Lords Sitting of 14 February 1979

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

NORTH SEA OIL: TENSION LEG PLATFORMS
The Earl of LAUDERDALE: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the first Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper, and at the same time to declare an interest in a company which has design patents in this area.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what arrangements they foresee to enable tension leg platforms designed by the United States Fluor Corporation's subsidiary "Deep Oil Technology" to be built in the United Kingdom and used in the North Sea.
Lord STRABOLGI: My Lords, the decision whether or not to order a tension leg platform to the deep oil technology design, or to any other design, is entirely a matter for the oil companies who select the production system best suited from both the technical and commercial viewpoints. However, I understand that commercial arrangements have been made, which would enable this particular design to be built in the United Kingdom if a requirement for it arises.
The Earl of LAUDERDALE: My Lords, in thanking the noble Lord for that reply, may I just ask him whether the Government, through the Offshore Supplies Office, have inquired whether there may be British designs in this area which might be worthy of encouragement for research and development?
Lord STRABOLGI: Yes, certainly, my Lords; the Department of Energy is in constant touch with the oil companies and the offshore contracting industry, and new technology is frequently discussed. The Offshore Supplies Office in Glasgow
1242
is always willing to discuss proposals for research and development work on such systems.
The Earl of LAUDERDALE: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord.

DISARMAMENT: MINISTERIAL RESPONSIBILITY
2.37 p.m.
Lord BROCKWAY: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will appoint a Minister for Disarmament.
The MINISTER of STATE, FOREIGN and COMMONWEALTH OFFICE, (Lord Goronwy- Roberts): My Lords, disarmament is an essential part of our foreign policy which must be conducted as a whole by my right honourable friend. I have special responsibility for arms control and disarmament questions.
Lord BROCKWAY: My Lords, in view of the fact that there are now weapons which could destroy all mankind, would not the Minister agree that disarmament is of the greatest precedence in world affairs? Would he not also agree that my proposal has now become a practical, realistic proposal, with the Committee at Geneva reconstructed and extended to report to the United Nations next year? Would not a Minister, whose first aim was disarmament, prove the sincerity of Her Majesty's Government in this matter and give hope to the millions who desire peace in the world?
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, the sincerity of the desire of this Government, and I beg leave to say of any other British Government, howsoever composed, to achieve as soon as possible general and complete disarmament under effective control is not, I think, in question. I do not think it is in question outside this country, from my experience of disarmament meetings and the response which I get when in those gatherings I put forward British policy. As to my noble

1243
friend's point that a Minister exclusively devoting his attention to disarmament questions would be preferable to one who, as has been our practice for some time now, deals with disarmament but in relation to other foreign policy questions, this is debatable. It has been the conclusion of successive Governments since, I think, 1967 that arms control and disarmament questions are best and most effectively studied and promoted in relation to two other considerations; namely, détente and deterrence. My own experience, extending over some years now, is that the present system is the best for this country, and I cannot at once recall any comparable country that organises its disarmament work, ministerially, on the lines that my noble friend has suggested.
Lord AVEBURY: My Lords, would the Minister agree that one of the most important contributions that can be made by the United Kingdom and her allies is agreements between arms suppliers to cut down the flow of arms into the Third World? Would the Minister not further agree, in view of what has just happened in Iran, that it would be not only morally and ethically desirable for us to cut down this flow but also economically wise for us not to become dependent on it as a nation?
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, I can certainly reassure the noble Lord and the House on this question. We are constantly trying to promote the objects that he has in view in regard to lessening the demand for arms from the Third World. It is not at all just a question of arms producers thrusting arms on Third World countries. Too often, I regret to say, it is that Third World countries demand these arms. Indeed, I believe that the increase in Third World armaments over the past seven or eight years has been 60 per cent. and, indeed, as a whole, that group spends more money on armaments than it receives totally in aid. But the noble Lord's point is valid and we are pursuing it at every possible opportunity. As to the position in Iran, the noble Lord will understand that we are in discussion, or are attempting to get into discussion, with the new Government on this and other questions. We have recognised the new
1244
Government, and we hope that we can achieve a useful and fruitful relationship with it on this and other questions.
Lord SHINWELL: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that while most of us—probably every one of us—recognise the genuine convictions of my noble friend Lord Brockway, a previous Labour Government not so long ago appointed a Minister for Disarmament? He was a Member of your Lordships' House, though I do not see him present at the moment and I hope he will not mind my making reference to him. No politician should mind being mentioned: in fact the more he is mentioned the more popular he becomes! But is my noble friend aware that, despite the genuine efforts of that Minister, which were supplemented by activities at the United Nations and the efforts of the Soviet Union, in the way of détente—whatever that may mean—we still want to sell armaments to China and to any other country that wants them, and we regret that we sold so many to Iran? What about those armaments we sold to Iran? Are we going to be paid for them? Is it not about time that we indulged in a little less hypocrisy and humbug about this? Is it not about time we recognised that the world, as it is today and with the tension that exists, requires a deterrent, and that the most effective deterrent is to be strong?
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: Yes, my Lords, strength can rest in properly verified measures of global disarmament. Disarmament is well worth pursuing for every kind of reason, but with it must go verification. That, I think, is the essence of our policy and what must be the policy of this country.
As to what my noble friend also said, indeed we did have a Minister definitively for disarmament for two or three years after 1964, and my noble friend Lord Chalfont rendered distinguished service in that capacity. He moved on to other duties at that point. An appraisal was made of how best to promote disarmament questions, with the result that for the last 10 years we have found that this is the best way to do it: that is, to link disarmament with defence and détente.
My noble friend referred to China. Of course we are prepared to trade with the

1245
Peoples' Republic of China, but not exclusively in arms. There is some suggestion that we might supply defensive arms to them but only as a part, and not the predominant part, of a very large package, largely civil, of goods and services which that country may prefer to get from this country.
Lord DUNCAN-SANDYS: My Lords, does the Minister agree that, having regard to the deplorable state of military weakness of Britain, we are hardly in a position to do very much to negotiate disarmament with other countries?
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, I reject the noble Lord's premise and therefore the conclusion. I know he reads German but, if he did not, I could give him a translation of my right honourable friend's article in reply to certain strictures in Der Spiegel, published in Germany, where the facts and figures show that this country is devoting a larger proportion of its wealth to defence and armaments than probably any other comparable member in the Alliance. This does not betoken a weakness or an unwillingness to take part in collective defence by this country, and it is time that these facts and figures were more widely known, not only in Europe but in this country.
Lord PAGET of NORTHAMPTON: My Lords, has not experience shown that, so far as the export of arms to the Third World is concerned, the most effective weapon of disarmament has constantly been to supply them with sophisticated weapons that they are incapable of using? But if it be true that, so far as we are concerned, we are spending more money than other people, how can a Minister for Disarmament really improve on our present impotence?
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, the noble Lord raises two questions. The first is a matter of opinion, and the second is one that he should put down as a separate Question for a considered Answer.
Lord BOYD-CARPENTER: My Lords, reverting to the Minister's reply to my noble friend Lord Duncan-Sandys, is not the relative comparison as to the percentage of national product devoted
1246
to defence not with our allies but with the Soviet Union, which every year increases its armaments to a formidable degree? In the light of that, does not the Minister think that we have carried unilateral disarmament dangerously far?
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, one could conclude from that, that if we have done that then certain of our friends and allies in the Alliance have gone even further than we have.
Lord BOYD-CARPENTER: My Lords, that makes it worse!
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, in that case it is time that due weight was given to that consideration before we constantly "knock" this country for its performance, which in my view, in regard to questions of security and other subjects, compares very favourably with that of most of our friends and allies.
Baroness ELLES: My Lords, the noble Lord mentioned the article in Der Speigel. Could he perhaps make this article available in the Library—and perhaps not in percentage terms but in real terms of what is spent on defence as between members of NATO?
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, it can be made available in whatever terms the noble Baroness wishes; but on whatever terms it is given the message is the same: this country is doing better than many of us are prepared to accept that it is doing. It will give me very great pleasure to make this excellent article available in both languages—in German and in English, and possibly in Welsh as well. It is an article written by a great and patriotic Foreign Secretary who speaks for Britain in this article, as he always does.
Lord BROCKWAY: My Lords, is the Minister aware that many of us appreciate his own activity in connection with this issue, and in particular his speech at the Special Assembly of the United Nations? Would he not agree, however, that there are three functions which a Minister for Disarmament could fulfil? The first would be by constant contact in the discussions at Geneva and by his presence there on many occasions; the second

1247
would be by association with those Governments which signed the British proposals for disarmament; and the third would be by leading public opinion as to the necessity for disarmament.
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, I agree unreservedly with my noble friend about the three objectives for any Minister concerned with arms control and disarmament, and I am most grateful to him for what he said at the beginning of his supplementary question. I have had the privilege of doing my best in these gatherings, with some little success from time to time, always keeping in mind the relationship of disarmament to security and detente. There is no disarmament without security. This is not to controvert the idealism of my noble friend. It is a practical as well as an idealistic matter.

OFFSHORE OILFIELD ROYALTIES
2.52 p.m.
The Earl of LAUDERDALE: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the second Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will now complete their incomplete reply to the Question tabled in his name for Written Answer on 14th December (Hansard 16th January, col. 932) about their willingness to forego royalties on otherwise unprofitable off shore oilfields, by stating—

(i) how they would determine their stated criterion, namely "the balance between the cost of the refund and the benefit to the nation"; and

(ii) when royalties would be refunded in cases where a refund is agreed.

Lord STRABOLGI: My Lords, in determining the balance between the cost of a royalty refund and the benefit to the nation from granting it, we would consider all relevant factors. These would include as well as the amount of the refund, the contribution of the develop-
1248
ment concerned to national income, the timing of that contribution and the estimated cost of the development.
Any refund granted would be the subject of an agreement between the Secretary of State and the applicant and the refund would be paid in accordance with the terms of that agreement. The terms would include provisions on the timing of refund payments.
The Earl of LAUDERDALE: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for that Answer to what I agree is a complicated Question. May I, however, ask him this further question: Would he not agree that a company which wants to seek a refund of royalties, if it is going to enter upon an activity which is on a relatively unprofitable scale, will wish first to convince its financial backers that this is going to happen? Therefore, what I think I must call the elegant rigmarole read out by the noble Lord is not going to be very helpful in that situation. Does not the noble Lord realise that the statement which he made just now was of a rather general nature?
Lord STRABOLGI: My Lords, the advantage to a company of a refund rather than a remission of royalties is that the refund is free of PRT and corporation tax. That is why the 1975 Act was worded in this way and approved by Parliament, in its wisdom.
The Earl of LAUDERDALE: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for that further answer. Since he has referred to PRT, may I also ask him whether or not it might be possible to allow the latest submission on PRT, which has been made to the Treasury by the United Kingdom Offshore Operators' Association, to be published? Would not the noble Lord agree that this would now be worth while?
Lord STRABOLGI: Yes, my Lords, Ministers and officials have discussed royalty refunds with a number of companies during the consultations on the proposed PRT charges. These consultations, which are confidential, are continuing. The Government have no objection to the Association publishing their submission and making the best of their case publicly, as they see it.
The Earl of LAUDERDALE: My Lords, if I may ask the noble Lord for one further piece of information, going back to the refund of royalties and estimating all the relative facts, could he say whether the Government give greater weight to the benefit to the balance of payments or whether greater weight is given by them to the production of energy for our national use?
Lord STRABOLGI: My Lords, the contribution to the national income would be the increase in Government tax and royalty receipts and also in the profits of United Kingdom companies. I may say, though—I want to be helpful to the oil companies because we value the importance of their work—that we are ready to enter into agreements to refund royalties in time to enable licensees to rely upon receiving a refund, subject to any agreed conditions, before they undertake a major investment.

PORTLAND FLOOD DISASTER
Lord SANDYS: My Lords, I beg leave to ask Her Majesty's Government a Question, of which I have given Private Notice. The Question is as follows:
"To ask Her Majesty's Government whether, in the light of the Portland flood disaster and the damage sustained by residents on the nights of 13th December and 13th February, they will indicate the action likely to be taken to prevent the further loss, either of life or property, and the size and nature of the compensation to be provided."
Baroness LLEWELYN-DAVIES of HASTOE: My Lords, with the leave of the House, at a convenient moment after 3.30, my noble friend Lord Strabolgi will answer this Question in the form of a Statement and my noble friend the Leader of the House will then repeat a Statement being made in another place on the economy, the Government and trade union responsibilities.

DIRECT LABOUR (MAJOR CONSTRUCTION WORKS) ACCOUNTING BILL [H.L.]
The Earl of KINNOULL: My Lords, I beg to introduce a Bill to provide for an
1250
accounting system for major construction works undertaken by direct labour organisations employed by local authorities; and for connected purposes. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 1a.—(The Earl of Kinnoull.)
On Question, Bill read 1a, and to be printed.

RURAL DEPRIVATION
2.56 p.m.
Lord WALSTON Lord WALSTON rose to call attention to the problems of rural deprivation; and to move for Papers. The noble Lord said: My Lords, in moving this Motion, I have no desire to assess the relative merits and hardships of urban deprivation and rural deprivation. To my mind, they are big and serious problems but they are complementary, not rival problems. The only point I should like to make is that rural deprivation (which I hope I can persuade your Lordships does exist) although not nearly so dramatic as the urban deprivation that we so often see in the slums of our cities and read about and see pictures of and, I freely admit, although not nearly on so large a scale, since it does not affect so many people, still is a very real problem: one which affects not only the lives of the people who live in deprived rural areas but also, as I hope I shall be able to convince your Lordships, the lives and wellbeing of all of us in this country.
To start on a pedestrian note, it is perfectly true that, even with the spread of sewerage and water supplies, of electrification and all the rest of it throughout the whole country—and remarkable progress has been made—there are still areas and individual houses which are deprived of these services; and there is still a painfully large number of cottages and houses in the country where the privy is down at the bottom of the garden and where there is no inside sanitation of any kind. But bad housing is by no means the commonest or, indeed, the most serious aspect of rural deprivation. What, of course, is needed is more housing and, above all, housing at a price that the poorest members of the community, living in rural areas, and the

1251
youngest members of the community can afford. Unfortunately, that is rarely the case. So housing comes high on the list of priorities.
Also very high on the list of priorities are schools. As we know all too well, many schools are already closed. Many others are under the threat of closure, while many schools are in painfully old buildings. Indeed, very many of them lack the amenities which our educationalists tell us are essential for proper modern education. In addition, and in my opinion possibly the most important of all, is the question of jobs. Where should the young people of the villages go to get work?
I am not going to devote any time at all to the problem of agriculture. Obviously it is the most important of all rural industries. It is indeed the most important of all our national industries but, for all that, the contribution that it can make to alleviate rural deprivation is, at the best, no greater than the contribution it has made in the past. It employs—what is it?—2·8 per cent. of the total working population. Of course, in rural areas that rises to a considerably higher proportion, but I do not believe that it will, or indeed that it should, increase its labour force significantly. I hope it will not diminish its labour force, but we cannot look to agriculture to solve the problem of creating more jobs for people living in the rural areas. Therefore, my third point is the absence of jobs in rural areas.
The fourth point is facilities for shopping. Frequently in villages today there are no shops, or there is just one shop. Such shops as they are—good though they are and pleasant though they are to shop in, thanks to the owners who run them themselves—of necessity charge prices which are almost invariably higher than prices in the supermarkets in the towns. Their turnover is lower; more transport, and all the other things connected with it, are involved. So for those living in rural areas the cost of shopping is higher, unless they can get into the towns, and many of them are unable to do that because of my final point—public transport services are poor or non-existent. There are still very many people living in rural areas who do not own cars, who are unable to drive them; or even if the family does own
1252
a car, for most of the day it is away, taking the husband to work and therefore leaving the wife isolated and unable to shop except by public transport.
Those are the main factors leading to rural deprivation. The result of that is that, above all, young people are leaving our villages and because there are fewer young people now living in the villages the average age of the population is rising. It means that fewer children are being born in the villages; fewer children of school age are growing up in the villages, and therefore there is a greater threat to those village schools which still exist because in 10 years' time there will be fewer children than there are even today to go to them.
In remote areas—and as your Lord ships will know there are many of them—this leads to dying villages; the deserted villages which we have heard about from the days of Goldsmith onwards and certainly in more recent times in the inter-war years. They still exist. Dying villages are still to be found in many parts of the country. But where villages are not dying—and there are many of those, too—two other factors have come into the picture. One is that where the village is attractive, where it is on the coast or is scenically beautiful and has a good climate, more and more people are buying the houses that otherwise would be derelict, in order to have retirement homes or possibly week-end homes. In other areas not quite so remote, those within commuting distance of, not only London but the other big centres and the not-so-big centres, the professional classes, the managerial classes and the representional classes come to live, and of course go away to work 20 miles or even 50 miles away. In my own village in fact, some 50 miles from London, there are now people who commute to London every day.
Therefore, in those villages we are getting an entirely different form of population, and very largely a population which sleeps there and which looks after its garden there but increasingly does not send its children to the village school and does not shop in the village shop because these people have cars to go into the towns where there are a better choice and cheaper commodities. They find their recreation elsewhere, go off to the local

