Lords Sitting of 19 May 1978

Preamble
The House met at eleven of the clock: The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Peterborough.

INNER URBAN AREAS BILL
11.5 a.m.
The PARLIAMENTARY UNDERSECRETARY of STATE, DEPARTMENT of the ENVIRONMENT (Baroness Birk): My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. The problems of our deprived inner areas are deep seated; they have grown in intensity in recent years and it will take considerable time to overcome them. When the Bill is enacted it will undoubtedly make a practical contribution towards alleviating the crucial problem of our inner city areas, which is the lack of employment.
We last debated inner city problems in March 1977 on the initiative of the noble Lord, Lord Sandford. We anticipated—as we so often do in this House—the statement in another place by my right honourable friend on the partnership approach to inner city problems and the subsequent White Paper Policy for the Inner Cities. The Bill before the House today is based on proposals contained in just one paragraph of that White Paper. Let us be quite clear that this Bill is only one element of the Government's inner areas policy which should be seen in the context of the considerable range of measures that are already under way.
The White Paper drew attention to the three main problems of the inner areas: economic decline, physical decay and social disadvantage. With the decline of industry and commerce have come the decay and desolation of the local physical environment. Vacant, derelict sites, boarded-up houses, abandoned factories, disused canals and litter all combine to create an atmosphere of despair.
The Bill enables local authorities in inner areas with acute problems of social and economic stress to take a more positive role in developing their local
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economies. In collaboration with the private sector, authorities will now be able to remove some of the physical symptoms of decline by making loans and grants available for works on land and by setting up industrial improvement areas. In the worst-hit areas authorities will be able to help firms with the high costs that they face, such as rents.
Before I describe the detail of the Bill, I think it is simpler to tell the House of the progress of other aspects of inner city policy, in particular the partnerships. The key feature of the Government's policy for inner city areas is a new commitment to a co-ordinated effort by local and central government. Noble Lords will recall that the three inner area studies—Liverpool, Birmingham and Lambeth—all emphasised the need to co-ordinate the work of the public services. We concluded that if a real impact were to be made we had to concentrate on areas with the most severe problems.
Seven partnership areas were chosen: Newcastle/Gateshead, Manchester/Salford, Liverpool, Birmingham, the London Docklands, Hackney/Islington and Lambeth. In all of them there are severe problems of multiple deprivation: concentrations of social problems, bad housing, overcrowding, single-parent families, problems of unemployment and low income. For each partnership area a three-year programme based on an assessment of the inner area needs and priorities for action is being prepared. This covers all local and central government activities and a concerted approach is being developed which involves Ministers and local authority members. Each area has a partnership committee chaired by a Minister from the Department of the Environment and includes Ministers from other Departments. There will therefore be a hard look at how the policies of Government Departments, their agencies, and local government working together affect the area, whether they are in conflict or whether they reinforce each other.
The Government have allocated specific additional resources to those seven areas. For example, Liverpool was allocated £11 million for immediate spending under the "construction package" in last year's April Budget. It has £2·5 million from the urban programme for this year to get

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the partnership under way and £10 million per year for succeeding years, and other areas have broadly similar sums. The whole programme is likely to involve £1 billion over the next decade.
In addition, much larger sums are now being spent through the existing central and local government programmes, and the partnerships will review these programmes to see that the money is spent effectively. The initial partnership programmes will be completed by September and reviewed annually. Obviously it will take some time to deploy the extra resources and make changes in existing schemes, but action is already being taken.
If partnership arrangements are to be successful, they must involve local people in developing ideas and projects for their own areas. The partnership committees consist of those elected to make decisions —Ministers and members. But voluntary groups have a tremendous contribution to make, which must in no way ever be underestimated. Indeed, the White Paper stated:
"Involving local people is both a necessary means to the regeneration of the inner areas and an end in its own right."
These words are now being turned into action.
The partnerships have already, each in their own way, drawn on local groups for help and advice. The views of tenants' associations, amenity groups, ratepayers' organisations, local chambers of commerce and trade, local union interests and others, including individuals, are being sought. Special newsletters have been produced, public meetings held. Yet I am well aware that there are criticisms that not enough has been done to involve voluntary bodies. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State is going to meet the National Council for Social Services to see what more can be done specifically to involve local people more deeply in the partnerships. This is as much 'a wish of the Government as it is of organisations concerned.
There are other areas in cities with difficult problems that also need to be tackled, and, after consultation with the local authorities, my right honourable friend selected 15 more for special attention. These authorities have been asked to prepare three-year programmes to deal
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with their inner area problems. They have also been given between £1 to £2 million from the urban programme. These are the areas which are known as "programme authorities".
Beyond this my right honourable friend has recently said that he proposes to give 14 additional districts with serious inner area problems the powers in the Bill. All this together means that 43 local authorities with the most acute social and economic problems in their inner areas, and with a population comprising around 15 million people, will be directly involved in the improvement of the physical fabric of their areas and the promotion of employment.
However, the public sector cannot revitalise these inner areas alone, nor indeed should it. Obviously the private sector has an essential role. The Bill allows local authorities to help local industry and commerce, particularly the small- and medium-sized firms, which fit more neatly into inner areas. Of course the initiative must come mainly from the firms themselves, since only they can find the opportunities for development and growth which suit their particular expertise and capacity.
Large firms have a dual role. First, industry, the banks, retail chains, insurance companies all have considerable existing investment in these areas. If only to protect and develop their own investments, these companies should be looking for prospects in the inner cities. Secondly, larger firms can look at ways of encouraging the smaller enterprises, and some firms are already doing this. Others contribute indirectly through organisations like the Action Resources Centre. Noble Lords, with their many industrial and commercial connections, might consider urging this kind of approach on firms with which they are involved. I know, for example, that the noble Lord, Lord Byers, is doing this already.
Now I turn to the Bill itself. The first clause indicates how selected districts become "designated districts". Each tier of local government for the designated districts—that is the county council and the district council in England, the region and district in Scotland—will be able to make use of the relevant powers; that is, it will be a "designated district authority".

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Clause 2 provides the first of the new powers. Designated district authorities will be able to offer loans for the acquisition of land or works on land—loans up to 90 per cent. of the value of the security and at commercial rates of interest. This new power will enable the designated authorities to assist industrialists to acquire and develop land where other sources of finance are not readily available.
In last year's debate noble Lords emphasised the importance of rehabilitation. Two particular authorities, Rochdale and Tyne and Wear, have pioneered industrial improvement areas where the aim is to arrest the spiral of decline, to rehabilitate and convert buildings as well as improving local amenities. We have been very much impressed with what these two authorities have done, and Clauses 3, 4 and 5 are designed to provide all designated district authorities with specific powers to declare industrial improvement areas and make loans and grants for improvements to the amenities of their area and to make grants towards the cost of converting or improving industrial or commercial buildings. These two powers —the long-term loans and the industrial improvement areas—will be available to all 43 of the selected districts.
Clause 6 deals with the establishment of partnership arrangements. It is important to give these arrangements statutory recognition, since the Minister's participation in the development of a programme or partnership might be said to conflict with his other statutory responsibilities—for example, those relating to planning or compulsory purchase. Clause 7 provides for the Secretary of State to define partnership areas, here called "special areas", within which the additional powers in subsequent clauses of this Bill may be exercised.
The next three clauses—8, 9 and 10—provide the powers specifically for the partnerships and are aimed at dealing with problems of land and buildings that arise particularly in inner areas. Many vacant or disused sites in inner areas contain the remains of older buildings or have been used for dumping waste, and the cost of new building on these sites is often considerably greater than the cost of using a "green field" site. Clause 8 therefore provides that,
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in partnership areas, the designated district authorities can make loans for site preparation works and for the servicing of land and the provision of access roads. Although the loans are to be at commercial rates, the interest on them may be waived for up to two years, and this will to some extent compensate for the extra costs of using these sites rather than green field sites.
Firms often have to close when redevelopment forces them to move from old low-cost premises to newer ones with higher rents. Clause 9 will therefore allow designated district authorities in partnership areas to make grants towards the rents of firms taking new leases on industrial or commercial premises, and we hope that this will give an impetus to new development. The Bill does not itself prescribe the maximum amount of grant. That is left to later directions, but we envisage that the maximum should be the equivalent of between one and two years' rent, depending on particular circumstances.
Some firms will want to buy or build their premises rather than rent them. Clause 10 therefore provides that designated district authorities may, in partnership areas, give interest relief grants to small firms that take out loans, from whatever source, to pay for land or buildings or works to buildings.
Clause 11 helps to streamline the planning process for inner areas. At present, local plans cannot be carried to the stage where objections are considered at a public local inquiry until the structure plan has been approved. In particular cases it will now be possible for local plans to be publicised and adopted notwithstanding the absence of an approved structure plan for that area. The full public participation procedures will, of course, be followed. This arrangement will reduce the risk of delay in developing an up-to-date local plan where one may be needed to replace an out-of-date development plan.
Clause 12 is a small, consequential provision to ensure that these selected local authorities' general powers to spend under existing legislation will not be restricted by the new powers. Clause 13 corrects a minor flaw in previous legislation dealing with derelict land clearance. Grants of 100 per cent. towards the cost

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of derelict land clearance are available in the assisted areas and in any area where a derelict land clearance area is declared, except for Greater London. My right honourable friend the Minister of State for Industry recently announced a number of new derelict land clearance areas, including inner Birmingham and the docklands area of London. This clause provides that 100 per cent. grants can be paid in this derelict land clearance in London.
Policies pursued since the war involving wholesale redevelopment, high-rise housing and a lack of understanding of the difficulties facing local industry have, unfortunately, contributed to the decline we are now trying to reverse, and we hope local and central government have learned from past failures.
This Bill, together with inner city policy in general, places a much greater emphasis on making the best use of the existing physical environment. The local community will have to be more tolerant of the needs of its own industry and build on the skills of its own people. The central importance of employment to inner city areas cannot be overestimated and is now well understood. This Bill gives additional powers to local authorities so that they can involve themselves more closely in the development and maintenance of local prosperity.
"Partnership" is the word that crops up most often in this policy. Specifically, it means joint involvement of central and local government in the task of reviving the worst-hit areas of our cities, but to be successful our inner city policies require a partnership between local authorities, local industry and, above all, local people. It is this co-operation this Bill seeks to develop and I therefore commend it to the House.
Lord PARGITER: My Lords, before my noble friend sits down, with regard to the county part of this legislation, can she say whether this applies only to metropolitan areas or whether it will apply countrywide with regard to counties, because I can hardly see how it would work as well as the districts?
Baroness BIRK: My Lords, as I pointed out, the designated areas in England apply to county and district, but they are called
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"designated districts". How it works out in detail I think we shall be discussing further at the Committee stage.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Baroness Birk.)
11.23 a.m.
Lord BYERS: My Lords, I should like, from these Benches, to give a very warm welcome to this Bill and a particular welcome to the Bill in its amended form. I congratulate the Government and the Minister on agreeing to extend its scope, as they have done quite remarkably in another place. The rehabilitation of the inner cities, coupled as it is to the problem of creating jobs and improving employment, and allied, as we believe it to be, with the future of the small firm, is one in which we, as a Party, have for some time taken a lively interest.
We had a debate in this House on 20th July on the economic situation, and I spent much of my speech on this subject. I expressed the view that over the years we had taken far too many incentives out of our economic system and that we needed to restore them. I drew attention to the alarming rate at which the smaller firms had been disappearing within the inner urban areas, and I pointed to the fact that too high a proportion of our gross national product was devoted to the public sector at the expense of the private sector.
I expressed the hope then that one Minister should be given sole responsibility for looking after the interests of small businesses and the self-employed, because we had come to the conclusion that it is in this field of the small business and the self-employed that one gets the fastest multiplier in creating jobs, and we believe that this is an important fact. We made to the Prime Minister the proposal, on which he acted very swiftly, that Mr. Harold Lever should be given responsibility for this area. This is much welcomed by our Party. I believe that that appointment, and the conferences which he held in London and the Provinces, is already paying dividends. Certainly more people have become aware over the last six to 12 months of what has to be done in the inner cities. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has also accepted, and is implementing, six changes to help small

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businesses which we have proposed to him. I shall not detail these, but taken together they provide considerable help for small businesses and the self-employed.
I am looking forward to hearing the maiden speech of my noble friend Lord Evans of Claughton, who has great experience of these problems on Merseyside and the Wirral. We look forward also with great pleasure to hearing the maiden speech of the noble Baroness, Lady David. Turning to the Bill itself, I do not pretend that the noble Baroness suggested that this one measure will solve the inner urban area problem. Far more than an Act of Parliament will be required, but at least this is a contribution to it which I welcome. It is a well-structured contribution. I do not agree with those who say that the amount of money and financial assistance envisaged in the Bill is so small as to be derisory. Money is important, but what come first are new ideas, new initiatives and imaginative schemes which, with some help, will get off the ground and prove viable. If the people and the viable projects come forward, I believe that the cash will be found. Indeed, it will have to be found, and there is a reasonable degree of hope that it will.
We should remind ourselves of the nature of the inner city problem. In a nutshell, it is that the able and the skilled have moved out of the inner cities—indeed have often been encouraged or forced to move out—and what is left, and what moves in, is the deprived citizen, the unskilled, the illiterate, the inarticulate. There is a high percentage of unemployment, and a high percentage of young and particularly young black unemployed. This is the trend which we have to reverse as quickly as we can. The Bill provides financial assistance and gives powers to local authorities to help and encourage projects which will result in greater employment. This is all to the good, but a great deal more than new powers and financial help will be needed.
I am impressed with the people in the Department of the Environment who are dealing with this problem, and the grip which they already have on it. They realise that real progress in beating the inner city problem will be achieved only by a new attitude being developed in local
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government towards business and commerce. Local authorities have to learn to understand how business actually works, and what it requires from them to be successful. Some local authorities already have excellent people with this outlook, and they are getting on with it. Others still have to develop it, for, as the noble Baroness said, if anything needs a real team effort, it is the regeneration of the inner urban areas. Above all, what is needed is a long-term commitment to the development of viable commercial enterprises which will give new hope and scope to the urban population.
I believe that the key to fostering this long-term commitment is to establish a firm partnership of local government with practical business people and the voluntary and community organisations in each area. This is the American practice. What is needed now is a forum to bring all these interests together. I say this because I believe we have in this country a great deal of latent talent waiting for the opportunity to develop. I do not believe that there is a single type of project on which the rehabilitation of any one area depends, but I am impressed with the contribution which the workshop type of project can make. A number of these have come into existence particularly in London, but also in other parts of the country, and have met a real need. One example which particularly impressed me, although I saw others—the co-operative at Rotherhithe, and Clerkenwell, Wandsworth, Lambeth—was the Barley Mow Workspace unit at Chiswick. In a former wallpaper factory, offices and workshops have been created, the smallest unit being 10 ft. by 10 ft., and the largest probably 10 times that size.
Thanks to the pioneering work of John Morton, 91 businesses covering more than 200 people have been provided with very good accommodation and many common services, which relieve them of many of the administrative chores and risks which often deter bright young people with good ideas from taking their first steps in the business world. This can be copied, I believe. The only bottleneck at the moment would be the training of managers to give the confidence to a unit like this and to administer it for the first few years at least, so that the risks are taken out of it. But it is a very impressive unit.

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Similar enterprises have sprung up in other parts of London and in the Provinces. Common to all of them is the provision of low-rent premises and someone to run the project who has a flair for non-bureaucratic administration and an ability to cut through red tape. Many of these small one-man, two-people or three-people units have already in them the seeds of new, expanding companies which may well in time become household names. It is therefore vital that opportunities should be provided at local level to release the talent of the new caftsmen and entrepreneurs who are coming forward. It is in this area that private enterprise has a lot to contribute. It is the intervention and the interest of private enterprise that will provide the impetus which is needed if real progress is to be made.
The harnessing of private enterprise will take many different forms and be none the worse for that. But as a start—it may well be that this can be built into the existing structure, into the partnership committees, or it may have to be something which runs parallel with them—I should like to see an enterprise forum in which are represented central Government, local government, Government agencies such as the Manpower Services Commission, which has a tremendous job on hand and is doing it very well, and the Training Services Agency getting together with private enterprise, and neighbourhood and community organisations, to identify and smooth out problems, not forgetting the contribution which can be made by local polytechnics, technical colleges, business schools and similar organisations in the area. Often these bright new ideas originate in the polytechnics. I have seen some of them being developed only in the last week or two.
A forum of this kind, which can be an extension of the partnership committees or an additional organisation, can help to assess the viability of new ideas. It could set up small sub-committees with private enterprise people—accountants and others—who can help these people to develop their ideas and take out some of the risks. The private sector in any organisation like this must be represented by top-calibre industrialists who are sympathetic to solving the problem of the inner urban areas. In a number of ways private enterprise can help, and is
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helping, firms to start up. It can provide expertise, management and commercial skills. It can second people to individual projects to help get them started. It can provide specialised training. It can sometimes provide second-hand equipment, which may be the one item missing to enable a project to get off the ground. It can provide modest finance on reasonable or subsidised terms. It can organise bank guarantees for modest sums. All these things are needed in one project or another.
I should like to see a consortium of top firms in the partnership areas being organised to see how best they can help to get things moving. There is a tremendous opportunity here for private enterprise and the private sector. I am very impressed with the amount of activity already being undertaken in the inner cities. But often good ideas are frustrated by a lack of flexibility in the arrangements which are authorised. This is something we can discuss at the Committee stage. For instance, a building is available from the local authority. Equipment has been provided, perhaps by the Manpower Services Commission. Cash grants will also be available towards the employment of people on the register of unemployed. But nowhere can one find the cash to carry out a viability study, a feasibility study or a market survey. This is the one item missing from the package. This is where flexibility is required.
There is a case where suitable buildings are available for development just outside the partnership area but which will create employment for people living inside the area; but they cannot be used because they are the wrong side of the boundary by a quarter of a mile. Again, flexibility and discretion are required to get things moving. These "Catch 22" situations continue to arise and there must be more flexibility.
I believe that there is so much talent and imagination available but unused that our top priority is to provide an opportunity for it to develop and give it all the help and advice we can. Countries like Germany and the United States have provided these opportunities and have reaped the rewards. We must do the same. I offer a very warm welcome to the Bill.
11.36 a.m.
Baroness DAVID: My Lords, I ask the indulgence of the House on this occasion. I had not thought to make my maiden speech so soon after being introduced to the House, but as a member of a local authority and as a member of the Board of Peterborough Development Corporation, I felt that I had some experience relevant to this matter. This is a modest Bill, but I am glad that it is not quite so modest as when it started. I welcome it as making a real contribution to the enormous problem of our inner urban areas. Any step must be welcome which can help to bring back and regenerate industry and firms, to bring, back jobs to the people there, and I hope encourage others to come back, perhaps a greater variety of people than live there now. I hope that the Bill will achieve these objects and that manufacturers and industrialists will be content to refurbish and return. I am anxious about whether the powers given to local authorities will be used forcefully enough, used quickly enough, and whether the mechanism is right.
This Bill is primarily an enabling Bill. I am not quite clear exactly what will be the powers of the Secretary of State. He may specify designated districts (Clause 1). He may give directions as to the making of grants and loans and impose conditions (Clauses 4 and 8). He may enter into arrangements with council or councils in an area where a special need exists (Clause 6). But he cannot make an order in respect of a special area without the consent of that authority (Clause 7). The whole machinery seems to me a little slow-moving and cumbersome, dependent perhaps on too many people, and not vital enough.
As a good local authority member, of course I do not want to see central Government dictating to local government, but can action be taken speedily enough? I hope that my noble friend the Minister will tell me how she thinks that it will work. From the debates on this Bill in another place it was quite clear that the mechanics of how the Bill would work were a major anxiety and a question that was constantly raised. The idea of partnership between central and local government is attractive, but will there not need to be a strong executive arm to
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get things moving, an executive arm responsible for land assembly, main infrastructure and site services, new building and rehabilitation?
I am aware that the White Paper discussed "The Agencies for Action" and considered new town style development corporations to tackle inner areas, saying,
"that they could be expected to bring single-minded management, industrial promotional expertise, and experience in carrying out development".
But the Government turned down that idea in favour of the establishment of a partnership between central and local government, while admitting that changes in approach would be necessary. The White Paper said:
"Local areas with inner area problems will need to be entrepreneurial in the attraction of industry and commerce".
I am not sure that entrepreneurial expertise is the foremost characteristic of local authorities, although there may be honourable exceptions. But it is what the chief officers of new towns have developed.
Having seen at first hand how efficiently and effectively the new town arrangements work in partnership with county and district councils, I am a keen admirer of that way of doing things. The New Town Act combines all the powers that a development corporation needs for planning, land acquisition, development, management, disposal, and for the funding of its activities through central Government. It has to get a variety of formal and informal consents and agreements at both local and national levels, but it has independent status and singleness of purpose. Its organisational structure, with a chairman and a small representative board and a chief executive who has full authority and carries full responsibility, is geared to rapid action. There can be consistency and continuity in policies and programmes, quick decision-making and the possibility of being adventurous and imaginative. I hope the arrangement suggested in this Bill will work as well.
I understand the reasons for the Government's choice of the partnership, and the importance they place on accountability to the local electorate, but I should like reassurance on how decisions can be reached and acted on swiftly. If it should

