Lords Sitting of 30 November 1978

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

DOLLAR PREMIUM: EXEMPTED EMPLOYEES
Lord BOYD-CARPENTER: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they are prepared to waive payment of the dollar premium in the case of United Kingdom employees of United States companies who are offered and desire to take up shareholdings in those companies.
The SOLICITOR-GENERAL for SCOTLAND (Lord McCluskey): No, my Lords, to do so would put such employees in a privileged position by comparison with other would-be investors in foreign currency securities and would be inequitable to those investors all of whom have to pay the premium.
Lord BOYD-CARPENTER: My Lords, would the noble and learned Lord not agree that it is the declared policy of the Government, as illustrated in this year's Finance Act, to encourage employee shareholdings? If the Government are encouraging these by tax concessions at home, as they are doing, why is there any objection in principle to giving employees this privileged position when they happen to be employed by an American company?
Lord McCLUSKEY: My Lords, as the noble Lord has said, it is the Government's policy to encourage in the way that he indicated, but the Question on the Order Paper is not, as I think the noble Lord will acknowledge, confined to employees who could take advantage of the provisions of the Finance Act 1978 relating to income tax relief for employees who participate in a profit-sharing scheme. Indeed, the effective date for that scheme coming into operation is April, 1979.
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So the answer I have given is quite general in relation to all would-be investors. But if I turn to consider the narrower question of the Finance Act 1978, the essential point is this: the investment currency premium is an integral or intrinsic part of the value of foreign currency securities to United Kingdom investors. If it were excluded from the value of shares that could be appropriated each year to an employee, some United Kingdom employees would receive foreign currency securities with a value well in excess of £500, and this would run counter to one of the main features of these schemes, which is that the upper limit should be £500 per year of assessment.
Lord BOYD-CARPENTER: My Lords, if the noble and learned Lord is putting any weight on that last objection, would it really surpass the skill of the Treasury to limit the amount of purchases with free dollars to an amount equivalent to the £500 sterling?
Lord McCLUSKEY: My Lords, it would not tax the ingenuity of the Treasury to do that, but that would run counter to the whole scheme, which has been in operation since 1939, which is designed to protect our foreign currency. We do not want to do that and give special privileges to this small category of potential investors.
Lord KINNAIRD: My Lords, can the Minister tell me why a Socialist Government are apparently always so keen to impose restrictions but never to grant any freedoms?
Lord McCLUSKEY: My Lords, with respect, that is a nonsense. The Government are not imposing any restriction at all. What the Government are doing is introducing profit-sharing by the present Finance Act with effect from April, 1979. It is that concession on the part of the Socialist Government which has caused people to want even more.

COMPUTER SALES POLICY AND TASS AGENCY
3.10 p.m.
Lord CHELWOOD: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government on what grounds the United States Government requested them not to supply the Tass Agency with sophisticated computer equipment: what discussion there has been with the French, West German and Japanese Governments which received similar requests; and what decision has been made.
The MINISTER of STATE, FOREIGN and COMMONWEALTH OFFICE (Lord Goronwy-Roberts): My Lords, the United States Government informed us of their decision not to permit the sale of a particular computer system to Tass and sought our co-operation. We did not discuss this approach with any other Governments, but under the strategic embargo the export of any sophisticated Western computer to the USSR requires the prior approval of all COCOM partners.
Lord CHELWOOD: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that this first example of what I may call economic diplomacy, as a protest against the savage sentences meted out to Soviet dissidents who were monitoring the promises made by their own Government arising out of the Helsinki Agreement, has done more than any mere words can do to emphasise how seriously we do take the human rights question? May I also ask the noble Lord whether he is aware that apart from the strategic embargoes imposed under the COCOM arrangements—and they are purely military, of course—there does not appear to be any adequate machinery whereby the free countries can co-ordinate the bringing to bear of any pressures they might wish to bring to bear in trade matters or financial matters, such as loans, and many people take the view that these pressures could very well be politically highly effective? Is there not a real gap here which ought to be looked at?
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, there may be, but I do not at the present think there is a real gap. The noble Lord's opinion is always apposite and valuable in these matters. I believe the so-called political co-operation in EEC—I make no reference to NATO for the moment—is very effective indeed in these matters, and, when joined to the
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operation of the Paris Co-ordinating Committee, the COCOM procedures can be extremely effective, not only in signalising our objection of principle to repression in the Soviet Union and other totalitarian countries, in the way President Carter did in this instance, but also attach that to the necessary strategic conditions which control the export of sensitive technological goods to that part of the world.
Lord DAVIES of LEEK: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that some of us are a little bewildered? It is not so long ago that on television throughout the world we saw pictures of United States' and Russian astronauts working together on the most sophisticated equipment in the world. The small piece of apparatus in question is not beyond the wit of the Russians. This, to me, is just intellectual dandyism which will have no effect on the result of any war.
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, I must confess that I am somewhat lost in outer space by the last part of my noble friend's question. However, I join with him in rejoicing in the fact that astronauts combined on whatever idea-logical basis in outer space. The point is that, whatever equipment they used, I am quite sure that it was approved by COCOM.
Lord AVEBURY: My Lords, does the noble Lord agree that a ban on the sale of computer equipment to Tass—equipment which is of no particular strategic or military significance—is not necessarily the best way of indicating the severe displeasure and disquiet felt throughout the West by the trial of dissidents and, in particular, the appalling treatment meted out to Anatoli Sharansky the famous computer scientist, who has so many friends in Britain and the United States? What steps will the Government take to continue making it absolutely clear to the Soviet Union that co-operation on technical matters, including computers, is rendered far more difficult if it continues to persecute distinguished computer scientists like Mr. Sharansky?
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, I am quite sure that President Carter's gesture in his statement earlier

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this year in which he joined the decision as regards the Sperry-Univac computer, had an impact on Soviet thinking and its reaction in regard to the repressive measures that at that time—and the noble Lord has instanced an outstanding case in this connection—were taking place. As to how we continue to make absolutely clear to the Soviet Union and like-minded countries our detestation of these repressive measures and our support for basic human rights, I can assure the noble Lord and the House once more that we lose absolutely no opportunity to make clear to them here, in Moscow and in the other capitals concerned, where we stand. In that we are healthily joined by the Government of the United States and other Governments in the sphere of Western democracy.
Lord WIGG: My Lords, will the noble Lord not agree that the principle upon which the Question is based is one of applying economic sanctions? Cannot one take it that when the Foreign Office implements such a policy it will do so with equal enthusiasm and perhaps a little more efficiency than it has shown in the case of Rhodesia?
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, my noble friend and I must agree to differ on the efficacy of sanctions in various parts of the world. All I know is that it is the intention of this Government, and, I should think, of any other Government that comes to power in this country, to make absolutely clear to totalitarian Governments, of whatever colour and in any part of the world, our basic and utter detestation of repressive measures of the kind that have been mentioned this afternoon. At the same time, there is no influence without contact and certainly within reason we would continue to have diplomatic, cultural and even commercial contact with those Governments, seeking to influence them, but at no time yielding an inch on the question of principle, and doing everything we can to assist those in such countries who are afflicted by the kind of policies which, unfortunately, they continue to adopt.
The Earl of HALSBURY: My Lords, in responding to the American request, does the noble Lord discriminate between
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sophisticated equipment and circuitry, which as often as not are American, and as regards which they have locus standi, and overall design and logic which as often as not are British and as regards which we ought to be masters in our own house?
Lord GORONWY-RRBERTS: My Lord, the Paris Co-ordinating Committee of course, as the noble Earl knows, reviews what I shall call two lists: the list of technological equipment which is deemed to be unexportable on strategic grounds to certain countries; and the list in which national Governments—and now I come to the point of the noble Earl's question—are deemed to have total authority as to how they proceed as regards exploits in that field. I am convinced that the system has worked and is working extremely well. Very little escapes the attention of the COCOM procedures in Paris in which, of course, we take a very active part indeed.
Lord BROWN: My Lords, is it not a fact that the COCOM agreement means that those types of equipment included within this animal cannot be exported to Eastern European countries unless every member of COCOM agrees? Therefore, is it not wrong to suggest in the Question that the United States has requested us not to supply, whereas in fact it is in a position to assert that we may not supply until the COCOM list has been altered?
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, it is exactly true to say that all countries participant of the Paris arrangement—that is to say, the NATO countries plus Japan but minus Iceland—have an equal voice, indeed a very strong voice, in commenting and in a practical veto on such exports when they are repugnant to the general question of security within the NATO ambit. As my honourable friend has said, it is equally true to say that in pursuance of that policy the position is reviewed frequently and very carefully. As I have said, this country, and indeed the United States, and in varying degrees the other members of the consortium, exercise their rights.
Earlier this year the United States Government, led by its President, made a fundamental declaration on human rights.

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In that connection the President said that there would not be this particular export. They then came to us—this country in many ways being a leading computer country—and said that they hoped we would equally address ourselves to the importance of this particular export. We did so, partly on the question of human rights and partly, I assure the House, on the question of strategic security.
Lord MISHCON: My Lords, will my noble friend note that in his expression of detestation for this breach of human rights he has spoken for every section of this House?

REMEMBRANCE CEREMONY: WAR WIDOWS' ASSOCIATION
Lord SWINFEN: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether there is any truth in the Press reports that the War Widows' Association of Great Britain was refused permission to participate in the National Ceremony of Remembrance, and whether their wreath was removed from the Cenotaph.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, the Association has made it clear to my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for the Home Department that it has never asked to participate in the ceremony and did not at present wish to do so. All wreaths are removed from the Centograph before the ceremony, in which national homage is paid to the Commonwealth dead of both World Wars by the laying of wreaths by members of the Royal Family and of the Government, and by other national representatives on behalf of the peoples of the United Kingdom and of the other Commonwealth countries. These wreaths are subsequently replaced if space permits, and the wreath of the War Widow's Association was so replaced.
Lord SWINFEN: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for his Answer.

RHODESIA: FUTURE CONSTITUTION
3.23 p.m.
Lord GISBOROUGH: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they have offered help to, or been asked for help by, the Rhodesian transitional Government in drafting a new constitution.
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, we have not been asked for such assistance, nor have we offered any assistance to the régime in implementing the so-called internal settlement. However, we have shared fully with the regime and with the other parties our own views and proposals relating to the transition period to independence.
Lord GISBOROUGH: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for his Answer. If technical help were to be offered and were to be accepted in a spirit of constructive goodwill, would not Her Majesty's Government be in a better position to appreciate and to allow for the difficulties being met with by the transitional Government in their efforts to implement the Six Principles, particularly in relation to the competing claims of the Matabele and the Shona, and thereby speed up the resulting state of democracy, which is the object of the policy of Her Majesty's Government?
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, in the proper conditions, certainly. Those conditions are, fundamentally, that there is agreement and participation by all interested parties in the kind of operation that the noble Lord has described. I do not think that anyone on the Rhodesian scene, whether internally or externally, would find my right honourable friend Mr. Cledwyn Hughes averse to discussing every possible way in which everyone concerned can come together and do precisely what the noble Lord clearly wishes to happen in Rhodesia
Lord BARNBY: My Lords, if I understood him correctly, the Minister has said that there has been no request from

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Rhodesia for assistance in drafting a new constitution. Can he say whether it is still the Government's intention not to offer that kind of assistance?—because presumably both the framing of the constitution, together with the proposed registration of voters, have largely contributed to the apparently unavoidable delay in holding elections.
On the question of the registration of voters, has not the experience in South West Africa—and the same applies to New Zealand—to be noted?—where a very large proportion of Africans can neither read nor write, yet there they claim to have achieved an 80 per cent. registration of all potential voters. Would it not be advantageous for the Government to offer assistance on these matters, which was recommended quite some time ago?
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, with every respect to the noble Lord, I do not think that this is quite the time or the conditions in which we could offer such assistance. However, I can assure both him and the House that, given the conditions which I indicated in my reply to his noble friend Lord Gisborough—namely, the agreement and participation of all those concerned in an all-party arrangement—the British Government, of course, would be very prepared to assist such a procedure. This is exactly what my right honourable friend is trying to achieve in Southern Africa: to bring people together, to agree and then to participate. I do not think that his very difficult task would be eased if we were to offer to one participant a one-sided offer of support and assistance. I do not wish to say anything which would make his task more difficult than it undoubtedly is. The short answer is that, given the conditions which I have indicated to the noble Lord, Lord Gisborough, certainly the British Government will be forthcoming in giving every possible assistance to an all-party agreement.
Lord BROCKWAY: My Lords, is not the greatest hope of an acceptable solution still a conference at which all the parties are represented on the basis of the American and British proposals? In the present situation, would not an offer of this kind prejudice the holding of such a conference?
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, yes; I think so. In somewhat more restrained words I was endeavouring to indicate that, if we were to make any offer now, it might perhaps prejudice the success of the present mission. I join with my noble friend in hoping that we aim at an all-party conference—he is quite right—which by agreement, presaging full participation, will make it possible for this country, as it wants to do, to offer every possible assistance to the new national regime in Zimbabwe to go ahead.
Lord INGLEWOOD: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord whether, when he speaks of an all-party conference, he includes the party led by Mr. Mugabe, who has publicly published a death list?
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, yes, undoubtedly. The noble Lord knows perfectly well that he is at least as historically erudite as I am. That is not saying very much, but I am quite sure that he knows. I am saying that the noble Lord knows very well that some of the most successful solutions of situations analogous to this have resulted from our accepting to the conference table everybody who is concerned with a solution. The only test of anybody coming to the conference table—and I am quite sure that the Prime Minister, my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary, and my right honourable friend Mr. Cledwyn Hughes would apply this—is if they are prepared to sit down to negotiate now a peaceful settlement and let bygones be bygones on both sides.
Lord PAGET of NORTHAMPTON: My Lords, does not the noble Lord agree that surely the situation is that both Mr. Mugabe and Mr. Nkomo have refused to go to a conference while the present multiracial Government in operation in Rhodesia is in the process of working out a constitution? Surely what we want, if they ask for it, is to give them assistance in making their constitution a good one? Are we going to refuse to do that until two other gentlemen from outside the country decide to turn up?
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: Yes, my Lords, of course we are, because the

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best constitution on paper and in motivation is valueless unless it carries the substantial proportion of the people concerned with it. We have tried this before—as, indeed, have other countries—but it has not succeeded. There is a place for Mr. Nkomo, Mr. Mugabe, and everybody else who, in their own way, have fought for the independence of a national Zimbabwe, at the conference table. It is on that basis that we should go forward.
Lord ORR-EWING: My Lords, has the noble Lord read the appeal in a Times letter today—albeit sadly possibly the last edition of The Times—from Chief Chirau who asks for just this help? If it was offered, surely in the event of the transitional Government refusing it, they would alienate a lot of people who are basically on their side. If they accept it, then that expertise is in the House, and could be quickly picked up and used if a settlement, as we all hope, is reached after Mr. Cledwyn Hughes' negotiations?
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, I echo the last few words. If a settlement is not achieved on that basis, certainly the assistance is here and forthcoming. That is understood. I hope that everything said in this country, and in Rhodesia, indicates to everybody concerned that that is the basis on which this difficult but worthwhile mission has proceeded.
Baroness MACLEOD of BORVE: My Lords, could the noble Lord assure us that his right honourable friend—
The LORD PRIVY SEAL (Lord Peart): My Lords, I think we have had a good innings on this. We do not have any sex differentiation in this House, and I hope the noble Baroness will put her question shortly. I think that the House would wish us to finish.
Baroness MACLEOD of BORVE: My Lords, could the noble Lord assure us that his right honourable friend, who is now on this important mission to Africa—and I am certain we all wish him well—will also be visiting Mr. Smith and seeking his friendship in this particularly difficult problem in Africa at this time?
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, certainly Mr. Hughes will be visiting everybody he thinks has a contribution to make to a peaceful and lasting solution.