1253
golf club or drive many miles to a different pub instead of patronising the village pub. So the whole character is changing. One finds that either the village is dying or is providing homes for the elderly and retired, or becoming a dormitory. In any event the villages lose their character. They are very different from the villages we have known in the past and have come to love.
Does this in fact matter? Is there anything sacrosanct about village life as we knew it? Is not this perhaps a change to which we should say, "Well, some of us are rather set in our ways, we do not like changes, but there is nothing essentially wrong with it", or is there something essentially wrong with it? Yes, my Lords, I believe there is.
I believe there is for two reasons, to which I will give first a very short answer and then a somewhat more explicit answer. The short answer is that in village life there is a mixed society (and I shall develop that point a little more in a moment) and there is a small society. Today I believe one of the troubles in this country is that too few people understand the problems of other people. They live together in a street in a district of a town, in a suburb, where most of the people with whom they rub shoulders, their neighbours, those whom they meet on the way to work, on their way to school or on their way to the shops, are of roughly the same age, roughly the same income group, with roughly the same interests, roughly the same type of family. They are people who have the same interests and who take their holidays in similar places, and so on. People have little opportunity to have any contact at all with others: people who are older than themselves, people who are younger than themselves; people who are richer or poorer, people who are better or worse educated. They are insulated, as it were, in a cocoon, living in a form of monastery, protected from very much of the real world, knowing their own problems, ambitious for their own ambitions, knowing their own joys and their own disappointments, but with very little opportunity to understand or comprehend the ambitions, problems, joys and disappointments of other people.
This I believe to be very bad for adults. The more you can know about people different from yourself, the better; the
1254
less you know about them, the more you look upon yourself as belonging to the only important group of people. I believe this is one of the reasons why we have so many strikes today: people are so insulated that they do not realise the effect of their actions on others until it is too late. Of course they realise it now, but not when they are taking the initial steps. It is even worse for young people growing up. They do not know anything about the world outside. That ignorance of other people is the breeding ground for hooliganism, vandalism and crime.
In a village that does not happen at all. It is entirely different: you meet all types. There is the retired professor or the retired colonel, there is the roadman, the businessman, the tractor driver, the commercial traveller, the farmer. There are the bedridden old people and the rowdy children—they are all around you. The village gossips and the recluses, those who organise the Women's Institute and those who run the cricket club. They are all there, rich and poor, sick and healthy, and of necessity you know them all. You know of their problems, you know they exist and you talk to them, walking about in the village, watching the cricket match, simply because you are in a small community.
Because of the smallness of the community there is this feeling of involvement, of responsibility—responsibility for everybody, not just for yourself and your family. And it is very much harder for young people growing up in a village to become hooligans and vandals, to take to crime, when they are so much involved in the community and the whole village community is so much involved in them. It is very much harder for a worker in a village community to go on strike when the sufferers from the strike are people he knows and meets every day. I would just mention one statistic, the only one I shall mention. In my own region of East Anglia the days lost through industrial disputes in the past years were only one-sixth of the national average, and East Anglia is, of necessity, a rural community with far more villages and far fewer large conurbations than virtually any other region in the whole of the country.
While I do not want to trespass on what the right reverend Prelate may be saying

1255
later, I should like to put in one word for the village parson. His job must be, and I am sure is, very much easier, especially if he lives in the village itself, when he is able to walk round on a summer evening, talk to people working in their gardens, make contacts in that way, rather than in a town when he has, as it were, to pay an official call on his parishioners, with all the difficulties that ensue from that.
These are some of the qualities of village life that are of value, and I believe them to be of ever-increasing value today in our urban, impersonal, uncaring society. These are the values that are at risk; far more at risk than the lovely old houses, the thatched cottages, the village green, the trees, the elms struck by disease, the oaks still growing, the hedgerows, and far more important than all those things, important as they are. Fortunately, there are societies—I am very glad there are—to protect these inanimate objects, but there is no society to protect the far more important and elusive values that I have been talking about, the values which arise from small communities. So I would most strongly suggest to your Lordships that villages have very much to offer to the whole of the country, and that it is in the interest of all of us to see how the good things of the village can be preserved.
I have mentioned some disadvantages and I shall make some concrete proposals for overcoming the disadvantages that I have mentioned. All the well-known things are needed; of course, there must be better rural bus services, and I know that much thought has been given to this and that progress has been made in certain areas with the minibus. This is very valuable indeed. I know that there are already—and they have been in existence for a long time—subsidies for rural bus services, but they are still diminishing every year. I would like to quote briefly from the National Consumer Council, who have written to me on this subject. The main conclusions of their very valuable report on rural public transport are that the various experimental services that have been tried can make a very real contribution to the lives of rural communities, but are limited in scope and cannot solve all the problems of access of people living in rural areas.
While the report praises the qualities of imagination, innovation and self-help demonstrated by the schemes, the National Consumer Council strongly opposes the replacement of conventional with unconventional transport schemes. It goes on to say that there is widespread evidence that local authorities are not nearly as involved as they should be in joint planning with the Post Office on post-bus services in rural areas. So we cannot be complacent over what has been done. Let us give credit to those who are trying, but above all I would very strongly support anything that can involve the rural bus services with the postal services. It has been done in many countries: Switzerland is an example where it has been very successful, and I believe we can make very real progress in helping with the rural transport problem by making use of postal buses at the same time.
So what is needed is bus services, rural transport, far better infrastructure, which is always needed, and more houses to let, council houses for young married couples. This is of vital importance. All this imposes still more upon the local authorities, upon the rates; it means that more money must be available. We have heard a great deal about the urban renewal programme, a very good and valuable one, but I make a plea to the Government that this should not be at the expense of money which otherwise would be available for the rural areas.
Then, of course, we come to this very vexed problem of the rate support grant. I will not weary your Lordships with any long details of it; I do not know them myself in any case, and I think it would be out of place to attempt to do so. I said that I would not give any more statistics. I apologise, but I have one or two very small ones here. The rate support grant in 1978–9 for the whole of England works out at £145 per head of population, out of general taxation. The county of Suffolk, not a county I live in but one I am close to and fond of, gets not the £145 which is the average for the whole of England, not the £161 which London receives, or the £175 which the North-West receives, or the £185 which the North receives, but £116, in spite of the very heavy burdens that it, in company with all other rural communities, has to bear.
So far as education is concerned, I have some figures here which show that the amount spent on education in the same county is higher than the average. It has a larger number of school-children in need of education and that population of school-children has been rising steadily year by year. But its share of the needs grant has diminished from a figure of 0·92 per cent. in 19747–5 to 0·74 per cent. in 1977–78. The only point of those figures is to show that the picture is by no means getting better, that there is in fact a deterioration in it throughout the whole of the country, throughout all the rural areas.
So far I have spoken only of those things which require money, and I know that it is very difficult for any Government at the present time to say, Yes, to any proposals which require more money. But there are other things which do not require money. For instance, the village schools always have difficulties with regard to teachers. But why should they not have peripatetic teachers moving round the villages, specialising in history, geography, music, whatever the subject may be, so that on Monday one village has it and on Tuesday the next, with a great saving in money and a great improvement in standards of education in the rural districts, with the one resident head but the peripathetic specialist teachers?
Secondly, there should be—and again no money is needed in this connection—a far greater willingness on the part of the planning authorities to give permission for small factories and extensions to existing ones, and for small offices too, in selected villages. So, ideally, everyone living in a village—other than the most remote in the Highlands of Scotland or in the vastnesses of Wales—will have a choice of employment, a variety of jobs in factories and offices, within the maximum of half an hour's travelling from his or her home. That would be the ideal.
I am glad to see my noble friend Lord Northfield present and I hope he will take part in the debate. His organisation and especially COSIRA are doing very valuable work in this respect. However, they cannot put factories, however willing they are to do so, in areas for which local authorities will not give them permissions. It is the relaxation of those permissions that I believe to be one of the most vital
1258
needs at present. Of course, people will say that if one puts factories, or even offices, however small, in a village it will change the character of the village. It will do so, but I have tried to show to your Lordships that the character of the village is changing in any case, and changing for the worse.
I believe that if the sites were properly chosen, if the architecture were good, if the tree planting around the factories was well thought out, then, although the character of the village would change, it would change for the better. There would be more jobs. The young people would remain in the villages—provided the other changes were made also—and we would have live communities ready for the 21st century rather than the dying communities still trying to live in the 19th or even the 18th century.
Why are we so appallingly defeatist about our new buildings? After all, a village is nothing if it does not have buildings. We love our villages and we love the buildings in them. Is it a fact from which we cannot escape that our architects in this country are so lamentable that there is nothing that they can build anywhere at any time which will enhance the site on which it is built rather than detract from it? I do not believe that to be so. We have good architects and we have some damn bad ones too, and we have seen the results of their work. However, we do have some extremely good ones, and if they are given the opportunity and encouragement I believe that just as the great houses, the small houses, the manor houses and the cottages have enhanced the appearance of our villages, it is possible that even factories and places for offices—I shall not call them "office blocks"—can also enhance the beauty of our villages and will certainly make life for the people living in the villages far better than it would otherwise be.
Rural deprivation exists. It has not ruined our village life yet, but the warning is present. It is there for all of us to see who are not so obsessed with the problems of the inner city, with urban deprivation, slums and the rest of it in the large towns, that they have no understanding whatsoever of the values and the advantages of village life. Even with no extra expenditure much can be done to

1259
halt the decline. With relatively small amounts of money wisely spent, our villages will still be able to play their part in the aesthetic, economic and spiritual wellbeing of the country. I beg to move for Papers.
3.24 p.m.
Lord ELTON: My Lords, the House is fortunate to have someone with such a very wide experience as the noble Lord, Lord Walston, to introduce this subject to it. He has his roots in farming and agriculture but his knowledge extends right through the affairs of this country and, indeed, the world.
The proper point from which to start a review of the subject is a recognition that we are one nation. It would not be right to look at the problems of the countryside as if they were separate and distinct from the problems of towns or, indeed, of the inner cities. Many painful situations that countrymen sometimes believe are theirs alone have an exact counterpart in the conurbations. The noble Lord, Lord Walston, took that point, but I think perhaps did not place it at the centre of his theme. Certainly, one can be acutely isolated in a fenland cottage, but one can be just as remote from the community in a high-rise flat. Certainly, there are low paid jobs on the land, but so, as we are all aware, there are in the cities. Certainly, some urban councils keep many houses empty in spite of homelessness, but so, regrettably, do some landowners. In many of the problem areas at which we are looking there is a direct parallel between what is happening in the country and what is happening in the towns. At some point we must recognise that town and country are in competition with each other for the same scarce resources, the same sparing Government assistance.
Secondly, we must recognise that the diversity of the countryside defies generalisation in most of the subject areas. The differences are not merely geographical. The difference is not only that between the hill-farms of Cumbria and the hop gardens of Kent: it is also economic. The contrast is between the compact gentility of subtopia, the lengthening urban shadows of Manchester and Birmingham, and those parts of the West
1260
country and Wales which are saturated by tourism.
Thirdly, we must recognise that a large and vital area of political thought and, hence, of economic action has, since the 1950s, been captured by what I shall loosely term the conservationist lobby. The reasons for that have been sound, but like all conscious political fashions I fear that this may have gone too far. The effect has too often been to preserve rather than to conserve. And what has been preserved has, in some areas, been too often an idealised notion of a life-style that never existed.
Perhaps the most emphatic conclusion of a conference which I recently attended on the future of the rural community was that the countryside is a place in which to earn a living and not just a place in which to live or, worse still, to which one goes to die. The fields are not just landscape: they produce 71 per cent. of all the wheat we need in this country; 100 per cent. of the milk; 38 per cent. of the butter and cheese; 87 per cent. of the beef; 61 per cent. of the mutton, and 40 per cent. of the sugar. Together with the ancillary industries, agriculture generates £2,500 million-worth of exports a year and, of course, saves us a staggering sum by import substitution.
Is it not, therefore a little odd, in the light of those figures, that it is necessary for the noble Lord, Lord Walston, to ask us today to consider rural deprivation? It becomes less odd when one realises that this huge industry employs what he puts at 2·8 per cent.—and what I think is probably nearer 2·5 per cent.—of the working population. It came as a jolt to me to discover yesterday that there are fewer workers in agriculture than there are in British Leyland, and when one compares their average wages and average strike records one begins to realise that while there are large areas in which town problems and country problems are the same, there are also large areas in which town conditions and traditions are sharply different from those of the country, and that is perhaps why this is such an important debate. However, if we start to think of the country merely as a place in which a loyal workforce can be employed for long hours at a low wage and without striking, we shall get off to a very poor start indeed and shall be going in the wrong direction.

1261
Therefore, agriculture is economically important, but numerically small. As it provides few jobs it does less to support the rural community than is commonly supposed. It provides fewer customers for the village shop and post office; fewer passengers on the local bus and fewer pupils in the village school, and the noble Lord, Lord Walston, referred to that matter. The extent to which agricultural employment has shrunk since the war has made all those services more expensive to provide. Yet, as each of them is in turn withdrawn, the community crosses another threshold of decline and the recovery becomes that much more difficult.
I have the clear impression that not enough has been done to counteract the decline of agricultural employment since the war and that what has been done has been directed not at the condition but at its results. In medicine a detectable symptom is often evidence of the natural reaction of the body to a disease. Therefore, if we try to cure the symptoms, we are in danger of encouraging the disease. The countryside is our patient. For instance, our planning regulations are admirable in their intentions and have been applied by admirably-intentioned people, among them the noble Lord, Lord Walston, against whom I make no charge. But wherever, by prohibiting the introduction of light industry, they have been used to preserve the elegant repose of a village street that has grown quiet only because of the loss of jobs in the area, when it used to be noisy, dirty and bustling, they have, in fact, been preserving the fabric of the community while stifling its life. That is not the principle upon which human communities are based; it is the principle of the coral polyp, it is the principle of the coral reef: a mass of pretty dwelling places abandoned by their inhabitants.
As planning decisions are functions of democratically-elected authorities, why then is there a tendency for them to be used to stifle the economic and so eventually the social life of the communities that elect them? In part, it may be that the level of decision has been too far removed from the level of impact. I believe that that may be remedied by changes in the rules about what a county council may reserve to itself in planning matters, and that is in hand. In part it is, I think, a result of
1262
what I call the institutional disease; that is to say, that convenient administrative criteria have too much inertia to be overset by elected people not sufficiently closely engaged in the problem. This also may be dented, if only marginally, by the lowering of the effective level of decision.
However, I fear that the third reason is much more serious and much more intractable. I fear that it is also difficult to express without giving unintended offence. It is that the elected bodies themselves are too often in the hands, not just of interest groups that may not favour a particular development, but of people who have not recognised that, if it is to survive, the rural community must be a place in which one can earn one's living. It is the vocal who get their way in politics because they motivate and inform those who take the action, and they also appear to control the votes.
Local government is a thankless task. The reward is much more often measured in kicks than in ha'pence; it is a voluntary occupation and can be pursued only by those with adequate spare time at the cost of their own leisure. This usually means that there is a fair proportion of the elderly and the well-to-do; and it often means very humane and enlightened people as well. I deeply and honestly admire those who are prepared to dedicate themselves to this task. But I ask myself: have they recognised what is going on and what they can do to put it right? I hope that after today's debate they will, and will also recognise the causes.
In part, of course, this is due to the fact that the electorate simply does not know what is going on; nor does it know the resources available to it. I believe that this can be remedied in a number of ways. The first is a revival in visible democracy. I believe that we must look again at the parish council. With the disappearance, upwards, under reorganisation of the functions of the RDC most significant decisions have been taken so far from the man in the cottage that they are above the cloud base. The parish council is irrelevant, and the district council out of sight. Maybe we ought to return some responsibility to the parish. Certainly, as the point at which government actually reaches right into the community, it ought to be drawn more effectively into the central and effective network. If there

1263
are such things as grass roots, surely these councils are the most fibrous and tender tips of the whole system. Like other local authority bodies, they are composed of amateurs and are themselves often woefully short of information. When I became a parish councillor, I rapidly became acutely aware of this very fact.
I should like to see local education authorities prepared to run short, voluntary, part-time courses for councillors at all levels. They might start with very short courses for parish councillors, and the system might then reach upwards, just as the courses for justices of the peace seem to have been extended to the higher benches of justice. A very few hours could prove invaluable.
I also hope that more local authorities will consider the appointment of a stipendiary clerk to serve groups of parish councils and to act as a channel of information on the enormously wide and complex range of services, both voluntary and official, available, not just to the council, but to the community it serves, for whom it should be acting as the information point. This could include everything from Citizens Advice Bureaux to legal aid. What is not known cannot be used.
One powerful aid about which far too little is known is the National Housing Corporation. An approach to this body is the essential first step in setting up a housing association. To set up such a housing association is often the first essential step in enabling the next generation to live in a village rather than to leave behind it tumbledown and picturesque cottages. That, in turn, can be the actual turning point from decline to development. Here is a case in point of direct competition for resources between rural and urban communities. The funds of the Corporation are earmarked for areas of stress. For an extraordinary reason, it appears that the countryside does not seem to be recognised as an area where there is stress. Perhaps this is another example of the idealised or what some call the "gentrified" view of the countryside and one wonders whether the gentry have read, Wuthering Heights.It hurts as much to be battered in a village as it does to be battered in a deprived urban area, and yet the
1264
funds of the Corporation, as I understand it, are not available for refuge homes in rural areas.
Lord NORTHFIELD: My Lords, if the noble Lord will allow me—
Lord ELTON: My Lords, I understand that the noble Lord will speak later. I was going to say later on, but shall say now, that I am new to this subject and if I am wrong I stand ready to be corrected on every point. I wish merely to put ideas into people's heads and not to lay down categories.
From the general, I have now begun to be drawn into particulars, and there is not time—nor do I have the knowledge—to speak at length on every facet of this complex problem. Noble Lords are already aware of the rate of closure of village shops, village schools and village post offices. In Wiltshire, the rate of decline in the provision of all these, particularly the shops, is alarming. No one who has lived in a village will doubt the central role of each to the community. This was most sharply pointed up by a married couple who recently took over a shop in a village in Cornwall. Until then the husband had been a probation officer and his wife a social worker. After two years they both emphatically said that in their new job they were far more effective in the same role of supporting and helping their fellows in the community than ever they had been before.
In a village, people are individuals and are known to one another. The noble Lord, Lord Walston, devoted one of his most important passages to this. This is what should give it its stability. The local resident community—the people who take jobs where they live rather than live where their jobs take them—are all known to one another personally and very often have been personal friends since they first entered the reception class of their village school. The effect this has upon industrial relations in rural industries is very marked. Friends deal more fairly with each other than with strangers, regardless of their social position.
But villagers must know that the village shop will be extinct if they do not support it. In a community of 500 any shopkeeper would be working at or below