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not work—and we all hope it will—would the Government think of an Old Towns Act, setting up old town development corporations to get things moving? In this context I think it is not insignificant that Dockland Settlement found no manager as a result of its advertisement, and that two new town general managers—Mr. Thomas from Peterborough and Mr. Roche from Milton Keynes—were later offered the job and turned it down. I am aware that the situation is different there. There are five boroughs, the GLC and the ILEA all to be co-ordinated, but I think one can draw inferences.
I should like to comment on what some see as a conflict between the policies of revitalising the inner cities and continuing with the new town programme. I think there is no conflict, that both are necessary and that they are in many ways complementary. The new towns are now taking a number of the disadvantaged: the low income families, the semi-skilled, the unskilled, and some of the unemployed and single-parent families. They can help in this way. The need for reasonable rented housing is great and this the new towns can provide and, what is more, in green and pleasant surroundings.
The consultants' report on the inner urban areas—the Lambeth section—recognises that what can be done to arrest the decline of jobs in Inner London is limited. Even sizeable expansion in trading will not overcome the mis-match of jobs and skills. There must therefore, it seems to me, be more effective measures to help the less skilled and less affluent to move. These people caught in the housing trap are unable to buy, unable to move, and unable to rent reasonably because of the long council waiting lists. The waiting lists in the housing stress areas remain very long. I am sorry I do not have the up-to-date figures, but last year the number on the waiting-lists was 93,000 in the inner boroughs and 43,000 in six other boroughs with problems, and I do not expect that the figures are very different now.
The new towns can help people to move to houses they can afford and, just as important, they can set up training schemes and skill centres so that those going there can try to acquire greater skills than they have at present, skills which are now very much needed when
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labour-intensive firms are getting fewer. The consultants in their study say:
"We do not believe that further dispersal will impoverish London: a less congested London should be cheaper to run".
I would ask that there be no further cutbacks on the new town programmes. Whatever is done—and assuming that the policy in the Bill is right, as I trust it is, and that the plans work—inner urban renewal could not, I suspect, begin to have a very significant effect within the next five to 10 years. I see no reason why low-income families living in bad conditions and wanting to move—and between one-quarter and one-third of those who answered questions in the Lambeth study said that they wanted to move—should have to wait for such a large proportion of their lives. I hope your Lordships do not think me guilty of special pleading for the new towns. I just want to repeat that I think that inner urban renewal and the continuation of the present new town programmes should go ahead together in harmony and not in conflict.
I have two questions to ask my noble friend before I sit down. Could the Government give consideration to the problem of excessive land assembly costs? The way land is valued needs examination and I think there should be a new approach. I was interested to read, in speech after speech in the debates on this Bill in another place, anxiety over land values, land being hung on to, land lying idle. My second question is: Are we moving towards a clear, coherent, comprehensive policy in terms of all the areas receiving aid?
11.47 a.m.
Lord SANDFORD: My Lords, I am very glad to be the first person in this debate to be able to congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady David, on her maiden speech, which I think we would all agree was fluent, well informed and made a very useful contribution to this difficult subject. This subject—the revitalisation of the inner cities—requires all the experience and acumen that can be brought to bear upon it and experience coming from the new towns will be particularly valuable. I wish, as the noble Baroness suggested, that special development corporations for the old towns could have been established. If that were feasible

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my right honourable friend Mr. Peter Walker would have established one for the docklands in 1970 and we would by now have eight years' valuable progress behind us. I am afraid that anybody who goes to the docklands now can see, unfortunately, that that is not the case. However, even if that solution is not practicable, I think the insights and experience, the acumen and entrepreneurial skills of the new towns are applicable and I hope the noble Baroness will help us to see as the Bill proceeds how they can be brought to bear.
The Bill provides a very welcome change from the long complexities and controversies of the Scotland Bill—which nobody seems to want very much—to a short, simple Bill which I think everybody agrees is most necessary and desirable, and which I should be surprised if everybody taking part in this debate did not welcome. It is a short, simple and agreed Bill but the problems underlying it are as complex and long-lived as any that we have to face. I was therefore glad that the noble Baroness began her remarks by giving a review of the progress that has been made in the past year across the whole field of the inner city policies. As she said, I initiated the debate on this subject just over a year ago. At that time only the summary reports of the inner area studies were out. Now the White Paper and the full studies have both been issued and I think it is useful to make the debate on the Bill an occasion for reviewing progress, as the noble Baroness has done.
I have a few questions but I think I should prefer to leave those to the Committee stage. They are relatively minor compared with the broad span of progress in the inner cities. I think that this Second Reading debate is an occasion more for that. As the noble Baroness says, the inner city policies are only in a minor degree a matter for new legislation. Most of what is needed is to be achieved by administrative action reflecting new approaches. I imagine that Her Majesty's Government would want chiefly to be judged by their own stated aims, the aims stated in the White Paper which, to take paragraph 103, the concluding paragraph, can be divided into four headings.
There is the involvement of the private sector—and the noble Lord, Lord Byers,
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has already introduced that in full measure —and the steps that can be taken to attract private investment. I think we shall want to hear more as we go along about how that can be done. I am glad that this Bill reflects the valiant pioneering efforts by the Borough of Rochdale and the far-sightedness of the County of Tyne and Wear in getting a Private Bill of their own which conferred on them the powers that will now be available to everybody.
The second strand of the Government's policy is the collaboration with representative groups in the community, and I think there is more to be said about that. The third is the scope for the voluntary bodies to participate, and the fourth is greater sensitivity to the views and needs of the individual citizen in the inner cities. These are the approaches cited as, "the ultimate touchstone of success", to use the Government's own words. Like many other noble Lords—the noble Lord, Lord Byers, for instance—concerned with this topic, I have been up and down the different cities of the country since our last debate, paying particular attention to the City of Newcastle in the county of Tyne and Wear where these powers have been available. I believe that the noble Baroness, too, has been there recently, though looking at other things to do with the heritage.
My special interest in Newcastle arises from the fact that I am chairman of the trustees of a body called "Taskforce North" which, in conjunction with the City of Newcastle, the county of Tyne and Wear and the Manpower Services Commission, is running an enterprise called "Townscape" which is designed to involve the young unemployed and the voluntary bodies in scores of small projects of environmental improvement identified and suggested by local people through their local councils. I think this is auguring quite well, because the right framework for this kind of local involvement has already been provided and the area in question has already available the powers provided in this Bill.
From the rest of the country I receive rather less satisfactory reports. I know that these reports have gone to the Secretary of State from the National Council of Social Service. I am glad to hear from the noble Baroness that she

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will respond to them, but I think that the House ought to have the gist of them because, if true, they are rather serious.
The NCSS has been monitoring the inner cities programme and these are the salient points which they make:
"There have been long delays in seeking the involvement of local organisations and community groups. It has not been sufficiently well understood that this needs to take place from the outset to be successful".
I think I had better read most of this:
"The timescale imposed on local authorities by the Department of the Environment for drawing up their inner area programmes for the next three years is so tight that firm proposals are being required by June or July of this year, leaving insufficient time for consultation and involvement.
"Ministers have not pressed the local authorities to establish an adequate framework for the involvement of local communities and voluntary organisations. Apart from Newcastle-upon-Tyne"—
and I can vouch for the value of the fact that it is there—
"Islington, Leicester and Sheffield … with few exceptions, the quality and quantity of information being made available by local authorities is inadequate for local organisations and local communities to identify opportunities for involvement and make a proper contribution to the planning process".
Finally,
"In most of the areas, local councillors have not been adequately briefed on the background work being carried out …".
and one cannot afford to leave out the local councillors in work of this kind.
So the proposal which the NCSS have made to the Secretary of State—and I am glad to know that he will be discussing them with them—is that they should develop adequate frameworks to involve local communities, that the finer points of detail must he worked out locally but guidance must be given. The final point they make is that the experience which has been acquired in some areas must be applied to many others, and the wards and the councillors should be used more extensively. I do not think I need say any more about that; but if the Secretary of State has a meeting with the NCSS during the passage of this Bill I think it will be useful if the noble Baroness can give us some report of progress.
So much for participation. The other aim that Her Majesty's Government set out in the White Paper is to attract private
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investment. I could not agree more with the noble Lord, Lord Byers, in what he said about that. As he has said it, I do not think I need say much more. I think it would be important if the noble Baroness not only could repeat the many exhortations that there have been about the importance of private investment being attracted but could give us some examples of such success and progress as there has been. We have had some from the noble Lord, Lord Byers, but anything indicating the way in which this can be done, the key to success, would be valuable.
The further strand in all this which the noble Baroness, Lady David, was right to dwell on is the need for a co-ordinated and corporate approach both at central Government level—Whitehall—and at local government level. It would be useful to know a little more at appropriate moments as the Bill progresses about what the progress here is. How does the Whitehall machinery stand now? Have we still a Cabinet committee chaired by Mr. Shore or has that been succeeded by something else, and how is it working out? At the local level, it would be interesting to know what forms of area management ate now proving most useful. This was one of the devices identified as likely to be useful. Experiments have been taking place for many months now. They take a number of different forms. It would be interesting to find which forms are proving most useful and where they are being adopted.
Finally, the question of priorities. I suggested a year ago that the extra efforts, such extra resources as there were available, and the new approaches that are most likely to prove fruitful, should be applied where they will show early results and teach useful lessons on which other authorities which were less advanced and less imaginative could then draw. At present I do not see too many concrete results or very many useful lessons. If they are there, let us hear about them during the passage of the Bill and let us have them published. Rather I see an ever thinner spreading of resources over a score or more of partnership and programme cities, with 14 more in the pipeline, and rather too few signs of new and imaginative approaches. Here I would very much agree with the noble Lord, Lord Byers, that it is these new and imaginative approaches and ways of doing things

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which really must come first before huge extra resources are applied to problems which so far have just cropped up whatever has been made available.
I hope we can obtain an encouraging response to questions like these from the noble Baroness as the Bill goes through. I think we are all very grateful for the information she has given us so far.
What we have to guard against is a feeling which I am afraid exists and which must not gain ground. The opportunities really to make some progress in reviving the inner cities which appeared last summer must not be allowed to fade away. If this does happen, I think that the disillusionment which is already so widespread and which is such a weighty factor in the whole problem of dealing with the inner cities will be perilously compounded. I hope that that will not happen.
12.1 p.m.
Lord EVANS of CLAUGHTON: My Lords, I crave even more than the customary kindness and indulgence and, indeed, patience which I believe your Lordships' House gives to maiden speakers, first, because I have the good or bad fortune to have followed a maiden speech of such high standard from the noble Baroness, Lady David, that it makes it very difficult for me to follow her, and secondly, because I have spent the last 21 years in the hurly-burly and the rum-bustuous politics of local government on Merseyside. I suspect that the translation to your Lordships' House will engender the sort of feeling that a lay preacher would have on being asked to preach a sermon in St. Paul's Cathedral.
I do hope, however, that the experience which I have gained over these many years in local government at most levels may be of some help to me in debates in your Lordships' House. I hope that you will forgive me if, in moments of great excitement or emotion, I descend to the patois of local government and possibly describe the noble Lord on the Woolsack as "my Lord Mayor" or some such title. I hope that I shall be forgiven if that does happen from time to time, as I believe has happened in another place.
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I thought that the debate on this Bill was a suitable opportunity for me to make my maiden speech, since I have been involved in very much of the action on Merseyside County Council and on Wirral Borough Council during the consideration of the White Paper and the introduction of the Bill and the promotion of the Merseyside County Council Bill, which I believe is at present before your Lordships' House. Many clauses in Part 2 of that Bill seek to deal in different ways with the very problems that this Bill tries to remedy, namely, problems to do with inner urban regeneration.
In addition, I have for many years represented an inner urban area of Merseyside ill Birkenhead called Claughton on the county council, on the old Birkenhead County Borough Council and on Wirral Borough Council, and I have had first-hand experience over a great number of years of the kind of inner urban deprivation with which this Bill seeks to deal. In fact, the division I represent has within it the nationally notorious Oak and Eldon Gardens—a block of 214 high-rise houses built only 18 years ago and now being demolished because of their unsuitability. Indeed, as the noble Baroness, Lady Birk, has said, I have personal experience of extremely high levels of unemployment. There is a level of unemployment in Merseyside as a whole of 14 per cent., but in areas of the kind I represent that very often gets up to 20 to 25 per cent. I have experience of closures of small businesses through slum clearance and through the removal of non-conforming uses under the Planning Act. In very many cases the opportunity for employment, if there is any at all in the area, means a long and extremely expensive journey for the person who is seeking employment to an area perhaps 10, 15 or 20 miles away from his home.
In general, therefore, I welcome the proposals contained in the Bill, strengthened and broadened, as my noble friend Lord Byers has said, during its passage through another place. In particular, I welcome its extension to commercial developments. I must say, however, that my enthusiasm is limited to two cheers rather than the more customary three. One thing has been a disappointment—and this had been touched on. Those of

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us who have been engaged in local government over many years have grown more and more depressed by the erosion of the powers that local government can wield by the considerable decrease, during the years that I have been in local government, of the powers that local government possesses; by the ham-stringing nature of the financial arrangements so that fewer and fewer councillors at county and district level feel that they are doing a useful job, with a consequent reduction in the number of people willing to come forward to take part in local government and a lowering in the standard of councillors generally. Whatever Party we belong to, we must recognise that it is a fact, in spite of reorganisation, that the erosion is reducing the interest and enthusiasm of the kind of community leaders who used to take a great part in local government.
I fear that the Bill itself to a certain extent erodes the freedom of action of local authorities. It continues this process. Noble Lords will perhaps recall paragraph 54 of the White Paper, which states:
"The Government intend to introduce legislation to enhance the powers of local authorities with serious inner area problems to assist industry".
The Bill does not do this in those terms. Before local authorities can enjoy these enhanced powers, they have to follow a sort of municipal "Pilgrim's Progress". The first problem is to become a designated district—a distinction which is granted by the Secretary of State. The next obstacle is to have an industrial improvement area within that designated district. Again, the Secretary of State makes that decision. The final hurdle—the top of the pile—is to become a "special area" within a designated district and within an industrial improvement area. That special area status is again a matter for decision by the Secretary of State.
The problem, therefore, as far as I am concerned is, first, that the Secretary of State controls the whole apparatus, and secondly, that the Bill is based on a broad-brush approach. If "designated", all is well; if not "designated", all is lost. I can think of many districts which are largely areas without inner urban problems but which have within them small towns which perhaps have serious inner urban problems but which are not designated and cannot therefore hope for
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the advantages of the Bill. I apologise if I bore noble Lords, but, again, take Merseyside. Four of the five districts of Merseyside are designated. Liverpool is a partnership area. Wirral is a programme area. Sefton is largely an urban residential area but has an inner urban area problem in Bootle and is therefore designated. St. Helens is designated. But there is a fifth district, Knowsley, which has no inner urban problems because it is very largely a new town—a new area. However, it has problems equal to those of the inner urban areas except for the fact that it has modern slums rather than old slums; it has modern factories which are running down rather than old factories which are running down.
One of the things which concerns me about this Bill is the fact that all kinds of provisions, incentives and carrots are given to the building of factories in inner urban areas which will then attract—because of the grants given, the rent-free periods and so on—the owners of factories in outer urban areas to take on a factory in an inner urban area, leaving the factory in the outer urban area vacant and without any incentives for it to be reoccupied. So, while the Bill deals with inner urban areas—and, as other noble Lords have said, one gives a welcome to it for going a long way to cure the problems of inner urban areas—I suspect that before long your Lordships will be called upon to consider a Bill to cure the outer urban problems which will flow from the success of this Bill. This is not a joke; it is not an exaggeration. This is a real problem which already exists in certain parts of the country that I come from, and I suspect that we should really be considering—and I hope we shall—making it possible to extend the benefits of the Bill to outer areas which do not at present qualify as inner urban areas, but which have exactly the same problems because of modern dereliction. I thank your Lordships for your patience in listening to me.
12.11 p.m.
Lord ORAM: My Lords, I am very glad to have this opportunity of congratulating the makers of the two maiden speeches in this debate today, both my noble friend Baroness David and the noble Lord who has just addressed your