AGRICULTURAL STATISTICS BILL [H.L.]
The LORD CHANCELLOR (Lord Elwyn-Jones): My Lords, I beg to introduce a Bill to consolidate certain enactments relating to agricultural statistics. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 1a.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Bill read 1a, and to be printed.

DEER BILL [H.L.]
Lord NORTHFIELD: My Lords, I beg to introduce a Bill to repeal and re-enact with amendments the Deer Act 1963; to prevent the poaching of deer; to control the sale and purchase of venison; and for purposes connected with those matters. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 1a.—(Lord Northfield.)
On Question, Bill read 1a, and to be printed.

SUSPECTED PERSONS (ABOLITION) BILL [H.L.]
Lord AVEBURY: My Lords, I beg to introduce a Bill to abolish the criminal offence of being a suspected person. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 1a.—(Lord Avebury).
On Question, Bill read 1a, and to be printed.

FORESTRY BILL [H.L.]
3.35 p.m.
Lord STRABOLGI: My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now resolve itself into Committee on this Bill.
Moved, that the House do now resolve itself into Committee.—(Lord Strabolgi.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
[The LORD ABERDARE in the Chair.]
Clause 1 [Finance for forestry]:
Lord SANDYS Lord SANDYS moved the Amendment:
Page 1, line 11, at end insert—
(" (3) For the avoidance of doubt, it is hereby declared that for the purposes of this section "grants and loans" include loans which are made payable by the Commissioners to owners and lessees of land in instalments, whether yearly or otherwise, for such period of years and on such terms and conditions as the Commissioners think fit.").
The noble Lord said: In rising to propose this one and only Amendment, I should like to draw your Lordships' attention to the Explanatory and Financial Memorandum attached to the Bill because it explains that the Bill restates the power of the Forestry Commissioners to make grants and loans for forestry purposes. This is an extremely short Bill of only three clauses with only two Schedules, but nevertheless it is important when related to the activities of the Forestry Commission.
The reason why this particular Amendment was thought necessary by my noble friends was this. We believe that as the intention of the Government under Clause 1 is to set aside Section 4 of the Forestry Act 1967 altogether, the new clause—that is, Clause 1 of the Bill—should leave it beyond a peradventure what the intention of the Government is. The Amendment opens with the words "For the avoidance of doubt". This phrase has a good parentage; it is already embedded in statute law in Section 22(3) of the Town and Country Planning Act 1971. The aim of the Amendment is to ensure that the phraseology leaves no doubt whatever in the minds of those reading it of the purposes and the flexibility also of the phraseology set out in the Amendment.
The difficulty is really this. In the existing Section 4 of the Forestry Act the following statement is made:
"The Commissioners may, subject to the approval of the Treasury, make advances by way of grant or by way of loan or partly in one way
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and partly in the other, and upon such terms and subject to such conditions as they think fit, to persons (including local authorities) in respect of the afforestation (including the replanting) of land belonging to those persons".
It makes it clear that a part grant, or part loan, could be included in the powers of the Forestry Commission. The wording of the Government clause is much terser. I do not suggest to your Lordships that terse wording is ineffective—very often it is extremely useful—but in this particular case this is the only section in the 1967 Act which refers to loans.
On Second Reading we had the benefit of a number of your Lordships' speeches in regard to this important factor in forestry today. The noble Lord, Lord Mackie of Benshie, who we regret is not in his place at the moment, made special reference to this issue. He also referred to a Liberal colleague of his, the noble Lord, Lord Tanlaw, who had put forward to the Forestry Commission a scheme under which loans could be repaid and a loan could be raised on the basis of the value of the final crop.
I believe a number of other such suitable, sensible and ultimately efficient and useful schemes are now in embryo and are being discussed at Reading University. For this reason, would it not be prudent to include in legislation means whereby the loans system could be applied to any such future scheme? I think it would be unsuitable at this stage to go into the details of such schemes. Nevertheless, in the financial world today it is so necessary to have that degree of flexibility and adaptability whereby a loan and grant can be made alternate if necessary in suitable proportions. I hope that other noble Lords will address themselves to the Amendment and, before resuming my seat, I wish to thank the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, for his assistance in this matter and for his courtesy in going into it in such detail.
Lord DULVERTON: While I regret that I was unable to be present for the Second Reading of the Bill, I wish at this stage to welcome the Amendment for very much the same reasons as my noble friend Lord Sandys spelled out; namely, because we in the forestry industry are very concerned that there should be greater participation in the forestry effort by

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hill farmers—and lowland farmers for that matter; and the particular form of aid at present held forth in the form of grants under the dedication scheme is not always suitable or adequate to encourage them to do planting by themselves.
A number of farmers who have done planting on their hill farms have found great benefit resulting from it, both in the shelter it gives to their pastures and stock and ultimately, after many years, in giving them a reservoir of timber on which they can draw when cash is required for farm improvements. We in forestry in Great Britain—in which, as noble Lords may know, I am involved—would very much welcome seeing hill farmers in particular joining in the effort and planting up parts of their hill farms, which is often possible, to the benefit of the farm itself and, most importantly, for the national forestry effort.
3.45 p.m.
Lord STRABOLGI: I am glad the noble Lord, Lord Sandys, tabled the Amendment, I am grateful to him for explaining its purpose and I am pleased that the noble Lord, Lord Dulverton, with his unrivalled knowledge of forestry, has taken part. This has given the Committee an opportunity to consider an interesting scheme for encouraging more planting by owner-occupiers of land, as both noble Lords have said.
The Committee will appreciate that the scheme would be a fundamental departure from the structure of financial help presently available for planting, which takes the form of outright grants, and clearly there would be a number of administrative problems over long-term loans which would need to be considered very carefully, quite apart from the merits of the scheme itself, as a means of putting more land under trees. I assure noble Lords that our minds are by no means closed to the scheme which has been put forward by the Country Landowners Association. I know the Forestry Commission are aware of the scheme and have discussed it informally with the Country Landowners Association and others, but they still have it under detailed study and it is too early to say what the outcome will be.
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Whatever the merits of the case for making loans available on the lines proposed by the Amendment, the Amendment is not necessary. Clause 1 as it stands will enable the Commissioners, with Treasury approval, to,
"make grants and loans to owners and lessees of land, for and in connection with the use and management of the land for forestry purposes … on such terms and conditions as the Commissioners think fit".—
and those are the operative words. That clause is widely drawn to give maximum flexibility as to the type and level of grant or loan and the method and timing of such payments and the terms and conditions under which they are made.
Under the terms of Clause 1 as now drafted, it will be entirely within the province of the Commissioners, subject to Treasury approval, to provide loans in a lump sum or by yearly instalments or at any other interval should they decide to do so. Clause 1 also enables loans to be made in individual cases for as many years as are appropriate in the circumstances. The Amendment is therefore unnecessary as it would not add in any way to the powers already provided by Clause 1. In view of that, I hope Lord Sandys will withdraw it; I assure him that what he wants done can be done if, after full discussion, it is found feasible to do it.
Lord GLENKINGLAS: I was happy to hear what the Minister said about the Amendment. It may not be necessary technically to make this sort of amendment, but the debate has at least made it quite clear that, in the mind of the Government and perhaps of the Forestry Commissioners too, is the problem about which my noble friend Lord Dulverton spoke, a problem which arises not only for hill farmers—important though it is to them—but for the land and the national effort in forestry.
I hope the Forestry Commission may also consider it part of the scheme to give loans to smaller people for small woodlands. At the last stage of the Bill I mentioned the need to make the country more beautiful as well as more prosperous. We have lost a tremendous number of broadleaves; small woodlands are particularly attractive, but often rather expensive to produce, so if that can also

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be borne in mind, in addition to the hill farming point, I should be happy to accept the Minister's clear assurance that all these things are within the scope of the Bill as drafted.
Viscount MASSEREENE and FERRARD: I agree with the remarks of my noble friend Lord Glenkinglas, but do we not already get grants from the Forestry Commission for small woodlands? I have had them—I agree that was some time ago—and I thought they were still available.
Lord GLENKINGLAS: I may have misled my noble friend. I am well aware that there are grants. I was hoping there could be loans as well.
Lord SANDYS: I am grateful to my noble friends for clarifying the position, and I am particularly grateful to my noble friend Lord Dulverton for his support of the Amendment and to my noble friend Lord Glenkinglas for his remarks: I shall be addressing myself to the subject which Lord Glenkinglas raised on clause stand part. The noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, said the Amendment added nothing to the powers in the Bill, and that is true. Nevertheless, it is our contention, and I stand by it, that it is a question of draftsmanship and the need to avoid doubt. There must be doubts in the minds of a number of your Lordships who have spoken to the Amendment. If there is dubiety I hope we shall have an opportunity between now and Report stage to examine the case further. I think that it would be for the benefit of the Committee if I withdrew the Amendment at this stage and returned to it on Report.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
On Question, Whether Clause 1 shall stand part of the Bill?
Lord SANDYS: This is probably an opportunity to refer to a very important matter which was raised on Second Reading by the noble Lord, Lord Glenkinglas, the noble Baroness, Lady Elliot of Harwood, and others. We have already informed the Government that the reason why a whole stream of Amendments
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has not been addressed to the Bill is that we felt the need for a high degree of care and restraint in adding to a Bill which consists of only two clauses and which has a narrowly drawn Long Title. Nevertheless, our enthusiasm for including in forestry matters the urgent question of the replacement of lost broad-leafed species in this country, notably through the loss of elm cover throughout most of the United Kingdom, is very pressing. I understand that a report is being prepared and will be published in the early spring of next year, so it would be imprudent to attempt at this stage to include further matters. However, I hope that an opportunity will be given for us to bring this matter before the Government once again in the course of a debate at a suitable time.
Lord STRABOLGI: I am grateful to the noble Lord for what he said and for his forbearance in not seeking to enlarge and extend what is really a very small enabling Bill by the addition of subsequent Amendments and clauses, which would not have been included in the Long Title. The Bill seeks to do only two things, as I explained on Second Reading. I am sure that there will be an opportunity for a debate after Christmas, if the Opposition wish; there can be discussion through the usual channels. It is a subject to which the Leader of the House, with his great experience in these matters, and I look forward, and I am sure that a debate can be arranged at an opportune time.
Clause 1 agreed to.
Remaining clauses and the Schedules agreed to.
House resumed: Bill reported without amendment: Report received.

WALES ACT 1978 (REFERENDUM) ORDER 1978
3.54 p.m.
The LORD CHANCELLOR The LORD CHANCELLOR rose to move, That the draft Wales Act 1978 (Referendum) Order 1978, laid before the House on 14th November, be approved. The noble and learned Lord said: My Lords, the purpose of the order is to appoint 1st March next year, St. David's

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Day, as the day on which the devolution referendum will be held in Wales, and to apply the statutory machinery through which the referendum is to be conducted. We are reaching the end of the devolution pilgrimage in which we trudged so manfully through the long days of summer. The 1st March is chosen because it is the first Thursday on which it is possible to hold the referendum under the new electoral register; so we are proceeding as quickly as possible.
The order is made under paragraphs 1 and 4 of Schedule 12 to the Wales Act 1978. It applies all the relevant Parts of the Representation of the People Acts, including the Parliamentary Election Rules and the Representation of the People Regulations, and part of the Town and Country Planning (Control of Advertisement) Regulation 1969. It follows substantially the precedent of the order made for conducting the EEC referendum in 1975.
Your Lordships will note that the requirement of paragraph 1 of the Schedule, that the referendum shall be held on a day not less than six weeks after the making of the order, is being amply complied with. The main provisions for the holding of the referendum are laid down in Schedule 12 to the Wales Act. This of course will not be the first referendum to be held in Wales. We have them from time to time on the critical issue of whether Welshmen should be allowed to drink on Sundays. I well remember an occasion when a London Welsh Society foregathered and was addressed by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris of Borth-y-Gest, the day before a referendum on the drink issue was to be decided in Carmarthenshire. The noble and learned Lord observed:
"It may give those of you some comfort on this wet day in London that tomorrow it will be dry in Carmarthenshire".
The devolution referendum will follow the precedent set by the EEC referendum. Polling will be conducted on the basis of districts, and the returning officers will be those who act in that capacity at district council elections. However, counting will be conducted on the basis of counties and will take place in the county halls. A chief counting officer will be appointed who will certify the overall result for Wales generally. He
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will appoint counting officers who will in practice be the chief executives of the counties and will declare the county results locally after consultation with the chief counting officer.
The form of the front of the ballot paper is prescribed in the appendix to Schedule 12 to the Wales Act and, as no doubt the House will remember, the Government accepted the Amendment moved energetically by the noble Lord, Lord Elton, on that occasion which made the form bilingual, although your Lordships will remember that we failed to extract from the noble Lord an attempt to read the Welsh version. For that I duly forgave him. However, without disparaging Lord Elton, I should say that the ballot form would of course have been bilingual even without his distinguished initiative.
The powers available under Section 2(1) of the Welsh Language Act 1967 will be used to prescribe a bilingual version of what will be on the back of the ballot paper and other statutory forms which are applied by the order. In Wales, as in Scotland, the 1979 electoral register comes into operation on 16th February, 1979. In selecting the date for the referendum it is our intention that it should be conducted on the basis of an electoral register which is as up-to-date as possible. The 1st March was chosen because it was thought to be the earliest practicable date after the new register takes effect, as I have said, and it will provide the opportunity for the maximum number of Welsh electors to cast their vote. The last statutory date for publication of the new register is 15th February, 1979. In view of the proximity of that date to the date of the referendum, the electoral registration officers in Wales have been asked to do their best to arrange for copies of the registers to be made available as soon as possible before 15th February. So far the indications on this point are helpful.
Eligibility to vote in the referendum is determined by paragraph 2 of Schedule 12 to the Act, and is not therefore a matter for this order. Those who will be able to vote in the referendum will be all those eligible to vote as electors in a Parliamentary Election in Wales and those Peers eligible to vote in a local government election in Wales. To be qualified

