field. I wonder whether they have yet produced a good booklet, not just telling you how to lock a bicycle or secure the boot of a car, but saying what men and women of some capacity can do to help. In the counties, I hope that the police authorities will be given a rôle and given some encouragement by the Home Office because they can be a useful bridge between the police forces and the general public.
France is taking this very seriously at the present time. They have had a high level committee of inquiry set up by
862
the Minister of Justice which has covered this whole field. I will only quote two points from the summary. First, they stress the importance of small police stations and not just concentrating their police in large stations spaced widely apart. They want not only crime prevention panels locally but—and this may be the way that the French mind works—they recommend a central organisation which is prepared to give a lead and impetus to the movement, both at the force, or area, level and at the county level, and smaller. They are particularly anxious too that there representatives of the Bar and the local Press should be associated with these panels.
The alternative may be the continuing growth of private firms specialising in security work. When I say that, I do not mean electronic devices, safes and so on, but men employed by different firms who carry out semi-police work. Some may be very good, but I suspect that they do not all attain the same standard. I would deplore the growth of this movement if it were to continue. I would much prefer to see all of it come under the police, with those people who are taking part in it given something that they feel is really worth doing. Otherwise, they will drop away and we shall have made no progress. But we must make progress, and that means calling for the aid of men and women of goodwill, as was said more than once in our debate last week. Then, having achieved that response, we must give them something to do which they feel is really worth doing.
6.27 p.m.
The Earl of LYTTON: My Lords, it is always a pleasure to take part in a debate in which the noble Baroness, Lady Phillips, speaks; it is a special pleasure when she leads the debate. There is always some kind of gaiety in her treatment of any subject, however solemn. I noticed among her gaieties her use of the expression:
"Prevent us, oh Lord, in all our deeds."
That expression at prayer was one which my father found a great obstacle to any prayer of petition when he was at school. He said: "It clearly means, Oh Lord, please throw a spanner into our works and prevent us achieving our aim'". Yet again the word "prevent" has not

863
meant exactly what the noble Baroness tried to make us believe it does, any more than it did for my father.
I sympathise also with the noble Baroness that she had her subject down for debate in a clear field with debates on crime a long way behind. Then along comes a major debate labelled "Authority and the Law". Nobody speaks about authority, but everybody speaks about crime. Yet again, there is a slight deception in this debate because it started off as a debate on crime prevention and then the words were added a little later,
"with particular reference the work of crime prevention panels",
too late to stop me going a little wider, and the noble Baroness is agreeable that I should do so.
I should like to focus the major part of what I say on a part of the speech in last week's debate of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner. I should also like to ask the Government whether they can answer questions on it, even if not today and if not by producing papers, at any rate in some form. The noble and learned Lord said that after almost a lifelong consideration of the problem of crime he had reached the conclusion that our best bet was to ensure that somebody thinks when he has done a job that he will be caught and punished—because that is the best deterrent of the lot. The noble and learned Lord quoted Sir Leon Radzinowicz as his authority, but he did not get that particular thought from Sir Leon's book, although he quoted the book, because he himself was saying the same thing rather more than a dozen years ago.
The noble and learned Lord gave certain particulars and, in this connection, my first question would be: do the Government agree that this is the best bet in a field where nobody has any certainty of any kind? To move on from that, I should also like to ask whether the Government agree with the figures given for expectation of being caught in col. 494 of the report of the debate that we had in this House on 1st March, 1978. The expectation in former times which was referred to by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, as "satisfactory" was of a more than 50 per cent. chance of
864
being caught. The chances now, according to the examples which he gave us, varied between 8 per cent. and 33 per cent. Do the Government agree that these are the present percentages and that unless those figures are drastically changed we cannot expect crime to diminish?
The noble and learned Lord went on directly to relate the detection of crime to the size of the police force. He made a direct link between the two, and so I would ask: do the Government agree with the figures that he gave in col. 494 where he said, I think, that, over about 14 years:
"crime has increased 400 per cent.; the police have increased 15 per cent.".
Is that true? Does it represent what I would imagine would be the full productivity of a smaller force, using this, that or the other device and not so many policemen? It is a tremendous reduction in the relationship between police numbers and crime, if the figures given are true and valid ones.
The noble and learned Lord welcomed the pledges made by Mr. Whitelaw, and possibly others, to increase the police force. Of course, we are all hesitant about what people promise to do when they are in Opposition, and he made quite fair in pointing out that, in many years of Government, the Party now in Opposition have not done what they say they are going to do next time. Therefore, I wait with the same apprehension as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, hoping that something more important will be found than paying more for the police. I have a fear that no Government will do it.
I think they will try to explain how other methods should work. One of the constantly recurring factors is that crime is somehow connected with poverty. During the 14 years of this rise in crime, I suggest that not only has crime risen by 400 per cent.—if that is a true figure—but that wealth has also risen by 400 per cent. and that crime today is a product of a wealthy society and not of a poor society. If we go on harping on poverty, we shall make very little progress. I have been in some of the poorest communities in the world, as I have said before, and there is practically no crime at all in them. Crime is a product of the wealthy society:

865
that is what we have to cope with. We have to deal with wealth and not with poverty.
Then we are told that unemployment is a factor. I deplore unemployment as much as anybody else, but I look back on the property that I have administered during my little span in Somerset, and I think about the monuments that are to be seen to the greater unemployment and poverty of the recent past. People put up enormous walls because in winter they were unemployed on the farms. For food, they would gather stones from the fields and make these great monuments on Exmoor—the tremendous fences which everybody now admires. They are like the Pyramids in their representation of dire poverty and unemployment. If people did not build those things, they could do nothing.
Surely, now, things are very different. The right to work is recognised and if men or women do not get work they can be given compensation in lieu. Not long ago I was interested to see that The Times had picked out of somebody's portfolio a number of families in dire need. Those families were visited and it was found that things were by no means calamitous: there may have been four or five children, but they were well dressed and all at school. Of course, that is not an ideal situation, but let us look at the past and at the progress which has been made. The right to work has been recognised and compensation is given in lieu if work is not available. There were some dreadful times in the past and I have spoken to people who lived through them—for example, there was a contractor who planted trees for one of my forbears, and when there was a frost lasting ten weeks he did not have anything and he did not get anything from anywhere else: he could not work. That is the type of poverty and unemployment from which we have sprung, and it is not all so dreadfully bad today. Even unemployment is not so bad.
I turn now to another matter which is constantly brought to our notice: that is, the question of housing. I spent some time—and it was one of the most enjoyable periods of my life—helping to run a boys' club in Bermondsey; and at that time people talked of the dreadful slums. Everybody spoke of slum clearance and the housing director talked of new plans
866
to provide more air and more space. More air and more space have arrived, with the assistance of Hitler, the doodle-bugs and other forms of destruction. Thanks to those things, the slums disappeared and beautiful buildings have taken their place. We have wonderful schools and there is a great deal more air and space; but people do not like the high-rise flats. The people who live in them are afraid, and they are afraid of their neighbours: they do not know them. There was a community feeling among those terraced slums. People knew everybody else and, from the point of view of protection, the terrace is a great obstacle to crime. The higgledy-piggledy council house estate is an absolute pleasure-ground for the thief and, as Bacon said about 400 years ago,
"Opportunity makes the thief".
There are some things on which I should have liked to dwell, which were said by others in this debate. I liked what the noble Lord, Lord Airedale, said, about leading us not into temptation. It is true that unguarded property is a provocation to theft, and it is not always that one can get co-operation. If I have mentioned this before, I apologise. But there was a certain friar, who had charge of schoolboys, and he asked, I think, Marks and Spencer or Woolworth—I should hate to label anybody in particular—whether they would kindly leave watches, which were just inside the porch, further in and out of the way, because his scholars were stealing them. But they said "No". They did not like that. They held to the argument that what somebody can hold is already half sold. Some little jingle of that kind was their maxim, but it is not right.
On the other hand, there are other forms of argument in this line, and here I know that the noble Baroness agrees with me. When a judge says that a pretty girl who has been raped is largely responsible for being pretty and wearing a pretty dress, that is an absolutely intolerable argument and is totally unacceptable. So that one has to be careful. I never prepare a speech. I just go on talking for a certain time and then I see that it is time to turn off the tap, so I am turning it off.
6.42 p.m.
Lord HOUGHTON of SOWERBY: My Lords, I apologise to the House for

867
rising without giving notice of my desire to speak, but there are occasions when a little spontaniety in our debates is justified. It is what one hears that may prompt some remarks which can be a more or less useful contribution to a debate. I regret that I was not in the House when my noble friend Lady Phillips opened the debate, but I have listened to the whole of the debate since. In the circumstances, I must be very brief.
I sometimes wish that we would not lump all crime together, and discuss it as if it were one kind of thing. It is many kinds of things, and I sometimes think that we ought to distinguish between one form of crime and another. I take, first, the speech of the noble Viscount, Lord Long, who referred to discipline, education and so on. Like many noble Lords, I have lived long enough to see three generations of young people swept up in war. This is only the second generation of young people in my lifetime not swept up in war. I was in the Army at 17, and I came out at 22. That took care of my dispositions to delinquency.
I was subject, as were many noble Lords of my generation, to the disciplines, hardships and dangers of war. I was subject, as many noble Lords have been, to the discipline of a rigorous non-conformist home, with chapel twice on Sundays, Sunday school twice on Sundays, strict discipline in the home and no newspapers allowed in the house on Sundays. It was a God-fearing household. When you had been through that, you were then sent to the war to be slain, and people wondered what kind of life, what kind of country and what kind of beliefs they were inheriting, if that was how the world treated its young people.
I should also like to refer to what I often describe as the crime of protest. There are many crimes committed in forms of protest. Are hunt saboteurs criminals? Are animal liberation movements criminal? They are deeply moved by what they feel to be a corrupt society, and they will protest against it. What about Grunwick and the disorders, the violence, the attacks on the police and the breaches of the law? But that was organised by responsible trade union leaders and the Trades Union Congress. What are young people to think, when that
868
kind of demonstration can be organised day after day by responsible grown-up people, although if young people did it they would be accused of disorder and crime.
Let me now come to drugs. This afternoon we have read of very severe sentences being imposed on people who have been convicted of manufacturing cannabis. This is not the law of God. This is the law of society. Society has decided that cannabis is a dangerous thing, and that it is a discreditable occupation to manufacture or possess it. The tobacco trade is killing more people than drugs, but that is a socially acceptable trade. It is associated with sparkling streams, seductive women and strong-armed men of the Marlboro country. Smoking is the symbol of manhood, but 55,000 people clutter up our hospitals every year, dying in anguish from lung cancer. Nobody says that that is a crime.
In my boyhood, the brewing industry committed the biggest crime against a poverty-striken community of any element in society in our history. Yet the brewers are respectable people. They are allowed to offer their seductive opportunities to indulge in alcohol, and the media are used to indicate what a pleasurable occupation it is to drink your beer, encouraging more young people to be addicts to one form of drug or another. But if it is cannabis, then you must be sent down for 22 years.
Are these things rational? Have we got them rationalised, or are we just prattling along in the same old middle-class conventional attitudes to crime? What is crime, except misbehaviour; a refusal to comply with ordered society? Was my father a criminal, when he refused to pay the Conservative education rate in the early part of this century, because he was nonconformist and would not subsidise Anglican education? Was he a criminal when, in my boyhood, he went to prison for a fortnight every year, rather than pay? I regarded him as a hero. I have inherited some of my non-conformist tendencies from him. If I ever go to prison, it will be for the crime of protest. I am not in favour of law and order in the conventional sense that you must behave, even though society fails to respond to what you want it to do.