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Lordships. Both of them clearly have very considerable experience in local administration, and they are to be congratulated on having seized this very early opportunity on a very appropriate Bill to demonstrate to your Lordships what experience and ability they have. They have already enriched your Lordships' House and we shall look forward to hearing them on this kind of subject, and indeed others, in the future. I feel almost as though I am making a maiden speech myself. Although over the last two years I have inflicted dozens of speeches on your Lordships, this is the first time that I have addressed the House without that expert advice that I used to receive, and indeed to need and appreciate, when I stood at that Box.
This is a Bill which, like the other speakers in the debate have said, should be very warmly supported. Over the last few days I have been asking myself what is the reason for the warmth that I have felt when I approached the Bill, and my mind went back to what I think was one of the last speeches that I made in another place some years ago. I was then speaking on a local employment Bill which provided grants for development areas and intermediate areas, or "grey" areas as they were then nicknamed, and at that time I was representing a dockland constituency in East London which had entered upon difficult times. I shared that area with the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack, and I hope that some of the remarks that I shall make will receive his approval.
I suggested in another place that it was unwise to provide assistance only for the extensive geographical regions in the North of England and in Scotland which were categorised as development or intermediate areas. I pointed out that the South-East of England was regarded as being prosperous and not warranting special aid, but that within such a region, generally prosperous, there could be quite sizeable, though relatively small, areas just as much in need of help as the major areas of industrial run-down. It seems to me that the central purpose of the Bill that we are now considering is to take note of just that kind of area. Whether it is in London, in Liverpool or in Birmingham, or in any of the major
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urban areas, and whatever the overall prosperity of those particular cities, it is recognised now that there are these black spots which need special treatment. It seems to me that the Bill provides a more discriminatory instrument of assistance than some of its predecessors. Therefore, in making my contribution to the debate today, I want to pursue those thoughts that I expressed in another place, and I should like to draw on my experience in East London, and earlier on in Essex beyond London. I hope your Lordships will forgive me if, in two or three sentences, I indicate the scope of that experience.
If I can go back to the Election of 1950, I was Parliamentary candidate for the Billericay constituency, much of which has now been developed as the new town of Basildon. At that time, in the early 1950s, it was an area which presented a very real social problem. It was neither town nor country. It was a sprawling mess of semi-development. People had gone there after the first World War; they had bought plots of land and built their own, most inadequate, homes without any amenities, with no roads, no sewage plant, no electricity supply, and much of the area was, therefore, capable of being described as a rural slum. It was this that in course of time the new town of Basildon was to replace.
Subsequently, for a period of nearly 20 years, I represented the southern half of the borough of East Ham, which was to supply much of the population which took up the houses in the new town of Basildon. During that period I witnessed the serious decline in our own area; a decline in the industry, in the size of the population, in the skills that were available and in the general economic and social strength of what had been the formerly thriving town of East Ham and its neighbour, West Ham. I hope that this Bill will provide the means of restoring health to those areas which had been denuded of their strength under earlier arrangements.
What I like about this Bill in particular is that it raises no great slogans, it provides no panaceas and it offers no shibboleths. It does not pretend to bring sweeping changes throughout vast areas, as some earlier Acts have done. It is discriminatory. It is selective and, I belive, it is capable of bringing help to the districts

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which need it most. That, I suggest, is a welcome change from much that has gone before. Both in town planning and in industrial development large imaginative ideas and new miraculous techniques, very often the bigger the better, have too often been the order of the day, and all too little regard has been had for the social consequences of implementing those big ideas. I suggest, if we look back over the post-war period, that two things together —the adoption of too sweeping administrative changes on the one hand, and the uncritical exploitation of modern technology on the other—have more often than not created new problems in an attempt to solve old ones.
Let me give an example. It seemed clear to us in the immediate post-war situation that areas like East London were unsatisfactory places in which to live. They had been bombed; their industries had been damaged; their homes were in any case old and had then subsequently suffered war damage, and in many areas, of course, slums had developed. What then seemed to be the solution? It was to move the population out to the new towns which were initiated by the first Labour Government. And, in addition to the new towns, of course, progressive local authorities had their out-borough estates. Applicants for houses were told that there was little opportunity for rehousing in the town of their birth, but if they were prepared to move out into the areas of new development then it would be possible to find them a house. Many a time in my advice bureau as a constitutency Member of Parliament, I listened, as many, all indeed, of my colleagues listened, to pathetic claims for rehousing, and we had to tell that story: No, there was no chance of rehousing within the borough, but there would be a chance of getting a house outside, either in the borough properties in outer Essex, in my case, or in the new town of Basildon.
I was perhaps helping to solve individual family problems, but I was, willy-nilly, at the same time helping to denude the borough which I represented. What we were in fact doing was moving out the younger elements of the population, the newly married couples; often moving them away from existing jobs in the hope that there would be jobs in the areas to which they moved. We were leaving behind the elderly, the grandparents, and
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the unskilled. That is what has happened in the inner urban areas and that is why we need this Bill.
I am by no means suggesting that the building of new towns or of out-borough estates was wrong. I should not like to leave that impression. It was necessary that many people should move out of overcrowded cities into better homes and a better environment. What I am suggesting is that the emphasis was wrong. The movement outwards, which was inevitable and correct, should have been counterbalanced by equal and parallel concern about—and an equal expenditure on—the social problems that the outward movement left behind. We are legislating, in this Bill, with the benefit of hindsight. We are trying to put the clock back—or, rather, to get the pendulum to swing back. It is a sad reflection that the mistakes we now all recognise were allowed to be made in the first instance.
But it was not only in housing policy that the emphasis was wrong. The Bill provides for aid to industry in the inner urban areas. Here again I can illustrate what went wrong—or, rather, what was allowed to go too far—in respect of industrial development in the past. We were too ready to exploit on a large scale what was new and wonderful in technology, without due regard to the residual problems that were being created as a result of that exploitation.
May I give two examples from the area to which I have already referred. When, in 1955, I first went to East Ham, I visited the vast Beckton Gas Works, which was considered to be the largest in Europe and supplied much of London's gas—gas derived from coal. It also had an important products works as a subsidiary undertaking. It was not long before North Sea gas became available. This led to the rapid transformation of the Beckton Gas Works. It was no longer necessary to bring coal to change it into gas and therefore no longer necessary to have the products works. All that was required now was to distribute the gas which flowed from the North Sea or was brought in tankers from even farther afield.
No doubt those who were responsible for the technical change were advised, in a sense rightly, that the change would be

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economic; that it would be much cheaper to use North Sea gas than to make gas out of coal. But, as has so often happened in the various problems in our national life over this period, one major element of the equation was left out. What the accountant cannot take into consideration in deciding what is more and what is less economic is the social cost. The jobs of those who worked in the products works would be no longer available. Valuable plant was no longer to be used. That area of my constituency was to become derelict, as it now is—a depressing monument to a new technology which was right in a sense, but which was too ruthlessly and rapidly pursued.
Here again, let me make it clear that I am not a Luddite. I do not believe that a fundamental mistake was made in utilising North Sea gas. Of course it was right to take advantage of nature's bounty. What was wrong was to ignore the gap that was being left in the social structure as a result of the change of technology. We should have ensured that resources were pumped into that part of the social structure that had previously been served by the coal-based gas works and by the products works. That was the time when new industry should have been encouraged to replace the old in that inner urban area. We are doing it now through the Bill, but it would have been better done 10 years ago.
My second illustration has become particularly topical and threatening these last three weeks. It concerns the Royal group of docks which I shared with my noble and learned friend on the Woolsack. These also were a major part of the life in that part of London, but whereas when I first became acquainted with that area the docks were full of ships, very few ships now come that way. Basically, this has, again, been in response to a new, modern, wonderful technology—the development of containerisation, which is particularly associated not so much with the Royal docks but with the Tilbury docks further down the river. We were discussing this in the House a few days ago. Now we read in the report of Mr. Cuckney, the chairman of the Port of London Authority, the ominous words threatening that the retention of the upper docks cannot be justified much longer. Of course, I recognise the reasons for the decline in the
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viability of the Royal docks. It is a history that I need not go into. But I cannot believe that it is right that that important physical asset, which the Royal docks certainly are, should be closed down and that the area around them should simply be left to stagnate and die.
We read in the Explanatory and Financial Memorandum to the Bill that it will enable the Secretary of State to enter into partnership arrangements, as my noble friend has described, and that one of the partnerships relates to the major programme of urban renewal for the London docklands area. That programme is set out in great detail in the publication, the London Docklands Strategic Plan. In includes provision for 8,000 houses on the land immediately North of the Royal docks. It was derelict land and we wished it could be used for houses. For technical reasons that was not possible. But the proposal now is to put 8,000 houses in that area.
What folly it would be for one public authority to go ahead with that housing development and for another public authority to abandon a major source of jobs for many of the people for whom the houses are intended. When we talk of jobs, it is not just the dockers we have in mind, but the craftsmen, the boilermakers, the carpenters, the transport workers and many others whose livelihoods depend on those important docks I hope that the Government—I hope my noble friend will convey this message—will count the costs which do not appear in the balance sheet of the Port of London Authority. Otherwise a very bad mistake could be made.
The major lesson that we should learn from experiences of the kind that I have referred to is that it is people who matter. I was glad to hear some such phrase in my noble friend Lady Birk's opening speech. So often, both before he died and since, a famous phrase of Dr. Schumacher's has been quoted in debates such as this, that "small is beautiful". That was the thought-provoking title of his book. But what is less famous, but even more thought-provoking, is the sub-title of that book. He called it not only Small is Beautiful, but "A Study of Economics as if People Mattered". I notice the noble Lord, Lord Robbins, in his place. He first taught me economics. He, I hope, will agree that we ought to have more study of economics as though people mattered.

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It should be our constant endeavour to legislate here and in another place as if people mattered, and I am not sure that we always do. But I have no doubts on that score in relation to the Bill. I believe it is designed to bring industry to the people, to bring jobs to the people, and to bring a better environment to the people; not moving people out to the green and pleasant land, but to make the environment in which they live in the inner urban areas a pleasant place to live. That is why I give the Bill my warm support.
12.32 p.m.
Lord DAVIES of LEEK: My Lords, if the noble Viscount who follows debates with such assiduity will forgive me, I propose to take no more than two or three minutes, after listening to this excellent and informative debate, and a few seconds to say how delighted I was to listen to the noble Baroness's speech, and also to the melodious speech of, I think, a fellow-Welshman. I have been a baritone, and I think that together we could render "Watchman, what of the night?", one tenor and one baritone, if the House should ever need it.
A noble Lord: Why not now!
Lord DAVIES of LEEK: The noble Lord had better be careful—we might do it now. I am delighted, and say, if I may, with all sincerity, that I am sure we have two valuable additions to this noble House.
Now, having been forgiven by the noble Viscount, I will intersperse the small point I thought was worth making, although it may be more important at the Committee stage. The noble Baroness who opened so ably mentioned, in passing, canals. I am interested in our canals commercially —I do not mean financially, but in their commercial use—but more especially in their use. The old artefacts and the old technology should be kept alive, and where they come in the 43 areas and in our inner cities I hope that there will be a lobby that will intelligently use the Bill to keep alive canals in those areas. They are part of the nation's social furniture, which should not be "Beechingised" completely. I do not mean by that that they should all be left open, willy-nilly, but they give comfort, succour and
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exercise. There are 3 million fishermen, for a start, and now more young people than ever are taking trips on the canals. In places like Stoke-on-Trent, to convey clay and pottery canals are being used commercially; but they need financial help. And in the inner cities, if we are making them anew and offering help, this is somewhere where capital and engineering technique and know-how can be used.
I have taken two minutes. That is all I wished to say. I may enter into the Committee stage. I thank the House for my having usurped the position on the sheet, because I was too lazy to put down my name.
12.35 p.m.
Viscount COLVILLE of CULROSS: My Lords, my first and very pleasant task is to join in the congratulations to the three maiden speakers. To the noble Baroness I say that it seems that for distinguished ladies in local government there is no surer step to your Lordships' House than to join the Peterborough Development Corporation. She now comes in the wake of the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman, and brings equally sound experience with her.
To the noble Lord, Lord Evans of Claughton, I simply say that there can perhaps be no more apposite moment for somebody from Merseyside to join in your Lordships' debates. It was certainly in Liverpool that my eyes were first opened, through some of the voluntary organisations, to what the inner city problems looked like and felt like on the ground. He will be able to tell us more about this and direct us aright on the Bill as it proceeds, and on many other topics as well.
To the noble Lord, Lord Oram, all I can say is that he sails just as well under his own colours as he did under the Government's. What he has done is to deliver a most interesting and penetrating analysis of some of the misguided and short-sighted policies and decisions which we, alas! have all taken in the past and which have given rise to a great part of this problem, the result of which is a multiplicity of social problems of unemployment, of crime, of misery and hopelessness, with the attendant strains

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that they place upon the police, social workers and many other public services, all of the kind that the noble Lord, Lord Byers, listed earlier.
It has seemed to me for a while, and I am glad to say that it has seemed to those on these Benches for even longer, that this was wrong. That is one of the reasons why my right honourable friend the Member for Worcester, Mr. Peter Walker, when he was Secretary of State, instituted the inner urban studies to which we are now so much indebted. It always seemed to me personally, since I started looking at this problem, that it was madness to allow industry, commerce and housing to spread out into the countryside and take thousands of acres per year from agricultural use while we left in the centres of our towns areas of useless dereliction and ill-begotten environmental horrors.
I would say to the noble Baroness, that now that we have the new structure plans before the Department of the Environment for consideration and approval we may have an opportunity to do something about this. I was recently looking at the Surrey Structure Plan in draft, and that indeed says something about the opportunities for redevelopment, even in the towns of Surrey, which are not notorious for their dereliction. At the same time she would, no doubt, like to pass on for general use the suggestions made by the noble Lord, Lord Evans of Claughton, about a little more tolerance for nonconforming users, even in residential areas, the departure of which is rightly blamed for many of the losses of jobs. This was the topic on which I spoke in my noble friend Lord Sandford's debate about a year ago.
In the light of the useful explanation that the noble Baroness gave of the provisions of the Bill, and in the recognition that it forms a small part of the jigsaw that the White Paper explains in full, I too should like to join from this side of the House in welcoming it. The Government will then be judged on their implementation of their policies as a whole, and how well they work out.
I would say in passing that, although the noble Baroness commended to us Clauses 9 and 10 as being helpful towards the real problem that either the dis-
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possessed or the new firm often finds it difficult to buy or rent properties, there is apparently no relenting on the Government's side as regards the refusal to allow local authorities to dispose of freeholds in a general way, because they insist on their Community Land Act problem. That does not help in this respect.
A number of points have been suggested to me through representations made, and I find that all the local authority organisations are at one in deploring that the Bill has to be discriminatory, and that they cannot all join in the powers and opportunities that it gives unless they are like Tyne and Wear and Rochdale, which promote their own private legislation. I understand and sympathise with conscientious local authorities all over the country which wish to take positive steps in this direction. I also join with them in the hope that there will be opportunities for further candidature to join the 43 local authorities already named. Now that the criteria for inclusion on the list have been spelt out more clearly, particularly at the Report stage of the Bill in another place as well as in the White Paper, I imagine that they will have the opportunity to argue their case. I suppose that it is purely a matter of coincidence that so soon after the right honourable Member for Blackburn argued in favour of the inclusion of that town in the list, lo and behold, when it was published in May it appeared to have been included. I am sure that other Parliamentary and extra-Parliamentary pressure can be brought to bear by those who would wish to come in.
I understand their aspirations, but equally I can see that if the Government are not prepared to make available more than the £80 million between now and 1981, then we shall almost inevitably have discrimination; because I very much agree with paragraph 81 of the White Paper that in the course of this exercise we must aim "at early and demonstrable results". It is no use on this task if we do not show that we can succeed. Everybody will lose heart and we will achieve nothing. In that context, if the money is not sufficiently generous there will have to be discrimination. I stress, with the noble Baroness, Lady David, the need for quick and successful results, because otherwise there will be disillusionment.