1265
subsistence level and is entirely dependent on the patronage of his clientèle, who, on average, have only £6·50 per week per head to spend. Apparently prosperous concerns—there has been research on this—are run by people working 70 and 80 hours a week for £65 gross and less and no annual holiday. The fact that a concern looks prosperous does not mean that it affords a good life to the person who runs it. If the shop is vital to the community, it should be supported by the community. I think that there should be some form of rate relief, and I hope that this will be achieved by Clause 3 of the Local Government Finance Bill which is at present in another place.
The closure of schools is a very tender matter about which, under other circumstances, I would speak at length. The effect on very young children of busing even quite a short distance is bad. I am not certain that I follow the noble Lord, Lord Walston, in his idea of a sort of gyro of peripatetic teachers dealing with large numbers of children in different places. But I believe that in Cambridgeshire the experiment of having a key school in the centre of satellites, with the head teacher and the junior departments in the middle and the infant departments and reception classes in the satellites is one that ought to be followed. I believe that local education authorities somewhat tend to consider a school as being a social net cost or, at least, regard the social credit side as being only the provision of a desk not too far from the back door.
First, of course, there is the focussing effect of the school on the community: the twice-daily pilgrimage to the school gate and the gathering of the peer group of the mums. Secondly, there is the effect of out-of-school fund-raising activities, sports days, and so on. Thirdly, and most often forgotten, schools provide employment, and not only jobs for teachers; there are also the caretakers, the dinner ladies, and the crossing attendants. Above all, let us remember that in education small is, within limits, more efficient than big because everybody knows and can care about everybody else.
The Church, I believe—and I am glad to see the most reverend Primate here—has a role to play that is no less crucial
1266
than it ever has been, but it is different. We do not live in the days of Trollope. Too many parsons, I fear, still try to act out, and exhaust themselves in trying to act out, the roles of the 19th century. What they are ideally placed to do as, one hopes, neutral and ecumenical as well as committed and Anglican, is to identify social needs within the whole community, and identify them not only to their congregation but to the community, and also to identify the needs of the community in its wider surroundings. And this goes not only for the old, the sick, and the lonely, but for things like bus services and schools as well.
The post office is another vital link at the centre of village life, but also between the village and the outside world. I can only say in passing that if the level of stipend necessary to maintain sufficient sub-postmasters is too high to fit in with the costings imposed on the Post Office, the social role they play should be recognised. It would not be improper for this to be recognised financially by the Department of Health and Social Security. We are, after all, considering deprivation, and the Department was built to look after the deprived.
On transport I hope to learn much of interest this afternoon. The market research of the National Bus Company is one of a number of useful inputs—including some very useful experiments in post buses and the like. Because your Lordships are anxious to hear a Statement I shall not expatiate on that, or on the report that the noble Lord mentioned, although I hope that I may briefly say that I believe that we ought to be looking at the present criteria by which British Rail cost the running of existing branch lines and the opening of new ones, which seems to militate against a policy of expansion.
When I sat down to write this speech I despaired both of covering the whole canvas of rural conditions in detail and of distilling a philosophy to meet its demands in general. As I reach the end I recognise how wise I was, but I think that we must return to essentials and to the beginning of what I said. Over a wide range of its needs the countryside is in competition with the towns, not just for customers but for services. It is the infrastructural services that are proving too expensive to

1267
support in relation to diminishing employment. The one area in which this balance can be adjusted without direct Government interference in policy in local matters, which is a bad thing, is in the allocation, as Lord Walston so percipiently said, of the rate support grant. Recently this was shifted to favour the inner cities. Certainly the inner cities have a claim to special treatment, and were we debating inner city deprivation we would be saying the same thing the other way on. Is it not time that a comparison of the conflicting claims was examined again? It can then be left as it is, or adjusted in either direction. What we must not assume is that it is correct for all time.
I have omitted large and crucial subjects altogether. I have scarcely mentioned the admirable work of COSIRA, and the contribution of the Commission chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Northfield (I am sure that he will at least make good that omission); the Highlands and Islands Development Board, the Development Board for Rural Wales, and the various tourist boards. I hope that in indicating the direction in which their policies should lead us, while sparing your Lordships a long catalogue of my views on each, I have shortened the debate without impoverishing it.
In conclusion, without British agriculture this country would either go bankrupt or starve within a matter of years. Without the rural community there would be no agriculture. The countryside is a part of the British way of life. It is not simply an eventide home for the retired—though there is room for that. It is not only a healthy and relaxing dormitory for urban commuters, though there is room for that. It is not only a pretty place for second homes, attractive as these may be. But did your Lordships know that there is a booming industry now in selling second homes to Belgians, Dutch, and other members of the Common Market, who leave them empty for large parts of the year?
It is the scene of essential extractive industries such as gravel, china clay and gypsum, but it is also, and above all, a reservoir for our people of all those values and strengths that come from living in a caring community small
1268
enough for its members to know one another as individuals; where that knowledge brings them to resist the centrifugal forces of a rapidly changing technology and economics, and where many of them, getting their living in the face of natural forces that no strike, no concordat, and no parliamentary regulations can alter, recognise human life for what it is—a very small and precious thing that must be protected by courage and held together with mutal affection and respect by all of us. If we are not in the end to perish in confusion this must be done. Those are the values we are talking about today because they are under threat. The noble Lord, Lord Walston, deserves our thanks for bringing this threat to our attention so effectively.

PORTLAND FLOOD DISASTER
3.46 p.m.
Lord STRABOLGI: My Lords, with the leave of the House, I shall now repeat a Statement being made in another place in answer to a Private Notice Question on the Portland flood disaster. The Statement is as follows:
"I would like to begin by expressing my sympathy for the residents in Portland who suffered such a terrible experience on 13th February. We are still collecting information about the cause of the very severe flooding but it looks as though the wave action which caused the damage was of freak proportions. Subsequent reports from the Meteorological Office suggest that waves of 20–25 ft. had built up in the Channel as a result of a storm swell in mid-Atlantic. By the time that these waves reached Portland they had increased to 40 or 50 ft., but local weather conditions gave no warning that such an onslaught was imminent.
"All our efforts are at present concentrated on dealing with the problems on the spot, and it is too early yet to make a full assessment of the position. However, it is clear that no sea defences could possibly keep out freak waves of 40 to 50 ft., even if the sea defence improvement scheme which the Wessex Water Authority at present has in hand had been completed it would not have protected Portland against these conditions. Nevertheless, I have instructed

1269
my engineers to discuss straightaway with the Water Authority what measures now need to be taken to strengthen the sea defences, and how the warning arrangements can be improved. I have told them to offer all their specialist advice to the Authority and to indicate that we shall be prepared to consider sympathetically such requests for additional funds as they may make.
"The question of compensation is a matter for my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for the Environment, but briefly the position is that the district council has powers under Section 138 of the Local Government Act 1972 to incur expenditure on assistance to householders and others affected. As on previous occasions the Government will be prepared to grant aid the council at the rate of 75 per cent. on any expenditure in excess of the product of a penny rate".
My Lords, that concludes the Statement.
Lord SANDYS: My Lords, the House will be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, for repeating the Statement. I must begin from this side of the House by joining with the noble Lord in expressing our sympathy, as he so rightly did, to the residents in Portland. Those who watched on their television screens news reports last night and have read reports today in the Press must, in some measure, be aware of the magnitude of the disaster which took place. When one considers that the height of the waves concerned was probably a little higher than this Chamber, one realises that the problem suffered by them has been truly terrible.
We are of course glad to hear that arrangements are being made with the Meteorological Office to see how the early warning system can be improved. But at the same time are the Government going to combine this system with efforts which might be made through the Chamber of Shipping and the coastguards, who perform such a valuable service in this regard, and Trinity House? It seems remarkable that this very severe swell which developed in mid-Atlantic was largely undetected, or so it seems from the Statement, until its appearance in the form of those enormous waves on the night of 13th February.
1270
Turning to the actions which we hope will be taken, we note in the Statement that further administrative action will be taken to improve arrangements. Does that mean the Government will be consulting, through the Home Office, with the county councils, particularly those with coastal areas, about the normal emergency schemes and the question of bringing those up to date where necessary? These particularly concern the actions of both the emergency services and the Armed Services, and we on these Benches wish particularly to couple our appreciation of what the Armed Services have done in this disaster.
In regard to compensation, we note the Government are offering the standard expenditure which has been offered on previous occasions and which does not seem over-generous. We wonder whether the Government may be a little more forthcoming, bearing in mind that two disasters have taken place on a short stretch of coastline within the short passage of two months. We hope the Departments concerned will consider this very favourably and generously.
Earl GREY: My Lords, I, too, wish to thank the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, for repeating that Statement and we from these Benches would like to express our sympathy to the unfortunate inhabitants of Portland. Would the Government reconsider the urgent need for a national disaster fund to be set up at the earliest possible date to give immediate assistance not only to those who suffered at Portland but those at Torcross in South Devon?
Lord STRABOLGI: My Lords, I will see that the sympathy of the noble Lord, Lord Sandys, and the noble Lord, Earl Grey, is transmitted to those concerned, and I wish to add my own. Lord Sandys asked a number of questions. He asked, first, whether we would combine the Meteorological Office's information with that provided by coastguards and Trinity House. I cannot answer that at present; the disaster happened only yesterday. However, we certainly take the point on board and I will let him and your Lord ships know later on. Earl Grey asked about a national disaster fund. I will also put that point to my right honourable friend the Secretary of State.

1271
To sum up the action which the Government have taken, we have instructed our engineers from the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food to discuss at once with the water authorities what measures are needed to strengthen the sea defences and how the warning arrangements can be improved, and we will take account of what the noble Lord, Lord Sandys, said. We are therefore offering whatever specialist advice we can and what is required. Her Majesty's Government will also be prepared to grant aid through MAFF for the defences and, through the Department of the Environment, for the relief of households. I know, too, that the Royal Navy, the Army and the voluntary associations are doing what they can to help the unfortunate people who have been afflicted by this terrible natural disaster.
It is of course for the local authority of the area affected to decide the extent to which they exercise their powers, including the making of grants or loans to other persons or bodies, under the Local Government Act 1972. The Government will reimburse the local authority for any excess expenditure, as I explained when I repeated the Statement. Of course one hopes that householders will be covered by insurance on their houses, as I think most householders are, but if any further compensation or relief is required, I am sure that will be considered very seriously by the Government.

THE ECONOMY: GOVERNMENT/TUC JOINT STATEMENT
3.56 p.m.
The LORD PRIVY SEAL (Lord Peart): My Lords, with the leave of the House, I will repeat a Statement being made in another place by my right honourable friend the Prime Minister. The Statement is as follows:
"As the House is aware, the Government have been holding discussions with the General Council of the TUC to find a better way of conducting industrial relations and to reach a common approach that will secure our economic objectives. The Government and the General Council have today
1272
agreed a joint statement which sets out the outcome of these discussions. I will place the statement in the Vote Office.
"The statement reports that the TUC is on its own authority separately issuing guidance to its affiliated unions on the conduct of industrial relations covering three areas: first, negotiating procedures for avoiding disputes; secondly, the conduct of industrial disputes where they arise; and thirdly, trade union organisation and the closed shop.
"Honourable Members will find that the documents issued by the TUC on these matters are appended to the joint statement. They lay down comprehensive standards of trade union responsibility and commend the value of conciliation and arbitration.
"They say that strike action should be used only as a last resort; that agreements once entered into should be observed by both union members and management; and that when a strike does take place there is a vital necessity to maintain supplies and services essential to the health and safety of the community.
"They contain detailed advice on the identification and union control of pickets. The third guide acknowledges that aspects of the closed shop have caused concern and that there is a need for agreements to provide for conscientious objectors and certain other categories of workers.
"The Government welcome the publication of this authoritative advice by the General Council of the TUC, which their affiliated organisations are asked to accept as a basis for their conduct of industrial relations. General observance of this guidance would make for a substantial improvement in our industrial relations.
"The joint statement itself is concerned to find a better way of reaching a consensus on the economic path. We jointly recognise the anxiety about employment prospects, the need for training so that workers will possess the skills to match the new technological developments, the need for greater industrial accountability and demo-

1273
cracy and the fundamental importance of increasing productivity.
"We agree that industrial regeneration cannot rely on market forces alone and that action is needed by industry, the Government and trade unions. The document emphasises the need for a close working understanding between the Government and the Trades Union Congress and that the proper handling of this relationship imposes on the TUC the need to accept that its expanding role carries with it wider responsibilities.
"We are agreed that the British people must achieve living standards in line with those in the rest of Europe; that prices can best be kept down by increasing productivity and output and re-equipping our manufacturing industry.
"We have agreed on an important objective about the future level of inflation. It is that within three years we must reduce our annual rate of inflation to 5 per cent. or below. We are agreed that the concept of a 'going rate' with successive groups escalating the rate by building on the basis of earlier settlements is an obstacle to reducing inflation.
"The statement points to advantages that may be secured from the synchronisation of pay bargaining in certain areas, whilst recognising the difficulties of introducing this quickly.
"We are agreed that each year before Easter there should be a national assessment by Government and both sides of industry of our economic prospects.
"On the question of workers in the public services, both sides have agreed to examine means by which workers in the public services could establish arrangements for negotiating their pay and conditions which would make it unnecessary for them to resort to industrial action. And we agree as a matter of urgency to identify the groups that might be covered by such agreements.
"We have also agreed on urgent consultations into the problems of relativities and comparability in pay matters which are of course directly related to the problem of low pay and
1274
differentials, and on the continuing arrangements to deal with them.
"These objectives have been agreed between us as a guide for action now and in the future, and the joint statement asks trade unions to have regard to all of these objectives from now on.
"This is an important beginning.
"But it will of course be necessary for all sections of the community to be involved in this search for a better way. I note that the CBI yesterday published a series of recommendations that overlap some of the matters I have referred to, and the Government will be ready to have discussions with them to try to secure as much agreement as possible. I appreciate that joint discussions already take place between the TUC and the CBI, and I would welcome their extension.
"Our approach is based on the Government's conviction that the most effective and lasting way of improving the conduct of industrial relations is to secure the consent of the trade unions and their members in the manner in which it is embodied in the joint statement.
"It is only too easy to propose apparently simple legal answers to these complex issues. They do not exist.
"The value of this joint statement is that by discussion, consultation and, above all, by consent it brings the full authority of the General Council of the TUC to bear, alongside the Government, in working out a constructive approach to our economic and industrial future."
My Lords, that concludes the Statement.
4.3 p.m.
Lord STRATHCONA and MOUNT ROYAL: My Lords, the House will be grateful to the noble Lord for repeating this very wide-ranging Statement, and we shall look forward to reading the TUC's statement in full in due course. However, I must say that the history of the last 10 years, since the publication of In Place of Strife, is not wholly reassuring in this matter. I remember Mr. Healey saying at the time of the Social Contract, I think in 1974, that that was the New Deal Britain

1275
had been waiting for. Yet after all these years we find today's Statement now talking about this being "an important beginning."
It must also be said that the Statement contains its fair ration of platitudes. I am sure that most of us would, as the Statement puts it,
"commend the value of conciliation and arbitration".
Most of us believe that,
"strike action should only be used as a last resort…".
Almost all of us would agree—and here is a supreme irony—
"that agreements once entered into should be observed by both union members and management".
It would indeed be something if we could achieve that. I do not think that that was what the other side were saying when we debated this question in relation to the 1971 Industrial Relations Act, if my memory serves me right.
However, we can certainly welcome the Government's declaration of the
"vital necessity to maintain supplies and services essential to the health and safety of the community",
and the
"identification and union control of pickets".
Further, it seems to me a rather belated repentance to talk about possible limitations of the closed shop. Again, I doubt very much that that was the kind of advice which the TUC was giving to the Government at the time of some of our previous debates on industrial relations legislation.
Unfortunately, to recognise some of these problems is not to solve them. They are simply not going away. Again, it is welcome to find the Government and the TUC saying that they recognise the limitations of the TUC's constitutional authority, and they talk about giving it wider responsibilities. However, I suggest that it is possibly a little facile to talk about
"apparently simple legal answers to these complex issues",
and to say, "They do not exist." Anybody who has ever had anything to do with the law knows that it is seldom simple and very rarely intelligible. It is also true to say that surely in our present situation exhortation has been demonstrated as not being enough. How can we have confidence
1276
that what the Statement refers to as the "common approach" will really secure anything?
I am afraid that for me the Statement reinforces a conviction that by their inaction the Government are missing a national opportunity to secure all-Party support for what I believe should be stern and binding measures, even if of a temporary or emergency character, to curb some of the wilder excesses of certain elements of society, who have allowed their sense of grievance to outweigh their sense of responsibility, their compassion and their common sense.
4.7 p.m.
Baroness SEEAR: My Lords, we on these Benches also wish to thank the noble Leader of the House for repeating the Statement made in another place. We welcome many of the items included in it, yet we must at the same time say that it leaves, perhaps inevitably, many questions unanswered, and, from our point of view, in many respects it does not go far enough. Outstanding among examples of the questions unanswered is the fact that it has nothing to say about the immediate situation which confronts us, and with which everyone in your Lordships' House, and indeed throughout the country as a whole, is greatly concerned. Perhaps in the proposals put forward here there are hints of matters which might have a bearing on the present situation. For example, may we interpret the hope that by 1982 the inflation rate will be down to 5 per cent. as a suggestion that those people who in the present pay round receive a much higher rate of increase than is granted to other people will in the years between now and 1982 be prepared to accept a lower rate, so that there may be some hope that the 5 per cent. inflation rate is other than the pious hope to which the noble Lord, Lord Strathcona and Mount Royal, has already referred?
Of course we welcome the fact that the TUC is prepared to lay down guidelines for behaviour in relation to strikes and the other matters mentioned in the Statement. But again I wish to ask the noble Lord—as I have asked in your Lordships' House on a number of occasions in the last week—what has the TUC said to the Government about the way in which it proposes to deal with breaches in the guidelines? We

1277
on these Benches, like the noble Lords opposite, would far rather see voluntarily agreed procedures governing our industrial relations, if they will indeed govern them; but voluntarily agreed procedures which are not in any way backed by sanctions used by the TUC, or by the appropriate trade union authorities, are not at all procedures which are worth anything more than the paper on which they are written.
We ask the Government to tell us what is happening, and what action is being taken by the trade unions where there are breaches of these voluntary agreements. If we are not given some understanding that something will be done, then, indeed, reluctantly, one will have to say that it is necessary to resort to the legal procedures which the noble Lord says cannot be made to work but which, after all, in other countries, do on occasion work.
We welcome the reference to modifications of the closed shop. Where it says that conscientious objection will be accepted as a reason for not entering a trade union, may we take it that the very rigid interpretation of religious objection has been abandoned and that a wider interpretation is now to be accepted? It would be a most welcome introduction if this were so. And if there is to be a modification of the attitude towards the closed shop, may I also ask whether, in line with the question asked by my noble friend several times in the last days, this will extend to protection for those people who are breaching the strike regulations of the unions at the moment in order to carry on their duty?
We on these Benches are also glad to hear that there are to be some steps taken towards setting up machinery for establishing relativities, but we would urge that nothing less than the reintroduction of the Prices and Incomes Board, so lamentably abandoned by the Conservative Party, should be considered. We would also say that no agreement which is reached by only one Government, by one Party, can hope to endure. We have seen this again and again during recent years; and one of the few points made by the noble Lord, Lord Strathcona, with which we on these Benches can agree is that there is need for all-Party agreement—all-Party agreement along with the agreement of the trade unions and the CBI, so that we can rely
1278
on that agreement enduring. Finally, my Lords, let us say that a concordat between the trade unions and the Government is a useful thing, but the final authority must rest with the Houses of Parliament.
4.12 p.m.
Lord PEART: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Strathcona, welcomed the Statement in parts. I think he should recognise that this is really a tremendous step forward. After all, the CBI, the employers—and they are important—welcome this, and this is mentioned in the Statement. So I cannot see why we should have this niggardly approach to the Statement. If the noble Lord will forgive me for saying so, I thought he was labouring his questions to me. In fact, what he said became almost a speech. I hope he will carefully read the guidelines. I could quote from this document what the trade unions have accepted in the picketing field. There is a whole section on it, and I hope noble Lords will look at it.
I therefore hope that the Opposition will be really constructive if they desire to improve industrial relations—and I know the noble Lord wants to have good relations. We do not want to have a repetition of the frustration which has occurred because, if we are going to get productivity going, and if we are going to have good management, et cetera, it is important that we should have good industrial relations. We believe that these can be achieved by the voluntary method.
I welcome the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Seear. I think she was much more constructive than the official Opposition. I did not quite agree with all that she said, but, nevertheless, she put it courteously and constructively, and welcomed the Statement. She asked about the immediate situation, and talked about the three-year period being, or possibly being, a pious hope. I hope that will not be so. On the guidelines affecting picketing, there is a whole section in the White Paper, as I have said. I shall not read it out now; no doubt noble Lords will return to this question on another occasion. She also mentioned breaches of the voluntary, agreed procedure. Here, again, I hope that, by voluntary methods and by exhortation, and with the CBI,