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to vote the elector's name must appear on the electoral register, and the electors must be 18 years of age or over on the day of the poll and not subject to any legal incapacity on that day. The qualifying date for entry on the 1979 electoral register was 10th October, 1978. The draft 1979 register was published on 28th November, and is open for public inspection and for notification of additions, changes and objections until 16th December, 1978. So it is important for the people of Wales to make sure that their names appear on the register, and to act timeously if they do not.
I return to the order itself. The general principle has been to apply the normal electoral law for Parliamentary Elections, modified as necessary. A great number of the modifications are necessary simply because, of course, there will be no candidates and therefore a consequent need to make such substitutions as, for example, "a particular result at the poll" for "the election of a candidate". The order consists of seven Articles and two Schedules. Article 1 provides that the order will come into operation as soon as it is made. Article 2 deals with interpretation. Article 3 is the enabling provision whereby the relevant provisions of the Representation of the People Acts and Regulations are adopted and applied. The provisions are listed in Schedules 1 and 2 with the modifications which are necessary to take account of the circumstances of the referendum. In general, the same provision is made as for the EEC Referendum in 1975. Article 4 fixes the date and the hours of polling from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m., which are the same, of course, as for Parliamentary Elections. Article 5 provides that the Secretary of State may make arrangements for observers at the verification of the ballot paper accounts and the counting of the votes.
Article 6 provides that absent voting facilities, postal voting facilities, will be the same as for Parliamentary Elections. Article 6(1) provides that applications which have been allowed and which remain in force on 15th February 1979 enabling people to vote by post or by proxy at a Parliamentary (or, in the case of a Peer, a local government) election shall be in force for the purposes of voting
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at the referendum. Article 6(2) enables persons who are in certain categories to apply to vote by post specifically at the referendum. Here again, the normal rules applicable to Parliamentary Elections will apply. Article 6(3) enables a person who has asked to be treated as an absent voter because he is in service in one of Her Majesty's reserve or auxiliary forces to request the appointment of a proxy to vote on his behalf at the referendum. Article 6(5) provides that postal applications must be received by the registration officer by 15th February 1979. By then the registration officer must also receive, for the purposes of the referendum, an application to be no longer treated as an absent voter or cancelling the appointment of a proxy. It is of course important that people should be aware of this date, and I would urge anyone who thinks he is entitled to a postal vote to apply well in advance of that date. Article 7 carries out the provisions of paragraph 5 of Schedule 12 to the Wales Act, and provides for the expenses of returning officers to be defrayed as administrative expenses of the Secretary of State.
I should now like to turn to a provision in the Wales Act relating to the referendum which has given rise to a good deal of discussion, and to explain how we intend to deal with it. This is the 40 per cent. provision in Section 80 of the Wales Act. This section requires that if it appears to the Secretary of State that less than 40 per cent. of the persons entitled to vote in the referendum have voted "Yes", he shall lay before both Houses of Parliament the draft of an Order in Council for the repeal of the Act. In other words, if the 40 per cent. requirement is not met the issue whether or not the Act is to be implemented is automatically referred back to Parliament for decision. It does not mean that the Act must be repealed, but provides a mechanism whereby Parliament may consider the matter further. Naturally, the Government will take careful account of the result of the poll before recommending what action should be taken, as of course would Parliament itself, when either a repeal order or a commencement order is laid. It should be clear from this that the strict determination of what constitutes 40 per cent. of those entitled to vote, while important in deciding whether the Government should lay a repeal order, does not of itself decide

1421
the fate of the Act. In the last analysis, both the Government and Parliament will need to exercise a judgment bearing in mind the result of the referendum. In this sense it is an advisory referendum.
Before we can determine the 40 per cent. figure we must try to establish the number of persons who are entitled to vote in the referendum, and it is this expression "entitled to vote" in Section 80(2) of the Act which creates some problems. As I have said, to be entitled to vote an elector must be registered, so those who are entitled to vote will be those on the electoral register which takes effect on 16th February 1979. The register itself, based on residence on 10th October 1978, is not, however, an accurate record of all who are entitled to vote on polling day. This is because it contains the names of those minors who reach voting age only during the life of the register. A considerable number of these would not have reached that age by 1st March. These "attainers", as they are known, can be accurately deducted because their numbers can be counted when the 1979 register is available. On the basis of the 1978 register, the subtraction for this group would be of the order of 26,000.
The electoral register, sadly and inevitably, will also contain the names of those who have died since 10th October 1978. That category raises more difficulties, because it would be impracticable to check a roll of deaths against the electoral register. It is therefore proposed to make a statistical estimate using information held by the Registrar General and on the basis of experience of death statistics over the last few years. If the referendum had been held on 1st March 1978, the figure for deaths in Wales would have been of the order of 14,000. In 1978, therefore, the two categories amounted to a total of 40,000, which is a very small figure in relation to the total number on the electoral register in Wales of 2,065,045. There is a further problem which is still being examined; namely, of multiple registration—that is to say, those people who may have homes in, and may be registered to vote at, more than one address in Wales. They can, of course, only use one vote. The difficulty is that no statistics are kept on multiple registration of this sort.
A further very small category are those electors who are committed to prison after the register the register is compiled and, again, there would be very great difficulty in estimating their numbers. I hope that they will be rather less than more than we have had on previous experience; although I should be very optimistic indeed if I were to state that with any confidence, even in Wales. The House will no doubt bear in mind that the effect of these factors would only have an influence on the result if the "Yes" vote when counted is very close indeed to the 40 per cent. mark. The Secretary of State is looking into these matters carefully and will make an announcement regarding them in due course.
My Lords, the Government anticipate a conclusive "Yes" vote in the referendum. What I think is important is that everyone in Wales should make use of their right to express their own choice in the referendum on an issue of such great importance for the people of Wales, and we shall encourage as high a poll as possible. I beg to move that the draft order be approved.
Moved, That the draft Wales Act 1978 (Referendum) Order 1978, laid before the House on 14th November, be approved.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
4.12 p.m.
Lord LLOYD of KILGERRAN: My Lords, it gives me very great pleasure to welcome this order and I am tempted on this occasion to say that this is another historic occasion not only for Wales but for the United Kingdom. Many Welshmen in the past have fought for a devolution of limited powers to the people of Wales in their domestic affairs. I should like to take this opportunity not only to congratulate the Government for putting forward their proposals for devolution in the Wales Act 1978 but also to congratulate them on the choice of date for the referendum—namely, 1st March, St. David's Day. If I may be permitted to do so with the leave of the House, I should like to couple those congratulations with the name of that great Welshman, the noble and learned Lord who sits on the Woolsack.
Of course, this occasion seems to me to demand that I should endeavour to engender in this House that Welsh

1423
hwyl which it so much deserves. Hwyl—and for the benefit of those noble Lords who may not be acquainted with that word, it is spelled hwyl—is a Welsh word almost incapable of translation; but it describes very graciously the Welsh exhilaration which is expressed on important occasions such as this. The noble Lord, Lord Elton, and I, as perhaps your Lordships may remember, were able to engender some of this hwyl at the conclusion of the debate on the Wales Bill. For my part, I find the noble Lord more muted today than he was on that spendid occasion at the end of the Wales Bill when he paid such a tribute to it.
Let me therefore conclude by echoing the hopes expressed by the Secretary of State for Wales when this order came before the other place. At the conclusion of his speech, he said—and I shall not repeat his words exactly—that he hoped everyone in Wales would make use of the right to express his or her own choice in the referendum. I trust that the people of Wales will give a clear answer and will respond with a resounding "Yes" so that the achieving of the 40 per cent. provision to which the noble and learned Lord referred will not be called into question.
4.15 p.m.
Lord SKELMERSDALE: My Lords, it is a terrible temptation to me on this occasion to rake over the cold coals of the referendum question that we discussed at such length during the course of our debate on the Bill but I shall restrict myself to two observations because, I am delighted to say, I have been pre-empted by the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack. As a result, my comments will not be quite so lengthy as they might otherwise have been. In one of our many debates on the Wales Bill last Session, I suggested that the Welsh were a nation of debaters. A small paragraph in the Daily Telegraph of Monday of this week told me that, in fact, I was not so right as I had assumed myself to be. I make no apology to your Lordships for quoting that particular paragraph in full. I think it is very germane to the subject under discussion. It read:
"It cannot be true—or can it?—that when the question, 'Who or what is devolution?' was put to the people of a small community in South Wales, 10 per cent. said he was Jeremiah's brother,
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10 per cent. said it was an aria from "Elijah", 10 per cent. said it was the last Book of the Bible and the remainder that he was a French prop forward".
Your Lordships may laugh; but it is serious because one of my great worries about this whole question is that the wrong question is going to be answered by the people of Wales when they vote in the referendum. It may be a silly quotation but I think it is germane.
The question is not, "Do you want devolution?"—and I venture to suggest that we all want devolution in Wales—but, "Is it devolution according to the Wales Act 1978?"—which is a completely different cup of tea. I did my little bit towards trying to understand the Wales Act but I would not say I had it completely on top, fixed in my mind; I would not say that I was capable of giving a lecture on the subject in Wales or outside it. I venture to suggest that very few of us (even those who took a bigger part in our debates such as the noble and learned Lord, Lord McCluskey, and the noble Lord, Lord Elton) have got the whole thing well at their finger tips. However, it is all very well to have it at one's own fingertips and in one's own mind, but is it then possible to put it across to the voting population of the Principality? I personally have my doubts and I would ask—I would plead—that everybody, from whatever political Party and from whatever stance they are talking, either privately or publicly, should do their best to refer all the time to the 1978 Act and not to the issue of devolution per se.
I have said in your Lordships' House before that I have a feeling that the Welsh people will not vote "Yes" in spite of the confident words that we have heard from the noble and learned Lord who sits on the Woolsack. I hope I am wrong. I hope the answer that will be given in the referendum will be a thoughtful vote, having understood the question. The more anybody can do to bring this point home the better.
I was delighted to hear the noble and learned Lord bringing up my second query—which is what has been popularly referred to as the "dead vote". This is very important. It already has led to wide-scale discussion in the Principality and will continue to do so. My mind

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was very much relieved when I heard him say so definitely what he did say.
4.19 p.m.
Lord ELTON: My Lords, on the weekly prediction of duration of proceedings, I see that we were allocated one hour for these proceedings. I do not propose to take up what I presume may be my fair share of the ballot, but there may be time to blow on a few of the cold coals referred to by my noble friend. As to the details of the machinery, the noble and learned Lord was very helpful and clear in his exposition of them. But there are one or two minor points that I should like to refer to him. I notice that, while Article 4 of the order provides for the poll to be open until 10 o'clock on the evening of the day of the referendum, Rule 46 in Schedule 1 lays down that:
"The counting officer [while he] shall, so far as practicable, proceed continuously with counting the votes, allowing only time for refreshment … he may, subject to the directions of the Chief Counting Officer, exclude the hours between seven o'clock in the evening and nine o'clock on the following morning".
In other words, he can shut up shop two hours before the votes are in. As it is hardly to be expected that counting, if done by enough people—and if pauses for refreshment are not too long and too frequent—will take more than 10 hours, I presume that this regulation is designed to permit scattered districts to delay the start of the count until the day after polling. It will be interesting to know what guidance will be given to the chief counting officer on making these directions or how many such districts there will be. More particularly—and the noble and learned Lord touched on this, though I did not quite get the sentence in which he described the process—when and where will the final verdict of the chief counting officer be given? Will it be upon St. David's Day or the day of St. Chad which follows it? When will campaigning start? In a General Election this is fixed by both statute and convention. I see none of that here.
I know that the Government are sensitive on the subject of St. David, and indeed all saints. They have become quite effusive in their denials in another place and firm in their denials in this place that they have had any motive at all in choosing his day for other than administrative con-
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venience for the holding of a poll. In another place this was greeted with incredulity. But I can quite believe it. Her Majesty's Government are quite without imagination, sensibility or poetic instinct in such matters. They do not understand about saints or national sentiment. How could a Government that has until now put every stage of the Wales Bill after every stage of the Scotland Bill, for instance, reverse the order so that we get the Wales order on St. Andrew's Day, of all days and claim to understand about saints and nationalities? How a Party which, as the noble and learned Lord generously admitted, could, but for the energetic proposals of my friends and myself on these Benches, have placed the Wales Act on the Statute Book without a word of Welsh in it, can claim to be sensitive to matters of language and religion, I do not know.
There is evidence in another direction. If one cares, as I am sure the noble and learned Lord often does, to look at Butler's Lives of the Saints, which has a most succinct reference to the life of St. David, one finds that when he founded his first Abbey at Mynyw, the people who were his disciples there were enjoined, among other things, that they should "never speak without necessity". The sparsity of contributions from the other side of the House makes me think that they are, after all, his devoted followers.
However, it is the object of the exercise, not the machinery for achieving it, that ought, with two exceptions, to occupy us beyond this. The object, as my noble friend Lord Skelmersdale has rightly said, is to ask the Welsh people a question. That question which will be asked if and when this order is approved is a simple one: but it is not what it is often made out to be. It is not: "Do you want devolution?", as my noble friend has said, or: "Do you want home rule for Wales?" It is something else. Her Majesty's Government will say it will be: "Do you want to be better governed? Do you want to be governed by yourself? Do you want to have a louder voice in your affairs?" I am not sure that that is right because what it really is is: "Do you want the sort of Assembly, the sort of bureaucracy and the sort of central control of local authority income that are embodied in the Wales Act?"