869
How many young people think that Parliament is irrelevant? It cannot keep pace with the changes that are being imposed on young people, and the violent adjustments that are necessary in a changing society. Many people do not know where they are. They are bewildered and looking around for signs of good behaviour, of good citizenship. But many young people believe that they are living in a corrupt society, and a corrupt society corrupts other people, and so it goes on. I hope that the noble Viscount, Lord Amory, will not interrupt, because I am in full spate and will sit down in two minutes. I feel so strongly about this, and when I listened to this debate I felt that your Lordships were missing the point of what it is about. Therefore, I would urge your Lordships not to go on with this kind of conventional debate on law and order and crime, but try to sort it out and examine those elements in our society which are giving rise to so much discontent, and to a disposition to protest, to refuse and to reject the society in which people find themselves. My Lords, I have said enough.
Viscount AMORY: My Lords, I should have hated to interrupt the noble Lord's magnificent peroration, but I think I can say before the noble Lord sits down—
Lord HOUGHTON of SOWERBY: I have sat down.
Viscount AMORY: —that he seemed to me to be saying that crime is misbehaviour. Surely that is not so. Crime is breaches of the law.
6.50 p.m.
Lord HARRIS of GREENWICH: My Lords, I think that I should hurriedly intervene. This debate began as an interesting discussion of crime panels and in its dying moments it has engaged the attention of a former Chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party and a former Chancellor of the Exchequer who asked some rather deep philosophical questions which go beyond the narrow confines of my noble friend's Motion. I am quite sure that the two noble Lords who have just spoken will agree with me that we are very much indebted to my noble friend for having given us the opportunity to have this debate today. My noble
870
friend's Motion has enabled us to concentrate on what can be done outside the criminal justice system to deal with the problem of crime. Much has certainly been done to strengthen the police and to make sure that the law gives suitable powers to the courts to deal with offenders, but here we are concerned with the problem of preventing the occurrence of offences which is an altogether different question.
Rising crime inevitably is a serious problem. There is no panacea for it and it is a cruel deception to pretend that there is. This brings me to the speech of the noble Viscount, Lord Long, who, as always, spoke with moderation. However, the noble Viscount raised a number of questions which went outside the narrow terms of my noble friend's Motion. Some of those questions were raised during the debate we had last week on the Motion of the noble Lord, Lord O'Hagan, and I should like to deal with one or two of them now.
The noble Viscount raised the question of the shortage of police. There is a shortage of police although, incidentally, not quite so serious a shortage as when the noble Viscount's friends were in Office in 1974. Both Governments have confronted this major difficulty. There are now about 7,500 more policemen than there were in March 1974, and in the Metropolitan Police district there are about 1,200 more. I say this not in any way to understate the problem. I agree with the noble Viscount that this is a real difficulty. By no means is it a nationwide difficulty. Quite substantial numbers of police forces are pretty well up to their establishments. This is a problem which affects big cities, and one or two county forces also suffer difficulties.
The noble Viscount made one other point with which I very much agree: that it is necessary for all of us to give support to the police. I agree with my noble friend, who mentioned the Grunwick picket lines and the large amount of comment in the newspapers about the need to support the police who are doing a difficult and dangerous job on behalf of the entire community. But there are other occasions when noble Lords can make a fairly direct contribution. May I give an illustration of what I mean by this. Last year we spent a great deal of time on the Criminal Law Act 1977.

871
During the course of the proceedings, a new clause was inserted at the instance of the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder. We spent a great deal of time on what is now Section 48 of the Act, a clause which gives power to make rules as to the furnishing of information by the prosecutor in criminal proceedings. One might perfectly naturally say, "What has that got to do with the police? I will tell the House exactly what I mean by it. When we had our discussion on this new clause, I pointed out that very substantial police resources would be involved if the House insisted upon writing this clause into the Bill. I resisted it on behalf of the Government because of the public expenditure implications. I am bound to say that I was a very lonely figure when I made these comments because all of the pressure in the House—quite reasonable pressure for reasons which I wholly understand—was in favour of writing into the Bill a provision which was going to have the most profound implications on police force resources.
A few days later I went to a large county police force outside London. They had been reading in the newspapers about this new clause and, quite bluntly, they were astonished to find that in a responsible House of Parliament their difficulties had, apparently, in no way been taken account of by anyone who had participated in that debate. May I emphasise once again that I say this not because I wish to underestimate in any way the value of a provision of this kind. However, I think it is right to emphasise to the House that there is at times—the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, touched on this point in his speech—a degree of incomprehension in the police force about the demands which are made in both Houses of Parliament for additional statutory responsibilities to be laid on the police at a time when, as the noble Viscount rightly said, there is heavy pressure on their resources because of the increased level of crime. When I was told this, I assured the police that I would report their views, and I must tell the House that it is a widespread view in the Police Service that this is so.
May I turn very briefly to another point which the noble Viscount made, and I am bound to say that here I part company
872
very substantially from him. It relates to the new view that the way out of our problem of increased crime in our society is to reintroduce the glasshouse in one form or another. I am particularly glad that the noble Lord, Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone, has now joined us. I must say quite bluntly to the noble Viscount that this policy was rejected by two successive Conservative Home Secretaries: namely, by Mr. Maudling and the noble Lord, Lord Carr of Hadley. A conscious decision was taken by them when they were at the Home Office that in the 1970s there was no advantage in persisting with a régime of this kind. It simply did not work. That is why they rejected it. May I say very seriously to the noble Viscount and his friends that they should pause long before they believe that this is a way to deal with the problem of some of these young delinquents.
I am sorry that the noble Viscount, Lord Colville of Culross, has left us. I know that—given the fact that he, like me, has had responsibility for prison administration as a Home Office Minister—he would agree with me that the idea that there is some form of luxury régime in prisons, whereby prisoners spend all their time watching television and having a rather nice time, is very far from the truth. I have referred on a number of occasions in the past to the fact that there can be three men in a small cell in a rotting Victorian prison that is situated in one of our city centres. It is a sad sight and it is a very long way from the description applied by the noble Viscount, Lord Long, in his speech. I must repeat that we have one of the largest prison populations in Western Europe. Indeed, so far as I can recall, there is no country in Western Europe that has a larger prison population than our own. I do not believe that to return to some form of "glasshouse" régime, a régime which has been rejected by the Armed Forces, would be a way out of this problem.
A number of other points have been made in our debate today. The noble Earl, Lord Lytton, asked me whether I took the view that certainty of detection was likely to be a far more substantial deterrent than anything else. I agree with the noble Earl. I, like him, heard my noble and learned friend Lord Gardiner say this in the debate which we had last week. The noble Earl asked me about

873
the size of the Metropolitan Police Force. I should like to write to him, if I may. One point which is sometimes left out of account when discussing the situation in London is the very substantial number of civilians who now work for the police service and who were not so employed in the 1930s and earlier. I believe that a question on this subject was put down about a year or so ago by a noble Lord.
I am now in a position to give the figures. They represent a quite striking indication of the situation. In 1947, the number of civilian employees in the police force was 2,977. This number had risen to nearly 10,000 in 1957 and to nearly 20,000 in 1967. The number was over 34,000 in 1977. May I repeat that this does not in any way minimise the serious and significant manpower problem in the Metropolitan Police. It is just to give, I hope, a rather more balanced account than is sometimes given when there is discussion of these problems.
In addition to the speech of the noble Earl, we have had a number of other interesting speeches in this debate. The noble Lord, Lord Airedale, made a number of suggestions that I should very much like to consider. As he would realise, they go rather outside the confines of my own Departmental responsibility, but I should certainly like to study what he said and will indeed do so. The noble Lord, Lord Hayter, spoke with his great expertise of the security industry in this country and I think his was a very valuable speech indeed.
My Lords, I would now come, if I may, to the introductory speech made by my noble friend Lady Phillips. Certainly I should like to join with her in the tribute she paid to the work of the crime prevention panels. I think they do important and valuable work on behalf of the entire community and it is right that on an occasion such as this we should pay tribute to that work. As my noble friend said, there are about 150 of these panels in England and Wales. They undoubtedly have an important continuing role to play as a means by which local communities can help the police to deal with local crime problems.
The emphasis of their work is on helping people, at home and at work to take sensible precautions to avoid becoming
874
the victims of crime. The ways in which they have gone about this, I believe, demonstrate the imagination which one so often finds among volunteers with enthusiasm and commitment. They include publicity of different kinds, much of it as leaflets to householders, stickers on cars, competitions of one sort and another, with an emphasis on making school children aware of the need for crime prevention.
The targets of their activity have also been varied. To prevent burglary, advice has been given not only about the security of dwellings and the risks of leaving premises unoccupied, but also the precautions which can be taken against bogus callers, which is a substantial problem in many of our cities. The prevention of theft of and from cars has been another target of the crime prevention panels. This is especially important since stolen cars are often, inevitably, used for criminal purposes. There have been a number of schemes to prevent shoplifting, and "early warning systems" to safeguard against repeated cheque frauds, which again is a rapidly expanding area of criminal activity.
Panels have discussed with architects and local authorities the crime prevention aspects of design. Much quite interesting pioneering work in this respect has been carried out by the Westinghouse Corporation in the United States. Some of this I saw when I was in America. I think probably we still have something to learn in the area of constructing buildings in such a way that they are, to some degree at least, proof against some forms of vandalism. At least 90 panels have reviewed the problem of vandalism in their areas to see what preventive measures can be taken. Crime prevention panels have extensive contacts in the communities in which they work, but they also depend considerably and inevitably on the support which they receive from the police. The police can help to identify the problems in which the services of a panel may be used. And they can contribute expertise and resources to help carry out the action which may be necessary.
There are also, obviously, ways in which central Government can and do help. It was the Home Office Standing Committee on Crime Prevention, of which my noble friend is a member, which,