1279
the trade unions and the Government involved, this can be successful.
Specifically on the closed shop, I have been responsible, as the noble Baroness knows, for negotiations in the field of the Civil Service unions, both the Civil Service industrials and the Civil Service as we know it. I and the Government want to achieve a liberalisation of the definition, and not just to confine it to one category; in other words, to have other categories. So I do not think there is any difference of opinion between us on that. Generally speaking, I am glad there has been a welcome of most parts of the Statement.
Lord HOUGHTON of SOWERBY: My Lords, may I ask my noble friend two questions? First, in view of the importance of the Statement that he has just made to the House, are we likely now to be given an opportunity to debate it? That is the first question. The second is: Is my noble friend aware that the Statement he has made, important and welcome though it be, appears to have little or no bearing upon the current pay round? Is he aware that his reference to a study of the application to the public sector of the principles of fair comparability was made in the light of the fact that the principles and the methods of applying fair comparability to the Civil Service were agreed under my chairmanship as long ago as 1955, and remained unbroken and unsuspended until they were put into cold storage by the present Government? Is he aware that there is a threatened Civil Service strike due to begin 10 days from now, and will the promised consultation on the application of fair comparability be finished in time to avert that tragic occurrence?
Lord PEART: My Lords, my noble friend is quite right: he played a leading part in this, and we had a debate on it in this Chamber. But we restored the Pay Research Unit, and the structure is there now. It has been assessing, for the Civil Service, analogues in sections of industry. I, being responsible for it, met the unions only recently. Some of them wished to strike before negotiations had begun. I deplore that, and I hope my noble friend does. It is absurd that civil servants, who have an agreed procedure, should
1280
decide to take industrial action, or threaten it, before talks, or before the information has been assessed.
I hope my noble friend, with his great experience and the great work that he has done for the Civil Service unions over many years, will use his very powerful influence to make them see the light of day. On the question of a debate, all I can say is that I do not want a debate now, but I believe we should have discussions on this matter through the usual channels. I agree that it is a very important subject.
Lord HARMAR-NICHOLLS: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that the Statement he has just made has no relevance to the immediate problems which are hitting the country, and ought not to be taken as the Government's answer? They ought to be dealing with the immediate problems. On the Statement, which is a long-term one, can the noble Lord guarantee that the spirit behind the Statement will still stand up and remain intact when there is a Government other than a Labour Government in power? Further, in order to ensure that that is so, can he guarantee that, out of office, the Labour Party will not try to sway the unions away from the spirit of this Statement for purely tactical reasons, as indeed they have done in the past?
Lord PEART: My Lords, in reply to the noble Lord I would say that I do not indulge in hypothesis. I am thinking in terms of his views on which Party will form the next Administration. I believe that this Statement, bringing in the attitude of the Trades Union Congress, will be of vital importance, so I hope the noble Lord will not use extravagant language when he criticises.
Lord JACOBSON: My Lords, will my noble friend assure us that, if the Statement he has just read has the importance to the nation which I think it has, he will urge his colleagues in the Government to launch a campaign to make the public aware of what is actually being proposed and what is in fact said in the Statement? I think the public are very confused at the moment, and the confusion arises on two topics: the immediate topic of the current industrial disputes and the long-term topic of how we avoid falling back into the same

1281
chasm. Will he urge his colleagues to make a great effort to make this known to the public?
Lord PEART: My Lords, I agree. This is why we are making this Statement today in both Houses. No doubt noble Lords will study this carefully and, even if they are critical at this stage, I hope that they will come to accept that this relationship is something worth achieving, and that the guidelines that they will read in the White Paper are important—and important because we wish to increase productivity, which is one of our main targets, and to reduce inflation. So far as I can, I will persuade my colleagues to conduct a campaign on the two issues that the noble Lord mentioned.
Lord BOYD-CARPENTER: My Lords, the Statement says that the Government assess the possibility of a 5 per cent. rate of inflation being reached in 1982. Is the noble Lord aware that that assessment must be based on some assumptions as to the level of wage increases during the three years between now and 1982? Can he at least tell us what is now the Government's target for the level of wage increases in lieu of the past 5 per cent. for the current year?
Lord PEART: My Lords, as the Statement says, within three years we must reduce this. Our aim this year must be to have the level as low as possible, as I have said, in relation to the target put forward. Unfortunately, certain unions have talked of 20 per cent., 30 per cent. and even higher. We stick to the figure that I mentioned.
Lord BOYD-CARPENTER: My Lords, what figure?
Lord LEE of NEWTON: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that, for long, power has gone from the centre, from the TUC and the Executive of the unions, into the localities, and that collective bargaining under those conditions is bound to lead to the kind of anarchy that we have seen, and that those who have been campaigning to break down the incomes policy and to return to collective bargaining must not run away now from the responsibilities that they have incurred? Is my noble friend further aware that the kind of so-called collective
1282
bargaining that we now see is quite anomalous? The "going rate" for the whole of industry is not collective bargaining. Collective bargaining means that within each firm or industry one negotiates a rate which can still leave those firms or industries in a solvent position. A position in which we wait for one powerful employer to concede a very large increase and then demand that everyone else should get that is the very negation of collective bargaining.
Lord PEART: My Lords, most noble Lords will agree with my noble friend who has long experience in these matters. I reiterate that within three years we must reduce our annual rate of inflation to 5 per cent. or below; and, as was said in the Statement, we are agreed that the concept of successive groups escalating the rate by building on the basis of earlier settlements is an obstacle to reducing inflation.
Lord GLENDEVON: My Lords, may we take it—and I am sure that we may—that the Prime Minister has a unified Cabinet behind him on this occasion?
Lord PEART: My Lords, if the Cabinet was not united then inevitably there would be some resignations.
Several noble Lords: Oh?
Lord PEART: My Lords, it is not unknown in a Conservative Administration. I can remember the dismissal of Cabinet colleagues by one very ruthless Prime Minister. It is an agreed document by the Cabinet.
Lord WIGODER: My Lords, does the noble Lord the Leader of the House recollect that in recent days there have been repeated requests from all parts of the House that all political Parties should join together in attempting to solve the problems that are dealt with in this Statement? Does the noble Lord recollect that on each occasion what we have been told is that the suggestion will be conveyed to the noble Lord's right honourable colleagues in another place? Can the noble Lord now tell us what is the response?
Lord PEART: My Lords, I hope that the response will be that if we have an

1283
agreed discussion at a later period the Opposition will be responsible in their opposition to these proposals. I cannot go beyond that. The Government as a Cabinet must be responsible for the governing of this country. That is right. You cannot farm out a responsibility of that kind to Parties in the sense that I think the noble Lord is thinking. But if the Cabinet goes wrong, then another Party will seek to criticise the Government—and they have that right—with the desire to overthrow the Government by constitutional means in General Election. That remains the policy of the Government.
Lord WIGG: My Lords, is my noble friend not aware that what has happened is that the Government, in pursuit of policies to get rid of inflation, have got caught up in the drive for dependence upon market forces and that we have slipped into what we now may call free collective bargaining, leaving the political forces represented by the Labour Party to pay the price for it; while those who have generated the forces which created it tend to slide away from it? In his Statement my noble friend will be aware that he made reference to the fact that we cannot depend upon market forces exclusively.
That being so, will my noble friend be good enough to tell us whether the Government intend to tackle the alternative—which is, at least, some degree of planning—in order that inflation shall not only be defeated but that there should be a rising standard of life? Is he not aware that if, by 1982, we have got inflation down to 5 per cent. without creating comparable productive forces, there will be massive unemployment in this country which will threaten the roots of our democracy; and that that must be faced up to? Therefore, would my noble friend urge his right honourable friends not to listen to the siren voices from the other side who talk glibly about unity but who are never prepared to stand up for their corner when the barricades are reached?
Lord PEART: My Lords, my noble friend appreciates that I stressed that industrial regeneration cannot be related to market forces alone. He asked what we were seeking to do. We want the development of industries. Here the employers
1284
have a leading part to play. The CBI have a responsible part, and are playing it. I am thinking in terms of planning agreements and other matters which we have discussed previously. In view of the fact that I am going to have discussions about the possibility of raising this again with another debate and the fact that we have interrupted a very important debate which I do not want to spoil, I would hope that I could leave it at that for the time being and that I could have discussions through the usual channels.

RURAL DEPRIVATION
4.27 p.m.
Debate resumed.
Lord MACKIE of BENSHIE: My Lords, the debate that we are now resuming is very relevant to the subject that we have just been discussing; because we are discussing the threat to society in our country which has always been united in its attitude to its work, to production and to agriculture because those concerned live in one society. They understand what each other is doing and that is the reason why it is so important that we discuss this subject of rural deprivation raised by the noble Lord, Lord Walston. I must say I was a little puzzled as to what was meant by "rural deprivation". The one thing that I was sure of was that neither the noble Lord, Lord Walston, nor I were the results of rural deprivation. Having said that, I thought (and it turned that I was right) that I understood what the noble Lord wanted to talk about. It is something from which perhaps we have suffered more in Scotland, and particularly in the Highlands, than has been the case in England. It is something one can see very clearly in one's own lifetime, and in one's own work in farming. When I came to my farm at Benshie after the war it was the same size as now and we did much the same agricultural work. On the evening before Hogmanay my men and I assembled to lower a little whisky before going home to our wives. We used to have 12 people in the little office—and I shall not tell your Lordships how many bottles! Now we have only seven people, and that is a very big drop in population.

1285
The other aspect of the matter that brought this home to me was when I was at my father's funeral only three years ago. A lot of his old retired men were present. We were talking about the old days and of course describing funny incidents that had happened about the farm. One man said: "There is no other fun on the farms nowadays". Another very shrewd man said: "There is no other folk on the farm nowadays". This is what is happening in agriculture and it has gone to an extent that a lot of people cannot get the good men to carry out essential jobs, particularly hill farming, because of the social conditions.
In hill farming, for example, one will get a man who loves his work and will happily stay in the hills all day, living a full and satisfying life. However, it is seldom that one will get a wife who really enjoys being tucked away in a remote cottage up a glen three or four miles from the nearest neighbour. This is repeated throughout agriculture even in the more developed areas. Not only are the wives lonely, but the cost of living is more expensive. The noble Lord, Lord Walston, mentioned this. Some things are supposed to be cheaper in the country, but that is so only if one does a lot of work preparing food, catching the rabbits, digging the potatoes, and everything else which housewives have got out of the way of doing. They do not see why they should do these things when so many prepared foods are available.
Only yesterday the Scotsman published its table of prices, the cost of a shopping basket in different areas. They take Edinburgh, Glasgow, Berwick-on-Tweed, Cowdenbeath, Hawick, a Highland village and Aberdeen. It is extremely interesting that the cost of the basket of food in the Highland village was the highest. It cost £4·71. The lowest basket cost £3·43 in Aberdeen. Aberdeen is probably the most prosperous town in Britain—certainly in Scotland—but the Highland village is enormously more expensive to live in. A very large part of this comes from a fact that has already been mentioned. It is not so much that transport is more expensive—though it is more expensive—as that, if a village shopkeeper has to live by selling a small amount of stock, he has to charge a bigger margin of profit. As the noble Lord, Lord Elton, pointed out, he is not living high, he is working
1286
80 hours a week and has to charge the customers more.
The other factor which, again, was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Walston, is education. In the remote areas in the Highlands—for example, in Sutherland—the schools have been closed down one by one or have been operated at great expense for the benefit of just one or two pupils. The attitude to education has been one of: "For goodness sake let us get the children into a big school"—I mean by that, taking Sutherland as an example, a school at Golspie—"as quickly as possible". A man might become a shepherd in a remote area, but as soon as his children reach the age of 11 he has to look for a job elsewhere because his children would be taken away and put in a school at Golspie where they would board, something for which they would not care, although many English pay large sums to be deprived of their children at an even earlier age.
These factors in education are very important because the small school has been proven in a large number of parts of the world to be very effective if it is properly run. It is perfectly right that peripatetic specialist teachers are an excellent adjunct, but the main thing is in the excellence of the village school teacher. There is not enough scope for paying people more for a very valuable job. Every now and again one gets a perfect example of what can be done. There is a small school next door to us, Padanaram School, and we have a teacher who is brilliant. She never has more than about 12 pupils. New pupils improve enormously beyond their performance in a previous school. I do not think that you need specialists to bring children up to primary level. An enthusiastic teacher can keep ahead just by reading the work, if nothing else. His or her enthusiasm and personal attention to the children can make up for it. There is a suburban attitude among directors of education and they look upon the village school and the small school as a perfect nuisance. They think that as soon as children go to a large school any faults can be corrected there. That is untrue. It is an attitude which one can understand because it is one of administrative ease, but it has done a lot of harm to village and country life, and a lot of harm to children.

1287
The other great snag is transport. After the war, we used to have buses running between Kirriemuir and Forfar. They were always bung full and I am sure made a profit. These are two quite populous areas and the buses now run nearly empty the whole time. This is enormously expensive. I do not agree that one should always try to maintain regular bus services. Three years ago my right honourable friend the Leader of the Liberal Party, who represents the Borders, carried out a calculation of the cost of the bus service in his area. He found that it cost 50p per passenger mile, which was something like three times the price of flying in Concorde. I do not think that we can keep that up; in many cases it would be cheaper to give people cars and teach people to drive them than to try to provide a bus service.
There are a great many admirable services being provided right now. The Post Office deserve enormous credit for the running of the Post Office van plus bus. That has been an enormous help in a great many areas. Many speakers have already put their finger on the problem and this issue should be put in the hands of the local authority. They are the people who should license the vans, set out the routes and deal with the consultation. I do not see how the Traffic Commissioners can understand what goes on, particularly in these rural areas. This is one of the things that would help a very great deal.
On housing, there are a lot of good houses in the country. Certainly, the Rent Act and rent protection have done a great deal of harm in Scotland. Farmers have a tremendous interest in their own community and they may let a house to somebody who will develop a grudge against them. In a farming area, a lot of damage can be done by people who have a grudge against the farmer. They can leave gates open and so on. So the farmer, rightly, feels he must keep some control over his cottages. The result is that a great many houses are going to rack and ruin. This is because of the Rent Act.
I think it is having very much a counter productive effect in our area. I do not think one can stop people buying holiday houses by law, but I think we could encourage far more by grants to the local
1288
man who wants to build up his house and to improve it. I think that would do a great deal of good. I personally think that housing will have a lot to do with keeping up the fabric of life in the country. Again, in this village I am talking about, Padanuram, the council built a number of old people's houses and also a number of houses to let. There has been a large increase in the village and it has had a very good effect. The hall committee is now a very lively body; the school is now safe and the people who live there commute to Forfar or Dundee. So far as I can see, they take a full part in the life of the village; and, try as we will, we cannot force factories into the country. I think that the commuter will live in the country and can do a great deal of good in the countryside simply by providing a sufficient number of people to keep essential services going. Certainly this is very true in Caithness and along the A.9 are a lot of croft houses where people could live and commute to Wick and other places to work.
We come now to the question which I suppose is the core of the business: work in the countryside. It is not easy. Sutherland is a case in point. In the Aberdeen Press and Journal yesterday I saw a big survey of work going on in the Highlands. There was the story of a success here and a success there, with new factories in various places. In another part of the same paper was an account of Sutherland District Council's shock and dismay when they found that Sutherland in the last five years had lost 5 per cent. of their 13,000 population—and that in spite of the efforts of the Highlands and Islands Development Board. They have done a lot of good work and have tried very hard. It is not easy and I think that a whole number of factors need to be taken into account.
I know quite a lot about it because I am chairman of Caithness Glass, which is one of the most successful of the native industries which have been built up in the Highlands. We have had a tremendous amount of trouble in getting the right people to give us the skills to build up a modern industrial or craft enterprise which employs 170 people. It is a small industry, but very important, in the town of Wick. The important thing, as I say, is getting the right people and I think we