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A lot of people have so far struck attitudes on the subject without really knowing what is in the Act and what it implies. Few people who do know what is in it will eventually want it. It provides for 75 Welsh people—the Assemblymen—to do what one Welsh person—the Secretary of State—does now. It takes all the money that comes from the Treasury to Welsh local authorities in the form of rate support grant—£498 million in the current year—away from the local authorities and gives it to those 75 people to dole out to them as and when they please. It allows them to remit important decisions to a committee made up only of members of the majority party and entitled by law to meet and deliberate in secret, and it requires them to fix, after their initial meeting, their own salaries, their own pensions and their own expense allowances. It will employ, as the new overseers of the Welsh, at least 1,150 extra civil servants; it will cost at least £4 million to set up and at least an extra £12 million to run every year. There will be a further additional cost in the first year of at least £l¼ million, and that is without counting the cost of the referendum itself or of the building built to receive the Assembly if it ever meets. The former is estimated at £1¼ million alone.
The "tab" to be picked up in the first year will therefore be £19 million. All for what? To give the Welsh a stronger voice in their affairs, we are told. But, if we pass this order and they vote "Yes" will they get it? Will they still be able to count indefinitely upon their own special representative in Cabinet? There are plenty of other minority groups of over two million without one and without their own Assembly either. The Irish, for losing their Assembly, are, it seems, to be given more seats in the Commons. The analogy is not a direct one but it is fair to say that the strengthening of one Welsh voice in Wales will inevitably weaken the other Welsh voice in Westminster. Will the Welsh be better off for it? I should like only to point out that, according to a written answer given in another place on 13th November, they are under the present system receiving public expenditure of £167 per head per annum more than is received by other citizens of the United Kingdom. That I hope will not be forgotten.
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My Lords, under those circumstances one might wonder who would be likely to support the "Yes" campaign. In my view, there are a few small and very vocal groups whose true position will come as something of a shock to them when it is revealed by the poll. There are the Plaid Cymru; but they lost, I believe, over 20 deposits at the last General Election. There is the Labour Party; but 19 constituency associations have, I understand, declared themselves against the Assembly and dissentient members of the Government are not allowed to speak in the campaign. There are the non-political nationalists—people for whom I have a great respect—whose first and very proper concern is not with rate support grants or the employment of Welsh-speaking public servants but with the spirit of Wales itself, which is what this Bill is supposed to be about. But they are expecting a political and administrative institution to take on the role of a bardic and prophetic priesthood—and nothing is deader than the hand of a politically inspired bureaucracy. The final group is made up of those who privately hope to make for themselves comfortable and important careers in the new and richer tier of government that the Act proposes to create. But when the Welsh people "rumble" them they will surely go to the poll to vote "Nagedif".
I now return to the specific machinery of the referendum. Three important points must be made. The first—as has been pointed out in all fairness by the noble and learned Lord himself—is that if the voting in favour of this Assembly results in a majority but not 40 per cent. of those entitled to vote, the whole question will come back yet again to Parliament. That is the provision of Section 80 of the Act, and the noble and learned Lord has been kind enough to tell us that consideration is still going on of how the missing link, or the dead vote, is ultimately to be defined, and we await the resolution with interest. The second point is that under the circumstances of having a majority not amounting to 40 per cent. of the whole, Parliament is very unlikely to reject the Assembly. It will be difficult for Parliament—I make no commitment in advance—to say: "35 per cent. of you want it but only 20 per cent. voted against it; nonetheless we think that 20 per cent. was right". Therefore it is not enough for those who are opposed to the Assembly

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to stay at home and take silence as a vote against. It is essential that they should go to the polling station and, indeed, as the noble and learned Lord said, that they also get themselves registered.
The third point is the extent of the Government's commitment as a Government—and this is the most important point of all and ought to concern your Lordships closely—to securing a "Yes" majority. They are at pains to point out that this is not a General Election. By this, they appear to mean that it is not necessary to fight by the rules of fair play which are applied in General Election campaigns, and that one side may use the whole machinery of State available to a Government in Office to drag out of the Welsh a docile "yes" to the palliatives that they have invented while on the other side there will merely be a private organisation which, contrary to rumour, will not be in receipt of massive funds from the CBI or anybody else, but only of private subscription.
The Government's position was badly stated in another place during the debate on this order by the Secretary of State and the Under-Secretary of State. The Secretary of State roused the suspicions of my right honourable friends, had they not already been roused by the proceedings in this House on Third Reading, when he said at column 1343 of the Official Report on 22nd November:
"The Government expect a conclusive result in the referendum. We hope that everyone in Wales will make use of the right to express his own choice in the referendum, and we shall encourage as high a poll as possible".
That is perfectly all right, but he went on:
"We trust that the people of Wales will give a clear answer and will respond with such a resounding Yes that the achievement of the 40 per cent. provision will not be called into question".
Following that speech and various exchanges after it, we have the Under-Secretary of State saying at column 1392:
"We are saying that the only ministerial costs which will be met from public funds will be those associated with the activities of Ministers fulfilling official engagements, at which they will be explaining, and advocating of course, the Government's policy on devolution. The Government information service and other branches of the Civil Service will be used only to the extent that is necessary to continue to explain the Government's policy on devolution",
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Saying that only ministerial costs will be met is rather like a general saying that only live ammunition will be fired. It has a nice air of false bathos about it; but the analogy is false and the difference is crucial, because in this case at least half the ammunition will have been paid for by those very Welsh people whom these generals—the generals of our supposedly even-handed Government—choose to make their opponents in this campaign. The meaning of the Under-Secretary of State's speech is this: the Government intend to take powers under the Act to use taxpayers' money to produce out of a consultative referendum the answer which they want and which I firmly believe a majority of those consulted do not want.
If that is the power the Government intend to take, I do not think it is a power that this House intended to grant them; and I base that belief on what was said on both sides of the House and not only on one. I am certain, therefore, that after the referendum the House will want to know what has been the expenditure of time and resources by all Civil Service Departments in all activities relating to the promotion of the "Yes" campaign. It will wish to know the cost to the taxpayer of that time and those resources, and whether they were spent upon research, upon publicity, upon accommodation, transport, entertainment or in any other way. Let Her Majesty's Government not reply when the day comes that it is not reasonable to expect them to discover the answer in retrospect. There is no retrospection about it, because I am giving them notice now and on the record of the questions they will be asked. They will be accountable and they must keep accounts. The Welsh will want to know the answers as much as we do.
For myself, despite the majestic and eloquent respectability which the support of the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor has given to this Bill, I regard it as an Englishman's strategy to try to obtain a dangerous answer to a foolish question. I think the Welsh are too clever for them by more than half. They have seen them coming and they will see them off. As I said at the very beginning of our long exchanges all those months ago, Englishmen who go to Wales expecting the Welsh to admire their wisdom and their magnaminity had better learn to

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recognise at least two phrases in Welsh: "Ewch Ifwrd; Dim cynulliad I Gwmru". "Go away", it says, my Lords: "No Assembly in Wales". I would never presume to speak to the Welsh in Welsh, but to them I would say: "Staying at home is not enough. Turn out and vote Nagedif." St. Chad's Day, which has the great fortune for me of being my birthday, will be happier if they win.
4.34 p.m.
The LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran, for the continued enthusiasm with which he has supported the case for the Welsh Assembly. The noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, described the Welsh as a nation of debaters. Lloyd George called them "a nation of quarrelsome nightingales". Really, to think of the Welsh people giving a docile "Yes" or "No" to anything is a gross misconception of the nature of the people of Wales. Furthermore, the idea that they will be incapable of understanding the question is again something which does not fit well with my knowledge and, indeed, general experience of the Welsh people as an intelligent and very politically-minded community. A vague question about devolution would not, I think, be satisfactory. I believe the Government have been right in suggesting a definite question relating to the particular Act and I think that Parliament, in turn, was right to approve the wording of the question in the Act, whether it be in Welsh or in English.
The noble Lord, Lord Elton, put a number of questions to me, having refreshed himself in preparation for the debate by reading the lives of the saints, a subject in which I am always greatly interested as three of my predecessors were saints! That is a piece of historical information which invariably gives rise to derisive laughter: why I cannot think! It is true, of course, that some of my predecessors were not saints, but over that I will draw a very heavy veil. The noble Lord Elton asked a number of questions. The first was: when will the result of the poll be announced? The intention is that the count will be made and the result announced on his own Saint's Day, 2nd March, the day after the referendum. There will be eight county declarations;
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they will take place in each of the eight Welsh counties and the chief accounting officer will announce the all-Welsh result. That is the intended programme.
The noble Lord also made some observations about the expense that the Assembly and the election and all else will involve, and he spoke about the future of the office of the Secretary of State. The Government believe, and Parliament has accepted, that the democratisation of government and administration in Wales is worth the relatively modest additional cost of the Assembly. It is the Government's intention that the office of the Secretary of State should continue. That is obviously right, as major matters of importance relating to Wales—that is to say, the reserve matters —will still be retained by the central Government and primary legislation, Acts of Parliament, covering Wales will still be passed here in Westminster.
Lord ELTON: Would the noble and learned Lord allow me to clarify one point? I was not questioning whether there would be a Secretary of State for Wales. What I was wondering was whether he would be in the Cabinet.
The LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, my understanding is that the answer is "Yes", but of course I cannot bind future Prime Ministers—or indeed even present ones for that matter, come to think of it, bearing in mind the experience of one of my recent predecessors who found himself displaced without notice the night before the change happened. So one never knows with Prime Ministers, does one? At any rate, so far as I can gather, the intention is that the Secretary of State should be in the Cabinet, but, as I say, I cannot bind the view that any future Prime Minister may take.
The noble Lord, Lord Elton, once again returned to the fear that the Government would exploit, at enormous expense to the public, the fact that they are in Office, with governmental machinery at their disposal, to interfere in an unfair, weighted, partisan way with the referendum campaign. It is, of course, correct that Governments—and that would include the present Government—have the right to try to ensure that the policies which they promote should be carried

1433
out, and so, of course, Ministers will participate in the referendum campaign. But the only ministerial costs to be met from public funds will be those associated with official engagements which Ministers may have to keep, at which they may, nevertheless, explain and advocate the Government's policy on devolution. If a Minister attends a Party political occasion and goes to a place purely for that purpose to advocate a "Yes" vote, then the costs whether of transport or anything else, will of course be met not from public funds but from the funds of the Labour Party. The Government's information services and other branches of the Civil Service will be used only to the extent necessary to continue to explain the Government's policy. Obviously, civil servants will not take part in any Party political activities and the Government, as was said during the debates on the Bill itself, do not intend to issue campaign literature. So I hope that those assurances will dispel the fears that have been expressed by the noble Lord.
I was not quite sure about his reference to the choice of St. David's Day as the day for the referendum to take place. In another place, the Government were abused for choosing St. David's Day, because of its historical and cultural associations, and doing so for chauvinistic motives. However, the noble Lord, Lord Elton, thinks that the Government are incapable of chauvinistic, religious or cultural motives of any kind, so that there we are squeezed between the hammer and the anvil. But we shall emerge undismayed and, I trust, at the end of the campaign having persuaded the people of Wales that the "Yes" vote is in their best interest.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

PUBLIC HEALTH LABORATORY SERVICE BILL [H.L.]
4.42 p.m.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. The Public Health Laboratory Service Bill is a very short enabling measure, designed primarily to allow my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Social Services to extend the scope of the service provided by the Public
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Health Laboratory Service Board. The need for such legislation was indicated in another place by my right honourable friend on 8th March 1978, in answering a Question about the future of the Microbiological Research Establishment at Porton. In the light of studies by the Central Policy Review Staff and the Medical Research Council, the Government decided that many of the capabilities and facilities of the Microbiological Research Establishment formed a valuable national asset, and that it should be retained as a civil establishment with a reduced scale of activity. Further study suggested that this civil establishment could most appropriately be managed by the Public Health Laboratory Service Board, which has agreed to assume management responsibility from 1st April 1979, when the establishment will become known as the Centre for Applied Microbiology and Research.
Under the National Health Service Act 1977, the Public Health Laboratory Service Board provides a microbiological service for the control of infectious diseases. Not all the work at the centre will fall strictly within the scope of the already authorised microbiological service. For example, work is likely to be done on the extraction of therapeutic, diagnostic and research agents from human, animal and plant tissues; though not microbiological, this is work which can suitably be carried on in an environment appropriate for microbiological work. There is also likely to be work done involving the design and production of equipment for microbiological laboratories. The work of the establishment will be given a health and preventive orientation: it will, for example, include diagnostic functions relating to dangerous pathogens and the production of vaccines. A most important aspect of the work will be the setting up of a reference laboratory dealing with laboratory safety. This will be concerned with the development and testing of safety equipment, and with the safety of equipment used in medical and cognate laboratories.
It is therefore proposed that the Secretary of State should be enabled to extend the already authorised microbiological service to include such other activities as, in his opinion, can conveniently be carried on in conjunction with it. Provision is made for this in Clause 1 of the Bill.