875
some 10 years ago, recommended the setting up of crime prevention panels. In the relatively short period of its existence the Standing Committee has made an important contribution to crime prevention. The fitting of anti-theft devices in cars, for example, owes a great deal to the efforts of this committee. Another useful suggestion was that of a security liaison office in particular industries. These enable an industry to co-ordinate its security efforts, and it has been shown that losses can be very substantially reduced in this way. The committee has produced a number of useful reports, one of which, called Protection against Vandalism, has made an important contribution to current thinking. More recently over 100,000 copies of a booklet giving examples of how security can reduce losses in commerce and industry were distributed to senior managers, who were encouraged to review the precautions which they were taking.
The Home Office also has a contribution to make in other ways. Over the last five years about £300,000 a year has been spent on crime prevention publicity. The most recent campaign encouraged people to protect their cars by locking them up; anti-theft devices are manifestly not a great deal of use if they do not. Two films on vandalism are being shown in the Granada television area in a pilot scheme which we are monitoring. The Home Office also gives support to publicity mounted by the crime prevention panels and by the police. An increasing proportion of the Home Office research effort is being allocated to projects designed to give lessons on crime prevention. The effect of car security devices has been reported on, and the effect of a publicity campaign is being evaluated.
I think there is a further way in which the Home Office can help; that is, by co-ordinating and disseminating information. This is done in a variety of ways. The activities of crime prevention panels, and other related developments, are circulated to panel members in a quarterly newsletter. For example, the Department of Education and Science has recently issued a leaflet suggesting possible ways of reducing damage caused by vandalism in schools and colleges. Ministers have held meetings with those who have the
876
task of controlling the ugly phenomenon of football hooliganism. In April last year my right honourable friend the Home Secretary called a conference of a large number of organisations concerned with vandalism, so that views and information could be exchanged.
I think this illustrates the support which the Government give to those in the community who are taking initiatives aimed at reducing crime. There are signs of increasing interest in crime prevention in the community as a whole, which cannot simply look to outside forces to control the level of crime in society. There are widespread voluntary efforts; for example, the work done by the National Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders, and I know that there are a substantial number of other schemes where involvement of the community appears to some extent to have reduced the crime problem. Indeed, the Government's inner cities programme has a hearing on this problem.
There is obviously more to crime than is to be judged from statistics. Paradoxically, crime prevention efforts can sometimes lead to increases in recorded crime, by encouraging individuals to take the problem seriously and to report crime to the police. This is why, to some extent at least, one has to be a little cautious about crime statistics in themselves—also, if I may say so, clear-up rates by the police; they are a valuable guide but no more than that. Too much significance should not be attached to them, because inevitably there is a great deal of scepticism among not all, but many police officers about the assumption by many people outside the Police Service that one has to have absolute acceptance of these figures. They are not so regarded by everybody in the Police Service. They give a general indication of the dimensions of the problem but no more than that.
Prevention was, of course, one of the first objectives of the early police forces. There is now considerable debate both within and outside the Police Service about that role. The work of the police in schools, with young people and on the development of good community relations—in addition to the free advisory service offered by police crime prevention officers—is all related to crime prevention in this broader sense. The police are

877
clearly in a unique position, with their experience of local crime problems, and the contact which they can establish with the community, to make a valuable contribution. I know from my visits to police forces and police training institutions that these aspects of policing are increasingly being emphasised and discussed in police training. Indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, alluded to that matter in his speech.
The Government will continue to give priority to maintaining the strength of the system for dealing with offenders. The police, the courts and other law and order services must be strong enough to meet the demands which we place upon them. We also have to recognise that the preventive effect of these services is, at best, uncertain, and that we all have to do what we can in other ways to reduce the demands upon them. Law enforcement is there when all else has failed. The burden on the system, and perhaps particularly on the police, is a consequence of society's own failures. When we next debate—as we are bound to do—the subject of crime, I hope that we shall remember how much effort is now being devoted to crime prevention and how this makes a real contribution to the welfare of society. If this debate has had that effect, it will have been well worth while.
Lord AIREDALE: My Lords, before the Minister sits down, I should like to say that he made tremendous play of the astonishment of the police at not having been consulted about the Amendment put down by my noble friend Lord Wigoder, which was a very acceptable Amendment designed to secure that accused people should be given full information about the case that they would have to meet. Surely, when an Amendment is put down, a copy goes straight to the Home Office which has the opportunity to consult the police about the effect of the Amendment upon them and to state the view of the police, if necessary, when the Amendment is debated. Is not that the way in which the system is supposed to work?
Lord HARRIS of GREENWICH: My Lords, if the Home Office were to try to consult the police about every Amendment put down to every Bill when it passes through Parliament I must tell the noble Lord quite bluntly that the system would
878
be a little overloaded. I thought it right to point out to the House—and I would be sorry if the noble Lord did not like this—that it is perhaps desirable, when there are loud cheers from all round the House when a noble Lord rightly, in my view, says that we must all support the police, to indicate that on some occasions they believe that many people in both Houses of Parliament, at a tune when there is increased pressure on their resources, do not pay as much attention to the views of the Police Service as some police officers believe they should. That was the point that I was trying to make which does not, in my view, appear to be unreasonable.
7.14 p.m.
Baroness PHILLIPS: My Lords, I set out to draw attention to the work of crime prevention as opposed to the constant reiteration we have about punishment. I want to prevent people actually becoming criminals and I want potential victims not to become actual victims. I believe that I have achieved the object. I should like to thank my noble friend the Minister for his very splendid contribution in which he underlined the work of crime prevention. I repeat that I hope that the Home Office will spend more money on public advertising, because I believe that a national lead would be very useful. I should like to thank all the noble Lords who have taken part in the debate. I should like to thank my noble friend Lord Lytton who always comes in so splendidly on this subject with his usual very pungent and forceful comments.
I express my thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Hayter, who I understand specially delayed an engagement in order to take part in this debate. I hope that he did not think I was in any way criticising the security industries when I referred to them as "private armies". I have great respect for them especially now that I am working with the noble Lord. I was recently attending a conference at Aston University. I wanted to go into a room to sleep but the door had slipped and it took two men an hour to saw a panel out of the door in order for me to obtain entry. It seems to me that there must be some way to keep out thieves, even if it is simply by fixing modern doors which are obviously rather defective.

879
Today we have had something unique. We do not stress enough in society that people are actually working on the "positive". For every negative there is a positive. I should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, who again, as always, has been indefatigable in his support for our marvellous police force. I am extremely grateful to the noble Viscount, Lord Long, and the noble Lord, Lord Airedale. I see a picture of the house of the future, with the floodlights playing on the shutters and the people inside busy checking the double locks and wondering whether anybody is actually going to approach them. How their friends would ever get in is a matter of interest.
I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Houghton of Sowerby, did not actually hear what I said, because I really did not say anything that I felt he would have contradicted. Of course, I know precisely what a criminal is—I have not been a magistrate for the length of time I have without being able to establish that the type of person he refers to is hardly ever referred to as a criminal. It always seems to me that perhaps I oversimplify this matter, but I would say to those who talk about our penal system—and I am sorry that the noble Earl, Lord Longford, is not present—that there is a very easy way to keep out of prison; that is, in fact, not to commit a crime.
It seems that in our society we have a very reasonable code of behaviour, but I should like to stress that it is about time that we spoke up with the ordinary people—"the goodies"—who luckily represent a much greater group of the community than the "badies". I gather that I had better withdraw the Motion or a large man will come tomorrow not to take me away but to deliver Papers! My Lords, I beg leave to withdraw the Motion.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

CYPRUS
7.17 p.m.
Lord SPENS Lord SPENS rose to ask Her Majesty's Government whether they are ready to take a lead in helping to restore normal conditions to Cyprus. The noble Lord
880
said: My Lords, six months ago I knew nothing special about Cyprus. I knew that we had British bases there; that it is an island which many people like to visit; that there had been serious troubles between the Greek and Turkish Cypriots, culminating with a landing of Turkish troops who are still there; and that there had been an archbishop who was both priest and political leader, but who had recently died. I believe that that is about all the "man in the street" knows about Cyprus.
Then, last November, I was asked to take an interest in what was happening to the Turkish Cypriots. I was invited to visit the Turkish Federated State of Cyprus. I spent four very full days there in December and I subsequently wrote a report which I have circulated to many of your Lordships here. The last debate on this subject took place on 14th June, 1976, when the noble Lord, Lord Caradon, asked a somewhat similar question to the one that I ask tonight, although his question was directed primarily at action through the United Nations. Nearly two years have passed. There has been economic stagnation on the island and the problem is still with us, although there are signs that further talks may get under way soon. I must, therefore, be careful what I say tonight, but I want to make it clear that the views I shall express are my own opinions as to how things may develop and may be helped to develop.
Unlike the noble Lord, Lord Caradon, I believe that we must look into the past in order to understand what is likely to be acceptable for any final settlement. I do not intend to delay your Lordships very long with this matter, but I want to mention very briefly five points. First, as stated by the noble Lord, there is the feeling of total insecurity by Turkish Cypriots as the result of the attacks on them in 1963, 1967 and 1974. Secondly, there is the failure of the Government of Cyprus to deal with the refugee problems of the Turkish Cypriots. There have been 25,000 refugees since 1963, and the fact is that that Government refused to supply the building materials required to rehouse those refugees but instead declared the materials to be of strategic importance and therefore prohibited. Thirdly, there is the ruling by the Government of Cyprus in 1964 which stopped the registration of any transfers of land to Turkish Cypriots.