1289
need to look at a whole range of aspects if rural life is not to go to pot altogether.
We certainly need to look at taxation, because if you are going to develop an industry you have really to rely on finding the people to build it up from small beginnings, since you are not going to be immensely successful if you keep on bringing in branch factories. You have to get someone on the spot to develop it, and he has got to be able, quite apart from getting grants, help and everything else, to build up that enterprise and keep some of the money.
We have got to look at what is happening in agriculture as well. The landlord-tenant system is going to pot at the present time. It was a very useful system, and taxation at the present moment encourages landlords to take large tracts of land into their own hands and farm them; with the result that you lose tenant farmers, who were the centre of social life in a parish, and you simply get a large parish farmed by a company with a manager and an owner who very often is too busy counting up his taxes to pay much attention to other matters. This takes away the individual and I think it is something we have to look at very closely.
Another thing we have to do is to look at the development of natural resources. I have tried quite a lot of things in the Highlands, some of them successful and others not. The successful ones, the easy ones, are those which are tied up with something the Highlands have to offer, such as the hotel and tourist business, which is still capable of great development. That is a natural enterprise, where the customer comes to you. I know it has snags; I know it is seasonal; but still, if that is what is there, we should develop it. My Lords, I have spoken too long but I should like to say in conclusion that for many reasons this is a very important debate. I think that the answers are many and varied but we must all be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Walston, for bringing it up, because we must understand its great importance.
4.46 p.m.
The Lord Bishop of NORWICH: My Lords, I should like to echo what the noble Lord, Lord Mackie of Benshie said, about being indebted to the noble Lord, Lord Walston, because this is a matter of
1290
major importance. I must apologise to the House, in that I am due to preach a sermon—not now, but in about three-quarters of an hour—and therefore I may have to leave after making my speech. However, I hope to return to hear another six or seven speeches later on. I promise your Lordships that the notes of my sermon are on a different bit of paper from the notes of my speech!
It seems to me rural deprivation nearly always means rural isolation, and most of us who live and work in the country, like the noble Lord, Lord Mackie, up in Scotland, like the noble Lord, Lord Walston, in East Anglia and like myself in Norfolk, felt perhaps rather claustrophobic sitting on these crowded Benches during the first part of the afternoon. We were so glad when some of your Lordships went away and left us feeling more at home—and now of course they are all coming back again—because, of course, we are used to isolation in our part of the world and this deprivation is linked, as I say, to isolation.
Try as we will, it is not easy to overcome this. Two of our parishes were asked if they would share a clergyman. They said that they would not, because these two villages were on different sides in the war. We asked for an explanation and it turned out that it was the Civil War—but we have long memories in Norfolk! Another parish would not have somebody linked with their next-door parish, because that parish had not told them when the Danes came; so one is used to this sort of isolation, which is a true deprivation. At the same time we must recognise the fact that we cannot "cotton wool" the nation today. It is good for us to face the living issues which the noble Lord, Lord Walston, places before us and then find, in fairly rugged and determined ways, how we can turn the deprivations in the rural areas, without being defeatist, into a new quality of life.
I was interested to see that Canon Tony Russell was speaking yesterday at the conference which I gather the noble Lord, Lord Elton, had initiated. He had learnt the hard way by being right out in the Breckland as a young clergyman in one of the more isolated areas of Norfolk; and he made two points. The first is that people who want to live in the country may in many cases have to

1291
go without local medical or social services, schools or shops, simply because that is the way in which the country is at the moment. It has to be overcome, but it is a fact. However, Canon Russell also suggested that, like the monasteries, in religious terms, the villages were, in special terms, the repository of values of significance and importance in the wider society. It may not be possible for us to deal tidily with deprivation, but it is well worth our taking a determined stand on seeking to maintain and increase the quality of village life.
I know the employment situation makes this very difficult. As an example, the noble Lord, Lord Mackie, has spoken of his lovely Scotland, so let me therefore quote from Norfolk, with the approval of the Front Bench opposite to me, whom I see are present at this point. In 1932, 45·5 per cent. of Norfolk's school leavers went into agriculture, but in 1972 only 8·2 per cent. were able to be absorbed into agriculture. So we face a straight forward problem of the need to find a diversified form of employment for those who live in rural areas. We know about the rural bus services; we know about the cost of running cars which has risen so steeply. But it means, therefore, that a massive shift of allowable money within the country ought to be moved towards the countryside, because there are qualities and areas there that we must not allow to wither.
This is perhaps such a vivid illustration that it could hardly happen here. I was talking to one of our leaders in education over last weekend, when we were having a special education service in our cathedral, and he told me how he had been working 20 years ago in Turkey. He said:
"I worked in Turkey 20 years ago, and then the road from Izmir to Ephasus was largely bordered by farmland, with hamlets every few miles. I revisited the area three years ago and found that the city fringes have grown enormously, and practically the whole of the road is now lined with shanties—occupied by peasants who have been displaced from the land, because the tractor has taken over from the adze".
Obviously, nothing as terrible as that—I hope—could even happen in our fair land, but, unless we do something fairly dramatic and determined about rural deprivation, the balance between country and urban will tip alarmingly in the wrong direction. But those of us who also worked for years
1292
in the inner city area—I myself had 10 years in that area—know that parallel problems of a different kind develop alarmingly, if the balance between town and country is not maintained.
Education is, of course, the obvious situation that we look at and, again, I know that the question of money arises all the time. In Norfolk, we have 115 schools with fewer than 51 pupils in them, and, as one-third of all the schools in Norfolk are Church schools, we who seek to represent Church life in Norfolk know that this situation must be dealt with. I am very glad that two or three of your Lordships have made the point about peripatetic teachers. I believe that teachers with specialist skills must go to the small schools, rather than that children in need of special skills must always be driven off to the big schools.
I was talking to a chartered surveyor who was concerned about the countryside. He said to me:
"Once the Church and the school are taken out of a village, the heart goes out of the village".
We have to make sure that Church and school have a living presence in as many of the rural areas as possible. I know that it is difficult to do this, but, without those, we are in difficulties, because once we take away Church and school we have buildings without living people. We know something of this problem, because we have 637 glorious churches in Norfolk and about 270 clergy to service them, from the clerical point of view. Therefore we must be mobile. We cannot provide a schoolmaster and a parson for every village.
I have a suggestion which, I hope, might be of some use here, because in talking to the headmaster of one of my village schools, and his wife, who is a determined supporter of village schools, they made this point. The villages have never been idyllic. Nevertheless, village communities have provided, and do provide, the individual with a framework for living which is clearly acceptable to the human spirit. Time in the country is for living, not just for existing. The great danger is that villages will continue, but become geriatric ghettoes, not balanced caring communities where young and old can work together for the good of all.

1293
Therefore, I have a practical suggestion which stems from the question; can we do something about this? Yes, I think we can. Is it impossible to consider that, using an area such as Devon, the Highlands or Norfolk, as a pilot scheme, we might have a modern Domesday Book, in which we look and see whether the following factors are present in any given village: a church building, a small village school, a village shop, a post office, a pub and a village hall—about five or six centres. In addition to that, three out of those five centres should have key personnel—perhaps the post office, the church and the pub—who are part of the village community.
Having made that simple survey, we could put the details on to a grid of about 10 square miles, to see whether we could, at least, pinpoint across a given area growth points rather than deprivation points, and to see that no one lived further than 10 or 12 miles from a growing area of rural life. We should then be taking the positive rather than the negative view. It would, of course, need a proper Government study, because it would be too difficult for any voluntary organisation to carry out such a wide-ranging exercise as this, but we could then, at least, make sure that no one lived more than 10 or 12 miles from a living rural area with key people in it, where there was a sense of community, of church life, of village life, a balanced group of young and old, and where the qualities of life in the country—which are very precious and which, I believe, we have to work hard and energetically to maintain in our country—can be increased. So this debate, which I again thank the noble Lord, Lord Walston, for initiating, could be a stepping-stone to a whole new and developing view of life in the rural areas.
5.8 p.m.
Lord COLLISON: My Lords, it is a privilege to follow the right reverend Prelate, and I was very glad to hear him talk about the quality of rural life. As I have said earlier, there is a quality, particularly in respect of those who work on the land, farmers and farm workers, which is of great importance, because the fact that you have to work and co operate with nature imposes a discipline which is very salutary. While I believe
1294
that towns have a lot to offer which the country cannot offer, in this respect the country has a great deal to offer which it is difficult to find in towns. But, like many other noble Lords, I want to thank my noble friend Lord Walston for introducing this debate, which gives us an opportunity of discussing the problem of rural deprivation.
I sat down to consider what I might say, and found that I had two questions to ask myself. The first was: how do you define a rural area? I do not think it is easy. To many people living in towns, going out into the fringe area is enough. That, they feel, is the countryside. Again, to find the most convenient river for fishing satisfies them. For them, that is the rural countryside. But, of course, it is not. Therefore, for the purposes of what I have to say, I have in my own mind defined rural areas as those places where one finds isolated farmsteads and homes, and places which are 10 miles or so from the nearest large town. The definition is purely subjective, but it is one which gives me a basis upon which to work.
The other question is this: How does one define "deprivation"? It is a fact, is it not, that we hear about so many deprived people in the world today?—people who are suffering extreme hardship, oppression and subjugation. The noble Lord, Lord Elton, has put down an Unstarred Question on this subject, which is to follow this debate. My experience as chairman of the Supplementary Benefits Commission enabled me to know that in some of our large conurbations there is dire poverty and distress, but thank goodness! we in this country do not suffer deprivation of the kind which involves people being subjected to oppression, torture, the denial of their human rights and so on. It seems to me, therefore, that for the purposes of what we are dealing with one can define deprivation only by comparing what happens in certain sectors of a given community—first, what happens in towns and then what happens in the countryside—and seeing whether there is deprivation because people happen to live in a certain place.
The fact that deprivation occurs does not excuse it. I welcome this debate, because it is important that we should air the subject this afternoon. I have not

1295
attempted to find any answers. There is no doubt, however, that many people—in particular, the poor who live and work in rural areas—find that restrictions and hardships are imposed upon them which are not experienced by the majority of people who live in towns: people who quite rightly expect to get what a relatively affluent society can provide for all its citizens. I say again, it is not right that the advantages of modern civilisation should not be enjoyed by everybody.
I do not suppose that these deprivations are consciously or deliberately imposed upon country people. They are the consequences of isolation. I believe that they have grown like Topsy and that they are becoming more acute because of the continuing development of processes, services and so on which are directed mainly at townsfolk. Just because the services are there does not make it easy for country people to enjoy them; and in many cases, of course, they are simply not there.
The absence of transport facilities has already been mentioned by other speakers. I am afraid that some repetition in this debate is inevitable, and I apologise if I appear to be repeating points which have already been made. However, I agree with those noble Lords who have pointed out that perhaps the most difficult problem for rural people arises from the lack of adequate transport facilities. Since Beeching, we have seen the closure of railway branch lines. We have also seen a reduction in other transport services. Many villages now have an infrequent bus service—perhaps only one or two buses a week, perhaps none at all. And if there is a bus service, people still have to get to the nearest picking up point in the village. It may be that they have to travel a few miles. If you are a low paid worker and cannot afford a car, but if you are young and can ride a bike, it is not too bad. But what about the old, and what about all those people who, for one reason or another, are physically incapacitated?
Some of the problems which have to be faced have been generated by the rundown of village communities. This has been caused by the movement of people from the country to the town, due to the lack of employment in the countryside. It is perfectly true that employment is often difficult to obtain in the countryside,
1296
certainly in agriculture. So the demand for buses has declined, resulting in a reduced frequency of services and sometimes in the total withdrawal of some services. As a consequence of the decline in the number of passengers, the additional cost of providing buses and the staff to run these buses has meant that fares have risen quite steeply. Thus, the ability to use buses is now beyond the pocket of a great many poor people.
One other aspect relating to the depopulation of the countryside which has often been debated is its effect upon village communities. Many village communities are virtually dying of inanition. I need say no more about that, and I do not intend to do so because it has already been said by noble Lords who have preceded me in the debate. In other directions, too, country people suffer deprivation, perhaps due to the natural tendency to concentrate resources on the conurbations. A survey was carried out recently by the National Federation of Women's Institutes. It revealed that 54 per cent. of villages are without a doctor's surgery, that 75 per cent. are without a chemist and that 84 per cent. are without a dentist. The survey also revealed that 89 per cent. of villages are without an optician. If, therefore, country people need such services they must travel to obtain them.
The same report also mentions that 43 per cent. of country people have to travel over four miles to collect medicine, while more than 50 per cent. have to travel more than four miles to find a dentist. These statistics have been quoted by the Child Poverty Action Group. They say in their summary:
"The main conclusion which has been reached is, indeed, an understatement when it is said that country dwellers experience difficulty in gaining access to health care facilities".
I believe that probably it is an understatement.
Planners concentrate on housing problems in urban areas—again, perhaps, understandably. However, the housing condition survey of 1971 reported that one in every five homes in rural areas was substandard. I am not forgetting the welcome improvement which many farmers have sought to bring about in the cottages which they provide for their workers. But there is still a great deal of

1297
country accommodation which is inadequate and very substandard. We have spoken about the lavatories down the garden.
I could go on. I could speak about education and the distance which children have to travel to school because of the closure of so many village schools. One can understand the argument for the concentration of children's education in secondary modern schools, but the loss of the village school has been quite sincerely questioned by many people who are concerned with education, and also by many rural families.
I am sure that other noble Lords will tell us about other deprivations which country people suffer, but I must reiterate that it is a complete fallacy to believe, as many people do, that it is cheaper to live in the country than in the town. This point was emphasised by the noble Lord, Lord Mackie of Benshie, and by the noble Lord, Lord Elton, and it is of course a fact. While countrymen produce a high proportion of the food we consume, yet it is dear for them to take into their own households and to consume within their own families. The village shop is more expensive than the town store. Again, I think it was the noble Lord, Lord Elton, who mentioned the fact that this was because the turnover was small in relation to the capital which had to be invested in the small village shop. So if the housewife wants to go to town to purchase her goods more cheaply in the big store there, she has to find the bus fare and, as I have already said, it has become perhaps too much for many country housewives.
I am not seeking to suggest that living or working in the country is all bad, all gloom and despondency. There are real pleasures which accrue from country life and living and working in the country, as indeed the townsman knows and hankers after. This is evidenced by the interest that the townsman is showing in getting out into the countryside, it may be only into a fringe area; and by the growing number of people who, being comparatively well off, are able to buy week-end I cottages or retirement cottages where they retire, someone said, to die.
The question that one asks oneself is whether they can really integrate—"gel"
1298
—with the village community that is left, dwindling though it is. I agree with those who hope that integration will come about to the advantage of everybody; but in any case, good luck to them. The point I am making here is that really to enjoy the undoubted advantages and pleasures, both physical and spiritual, which one can derive from living on or near the land demands a high income. It is all very well to talk in glowing terms about the wonderful countryside in all its glory if you have sufficient income to have a good house, a good car so that you can get into town and go to see the things that you want to see in terms of the arts—the art galleries, the opera, the ballet, Shakespeare and all the rest of it. If you can afford to do this and you have the time to do it, so well and good; but it is clear that if you are a worker, you are excluded from these things.
As your Lordships know, I speak for farm workers. I know. I have had the experience of living in both town and country. I was born in the country but I grew up in Poplar, at a time when there was dire poverty and deprivation. Children were running about without shoes and stockings, and there was evidence of malnutrition, rickets and all the rest of it. I was more fortunate, but saw those things. Despite all that, as a town boy living in Poplar I was able to join the Boy Scouts—I did that and sought to get my arm covered with efficiency badges. I joined the Church Lads' Brigade. There was a swimming bath, where I learnt to swim. At that time Poplar was very much a centre of boxing, with the lower class professional, although we had our Teddy Baldock when I was a boy, and Jimmy Wilde.
As I have told your Lordships before, at the church hall I had the great privilege of growing up with Father John Groser who was a great Christian socialist and who taught the sort of socialism that I believe in. It must be realised that people like myself feel a great deal of distress at some of the things that are happening today. I do not want to thrash that particular donkey; it has been thrashed perhaps too much, and there are evils on both sides. I wonder why people are provoked to that extent. What I am saying is that, living in Poplar, those facilities were there if I wanted to use them. Then I left London and went to

1299
a very good grammar school. I did not experience any difficulty there, because everything was provided—the baths, the gym and all the rest.
Having left school I then came back to London at the age of 17 and was employed as a very junior office boy on a very low salary. Once again, everything was there. I had the privilege of being able to go to the old Queens Hall, which was bombed in the War, to hear the great orchestra under Sir Henry Wood. I was able to go to Sadler's Wells and the Old Vic. I saw and knew such people as the members of the Vic-Wells Society, including Peggy Ashcroft and Charles Laughton, who played Henry VIII there. He also played Prospero. Not many people ever knew that Charles Laughton could make a Prospero, but he was a fine one. I saw Alicia Markova when she was young, Anton Dolin; I heard Joan Cross and many more. These were cultural advantages which one does not and cannot find in the countryside. I went back to the country to work on a farm and although, as I am sure your Lordships appreciate, I made the choice deliberately to go back and work in the countryside and I enjoyed it and all the work that I did, I had had that opportunity before and it was very satisfying and helpful.
My Lords, I must stop because there is no time for more. The farmworkers are typical of other workers in the country. They do not preponderate now, as has been said, but in relation to the incomes earned by other people, I return to my point that really to enjoy the country and what it can offer one has to have a higher income than in town. But indeed the opposite is the situation; you just do not have it. All the time that I was General Secretary of the National Union of Agricultural Workers, from 1953 to 1969, the average wage of the farm worker was in the region of 1 per cent. above or 1 per cent. below 70 per cent. I am told that today it is 73 per cent. as a result of the increase which has just been gained for agricultural workers—from 11 to 13 per cent. But that is the figure before the other large gains which are being made elsewhere percolate into the system. It is quite probable—and indeed I am sure it is a fact—that they still remain at that particular level and what happens to them is symptomatic: it is what happens
1300
to workers in the country areas in the various different types of jobs they do.
I have made no proposals for amelioration. I agree with much that the noble Lord, Lord Walston, has said about the need to find employment opportunities in the country. I do not think that one can really make proposals this afternoon which can be considered viable. One needs to know and to study a great deal more, and that is the virtue of this debate. This is why I am so grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Walston, and indeed to others who have spoken, because clearly this is not a Party political matter; it is a matter of social interest and concern. I am grateful to him for giving us the opportunity of airing this most important and, in my view, too much neglected subject.
5.20 p.m.
Baroness VICKERS: My Lords, first may I make an apology to your Lordships' House for the fact that I shall have to leave in three-quarters of an hour to attend a very important committee; I have been commanded to go to it because we have to vote on selection of a secretary for the CPA. I would like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Walston, for the excellent way he opened the debate. I had the privilege just by chance last weekend of being at Cockfield, which he will know well, and so I saw many of the villages in the area he was speaking about. I am also very pleased to follow the noble Lord who has just spoken because I realise what a lot he has done for agricultural workers, and his great knowledge, and for another reason. I stood for Poplar for Parliament and for the LCC, and in the war we had children from Poplar evacuated to the village I now live in. So we have something in common.
Like the noble Lord who has just spoken, I have lived in both town and country and I consider the privations are less in the country than in the town. There is a very interesting pamphlet called New Deal for Rural Britain by Alan Butt-Philip and others. One passage reads:
"Whole communities are threatened by decay and collapse. The rural predicament is intractable and also often unrecognised".
I hope this afternoon to be able to prove that this is not the case, anyway at the