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We have already had a year since the White Paper was published, a year in which to look at the experience of the arrangements that the noble Baroness, Lady Birk, has spelt out for us and into which the pattern of this Bill fits. Of course, it has not all gone smoothly. I will not disrupt the harmony of this debate by listing again the various factors which the Government have stirred into the economic soufflé, which have had such a disheartening effect on private businesses. I suppose that everybody would know, except perhaps the noble Baroness, the disincentive of the development land tax at the rate at which they insisted on introducing and continuing it. But I do not want to sour matters which have so far gone so smoothly by rehearsing those, although they are matters into which my right honourable friend the Member for Henley went and where we think that we could make significant changes for the better. But one point is quite right: with the noble Lord, Lord Byers, I join in the emphasis that has been placed on small businesses during this debate. The noble Lord, Lord Evans, also referred to this subject. It is no monopoly of the Liberal Party to take this stance. My Party has been stressing the importance of this for a very long time, and it is only to the good that the Socialist Party has at last come round to our opinions.
There is one slight disadvantage under this Bill which has been drawn to my attention: It is that, although we have this £80 million to be distributed largely under the urban aid programme under its new shelter in the Department of the Environment and the Office of the Secretary of State for Wales, by contrast—and this will particularly harm the other local authorities which are not to be designated or to have partnership arrangements under this Bill—there has been a savage cut in the borrowing limits which have been allowed for local authorities in the locally determined sector. The figures are startling. In 1975–76, the amount allowed was £484 million; but in the last year it went down to £233 million. Those who are better at arithmetic than I are able to tell me that in real terms, taking account of the value of money, that is a drop of 60 per cent. Those other local authorities will have these much more limited resources with which to do the
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kind of work that we are talking about today, whereas the lucky ones will have the money under this Bill. So it is not by any means a universal success story.
I join in what has been said about the volunteers. My noble friend Lord Sand-ford has read out the letter from the National Council for Social Service, and I too was perturbed by it. So I commend the wisdom of the Secretary of State, as announced by the noble Baroness today, in going to see that body in order to try to make sure that these failings are put right. If I can give any advice at all from first-hand experience on this matter, the National Council for Social Service, with its links with local councils for social service, ought to be able, if anybody in the voluntary world can, to help the Government to direct aright the sort of emphasis that they should place in each individual town on the role that the volunteers can play. I think that is the route through which the most helpful contribution by the volunteers may at any rate be identified by the Government. It is always a difficult task for Government to see which voluntary organisations in the field are the ones which ought to be courted and brought into the co-operative exercise. I was very pleased to hear the noble Baroness stressing that aspect and I hope that the negotiations will be speedy and successful.
There is an aspect of this Bill which worries some who are interested in the housing situation. Whereas I am happy to see that jobs are to be encouraged not only as the Bill originally stood in terms of industrial jobs but now, by a change in another place, in the commercial world as well, we are not, at least in this legislation, doing anything about the housing problem which is a feature, as the noble Lord, Lord Oram, explained, of the inner urban problem. One special problem that I have heard about which gravely affects those who wish to buy private houses and rehabilitate them in the inner urban areas is that with the arrangements as they are at present the local authority cannot give an improvement grant to a person until he is the owner of a house, but unfortunately that person cannot get a mortgage to buy the house and become its owner while the house is unimproved. There is a vicious circle here which must militate against the rehabilitation of inner

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urban substandard housing. Now that there is this emphasis by the Government on rehabilitation rather than complete clearance and rebuilding, this might be something at which the noble Baroness and her Department would like to look.
The other day I went to a seminar in the City to try to explain some of the advantages of investment in London. I had only 24 hours' notice and I did not have time to do as much research as I should like. I will not bore your Lordships with what I said because that was insignificant; but I want to tell the noble Baroness and the House what the investors said. There are only two points which I think are of interest at this stage. The first is that they were, to my eyes and ears, anxious to assess the opportunities for investment in inner areas and, on that occasion, the inner areas of London about which we are talking. They had money for industrial investments and other commercial investments of that kind. Indeed, some of them are already co-operating with the Grater London Council and the London borough councils in this field. So that is encouraging. But they did say that one of the disadvantages of the inner urban areas, particularly inner London, is the problem of transport, especially getting their vehicles with the goods to and from the factories and warehouses that they would contemplate putting up.
I was therefore extremely pleased to see that at the end of the annexe to the White Paper, in paragraph 33, there is this emphasis on the necessity to bring into collaboration the transport authorities as well. I hope that no oversight will allow that aspect of the matter to be disregarded. They also said—although I think that this is not such a problem in the provincial cities—that the level of rates in London is a great deterrent to people who contemplate investing here. That is also a matter for the Department of the Environment.
I agree with my noble friend Lord Sandford and with the noble Baroness that investors are important and that we must make sure that we also identify their needs and see what we can do to help them. I come back in the end to the essence of this matter in which I so much agree with the noble Lord, Lord Oram. This is an exercise for people; it is not an exercise for the benefit of local govern-
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ment or central Government. It is a method whereby those bodies may help the people who live in these areas and of course, as I have said already, they will be powerfully assisted by the voluntary organisations. I believe that it was the voluntary organisations which first identified the impossibility under the system of some years ago of getting co-ordination between the multiplicity of departments in local and central Government which must, as the White Paper now recognises, be drawn together before one can get a coherent solution to these problems. It is no use if the Parks Department will not speak to the Housing Department, which will not speak to the Transport Department or whatever it may be. Here we have the source—or so I was told at first hand—of the despair and disillusionment of these areas.
I believe that we now have the machinery to put this right. We have heard of the way in which the committees have been structured under the partnership arrangements, with a Minister in charge, and how all the various bodies get together. But I believe they will need not only to have the help of the volunteers, as has been so much stressed, but will also have to ensure most carefully that what they are doing is what fulfils the aspirations and wants of the people who live in the areas in question. It is no use planning for them: one must plan with them.
In this context, perhaps I may ask the noble Baroness one question about Clause 11 of the Bill, relating to local plans. This matter was not very much discussed in another place, but it seems to me that if an opportunity is being sought in this measure to bring forward the time when a local plan can be considered, so that one does not necessarily have to wait for the approval of the Structure Plan, there are at least two advantages, and perhaps the noble Baroness can spell out more. First of all, there will be an opportunity in the course of the consideration and formulation of the local plan for public participation to identify the sort of things that people want done in their area. I was very interested to see the sort of things that have already been selected to be done in the dockland area described in an interesting Press notice from the noble Baroness's department. There is nothing like the exercise on a

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local plan to give people the opportunity to choose which way they would like their area to be fashioned, so far as local plans can do it. Perhaps that is one of the reasons why this clause is in the Bill.
The other point seems to me to be this: once a local plan is approved, there will be powers under the Town and Country Planning Act for local authorities to acquire land in accordance with the plan and in order to fulfil it, which they will not be able to—except on the chance occasion under the Community Land Act as it now stands—without the local plan being approved. This again may help to speed up the development of the right sort of advance in these areas. I should be grateful if the noble Baroness could tell us a little more about this.
I should like to end by saying that although this is a small Bill it is part of what could be a really valuable and imaginative set of measures to enable the heart and the morale to be put back into the inner urban areas. We shall never succeed unless we persuade people that they are good places to live in and I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Oram, that they must be made pleasant places to live in, so that people can be proud of their local area and can be proud to have their place of business there or to work there. They should be places where the morale of the whole community is raised from the depths where it now sometimes lies to the heights that will make it attractive, make it buoyant and make it successful. Then we shall have no further need of intervention from Government because from there on the matter will go ahead entirely under its own steam. That must be what we are all seeking. We do not wish perpetually to try to get this matter right; we must get it right first of all so that after that it can go ahead on its own initiative and of its own volition. If this Bill helps in that direction, then I am glad to welcome it.
12.51 p.m.
Baroness BIRK: My Lords, may I first pay my tribute to the two maiden speakers who have contributed to this debate in such an outstanding way today. It is very interesting that a debate of this sort which takes place at an inconvenient time on a Friday morning should have attracted two maiden speakers of such
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quality. I think it gives extra prestige to the Bill. My noble friend Lady David showed such clarity, knowledge and thoughtfulness in her contribution that it is quite clear we have a welcome addition and support to our Benches. She has also learned very quickly, I am afraid, the art of asking not just pertinent but very awkward qusetions. The noble Lord, Lord Evans of Claughton, spoke with great experience, humanity and understanding about one of the partnership areas we have been discussing today. It is always a pleasure in the House to have people who speak directly from their own experience.
We have had not only a wide-ranging and useful debate but an extremely good-humoured one, covering all the general questions of inner city policy, as well as the Bill itself. I cannot tell your Lordships how pleased I was to hear the word "people" used so often and to have humanity coming into a Bill such as this which is mainly a structural device. I was particularly pleased that there was such a general welcome given to the Bill, and even though Lord Evans gave it two cheers rather than three I will not hold that against him. I am also very grateful for the tribute paid to my Department by the noble Lord, Lord Byers. What has been said has demonstrated the concern of noble Lords for the inner areas and the people who live and work in them. They showed a very deep concern and interest.
I am sure, having listened very carefully to everything that has been said, that this Bill will be of considerable help. It is not, as I said originally, a complete panacea or completely comprehensive, but it will be of considerable help to local authorities in overcoming inner area problems. We have seen what authorities such as Rochdale can do with an ingenious application of existing powers. With the custom-made powers in this Bill I am sure that much more can be done. I think this is where the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Byers, on the need for flexibility and imagination is very applicable, and I agree with him entirely. I also agree with my noble friend Lady David that we must always look out for cumbersomeness and clumsiness in administering these measures.
One of the problems is that when one is dealing with complicated policies it is

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extremely difficult to get them as streamlined and as swiftly carried out as one would like. It is also true that when one is implementing policies of this sort in a democracy one of the prices we pay is a certain slowness in execution. But I think she will agree it is a price worth paying.
The noble Lord, Lord Byers, and the noble Viscount, Lord Colville, both stressed the importance, as did the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, of the private sector and, certainly, of small businesses. So far as industry generally is concerned, I do not have a great many examples to hand at the moment, but from memory I know that Marks and Spencer have made a great contribution, as have IBM and BP, and there are various efforts all over the country. I take the point very much of the noble Viscount on the importance of transport and, in fact, the whole of the infrastructure that is needed to back up these endeavours.
The noble Lord, Lord Sandford, and the noble Viscount referred to the criticisms that the NCSS have made of the way in which voluntary groups have not been sufficiently involved in the partnerships and elsewhere. I indicated at the beginning of this debate that the Government were concerned that local organisations, whether voluntary or representing business and commercial interests, should be fully involved in the work of each partnership as it prepares its programme of action, but I have to repeat that we also think it right that the final decisions on the programme should rest with the democratically elected members of the local authorities and the Government, who really are the only people who can be charged with this sort of accountability. But as I said, and I am glad that the noble Viscount responded so well to this, my right honourable friend is aware of the criticisms and proposes to discuss them with the NCSS.
I said, and I repeat, that we were all very much impressed by the way that my noble friend Lady David brought to the House her experience in local government, particularly when she was discussing the new towns and old towns and suggested that maybe one day we would need an Old Towns Act. I think the point here is that a new town is established
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in an area with a relatively small population and the prime job is to get houses, factories, shops and schools built. The development corporation concept, with this single-minded purpose, is very well suited to getting the new, large-scale development under way, but in inner areas it seems to me we have a complication and plurality of a number of problems. We have sizeable populations, we have existing local authority responsibility for many of the services, such as social services and education, that determine the quality of life in the area. It is right, therefore, that local authorities, with their accountability to the local electorate, and also their history and tradition in the area, should be in the lead in measures to improve our inner cities.
The measures that are necessary not only involve physical development but also improvements to all the major public services. Local authorities have the power, if they wish to use it, to delegate many functions to officers or subcommittees, if they wish to ensure that action is taken as speedily as possible; but the decision is theirs. The Government are firmly of the view that this is right, that the elected representatives should have the principal voice in determining the future of their areas. But I certainly agree with my noble friend that we need to ensure that speedy and effective action is taken. We also need to balance this against the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Sandford. His point was that we were working to too tight a timetable, so we must find the right balance between these different views.
I think I should emphasise here that we intend the three-year programmes to include the practical proposals that my noble friend Lady David seeks. Those programmes will be completed by the summer and Government decisions will, I hope, follow, swiftly. It was also suggested that land prices in inner city areas are artificially high and that this may deter developers. Naturally, it is sensible for all land owners, whether in the public or private sector, to dispose of surplus land at the best price reasonably obtainable, given the conditions of the market and the purpose for which it is being disposed. This may mean disposal below the cost at which the land was originally acquired.

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Local authorities, like anyone else, may sometimes be reluctant to sell land below the cost of acquisition because they, after all, have to balance their books; but they are not bound by historic costs, and many dispose of land at market value, taking into account the current prospect for development. We are encouraging them to do this. We also have encouraging evidence that a number of local authorities in inner city areas are already adopting this approach, and that as a result demand may be picking up.
The noble Lord, Lord Evans, in his very practical contribution to the debate stressed his concern for local government to have greater freedom of action. The Bill in fact brings a significant extension of the powers of local authorities and I think, again, some of the points he touched on really extend, quite rightly, even further than this debate and are concerned with the results partly of the Reorganisation Act, which I personally think was absolutely catastrophic, in 1972. It also raises a very difficult point. As the powers are more comprehensive, the matters that local authorities have to deal with are not only larger in scope but require far greater expertise, knowledge and time. This is a very real problem which the Government appreciate, and Ministers in my department spend considerable time discussing and thinking about it.
The noble Lord also raised the point of the powers being available only to the selected designated districts. It is, in my view, important that resources and cash be concentrated in the inner urban areas, and also in those which have the highest needs and the greatest priority. On the other hand, the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, was rather worried that the butter was being spread too thin; so it is, again, a question of trying to get that balance right. We recognise very well the problems of the outer development areas, and for Kirkby, for example, its special development area represents just part of the Government commitment to Merseyside, as the noble Lord is well aware.
My noble friend Lord Oram, in what the noble Viscount referred to as another maiden speech, demonstrated, as I think he was saying, how release from Front Bench responsibilities allows a widening of the horizons. When he referred to not being able to have help from the Box,
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at least he can keep his eyes ahead—as the pigeon arrives it does make one have to keep one's eyes down. His account of the processes of change in the East End, and his very considerable knowledge of his own constituency area, showed just how our inner areas have suffered from the individual decisions of families; and I thought his interesting description of the outward movement of population emphasised the importance of people having confidence in the future of their inner areas, which I believe is the key to the prosperity of these areas.
I am pleased to be able to tell my noble friend Lord Davies of Leek that we have already improved the Bill during its passage by including a power to assist with the cleaning and refurbishment of canals. So, his social furniture is not going to be "Beechingfied". I was pleased to hear the noble Viscount, Lord Colville, accept the need for discriminating measures in favour of inner city areas and, as he was speaking from the Front Bench opposite, this was, if I may say so, an extremely helpful contribution. But I am not going to let him draw me—
Viscount COLVILLE of CULROSS: What I said was that if there was going to be a limitation on the amount of money, then inevitably there would have to be discrimination.
Baroness BIRK: That was obviously not only implicit but said, and I was taking that into account. This is one of the criteria on which we are working. But I am not going to be drawn by him on development land tax or the Community Land Act, particularly as we discussed it—and I took the debate myself—only recently. I decided then that I would not discuss community land religiously every Friday because it was very bad for my health.
I accept that the LDS allocation has been restricted, but that reduction keeps public expenditure within bounds which is so important for our economic policy and also reflects the extra use of current funds by authorities for capital expenditure. This is a financial problem with which we have to live at the moment. On the housing improvement point which was also raised by the noble Viscount, I can say here that there is nothing we can

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do about this through this Bill. I heard several "Hear, hears" from behind me and from beside me, from my noble friend Lord Strabolgi, and I will carry back his query to the Department for consideration.
The noble Viscount also asked about Clause 11. If I may repeat what I said on opening, I think he is quite right that we should have this on the record as it was only barely touched on, if at all, in the other place. The provision allows local plans to be prepared to reflect the new policies for inner areas. The points that he made were, I am sure, legally correct but, if necessary, we can look at them again in Committee.
My noble friend Lady David and the noble Lord, Lord Byers—and, differently in one way or another, I think every noble Lord who has spoken—stressed the need for early and demonstrable results. This, frankly, is what we are aiming at so long as we do not rush too rashly into errors. The Bill is designed to give local authorities effective powers to stimulate and encourage their local economies—this is what it is all about—and our endeavour to see that they get on with it as quickly as possible. Authorities have many ways of helping industry indirectly through planning, provision of housing for key workers, and also through transport schemes. They are all now well aware of the importance of taking the needs of industry into account. This is a running theme all the time. But, for the first time under general legislation, they will be able to assist industry and commerce more directly.
Again I emphasise, as noble Lords have done throughout the debate, the potential role of the private sector which must take initiatives and seek out opportunities for development in the inner city areas. The noble Lord, Lord Byers, and the noble Viscount again stressed the importance of the small businesses strategy on the financial side which is not covered in this Bill but which is entirely complementary to it. I will refrain from making a political point over this. Let us say that the great thing is that the strategy is agreed and the policies are being carried out.
With the backing of the local authorities and the private sector, these areas should
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once more become good places in which to live and work. The test of success, as we are absolutely all agreed, is whether we can create a working and living environment which attracts people back to the inner cities. I can only say how it filled me with glee and raised my spirit and morale to hear noble Lords on all sides of the House emphasise that all these measures can come to nothing unless they are for the people as well as about the people, that they really put heart and morale into them and do not merely remain on the drawing board. I honestly believe that this is one measure which would help us to achieve this, and I hope that the House will give the Bill a Second Reading.
On Question, Bill read 2a and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

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

AGRICULTURAL HOLDINGS ACT 1948 (VARIATION OF FOURTH SCHEDULE) ORDER 1978
1.16 p.m.
Lord STRABOLGI Lord STRABOLGI rose to move, That the Agricultural Holdings Act 1948 (Variation of Fourth Schedule) Order 1978, laid before the House on 10th April, be approved. The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg to move first the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper. At the same time I should like, with your Lordships' permission, to speak to the Agricultural Holdings (Scotland) Act 1949 (Variation of First Schedule) Order 1978, which was laid before this House on the 12th April, and to move this formally later.
The purpose of the England and Wales Order is to bring the wording of certain short term improvements listed in Part I of the Fourth Schedule to the Agricultural Holdings Act 1948, for which compensation is payable to outgoing agricultural tenants, into line with current thought on the subject; to extend the payment of

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compensation, and to add a new tenant right item in Part II of the Fourth Schedule.
It may help your Lordships if I explain the background to this order. The rights of both landlords and tenants of agricultural land are set out in the Agricultural Holdings legislation, notably the Agricultural Holdings Act 1948, as amended. They may also be set out in the tenancy agreements. These rights include those matters for which the tenant may claim compensation from his landlord on quitting the holding and, for that matter, those items for which he may not claim compensation. Improvements for which compensation is payable without the consent of the landlord and other matters for which compensation is payable are set out in the Fourth Schedule to the 1948 Act. But farming techniques change over the years, as I need hardly say. The Schedule no longer fully reflects modern farming practices and is therefore no longer a complete list of those items of husbandry which a tenant may carry out without the consent of his landlord, and for which he is entitled to claim compensation.
Valuation is a highly technical matter and is normally carried out by valuers engaged by the landlord and the tenant to represent their respective interests, with recourse to arbitration in the event of disagreement. The Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food is advised on these matters by a committee of experts called the Committee on Agricultural Valuation which is set up under the authority of Section 79 of the 1948 Act. The Chief Surveyor of the Land Service of ADAS is the chairman of the Committee. The Committee have issued four reports, all of which have been published. The Statutory Instrument which we are considering today arises directly from the third and fourth reports.
If your Lordships would now turn to the order, we can consider its detailed provisions. It is rather complicated. I suggest that we deal with the Schedule first because it details the changes that are to be made. The Schedule amends certain wording of Part I of the Fourth Schedule to the 1948 Act and adds a new tenant right item to Part II of the Fourth Schedule. First of all, paragraph 1 runs together into one item—the liming
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and chalking of land which are items 3 and 5 of the Fourth Schedule. These are now held to be similar husbandry operations. Secondly, it modernises the wording of item 6 by, in effect, substituting the word "fertiliser" for "artificial manure". Thirdly, it amends paragraph 7 of the Fourth Schedule. This paragraph relates to the unexhausted manurial value from feedingstuffs not produced on the holding which are consumed by horses, cattle, sheep or pigs or poultry folded on the land as part of a system of farming practised on the holding.
The Amendment will have the effect of extending compensation to the consumption of such feedingstuffs by intensively managed poultry on the holding. In modern day agriculture the system of intensively managed poultry is much more widely used and intensive poultry units are now sufficiently large and numerous for the quantity of manure to be significant. Paragraph 2 of the Schedule to the Order concerns a tenant right matter which does not at present come within the compass of Part II of the Fourth Schedule. It is, I understand, generally accepted among farmers that there are benefits to be derived from the practice of alternate husbandry or ley farming—in other words, a period of grass followed by a sequence of arable crops.
A special scientific working party, appointed by the Minister's Committee on Agricultural Valuation, considered the matter and concluded that there was benefit to be derived from this practice. The scientific working party's ideas have since been subjected to complex field experiments. Although these must continue over many years to obtain a critical assessment of average results, the results so far, taking into account differences between experiments on different soils, show in general terms that benefit can be derived from the use of leys. It would seem eminently reasonable, therefore, in all circumstances to make it possible for compensation to be payable in respect of the residual value of leys. This is therefore what paragraph 2 provides for. To complete the picture, I should point out that the order will be followed, as recommended by the Committee on Agricultural Valuation, by regulations under Section 51 of the 1948 Act to prescribe the method