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Following from this, the Bill enables the functions of the Public Health Laboratory Service Board to be corespondingly extended. It also contains a wider provision than the one which now exists under the National Health Service Act for charges to be made for services and materials provided as part of the Public Health Laboratory Service.
A further provision of the Bill relates to the remuneration of members of the Public Health Laboratory Service Board, in addition to the compensation for loss of remunerative time and the travelling and other allowances which are already authorised. While it extends the range of payments possible to board members, the Bill transfers the power to determine them from the board to the Secretary of State, who is required to gain the approval of the Minister for the Civil Service. The Government have no immediate intention of introducing new payments to members of the board, but considers it desirable to bring legislation relating to the board into line with other similar bodies. I do not think that there is any need for me to add anything to what I have said. It may sound complicated, but it is really a simple enabling Bill.
In conclusion, I ask to be allowed to strain the patience of your Lordships to say on quite another matter, not in the least connected with this Bill, that I shall be placing in the Library, at the request of some of your Lordships, a supply of kidney donor cards. My Lords, I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Lord Wells-Pestell.)
4.48 p.m.
Lord CULLEN of ASHBOURNE: My Lords, the House will be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, for explaining the provisions of this Bill and, while we are in no way critical of its provisions, there are two questions on which I should like to ask for clarification. As I understand it, the staff of the Microbiological Research Establishment is to be reduced by one-third, effected by natural wastage, transfers to vacancies elsewhere in the Civil Service and redundancies. The remaining 220 are to receive protection on Civil Service pay and conditions, so long
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as they remain in the Public Health Laboratory Service equivalent of their present grade, or transfer to PHLS pay and conditions. We learn from the Explanatory Memorandum that the estimated net cost to the DHSS will be between £2 million and £2½ million a year, and that the existing cost to the Ministry of Defence will be discontinued. In order that we may get the picture in better perspective, I should be grateful if the noble Lord would tell the House what is the present cost of the MRE to the Ministry of Defence. I trust, in view of the one-third reduction in staff, that he will be able to tell us that this transfer of the MRE from the Ministry of Defence to the DHSS will result in a reasonable saving.
My second question concerns Clause 2, which authorises the payment of such
"remuneration and allowances as the Secretary of State may with the approval of the Minister for the Civil Service determine".
Noble Lords who suspect the birth of another QUANGO will be interested to know to whom these payments are to be made. I notice that the Minister says that it is not intended to make such payments at present, but presumably they will be so made when the transfer to the DHSS occurs in April 1979. Perhaps the Minister would tell the House how many people are to be remunerated and what the likely level of payments will be.
Apart from these two questions, we regard the transfer of the MRE from the Ministry of Defence to the DHSS and the extension of the scope of the service as a constructive step, and we are in accord that appropriate charges should be made for the services provided.
4.52 p.m.
Lord HUNTER of NEWINGTON: My Lords, I should like, with your Lordships' indulgence, to say a few words about the current epidemic of whooping cough, not only on account of its intrinsic importance but also because it demonstrates, I think, the sort of difficulties which are imposed on those who have the job of protecting our public health by a form of public opinion which is always vigorous but not always well informed. What I want to talk about may be the end of a myth and, if that is so, that end is substantially due to the Public Health Laboratory Service.

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So far this year, 12 children are known to have died of whooping cough, and this figure will certainly be raised as further death certificates are examined. But it is not only a question of mortality. In the last 12 months, 50,000 cases have been notified among children in England and Wales, many of considerable severity, causing great distress to the sufferers and their parents, quite apart from the ill consequences which may occur in later life. Yet of the first 100 cases admitted to the East Birmingham Hospital, not one single child had been immunised, and there is no doubt that a similarly low level of immunisation exists in other parts of the country, for reasons to which I should like to draw your Lordships' attention.
In 1974, there appeared in the Archives of Disease in Childhood—a highly regarded and responsible journal published by the British Medical Association—a paper concerning neurological disorders which had occurred in children following immunisation against whooping cough with a vaccine called DTP. Following this, an association of parents conducted a campaign to obtain compensation for children alleged to have suffered brain damage from DTP, and this inevitably led to a campaign for the withdrawal of the vaccine from use. There were one or two doctors who supported this campaign, and at least one Member of the other House gained major publicity for this cause through the medium of television. The result was a sharp rise in the number of parents exercising their right to refuse vaccination of their children, so that the proportion accepting vaccination fell from the previous level of 70 per cent. to 80 per cent. to less than 40 per cent. in 1976. Then came the present epidemic which began in November 1977, rising quickly to the highest quarterly rate of new cases since 1960 and continuing ever since, with 1,000 or more new cases a week.
A distressing aspect of the disease is that most deaths occur in infants under one year old, and it is precisely to protect infants from infection in the home that immunisation of older children is so valuable. Seventy-five per cent. of cases in the present epidemic have involved children under five, and it is difficult to escape the inference, although conclusive statistics are not yet available, that the majority of these are victims of the campaign
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against whooping vaccine which began in 1974.
Doctors and public health officials cannot delay action while they wait to establish the cause of the deaths they are trying to prevent, but I think your Lordships would support their interim judgment in accepting the evidence of two local studies regarding the efficacy of the vaccine. In Hertfordshire, Dr. Church found during the 1977 epidemic that the incidence of whooping cough among children under five was 10 times lower for those who had been immunised than for those who had not, and in 1978 an analysis by another general practitioner found that the incidence was six times lower.
The anti-vaccination lobby defended itself by suggesting that the current epidemic is an illusion, due to diagnostic confusion with respiratory virus infection, but from bacteriological analysis by the Public Health Laboratory Service it is now clear that the rise in the number of cases diagnosed as whooping cough has been matched pari passu with an equivalent rise in the number of cases confirmed in the Laboratory. Here this myth dies in the face of scientific fact produced by this invaluable public service.
We must hesitate to discount entirely the possibility that the vaccine may be associated in certain cases with neurological after-effects, such as screaming attacks, convulsions or retarded development. The answer is not known with any statistical certainty. But I would draw your Lordships' attention to a study called The National Childhood Encephalopathy Study which was initiated by the Vaccine Complications Sub-Committee of the British Joint Committee on Immunisation, which is directed by Professor David Miller of the Middlesex Hospital Medical School. This embraced all children under three years of age who were admitted to hospital suffering from nervous disorders, and it shows that children who had not been vaccinated with DTP were just as liable to such disorders as those who had.
Against the background of a sustained anti-vaccine campaign, it is natural that parents, doctors and even Her Majesty's Government should be apprehensive about

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the possible risk. General practitioners have for some years been advising against the use of the vaccine where there has been a history of neo-natal illness or neurological disturbance, while the Government now accept the principle of compensation and have already made some ex gratia payments in cases of alleged vaccine damage. Nevertheless, it does appear from the evidence available that the risks from not using the vaccine—now, unhappily, measured in death and suffering —greatly outweigh any risks that there are from using it. However, there are still some, doubtless well meaning, persons who seek to have the vaccine officially withdrawn and continue to repeat the allegation of risk. Public confidence, once upset, is slow to return, and doctors and nurses concerned with administering the vaccine find their work frustrated in the extreme by this carefully nurtured controversy.
I draw your Lordships' attention to this matter because it appears to me and my medical colleagues to represent a triumph of emotion over reason—but, more than that, a triumph engineered with the best of intentions by people of goodwill in public life, in the Press and in the broadcasting media. It is a clear indication that the continuing movement in the direction of more open government will impose responsibilities upon the individual citizen greater than he or she has hitherto had to bear.
5 p.m.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lords who have taken part. Perhaps I could deal with the two questions which were asked me by the noble Lord, Lord Cullen of Ashbourne. The spending by the Ministry of Defence on the Medical Research Establishment is in the region, I understand, of £1·6 million and. as the noble Lord has quite rightly pointed out, we are envisaging under the change an expenditure of something like £2 million to £2·5 million, and he quite rightly says that we are going to do it with a staff of only two-thirds the original number. While that is perfectly true, what I want to point out is that for some appreciable time the Medical Research Establishment has been quite deliberately running down and there is no doubt that so far as the
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Centre for Applied Microbiology and Research is concerned this must be very much strengthened. It must be built up, there must be quite a substantial amount of money allowed for capital expenditure for alterations and adaptations and it must cover certain repayment charges as well. Although I accept the concern of the noble Lord, I think that on balance, having regard to the fact that something has been running down and therefore costing less, now that it has to be built up and to some extent to be recreated, that expenditure of £2 million to £2·5 million is not unreasonable.
With regard to the second question that he asked, on remuneration and pay, it is something of an anomaly that we should have a board where the expenditure on reimbursement of fares and reimbursement of time lost should be the criteria to be applied to the board. This is most unusual and so steps are being taken to include in the Bill the right of the Secretary of State to decide to change that if, in his wisdom, he thinks it is desirable to do so; but I must emphasise that this does not mean that it will automatically take place on 1st April, 1979. I can tell your Lordships quite truthfully that my right honourable friend the Secretary of State has not made up his mind on this matter at all. He will take advice and, as I explained in my opening speech, it will need the approval of the Minister in charge of the Civil Service; so I am not anticipating that there should be any anxiety on that particular score.
The only other matter that I want to mention is the contribution made by the noble Lord, Lord Hunter of Newington. The first thing I should like to do, and I do it very gladly indeed and with some sense of privilege, is to be the first in your Lordships' House to congratulate him on his maiden speech. If I may say so, one of the joys to people like myself—and I am not alone—is that by being Members of your Lordships' House we are privileged to hear some of the most outstanding people that we can find anywhere in the country on certain matters. Your Lordships' House is rich with people who bring to it a wide experience, a fund of knowledge on almost everything that we discuss, and those of us who do not posses that kind of ability in those particular fields find it a privilege to listen to people

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such as the noble Lord, Lord Hunter. In him we have a very distinguished member of the medical profession, a vice-chancellor of a university—really it is not for me to go through Who's Who because he is so well-known and it is a privilege to have heard him today. He has touched on something which has caused my Department a good deal of anxiety and concern, and before I make any further comment I should like to say—and I am sure I say it for everybody in your Lordships' Chamber—that we hope to see him here regularly, and that he will take part in those debates in which he has an undoubted qualification to make a contribution.
I do not want to enter the field of discussion on the vaccine affecting the whole problem of whooping cough, except to say that we are hoping to present to Parliament a Bill known as the Vaccine Damage Payments Bill. I have to stress that title because I think the noble Lord used the word "compensation". I think there is a great legal difficulty about the difference between accepting the need to pay compensation and making a payment. So this Bill, the Vaccine Damage Payments Bill, should be available soon and will be presented to your Lordships in due course. As your Lordships know, it will provide for those who suffer severe damage following routine public policy vaccination, and it is a once-for-all payment of £10,000.
The noble Lord, Lord Hunter, drew attention to the need to be very careful about the vaccines which are used, and none of us would disagree with him there. I think I might say that the whole purpose of a centre for Applied Microbiology and Research is chiefly to try, as we have been trying and as his profession has been trying for a good many years, to produce purer vaccines. I will read to your Lordships something that I read quite recently about the Centre for Applied Microbiology and Research. It says:
"The technique will be employed in identifying the fractions of bacteria which give the protective effect of vaccines with the object of enabling the bulk production of protective material without the toxic effects often present in whole bacteria".
That will mean much more to the noble Lord, Lord Hunter, than it does to me and to many of your Lordships, but this is a matter which the medical profession, my right honourable friend and my
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Department took on board a long time ago and we shall not be satisfied until every effort has been made to produce purer vaccines in the future. I am grateful to noble Lords for having taken part in this debate.
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.
Lord STRABOLGI: My Lords, I beg to move that the House do adjourn during pleasure until 5.15 p.m.
Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.
House adjourned during pleasure.
House resumed.

ATMOSPHERIC CHANGES AND WEATHER PATTERNS
5.15 p.m.
Lord TANLAW Lord TANLAW rose to ask Her Majesty's Government whether there is cause for concern in the current increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide and apparent change in global weather patterns. The noble Lord said: My Lords, I should first like to put on record my apologies for any inconvenience to the House in having to adjourn, I myself being the cause of the adjournment. The main object of asking this rather technical Question is to discover the attitude of Her Majesty's Government towards the whole problem of atmospheric carbon dioxide and the subsequent social and economic impact of a sudden and unpredictable change in the world's weather patterns.
This problem is an entirely novel one in that it may create an entirely new set of conditions to be met by Government agencies at national and international level. Therefore, I shall make an attempt to describe first, in the briefest possible terms, what is popularly known as the "greenhouse effect", how I believe excessive atmospheric carbon dioxide may affect the world climate.
Until this present time in history the amount of carbon dioxide created by nature and by man has been cleaned naturally by the oceans and counteracted by oxygen produced from the large forest

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areas and vegetation on our planet's surface. It has been until now a delicate balance, and the concern today is that man's industrial development, combined with greatly increased use of fossil fuels, may have created for the first time an imbalance in this atmospheric change-over. The surplus carbon dioxide created by human activity may now be adding extra heat to the lower atmosphere or troposphere, which is simultaneously cooling the stratosphere or upper atmosphere. The general climatic effect of this process simply means that the lower levels of the atmosphere will hold more water vapour while the absorption of radiation by that water vapour enhances the warming effect on the global surface.
It has been estimated that if the amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide were to double between now and the year 2000 this might produce an average global warming of between 5 and 10 degrees Centigrade in the polar regions, and this in turn could lead to substantial melting of the ice cap and widespread flooding; whereas a more modest, and more likely, increase of between only 2 and 3 degrees Centigrade—as has been suggested by Dr. Mason, the head of our Meteorological Office in a recent article in the magazine Nature—might well lead to increased food production by prolonging the growing season, and, furthermore, produce considerable savings in energy consumption. In the second scenario there could be some unforeseen and offsetting disadvantages, but these should be assessed before assuming a catastrophe situation.
For some years now scientists concerned with meteorology and climatology have been expressing at times conflicting conclusions, but unanimous concern at the outcome of the processes I have described. Consequently, the World Meteorological Organisation, the International Council of Scientific Unions, in collaboration with other international agencies, are planning a world climate programme spanning the two decades from 1980 to 2000. This will be preceded by the World Climate Conference in Geneva next year. This programme will have three main elements, which are climate data and applications, an investigation of the impacts of climate on human activities, and, finally, research of climatic change and variability. What
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all this means to me as a non-scientist is that something is going on in the atmosphere which may not be fully understood, but its effects could change the existing pattern of life for society throughout the world. Therefore, it is surely time to ask whether Her Majesty's Government are participating in these international investigative programmes, and whether everything possible is being planned to ensure that, if any disruptions do occur in this country, they will be minimised or anticipated by previously prepared Government plans.
This leads me on to ask for confirmation from the noble Lord the Minister that, whatever plans the Government may have in mind, they have co-ordinated and directed them by scientists who are both meteorologists and climatologists, and not by various Civil Service departments. I say that bearing in mind that these subjects are relatively new and, because of their nature, have to draw upon a whole range of differing skills and technologies. The very varied nature of the disciplines involved makes this subject, to my mind, totally unsuitable for management by a single Government Department or Departments.
I hope that the Minister will be able to advise me that a committee will be established with full powers to draw on the expertise that exists within Government departments, as well as the scientific community as a whole, and that that committee will have direct access to the Cabinet. It is also to be hoped that the Minister will give an undertaking that, if such a committee is put into being, its findings and conclusions will be made available to the public. I ask that because up until now, in all the energy equations that I have seen and the results of the energy conferences which I have attended, the global weather pattern has not been part of the published papers.
The other reason why I have asked Her Majesty's Government to take note of these matters at this time is that decisions will have to be made within the next three years or so as to the sources of energy that will be used at the turn of the century. If it is proved that the burning of fossil fuels will change the world weather pattern, then complete reconsideration must be given to current thinking on not only the sources of energy we intend to