881
Fourthly, there is the breakdown of the Constitution from 1964 onwards and the failure of the Guarantor Powers to prevent that happening. Fifthly, there is the fact that in July 1974 there were five days of brutal massacres of both Turkish and Greek Cypriots by Greek extremists under Sampson before the Turkish Army arrived to stop the fighting.
Let me examine those five matters very briefly because they are most important. The first is the insecurity of the Turkish Cypriots. That was adequately covered in the debate two years ago, but it must now be realised that that insecurity has vanished and, therefore, any final solution must not be such as to bring it back for Turkish Cypriots. They are now sitting behind a wall of 30,000 troops and are secure.
Secondly, there is the refugee problem of the Turkish Cypriots since 1963, which nearly trebled in 1974 with some 65,000 refugees to be resettled, many of them having been made refugees three times over during those 10 years. The failure of the Government of Cyprus to help them since 1963 does not now incline Turkish Cypriots to make more sacrifices to help Greek Cypriot refugees. Thirdly, there is the refusal since 1964 of the Government of Cyprus to allow registrations of property transfers to Turkish Cypriots. How can we now expect them to get very excited about Greek Cypriot property rights?
Fourthly—and I think that this is the most important of the five points that I have mentioned—there is the failure of the three Guarantor Powers to carry out their guarantee to preserve the 1960 Constitution. This rankles very deeply with Turkish Cypriots who regard the present Government of Cyprus as an unconstitutional Government and therefore illegal, especially when it holds itself out and is apparently accepted internationally as the lawful Government of the whole Island.
We accept our role as a Guarantor Power and that guarantee, set out in Article II of the 1960 Treaty, reads as follows:
"Greece, Turkey and the United Kingdom, taking note of the undertakings of the Republic of Cyprus set out in Article I of the present Treaty, recognise and guarantee the independence, territorial integrity and security of the Republic
882
of Cyprus and also the state of affairs established by the Basic Articles of its Constitution".
That all comes in the same paragraph. The undertaking of the Government of Cyprus referred to in that paragraph, as set out in Article I of the Treaty, reads:
"The Republic of Cyprus undertakes to ensure the maintenance of its independence, territorial integrity and security, as well as respect for its Constitution".
How can Her Majesty's Government continue to regard the present Government of Cyprus as the legal Government when almost every Basic Article in the 1960 Constitution has been broken and in particular Basic Article No. 182, which reads
"The Articles or parts of Articles of this Constitution set out in Annexe III hereto which have been incorporated from the Zurich Agreement dated 11th February, 1959, are the Basic Articles of this Constitution and cannot, in any way, be amended, whether by way of variation, addition or repeal"?
That is the situation of the Constitution of 1960. It has been broken almost completely by successive Governments of Cyprus. There are no Turkish Ministers in the Government as suggested in one of the Basic Articles; there are no Turkish Members in the Legislative Assembly which is another of the Basic Articles; there are no Turkish public servants, which is another of the Basic Articles; and there is now no constitutional court to decide whether the Constitution is right or not.
My fifth point was about the five days of slaughter before the Turkish Army came in. During that time Greek extremists, led by Sampson, were slaughtering the supporters of Archbishop Makarios as well as the Turkish Cypriots, and burying many of them in mass graves. Turkish Cypriots now believe that the great majority of the 2,000 missing Greek Cypriots went missing during those five days and that the Turkish Army has no responsibility for them.
So much for the past. Although the overall situation has not changed very much, a number of developments have occurred which must affect any final solution. I think that the most important was the final meeting between Archbishop Makarios and Mr. Denktash on 12th February 1977 in the presence of the Secretary-General of the United Nations Organisation, at which four guidelines

883
were agreed between the two leaders for the negotiation of a final settlement. These guidelines read as follows:

"1. We are seeking an independent, nonaligned, bi-communal Federal Republic.

2. The territory under the administration of each community should be discussed in the light of economic viability or productivity and land ownership.

3. Questions of principles like freedom of movement, freedom of settlement, the right of property and other specific matters, are open for discussion taking into consideration the fundamental basis of a bi-communal federal system and certain practical difficulties which may arise with the Turkish Cypriot community.

4. The powers and functions of the Central Federal Government will be such as to safeguard the unity of the country, having regard to the bi-communal character of the State".

Noble Lords will note the use of the words "Federal Republic", throughout those guidelines.
Since 1976 some 65,000 Turkish refugees have now been re-settled, many of them in properties formerly owned by Greek Cypriots. I do not believe that the Turkish Cypriot authorities will ever agree that these people should be turned out from their homes once again. Other happenings include the death of the Archbishop and the recent changes of government in Turkey. With regard to the former, perhaps we may hope for a less intransigent attitude to a final negotiation; that is certainly likely to be the case in regard to the change of government in Turkey.
These are points of progress. However, during this period, the so-called Government of Cyprus has taken some extreme actions to the detriment of the Turkish Cypriots by declaring the ports of Famagusta, Kyrenia, and Karavostassi and the new airport at Ercan to be illegal ports of entry to the Island. Because that so-called Government continues to be recognised internationally these declarations are taken seriously by other governments.
I have here a copy of the translation of a letter circulated by what I think is the Dutch equivalent of our Shippers' Council to all its members and dated 31st October 1977. It reads in translation:
"I herewith inform you that the Government of the Republic of Cyprus has drawn the attention of the Dutch Government to the fact that, in spite of the Resolution of the United Nations regarding the termination of foreign intervention
884
in Cyprus and the withdrawal of all foreign troops, still about 40 per cent. of the Cypriot territory is being held occupied by Turkish troops.
"In connection herewith, the Cypriot ports situated in the relevant area Famagusta, Kyrenia, Karawastassi, will remain closed to all ships, cargo and persons and the use of these ports will be considered illegal and be punished accordingly".
How can a government which has no authority over 40 per cent. of the island make such a declaration?
The Turkish Cypriots are working very hard to revive the economy of their area and are determined to do so, despite all attempts by the Greek Cypriots to prevent them. They are enthusiastic and capable, but they need help. They are very short of foreign currency because the Central Bank is on the Greek Cypriot side, and, even when they get a share of any foreign aid, they do not benefit from the use of the foreign currency. There are British banks in the north, but they will not perform a proper banking function because of their fear of reprisals by Greek Cypriots against their branches in the south.
I am still awaiting a reply from the Minister for Overseas Development—and I do not expect the noble Lord the Leader of the House to know anything about this—to a letter which I sent direct to the Minister on 16th January, suggesting that there was a precedent for giving aid directly to the Turkish Cypriots and not through the so-called Government of Cyprus. This is written into the 1960 Constitution in regard to certain Turkish municipalities, of which Famagusta is one. I shall not go into details about it. Sufficient to say that the interim reply from the Minister says that I raised a number of legal points which are under consideration. Need it really take so long as from 16th January to 8th March? I do not know. Meanwhile, Famagusta itself is in urgent need of assistance on matters of refuse disposal and water supply; needs which, if they are not met very quickly, may well lead to serious epidemics this summer.
I give one final fact before I come to the possible solutions to this problem. It is a fact that I believe should be very strongly stressed and it is this: apparently there has never, throughout the period of Cypriot independence, been a commercial partnership between any Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot principals. My Lords, just think about that. There they have been, living side by side for years,

885
and yet they have never got into such a relationship as to become partners in any economic venture, not even in the professional field of medicine.
A final solution could be achieved quite quickly, provided both parties—and I emphasise "both"—were ready to compromise from their present positions, the Turkish Cypriots by giving up some of the territory they occupy and the Greek Cypriots by giving up their claims to return to their properties in the north. I believe that the sticking points on the side of the Turkish Cypriots are these: first, they will not ask any of their resettled refugees to move again; secondly, they will not allow many Greek Cypriots to establish themselves in the north of the Island. On the other hand, they may well be persuaded to hand back Varosha to the Greek Cypriots—and that is an area with some 40 hotels and, I believe, 4,000 dwelling houses which are empty at the moment and going to rack and ruin for lack of maintenance—provided satisfactory arrangements are made for the security of the Turkish Cypriots in the Famagusta area.
But, primarily, they will only agree to a settlement on the basis of a semiautonomous Turkish Cypriot administration for the north of the Island, which, inside a loose federal structure, will hand over very limited powers to a future federal government, and those powers will chiefly be involved with foreign affairs. It is no use the Minister of State, Mr. Frank Judd, advising Mr. Denktash—as he was reported as doing in Monday's Daily Telegraph, although it may be an erroneous report— "not to stake his claims too high on the administrative aspect".
That is what this negotiation is all about. Turkish Cypriots will not go back to the 1960 Constitution. Even Makarios agreed that the future organisation should be a "Bi-communal Federal Republic", and nothing short of that will satisfy the Turkish Cypriots. Nor, I believe, will they compensate Greek Cypriots for any losses of property—they have lost enough of their own over the years in the south: 103 villages in 1963. But they will compensate foreign owners of properties in the north. On the other hand, I believe that they want to remain independent of Turkey and to be
886
relieved of the pressures arising from the presence of a large Turkish Army on their part of the Island.
I come now to the basis of my Question, and I do so with the knowledge that there is still, despite our failures as a Guarantor, a very large fund of goodwill towards us among Turkish Cypriots in Cyprus. I believe that our responsibilities towards Cyprus are nearly, if not quite, as great as they are towards Rhodesia. After all, we took over Cyprus from Turkey 10 years before Cecil Rhodes was granted his charter to start the settlement of Rhodesia; and although there has been no UDI in Cyprus, there has been a monstrous erosion of the 1960 Constitution which we had guaranteed to maintain.
Moreover, we are still enjoying, as one Cypriot told me—I cannot remember whether he was a Turkish Cypriot or a Greek Cypriot—the fruits of our sovereign bases. I should like to see our young and energetic Foreign Secretary go on his travels again, as soon as the expected offer from the Turkish Cypriots has been studied. I believe that pressure from us—the third party to this affair—might well tip the balance towards reaching agreement on a solution. And who knows, there might even be the opportunity for the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Carver, to take on a role similar to that of his appointment in Rhodesia; namely, to preside over a transitional period while a new federal Government is being established and Turkish troops withdrawn.
Meanwhile, there are actions which I should like to see Her Majesty's Government take, irrespective of any negotiations, which may, and probably will, drag on for a long time. I should like to see Her Majesty's Government declare that the airport at Ercan is free and should be recognised internationally, provided that it meets international standards, which I believe it does. Similarly, I should like to see Her Majesty's Government declare that the sea ports in the north are open to shipping of all countries; in other words, to declare that the present Government of Cyprus have no jurisdiction in the north.
I should like to see some immediate sent to Famagusta, using if necessary course I suggested in my letter to the