1301
present time. I always think that individuals as a whole are happier in the country. There is a very much better social mix, there is less crime, and also there is no need for loneliness. The main problems have been mentioned, but I want to mention them again and go into detailed suggestions I have to make in order to help.
There are the shops, the post offices, the buses, schools, and medicines; medicines are one of the most difficult things to get in a local area. But shops are coming back into their own again, and the reason is difficulty with the buses and the expense of the buses. We have a shop in the next village to mine, not far away, just over a mile. The shop is flourishing and it had everything except drink; so I suggested to the chap that he should apply for a licence and last week he got it. So we shall be able to get everything we need. The main butcher in the area is delivering to his shop. There will be no need for people to go elsewhere for anything. He is putting up a list; if people want anything in particular they let him know and he will try to make arrangements to get it. I think this is going to help the small shops tremendously if they have the initiative. We also have a mobile shop. We have milk delivered, and I must say that all during the snow the milkman delivered the milk. There is a mobile food van which brings the vegetables; there is a mobile library; there is a mobile chiropodist; there is a meals-on-wheels, if necessary. There is an over-sixties club. There is an oculist in the next village, and there is an excellent pub, which is just like the Archers and gives everybody a great deal of fun.
This village consists of 500 voters. It is divided into the parish and the hamlet, and I live in the hamlet. Recently we had a by-election and I suggested that we should run a candidate. A friend of mine agreed to stand and I acted as his agent. This had an electrifying effect. Two others put up, and we got beaten by the local postmaster. Obviously for him it was easy, because he knew everybody and my candidate did not. Of course, he could say to Mrs. Smith "I am not going to pay your pension next week if you do not vote for me". We have a Women's Institute, a play group and a nursery school. There is still, I am glad to say, a primary school, and a club for the
1302
over-sixties, who I think today, weather permitting, are in a bus on the way to Salisbury to go to a theatre.
One of the things I really think need considering is planning. This is what worries me with the villages. So often the council comes along and builds a whole section of council houses away from the village proper. There is also private building. One village near me has a council estate about half a mile away from the actual village, and a private estate which is also not in the village proper. This, of course, does make a difference in integrating the newer people. Also, there is another problem; the Ministry of Defence has a great many empty houses, because this is on Salisbury Plain, and I have time and again asked them to sell them off because I think it is very essential that we do get them occupied.
The noble Lord, Lord Walston, talked about the peripatetic teacher. I would like to say to him that in West Lavington there is a school run by the Merchant Tailors and also a comprehensive school. They have had exchange of teachers and other things, but it has been said in the local paper—perhaps the noble Lord could find out by asking his right honourable friend Mrs. Williams—that she is going to request that this amicable arrangement should cease next year or perhaps this year. I think this would be a very great pity. I think also it would be a pity if the smaller children had to be bused, because I think one of the great things is to have co-operation between the parents and teachers and that is not possible if the young children have to be taken off considerable distances. I would like to suggest in regard to these schools that when they are not wanted they should be handed over to the parish council, especially where there is no village hall. Living in the hamlet part of the village, I let the local people use my house when I am not there. I have formed a committee; I am not on it and I would not be, because it is much better that people should run things themselves. As the noble Lord, Lord Elton, will know, because his sister lives in the village, we have open air summer fetes, fruit and vegetable shows and so on, cricket matches, a quarterly dance and we have managed to get a licence for a bar. So everybody comes along. They have to have tickets because it is not all that big.

1303
There has never been any trouble and the place is always extremely well cleaned up.
I was very interested in Lord North-field's Land Inquiry, but I did not like his suggestion that there should be control of rural land in public ownership. Perhaps he will say something about this to enlighten me if I have got it wrong. I would like any land like this to be managed by the local authority. Mr. Christopher Hall who is the director and expert of the Council for the Protection of Rural England said that with fewer demands on the social services than in the town the place is healthier, the police have less trouble and there are fewer broken marriages and broken homes and fewer children delinquent. I think this says a lot for the countryside. I think people are taking a great deal more interest now. In Wiltshire the other day a farmer refused to turn his barn into a tractor centre when it had been a blacksmith's forge. He suggested that this was rather rare these days and it should be kept, and of course it can still work, not necessarily on shoes for horses but on other useful work.
I would like to discuss village schools. I am delighted that Lady Plowden has recognised the need for the village school and the smaller classes. I would like to quote from Lord Young of Dartington, his letter from the Mutual Aid Centre Limited published on 9th September. He said:
"…rather than accept complete closure there is no reason why a parent-teacher co-operative should not be formed to keep the school open through a charitable trust which does not charge fees. Parents can keep costs down by doing much of the work themselves and raise money to pay teachers who would be otherwise unemployed. This Centre—(this is the Mutual Aid Centre) has given its full support to the co-operative at Medingley in Cambridgeshire which is trying to do just that".
I think that that is a point which should be put forward.
Moreover, the telephone system should be made easier. It is extremely difficult for people who live in distant parts. Indeed, one farm is five miles away from the road and so it cannot have a telephone. I suggest that the local authority or the Social Security Department should be able to install a telephone. The initial expense is great, but people must pay for their telephone calls. As regards the
1304
places which are far distant and the people who cannot get to a post office, I suggest that they should have a little box on their front door where they can place their letters and the postman can collect them when he delivers the mail. It is extremely simple. I do it myself from time to time and there is never any trouble. In fact, we have a most delightful postman and he had a good Christmas box for that reason.
There is also the question of churches, which is extremely difficult. There are no buses at all on Sunday and our vicar has to deal with three churches. Moreover, it means that regrettably at present there is no Sunday school. I should like to see a parish bus run by the council or, if they wish, contracted out to a private operator. Of course, in the olden days one had carriers which were very advantageous. We have good doctors, but the difficulty is getting medicines made up. One of us usually takes prescriptions to the nearest town which is about seven and a half miles away. I am glad to say that the cottage hospital, which is not very near us but near many of the surrounding villages, is still intact and working well.
I hope that the few remarks I have made, which are perhaps not altogether practical, will prove that the villages are not dying on their feet and as a whole are very happy communities. Most of them now have electric light and television. They may not have main sewerage but we can do without that. I remember that when I was young a man with a wooden leg used to pump the water for our baths. We have gone a long way since those days. Jubilee Year was a great help to the villages. If one read the local newspapers one knew that most villages decided that they would have some fun—and they did. I hope that that spirit which brought people together in Jubilee Year will continue. It is certainly present in the village in which I now live.
Viscount SIMON: My Lords, before the noble Baroness sits down, I should like to ask her a question. Early in her speech she told us a story about her local post master. I wonder whether she will reflect that that story will appear in cold print in Hansard, although I am sure that she was telling the story as a joke. If it appears in cold print it will be rather hurtful, if not libellous, to the postmaster.
Baroness VICKERS: My Lords, I do not think that it could be hurtful or libellous. The postmaster already knows what I have said; therefore your Lordships need not worry. Indeed, I have pulled his leg about the matter. Moreover, he is an extremely nice man even though he beat us. I have had a word with him and one of his colleagues about what we need in our part of the parish, and we got on very well.
5.35 p.m.
Lord DAVIES of LEEK: My Lords, this has been an interesting debate and I should think that nearly everything possible has been said. Consequently I shall try not to reiterate what has been said. I have a great advantage. I was brought up in all kinds of villages—rural villages in Cardigan where we were small hill farmers and then mining villages in the Rhondda and Rhymney Valleys. We had marvellous villages with highly intelligent miners running small wheelbarrow farms—which might interest the noble Lord, Lord Mackie of Benshie. Incidentally, I apologise for the fact that I left the Chamber during the middle of his interesting speech. My absence was not meant as an insult to his ability to interest me, but my secretary was outside with an important letter for the bank and I want to avoid being a bankrupt, because if I were a bankrupt I would not be allowed to stand here.
Coming to these marvellous villages, I partly agree with what the noble Baroness, Lady Vickers, has said. I do not think they are dying. The sophisticates and the philistines talk about rural life. For God's sake! let us keep out of our villages the planners who build the mega-high line, high rise towers that we see all around London. We destroy the soul of mankind by knocking up those steel matchboxes. I think that the social life of the village is marvellous. If there is any noble Lord who wants to take me on in dominoes, tip-it, or even a game of darts, and if there is good beer—we still have good beer in the Bishops' bar—I am willing to play. I was brought up in villages. Do not think that the villagers do not enjoy themselves. Do not think that their IQs are low because they speak slowly and deliberately—every farmer, as the right reverend Prelate will know, believes in God because things grow.
1306
They have a fund of common sense. Do not let us talk in a high falutin' manner. The yeomen of Britain—and I use the word "Britain", bringing in even the Scots—helped to make this country great. That is no exaggeration.
I have decided that I shall speak for only 10 minutes, which should please your Lordships. However, I should like to bring out a few points worthy of note. I must also in passing pay a tribute to my noble friend Lord Northfield and the work that his organisation does. The noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, is chairman of the Countryside Commission, but there are many organisations about which I should like some information. Do those organisations co-ordinate their approach to our rural problems, especially as regards the point made by my noble friend Lord Walston about deprivation in those areas? I think that perhaps they do meet, but I do not know. I do not even know whether I have made a constructive suggestion, because they may already do so. Do they get together to see whether their work overlaps? For example, the organisation of the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, carried out an investigation into the villages. I had better give an accurate figure, so I must look it up.
There is a massive movement of the urban population into the countryside which is roughly estimated at 82 million visits in an average summer. I have seen the mountain paths in Wales; I have even seen them in Scotland and I have certainly seen them in the Peak District because I had the honour of representing a beautiful constituency for many years in North Staffordshire in the moorland area where there are wonderful villages. However, the Peak District is beaten up by millions of feet and millions of motor cars rolling through it. I do not want to be pompous about the problem but it is an extremely difficult problem as regards the deprivation of villages.
How does one solve the problem? Should we, in some cases, come to the fringe of the countryside areas. For God's sake! if we do keep people out, let us keep out the funny machines that play violent pop music while nightingales and skylarks may be singing. One hears these damn machines blowing away like the bellows in a Vulcan's blacksmith's

1307
shop and shaking the whole valley. I cannot understand it. I do not think that we have the right to pass laws in this respect, but in this regard we must do something about education.
I should like to raise another matter as regards an ex-town clerk. He was retired at barely 60. He did not want to be retired, but he had to be under the daft reorganisation of local government. That reorganisation has ruined the real drive of local government. Anyway, he said to me: "Do you know"—I must not name the village because I was asking about a cottage—"how much that cottage sold for?" It sold for £22,000. It was probably built in about 1860 for £100, if that. I say that because my grandfather was offered a farmhouse for £50 during the Boer War. It was great talk in the family. The cottage sold for £22,000 and that of course is sheer idiocy. This is the sheer apotheosis of materialism. We are making the village a dump where neurotic city dwellers, who cannot sleep without shoving tons of valium down themselves, can unwind. Rural Britain is not a dormitory for the over-rich or for those who are too tired to talk properly.
Lord GLADWYN: My Lords, would not the villagers make a great deal of money out of the neurotic city dwellers?
Lord DAVIES of LEEK: My Lords, thank God that is not the driving force of the villages of Britain! The noble Lord has exposed the very point that I am trying to make. The materialistic drive and the measure of happiness does not depend on one's health. When I was a boy in February it was always which of us could swim first in the River Teifi by breaking the ice. We used to say "Who has been first in the river?" and that person swanked about it. I am talking about kids. They did it because they breathed deeply and they lived fully. Without the materialistic objective there was a kind of faith, and a fullness and richness in life.
Without being didactic—and by no means do I want a theocratic State—I wish that we could recapture a little of that spiritual drive, a little of that non-materialistic drive, that has made rural England and rural Britain what it has been in the past, and stop the worry.
1308
The word "worry" is a wonderful word and comes from the Anglo-Saxon. It means "to choke". That is what is happening to our cities. Noble Lords should have driven with me this morning in a motor car around Hampstead. For the first time for years everybody was being polite, because they were frightened to death on the ice. Fear makes human beings cling together. I want understanding to make human beings co-operate.
I have spoken for only eight minutes and I shall take about three more. As its objective, the Countryside Commission has the conservation of the countryside and the promotion of public access. Those are two diametrically opposed objectives. Do not get me wrong; I am not suggesting that we should stop access to the countryside, but how can we conserve the countryside when millions of tons of tin, called automobiles or cars, roll around and are dumped anywhere. I think that in the main people should be made to walk through national parks, except, of course, the elderly and the sick who should have the privilege of travelling through to picnic sites on a local bus. However, I believe that cars should not be admitted to great rural parks, especially if they are driven by the young and the fit.
I turn to schools. The Department of Education and Science should have someone on its staff who knows about the value of country schools. The moorland district of Staffordshire in which I nearly had 3,000 farms, is not now represented by me but by an excellent Member of Parliament who, as I did, does a job of work. He has been trying to keep open the rural schools. However, the county council in the South of the county is so far away and so remote that it does not know what a 14 ft. drift is, and children of seven and eight years of age who are taken home by cars are sometimes stranded for the night in the moorland town of Leek. These people have marched to the Ministry, have tried to contact Ministers and have certainly tried to contact the pompous Staffordshire County Council. But they failed. I do not think that anyone there knows the real joy of a well-knit country school. I have forgotten my teaching days, but I guarantee to get an intelligent boy through his matriculation in maths, or some such

1309
subject—certainly in geography—in a little country school with a top class of about six or seven. Thirty or forty years ago those small classes were doing nature study and study in depth, which many people have forgotten. Today children may be taught binary mathematics—which I understand up to a point—but that is not that much use to those children compared with an understanding of nature and agriculture.
How time flies; I have been speaking for 12 minutes. I want to support the Association of District Councils, bless them; I speak partly on their behalf. I have been invited to a meal tonight, but I cannot get to it. They say that they aim unequivocally—I like that word—for the maintenance of a strong and prosperous rural economy. I wish that Mr. Beeching had remembered that when he bundled up all the country railways. If we had subsidised the rural railways in the Buxton area, the Welsh area, Devon and some of the holiday areas, the country would have made money from it. I believe that we made a fundamental mistake in closing so many of our country railways. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich mentioned Norfolk. I remember the local stationmaster on one country railway there saying "We used to carry hundreds of tons of sugar beet to the market but the contract all went to the roads". So we clutter up the roads unnecessarily with tens of thousands of tons of sugar beet which, quite happily, could even have been carried on a canal or on the old railways. We should have examined that possibility. Does it not sound wonderful to say that one is an economist, but not one economist can provide us with the answer to the economic problems which England faces tonight, because they all disagree.
I come to my last point, as much as I would love to continue. This noble House needs waking up a little. The district councils have suggested that existing authorities should have more power. I enjoyed the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Elton, who—along with a number of noble Lords—said that more power should be given to the parish councils. They are on the spot and know what they are talking about, despite the fact that they may speak with a Welsh intonation. The existing local authorities
1310
are limited and the local district councils think that their powers should be extended, because the Local Authorities Land Act 1963 permits district councils to make advances towards costs of building by industrialists and other small enterprises. I would not grumble at subsidising private enterprise to set up small electronic or other concerns in the village. Nearly everything has been covered. However, I could think of another dozen aspects. The night is short. I have enjoyed speaking and I am waiting with absolute enthusiasm for the speech of my noble friend Lady David, who I congratulate because she will be answering us for the first time from the Dispatch Box.
5.49 p.m.
Lord SANDFORD: My Lords, I can assure the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Leek, that we have immensely enjoyed listening to him. There is no need for him to set these time limits; nor is there any point in setting them because, to our great enjoyment, he always exceeds them. We are supposed to be having a sombre debate about rural deprivation, but in fact the theme which constantly breaks through is one of rural richess and rural wellbeing. This is because the rural deprivation is, fortunately, only there in small pockets. But it is a phenomenon that we have to recognise. It is nothing to do with personal deprivation, or the absence of a bus service, or a school, or one or two features of rural life.
What we are concerned about is the exact opposite of what my noble friend Lady Vickers was talking about: the situation when the population of an area, a dale, a village, declines to the point that the whole community collapses and loses coherence. Instead of a single coherent community we are left with a group of isolated householders who have no centre at which to shop, worship, or do anything else. That exists in pockets because of two factors. One is an exodus of farming folk at the rate of anything up to perhaps 14,000 a year 10 years ago, now fortunately down to something like 2,000 a year. But that is not the only trend; it is compensated by a positive invasion. I am not talking now about these millions of visitors, but something like 80,000 or 90,000 people moving from the towns into the country to live; commuters, pensioners, weekenders,

1311
and what I have heard described as neo-peasants going into the country to seek alternative forms of life style. It is a tremendous mixture and a very large invasion.
In the areas within the urban shadow—the urban shadow which gets longer and longer as people are prepared to drive further and further to commute—this invasion completely swamps and masks the exodus which produces deprivation. I think that the invasion causes considerable stress and strain because it imposes a violent change in the villages where it occurs. I dealt with this pastorally when I was on the staff of the Bishop of St. Albans, a diocese which I think contains more new towns than any other diocese in the country, and where all around each of those new towns you get a tremendous influx of these four groups into the surrounding previously agricultural villages.
One by one the natives cede their institutions, such as the Women's Institute, the football club and the pub, to these more numerous incomers, and there is a tremendous conflict and fragmentation. It is here that the churches have an important role to play in integrating these disparate elements into a single healthy whole. Although I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Walston, that the role of the rural parson is a satisfying one, his job in that situation is no light one.
The integration of villages under invasion from the towns is not primarily the problem we are dealing with. Where there is no invasion there is no hope of any continuing long life; no viability left now on a base which is purely agricultural. As my noble friend Lord Elton said, villages do not now live on farms alone. They cannot live on farms alone. If the decline through the moving out of farming people in the remote rural areas is unchecked, then at some point the trend becomes irreversible, the village community collapses and cannot then be recovered. In that decay something priceless is lost to the nation as a whole, so that our efforts to stop this occurring really deserve considerable attention.
The process involves diversification from agriculture by the infusion of new jobs, and new income is what is needed to get the economic base right. Here we come
1312
straight away to the role of the Development Commission. I need not go into this at any length because the noble Lord, Lord Northfield, can be relied on to do it. However, I should like to take this opportunity of congratulating him on his drive and that of his colleagues in the three things that they are doing to put things right, and I shall say no more about that aspect.
The Association of District Councils also have an important role, which I must mention because I am one of their vice-presidents. Like the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Leek, I am anxious to get there before the party is over. They are having their reception tonight. They have an important job to do in focusing the various policies—not all of them always successfully integrated—that emanate from Whitehall, and bringing them to bear with their various grants and aids, and so on, in a tailor-made fashion in their own particular area. As the Association of District Councils say in the useful book they have recently published called Strategy for Survival this task can really be summed up as harnessing the tradition of the rural communities to sustain the way of life by various forms of self-help. I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Northfield, is going to say that that is where they are going to put their main emphasis—and quite rightly.
It is true to say, as my noble friend Lady Vickers was just saying, that most rural areas have now their basic services—electricity, water, sewerage, posts, telephones, buses, et cetera, albeit in many of them at a heavy subsidy, which I think most of us will gladly shoulder on their behalf. But many equally basic but more general rural services are extremely vulnerable in these remote rural areas. By that I mean the shop, the pub, the village hall, the school bus, the school, and the church. Many feel that these are virtually indispensible too, and I think quite rightly.
The only way to safeguard and secure those vulnerable services is to build up the rural economy, and to do it in the remotest and most deprived areas—fortunately, not too many. What can be done is to make more use of the rural areas' main and finest resources; that is, the countryside itself. Farmers know well enough how to exploit the countryside for the production of food