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of calculating the value of a qualifying ley, but these regulations are not yet before the House.
May we now look at the articles in the order. Article 3 is the main operative article and gives effect to the Schedule to the order. Article 4 deals with the effect of the new provisions on existing tenancies and follows the lines of the 1948 Act itself. Sections 47 and 64 of the Act gave existing tenants the right to choose between compensation based on custom and statutory compensation under the 1948 Act. Paragraph 1 of Article 4 does the same for the residual value of leys, but brings the material date forward to the time when the order comes into operation.
I should explain, however, that under the Act choice of customary or statutory compensation applied to all the items specified in Part II of the Fourth Schedule as a whole. The tenant could not choose one form of compensation for some tems and another for the remainder. Consequently, a tenant who has already chosen statutory compensation—that is, a pre-1948 tenant—would have to accept that form of compensation for the new item in respect of the residual value of leys if the contrary were not specifically provided for in paragraph 4 of Article 4. Paragraphs 2 and 3 of Article 4 are consequentials. I must tell your Lordships that the Minister is required by Section 78 of the 1948 Act to consult organisations affected by any order to be made under this section and the National Farmers' Union and the Country Landowners' Association have been consulted on this order and have agreed the changes.
In the case of the Scottish Order, the Amendments are to the First Schedule to the Agricultural Holdings (Scotland) Act 1949, which is equivalent to the Fourth Schedule to the English 1948 Holdings Act. The effect of the amendments is to modify Part III of the First Schedule, which deals with improvements for which compensation may be payable to the tenant at the termination of the tenancy, without previously informing the landlord or getting his consent to the improvements. The amendments are given in the Schedule to the order, which is, in effect, identical to the first paragraph of the Schedule to the English order, and the changes are
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being made for the same reasons that I have ventured to explain in dealing with the English order.
However, the obvious differences between the two orders is that, unlike the English order in the second paragraph of its schedule, the Scottish order does not provide for the addition of a new paragraph to the Schedule to the Act to deal with compensation for the residual value of temporary pasture. The reason is that a new paragraph on these lines would not be appropriate to Scotland because of the different climatic and other physical conditions. As a result of these differences, even on land where there is continuous arable cropping, the level of organic matter seems to be maintained above the levels found where continuous cropping is similarly practised in the South. The evidence from both experimental and advisory work indicates that it is rarely possible to identify conditions in Scotland where crop growth could be significantly improved by additional organic matter from more or longer leys in the rotation.
The Scottish Standing Committee for the Calculation of Residual Values, being aware of the proposals being made for England and Wales, considered whether it should recommend a similar Amendment for Scotland, but concluded that it would not be appropriate to Scottish conditions. I should also add that, in terms of Section 79 of the Agricultural Holdings (Scotland) Act 1949, the Secretary of State for Scotland is required to consult with appropriate interests before making an order under this section. The National Farmers' Union of Scotland, the Scottish Landowners' Federation and the Scottish Branch of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors were accordingly consulted and have agreed to the Amendments embodied in the order. My Lords, I beg to move the first order standing in my name.
Moved, That the Agricultural Holdings Act 1948 (Variation of Fourth Schedule) Order 1978, laid before the House on 10th April, be approved.—(Lord Strabolgi.)
1.28 p.m.
Viscount LONG: My Lords, I am sure your Lordships are very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, for introducing these two important orders, one for England and Wales and the other

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for Scotland. As they relate closely to each other, there is little point in making two speeches, so I hope that the noble Lord will understand that I shall be making only one, on artificial fertilisers and—bringing in the word which I rather like—just ordinary manure. First, in regard to England and Wales, the change may be given a very gratified welcome, which would be more enthusiastic were the drafting of its terms more explicit. I have never seen a more difficult order to try to pull together and make a speech about. It makes me wonder who can make these orders in such language that we find extremely difficult. I was dismayed to find the words confusing, not to say unnecessary.
The first alteration to the Fourth Schedule to the 1948 Act affecting England and Wales appears at first sight unnecessary and even laughable, where "chalking" is taken out and then, confusingly, put back in again. The remaining Amendments are more serious and relate to improvements to grassland cultivation. Of course, one must recognise that in the last 30 years techniques of grassland management have changed, and hence the new expression "qualifying leys" replaces the original short leys. It is the phraseology which I find difficult, and the alterations make it even more disturbing. One only wishes that in the Ministry of Agriculture—that is probably unfair; in other Ministries as well—the advice of Sir Ernest Gowers was heeded. His well-known book, Plain Words: A Guide to the Use of the English Language, was published in 1948 at the very time of the Agricultural Holdings Act, and here we are now discussing orders that are very difficult to understand.
If we read the proposed terms of the order, which change the Fourth Schedule, we notice how different it sounds. What was lucid is now opaque; what was brief is now lengthy, and what was easily understood has now to be read three times before the meaning begins to emerge. "Fertiliser" is replaced by "artificial fertiliser" when all I knew about the farming world—not being a farmer—was that the word was "manure". So why bring forward this order? If the reasons are technical they could be more readily expressed. When I turn to the parallel alterations to the Scottish Act of 1949, I find the situation
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much easier. It is certainly not so confusing. The references to grassland and compensation are omitted so we have that worry less on our minds when we try to read through this order.
I understand from the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, that the terms of these two orders have been fully discussed with the National Farmers' Union, the Agricultural Valuers' Association and the Country Landowners' Association, so I need not ask him about that. But may I ask him two questions relating to the regulations that he said would be laid at a later time during this Parliament? Can he let the House know when these regulations will be laid, and whether they will be subject to Affirmative or the Negative Resolution? I shall understand if he cannot answer at the moment, but it would be useful to the House to know, if not now, at a later date. I am grateful to the noble Lord for his extra explanation of these orders. I hope that what I have said contributes a little to the matter, although I am rather confused by the phraseology.
1.34 p.m.
Lord STRABOLGI: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Viscount, Lord Long, for what he has said. I agree that these are extremely complicated orders but, if I may say so, he seems to have understood them very well. On the question of chalking and liming, as I have said, the net effect is to couple the chalking of land with the liming of land as one item, since they are now considered to be equivalent. In fact, the values in the 1969 compensation regulations in respect of both items appear under "Liming of Land", so it is really modernising the nomenclature.
With regard to the old-fashioned word "manure", this also is a change in nomenclature, as it deletes the reference in item 6 of the Fourth Schedule to "artificial manure" and substitutes "fertiliser", since all artificial manures are now commonly referred to as fertilisers.
I agree that these are very complicated orders, although, as is customary, there are explanatory notes at the end of each of them. I was interested that the noble Viscount reminded us of the words, which I always remember, of Sir Ernest Gowers,

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about plain words. When these orders go out after approval by Parliament, they are always accompanied by a note from the Press Office of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food explaining exactly what happens with them and how they will affect the individual tenants and landlords. The National Farmers' Union and the Country Landowners' Association are, of course, au fait with them and have been so from the beginning because, as I said in my original speech, they have been consulted on them and have agreed.
The noble Viscount asked me about the further regulations to which I referred in my speech. They will be laid shortly and it is hoped, should your Lordships approve them and approval is also given by another place, that they will come into operation at the same time as these orders, which is 1st July next. They will be subject to the Negative Resolution procedure. I hope that answers the various points that the noble Viscount has raised. I beg to move the first order.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

AGRICULTURAL HOLDINGS(SCOTLAND) ACT 1949 (VARIATION OF FIRST SCHEDULE) ORDER 1978
Lord STRABOLGI Lord STRABOLGI rose to move, That the Agricultural Holdings (Scotland) Act 1949 (Variation of First Schedule) Order 1978, laid before the House on 12th April, be approved. The noble Lord said: My Lords, I should like, with your Lordships' permission, to move this Motion formally.
Moved, That the Agricultural Holdings (Scotland) Act 1949 (Variation of First Schedule) Order 1978, laid before the House on 12th April, be approved.—(Lord Strabolgi.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

POOL COMPETITIONS ACT 1971 (CONTINUANCE) ORDER 1978
1.38 p.m.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL Lord WELLS-PESTELL rose to move, That the draft Pool Competitions Act 1971 (Continuance) Order 1978, laid before the House on 5th April, be approved. The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg to move
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that the draft Pool Competitions Act 1971 (Continuance) Order 1978, laid before the House on 5th April, be approved. I think I can take this order very shortly, and remind your Lordships that the Pool Competitions Act 1971 came into force on 27th July 1971. It was to run for an initial period of five years, but contained provision for its extension by an order approved in draft by Resolution of each House of Parliament for up to a year at a time. It had been so extended on two previous occasions. Without those two extensions, the Act would have expired and a number of charitable and sporting organisations would have lost a significant part of their income.
Noble Lords will perhaps recall why the Act has been extended in the past, but I hope that it will be helpful if I refer to the background and explain why a further extension is now sought. The competitions with which the 1971 Act is concerned are competitions for prizes based on the outcome of sporting events, especially football matches, and the proceeds from these competitions go in support of charities or sports. The Spastics Society and some cricket and football clubs are examples of bodies which have derived substantial income from this cource.
A judgment by your Lordships. House in 1970 in the case of Singette and Others v. Martin established that a competition of this kind did not constitute lawful pool betting as had been supposed but was an unlawful lottery and led to the introduction of the 1971 Act. Its purpose was to enable organisations already promoting the competitions to continue to do so within a system of licensing and control established under the Act and administered by the Gaming Board for Great Britain.
Since 1971, the number of bodies relying on the 1971 Act for fund raising has decreased but several continue to place substantial reliance on pool competitions for their incomes. Ten licences under the 1971 Act are extant, although I understand that only seven pool competitions continue to be run at present. The Gaming Board continues to exercise its powers under the Act to safeguard the interests of the competitors and to secure continued financial benefit for societies named in the certificates granted under the Act.
As I have said, the 1971 Act was introduced as a temporary measure, but the question as to what the future arrangements might be is part of a wider issue; namely, what contribution should be made from the proceeds of gambling towards the support of other activities, including sport. The wider question is currently being considered by the Royal Commission on Gambling. In the view of the Government, it would not be appropriate to take any final decision on the future of pool competitions until we have been able to consider what recommendations the Royal Commission may make on such competitions and on the wider question to which I have referred. Unless this Act is further extended, the Act will expire on 26th July 1978. The Royal Commission is expected to report this July. It seems to the Government that it is necessary that the Pool Competitions Act 1971 be extended for a further period of one year. Accordingly, I ask the approval of your Lordships to this order. I beg to move.
Moved, That the draft Pool Competitions Act 1971 (Continuance) Order 1978, laid before the House on 5th April, be approved.—(Lord Wells-Pestell.)
1.42 p.m.
Viscount LONG: My Lords, I am sure that the House is grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, for explaining this pools order. The way that he has explained it allows us to understand that it will now continue for a further year. He and I had a few words last year about this pool. I believe that it is going on all right, except for the things about which I should like to ask. The first thing that interests me is the Royal Commission. The noble Lord has mentioned that the Royal Commission will report in July. This has been an experimental time of five years for this order; and, by now, I should rather have liked to see the Government place it into the Lotteries Act. I wonder whether the Government have any idea at this moment about whether they will do this within the coming year or in the next Session. Or are they waiting for the Royal Commission report before doing this? I feel that this is one order that could save us all a great deal of trouble in your Lordships' House if it could be properly placed into the Lotteries Act.
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Referring to the Lotteries Act, are the Government happy with the situation as it stands, with 10 licences granted under the Lotteries Act? Are many other licences to be granted? What ideas have the Government on the maximum licences they would like? How many firms will take part in lotteries? My further question to the noble Lord is about the money that the Government receive from the pool. I should be interested if he could give us some outline of where this money is disbursed by the Government; into what charities; or, is it held back and then given to a charity when it appeals? Could the noble Lord give us a little more information on that point? I see no reason to proceed further with questions on this order, and I am most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, for explaining it.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Viscount, Lord Long, for his support of this order and for his comments and observations. I will try to deal with the questions in the order in which he asked them. As I indicated, the Royal Commission on Gaming is expected to report in July of this year and, quite frankly, at this stage the Government have no idea what will be in the report. We have no advance knowledge of it. It might be far more comprehensive than we expect, and we would expect something comprehensive from such a commission. It will take some appreciable time, first, to read the report and consider its implications. It may well be possible that the Government would not be able to act upon any of the recommendations in the immediate future, and therefore it may be necessary to come to your Lordships' House to ask for a continuation of this order, perhaps for another year. I think it reasonable to say—and I hope that I am not wrong in this—that one of the outcomes of the Royal Commission may be a consolidation of all the Acts. I know that this is what the noble Viscount would like to see. But I ought not to give an undertaking to your Lordships' House that there will not be a renewal, because in certain circumstances it might be quite right and proper that there should be
With regard to the number of firms, perhaps I ought to say at the beginning that the number of firms which are empowered to function under this Act

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was specified in the 1971 Act, and they cannot be added to. I cannot remember the exact number, but at the present moment there are 10 which hold licences, of which seven are taking full advantage of the Act. But, in any case, the number cannot be added to; that was specified at the very beginning. The noble Viscount raises the question of the money. In point of fact, the aggregate average turnover has shown a tendency to decrease since the Act was introduced. The most recent figures show it to be about £24·8 million, of which approximately £3·6 million, that is 15 per cent., is paid to the benefiting societies which fall into two groups. One group is concerned with providing financial assistance for sport, principally football clubs; the second with charitable aims, including aid to the Spastics' Society, and to polio and cancer research. Whoever undertakes the promotion of one of these is obliged by law, and it is seen to be carried out, to ensure that 15 per cent. of total income goes to the beneficiaries. It has meant a total of about £3·6 million.
The pool betting tax is 33⅓ per cent. but is shown as 28 per cent. because, before the pool betting tax is applied, the 15 per cent. which is given to the beneficiaries is taken away. So it is 33⅓ per cent. Of the remainder which in the final figures must show at 28 per cent., although the pool betting tax takes 33⅓ per cent. Prizes account for 28 per cent.; agents' commission 15 per cent., because people are paid to sell tickets; printing and stationery 3 per cent.; staff wages—which include fees to the promoters who are employed full-time doing this—come to about 7 per cent., and office costs about 4 per cent. So administrative expenses, 29 per cent.; 28 per cent. for prizes; of the total amount, 28 per cent. pool betting tax; and the beneficiaries 15 per cent., make a total of 100 per cent. which on the basis of these calculations seems reasonable.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

EUROPEAN COMMUNITIES (DEFINITION OF TREATIES) (No. 4) ORDER 1978
1.50 p.m.
The MINISTER of STATE, FOREIGN and COMMONWEALTH OFFICE (Lord Goronwy-Roberts)The MINISTER of STATE, FOREIGN and COMMONWEALTH OFFICE (Lord
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Goronwy-Roberts) rose to move, That the draft European Communities (Definition of Treaties) (No. 4) Order 1978, laid before the House on 11th May, be approved. The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper. The Schedule to the order contains the Act concerning the Election of Representatives of the European Assembly by direct universal suffrage, taken with the Decision of the Council of the European Communities of 20th September 1976 to which it is annexed. The text of the Act and Decision, in the form of Cmnd. 6623, was laid before Parliament in October 1976.
If the House approves the order, the Act and the Decision to which it is annexed will become formally defined as a Community Treaty under Section 1 of the European Communities Act. The European Communities Act gives effect to all the rights, powers, liabilities, obligations and restrictions embodied within a Community Treaty. But only Community Treaties formally defined as such, under Section 1(3) of the Act, have direct effect in the United Kingdom. Without the approval of both Houses of Parliament to the Act and Decision listed in the Schedule to the order, they would create rights and obligations at the international level, but could not, for instance, be invoked by individuals before the courts of this country.
The Act has the character of an international agreement. Article 16 of the Act requires that it enter into force only after notification by Member States of the completion of their respective constitutional requirements for adoption of its provisions. In Britain, constitutional practice has required that we first enact the European Assembly Elections Bill, which received the Royal Assent on 5th May, and also secure Parliament's approval to the specification of the Act and the Council Decision of 20th September 1976 to which it is annexed, as a Community Treaty, before we proceed to ratification. This approval we now seek.
With your Lordships' permission, I will describe briefly the contents of the Act and the Decision of 20th September 1976. The Decision consists of a preamble citing the articles of the Community's constituent treaties giving

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authority for direct elections, and reiterating the target date of May-June 1978 for direct elections, which was set by the European Council in Rome on 1st and 2nd December 1975, followed by short provisions concerning the publication, adoption and entry into force of the Decision and its accompanying provisions.
The annexed Act contains in Articles 1 to 4 the most important provisions agreed between Member States concerning the elections and related matters; that is, the framework within which the national provisions adopted by Member States are to operate. These provisions require elections by direct universal suffrage; they set out the number of representatives from each Member State; they prescribe a five-year term for the Assembly; and they make clear that the representatives vote on an individual basis. Article 5 provides for the possibility of a dual mandate. Articles 6 to 13 provide for disqualification, procedural and supplementary matters. Article 14 lists those articles in the constituent treaties which are to lapse with the coming into force of the Agreement. There are also three brief Annexes which form an integral part of the Act, and a declaration by the Federal German Government concerning the application of the Act to Berlin.
There have been few political issues so extensively debated in recent years as direct elections to the European Assembly. The commitment to eventual direct elections to the European Assembly "on the basis of direct universal suffrage" is embodied in Article 138(3) of the Treaty of Rome to which we subscribed on our accession to the Community. There had been several attempts prior to our accession to work out a generally accepted system of direct elections, but they had all foundered on the difficulties of devising a uniform system of election acceptable to each Member State.
At the December 1974 meeting of Community Heads of Government in Paris, it was agreed that a new effort should be made to achieve direct elections "as soon as possible", and, recognising the difficulty of reaching agreement on a single electoral system for the whole Community, it was subsequently accepted by both the Assembly and the Council that it would initially be necessary to
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allow the choice of the electoral system for the first round of direct elections to each Member State. Article 7 of the Act annexed to the Council Decision of 20th September 1976, however, requires the directly elected European Assembly to draw up a proposal for a uniform electoral procedure, so the search for a uniform system has not been abandoned. It has only been postponed.
The Government participated fully in the negotiations leading up to the signature of the Act annexed to the Council Decision of 20th September 1976 on direct elections, and during this time had frequent occasion to consult and take into account the views of both Houses of Parliament on the significant constitutional issues involved. In February 1976 a Green Paper on Direct Elections was published. This was followed by debates in both Houses, and the setting up of a Select Committee in another place, which produced three reports, together with published evidence, which were also debated. Following signature of the Council Act in September 1976 the Government published, in April 1977, a White Paper which was the subject of Parliamentary debate.
The House will recall that the first version of the European Assembly Elections Bill was published on 24th June, 1977 and was given Second Reading in another place on 3rd July by 394 to 147 votes. The Bill was reintroduced into Parliament in a slightly amended form on 9th November, and was finally approved in another place on 16th February by 159 votes to 45. Your Lordships gave the European Assembly Elections Act a fair passage through this House, and following approval of the Bill at Third Reading on 4th May, in a form unamended from that in which it had left another place, it received the Royal Assent on the following day, 5th May. It now only remains, as I stated earlier, for Parliament to agree to the specification of the Act of the Council and the Decision of 20th September 1976 annexed to it as a Community Treaty, before we proceed to ratification.
The position as regards ratification of the Council Act is that all Member States have now done so except France and Britain. France has completed all the necessary Parliamentary procedures, and is in a position to ratify at any time. The