887
Minister for Overseas Development; treating it as a Turkish municipality under the 1960 Constitution. I should like to see the British Council and relief organisations told that they can deal directly with the Turkish Cypriot Administration. Finally, I should like to see Her Majesty's Government warn the present Government of Cyprus that, unless they drop their hostile actions against the north, and if they procrastinate too long in the negotiations, Her Majesty's Government will withdraw recognition of that Government.
I believe that, if Her Majesty's Government were to take these actions, it could safely be left to the enterprise of the Turkish and Greek Cypriots to bring about an economic recovery in Cyprus. I therefore beg leave to ask Her Majesty's Government whether they are ready to take a lead in helping to restore normal conditions to Cyprus.
7.43 p.m.
Lord NEWALL: My Lords, this is an opportune time for the noble Lord, Lord Spens, to ask this Question because I believe a great many people are wondering whether the Government are indeed going to take a lead in helping to restore normal conditions to Cyprus. The noble Lord clearly told us of many of the problems of Turkish Cypriots in his view, but I will not follow the exact detail of his argument.
The land called Cyprus is an island which has been placed by geography at the crossroads of the civilisations of Europe, Asia and Ancient Egypt where races have always met yet have never really mingled. Those are the words of Sir Harry Luke, an ex-Governor of the island, who went on to say that it has the longest political and cultural history of the British Commonwealth, longer than Malta, Ceylon or India, and of course it has had over 30 different rulers and régimes since 1184.
Historically, I think it is true to say that the Turks and Greeks have had a natural hatred for one another, so it is naturally difficult to get them talking together. In more recent times, murders, burnings, rapes and lootings, especially by extremist groups, have taken place and have affected not only Greek and Turkish Cypriots but also the British soldiers, whose rôle was purely to keep the peace between the rival factions within Cyprus. I think it is true
888
to say that faults can be laid at the door of both sides and of course locally some of the crimes have been given importance out of all proportion to their seriousness due to the often rural community nature of many of the local inhabitants and the personal implications for individual families. There are very few families who have been spared all problems.
The Greek Cypriots have always been in the majority and Enosis, or union with Greece, has been an undercurrent of feeling which has occasionally erupted with rival Greek factions being strongly in evidence. I think everybody knows that, in 1959, in Zurich, a major decision was made by the three Powers guaranteeing the island's future, but who knows now what that piece of paper is worth? The Guarantors knew then of the difficulties when they signed and the British certainly realised that their rôle was as a buffer between two antagonistic nations. Since that time many things have happened. There has been the long period of minor aggression between the two sides with possibly the Greek Cypriots as the more energetic ones, continually doing things to discourage and annoy the Turkish Cypriots who were in a permanent minority, and this policy was to prove unacceptable in the long run. Then, when Mr. Sampson organised his coup, it became apparent to the Turkish Cypriots that their somewhat limited aspirations were at stake, and so the Turkish troops were called in.
The Turkish invasion has naturally been scorned by the whole world, and although the Turkish Cypriots, backed by vast forces of Turkish troops, now hold about 40 per cent. of the island, their prospects for international currency, aid, tourism, air travel and even trade by sea are, to say the least, very limited. This inconvenience could, one would hope, be a stimulus and incentive towards the bargaining table, but so far it appears that, although the Greek Cypriots have offered several concessions, the Turkish ones are still awaited. However, after all this time, it is gratifying to find that the Turkish plan is being looked at by the Turkish Prime Minister now with a view to its being made public at the United Nations very soon.
But it is almost a year since the last Greek Cypriot proposals, and the permanent displacement of 200,000 Greek

889
Cypriots from their property leaves some balance to be redressed. No doubt a solution will be very hard to find, for both sides will find it hard to swallow due to the years of conflict and the bitter feelings between them. Both sides are being very obstinate about recognising the other's veiwpoint. The Turkish Cypriots are more worried about their own security than almost anything else, and perhaps this is because they are more by nature the tillers of the land and have not the regular know-how to set up a business quickly in a new area. Their distrust of the Greeks is of very long standing.
There are many people who say that the Greek Cypriots have brought the situation on themselves due to their consistent harrying of the Turkish community over a period of years. Even though I believe there is some substance in this accusation, I feel that the matter goes a great deal deeper, and it is no good raking continuously over the past. A situation exists now and, so long as one bears in mind the main historical innuendoes, that present situation is the one that we must deal with. Otherwise, the historical factors can sometimes blur the problems which we are facing today.
Apart from the domestic problems which may or may not affect other countries, there are various external factors which must be considered. There is NATO, our ultimate bulwark against communist aggression. The Eastern flank has been put in jeopardy by the conflict between Greece and Turkey and, of course, between the Greek and Turkish Cypriots. This is no trifling matter; it has a distinct bearing on the ultimate growth of our potential enemies and a bearing on our own defence structure and it must not be underrated. Secondly—and here I am looking at the problems and rights of many people, not least the British nationals who have lived or have property in Cyrpus—there is the weighty problem of compensation, which is essentially one of property. It is a problem which must necessarily take second place to the problems of settlement and the main problem of basic agreement between the two sides in Cyprus.
When it is agreed what the compensation is, there is the problem of the currency in which the payment will be made. Some people think that the Turkish currency
890
is a little bit spongy, and yet this is one of the most likely currencies that will be used. Her Majesty's Government have a clear duty to establish the facts so that the many individuals involved will get proper financial compensation which they deserve. Then there is the EEC agreement on trade with Cyprus and the duties and levies involved. It can be said that the Council of the EEC has been dilatory in its recommendations, but it has been very difficult to make decisions in the current situation.
So perhaps I can come to the good news. I am sure that all Members of this House have welcomed the forthcoming talks this Friday and Saturday between the Turkish and Cypriot Prime Ministers in Montreux. We are all aware of the great void left by the death of President Makarios last August, and of course there have been varying interpretations put on the talks between President Makarios and Mr. Denktash. But at least they were talking and we hope that there will be more frequent discussions in the future between the opposing factions.
We must also welcome the discussions only last month initiated by my noble friend Lord Bethell between the Greek and Turkish Cypriot leaders in this country and hope that some really positive results will be forthcoming from that in the near future. But surely as one of the Guarantor Powers we have an obligation to do something positive while the other two guarantors are so far apart. We are in a position of sorting out, as a kind of uncle, the problems of two rather spoilt children, and as such we have a duty to give a very strong lead. During the past 12 months there have been many informal discussions and visits by both private individuals and the odd Minister, but they have all taken place very quietly. What are the possibilities of making more of a public display of interest, shown throughout the Western World, in the repercussions of any long-term lack of agreement between the Greek and Turkish Cypriots? If we were to propose our recommendations more forcefully, would we not make the two sides realise that we have their interests at heart and want a solution as soon as possible. It is certainly not a Party matter, because all people want a solution even if there are different ways of finding one.
I must ask Her Majesty's Government three questions, of which I have given

891
prior notice: first, what have they done to pursue positive discussions between Greek and Turkish Cypriots? Secondly, what are they doing to promote active relations between Cyprus and the EEC? Thirdly, what steps are they taking to encourage the Greek Cypriot Government to initiate a system of channelling aid for the benefit of both communities? We all know that it is useless to dictate to either side, but in the final analysis any solution relies on the good will and responsible bargaining and concessions of both sides before anything can move at all. This climate is certainly one which must be developed carefully and with great tact.
Perhaps the many official visitors to this island have been too polite and too concerned with fact finding rather than spelling out strongly the possible outcome and consequent problems if the situation is not sorted out very soon. We eagerly await the comments and answers of the Lord Privy Seal who will hopefully tell us of the lead which we are taking and will take when it is clear, after this weekend, that there is some form of agreement between the Turks and the Greeks. If this happens, we look to the Government to spell out loudly and clearly that any discussions are very welcome and offer to play a major role in settling the muddled affairs of Cyprus.
7.54 p.m.
Lord BANKS: My Lords, the House is indebted to the noble Lord, Lord Spens, for raising this important matter this evening. I have also had the privilege of reading the very interesting report which he prepared after his visit to the Island. I am sure that the noble Lord will forgive me if I say that in the course of his remarks he appeared to lean rather heavily on the Turkish side of the argument. I do not myself wish to support one side or the other. I believe it is true that the Turkish Cypriots have many grounds for complaint in the period before 1974, but there are certain facts which we cannot ignore; for example, the noble Lord complained that there were no representatives of the Turkish Cypriot minority in the institutions of government, but in December 1963 the Turkish members of the House of Representatives withdrew; in January 1964 the Turkish Vice-President resigned. They may have
892
felt that they had very good reasons for taking these actions, but one can scarcely complain of lack of Turkish representation in the institutions of Government if, of their own choice, they have withdrawn from them.
We cannot ignore the fact that there was a Turkish invasion in 1974 which resulted in the occupation of 40 per cent. of the territory of the Island, and that, although the Turkish Cypriots represent only 18 per cent. of the population, this invasion meant the introduction of troops numbering 40,000, of whom some 30,000 still remain. Then there has been an economic stagnation in the zone occupied by the Turkish forces, and this has been recently underlined in articles in the Financial Times and the Guardian. Also, and I do not think there is any doubt about this, there has also been some introduction into the Turkish-held area of people from Turkey who were never before residents of Cyprus. There has been a rigid partition of the Island and virtually a separate State established. Then there is the question of refugees. There have been refugees on both sides, but it is estimated that there were 200,000 Greek Cypriot refugees.
It seems to me that the problems remain largely the same as they were when we discussed the matter on 14th June 1976— nearly two years ago—at the instigation of the noble Lord, Lord Caradon. These are the issues as I see them—as I saw them then and as I think the House saw them then. What amount of land should the Turks give up? What amount of land will they give up? How many of the refugees can be re-established in their homes? How distinct will the two communities be? Will there be any intermingling between the communities which seems desirable in a State if it is to remain a unified State? How rigid will the Turks be about that? Will there be a unified economy? Will it really be one country? We know that the concept of a bi-zonal communal federation is accepted, but how much power will there be at the centre? What about the balance at the centre? Will there be parity, as I believe the Turks would like, although they have only 18 per cent. of the population, or will there be some other distribution?
Two years ago we spoke of the European Economic Community and the Commonwealth