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use in this country but those throughout the industrial world as it exists and in those countries which are about to become industrial.
The scenarios that I have described were based on the assumption that there will be a doubling up of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere within the next 30 years. To my mind that is no longer a probability, but a certainty when one considers that the majority of people in the developing world have not begun to use the quota of energy consumed today by the industrial nations. If one combines that with the savage programmes of deforestation that have occurred in South America, India and Asia, there would appear to be no difficulty in doubling the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, whether we like it or not.
On the other hand, I cannot see how we can deny the developing world from following the same course of technical development, and achieving the same levels of comfort that we ourselves have reached. Indeed, we are hell-bent on providing future industrial nations like, for example, China with all the latest and most energy-consuming engines of our technology. Therefore, it is a matter of the greatest urgency that we know as soon as possible the effects of these inevitable developments in order that, if they prove to be detrimental to the weather system, their impact on society may be minimised as far as possible.
The energy equations to date have been based, in my view quite correctly, on extrapolations of the weather patterns for the past 30 years. It has been assumed, because there is no other basis, that the next 30 years will produce the same variety of weather. If the information from the World Weather Watch and the World Climate Programmes indicates an entirely different or irregular weather pattern, that in turn must mean that the future energy calculations will be wrong yet again. Therefore, if the weather element is incorporated into all future energy equations, the results may be different in that a much more flexible approach to anticipating future energy requirements will have to be made and there may be a slightly better chance in my view of obtaining more accurate results.
Some people may say that the predictions I have suggested are at best theoretical, and at worst unlikely to happen in the foreseeable future or even within the next 100 years. I was one of those people not so long ago, until I became completely convinced that the time spans that are being suggested by the climatologists and the meteorologists are very short indeed. What is more, they indicate that whatever process may be at work in the atmosphere it is a rapid one.
I now come to the second half of my Question, which is to inquire if the recent exceptional weather conditions that have been reported from all parts of the globe in the last few years are a first indication that man's industrial activities have already begun to affect the global weather pattern. I have read of no proper explanation for the extraordinary North American winter of 1977–78 or for the British drought in 1975–76. We are already aware of the tragic flooding in Northern India, and there are reports of heavy and exceptional rainfall occurring on the African Continent outside the normal rainy season. It is too early to say this evening, but I would be very surprised if this November does not prove to be the warmest recorded in Southern England for at least 200, if not 300, years.
Unfortunately, at this stage scientific proof that these anomalies are directly linked to increased atmospheric carbon dioxide may not be possible, in spite of the most sophisticated computers in the world that are operated by the Meteorological Office at Bracknell. However, it may be worth mentioning that Britain, along with the United States, is at present the world leader in meteorological science, and it is to be hoped that the Government will support the studies being undertaken under the very competent direction of Dr. Mason, to whom I referred earlier. Nevertheless, it will be unlikely that the results of the various world climate programmes will be available for at least 10 years. My concern today is whether, if the climate does change more rapidly than any predictions that have been made so far, the Government are prepared to cope with the impacts this may have on—to give two examples—agriculture and shore-based power stations.
If I may return for a moment to the British drought, the Government's

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reactions to that were, to my mind, not particularly encouraging. It would appear that the Government were fully aware of the impending drought many months before it occurred but took no action either nationally or through directions to local government authorities. Instead, the Government waited until there was a meteorological indication that the stationary warm front was on the move again, and only then decided to create a Minister for Drought. Although no real harm was done, I should like the Minister to give some assurance that any future situation will be taken a little more seriously and dealt with perhaps more swiftly than was the case in 1976.
In conclusion, my Question raises the far wider issues of communication between the scientific community, Government agencies and the general public. Scientists work within an entirely different framework from that of us in Parliament. Their statements have to be more restrained and are based on proven scientific fact, and often because of that their conclusions are not necessarily unanimous. That is particularly the case with questions of weather and climate. Therefore, we cannot hope to expect any definite answers to the very wide-ranging questions raised in the debate. However, what we can, and I believe should, expect from the Government is an assurance that the lines of communication with all the scientists concerned are kept fully open on this subject.
My own view, for what it is worth, and it is no more than a guess, is that the seasons have already begun to change. That change will progress with a general surface warming, and the net effects may be both beneficial and agreeable rather than catastrophic—provided the "greenhouse effect", to which I have referred, does not turn into a runaway situation. The FAO has just announced that world food production has increased by 3 to 3·5 per cent. Therefore the recent weather changes appear, so far, to augur well for mankind. On that note I should like to conclude, and it is an optimistic note at that.
5.28 p.m.
Lord O'HAGAN: My Lords, after listening to the noble Lord I am sure that
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your Lordships are grateful that Lord Tanlaw finally arrived. At first I thought that perhaps he had become unhorsed by the changing pattern of weather conditions, or was even suffering from an overdose of carbon dioxide. However, both of those gloomy prognostications were untrue. Like him, when I first began to study this question I thought it was the type of subject which deserved more attention from Dr. Who than from your Lordships' House with serious political or scientific examination. However, something strange is going on in the part of the world in which I live. Barley is in "ear" at this time of the year and, although it is a pleasure to me that it is the "greenhouse effect" or the warming up of the atmosphere which should be blamed for things that arc changing for the worse, instead of our membership of the EEC, it is nevertheless, as the noble Lord, Lord Tanlaw, has indicated in his remarks, much more than a joke.
It is not only a matter for farmers and the agricultural community and those who are inconvenienced by the changes in the climate. It is something which should, and will, play a very important part in the centre of the discussion about the likely sources of energy in the years to come and those which are safest to use. What we are talking about today must be considered when we are discussing how much nuclear power we should rely on in the future, both for this country and for the industrialised world as a whole.
Therefore I should like to welcome the opportunity that the noble Lord has taken for posing this wide question. I believe that the particular subject that he has chosen to raise illustrates a need for an adaptation of the British Government machine to a changing political and scientific environment. That sounds as bad as the jargon in scientific journals, but I mean that on our own we cannot make a real contribution to doing something about the problems to which the noble Lord, Lord Tanlaw, is addressing himself.
The questions that I should like to ask the Minister—we have a Minister for bad weather as they have a Minister for drought in the other place—are as follows: What has been the response of the British administrative machine so far? Which Ministry is primarily responsible for, and in charge of, co-ordinating the other

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Ministries? Who is pressing for activity within the European Community? Are the joint research programmes, which are conducted at European level, looking at this subject?
If the weather patterns change and the Polar ice cap melts so that the level of the sea rises, some of our partners in the Community would be among the countries most likely to suffer the worst effects, particularly the Netherlands. Therefore, we could expect our fellow members of the Community to have a direct interest in looking at the possibilities that affect Europe as a whole in the sort of questions raised tonight by the noble Lord, Lord Tanlaw.
It would be a welcome change if this Government were to put forward constructive ideas for activity at a joint level in the Community. We have a high and deserved scientific reputation. If one makes a study of the opinion polls regularly conducted by the Commission, I believe that one will find that joint scientific research is something which all the people in all the member States have regularly said they wish to be increased among the activities of the EEC. It is something which is welcomed rather than something which is resented.
Therefore I would add to the questions of the noble Lord, Lord Tanlaw, about the participation of Her Majesty's Government at an international level in discussions and consultations, a question about our own preparations within our own Departments and what the state of play is there, and a question about activities within the EEC and our contributions there. Somewhere between the two I would ask whether any thought has been given to commissioning the Central Policy Review Staff to look into this subject. It might well be a field in which they could make practical recommendations, having taken into account specialist opinion commissioned for the purpose. If the CPRS were to issue a paper, to which Government credit did not attach and to which the name of the Government was not committed, it might lead to the kind of informed discussion which the noble Lord, Lord Tanlaw, was hoping to promote.
Finally, I wonder whether the noble Baroness, Lady Birk, has any information
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about the amount of research that is currently being sponsored by different Government Departments through the Research Councils in scientific disciplines which would affect the subject that we are discussing tonight. I think that all the activities which I have described—co-ordination within Whitehall, activities in the international fora and the advancement of co-operation in the European field—could not proceed satisfactorily without there first being an adequate scientific investigation. If we are to continue to hold our deserved scientific reputation in this field, it can come about only through a continued programme of training for those who are skilled in these disciplines, or who want to be skilled in these disciplines, and a continued programme of funding for research projects which can throw up the information for those in other spheres to take political decisions which will lead to activity that may begin to deal with this problem.
I do not know whether or not this question is a serious one, or if it is a question that one can dismiss. However, until we can be certain that it can be dismissed, we should go on investigating. I believe that we have the capability to make a contribution to the solution to this problem. Without encouraging the Government to spend huge sums on this subject as against any other, I hope that we can have a reassuring answer from the noble Baroness tonight that there is at least the administrative capacity to begin to co-ordinate our efforts, so that we are using what skills and what resources we have in the most effective way.
5.37 p.m.
Lord RITCHIE-CALDER: My Lords, I want to thank the noble Lord, Lord Tanlaw, for giving us the opportunity to discuss this question. If the noble Lord, Lord O'Hagan, had any doubts about it, I can tell him categorically and emphatically that this is a very serious question. In fact, it is no longer a question; that is to say, we may have endless debates on the question of the climate because the subject is just as big as the climate itself. But one thing is now perfectly clear: the increase in the carbon-dioxide content of the atmosphere is, as I say, beyond dispute. One can argue about how one quantifies it. One

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can argue about the detail, but about the general facts one cannot argue.
Weather is always with us, but the Question which has been posed by the noble Lord, Lord Tanlaw, is particularly timely because, as he has pointed out, next year this subject will be commanding—as it should (and I may say, rather belatedly in the total sense)—a great deal of international attention and intense activity. I am getting on in years and am beginning to despair of being listened to, but the fact is that in 1963 the United Nations Conference on Science and Technology spelled this out in the same terms as those in which we are spelling it out now. That was in 1963, 15 years ago. The debate was about the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere.
As has been pointed out, the World Climate Conference will meet in February, and in addition to the weathermen and the climatologists there will be the biologists, the farming experts, the engineers and the economists, all gathered together in Geneva. They will help to map the tasks of the World Climate Programme. The global weather experiment, to which the noble Lord, Lord Tanlaw, referred, will, in fact, mobilise pretty extensive resources, although whether they will be sufficient, I am not sure. It will mobilise the resources of the entire world to study the weather as it has never been studied before. Some 9,200 land-based stations and weather-ships, deployed at sea, will be reinforced by five weather satellites positioned over the Equator, by balloons and by unmanned buoys strung out throughout the oceans reporting back scientific information to land-based computers. The weather, which is the atmosphere continuously in motion, will be passing through a sieve of stations and all the information will be filtered out and fed to the most powerful computers available in order to simulate the weather and climatic systems.
The matter can only be dealt with globally. I have a great deal of sympathy with Lord O'Hagan's questions, and I support all the questions Lord Tanlaw put, but as we know only too well weather is not a parochial question; it is not a national question; it is not a European Community question; it is a global question, and that is where it is, and should
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be, dealt with. That is where in the next year we shall be dealing with it. Weather has no frontiers. No Government, however scientifically and technologically endowed—and I agree with Lord Tanlaw that we in this country have one of the best meteorological set-ups in the world—can tackle it.
We do not need a world climate conference to tell us that the weather is changing. We know it in this country. We say it is weird, abnormal. The noble Lord, Lord O'Hagan, tells us that barley is heading up, et cetera. We say it is abnormal, but what was the norm? We remember good summers and bad winters, and our weather memories average them out. But there are climatologists who will tell you that the temperate weather we have enjoyed in the first half of this century has been abnormal—a wobble in a cycle. The noble Lord, Lord Tanlaw, touched on the cyclical aspect, and I am not embarking on the arguments about the little ice age, and so forth. I would explain to your Lordships, if I had the time, why it sounds contradictive but it is not contradictive when we talk about the warming-up of the earth. We may be in the beginnings of a part of a cycle which will produce greater extremes. In fact, we may be moving presently into the kind of thing which was evident in the 19th century when we talk about Dingley Dell and Dickensian winters, which we only put on Christmas cards but which we rarely experience at Christmas.
The fact is that these variations may be going back to the kinds of conditions before 1870, which were very hard. We know that in the 16th and 17th centuries, in Shakespeare's time, there was in fact a little ice age. Conditions were very extreme. We know this from the whole of nature. I do not want to get embarked into what would become a pretty involved argument on the general climatic picture. But I will say categorically, and beyond a peradventure, that the weather has changed and will never be the same again. It has changed since 1945–1950. There is no question about that. We have got all these variations; this weirdness, this strangeness, et cetera, which we ourselves recognise in our ordinary lives.
So we have to know what we have to come to terms with, and what it is going to mean in global terms to the 8,000 million