1313
to meet the strong demand for food. That is going on well, and there are few industries in our country as efficient as our agriculture. But the demand on the countryside is not only a demand for food from it. There are strong demands for tourism, leisure and recreation, as the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Leek, has just mentioned. That demand is very strong too.
The question we have to ask ourselves is whether the farmers and the landowners are as expert and as well advised in that field as in exploiting the countryside for food production. I believe that the farmer might do worse than harness the demand for food and the demand for tourism together, and meet them both together on his own farm. What is needed is the means to translate that theory, which is expressed over and over again and is constantly being preached, into practice. I am afraid here we come across some serious shortcomings at both central and local government level.
The Development Commission does a good job, and Lord Northfield can be relied on to tell us all about it. But I think he would agree that his Commission does not engage to any great extent in tourism, because an English Tourist Board is there, specifically set up for that purpose, with no less than 12 regional tourist boards. But the fact of the matter is that those regional tourist boards are not empowered to give grants save in the assisted areas defined, not for these purposes—the purposes of overcoming rural deprivation—but for the purposes of regional, industrial policy. It really is quite made that in a sector where tourism is so important the regional tourist boards and the English Tourist Board are not empowered to give grants for farm tourism unless it happens to fall in a development area.
The second weakness is that the regional tourist boards as a whole—and I am generalising; there are plenty of admirable exceptions—have little contact with the farmers and the farmers have no great confidence in the regional tourist boards. The farmers' confidence lies in the staff of the Agricultural Development Advisory Service. They are the people to whom a farmer turns when he wants to embark on some new venture. He has their confidence and they have his, but that
1314
service has at the moment no remit to go into the field of farm tourism. However, there are a number of important developments here which I wish to report to your Lordships.
First, on this question of tourism, it is I clear that the Association of District Councils now see that they should embark on a fuller role. They have included four important paragraphs—at this late hour I will not read them at length—in which they record their recognition of the importance of tourism in this area and the necessity for them to take a more active role in that field. But, more specifically, the so-called Strutt Committee, the body which advises the Ministry of Agriculture and which reported recently, said specifically that they recommended their Minister, the Minister of Agriculture, to:
"…ask the Secretaries of State for the Environment and Trade to consider extending the financial aid provided by CoSIRA and the National Tourist Boards to farmers for tourist projects and facilities, to areas of the countryside outside the Development Areas".
That is the very thing I was arguing for, and there is a specific recommendation about it. The report goes on to recommend the Minister of Agriculture:
"…with the Secretary of State for the Environment to encourage the integration of farming and tourism through the establishment of permanent management services…".
So as long as that is acted on, and acted on quickly, we can look forward to some progress there.
But the integration of agriculture and tourism on a farm base is not the only possibility. Also, it is desirable and beneficial for the farmer to bring together agriculture and conservation and the improvement of the landscape; and we get another clear recommendation from the Strutt Report when they urge the Minister of Agriculture to:
"…urge the Secretary of State for the Environment to increase financial assistance towards the improvement of footpaths through better maintenance, signposting and waymarking, especially in areas of intense visitor pressure",
and for permanent management services, on lines similar to the Upland Management Advisory Service in the Lake District, throughout all other national parks. Thus, that is also recognised within Ministry of Agriculture circles at any rate as being a right, feasible and valuable thing to do.

1315
All of that calls for changes in policy and attitude in Whitehall, in local government and in the agriculture industry. Meanwhile, the technique of management agreements lies to hand to help to achieve this greater coherence in rural policy on the ground and, through it, revival in the rural economy in remoter villages. The legislative basis for management agreements is now provided in a couple of clauses in the Countryside Bill which is in the Commons, and we must make sure that that Bill gets through to us before anything else supervenes.
The technique of a management agreement is described in detail in a new study written by a Mr. Michael Feast and published recently by the Countryside Commission; an extensive study into the whole art. There are a number of models already in existence of very informa management agreements, which are typified by the Upland Management Advisory Service in the Lake District; and there is the model, much more elaborate and formal, which is incorporated in the Bill I introduced to your Lordships on Monday dealing with the management of the commons on Dartmoor.
With management agreements we can, I believe, at last achieve the trinitarian goal, as I might describe it, of reconciling three rural objectives in one coherent policy on each piece of countryside or farm, and we can show that it is pratcical and profitable for the farmer to manage one piece of land for three purposes simultaneously. I do not agree with Lord Davies that these things are diametrically opposed to each other; it is possible with good management to reconcile production of food, conservation of the landscape and enjoyment by the public. It takes some skill to do it, but it can be done. Some farmers do it already, but it is by striving to get many more to do it better that I believe we can do most to lift our remoter rural villages from the deprivation by which they are threatened, and by doing that I believe we can do much else for the benefit of the whole nation.
6.6 p.m.
Lord ORAM: My Lords, as others have done, I wish to thank my noble friend Lord Walston for introducing this debate,
1316
and I am sure he is gratified with the standard of debate that has resulted from his initiative. In doing so, I am conscious that he and I have two interests in common which have some relevance to this discussion. For some time he and I served together on the board of the Commonwealth Development Corporation, which was one aspect of our common interest in the Third World problems, and as any noble Lord who is acquainted with the problems of the Third World will readily know, this question of rural deprivation is by no means a British problem but a world-wide one.
Indeed, the shanty town and the poverty stricken village is all too commonly the fate of people in the Southern Continent. It occurs to me, therefore, that we have in the subject we are debating today yet another example of how the problems of the developed world, the world in which we live, and the problems of the Third World are proving to be basically the same. We at one time thought we were worlds apart, but increasingly we are realising that the problems are the same world-wide.
The second thing I have in common with my noble friend, more directly related to what we are discussing, is our common interest in the Plunkett Foundation for Co-operative Studies. He has given distinguished service to that organisation. I cannot claim the same direct association, but I have a long-standing interest in the work of that body, and the work of the Plunkett Foundation in relation to co operative societies, particularly in rural areas, is very relevant to what we are discussing today.
Indeed, the name Horace Plunkett has much relevance to this debate. He was the father of the Irish agricultural co operative movement. He taught that the same co-operative principles which have over the century proved so successful in urban shop-keeping could be applied with equal effect for the benefit of rural communities, and it is to me, at any rate, a most satisfactory development in the post-war world that farmers are coming more and more to realise the importance of their own co-operative movement, and that I suggest has a great deal to offer in seeking to overcome the problems to which noble Lords have called attention today.

1317
In this respect, we have a great deal to learn from Ireland, where Horace Plunkett did so much of his work, and I am glad we are still learning from Irish co-operators. I would cite particularly the work done in County Donegal under the leadership of Father James McDyer. It has been said of him that he simply applied his Christian ethics and came up with the co-operative answer. Under his leadership derelict rural communities have been restored to health by the application of co-operative business principles.
I am now glad to read that his message, and the message of the rural co-operative, has been delivered in an area which has already been referred to several times in the debate (the Highlands and Islands of Scotland) and that the Highlands and Islands Development Board is now encouraging the establishment of community co-operatives, as they are called, the first one having been established in the Isle of Lewis. The Highlands and Islands Development Board is now employing two full time co-operative development officers to carry out this work.
The community co-operative has, as its name implies, many purposes within a village community. It can provide houses, craft workshops, shops, community amenities, and marketing facilities. It can do all that within one organisation. I personally have seen examples of what in other countries are called multipurpose co-operatives which are doing magnificent work in tackling the kind of problems to which we are turning our attention this evening. I saw one in as remote a place as the Island of Borneo, in a fishing village where there had been developed co-operatives in housing, marketing, fishing, and in many other respects. Perhaps the most sophisticated and successful example of a rural community thriving on the basis of co operative organisation is the moshav in Israel. I have seen splendid examples in Israel of a thriving village life on the basis of full co-operation.
Therefore I am suggesting that in tackling our village problems we shall have much to learn if we look abroad to the examples of successful co-operative development in the rural community. I am glad to note that nowadays many people other than merely those like myself who come from the established
1318
co-operative movement, are giving much thought to the possibilities of co-operative organisation to meet the problems which we have been discussing.
I wish to give just two examples of how the National Consumer Council is thinking in co-operative terms when it faces the problems of the consumer in the village community. When my noble friend Lord Young of Dartington was chairman of the National Consumer Council he gave the lead in the establishment of so-called bulk-buy groups, where-by on a community arrangement, in what might be called miniature co-operative societies, people went on behalf of the group to the supermarket and brought back goods in quantity, and then divided them among the members of their bulk- buy groups, thereby overcoming the problem to which my noble friend Lord Walston referred, of prices in the village being disadvantageous compared with the supermarkets. These bulk-buy groups on the co-operative principle enable the discounts of the supermarkets available in the town to be shared with those in the remoter parts of the country—
Lord MACKIE of BENSHIE: My Lords, what does the noble Lord think the bulk-buy groups did to the village store?
Lord ORAM: I am thinking, my Lords, of the advantage to the people living in the village, and I see nothing wrong with giving them the benefit of joint action mutual aid. I believe also that given proper discussion, it would be quite possible for the village store to join in such arrangements. There is no need for the village store to be antagonistic.
Only this week the National Consumer Council has come out with another report that is very relevant to our debate. This is its admirable study of rural transport, and the Council has done a valuable service in bringing together information about unconventional ways of providing transport for the rural communities, including such matters as car sharing which also embodies essentially the co-operative principle. As I have said, the Council has done us a very good service, because a great number of experiments are going on, and so far as I know, this is the first time that information about them has been collected and

1319
an analysis made. I have not yet been able to study the report as I hope to be able to do, but I have seen sufficient of it to know its value. I regret however that it seems to me to have reached rather too categorical a conclusion about the value of the unconventional transport schemes which it analyses. I say this because one of its major conclusions is that it is strongly opposed to the replacement of conventional with unconventional transport schemes. I consider that it is premature for the Council to have reached such a firm conclusion because it may be, especially if co-operative business principles are incorporated in a number of the schemes, that a new conventional transport system could be organised appropriate for the rural communities. So I think that we ought—unlike the Consumer Council—to reserve judgment about the possibilities of these kinds of arrangements.
I would point to the fact that in both the bulk-buy schemes and the experimental transport scheme to which I have referred the question of volunteer labour arises, and it is a problem which must be faced with both imagination and care. I was glad to see that in the Press this week the Volunteer Centre came out with a statement which called attention to guidelines which its organisation has drawn up for the regulation of volunteer work, which is very important in providing facilities in villages, and it seems to me that the approach of the guidelines is a very responsible one to the question of volunteer work being acceptable as against paid employment. Obviously it is a delicate area that needs to be carefully negotiated, and I was glad to see that the director of the Volunteer Centre, Mr. Ian Bruce, said that they have successfully fought long and hard to achieve recognition of their guidelines by trade unions and professional associations.
It may be useful if I sum up the kind of approach that I am seeking to put before your Lordships in relation to the co operative possibilities in the rural area by referring to a Press cutting which I came across a few months ago. It summarised a report by the Hereford and Worcester County Council on the rural dilemma as they see it in their area, and a series of proposals which they make to overcome the problems which they analysed. It seems to me that in the case of all but one
1320
of the proposals in the list which they put forward it is possible for there to be a co-operative approach to the provision of the service that they have in mind. First, the establishment of new, small, craft industries. Small co-operative workshops are possible in relation to that proposal. Then, the turning of abandoned barns into small workshops. They could be turned into co-operative workshops. Next, the setting up of a rural radio service. In other countries there are radio services provided on a consumer basis, a co-operative basis. Then, community newspapers. In other countries there are newspapers run on a co-operative basis by the readers, the journalists and the printers. Then, new housing co-operatives. It goes without saying that the co-operative input is there. Then there is a point I have already dealt with, mini-bus and car-sharing services.
I could go through all this list of practical proposals that the Hereford and Worcester County Council are putting forward, and I believe it would be seen that in each case there is a co-operative input which can be of great value. I have simply quoted this list, and made my suggestions as to how these matters could be approached, in order to illustrate to your Lordships the great potential, the widespread possibilities that there are, in the application of the co-operative method of running industries and services in this field. As I said earlier, I am glad to see that more and more people and more and more organisations are coming to realise the significance of these principles, and I only hope that, as the Consumer Council and other organisations are doing, more and more bodies, both official and unofficial, will give increasing attention to the possibilities of co-operative organisation.
6.22 p.m.
Baroness ELLIOT of HARWOOD: My Lords, I have listened with tremendous interest to the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Oram, much of which I agree with and much of which is already being practised in a great many of the rural areas today. I do not know so much about the city areas. I should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Walston, very much indeed for inaugurating this debate, which I think has been quite fascinating. I particularly enjoyed the speech of my noble friend Lady Vickers, whose descrip-

1321
tion of her own village community I thought extremely encouraging. As always, I enjoyed the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Leek, with whom I nearly always agree in everything he says. On this occasion, however, I agreed with him more than on most occasions in his condemnation of railway closures. If ever there was a short-sighted and altogether unfortunate action, it was taking all the railways from the rural areas. All I can say is that I fought like a tiger, and went to every possible headquarters of the Ministry of Transport—in London, in Glasgow, in Edinburgh; anywhere—in order to try to stop them taking the railways away from the Border area, where I live. But they had made up their minds, nothing would induce them to do anything different, and they would not believe a word I said.
What is coming home to them now is that in this particular area, where we have colossal forests and they are just now beginning to cut the trees, the roads are narrow, twisty and dotted with little bridges which will not carry these huge lorries. They are going to have to spend millions on roads—putting in new bridges, taking out the corners and all the rest of it—in order to be able to take the trees which are beginning to be cut (and it will go on for 30 or 40 years) to the areas where they are going to be used in manufacture. All that could have been put on the railways and done by the railways and it would have saved them millions. However, it is no good having hindsight; but I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Leek, very much indeed. As to the noble Lord, Lord Collison, whose views on these matters I always agree with, I think he has a real understanding of the needs of the rural community.
I think I am the only other Scot to put their name down for this debate, and I follow my noble friend Lord Mackie, who speaks with great authority and who cannot be gainsaid, not even by me—which is quite formidable. However, I agree with all that he has said today. I do not always agree with him, but on this occasion I certainly do. I should like, just shortly, to say a few words about a very rural area in Scotland where I have lived now for more than 40 years and where, for some 30 years, I was a member of the county council. In order not to discourage anyone in this debate, I have
1322
listed the improvements which have taken place in those 30 years—improvements which have made our rural centre very much nicer to live in and very much more agreeable for everyone concerned. These improvements are quite simple. When I started off there was no electricity, the water supplies were extremely indifferent, there was very little drainage and the houses in the rural areas were not modernised. Today there is electricity everywhere, water supplies which are first-class and drainage and sewage systems everywhere. In fact, our county council will not allow people to live in a rural house, even if it is a long way away, which has not got modern conveniences. They may not always be attached to the main drainage system, but they have a septic tank and a water supply, and you can live there perfectly happily with just as good amenities as anywhere else. Telephones, too, I think, have been a tremendous help, and nearly everyone is on the telephone.
Transport is more difficult. In the old days there were buses; today, there are practically no buses. On the other hand, there is hardly an agricultural worker—in fact, there is not an agricultural worker, but there is hardly a village person who has not got access to a motor car. Every agricultural worker has a motor car, and a tremendous number of people living in villages have motor cars. But some have not. Old people and people who are retired have not got them, and, for them, transport is much more difficult. We have been successful—I think many people have spoken about this here—in getting help from the Post Office buses, and they are a great success; but, on the whole, I would say that transport is less good than it was unless you have a motor car. The number of people with motor cars in any area must be something like, I would say, 90 per cent., so one has that problem of the 10 or 15 per cent. for whom we have to find transport. But the percentage is very much smaller than it was 40 years ago, when the average agricultural worker had a bicycle and no motor car at all.
The question of shopping—and I was very interested in what the noble Lord, Lord Oram, had to say about co-operation—is to some extent helped by mobile shops. We still have Co-operative vans

1323
which deliver milk and all sorts of groceries, and we still have vans which come round to the rural areas. I do not say that it makes the food very cheap—it does not—but if you do not want to go into the local store (the Fine Fare, the Tesco or whatever it is) 10 miles away, and are prepared to put the amount of money which you would have used on petrol into buying food on your doorstep, it is available. I think that all those things are important, and village life has been improved in these ways.
I should like to support all those who have spoken in terms of the responsibility of local authorities and the responsibility of the parish councils. I think that is most important. We have not got parish councils in Scotland. We used to have a small committee, which was the advisory committee to the local county councillor, which in my case was myself, but those committees have now been replaced by community councils. I am no longer on the county council but I understand that the community councils work well and bring the community into local government in every sphere. I am extremely keen about the village hall. I think that that has been a tremendous asset to village life. It is a centre where various activities can go on. They may be playgroups, nursery schools, old people's meetings, dancing or carpet bowls. It is vital. I spent many years of my life raising money to enlarge our village hall and I do not regret a single hour of that work. It made it one of the best in the area. It is the centre of all the village community life, and I am sure that that is extremely important.
Perhaps noble Lords in the villages they spoke about do not have this sort of thing, but we have a forestry village. These villages have come about since the war because forestry is now one of the biggest industries in the Borders. I fought hard to prevent the Commission from putting their forestry village away from existing villages in order that it should be near the forest. Well, it does not matter a scrap about trees; nobody is going to knock them down or do them an injury simply because people are not living next door to the trees; but it is very important that the forestry village should be integrated with the existing village community. We have now got
1324
that. I do not know how many years it has taken: they began in 1946–47. The Forestry Commission have been of great help and have been a great asset.
The people who come in integrate with the existing villagers, partly because of the village school and the village pub, of course, and partly because we have still got a village church. That is also a great centre. I have always fought hard to make a community that comprises all sorts of interests—but in one area and not separated by a mile or two. You can take people by bus for a mile or two to work, but if they have to live there and are away from all the village amenities, you have a different proposition and you have two villages. That is fatal; for neither really co-operates. That, I think, is something that I should like to recommend in any development in rural areas.
One or two noble Lords mentioned education. I think that I agree with all that was said about it. But there is one great problem about rural education. I was for eight or 10 years chairman of the education committee and I did my best to try to preserve as many rural village schools as I could. But when it came down to eight children with a teacher, someone bringing meals, someone cleaning the school, and so on, then there was an enormous bill. I once made a calculation that it would cost as much to educate the eight children in the village school as it would to send them to a public school. I felt that I could not justify that to the ratepayers. So we put the children into a taxicab and drove them to a larger school—which, I admit, was a pity but it was the only way to do it. It has worked out fairly well. We keep as many as we can of the schools, but only those two-teacher schools with between 30 or 40 pupils. That has made a great difference. I agree that shutting rural schools is a most unfortunate thing to have to do.
One development which has been a great success in our rural area is that of outdoor centres, which are run by the county council, where children can go for a week or a fortnight at a time. There they are given opportunities to study all sorts of rural life. They go for long walks, they are taken to farms and so on. It happens that one of these rural centres is very close to where I farm. It is run by the Northumberland Education Com-