893
playing a significant part, and the noble Lord, Lord Goronwy-Roberts, agreed that this was a desirable outcome. Perhaps the noble Lord the Leader of the House will be able to tell us, as indeed he has already been asked, how far the United Kingdom, the Nine and the Commonwealth have been able to work together to seek a solution since we last debated this matter.
Dr. Kurt Waldheim, Secretary-General of the United Nations, has continued his efforts. In January/February 1977 the new guidelines which the noble Lord, Lord Spens, read out were established and there were talks between Archbishop Makarios and Mr. Denktash. In the sixth round of communal talks which followed between 31st March and 17th April 1977, a Greek plan was put forward on behalf of the Greek Cypriots which suggested that 20 per cent. of the territory of the Island should be in the administration of the Turkish community, and a map was produced showing the views of the Greek Cypriots as to exactly where the boundaries should be and where the 20 per cent. of the territory should be. They reckoned that 120,000 of the refugees could go back under Greek Community control as a result of their plan, and that the others could either go back under Turkish rule, or remain where they were, with compensation.
On the other side, the Turks spoke of a federation by evolution, as indeed did the noble Lord, Lord Spens—a very loose kind of association, the exact nature of which has not yet been specified. According to Archbishop Makarios—and I do not think that this has been denied—the Turkish Cypriots wanted to retain 32·8 per cent. of the territory, as against the 20 per cent. which the Greek Cypriots suggested they should have. But there was no Turkish map showing exactly where the Turkish Cypriots thought the boundary should be. There was no clear indication of the powers that they thought the federal government should have when the new bi-zonal federation was established.
However, since that time—and I think it fair to say that discussions petered out because of the lack of a concrete Turkish plan—there has been a general election in Turkey, and a change of Government, and in recent weeks we have had the promise from Mr. Denktash to let the
894
United Nations and Dr. Waldheim have their new proposals. I understand that these proposals will be available any time now. There has been some talk about the possibility of a breakthrough here, and indeed I hope that that will be so. But I notice that both the Greeks and the Greek Cypriots are, inevitably, doubtful at this stage that these proposals will show any advance on the position which has been taken up previously by the Turks. But at any rate, we are promised that the proposals will be concrete.
There is a fear on the part of the Greeks, both in Cyprus and in Greece, that the United States Government may be prepared to persuade Congress to ratify the US-Turkish Defence Agreement before the terms are known, and I feel that that would be unfortunate. But Mr. Denktash has been in Ankara, and shortly before that President Kyprianou was in Athens, and as the noble Lord, Lord Newall, has reminded us, the Greek and Turkish Prime Ministers are to meet this coming weekend. One cannot stress too strongly the importance of a rapprochement between Greece and Turkey as a background to the possibility of a settlement in Cyprus.
Rapprochement is also desirable in the context of NATO, and I think that it would be necessary before enlargement of the EEC takes place and the Government of Greece is participating in political co-operation with the other members of the Community. So we must hope that this meeting this weekend will show the beginnings of an agreement between the Greek and Turkish Governments.
Now there is a new Prime Minister in Turkey. He suffers in one sense from the disadvantage that he was the Prime Minister who launched the invasion, but he is freer now to take a more conciliatory line. His political position makes him freer to do that, and perhaps for the very reason that he was the Prime Minister who launched the invasion he has the authority now to take a conciliatory line, and I very much hope that he will. I hope that there will be the same conciliatory line on the other side, too. To reach agreement will not be easy, but I hope that the United Kingdom, in conjunction with our partners in the EEC, in NATO and in the Commonwealth, will make every effort by quiet, persistent

895
diplomacy to effect reconciliation and understanding between Greece and Turkey, and between the two communities who must live together in this small, but strategically situated island.
8.5 p.m.
Lord HYLTON: My Lords, as has been said already, the House is very much indebted to the noble Lord, Lord Spens, for raising this question of Cyprus, and I should like to offer him congratulations at raising it and at a very appropriate moment. I really do admire his timing. The noble Lord has done another service: he has stated very clearly, and very succinctly, the Turkish case, or the case of the Turkish Cypriots. To my knowledge this has not previously been done in your Lordships' House, and the noble Lord has fulfilled a real need. The noble Lord, Lord Banks, has done quite enough by way of answering him on certain points.
I should like to take a rather different line, and examine what should be our own approach to these very difficult questions, and similar very difficult questions, which affect not only Cyprus, but other nations and other situations of conflict as well. I want to look at what our approach should be as members of a House of Parliament, equally as members of Government, or indeed as diplomats, or simply as members of the public who are committed to the cause of peace.
I should like to start with a quotation from the trial of Dr. Beyers Navde, a South African who was put on trial under one of the numerous repressive statutes in existence in that country. In answer to a question, he replied:
"No reconciliation is possible without justice, and whoever works for reconciliation must first determine the causes of injustice in the hearts and lives of those who feel themselves aggrieved. In order to determine the causes of injustice a person must not only have the outward individual facts of the matter, but as a Christian you are called to identify yourself in heart and soul, to live in, to think in, and to feel in the heart, in the consciousness, the feelings of the person or persons who themselves are aggrieved".
That gives us a good starting point because we have to do a work which affects both the mind and the heart. Objectively, we have to study what the situation is; why are there grievances? We have to understand the facts. We
896
have to understand, also, how each party to the conflict sees and understands those facts. So our approach has to be both objective and subjective. I feel that, we are in addition, called upon to love both sides as persons. We should certainly hate and detest the crimes and atrocities—one might say the sins—that have been committed in the course of a long drawn-out conflict. But unless we can love both sides, we have no chance of acting as reconcilers.
So, if that is our approach, what else is needed? I suggest that in the country in question, Cyprus, there is a great need of a change of heart. When we last debated this matter the noble Lord, Lord Goronwy-Roberts, spoke of "implacable nationalistic animosities". Those are the things that need to be left behind. I suggest that there has to be a turning away from fear, and hatred, and all the things that produce those emotions, in the direction of hope and of friendship. I fully accept that such a change of heart may take quite a long time yet to come about, and so that in the interim other things are necessary as well.
I suggest that we need a political approach and a determined effort to make a long-term plan for the future of the Island. There have been a number of suggestions made as to how a long-term plan might be devised. The noble Lord, Lord Caradon, has suggested a United Nations conciliation mission which would meet all sides, study the question and finally report back to the Security Council. That might be one method. Another method might be to set up a working party among the three Guarantor Powers, with perhaps the possibility of outside, co-opted members. The noble Lord, Lord Banks, has already touched on a number of the points which would have to be incorporated in a long-term plan. These include the Constitution, the question of territory and the question of economics. If one were thinking of the matter in an Irish context, one would be talking about cross-Border co-operation.
In the making of a plan, I hope it will be accepted that the Treaty of 1960 imposed no legal obligations on the three Powers: it simply gave them a legal right, after consultations, to act in such a way as to restore the status quo ante-1963. It is indeed uncertain whether the status

897
quo can now be restored as it was 15 years ago. I think we have also to accept that intercommunal talks have been going on, coming off and going on again for some 14 years. One may ask oneself: Did the parties really desire a solution in those intercommunal talks? We do not know. I think we can take it for granted that the negotiators themselves desired to reach a solution, but what constraints were placed upon them? So, if we accept those two factors about the nature of the talks we have had so far, the lack of a definite agenda and timetable, and the weaknesses of the Treaty of 1960, we still need a long-term plan that is capable of being modified and adapted to suit the particular requirements of the local interests.
There is another point which needs urgent attention in the interim—it has already been referred to tonight—and that is the question of compensation. I suggest that the very fact of assessing compensation will do a lot to defuse the situation, and will provide an incentive towards agreement. Who needs, or who may need, compensation? The Turks, who have had to move out from the south; the Greeks who have had to abandon their homes and properties in the north; and in addition, of course, the British residents. It occurs to me that the experience of the 1920s may be relevant in this context, because those years saw rather massive exchanges of population between Greece and Turkey which, in the end, were accepted by both sides. It may well be that an international assessment panel and some method of collecting compensation monies into a central, perhaps internationally-administered, fund and then paying them out, may be desirable.
Those, then, are my two suggestions for the interim. What of the longer term? I suggest that we need to have a vision of the future—a vision of an island of great beauty whose inhabitants have a most wonderful spirit of hospitality, but where one finds at the present time two very deeply wounded communities. Out of those wounds we must look to seeing in the future an independent, free, re-united Cyprus. We must look forward to the day when Greeks and Turks will live together again in what one might call symbiosis, as they have done in many places from the late 16th century to the present day. One may hope again to see mixed villages and mixed towns. It is our
898
earnest wish, I think, that Christians and Moslems should discover their common allegiance to the One True God; and, if one may press St. Paul into service in this debate, I think we must say with him, as he did in his letter to the Ephesians:
"For He is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition …; having abolished in His flesh the enmity; that He might create in Himself of the twain one new man, so making peace; and might reconcile them both in one body unto God through the Cross; for through Him we both have our access in one spirit unto the Father.".
8.16 p.m.
Lord BROCKWAY: My Lords, I think those of us who have listened to this debate may be inclined to take the fatalistic view that there is an irreconcilable division between the Cypriot and Turkish populations. I am reminded of a visit to Cyprus—my first—very many years ago. I then heard of the harmony which there had been among the Cypriot, the Greek and the Turkish populations on the Island; of how, in the villages, in the heat of the day, Turkish and Greek families would rest together in the shade of trees; and how their children, Greek and Turkish, would play around them. My Lords, historically that is not so far away. It was very near to the time when the conflict for their independence began between the Cypriot people and the British Armed Forces.
How did the conflict between the two peoples begin? I would say that, first, it was a result of the armed hostilities before the independence of Cyprus was gained. That conflict began to divide the people of Cyprus. You had, on the one hand, the Greek population declaring for Enosis and for unity with Greece; and, inevitably, as a reaction, you had the Turkish population antagonistic to that very idea. Independence came—the Zurich Constitution; a Constitution which permitted a great deal of Turkish participation in the government of the Island.
President Makarios governed Cyprus. All who met him must have appreciated his stature; his character, his strength; but he represented the Greek element in that Island. And I think that this must be acknowledged as we look back to that period: that, under his administration, the spirit if not the letter of the Zurich Agreement for the participation of the Turkish population was denied. I think one has to recognise that that was