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people we shall have to feed in the world by the year 2,000. We can think in our immediate experience of recent years of the Sahel famine, which went on for years; of the droughts in the Soviet Union in 1972; and of another manifestation, the catastrophic collapse of the Peruvian fishing industry, which reverberated in America and in Britain in higher food prices, and so on, because we could not get the fishmeal from the Peruvian fishing industry. That was as a result of a hot current generated in the Pacific which killed off the anchovies. It was the equivalent, if you like, of a drought in agricultural terms.
Now we have the disastrous floods in South-East Asia as a result of the wild vagaries of the monsoon. Of course, as we have been reminded, at one stage quite recently we needed a Minister of Drought. We have to know enough to meet such contingencies. I do not want to elaborate, but I would say that there is a consensus that in fact the jet currents which carry our climate have moved South. The main thrust has moved South. We know that the Gulf Stream has been modified geographically and has again apparently moved South, and that we, who get the advantages of the North Atlantic drift, may be in a part of the effects of that situation.
What does that moving south mean? It means that once again you have a sort of Sahel situation where you move possible rain-bearing winds further south. You can have all the perturbances which have produced the catastrophic variations in the monsoons. If we are to become purely domestic, I think most people would agree that the position in this country is quite clearly that at least—because we are intelligent people—we should be thinking about how we are in fact going to change the nature of our crops to meet the contingency. I should like to elaborate on that at some further discussion.
What the noble Lord, Lord Tanlaw, has raised is not the cyclical changes but the man-made effects of the increase in atmospheric carbon. This is not what we play around with called weather-making. There has been a lot of talk about clima-tological warfare—I think it has been written out of the armoury—and the fact is that we do believe that we could set up a
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blockade of a country and cut off its weather. We do believe, and it has been demonstrated in pretty local circumstances, that we can produce rain artificially by the seeding of clouds, and so on, but that is not what we are talking about. This is, if you like, inadvertent man-made intervention with the weather. It is the cumulative effect of man's industrial activities. In fact, it is another kind of energy crisis, with the recoil effect of energy. Whatever mankind does to increase energy must, by its nature, increase effects on the weather. It does not matter how you look at it, because you are regenerating a new kind of impulse into the system.
I would remind your Lordships that hundred of millions of year ago carbon from primeval forests was locked away in the coal seams, and carbon from the organic life of the seas was locked away in what are now our oil deposits. That carbon was locked away and kept out of circulation for a very long time. The geological vaults were not burgled to any real extent until the Industrial Revolution. During the past century, industry has vomited out of chimney stacks, and vented out of car exhausts, 360 billion tons of fossil carbon into the atmosphere. According to UN statistics the use of fossil fuel has increased every year since 1860 at a remarkably constant rate of 4·3 per cent. per annum.
If the known production of carbon dioxide is compared with the known atmospheric increase, it turns out that roughly one half of the excess carbon has remained in the atmosphere. Estimates of the ability of the oceans to continue to take up carbon dioxide, if we continue to produce it at the exponential rate, suggest that it will not be able to absorb a fraction of 50 per cent. in the decades ahead.
Another absorber of carbon dioxide, as Lord Tanlaw suggested, is the biosphere, consisting of all living matter on land and in the seas; consisting of the forests, which form the largest mass of the biosphere and which in the past were taking the carbon out of the atmosphere and should have been growing more abundantly because of the increased carbon developing. However, we are cutting them down and therefore the carbon is not being absorbed in that way.

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Thus, whatever the system of withdrawal—the sea or the natural vegetation—it has already been smothered. I have been reckoning today that it will take 1,000 years just to reduce to not even one half the amount of carbon now in the atmosphere to a balance between the oceans and the biosphere. In other words, the carbon is accumulating, and that is really all I am trying to say.
I should point out that man's activities operate in other ways as well. Part of the glasshouse effect is due to nitrous oxide which is due to the use of artificial fertilisers, and that is becoming a very serious problem as a contributory factor to the glasshouse effect. Let us consider what are the effects of higher concentrations of carbon dioxide resulting from this—on the analogy with the glasshouse—"greenhouse" effect. Carbon dioxide is a translucent layer, if you like, which admits the sun's rays but does not allow the surface heating of the earth to escape, so, as Lord Tanlaw pointed out, we get a natural warming up in the vapour sense of the word and we also get convection heat from the surface of the earth to the point where that begins to have real effects. Many theoretical calculations based on detailed observations have been made and they converge on roughly the same conclusion.
I apologise to noble Lords for making these technical points, but I was queried about them before I spoke and I feel I must put them on the record. The present 325 parts per million by volume (ppmv) of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will increase to 400 ppmv by the year 2000. This will mean an average surface warming of 1 per cent.—that is the most conservative estimate—and only 50 years beyond that, by the year 2050, it will increase to 650 ppmv, which is a doubling, an increase in temperature of a minimum of 3 degrees Celsius.
I assure the House that I am talking in limited terms. I remind noble Lords that I am talking about the mean, the average, temperature of the whole globe, not local temperatures. This means that in the Polar regions the increase can be three to five times greater than the global average. The resulting reduced difference between the low and middle latitudes will be significant because it is the temperature
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difference between the Equator and the Poles which drives the atmospheric heat-engine. There will be a slowing down of the large-scale flow patterns in the air and in the oceans that transport the heat polewards.
We now come to what might be considered the 64,000 dollar—we might as well call it the 6,000 million dollar—question; namely, what happens to the ice caps? The ice can be represented in ice dams, which can be found in the Himalayas, the High Andes and elsewhere, and they can be represented by the glaciers, mountain glaciers and the permafrost. The biggest problem, however, we are dealing with is what will happen to the ice caps and the ice-sheets.
The melting of the sea ice would not affect the sea level because (Eureka!) the volume of floating ice is equal to the water it displaces. The melting of the glaciers and the ice caps on land, however, will raise the sea level. One of my minor nightmares is wondering what will happen to the ice- dams if they melt; I am talking about the glaciers and ice caps on land. If all the glaciers melted, the sea level would rise about half a metre, approximately ·6 metres. If all the ice-sheets melted, the level would rise 65 metres. Anybody with property below 300 ft. should get rid of it. But that would be a deferred possibility because the warmed-up atmosphere would hold more vapour and that would increase the snowfall over the ice-sheets. All this is predictable—this is not something we are discussing as a remote possibility—within the next 70 to 80 years, within the lifetime at least of my grandchildren. It is therefore something we must deal with. It does not matter how we look at this issue—whether we take Dr. Mason's optimistic view about the way in which we may be increasing the potential for production and so on, or whether we take a grim view, or even whether we decide to cut off all coal and oil (just stop it altogether, which of course is completely unrealistic)—whichever way we turn, we seem to be in a jam because if we cut off the carbon going into the atmosphere we should then have an awful lot of nuclear waste. I hope that in the coming 70 years or so we will have fusion energy, but in the meantime things are going to be accumulating in the way I have described.

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As the noble Lord, Lord Tanlaw, said, this is not something we can discuss in a quiet non-political way because it is a totally global political question, though it is not a political question which can be dealt with by "demos" or "sit-ins" or any similar ways. I reassure my noble friend the Minister that I do not see us marching to Bracknell on a sort of CND march saying, "Stop the weather". But we must sit down now, as we hope we are doing, and look at it in its totality, in its global sense; and if there is one thing that must unify mankind, scientifically speaking, it is this.
Lord JACQUES: My Lords, may I ask my noble friend whether he has had a depressing day? I ask this because when I listened to him on the radio this morning he said that the waters were likely to rise in the next 50 to 100 years by 60 metres—that is about 200 ft.—and that if one had property of less than 200 ft. one should move away from it, or not take the lease if it was for 99 years or thereabouts. However, during the debate he spoke of 300 ft., and so I was wondering whether he had had a depressing day.
Lord RITCHIE-CALDER: My Lords, as the ex-chairman of the Metrication Board I find it very difficult to convert metres into feet. The figure is 65 metres, whatever one may make that.
6 p.m.
Lord SKELMERSDALE: My Lords, it is always with some diffidence that a mere amateur follows a scientist in one of your Lordships' debates, but I am especially grateful both to the noble Lord, Lord Tanlaw, for introducing this very important subject, and for the dexterous way in which my noble colleague on the EEC Sub-Committee G on the environment has enlightened us with the true scientific facts behind this very complicated and very urgent question. Both the noble Lord, Lord Tanlaw, and my noble friend Lord O'Hagan said (if I may paraphrase slightly) that something strange is going on. The noble Lord, Lord Ritchie-Calder, said that something strange and serious is going on. I should like to reiterate all three views. I am absolutely convinced that something strange is going on. It is something serious that is going on, and we should
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be worried about it. The only problem is, how and what? I am not a reader of detective stories, but I can recognise that here we have a riddle of the "Did she fall, or was she pushed?" variety. We are being bombarded with a dichotomy of views and opinions. Hardly a month goes by without another eminent scientist publishing a paper leading to one or other view. It seems to me that the picture is so unclear that all anyone can do is to hold a watching brief on the subject of carbon dioxide and its relation to climate.
However, there are a few facts that we do know. The first is that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is in the order of ·03 per cent. and is increasing at the rate of some 10 per cent. per year, through the burning of fossil fuels, and, we must not forget, the large-scale plundering of the world's forest reserves which gave rise to these fossil fuels.
Secondly, the optimum level of carbon dioxide for photosynthesis is 0·1 per cent. This is important, as I hope to be able to show your Lordships. So we still have a little way to go before this point is reached. If I understood correctly the noble Lord who has just spoken, it will be about three quarters of the way through the next century. This sounds an awful long time away, but it is not, as I am sure the noble Lord will be the first to agree with me. This is a matter which we want to watch, and watch carefully, from this moment on, and I am delighted that there is to be a conference next year in Geneva. The conference will not exactly set the ball rolling—because it is already rolling, though very slowly—but it will give it a much needed push. Third in my list of facts is that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere absorbs radiation—the well-known greenhouse effect—and warms it, possibly (I say possibly) giving rise to the melting of the Polar ice caps.
What conclusions can we draw from these three facts? As I have said, I am not a scientist. I approach the matter in, I hope, a thinking amateur fashion; nevertheless, I approach it with great diffidence. I should have thought that the first conclusion is fairly straightforward and obvious. This is that the more we cut down forests, especially the tropical rain forests, the less carbon dioxide will be stored in the earth, either in the form of timber, which is a temporary

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stage, or in the eventual form of peat, and one would hope also that fossil fuels are continuing to be laid down, though I have not seen any reference to this recently in the Press.
Next is a rather more difficult conclusion, and it is here that the scientists have two possible theories. On the one side is the idea that the extra heat in the atmosphere will warm the oceans and melt the ice caps, but no one knows by how much. This will have the effects that it will increase the level of the sea, changing coastlines all over the world, putting many low-lying areas under water, as has already been referred to. However, it should not be forgotten that the oceans of the world are by far the largest reservoir of carbon, from carbon dioxide, that there is. So if the volume of the ocean and its temperature is increased, I should have thought—not being a scientist—that this would also increase its absorption capacity. I see a shake of the head, so I am obviously talking nonsense, but I am grateful to be told so.
We now come to the other side of the coin. Some scientists whose views I have read believe that far from the greenhouse effect to which I have already referred, more and more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere leads to the blocking of some of the suns's rays to the earth, and by dust and cloud formations will lead eventually not to increased heat on the earth, but increased ice. A book entitled The Weather Machine, published three years ago, painted a very gloomy picture of the effects and the causes of a possible new ice age into which we may, or may not, be entering. One must somehow receive a balanced view from two totally opposing scientific streams. We all know that there is an increasing level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, but we do not know what the effects will be. Incidentally, it occurs to me that in primordial times, when the land mass was chiefly covered with forest, but before much, if any, coal and oil was created, the percentage of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere must have been very much higher than it is now and will probably become in my life time.
Where has all this carbon gone? It must have gone into humus and peat, and into fossil fuels certainly—but this is only
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a very small percentage. Most of it must have gone into the sea. So far as I know, there is nowhere else for it to have gone. So I feel that the sea must be the key to the whole of this problem, and it is here that we must look for most of the answers.
It is critical that we discover whether it is getting warmer or colder, by how much, and over what length of time. It is not yet by any means certain that the overall result of warming, or indeed of cooling, would be as damaging as is usually assumed. The noble Lord, Lord Tanlaw, referred to Mr. Morgan's comments in last week's edition of the magazine Nature in which he said that a rise of 2 to 3 degrees Centigrade might well lead to increased food production by prolonging the growing seasons, increasing the rainfall, and increasing photosynthesis. I suppose that the converse of this argument might well be that a fall by the same amount could well do the same by shrinking the deserts and thus making more land available for food production. So I do not know where I stand.
I am most grateful that this Question by the noble Lord, Lord Tanlaw, is on the Order Paper today, and that we can discuss it. However, I am convinced in my own mind that neither Her Majesty's Government, nor anyone else, can in fact answer it. I should like to ask the Minister whether she can give us an assurance that she and her Department—or the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, or, as my noble friend Lord O'Hagan asked, whichever is the supremo Department on this subject—are extremely concerned by the problem and are watching it closely; and secondly, that they will do all in their power to make sure that the leaf cover of the world—another of the problems—although changed by advances in agriculture, should be maintained. If the noble Baroness is again offering us a space to watch, I assure her that I shall watch it with assiduity.
6.9 p.m.
Lord GISBOROUGH: My Lords, I should like to intervene in the debate briefly to draw particular attention to the forestry aspect of this matter. The debate cannot but remind one of those debates on energy a few years ago, when people started to suggest that one day there might be an oil shortage, or even an oil