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Council Act comes into effect only after completion of ratification by all Member States. Until the Act is in effect, there can be no legal decision by the Community regarding the date of direct elections. Article 10 of the Act requires that the decision should be taken by the Council of Ministers acting unanimously after consulting the Assembly. The decision of the European Council meeting in Copenhagen on 7th and 8th April in favour of the dates 7th to 10th June 1979 was a political decision, and it needs to be confirmed by the Council of Ministers acting in accord with the Article 10 procedure before it has legal effect. Moreover, Article 13 of the Act, which requires unanimous decision by the Council on the basis of a proposal from the Assembly after consulting the Commission, provides the legal basis for the determination of emoluments of directly elected members. The Government believe that emoluments must be decided before direct elections are held.
Early ratification of the Council Act of 20th September 1976, which approval of draft European Communities (Definition of Treaties) No. 4 Order 1978 by both Houses will enable the Government to do, will permit all necessary steps of implementation, such as determination of emoluments, to be taken at Community level in ample time before the date of direct elections next year. I am sure that after the extensive public debate there has been on direct elections in this country, your Lordships will welcome the earliest possible ratification of the Council Act by the United Kingdom which will demonstrate to our Community partners our firm commitment to holding direct elections on the dates of 7th to 10th June next year. My Lords, I beg to move.
Moved, That the draft European Communities (Definition of Treaties) No. 4) Order 1978, laid before the House on 11th May be approved.—(Lord Goronwy-Roberts.)
2.1 p.m.
Lord O'HAGAN: My Lords, your Lordships, particularly the right reverend Prelate, would not welcome another long and impassioned speech from me on the subject of direct elections and, indeed, it would be quite inappropriate to the order
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that we are now discussing, which we have just heard explained to us by the noble Lord, Lord Goronwy-Roberts. The order, which is the subject of today's debate, is simply one more stage in the complicated legal and constitutional series of procedures which lead up to direct elections. There is really little point in your Lordships examining in detail most of the provisions of this older or the explanatory memorandum that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office provided for the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments or, indeed, the decision of the Council published as Command 6623.
This is a piece of machinery to implement what has already been decided politically. But it is a complex and difficult procedure to set up elections in this country for an assembly elsewhere and the provisions of the European Communities Act make me want to ask just one or two questions. Looking at the explanatory memorandum that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office provided on 11th May this year, I notice that on the penultimate page, in paragraph 10(c), there was a comment about the direct applicability of community law. I think this is a subject that it is worth spending just a second or two in examining, because the applicability directly of community law is a subject which has a relevance far wider than the order that we are looking at today.
I note that in this memorandum the Foreign and Commonwealth Office say that the extent to which Community treaties are directly applicable as law in the Member States is a matter to be determined by the courts and ultimately by the European Court of Justice. And later on they say that it is thought that, although no undertaking can be given as to the completeness or accuracy of the list, the following articles of the annexed Act contain, or may contain, directly applicable provisions, and then a list is given. I am sure there are very good reasons why the legal advisers to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office have not been able to be more certain than this provisional indication leads us to believe. But could the noble Lord, Lord Goronwy-Roberts, say whether it is really so uncertain, it is really so unclear, because we have been studying this subject for long enough, I think, to

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be able to be a little more confident in at least guessing what was not directly applicable and what was.
The other question I should like to put is connected with the decision taken in Brussels on 20th September 1976. As I understand it, this order has the decision to which I am referring annexed to it, so that the decision is, in some way, associated with, or part and parcel of, the order. This question may he more pedantic, but at the time in which this decision was drafted the date for direct elections was still considered to be likely to be May/June 1978, and that is the date which appears in the decision. That decision is itself attached to the order which we are now asked to approve.
My second and final question to the noble Lord, Lord Goronwy-Roberts, is this: Why have we got the wrong date in the document being attached to an order? If it does not matter, why do we need to have it there? If we have got to have it there, should we not have the right date? There may be an explanation that he has already given which I did not follow, but it would be helpful to know why this decision which is now outdated is still to be annexed to the order that we are discussing. Once again, I say "God speed" to the process of direct elections. This order is part of the constitutional provision laid down by the European Communities Act. I hope we can give it a speedy send-off from this House and help the process of direct elections to happen soon.
2.7 p.m.
Lord BRUCE of DONINGTON: My Lords, one of the less agreeable consequences of being one of those whom your Lordships' House has selected to send to the European Assembly is that it is almost always impossible for any of us to attend those debates in your Lordships' House at which EEC matters are dealt with. This may perhaps on some future occasion be a matter which can be dealt with by the usual channels. I shall listen with interest to the reply that my noble friend will give to the noble Lord, Lord O'Hagan, on these various constitutional questions that he has raised. The noble Lord, as is well known in the House, has devoted a very large amount of his time to European matters, and the House will be grateful
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for the meticulous attention which he has devoted to these important constitutional matters.
I rise merely to say this: Over the past two or three years it has been very fashionable in this House and in another place, and it has been, to some extent, echoed on the Continent of Europe, to say that somehow the United Kingdom has been lagging behind all the other EEC countries in its support for the Community and, in particular, in regard to the holding of direct elections. This manifestly has not, in fact, been so. The constitutional provisions in the United Kingdom tend to be rather more complex than those of other Member States, in which democracy, compared with our own, is in many instances of comparatively short-term standing. It is quite right, therefore, that the United Kingdom Parliament, as represented by this House and the other place, should devote very considerable attention to these matters before taking the very grave steps of far-reaching consequence to the people of the United Kingdom, before they proceed to ratification of these matters.
I observed when my noble friend was speaking that he mentioned that France had still to ratify the treaty, but he omitted Italy. It is my understanding, although I may be imperfectly informed, that there are still some constitutional obstacles in Italy which have so far inhibited it from ratifying the treaty. If I am wrong, I shall he happy to be corrected by my noble friend. But I hope that the time has now arrived when the story that the United Kingdom is somehow lagging behind the rest of its eight colleagues in support of the European Community may be killed. In point of fact, as I have found over the nearly three years' experience I have had with the European Community, when it has come to legal action or giving legal force to Community decisions, it has been precisely the United Kingdom that has been almost always ahead of the rest.
I hope that people who criticise our Ministers on the Council of Ministers in Europe, and sometimes when they criticise their delegates, will remember this; that is, that we are regarded in Europe now as being an active and constructive force for the promotion of the European ideals as defined by the Prime Minister in another

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place about a year and a half ago, that the representatives of the United Kingdom of all Parties are zealous in their duties, that we are not behind the rest. Indeed, in Community committees in the Assembly plenaries the attendance record of the United Kingdom delegates is a very significant percentage higher than that of any other nationality in the Community. We have acquired—not I particularly, but all my colleagues—a reputation for being the hardest workers in the Community institutions.
I shall not detain the House further. I merely use this occasion, which shows once again the orderly and typically British constitutional progress that we are making, to say that we should no longer be told either by the British Press or the British media generally that we are somehow lagging behind or dragging our feet in Europe. There are times when British Ministers find it necessary to stand up for what they consider to be legitimate British interests. I can assure your Lordships that the representatives of other nations are not backward in fighting for the interests of their own countries. It should therefore not be a matter of reproach that when one of our own Ministers—and I have in mind particularly Mr. John Silkin—stands up for the legitimate rights of this country without impinging in any way on the European ideals or on our policy of co-operation in Europe, he should receive our whole—hearted support. I can assure your Lordships that it is common practice for the representatives of Germany, of France, of Italy and of the other Member States to sustain what seems to them to be their own national interests within the overall concept of the Community. It is not right that we should be behind in this respect or that we should be reproached. Subject to what I have said, I support the order before the House.
Lord MORRIS: My Lords, while I thank the noble Lord, Lord Goronwy-Roberts, for his very clear explanation of this Instrument, may I quicky ask a question of my noble friend Lord O'Hagan? I understand that he quoted from the explanatory memorandum of the European Communities Elections Act and implied that the terms were very vague. As I understand that they have no legal force whatsoever, does it really matter
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Whether they are very specific or very vague?
2.15 p.m.
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, may I say how grateful I am for the general welcome for this order which came first from the noble Lord, Lord O'Hagan. This was followed by a most interesting speech of great impact by my noble friend Lord Bruce. The noble Lord, Lord O'Hagan, raised two points, first as to direct applicability and the uncertainty, as he called it, of the definition of "direct applicability" which we have been able to put forward in the explanatory memorandum. I shall put it like this. What is said in the explanatory memorandum under this head seems to me to offer a high degree of certainty. A clear list of articles which could reasonably be expected to come under this heading is given there, so the degree of certainty is pretty high, but naturally there the caveat is set; literally no one can be absolutely certain about the full extent of applicability until matters are tested in the courts and ultimately possibly in the European Court.
I have thought about this in looking at successive orders of this kind, and I recognise the point that the noble Lord is making. I would suggest to him that this is the fair and perhaps safe way of putting it. The evidence of applicability is there. The pretension to final comprehensiveness necessarily is not there. The noble Lord also raised the question of the date which is included in the print—I put it no higher—of the decision. This reference was to the objectives set out when the decision was taken. It is in the preamble, not the operative part of the decision.
Consider afresh that Articles 9 and 10 of the Act lay down the procedure. I quote from Article 10, sub-article 1:
"The Council acting unanimously after consolting the Assembly shall determine the period referred to in Article 9, sub-article 1, for the First Elections".
Therefore, regardless of the incidence of a printed date in the preamble, as I would call it, the clear basis for action is laid down in Article 9, sub-article 1 and in Article 10, particularly sub-article 1.
I agree that the noble Lord did not make a big point of this, but it was right

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that he should raise it. We should watch the phrasing and the printing of these Instruments, whatever their status, whether preambular or operative, as they come before either House. My noble friend Lord Bruce of Donington made a valuable contribution. We know him as one who has served, and is serving, with distinction and prominence in the Assembly. He referred to the fact that possibly there were other Members who had not ratified, and asked whether Italy had in fact ratified. He is quite right. Italy has ratified. What Italy has not done is to enact its electoral law. The Italian constitutional procedures differ from our own. They can ratify in advance of the passage of electoral legislation. So when I said that the only two Members of the Community who had not yet ratified were France and Britain, I was also correct. Indeed, so was my noble friend when, by implication, he wondered whether the full procedures which we would normally attach to ratification had been adopted by Italy. It is a case not without precedent in my relations, personal and political, with my noble friend when we have both been right.
The noble Lord made the point which needs to be made—and I was very glad he made it—that we have not lagged behind. We have genuinely and energetically gone about this business with expedition. This country does not lightly undertake obligations of an international character. When it does, when it finally decides to accept them, it works hard and makes a good job of it. I believe a very good job is now being made in the delineation of boundaries which should, any minute now, be published as a first set of recommendations, leading up to adoption by Parliament, perhaps in the autumn, and leaving the political Parties in our free democracy six or seven months to run up to the elections to be held between 7th and 10th June; so good progress has been made.
It is true that the first date, the target date, the objective, could not be reached. We were not entirely alone in the difficulties we encountered. As I have said before at this Box, the difficulties were not of our making. There were other circumstances bound up with our tradition, our practice, and for that I think we may take a little time.
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I welcome what he said, and indeed what he has said more generally about the acceptance, the enthusiastic acceptance of our membership of the Community, our intention to make our contribution to improve and strengthen the Community, but like every Member of the Community, to assert our reasonable national interests. It has always been said that we can more effectively do that once we are inside the Community. We have taken that to heart, and I would suggest it ill behoves anybody to complain when any Minister from the British Government does precisely what the most enthusiastic protagonists of accession said should be done, and could be done so much better once we were inside. This is precisely what our Minister of Agriculture has been doing and what no doubt other Ministers in the future, not only from Britain, will be doing.
To the noble Lord, Lord Morris, may I say that I am very grateful for his interjection. I see no reason to dissent from what he said. Certainly this will be part of our thinking in the future, as in the past. With those remarks I no longer wish to stand between the noble Lord, Lord O'Hagan, and the right reverend Prelate, an interesting but somewhat hazardous situation to be in. So, once more, I beg to move.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

CHURCH OF ENGLAND (MISCELLANEOUS PROVISIONS) MEASURE
2.25 p.m.
The Lord Bishop of LONDON The Lord Bishop of LONDON rose to move, That this House do direct that, in accordance with the Church of England Assembly (Powers) Act 1919, the Church of England (Miscellaneous Provisions) Measure be presented to Her Majesty for the Royal Assent. The right reverend Prelate said: My Lords, your Lordships' attention has had to range during the last three-and-a-half hours over a very wide spectrum, and I must now bring you into the world of the Church of England. The Measure that is before you is an omnibus measure. It picks up a number of details which arise from time to time and which are not of sufficient importance to warrant a separate Measure for each

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one. Therefore, in order to avoid occupying too much of your Lordships' time, we have put them all together in one Measure and bring them to your Lordships' attention. I hope that you will agree with me that this Measure is entirely uncontroversial and need not cause your Lordships any great concern. However, I am sure you would want to know what it is you are being asked to agree, and therefore I should like to take you briefly through the Measure.
The first clause requires special majorities for certain Measures passed in the General Synod. It is anomalous that under the Worship and Doctrine Measure any new service that is approved of by a Canon must have a two-thirds majority, whereas if the Church of England wants in any way to alter the Book of Common Prayer this has to be done by Measure, has to be done by coming to Parliament, and it would be possible for such a Measure to be introduced with a majority of only one person in the General Synod. There is nothing that is immediately in the pipeline regarding this part of our activities. But supposing—I say, supposing—the Church of England decided that it was right to ordain women to the priesthood, this would need a change in the Book of Common Prayer. It is felt in the Synod that it would be totally inappropriate that a matter of such importance could theoretically be passed by one vote in the General Synod and brought to Parliament for Affirmative Resolution. Therefore we think it right that if ever it is intended to ask Parliament to agree to a change in the Book of Common Prayer, it should do so only if there is a two-thirds majority in the General Synod. That is what is provided for in Clause I.
Clause 2 deals with certain people who would come under the Measure which provides that all clergymen in future must retire at the age of 70. This Measure is not retrospective and therefore does not affect those who were in their beneficies on 1st January 1976. If a man moves after that date, then he immediately becomes subject to the requirements of this Measure and would have to retire at the age of 70. If, on the other hand, he is still in the benefice which he held before 1st January 1976, then he can go on indefinitely because he has a freehold.
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But it does happen in the course of pastoral reorganisation that two benefices are brought together and create a new parish, and therefore technically, one of the incumbents would be in a new benefice. It is felt, however, that it would be unjust that, while because of a pastoral reorganisation scheme he was technically in a new benefice, he should not enjoy the benefits which were written into the Measure; that is, that it should not be retrospective. Therefore those clauses in the second part of this Measure provide that such a clergyman shall continue with his freehold, even though technically he would otherwise have come under the provisions of the 1975 Measure.
Clause 3 empowers the Church Commissioners to arrange that their accounts shall start on the first day of the year. This is at the request of the overwhelming number of dioceses most of whom keep their financial year from 1st January. By law, all parochial church councils have to account from the first day of the year, and it therefore seems much more convenient that the accounts of the Church Commissioners should also observe the same period during the year.
Clause 4 makes one or two small adjustments in the constitution of the Church Commissioners. Thus, for instance, of the eight Commissioners, four of whom are nominated by Her Majesty, and four by the Archbishop of Canterbury, two are required at the moment to be Queen's Counsel. It is thought that this is rather an unnecessary provision, and although it would be free to Her Majesty or to the Archbishop to appoint all eight as Queen's Counsel, we think it better that there should be only one that is statutory. Why there should be one at all I am not quite sure, although I imagine that it probably dates from the early times of the constitution of the Commissioners themselves. The other two clauses refer to the representatives in the General Synod that their timing may be more appropriate and that, if one ceases to he a member of the General Synod, he shall make way.
Clause 5 deals with the representative from a diocese on to the Central Board of Finance. It is thought very desirable that, unless it is the diocesan secretary himself who represents the diocese on the Central