899
one of the contributions to the present situation. Then came violence, violence not instigated by the Government but by extreme forces which, even here, in opposition to the Government. The noble Lord, Lord Spens, has referred to a massacre; but the killing was not all on one side. I do not think that anyone can say that what happened justified the Turkish invasion. I think that that has been condemned by all who deny the right of an external Power to intervene by armed force in an internal situation.
Lord SPENS: My Lords, does the noble Lord agree, even when that external Power was one of the three Guarantors of the 1960 Constitution?
Lord BROCKWAY: My Lords, I should have thought that the very fact that Turkey was one of the three Guarantors should have meant that before Turkey took that action there should have been discussions and agreement with the Greek and the British Governments, who were also Guarantors of the integrity of Cyprus.
My Lords, I am not trying to put the point of view of one community against the other; and I have to recognise that although it is deplorable that that comparatively small Island, with all the history of its past to which the noble Lord, Lord Newall, referred, should be divided, I think we have now to accept, if we are to be practical, that some division will have to take place. I would say that the present lines between the Turkish community and the Greek community are absolutely impossible. That 18 per cent. of the population should have 40 per cent. of the territory of that small Island is inconceivable as any permanent solution.
The noble Lord, Lord Spens, referred to a large part of the port of Famagusta. At this moment, it is as though the neutron bomb had fallen upon Famagusta. I have been there. Almost its entire population was Greek. Now there is no population at all. Streets are empty, houses are empty, shops are empty, hotels are empty; it is a city without people. And the people who lived there were Greek. It is quite impossible to think of lines of demarcation in Cyprus
900
which will exclude Famagusta from the Greek population.
My Lords, there will have to be a redrawing of the lines between the Turkish and the Cypriot populations if there is to be any final solution of that problem. I deeply hope that the talks which are now proceeding may bring about a solution. I should not be honest if I did not say at once that I am doubtful about it. I think that that solution must be one where, for a time at least, one must accept the division of the Island, a federal relationship between the Turkish and the Greek parts of that Island, with a good deal of autonomy on both sides.
I hope that these talks will bring about that result; but I conclude by making the proposal which the noble Lord, Lord Caradon, made in his speech in this House when we last debated this issue. He suggested that the United Nations should send a mission to Cyprus, a very authoritative mission, representing the leading Powers of the West, representing the leading Powers of the East, representing the neutral nations of the world—at the highest possible level, a level which could not possibly be ignored—to go to Cyprus and, in Cyprus, to meet the representatives of the Greek population, to meet the representatives of the Turkish population; and to seek to bring about an agreement and to go back to the United Nations Security Council with recommendations for a solution of that problem.
My Lords, we are supposed to have in Cyprus a United Nations peace-keeping force. If one had a mission of that character with a report which was endorsed by the Security Council, surely that peacekeeping force might be utilised in order to bring about the solution which was proposed ! I believe that that is the constructive answer to the present problem, and I hope that Her Majesty's Government will seriously consider it.
8.28 p.m.
Lord BOURNE: My Lords, I do not often have the pleasure of following the noble Lord, Lord Brockway. It is usually the other way round. But, in view of the fact that it is very nearly two years since Cyprus was debated in this House, I think that we all ought to be very grateful that my noble friend Lord Spens introduced the subject.

901
He made the position absolutely clear. He said that the basis of the 1960 Treaty of Guarantee was, 1, 2, 3: Enosis, out! Taksim, out!—that is, the division of the island—and that Cyprus should be united and independent. The noble Lord, Lord Caradon, said also that he thought that people who had served in Cyprus—I served there for a year, and he had done so twice—owed some sense of obligation to the people of Cyprus and that we ought to speak in these debates. At that time we all accepted Lord Caradon's principles; but unfortunately the Treaty of Guarantee lasted only 14 years. It had a pretty rocky time because Makarios worked secretly for Enosis. It is now a dead letter and so are Lord Caradon's principles.
Going back to the question of living together, Greek and Turkish Cypriots have lived together for hundreds of years, but they never, as the noble Lord, Lord Spens, quoted, set up a single commercial partnership together. That was a remark written by a barrister of Grays Inn. In his report he mentioned that and I take it that we all agree. It was a most significant statement. Makarios, when taking the Oath on becoming Archbishop of Cyprus in 1970, said he
"would never waiver from our policy of annexing Cyprus to Mother Greece."
He did not achieve it, unfortunately, before he died. No wonder that the recent history of Cyprus is littered with massacres on both sides—horrible massacres. Any plan, to my mind, which involves going back to living alongside each other is out. Nikos Sampson tried to turn out Makarios in a coup, and if it had not been for the Turkish invasion he would have declared Enosis; but, unfortunately, he did not.
I believe that any agreed plan must ensure two things: one, the Greek Cypriots have to give up Enosis as a basis of their ideas; and two, the Island must be divided. The noble Lord, Lord Goronwy-Roberts, in his winding-up speech in the debate two or three years ago, said that federation was coming our way. Most people agreed.
There are four ways of achieving this aim. One is the EEC. I think that the noble Baroness, Lady Elles, favoured them. They have had a bad time recently and I personally do not think—although they do other things quite well—that they
902
would suit here. Secondly, NATO, with 25 years' experience, will never give up Akrotiri and they will never give up the British sovereign bases. Thirdly, there is the United Nations. My Lords, we have had plenty of resolutions from them and nobody takes the slightest notice. Fourthly, there are the inter-communal talks. Of these four, I would suggest the inter-communal talks are the best hope. But there is one proviso: they seem to have been going along at what I would call a leisurely rate. I am delighted to hear of the meeting of the Prime Ministers which is to take place in Switzerland shortly.
I would apply the American system to them: lock them up until they have reached a solution. That is the way that the jeep was invented and it did not do so badly. We are still driving around in jeeps. The Turkish Government may shortly be submitting a memorandum, if Mr. Judd is to be believed. My advice to the Greek Cypriots is this; agree it and, if necessary, give way to the Turks. After all, the Turks have 30,000 troops and at least a squadron of tanks and they may decide to invade again. Then where would we be? I personally think the Greek-Cypriot case on a three-year basis is very much to be encouraged. I also recommend an independent president. The Greek Cypriots and the Turkish Cypriots never seem to agree about anything. They would have to agree if they had an independent Cyprus for a three-year period; then the United Nations Security Council could review the situation. This may be looking backwards towards the 1960 Treaty, but I think anything in that 1960 Treaty that is repeated is absolutely fatal. I think it is better to walk before you run.
8.38 p.m.
Viscount SLIM: My Lords, I apologise for not putting my name down on the list of speakers in time for this debate. I will not delay your Lordships long. Cyprus is my second home—or it was—and I naturally have some views and feelings which may be helpful to your Lordships. When we speak, as many noble Lords have, about the Greek Cypriot and the Turkish Cypriot not being able to get on together, that is true in some respects. But, as has been said already, we mixed Greek and Turkish Cypriots together.