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crisis. Within a short time it was with us with a vengeance. Since 1850 human activity has increased the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from perhaps 290 to 330 parts per million. By the year 2020, or thereabouts, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere could be doubled. Until recently this was largely attributed—indeed, it was in this debate—to the burning of fossil fuels. Evidence now points to the fact that it could in equal degree be due to the destruction of forests. There are a great number of studies being made, each reaching a different result and none of them being conclusive; and what I am saying is based on one of those studies.
It is important—indeed, it is vital—that an accurate assessment be obtained for the world's safety. Should the felling of the world's forestry reach a conclusive state, then it may be too late to counteract it. One study showed that tropical rain forests hold 42 per cent. of all carbon locked up in terrestrial vegetation and account for 32 per cent. of total net primary production. All forests hold some 90 per cent. of carbon and contribute 60 per cent. of production, according to that same study. These figures lie about half-way between the extreme estimates. Over the last 1,000 years forestry cover in Western Europe has been reduced from about 90 per cent. to 20 per cent., and this reduction released a quantity of carbon that formed a significant fraction of the total previously held in the atmosphere. It is reasonable to assume that continued industrialisation and population growth since 1900 has resulted in similar changes in forestry elsewhere.
In New England the reduction of forests occurred since the arrival of the settlers, but since 1900 there has been a period of recovery owing to the abandonment of agriculture and the expansion of forestry into the former agricultural land. The recovery, however, has not resulted in a pool of carbon equivalent to that of the original forests. Regular harvesting has never allowed the forests to reach the stature and extent of the original ones, so that the standing crop of carbon today is no more than half the original one. Furthermore, the increase of forestry has now ended due to a renewed expansion of agriculture and an intensified harvesting of trees. The experience of the New
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England study suggests that the regrowth of forests in temperate zones probably does not at present provide a large sink for atmospheric carbon dioxide.
Meanwhile, there is a continuous expansion of argiculture into other forest lands, a continuous harvesting of primary forests elsewhere, and a general toxification of the earth as a result of human activity, particularly in the tropics. The largest remaining forest area is of course the Amazon Basin, and there is no satisfactory survey giving accurate data of the destruction of forests in that important area. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the destruction of forests is adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere at a rate comparable to the rate of release from the combustion of fossil fuels, and, if oxidisation of humus is included, at an appreciably higher rate. This is a highly complicated and technical subject with inadequate scientific conclusions. The important point is that when the effects of deforestation become evident it may then be too late to make redress.
If the greenhouse effect were to occur, perhaps the world would be a warmer and pleasanter place in which to live. Perhaps deserts would become fertile with rains. Perhaps, however, the ice floes will melt, and the ensuing floods will perhaps cause, with respect, the Lord Chancellor's Procession along the corridors to be made in a caparisoned and emblazoned gondola propelled, perhaps, by a gay and gallant gondolieri in the form of Black Rod with a long black rod. Whatever the future, the world should try to understand the consequences of its actions in this field of nature, so that remedy may be taken before it becomes too late to escape the consequences.
6.15 p.m.
The PARLIAMENTARY UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE, DEPARTMENT of the ENVIRONMENT (Baroness Birk): My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Tanlaw, has certainly raised a question of truly global concern, and it is quite clear that this short debate has been extremely important and very interesting. It was also very scientific. I do not know about the deluge of ice or heat, but I have certainly never had such a deluge of paper around me to help fill in the tremendous blocks of ignorance from which I suffer on this subject. The Question

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that Lord Tanlaw has asked, if I may come back to that—because we have ranged fairly widely—is,
"whether there is cause for concern in the current increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide and apparent change in global weather patterns".
Before I get on to the Answer, which I believe is scientifically-based and is as accurate as I can give your Lordships, I must confess that I share the feelings of noble Lords—and I think the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, summed it up—that something strange is going on. I have my own private, pet theory that none of this radioactivity does us any good at all and does the weather a lot of harm, but I do not know that I have the scientists on my side in that respect so I think that that had better be in parenthesis.
In summary, the Answer to the Question asked by Lord Tanlaw is that the increase in CO2 that is occurring certainly gives grounds for concern because it can without doubt affect the world's climate. It is too early to say, however, whether the climate is in fact being affected, because there is no sufficiently long-term firm evidence. I know that my noble friend Lord Ritchie-Calder takes a different view, but the view we take is that any effect will be very gradual indeed, spreading over decades, and will certainly give us time for further research into the question on which some of the world's most able scientists are working. I shall be saying a little more about research later. Our own Meteorological Office is taking a leading part in this research. The noble Lord, Lord Tanlaw, asked me whether there was any inter-Departmental liaison, or any committees. An Inter-Departmental Liaison Committee was set up in 1977, and to the best of my knowledge it covers the Departments of Environment, Energy and Defence, and the Meteorological Office is giving scientific leadership in research by meteorologists and climatologists.
The subject of carbon dioxide and its potential impact on climate is surrounded both by uncertainties and by scientific controversy, and that was made very clear in the extraordinarily interesting contribution from my noble friend Lord Ritchie-Calder. What is clear is that CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere are steadily increasing, as they have been
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doing since the mid-19th century. The chief reasons for this rise are, as noble Lords are aware and as some noble Lords have mentioned, the increasing global use of fossil fuels and the destruction of forests, particularly tropical forests—and the noble Lord, Lord Gisborough, mentioned that just now—although it is not clear what are the relative contributions of fuel burning and forest clearance. During this century, the carbon dioxide concentration has increased about 10 per cent. The noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, said (it may have been a slip of the tongue) that he understood the increase was 10 per cent. per annum. It has been 10 per cent. over the century. It is nearer about one-half of 1 per cent. per annum.
My Lords, I am not going to go into a long explanation of the greenhouse effect, which is obviously common knowledge among all the noble Lords who have spoken and who have explained it, as Lord Tanlaw did originally, extremely well and clearly. But mathematical models of the world's climate suggest that this greenhouse effect could significantly raise the temperature of the lower atmosphere and the earth. Such a rise in temperature, although I agree that in many respects it could be very pleasant for us personally, particularly if, like myself, one is cold most of the time, could be of major importance to the global climate, affecting not only the average global temperatures but also rainfall, winds and the ocean currents.
During the debate, noble Lords have mentioned various figures for future CO2 levels; but what those atmospheric levels will be, and at what levels significant effects are likely are not questions we can yet answer with confidence. One reason for uncertainty is that, although we know that the oceans and living things absorb some of the CO2 produced, we do not know enough about the carbon cycle to say how much will be absorbed. In answer to the question that the noble Lord, Lord Tanlaw, put to me, there is no certainty about the future level of CO2, but most estimates, at their worst, predict a doubling in 50 years. However, estimates have been made that the increase may be from 330 parts per million now to 370 ppm to 385 ppm by the year 2000 and 450 ppm to 620 ppm by the year 2030. That is, perhaps a 50 per cent. to 100 per cent. increase in 50 years.

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What effect will all this have on the world's climate? There have been a range of predictions by noble Lords and what I will be saying is based on the best scientific advice available to the Government through the Meteorological Office. Here again the answer is not yet known. Mathematical models have been developed to predict the possible changes; but they are not able to allow for factors which may work to stabilise the climate. For example, it has been suggested that a small increase in global cloud cover could block out sufficient solar radiation to balance the enhanced heat retention of the atmosphere. Also, the circulation patterns of the oceans may alter to compensate for the temperature rise. It is, therefore, unclear whether the increase in carbon dioxide would actually have the greenhouse effect predicted.
In answer to another question raised by the noble Lord, Lord Tanlaw, it is most unlikely that weather conditions affected by CO2 will probably have any effect before the end of the century when some effects will begin to be noticeable. But before that, they would be unlikely to be noticeable over and above the normal fluctuations of our weather. Nevertheless, predictions have been made that a doubling of the level of CO2 in the atmosphere could raise the global temperature by about 1·52 degrees Centigrade to 3 degrees Centigrade. At the lower end of the forecast of CO2 increase that I have just quoted, a 50 per cent, increase might lead to a 1 degree Centigrade rise in 50 years. It has been suggested that any effect may be measurable by the year 2000; that is, we may by then be able to distinguish the effects of the increase in CO2 from the natural fluctuations that are always taking place in the world's climate.
The noble Lord, Lord Tanlaw, raised the question of why we were not able to predict the drought. The drought in 1976 was part of the natural variability of climate—which is rather different from long-term changes. This was not known beforehand and predictions are certainly not that good even on a one-month basis. Even if one had created a Minister for Droughts, one is not creating another God; so that one could not do anything to stop it. One was dealing with the situation when it arose, trying not to panic people or to put the country to enormous
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expense unless it was necessary. I think the noble Lord would agree that this is rather different from the long-range viewpoint.
Lord TANLAW: My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for giving way. The reason why I raised the question was that the rainfall during the winter months was (I think) 50 per cent. below the average; in which case it goes without saying that it was impossible for that rainfall to be made up during the summer months. There was a guaranteed drought as soon as it was known that the winter rainfall was 50 per cent. below normal. This is why the Government should have been told of this rather basic fact of meteorology and given some forewarning to the councils about the future drought which was inevitable.
Baroness BIRK: My Lords, I appreciate that, because I was standing at this Box, answering many questions and putting forward Government policy, during the period of the drought. These things are very difficult and I think they relied on the wet summers which so often follow dry winters. But I am not going to pursue that further. I have come to the end of my knowledge on that. But I will certainly pass on his thoughts and, in any case, they will be recorded in Hansard.
My noble friend Lord Ritchie-Calder mentioned the question of the Gulf Stream moving south; but there does not appear to be evidence that it has moved south to any significant degree. The trouble is that there are too many unknown factors for prediction to be made with certainty. All that we can talk about are the trends, being careful that we are keeping a watch on them and putting the input into the research that is necessary. The indications are that we might expect the "worst possible case" of a 2·5 degree Centigrade rise in temperature by the year 2030 to begin to have an effect on United Kingdom agriculture. The noble Lord, Lord O'Hagan, mentioned the question of crops of barley. Certainly some regions and crops would benefit from the longer growing season, although others, such as cereals, might begin to suffer.
It is not clear what would happen to rainfall in such circumstances. There could be a sizeable increase or decrease,

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both of which could have major implications. A 2·5 degree Centigrade temperature rise might also result in sea levels rising. But, if this did occur, this is thought likely to be by less than 1 metre, on average, which could increase the risk of flooding in low-lying areas only.
Speculations about the Antarctic glaciers melting and raising sea levels 5 metres or more and about the Sahara and Arabian deserts being restored to fertility are, I think, centuries rather than decades away and really come into the field of futurology. Such eventualities are not only remote in time; they are highly conjectural. That does not mean that we should not be considering them now—although I do not know what species may be on earth if the earth is covered in water. When I say "we" I am talking about our successors whoever and wherever they may be. They may be looking at it all from a different planet. But that does not absolve us from the responsibility of doing what we can at the present time.
Before the effects become significant, we should have had time to extend our understanding of climate and climatic disturbance by research. I think that this very timely nudge to the Government and to people generally is extremely welcome. Research into climatology is a major growth area among the world's scientists. I, like most noble Lords, saw last week's issue of Nature, with its full supplement on climatology. Britain is in the forefront of world climatological research. The development of climate simulation models (which was raised by the noble Lord, Lord O'Hagan) requires scientific resources and computing power that is currently available only in the USA and the British Meteorological Office. The Meteorological Office research has been expanding steadily over the last 15 years and has made remarkable progress in modelling the global climate.
When my noble friend Lord Ritchie-Calder asked why this subject was in the domain of defence, I was not disagreeing with him, but saying that that is what I, too, wanted to know. It is a question that I had asked. I understand that it is for historical reasons. The Meteorological Office was set up by the Admiralty in the 19th century to forecast gales and weather
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for shipping. Whether noble Lords feel that the time has come for this to be reviewed, I do not know; but it seems to me, speaking off the cuff, the time may have come for us to look at this. It was only on the basis that defence was not really an issue in the Unstarred Question of the noble Lord, Lord Tanlaw, that, Environment being the nearest Department to the weather, I am here answering this very difficult Question. If only the noble Lord, Lord Tanlaw, had brought in a question which was something to do with defence—and I must say I tried to persuade him but he was not having any of it—he would have had somebody else replying. It is quite as chancy as that.
Lord DAVIES of LEEK: You are doing all right, do not worry!
Baroness BIRK: My Lords, within the climatology research branch of 33, costing £740,000 a year, there are 17 people at the Meteorological Office directly concerned with developing and experimenting with climate models at an annual cost of £380,000, a substantial part of which relates to work on carbon dioxide and its effects. There are plans to increase the computing power available so that work, particularly that relating to CO2, can be pursued more effectively. Whether that is a right and proper use of our resources, I frankly do not know. We have to recognise the other priorities and demands on research resources. I agree it is something we must keep an eye on all the time and, if necessary, divert more research to it. The noble Lord, Lord O'Hagan, mentioned the CPRS. Sir Kenneth Berrill has taken a great interest in this subject and it is not lost on them. I do not think I can say any more on that at the moment.
Internationally, research is being promoted by the World Meteorological Organisation, the International Council of Scientific Unions and the United Nations Environment Programme, and a World Climate Programme 1980–2000, sponsored by the World Meteorological Organisation and the ICSU, is being launched with a major world climate conference in Geneva in February 1979. This is extremely good news because this means that there will be a great deal of publicity and discussion on this very important subject.

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The United Kingdom plays a full part in promoting and contributing to this international research effort as well as carrying on our research at home. There is also considerable interest, as I am sure the noble Lord, Lord O'Hagan, is aware, in this research in Europe. The Commission of the European Communities has submitted proposals for a new programme of climatology research which will include carbon dioxide and its effect. This proposal is at its early stages, and discussions on it are proceeding. I cannot see any harmonisation problems arising yet on that.
The noble Lord, Lord O'Hagan, asked me about the cost of this. The programme, if agreed, will cost £5·4 million over five years. Research into this global question, as has been pointed out by the noble Lord, Lord Tanlaw, and particularly by my noble friend Lord Ritchie-Calder, is of international concern. I entirely agree that it is also a political question in the widest sense, just as international co-operation will be of crucial importance in any action which may prove to be desirable either to control the increase in CO2 concentrations or to accommodate the climatic changes that are predicted. Therefore, without international cooperation we are not going to be able to come to grips with this problem in its global dimension.
If it becomes apparent that undesirable changes in world climate are likely, there may be important implications for energy policy and the future of coal as a source of energy. But it is too early to say what these implications may be. The United Kingdom would not, acting alone, expect to affect the global concentrations of carbon dioxide, and our own energy policy is designed to retain a mix of energy sources and avoid excessive reliance on any one source precisely so that we can respond to future changes that we cannot always foresee accurately. I took particular note of what the noble Lord, Lord Gisborough, said about the effects on forests, and I have also commented that lack of forests can affect the climate.
I should like to point out to the noble Lord, Lord Tanlaw, that the Green Paper on energy problems refers to CO2 in chapter 12 on environmental considerations. The present state of this problem indicates that we have sufficient time to
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seek a better understanding of the possible effects of increasing CO2 in the atmosphere before the time arises when action may be needed. This does not mean that we should approach this question with complacency, which is what my noble friend Lord Ritchie-Calder is most concerned about. So far as the present resources allow and the present set-up in this field is concerned, I can assure your Lordships that the United Kingdom are fully involved, both at home and in international efforts, to increase our knowledge.