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Board of Finance at Church House, the member should at least be a member of his own diocesan board of finance. So that would be made statutory. Clause 6 is honouring an assurance which I gave to the House when we were considering the Parochial Registers and Records Measure. It will be remembered that certain noble Lords felt very strongly that those libraries or institutions which are diocesan record offices but are not local authority offices should be under some restriction as to the fees they can charge. I gave an assurance that, although we could not write that into the Measure, because it was too late, we would in the next Miscellaneous Provisions Measure provide for this. Therefore, the Bodleian, the Borthwick Institute and Canterbury Cathedral Library will be allowed to charge only those fees that are approved in a Fees Measure by the General Synod.
Clauses 7 and 8 take us into a rather recondite area of the law. Under Clause 7, if land has been acquired under Section 13(1)(e) of the New Parishes Measure 1943, it cannot be sold later on. In order to make this clear to me, my legal friend who advises me gave me an instance. A church may have been given or have acquired a piece of land which it intends to turn into a car park, and then it finds that it cannot afford to tarmac it and so it lets it out as allotments. This may have happened over a period of years. Then the church may decide that, after all, it does not want a car park anyhow, and wants to sell the land. If it has been acquired under Section 13 the church cannot sell it. It is thought desirable that it should have the power to do so, and therefore that this sort of land should be put under the powers contained in Section 17 of the Measure.
Clause 8 again deals with a rather obscure situation. Suppose there is ecclesiastical property which it is required should be acquired by compulsory purchase. If there is no incumbent, there is no fee simple, and therefore there is nobody who can write a receipt. Therefore, the land cannot he compulsorily acquired. This is becoming a rather more likely situation because in the course of pastoral reorganisation we have very often had to suspend the presentation of a benefice and put in a priest-in-charge. But if a part of the ecclesiastical property
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was required under compulsory purchase, it could not be so done because nobody possessed the fee simple. And so it is suggested that in those circumstances it should be the Church Commissioners who can sign the receipt and enter into the necessary negotiations.
Clause 9 deals with a situation where sometimes in a parish there is some ecclesiastical building which has not been consecrated, which has only been dedicated. It may be a very distinguished building, and therefore it is desirable that it should come under the Inspection of Churches Measure 1955, which makes it necessary that over every period of time the church shall formally he inspected by an architect. Since it is not consecrated, it does not automatically come under that provision, and we think it desirable that the bishop should have power to order that such a building should come under that Measure.
Clause 10 deals with a problem of the Diocese of Oxford. The Diocese of Oxford is unique in that its cathedral is a college chapel. Therefore, the Diocese of Oxford does not come under the Cathedrals Measure. If any other diocese wants to change or alter its cathedral statutes, it can do so by the machinery that is set out under the Cathedrals Measure whereby a scheme can be laid before the General Synod and be objected to if necessary. This cannot happen over the Diocese of Oxford. The particular problem here is that, like every other bishop, the Bishop of Oxford has power to appoint 24 honorary canons. This is a way in which a bishop can recognise meritorious service to his diocese, and it is an honour which is greatly appreciated by the clergy.
The Bishop of Oxford has one of the largest dioceses in the country, and therefore he wants as much freedom as possible to be able to confer honorary canonries on his clergy. But as things stand at the moment, if an honorary canon retires and continues to live in the Diocese of Oxford, he cannot be removed, except with his acquiescence, from his honorary canonry. It is conceivable, therefore, that all the honorary canons could be retired clergymen, and this very much restricts the freedom of the bishop to he able to give honour to those who deserve it. Therefore, this clause will provide that, in the Diocese of Oxford,

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if a clergyman resigns, ceases to be beneficed or licensed to serve or if he attains the age of 70, automatically he shall vacate his honorary canonry and the bishop will be free to honour somebody else. This is not retrospective and does not affect the present honorary canons, and, of course, it does not affect the right of the bishop to appoint someone who has been removed from the honorary canonry in this way as a canon emeritus, so that he will be able to continue to call himself "Canon", even though he may not have that status in the cathedral.
Clause 11 has to remedy a rather unfortunate circumstance. When the Incumbents (Vacation of Beneficies) Measure came before these two Houses in 1975, for entirely proper reasons in another place, an Affirmative Resolution was not provided. This somehow escaped the notice of those who were drawing up the Endowments and Glebe Measure 1976. Now that the Incumbents (Vacation of Benefices) Measure has received the Royal Assent in 1977—because we remedied the mistake that had been made and which was observed in another place—we need in the Endowments and Glebe Measure 1976 to refer to the Incumbents (Vacation of Benefices) Measure 1977 and not 1975.
In the second part of that, since Section 85 of the Pastoral Measure was repealed and substituted in the Church of England (Miscellaneous Provisions) Measure 1976, we need to make the proper reference in the Endowments and Glebe Measure.
Finally, Clause 12 deals with certain property which is, under the Queen Anne's Bounty Act 1714, placed within the authority of the Church Commissioners. When this land is vested in them one of their officials from No. 1 Millbank has to make a pilgrimage to the High Court, and in a large ledger is written in the acquirement by the Church Commissioners of, say, a vicarage. This is considered to be rather an unnecessarily demanding act for what may be a very small piece of property which is already registered in No. 1 Millbank. The noble and learned Lord who sits on the Woolsack has indicated his readiness to forgo this piece of business. Therefore, it is thought that it is unnecessary that this journey should be made from No. 1 Millbank
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to the High Court in order to register this small detail.
I have said that this Measure is uncontroversial. When it came before the General Synod for final approval, it was received by the House of Bishops with Ayes in favour, 38; Noes, None. By the House of Clergy it was received with Ayes, 124; Noes, None, and by the House of Laity with Ayes 136; Noes, 1. I do not know what matter so irritated the one person who voted against the Measure, but I hope that your Lordships will consider that the vote showed that it is completely uncontroversial and will give the Measure an Affirmative Resolution.
Moved, That this House do direct that, in accordance with the Church of England Assembly (Powers) Act 1919, the Church of England (Miscellaneous Provisions) Measure be presented to Her Majesty for the Royal Assent. —(The Lord Bishop of London.)
2.41 p.m.
Lord ELTON: My Lords, I do not think I have ever seen anybody come to this House and introduce a Measure of 13 clauses referring throughout only, so far as I can detect, to the Instrument itself. I must congratulate the right reverend Prelate on an extremely exhaustive and clear elucidation of a Measure which your Lordships will welcome, as will almost everybody except possibly the non-residentiary canons of Christ Church Cathedral who do not happen to bask in the favour of the Bishop of Oxford. If I may pick up a small point, it does lie in the Bishop's power not to enforce the provisions in Clause 10 against a non-residentiary canon who otherwise would not qualify to retain his honorary canonry.
There is little, if anything, to alarm your Lordships in this Measure. Clause 7, which caused temporary concern to my noble friend Lord Denham is in fact harmless and relates to circumstances which are actually surprisingly common. The obstacles to the progress of planners in Clause 8 are removed without the necessity of filling vacant livings when the choice is not ripe to be made.
In Clause 2 we find what is an eminently sensible departure, which avoids the

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unnecessarily early retirement of clergy doing a good job in a parish which is being reorganised. The ministry is one of the few professions in which the effectiveness of the person in office is apt to continue to increase until very late in life, and although there are occasions when one would wish that it was possible kindly to retire an incumbent, the occasions on which one regrets an enforced early retirement are far more numerous.
I have reserved to the end what I regard as the principal feature of this Measure. It is one which I and, I think, many of your Lordships not now present who have spoken in debates on the Prayer Book, will welcome warmly. That is Clause 1, which requires a special majority for any alteration in the Prayer Book, not only, of course, over such a major matter as the introduction of women priests, but also over matters which many of us hold very dear concerning changes in the language and order of service—the liturgy and the Litany. In those respects, the Synod should be better qualified to form a judgment than your Lordships' House. There is always some inhibition in your Lordships' House about speaking against a decision of the Synod. This, I think, will be less necessary as a result of this Measure, and once again I thank the right reverend Prelate and congratulate him on his introduction of it.
2.45 p.m.
Lord KINNAIRD: My Lords, further to what the noble Lord, Lord Elton, has just said, I should like to make one controversial comment on what the right reverend Prelate, the Bishop of London, said about the majority votes in the Synod. I agree, of course, that to bring about a change in the Prayer Book by a majority of one vote is dangerous. But, knowing how stupid men can be, I consider that on a possible question, such as the ordination of women, a majority of two-thirds is not nearly high enough I suggest 99.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

SOCIAL SECURITY: OVERLAPPING BENEFITS
2.46 p.m.
Lord BANKS Lord BANKS rose to ask Her Majesty's Government what plans they have to
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reform the rules relating to overlapping Social Security benefits. The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper. The Question asks what plans the Government have to alter the rules affecting overlapping Social Security benefits. I look forward as always to hearing the reply of the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, and I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Macleod, and to the noble Lord, Lord Lyell, for taking part in this short debate.
The basic rule relating to overlapping Social Security benefits is that only one payment can be made from public funds for the same purpose for the same period. The application of this rule gives rise to the greatest proportion of the letters on Social Security matters which I and my right honourable and honourable friends in another place received. It is not really understood and is the cause of a great deal of bitterness, which has arisen particularly acutely over the introduction of child benefit, where people who expected to benefit have found that in fact they do not.
May I just look briefly at the effect of this rule on supplementary benefit. Child benefit is merely deducted from supplementary benefit. One can see some logic in that. Supplementary benefit, after all, seeks to provide a minimum level of income maintenance, It is means-tested and all other sources of income must be taken into account. When the retirement pension is raised, supplementary benefit is raised at the same time. If that were not done, the argument could be urged that the poorest were gaining nothing at all. The difficulty about that arrangement is that it is very difficult indeed to take people off supplementary benefit. In fact, one does not do so, and the Government have devised the two-pension approach—the two-pronged approach of the 1975 Act with the basic pension and the earnings-related pension—to get round that point. The earnings-related pension will not be added to the supplementary benefit and will, in time, take people off supplementary benefit.
However, with child benefit, when rises occur, as in April of this year and April of next year, when supplementary benefit is not being received, the supplementary benefit recipients—the poorest—get no

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extra. As I said, there is logic in this, but it has this effect of the poorest receiving no help, which is not understood, and it causes anger and disillusionment. It would therefore be better to find a system which did not require the application of this particular logic.
The way to do this is to get away from means-tested benefits. This could be done by the introduction of a tax credit system. If the Government were to convert the personal allowances—the single person's allowance and the married couple's allowance—into positive tax credits or payments like child benefit, a major step in that direction would have been taken. Under a tax credit system, supplementary benefit would become a thing of the past, except for a very few who slip through the welfare net which the credit income tax system provides.
There is one anomaly with regard to child benefit and supplementary benefit which I referred to in our recent debate on the family and which I should like briefly to mention now. Next November the one-parent family will receive for the first child £3 child benefit, plus the special benefit of £2 which is reserved for the first child of any single-parent family. That is a total of £5. But the supplementary benefit level for a child under five is £4·40 and the extra 60p—and it will be £1·60 from next April—is deducted from the remaining supplementary benefit; and so the benefit of that 60p, or later on £1·60, is not received by the single-parent family. In my view that position should be rectified, and it could be done by increasing to £5 the supplementary benefit scale for a child under five.
Now I should like to look briefly at the effect of the rule and National Insurance benefits. I have said with regard to supplementary benefit that there is some logic in the arrangement, but that it is not understood and the sooner we change the system the better; but I am not convinced that there is always a logic where the rule about overlapping benefit is applied to National Insurance benefits. These benefits are paid as of right, in the main on the basis of a contribution record; they are not means-tested, and other income, however large, is not taken into account. Why then should one National Insurance benefit be set off against another? Remember that the rule is
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that only one payment can be made from public funds for the same purpose for the same period, and it all revolves around the interpretation which is placed on the phrase "same purpose". The Government tend to argue that National Insurance benefits are designed to provide income maintenance and, therefore, they are all, or almost all, for the same purpose. I can see that unemployment and sickness benefit have the same purpose and should be so treated, but I wonder whether this can really be said of unemployment benefit, invalid care allowance, widow's pension and invalidity pension.
May I give your Lordships very quickly four examples of overlapping National Insurance benefits. A non-contributory invalidity pension is now being paid to handicapped married women who are both unable to work and unable to carry out their normal household duties. At £10·50 per week this is equal to the addition for a wife paid with the retirement pension or invalidity pension. If in fact the husband of a woman receiving the non-contributory invalidity pension is himself receiving retirement pension or invalidity pension, then he will lose the whole of the wife's addition which goes with that pension. The argument is that the housewife's non-contributory invalidity pension and the husband's pension are both maintenance payments, but the able-bodied wife of a pensioner is able to earn £40 per week before the husband's pension is reduced and is able to maintain the household. The housewife's non-contributory invalidity pension is paid for a disability which does not apply to the able-bodied wife, and it is ridiculous that the National Insurance benefit should have to be the same for both courts.
Secondly, widows who wish to train to acquire new skills using the training opportunities scheme, known as TOPS, are also faced with the problem of overlapping benefits. A widow cannot get widow's benefit plus the normal weekly payments which are made to trainees. She has to choose whether to claim widow's benefit or widowed mother's allowance and receive a reduced training allowance, or whether to opt to receive training allowance only. A working widow receives benefits plus wages, but the trainee widow does not receive what really is the equivalent of wages, the training allowance in addition to her widow's benefits.
Thirdly, widows who are working full-time cannot claim unemployment benefit or sickness benefit on top of widow's benefit, even those who pay the full-rate National Insurance contributions. While they are working full-time, of course, they receive their widow's benefit, so they are receiving their widow's benefit and their salary or wages from their occupation. The widow's pension is not reduced when a widow is in employment; so why is unemployment benefit refused when she is unemployed but with a full contribution record?
Then, fourthly and finally, there is the case which I raised in this House last November. A married woman in employment can qualify for maternity grant and maternity allowance. She gets the maternity allowance on the basis of her own contributions. If she is widowed during pregnancy then she cannot draw the maternity allowance in addition to any widow's benefit to which she may be entitled. She can have the one or the other, but not both, although she can draw any earnings-related widow's benefit to which she is entitled. Therefore, a woman who has lost the support of her husband's earnings will receive less maternity benefit than a woman who continues to enjoy the benefit of her husband's earnings, yet the widow's benefits replace in part the husband's earnings and derive from his contributions while the maternity allowance replaces in part the wife's earnings and derives from her contributions. Surely, the one should not be offset against the other?
I have put forward four cases where it seems to me that the application of this rule produces a thoroughly illogical situation. To sum up what I have been saying, there appears to be a logic as far as supplementry benefit is concerned, but it is not generally understood and it is widely resented, so the sooner we move to another system—and I suggest a tax credit system—the better. With regard to National Insurance benefits, sometimes the application of the rule is logical but often it is totally illogical. Again, a tax credit system would solve the problem, but I have no doubt that the application of the rule to National Insurance benefits should be reviewed right away in the context of the present system. I hope that in answering this Question the noble Lord
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will indicate that the Government are aware both of the anomalies to which I have drawn attention and of the depth of feeling which surrounds these issues.
2.58 p.m.
Baroness MACLEOD of BORVE: My Lords, I am indebted to the noble Lord, Lord Banks, for drawing the Government's atttention once again to the problems of those who, having been widowed, are left alone to cope with their own finances, and who have problems with the overlapping benefits system. I will be brief because it is a Friday afternoon and also because the noble Lord, Lord Banks, has taken most of my points. I should like just to quote what the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, said on 17th April, in the debate on the problems of widows. It was this:
"The restriction on a widow receiving both her widow's pension and the full amount of the training allowances stems from a long-established overlapping benefits principle which goes right throughout our social security system ".—[Official Report, 17/4/78: col. 935.]
Well, of course, it does. I know that, and I am well aware of it. But what I should like to say is that this principle is man-made and I do not believe that it is irrevocable or irreversible. I should like to say that it is high time that this Government, or any following Government, looked much longer and much harder at the problems that arise from the overlapping benefits system.
This week we have received in our office two letters from people who have been widowed recently and who have, before their widowhood, been granted invalidity pensions. One suffers from multiple sclerosis; in the other case the position is not so serious. The one suffering from multiple sclerosis received £28·50 a week. She was also helped by her husband who contributed to the family finances and no doubt kept her in food and lodging. He died, and directly he died she was obviously made a widow and was told by the Social Services Department that she would no longer get her invalidity pension of £28·50 but would at once be reduced to £17·50. I think the noble Lord will tell me that she gets immediate payments of, I believe, £24·50 for 26 weeks. All widows do that and all widows are grateful for that. However, it ceases after 26 weeks, and this particular woman will go hack from £28·50 to

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£17·50 on which, of course, she will have to pay tax.
The noble Lord, Lord Banks, mentioned the sickness and unemployment overlapping benefit. This seems to me particularly unfair. They are all unfair. I am only talking about women who, throughout their lives, have been working and have paid full contributions. I think this is the point. So many people seem to think that women going out to work, do not pay full contributions and more or less live off their husbands. That is not so. Those who perhaps know more about this than I do know that, having paid full contributions, it seems to be particularly unfair that quite suddenly they are not allowed to have a second amount of money from Government sources.
As regards the education grant, we have had eight cases in the office this week of people who have small children, and who want to take further education courses, have applied for a grant and are not allowed to have both a grant and a widow's pension. They still have to keep their children, but they are not allowed the grant. All eight of them have stopped the course because they cannot afford to do it.
I shall not prolong this debate, but I want to ask the Government three questions. One is whether in the future they will look to see if the overlapping benefits rule could be less inflexible. It seems that there is this particular rule by which everybody in all the offices in the country has to abide, and I think it is far too inflexible.
Will they also look into making special provision for widows and one-parent families with children of school age? Those people have great financial difficulties due to inflation and, where they cannot take an extra course because their widow's pension will be docked, it seems to he particularly hard.
Will they also treat all applications and cases individually and on their merits? This might mean a means test but I do not think that would be a bad thing. I do not think that any widow or one-parent family would resent this. There is nothing to be ashamed of. If it could be treated with more sympathy and understanding, I think that those people who
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are left alone to try to cope not only with earning their own living but also with keeping their children, and sometimes their brothers and sisters and perhaps aged parents as well, would have a better deal. We went over this very complicated subject when we were talking about widows and, as it is late in the afternoon, I shall not add any more.
3.4 p.m.
Lord LYELL: My Lords, I think that the House will be very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Banks, for raising and for explaining these incredibly difficult regulations. In another place, I think on 10th May in a Statutory Instruments Committee, the Minister said that he believed he could understand these regulations. Yet he admitted that he had had to read his brief several times in order to grasp not merely the regulations but the issues raised by them. I think that is probably one example of how difficult these overlapping regulations tend to be.
For my part, I owe the House an apology in that I am not guilty of wanting to run away from this debate or from the complications raised by it; simply, the normally well-oiled machinery of the usual channels suffered a minor malfunction in one respect: my name did not appear on the list.
So far as the debate this afternoon is concerned, the basic position in these pension and social security matters is that no one can receive two benefits for the same purpose. It appears to be the case that a vast number of variations exist on this simple proposition. Clearly, some anomalies give rise to legitimate grievances, especially in the case of widows, as the noble Baroness, Lady Macleod, has ably pointed out.
The regulations become really intricate when we enter the field of the new benefits which have arisen to help the disabled. I believe it is the case that someone who is disabled could, and very often does, receive, first, a disability pension, secondly, a mobility allowance, and, thirdly, an attendance allowance. All these are paid without any problem of overlapping to the basic recipient of the pension on top of any one maintenance benefit such as an invalidity pension or the unemployability supplement. I wonder