903
In our colonial days there, when we ran the country, we encouraged this separate development, not with the malice that goes on in other countries, but because it was more convenient. Moslem and Greek Orthodox could go their separate ways. The sad thing was, as the noble Lord, Lord Spens, said, that there was not even a single university, joint school or anything like that, to bring the two communities together.
If we have to look back—and the tragedy of Cyprus is that everybody looks back and not forwards—we must realise that that was part of our administration and the policy that went with it. Hindsight shows that perhaps it was not very clever. But the tragedy and the ravages that have taken place since bring me on to my second point, and here I speak for the British national who was left and suffered in the invasion. The harsh, brutal treatment—and I live, or used to, in the Turkish-conquered are a—by those invading armies was quite unnecessary. It was given to the Turkish Cypriot, to the British national and to anybody else who happened to be living there. It was quite without need. They did not actually have to conquer the bit of territory they wanted with 30,000 troops: it could have been done with a quarter of that number, even to make a show of force and to win.
I believe that, however much one likes to blame Athens or however much one likes to blame the Greek Cypriots—and there are wrongs on both sides—the Turkish Government today should be the first to make some gesture towards this compensation which several noble Lords have talked about. I would say this to the Turkish Government: "Your economy is not in a very good state. You are not alone in this, but yours in some ways is not even as good as others. If you want help and aid from around the world, you should make a commitment to see that this compensation, wherever it may be due, to whatever person of whatever nationality" —because a lot of Turkish Cypriots suffered too and so far the Turkish Government have not paid them any compensation— "should be assessed fairly and you should stand up and say that you will pay". I am not trying to blackmail them, but I am merely saying that in Ankara today they are
904
standing slightly with their hands out, wanting assistance; and that assistance should be given, in my view, with a few strings attached to it.
My Lords, I would say one further thing. I believe that the solution to the Cyprus problem—and I agree, as I think we all do, that there will be boundaries, partitions, and perhaps some loose form of federalism to come out of this—lies in the areas where these talks are to take place this coming weekend: it lies between the Turkish and Greek Governments. That is where the decision can be made. It is true that the Greek Cypriot, with all the schisms on him, can usually speak with one voice; but the Turkish Cypriot, I am afraid—and the Turkish Cypriot is my friend—today can speak only with the voice of Ankara.
We ask: What can the British Government do? In my view, the British Government should be seen to be in the arena and should be seen to support these talks, aimed at getting the Greek and Turkish Governments together. At the same time, as the noble Lord, Lord Bourne, has said, Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots should be allowed to speak together unfettered. My Lords, thank you for allowing me to intervene.
8.44 p.m.
Lord PEART: My Lords, I am in a sense a substitute. The noble Lord, Lord Goronwy-Roberts, would have replied to this debate but he is representing this country at a very important conference in Yugoslavia. However, I am a member of the Government and therefore must weigh my words carefully this evening. In this debate we have had a variety of views excellently put and we have had some very fine and moving speeches. I think that the noble Viscount, Lord Slim, in his short contribution, made a very fine plea for a better understanding of the situation and, following his long experience in Cyprus, naturally we take great note of it. I thought that the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, made a characteristically humane speech and put forward suggestions about the United Nations and the need to send a commission. Other noble Lords—the noble Lords, Lord Banks and Lord Hylton, and the noble Lord, Lord Newall, who spoke for the Opposition—made valuable contributions.

905
The debate was initiated by the noble Lord, Lord Spens, who is sitting next to the noble Lord, Lord Bourne, who made a characteristically succinct and clear speech. I would only say to the noble Lord, Lord Spens, that I thought he weighed heavily on one side, and I believe the noble Lord, Lord Banks, was right, not actually to chide him but to remind the House that he was really putting a Turkish case. It may be that he was there for I do not know how many days; I was there for a little longer, but I would not claim to be an expert. However, I have always carefully followed matters affecting that part of the world.
Over the years, in the Council of Europe and other places, I have taken a great interest in Cyprus. It is a lovely Island and I feel it is such a tragedy that it should not be an island of peace but just an island of beauty. I believe that we must achieve peace there and so I will first put broadly what I think is the right approach and give the Government's point of view. Naturally, noble Lords have expressed concern—indeed the noble Lord, Lord Newall, stressed this—at the continued lack of progress towards a just and lasting settlement in Cyprus. May I say that the British Government fully share this concern. The two communities in Cyprus have had to live for too long in the shadow of inter-communal strife. The suffering caused by the tragic events of recent years must be brought to an end as soon as possible. The noble Lord, Lord Brockway, was quite right to stress that. We must not tread the past.
The Government have acknowledged that Britain, for historic and other reasons, has a special position in Cyprus. We have therefore been closely involved for many years in the efforts to bring about a just system in Cyprus in which the two communities can live together in peace and can respect each other's legitimate interests. We had hoped that after the intensive negotiations which brought the Island to independence in 1960 we had arrived at such a system. Unfortunately this was not to be, and the Cypriots have been the victims of continuous inter-communal tension and recurrent violence ever since. In the various crises the British Government have exerted every effort to forestall violence and, in particular, in 1974 the then Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary, now the Prime
906
Minister, did all that was humanly possible to resolve the crisis by seeking the agreement of the parties to revise constitutional arrangements. Most regrettably, despite two conferences at Geneva, these efforts have not been successful; so I say to noble Lords that the present situation in Cyprus should satisfy nobody. The friends of Cyprus, and the Cypriots themselves, cannot allow Cyprus to drift towards an embittered division. The Government have, therefore, been engaged in intensive diplomatic activity in order to persuade the parties to get down to real negotiations. We shall continue to offer advice and encouragement whenever appropriate.
In addition, Britain is making, and has made for many years, a valuable positive contribution to the present uneasy peace on the Island, without which negotiations would be impossible. Britain supplies, at its own expense, a third of the strength of the United Nations peace-keeping force in the Island. Although we would naturally wish to see this burden, which is heavy in terms of both manpower and of finance, come to an end, we are fully aware of the value of this contribution to peace-keeping in Cyprus and that is why we have maintained this commitment for so many years.
We have made clear to the parties to the dispute that we are willing, together with our partners, to take any initiative which the parties consider would help towards a solution. But, if Britain is to exert a positive influence, it is vital that our policy is seen to be even-handed. We do not, therefore, believe that it would be helpful to put pressure on one side or the other, irrespective of circumstances. But, where appropriate, we shall certainly make clear to the parties our view of the direction in which progress lies.
However, it is important to remember that the two communities themselves must negotiate a settlement. It is they who will have to live with a settlement, and they must therefore agree to its terms. This will require a considerable measure of statesmanship and patience on the part of both sides. Both Greek and Turkish Cypriots must be prepared to make concessions in order to achieve peace and justice for their respective communities. Both must commit themselves to negotiations which will inevitably be pains-

907
taking, long and difficult. Only in this manner can lasting peace be achieved. No settlement could be lasting if it were imposed from outside, and lacked the commitment of both communities in Cyprus.
The Government therefore believe that the intercommunal talks, under the auspices of the United Nations Secretary-General, offer the best means of progress, since the talks bring together the two parties directly concerned. The Government therefore greatly welcome the efforts made by Dr. Waldheim to bring about the resumption of the talks. Britain in particular, and the international community in general, owes a great debt of gratitude to Dr. Waldheim for his perseverence at what must at times be a thankless task. But we believe that his painstaking efforts to persuade the people of Cyprus to agree on the terms of a just and peaceful settlement deserve our continued whole-hearted support and must end in success.
I know that the noble Lord, Lord Newall, asked me about this weekend's meeting between the Greek and Turkish Prime Minister, and I will deal with that.
Apart from the involvement of the Cypriots themselves, and of Dr. Waldheim I would add that, obviously, the mother countries of the two communities can also help towards a settlement. I am therefore pleased to note that the new Turkish Government has made clear its desire for early progress towards a settlement, and Britain looks forward with keen interest to the proposals which the Turkish side have undertaken to put forward. In our view, it is very important that these proposals should be constructive and detailed, so that they may lead to an early resumption of the intercommunal talks. It is equally important that, if such proposals are put forward by the Turkish side, the Greek side should react positively. Otherwise, another good opportunity for real progress will have been lost.
On the talks which are to take place, the Government welcome the meeting between the Greek and Turkish Prime Ministers, and hope that this meeting will pave the way for a resolution of the differences between Greece and Turkey. I think that all noble Lords, whatever their views and whatever their prejudices, will
908
hope that the talks which are now going on, and which will go on this weekend, will lead to success and rapprochement between the two sides.
I should like to say something at this point about the British Government's policy on recognition in Cyprus, which is an important aspect of our overall policy. We have been criticised in some quarters for having any dealings with the self-styled "Government"—and I am using quotation marks here—of the "Turkish Federated State of Cyprus" and its agents, since we do not recognise them. On the other hand, it has been said that the Government's policy is not realistic, given the present de facto situation in Cyprus.
I do not believe that either criticism is valid. The Government's policy on recognition is that, pending a settlement, we recognise only one Government in Cyprus, that of President Kyprianou, which is of course composed only of Greek Cypriots at present. But, at the same time, we consider that the Turkish Cypriot minority are entitled to have their legitimate interests respected; and British Ministers and officials have regular contacts with the leaders of the Turkish Cypriot community. This has enabled us, among other things, to urge the Turkish Cypriots to meet claims for compensation by British citizens in respect of losses during the Turkish invasion of 1974.
There are, of course, wider factors to take into account when considering the Cyprus problem. Apart from the distress which the lack of a settlement will cause to the people of Cyprus, there is a direct Western interest in preventing the Cyprus problem from continuing to fester. Otherwise, relations between Greece and Turkey, two of Britain's valuable allies in NATO, will continue to suffer great strain. It is important that Greece and Turkey should be able to resolve this difference, as well as the other differences between them, so that they can once again play a full part in the NATO alliance. For all these reasons, the Government believe that early progress towards a settlement is vital. We shall do all we can to help, but I repeat that it is for the parties involved to make a real effort to bring about a just and lasting solution, in the interests of all concerned.

909
I was asked one or two questions. The noble Lord, Lord Spens, asked about the Greek Cypriot embargo on Turkish occupied airports and seaports. May I say that under international agreements the use of Ercan Airport is not allowed, because it has not been designated by the Government of Cyprus. It is British policy to uphold these agreements to which we are a party. As regards the use of ports in northern Cyprus, the British Government's policy on trade with Cyprus is that that is a matter for the commercial concerns involved. Again, I was asked by the noble Lord, Lord Spens, about aid and about this being shared fairly between the two communities. As he knows, there is a modest programme of technical co-operation which includes support in education and natural resources. We also provide funds which enable some Cypriot students, both Greek and Turkish, to study in the United Kingdom. We believe that both communities should benefit in fair proportion from foreign aid.
The noble Lord, Lord Newall, pressed me on the question of compensation. May I just say that the Turkish Cypriot Compensation Commission was formally established on 12th January 1978, and its chairman has been named. The Commission is currently settling its detailed terms of reference. When these are announced, a circular letter will be sent to all those on our property register, advising them of the procedure to be followed in submitting their claims. My honourable friend the Minister of State, Mr. Judd, has recently returned from Cyprus where he has discussed the matter again with the Turkish Cypriots: and, also, we are continuing to impress upon them the need to deal quickly with these claims.
I could go on answering many detailed points. I will certainly write, as I always do, to Members who have raised specific points which I may have overlooked. But I think that this debate has been a good one. Here and there, there have been differences of emphasis, but all of us will wish the talks in Montreux well, and let us hope that we shall have peace again in Cyprus.