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in passing, whether the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, whose help I gratefully acknowledge in unravelling some of the more distant problems of this legislation, may be able to confirm—probably at a later stage—that the attendance allowance that we are discussing now is indeed that one which is dependent on National Insurance contributions. I hope that I have that part of it right. If I have it wrong, perhaps he will let me know at a later stage what is the position.
The noble Lord, Lord Banks, does us a service in asking how and when we can begin to reform or even to consolidate this legislation—all the Acts, the Statutory Instruments, the Orders and Regulations which are so relevant and so necessary. The facilities available in this House are first class but I found that the updating of Statutory Instrument Number 554 of 1975, referred to in the Overlapping Benefits Regulations for today, 1978, as "the principal regulations", makes it incredibly complicated to follow the regulations of this year. Certainly I and, I believe, the House admire the staff of the Ministry who have to explain all these problems and individual cases to the public.
There are over 60 different types of benefit. Perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, may be able to tell us, as he probably has the information, how many permutations of these 60 individual benefits there are. I think the noble Lord has done some mathematics and will have some idea of the figure. My mathematics are not that hot, but I should certainly be pleased to hear from the noble Lord, as I understand there is a very large number of permutations.
Surely this number of permutations from the individual benefits is one outstanding reason for at least attempting to consolidate some of this legislation, as so much of it is not easily understood, even if it were easily obtained. I believe that much resentment is caused by not being able to ascertain the correct entitlement to one or more forms of benefit by members of the public.
There are so many forms of benefit, some of which are treated as overlapping and some are not. Some of these benefits are taxable and some are not. Some benefits are contributory and some are
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non-contributory. I think it is small wonder that various groups become upset and possibly disenchanted. Each case, whether individual or relating to a group, large or small, tends to be something of a one-off operation for the staff at the Ministry and naturally gaps and what I would call "lacunae" appear. Each of these raises a grievance which is remedied with commendable speed in some cases and with less speed in others. This means that the main Act has to be amended and the process of amendment may result in a fresh grievance which will be felt among those who have not gained from the particular amendment or change.
It is late in the afternoon and I should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Banks, for raising this problem and for what I would call his courage and his skill in explaining the cases so clearly. I believe he was right to recommend the tax credits scheme. I do not say this merely as a Party point, but I hope it could be a major step to simplification of this jungle of legislation. I also believe he valuably highlighted another major source of grievance, which will be dear to the heart of the noble Baroness, Lady Macleod—that of widows, who do not receive what would be received by a married woman when both the married woman and the widow are taking a Training Opportunities Scheme course. This I believe to be a valid point.
It is sad that so much effort and thought in providing abuse-proof benefits going to those who should receive them, have resulted in these regulations and in Acts which are far beyond the ken of the public, in spite of the leaflets which one can find in post offices and Ministry offices all over the country. These regulations are indeed complicated, but I believe them to be necessary. Having said that, I should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Banks, once again, and look forward to hearing what the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, has to say.
3.11 p.m.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I sometimes think that we are over-ready to thank noble Lords for initiating debates or putting down Unstarred Questions. However, I do so today sincerely, because I believe that the noble Lord, Lord Banks, has rendered a service in bringing this

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subject forward, one, to invite the Government to express an opinion on this matter, and two, to draw noble Lords' attention to the situation. I am glad that he has raised this matter of overlapping benefits. The subject has latterly attracted some attention in various quarters, and is sometimes, I know, a subject unpopular in some quarters so far as the social security scheme is concerned. If noble Lords will bear with me, I will try to explain these provisions, why they are necessary, and their purpose in the scheme.
I do not think that anybody in your Lordships' House would run away from acknowledging that in we this country have a right to be proud of our social protection schemes. While individual rates of benefit may not always be as high as those in other countries—where they are matched, if I may say so, by a correspondingly heavier contribution burden—everyone in employment in this country is covered by a contributory scheme, and there is a safety net in the form of supplementary benefit for those who did not achieve membership of the National Insurance scheme. The social security scheme is supplemented by a wide range of measures that help the poorest earners, by the child benefit system, applicable to all, by other schemes such as war pensions, which provide benefits for special groups of people, and others.
The contributory National Insurance scheme provides benefits on a massive scale. I am trusting to memory, but I believe there are something like 11 million people in this country receiving benefits from this field. Obviously some will, in a sense, not be treated as well as they think they ought to be treated. We must keep in the forefront of our minds that the expenditure from the National Insurance Fund will reach something like £11,000 million this year, and the expenditure will be financed by employers to the tune of £5·2 billion, by the tax-payer via the Exchequer to the extent of £1·9 billion plus £400 million interest on the National Insurance Fund. The balance, which is slightly less than one-third of the total outgoings, namely £3·5 billion, will be paid in contributions by insured persons.
I want to reply to the noble Baroness, Lady Macleod. I am not getting at her—I think she will know this by now—but
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when we talk about the fact that people have paid for this we might remember that the contributions from the contributors are less than one-third of what we pay out. The noble Lord, Lord Banks, may well say that we have to take the employers' contribution into account. I do not deny that, but if we are talking about what people have paid for, they have paid less than one-third of the total amount that we paid out. The noble Lord, Lord Banks, knows better than most of us that the scheme is financed on this pay-as-you-go basis and I should have thought that, looking at what has been paid in and what is paid out, it is fairly advantageous.
I have never gone into this but I ask myself the question: What benefits would I have received if I had asked an insurance company to provide me with benefits for the amount of money that I have paid into National Health Insurance? I think that it would be a pretty poor benefit all round. I do not think that for the amount I have paid each week for a good many years, any insurance company would have given me the cover that I can get if the occasion arises.
I think that married women do particularly well under the National Insurance scheme. Not only do their pensions start five years earlier, but if they have not contributed they still get a dependant's retirement pension on the husband's insurance and a range of widow's benefits. In 1976, which is the last yar for which we have figures, 65 per cent. of our 8·3 million retirement pensioners were women. Of these, about one-third had pensions on their own insurance; the other two-thirds in about equal proportions were drawing either a dependant's retirement pension or a full rate retirement pension by virtue of their deceased husband's contributions.
I think this is a very important point. One of the things which is so often said by persons who dislike overlapping benefit rules is that their benefits have been paid for by themselves or by their husbands, and that we are cheating them out of what is rightfully theirs. I do not want to go back over how much has been paid in, but it is a criticism which is often made without any justification. Not only do the potential beneficiaries contribute less than one-third of the money spent on

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benefits, but contributions are levied at the same rate whether or not someone has dependants. There are a good many people in the scheme who are paying precisely the same rate who have no dependants and never will have. They may well say that they are being unjustly treated.
My Lords, you may ask what is then the contributory basis of National Insurance or, to put it another way, what is the philosophy behind it? I think it is this: the payment of contributions secures membership of a National Insurance scheme and full membership entitles the contributor and his dependants to benefit as of right according to the rules of the scheme. That is pretty well the philosophy behind any scheme of this kind. Overlapping benefits are part of those rules. They ensure a degree of equity between beneficiaries in different circumstances, and between those who contribute and those who receive benefits. My short answer to the noble Lord, Lord Banks, is that it would not be equitable if one permitted overlapping benefits. It may well be that the system is inadequate but I think that the system that we are working on at the moment does give equity.
When one discusses overlapping benefits one usually has in mind some particular case, for example, a widow pensioner who normally works and cannot be paid sickness benefit on top of her widow's benefit when she falls sick. But it is not difficult to think of a case where someone might be entitled to several benefits at the same time. We know that if we got rid of the overlapping benefits rule it would be possible for some people to receive eight to 10 different kinds of benefits. There are 43 different benefits provided by the Social Security and Social Security Pensions Acts alone. Then there are the various benefits under the Child Benefit Act, War Pensions Instruments, the Pneumoconiosis and Byssinosis Benefit Scheme, the old cases act, supplementary benefit, Family Income Supplement and a range of benefits paid by the Manpower Services Commission for such things as training, rehabilitation, youth training, premature retirement and so on, and all these benefits are either comparable to, or in some way complement, benefits under the insurance scheme.
The more mathematically minded of your Lordships—and let me say, quite
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frankly, it does not include me, and I do not think it includes the noble Lord, Lord Lyell—may wish to attempt a count of the possible combinations and permutations of these 60-odd benefits. I am told that there may be more than 4,000 permutations. In this situation, but for overlapping benefits rules, it could become something of a lottery and weekly benefits of, in some cases, over £100 a week could be paid to some individuals who were lucky enough—or perhaps I ought to say unlucky enough—to satisfy the conditions for several personal benefits at the same time. All this at a time when the basic rate of a retired person's pension is £17·50 a week.
This state of affairs is not difficult to explain. What has happened is that every contingency, such as sickness, unemployment, retirement, widowhood and so on, is recognised in social security law by specific provisions which give the claimant a complete benefit, consisting of personal pension or allowance, increases for dependants, sometimes an earnings-related addition or graduated benefit, special additions to benefit such as invalidity allowance related to age of onset, benefits designed to meet extra expenses connected with some aspect of disablement, such as attendance allowance or mobility allowance and so on.
As I have said, it is perfectly possible for someone to satisfy the conditions for two or more sets of benefits. For example, everyone entitled to industrial injury benefit will also satisfy the incapacity test for sickness benefit. It is important to bear in mind that the contingency for which both sickness and injury benefit are provided is the need for a maintenance benefit because of the interruption of earnings due to incapacity for work. If this is due to an industrial cause, benefit is payable at a preferential rate and leads into disablement benefit, which is compensation for the lasting effects of an injury, even if capacity for work is not affected. But it is well understood—at least I hope that I can say that is is well understood—that the injury benefit is a replacement for sickness benefit, and no one would expect us, when someone qualifies for injury benefit, to pay sickness benefit in addition.
I said a moment ago that it could be quite frightening if we did not have this

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overlapping benefits rule. I do not want to spend a long time on it, but would this be really logical? It would be perfectly possible for some person to satisfy the qualifying conditions for a whole range of benefits. A widow could qualify for a widow's pension obviously, for sickness benefit, for injury benefit in respect of a recent accident. If she was pregnant when her husband died, she could qualify for maternity benefit. She might be able to qualify for an earnings-related supplement to sickness benefit and an earnings-related supplement to maternity allowance, bringing her in a weekly income of £95 a week.
Lord BANKS: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for allowing me to intervene, but he seems to be working on the assumption that what I was arguing was that the rule should be abolished completely. That really was not part of my argument. I drew attention to four specific examples where it seemed to me that the rule was illogical. It would appear that it is up to the noble Lord either to say that it is not illogical and why, or else to say: "It is illogical, but for various reasons, such as administrative convenience or expense, we cannot do anything about it". I am not arguing that we should abolish the whole of the rule as it stands at the present time. I am asking the noble Lord to think that it may be wise to review the present working because of the number of anomalies which have been revealed.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Lord. I will not carry on with this. I thought I had something which was pretty good, but I will not carry on with that. I do not want to waste anybody's time. But if I am asked whether I recognise that there is an anomaly, I think, generally speaking, that we would say that, Yes, in certain cases there is an anomaly. I would then say, if I was asked whether we are prepared to rectify it, that I think that it would be virtually impossible to do so without creating more discontent than exists at the present time, having regard to the basis of our National Insurance policy. As I said, the philosophy of it was to provide a benefit commensurate with what people have paid in, to see that they have a reasonable amount to compensate
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them for the situation in which they find themselves. If they have not, there is, of course, the second string—that of supplementary benefit, about which I should like to say something later.
In the present situation I think that this is as much as we can do, having regard to our resources. I do not think that one could hope to have overlapping benefits in some instances without facing up to the fact that there would be a large number of people who would quite rightly want to know why they were not entitled to overlapping benefits in their particular circumstance. Noble Lords will know that in many instances overlapping is prevented by conditions laid down in the Act for the receipt of benefit. For example, a person who claims unemployment benefit must show that he is capable of work, if he has to show that he is capable of work before he can get unemployment benefit, obviously sickness and unemployment benefits—both maintenance benefits payable during an interruption of earnings—must be mutually exclusive; one cannot have the two.
Similarly, the Act does not permit the payment of sickness or unemployment benefit to people who are over pensionable age and retired. A retired person may receive only one basic retirement pension, so a married woman cannot have both a dependant's retirement pension on her husband's contribution and a basic pension on her own contributions. But there are many situations like this where she would be entitled to whichever is the greater, as the noble Lord knows. The overlapping benefits regulations as such merely mop up, as it were, all the cases where duplication is not prevented by a provision built into the main legislation. Your Lordships may be interested to know that it has been estimated, although I admit that it is not easy to calculate this precisely, that it would cost something like £2,000 million a year or more to remove all the provisions preventing duplication. I know that the noble Lord is not suggesting this. What I am saying is that, if one does it in one area or one field, I do not know what the justification would be for not carrying it to its logical conclusion. This is a tremendous problem.
It is not just this large amount of money that would be at stake. One has to face that, in a sense, benefits would become a

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kind of lottery and any semblance of equity would go out of the window. I said this before. It is a price that no Government could afford to pay. All the way along the line one has to see that there is some kind of equity. I am sure that noble Lords will agree that what I am describing is a very complicated situation indeed. It is more complicated than it was in 1948, when there were only 13 benefits in the National Insurance Act and about 11 in the Industrial Injuries Act. Since those days, another 19 National Insurance benefits have been added to the list and, as more benefits are added, more provisions against overlapping must also be added to keep the scheme sensible.
We are not the only country which has this kind of structure. I am told that provisions against overlapping feature also in the schemes of other countries, and relevant reciprocal agreements as well as EEC Regulations also contain provisions in this matter. It might be helpful if I explained fairly briefly the criteria on which the overlapping benefit rules are based. First, a person may not receive at the same time more than one of the basic personal maintenance benefits of the scheme or any analogous benefit. These benefits include not only sickness and unemployment benefit, which I have already mentioned, but such things as widow's, invalidity and retirement pensions. The amount of the higher or highest of these benefits is, of course, the one which is paid.
Only one special addition of the same kind may be paid on top of the basic benefit, but special additions of different kinds are not affected. For example, a disabled person could get a disablement pension, a mobility allowance and an attendance allowance on top of one of the maintenance benefits such as invalidity pension or unemployability supplement. Only one dependency benefit is payable for any one dependant at any one time, and a person who has a personal maintenance benefit cannot count as a dependant. Once again, any balance of benefit can be paid if the personal benefit is lower than the dependency benefit would be.
May I give an example of that—although I believe that the noble Lord, Lord Banks, himself referred to it. A married woman could, because of deficient contributions, qualify for sickness benefit
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at less than the standard rate. If, for example, her sickness benefit was at the rate of £7·35, her husband, who was an invalidity pensioner, could get £3·15 for her, bringing the total benefit up to the rate of dependency increase of invalidity pension to £10·50. So she gets no more money. She can exercise her right in one direction, but it must be taken into account. We take the view that this is quite the right thing to do. I was going to give other examples, but perhaps I could leave that for the time being.
From next April, earnings-related additional components will become payable under the new pensions arrangements on top of invalidity, widow's and retirement pensions. These are meant to be special additions for the purpose of bringing benefits up to a level related to a contributor's earnings, and they are the counterpart to occupational pensions which are not affected by the payment of State benefits. We have consequently made regulations to ensure that these fall within the second rule I have mentioned, and remain payable on top of the best basic maintenance benefit to which a beneficiary is entitled.
Additional components may be inherited, and in this situation the overlapping rules follow the precedent of the Pensions Act to ensure that no one can get more additional component from two sources than would be the biggest amount one contributor could have earned. We are also providing that graduated retirement benefit, like additional component, will not be lost in overlapping situations. In view of the time, perhaps I might turn to one or two matters which have been raised.
The noble Lord, Lord Banks, raised the question of child benefit and supplementary benefit. In so far as there is a problem here—and he admits that there is some logic about this—it arises from the Government's success in phasing in child benefit and achieving such a good rate of child benefit so quickly. Noble Lords will recall that the aim of supplementary benefit is to bring a family's income up to a given level, and this includes allowances for children. In assessing entitlement to supplementary benefit, a family's income from all sources is added up and supplementary benefit is awarded to meet the gap. If income from other sources such

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as child benefit goes up, the amount of supplementary benefit needed to cover the gap is reduced, as the noble Lord, Lord Banks, said, by the same figure. If this did not happen, the Government would fail in their aim of replacing means-tested benefits by universal benefits, and would not help the problem regarding incentives.
There is nothing new in this approach. In the past family allowances were offset against supplementary benefit, and increases in them led to corresponding reductions in supplementary benefit. The need for this to happen was well recognised, if I may say so, by Frank Field of the Child Poverty Action Group in his letter of 17th April to The Times in which he encouraged the Government to stand by this policy as a way of getting people off means-tested benefits. But, in view of the strength of the noble Lord's feeling on this, I would draw the attention of my honourable friend the Minister for Social Security to the points raised by the noble Lord.
One must bear in mind that supplementary benefit is designed to meet the needs of individual families. However much some people may dislike means-tested benefits—and I am not myself altogether wedded to the concept of means tests—I think one must recognise that, if not in all cases, in the majority of cases it is a workable and fair way of dealing with a situation and being able to assess each individual family's needs and to meet the needs of that particular family.
The noble Lord raised the question of a tax credit system. If he asked me why the Government do not take it on board, I think the short answer and the true answer, as things stand at the moment, is cost. I do not think we would agree on that. I have heard the noble Lord say before that perhaps the Government have made too much of this question of cost, but we have done our own costing. But having said that, I think in a sense it could be said that child benefit incorporates many of the features of a full tax credit system even if it does not go the whole way. One does not know but that perhaps in time something may be done about it.
I wanted to deal with the question of the widow who takes one of the full-time Government-sponsored training courses
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who forfeits her National insurance widow's pension and relies on training allowances. She can do that, or she can keep her pension and allowances for children and get an abated training allowance. This is not the whole story. If a widow takes the second of these options, and she keeps her pension and allowances for children and gets the abated training allowance, she will receive first her personal widowed mother's allowance at the current weekly rate of £17·50; secondly, an abated training allowance of £8·20, and the balance needed to bring her benefit up to the standard personal rate of training allowance of £25·70; thirdly, National Insurance allowances for her dependent children at the higher rate of £8·40 per week—those normally paid with training allowance are at the lower rate of £4·50; fourthly, an earnings-related addition for training allowance based on her previous earnings, if any, at a weekly rate of up to £15·42; and, finally, an allowance to cover various expenses connected with her training. We take the view that these arrangements make adequate and fair provision for her; that she really is not at the disadvantage that sometimes, I think, people are led to believe.
I think the only other thing I want to refer to is the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Macleod, who wondered whether there could not be some elasticity in these matters of overlapping benefits. Frankly, of course, that is not possible. Who is going to make the judgment? We have 600 local offices working to the rules laid down in the various Acts—in other words, laid down by law—and we cannot possibly give managers of our local branches discretion to administer matters according to their own judgment without there being (shall I say?) some injustice to many. It is one of these things that are laid down; it must be applied. And although one would like to think that there is always a measure of discretion, I do not think there can be a measure of discretion in matters of this kind. My Lords, I conclude where I began, and say that I am grateful we have had this opportunity to discuss this subject. I know my right honourable friends in my Department will be looking at this, and I hope that perhaps one of these days we can give an account which will be more acceptable to some of your Lordships.