1325
mittee. It was an ex-Forestry Commission place and the Forestry Commission when it built the village did not want all the equipment, mostly wooden huts but they were very nice. This was bought by the Northumberland Education Committee and they turned it into one of these centres for outdoor studies and the children go for a fortnight at a time and have a splendid time.
I think it was the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, who said something about integrating the in-comers with the existing arrangements. These children have the complete run of my farm, which is a very large farm with sheep and cattle; that is, provided they shut the gates and provided they do not bring dogs. As noble Lords know, that is fatal with sheep. It has been a huge success. The children walk across this lovely land and it is a tremendous success. We have also started three others in the county. They are not quite so large as this one; but they, too, started partly in connection with the Forestry Commission. One of them is in the middle of a forest keilder and another quite near the forest. Again, these are for rural studies. We began with one of these. It was a voluntary effort, a speculation, and I managed to get the Carnegie United Kingdom Trust to give me some money to start it. It was such a success that the local authorities have taken them over, and we now have three. Developments of this kind in rural areas create tremendous interest and I should like to see those developments furthered if possible.
I should like to pick up one point of the noble Lord, Lord Mackie of Benshie, about the breakdown of the landlord and tenant system. I am sure that that is a great mistake. In the area in the Borders where I live we have three great estates which have been going for hundreds of years. The tenancy of those farms goes on from father to son also for anything from 50 years to 100 years or 200 years. This has worked well. If that land gets sold to an insurance company or to some faceless landlord, that interest between tenant and landlord will go; and that will be a disaster. I know that the word "landlord" in the mouths of many people is a horrid word, but it is nothing of the kind in the rural area where I live. The landlords are all extremely good. There are extremely well-run farms and
1326
the tenancy goes on from father to son. They have been an enormous success. I am not keen about the great amorphous, non-rural companies buying land for investment and letting it at as high a rent as possible in order to make money for their companies. I am against that, and I hope that it will not go as far as that.
My Lords, I must not go on. I am like the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Leek, in that this is a subject I have a great love for and great experience of. There is one thing that I should like to mention, but it is not on quite the same subject as the one we have been talking about. We are not really talking about agriculture but as a farmer I am always worried about the amount of land that gets taken up by building round our urban centres. We must not discuss this; it is another subject. But what is happening, as I have been told and as I had experience of, is that because so many cities and largish towns are decanting their population to the peripheries of their towns, taking agricultural land to do so, in many cities we have really deprived centres, centres which are almost dead. What is ironical is this. I have been involved, to some extent as an experiment, in what are called city farms—as a farmer I may say that they have nothing to do with farming. You take some derelict land in the middle of a city and turn it into what is called a city farm where a small group of children may be taught. There may be a cow or a few sheep there or someone growing something, all on a tiny scale because the land in the middle of the town is derelict. How much better not to take the agricultural land which is good, which is outside the towns, for decanting people from the middle of the cities, and develop the middle of the cities into what they should be, urban housing, without, as the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Leek, said, these ghastly great high-rise flats, but ordinary developments of housing which we have been used to all our lives and which could still be preserved.
I have noticed while going through some of our small towns that whole streets have been boarded up. The houses are going to be knocked down. Many of them are rather good late nineteenth century houses. If they were to be reconstructed inside they would be rather interesting and nice houses for people to live in right in the middle of the cities.

1327
Carlisle is a good example. It is an old, interesting industrial city, and they have saved many of their old houses, not knocking them down but reconstructing behind their attractive early nineteenth century façades. Many areas could be dealt with in that way instead of just being an empty space in the middle of the town. These places could be used for the best purpose: for people to live in, without so much encroachment into rural areas.
That point is perhaps wide of this particular debate but it is something we can look out for. It is vital that this rural life, the community life, and so on, should be encouraged and preserved. It should not be allowed to collapse. Above all, do not let us have it revived by people, as somebody said, buying expensive houses and only staying in them one weekend a month and not being part of the community at all. That is just as bad. We must have the real community life in which we all take part. That is what makes for happy village life, and that is what I stand for and should like to see developed as much as possible all over the country.
6.43 p.m.
Lord NORTHFIELD: My Lords, I should like to refer in a moment to some of the points that the noble Baroness has been talking about and I hope to be able to give some good news on some of them. May I start by saying that I must resist the temptation under the conventions of the House—the Addison Rules as they are called—to talk directly about the body I chair; namely, the Development Commission. I am very grateful for the kind remarks made by your Lordships about the Commission. I was particularly pleased that yesterday a Minister of the Government—at last—finally said in public that the Development Commission is virtually now the English rural development agency. To have achieved our final recognition in this sense is very pleasing.
Secondly, I should not like to try to match the eloquence of my noble friend Lord Walston or that of the noble Lord, Lord Elton, in defining the problem. My noble friend talked about the contrast between the standards of the countryside and the urban uncaring impersonal society.
1328
I took down his words. He had many other penetrating remarks of that kind in his diagnosis. I took down one phrase of Lord Elton's which particularly entranced me. He said that we must see that the countryside is a place in which to earn a living and not just a place in which to live. I think I took down his words exactly. If the noble Lord could put that into a short Latin tag we might make it the motto of the Development Commission. It is a very useful phrase.
I do not want to talk too closely about the problems or be too eloquent in the diagnosis; I want to talk about solutions, practical ideas for how we can solve some of the issues that have been raised today and are being raised in every one of these debates. The first thing is to be fairly clear on what we mean by deprivation in the countryside. We are talking about a whole lot of things that are summarised in a study to which my noble friend Lord Oram referred carried out by the Herefordshire County Council. They talked about the following factors as being the important ones: the adequate accessibility of of water; the adequate accessibility of food; of shelter and warmth; housing to acceptable standards; relationships and communications, making sure that we provide facilities and means of adequate contact with other people in the society of the rural areas; making sure that proper health services and medical care are available; tackling education near to the people; making sure that there are recreation and leisure facilities; above all, making sure that there is a variety and a choice of work and that it is acceptable to people living in the rural areas.
That is a good catalogue of what we are talking about. When those are missing, we have rural deprivation and the decline starts. The good news that I want to bring concerns a number of these issues. First, let me say to the noble Lord, Lord Elton, that happily it is now the case that the Housing Corporation has been persuaded to operate in the more distressed parts of the rural areas. This is a programme which has now been mounted in small beginnings. Where local authorities want it to come in, the Housing Corporation makes sure that housing associations are made available to build 12 or 20 houses in suitable localities in suffering rural areas. That is a good move. Secondly, the noble

1329
Lord, Lord Sandford, raised the matter of tourism. The Government have now relented and are allowing tourism loans in areas of rural decline, and not just in the developing areas.
Lord SANDFORD: And grants, my Lords?
Lord NORTHFIELD: No, I do not know about that. Certainly we are getting tourist loans, and that is a good start along the way. I should not like to offer an answer to the other point as I do not know the answer. My Lords, those are two pieces of good news on matters which have been raised today. Let me go on with my list of good news. In the case of the provision of alternative employment, small factory programmes—mainly workshops—which do not disfigure the countryside now number the fantastic total of 622 which have been approved by Government. That is 1¾ million square feet of factory space now going up in the countryside in the form of small workshops. Approximately 120 are built and occupied. Another three dozen are ready and most have been finished in the past three months. They are being let as fast as they are built. Another 280 will go up in the next financial year alone. This is an enormous impact. I will refer to one village in a moment and explain how this operates.
More money has been made available for the Development Commission nad COSIRA, and at last the Government, under pressure, have guaranteed a period of five years. This is the first time that we have been able to plan ahead on a firm basis on a substantial amount of money. It is never as much as we want, but we have made great progress. If we take one county alone and look at the loans given out to small enterprises by the Development Commission's subsidiary, COSIRA from some of this money—and I pick one figure, but I could take many—since 1977 in Cornwall alone 412 jobs have been provided in the rural areas, simply on loans by COSIRA. That is a sort of mushroom figure going on all round the country, and I have taken only one example.
Again, to reassure the noble Lord, Lord Elton, resistance is breaking down. It is no longer true, on any scale, that local authorities resist the building of small
1330
factories and workshops in the country side. They are now more co-operative than they have ever been. Nor do local people any longer resist them on any scale. Of course there are some who resist, but call a village meeting and say that jobs are at stake and you know what the answer will be at that village meeting. It is that that counts in the end and gets the programmes under way. Again, the transport experiments in unconventional forms of co-operation and individual provision in the rural areas are going ahead very well indeed, and now we have to look at how we should begin more effectively to organise them and subsidise them, if that becomes necessary.
Going further, the loans we are able to give now attract advantageous rates of interest in the areas most suffering, so that they are on all-fours with the loans given in urban areas. The local authorities are accepting their responsibilities in the whole revival of the rural areas, and I agree very strongly with those speakers today who have pointed to the great breakthrough in the booklet mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Sandford: Strategy for Survival, published by the Association of District Councils. It means that these new bodies—and they are very young, after all—have accepted the necessity to take a firm hold on economic development in their areas rather than be just a passive service of local government.
Looking further afield, many bodies are sustaining extra work beoynd what Government agencies are doing. The noble Lord, Lord Sandford, is eminent in helping bodies like Task-Force North. All kinds of such bodies are helping to underpin the efforts of Government or neo-government agencies. The Dartington Trust is thinking of putting half a million pounds into one area of Devon alone, just for small businesses. Discussions are taking place with the Post Office on how exactly the bus service of the Post Office may need to be subsidised in some reas. Above all, the rural community councils are flourishing on minute budgets—£10 harnesses £1,000 worth of voluntary effort through those councils. No costs ever become exorbitant in their work, and it is extraordinary what their achievements amount to in the end in providing local societies, help for the aged and all those things that

1331
matter so much in making rural life tolerable.
I think we tend now to go on for too long about the problems without always recognising that we are solving many of them now, increasingly, and that we are making substantial progress. I should like to take, as an example, the village of Bishop's Castle in Shropshire. That village was in decline; but first of all the Development Commission built a couple of small factories, which were immediately tenanted. Then money was found in order to give £10,000 towards reviving the cattle market which had been disused for some years. In addition, the council put in money and opened the cattle market. That market in its first few months had a turnover of £1 million, and the village is now thronged with buyers on one and two days a week. The village pub is making money again; the village shops are brightening themselves up. The village garage is getting money, not just from the people who come to the sales but from the factories, in transporting their products. Two more factories are going up and, because of the cattle market, a private enterprise has now built an abattoir. And so the whole multiplier effect is taking shape and the face of that village has been changed in a couple of years—all for a very modest investment indeed, and with small workshop units taken up as quickly as they are built. There are problems, as there are in any area: some go bankrupt, but never very many of them. It is a risky business in rural areas, and I might say that the loss on loans in rural areas to small enterprises amounts to 0·16 per cent. of the total money lent: it is a negligible figure. So this is how small enterprise is now flourishing and helping to revive the rural areas.
I should like now to talk about the social problems, because it is these that we are not yet solving. We ought to be thinking how it could be done, and I should like to make some suggestions. What am I really talking about, for a start? We have to find a way of making sure that all the amenities, the facilities and the self-help can be organised in any area to make sure that people will want to live there or to continue living there. What are we talking about? We are talking about how we get commun-
1332
ity transport schemes organised—buses, social car schemes and so on. How do we make sure that playgroups are formed, recreational facilities are attracted or organised locally, particularly for young people?
How do we make sure that luncheon clubs spring up and are then run by voluntary effort? How do we make sure that the welfare services do not suddenly close down, with no early-warning system? How do we make sure that the shops and the post office survive? How do we make sure that bulk-buy clubs are introduced, where appropriate? How do we make sure that the information is made available about what the district and county councils offer in the way of services? Can we help to dig local councils into making better housing available and having more housing co-operatives and more housing associations? How can we enliven parish councils and make sure there is a two-way flow of information between statutory authorities of various kinds and remote residents? How do we establish contact points at which people can contact their local authority or a Government Department?
I could go on with the list, but this is where we are not yet succeeding in local areas of the deep rural districts. I can only think aloud about this. The Development Commission has just had six pilot studies made on how to tackle these problems in areas in various counties. These are pilot studies done not just by our own staff but by county councils and outside research bodies; in other words, we have had an input of other people in addition to our own thoughts inside the headquarters.
What is coming through quite clearly from the results of these studies is that we may, in the end, somehow need to find just one more body to add to the rural community council staff, or to be in some sort of liaison situation with the district and county councils. This man's jot)—he will be the equivalent to a person sometimes found in the urban areas—will be to make sure that the wheels are oiled and to organise the voluntary effort, to make sure that the local community newspaper gets published, that local authorities are encouraged to set up contact points and to make sure that the community bus system does not just

1333
collapse because the buses do not regularly run and are not regularly serviced. It may need just one more person—not a bureaucrat, but a man on the ground, a field organiser, drawing all the threads together and making sure that activity really takes place over these problems involving social amenities and facilities and local self-help. This is an area to which the thoughts of bodies such as my own, and, I hope, of the Government as well, and of voluntary bodies, such as those with which the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, is associated, will increasingly turn in the coming months and years. If I may end on this note—
Lord SANDFORD: My Lords, may I interrupt the noble Lord before he leaves that point? I have been following him with very great interest, because I was concerned with the establishment of the countryside officers under the Development Commission, working in the rural community councils. How does the person whom he has been envisaging differ from these countryside officers who are already in post?
Lord NORTHFIELD: That is a very good question, my Lords. They were established for different purposes, in order to give people access through the countryside officer to local authorities and statutory bodies on subjects such as planning matters. They are really environmentalists, making sure that local people's voices are heard on environmental and planning matters. But the noble Lord is quite right, and it is a very acute question. What is the future role of these, in conjunction with any new ones that I was talking about? All this is to be thought out very carefully now in a new stage, a new surge, of rural development.
I would conclude in this way. My own belief is that we are well on the way to solving the economic problems. They are not solved; we are on the way. We know how to do it. The important point is that we have harnessed the local authorities into that process. It is their action plans on the basis of which factories and workshops are built, on which houses arc built, and so on. But the next stage, having got the economic bandwagon rolling very well in the rural areas is; how do we now do an equivalent set of action plans in the social field for these suffering rural areas? I think it is the task of
1334
another two or three years of hard slog in all the organisations concerned. I believe that, at the end of that time, we shall be able to look around and say that in, perhaps, a decade at most we shall have made an enormous impact on the suffering rural areas. I hope that after that time debates here in your Lordships' House will have a rather more optimistic note than they have had in recent years about the face and the survival of the rural areas.
7.3 p.m.
Lord O'HAGAN: My Lords, if I were now awarding prizes in what might have been a village school in a village that was formerly near where I live called Knighton Sutton, I should, of course, award the prize for initiative to the noble Lord, Lord Walston, and the prize for persistent good work to my noble friend Lord Sandford and the noble Lord, Lord Northfield. But the most important prize for cheerfulness and encouragement for the future would have to be split between my noble friend Lady Elliot and the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Leek, because a special commendation which the noble Lord, Lord Northfield, himself mentioned needs to be added for optimism about the future, not based on a romantic and rose petal vision of the past, but based on a fair understanding of what can be done, because so much has already been achieved, despite the statistic that I have in front of me—500 village schools closed in the past 10 years. There is gloom, but there is more cheerfulness and I was very glad that the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Leek, contributed to this cheerfulness. I, too, plan, in honouring my pledge to the noble Lord, Lord Mackie, to take 10 minutes, but I am afraid that they may be a Davies of Leek 10 minutes.
I mentioned the name of a village which used to be near where I live. My house is now in the middle of a field, because hundreds of years ago the village of Knighton Sutton disappeared. Knighton Sutton is a farmhouse, and Bishop Sutton—I do not know whether divine intervention had any part to play in this—has grown enormously and its population has quintupled since the war, with overflow from Bristol. I am talking about a part of the country which is 10 miles from a major conurbation in a Green Belt. Between the two is the very ancient village of Stowey, which was already there

1335
in the 12th century, whose population is now less than it was at the time of the 1826 tithe map. So that, however enthusiastic and optimistic we are, we must accept that villages shrink and grow, and some decline; and whether it was the Black Death or my ancestors that caused Knighton Sutton not to persist into the 20th century, I am not certain.
But when we are cheerful, we must not think that we can plan everything. However good the great work that the noble Lord, Lord Northfield, and his colleagues are doing—and it is good because it builds on energy, local initiative, enterprise and confidence that is already there within the local community, gives it encouragement and is not implanted by some alien and remote body against the wishes of local inhabitants—each noble Lord will have his own private horror of what 1984 and a wholly unpalatable society might bring. I must confess to your Lordships that I am far more frightened by the mandarins of Marsham Street than by the bureaucrats of Brussels.
The monolithic mentality of some planners must not do to the rural areas what has already been achieved in the heart of Liverpool, or even in the city of Bristol, where, by appointing as planning officer a road engineer after the war, we have a marvellous city for the motorist, but a city whose historic beauty and past have been made subservient to the ring road. That type of mentality must not start, in this mood of optimism, to weave a scourge of destruction through the countryside. We must make sure that developments always go in the way that the noble Lord, Lord Northfield, was indicating—building on local enthusiasm and local enterprise, and welding the new together with the old. I wholly deplore isolated rows of council houses and isolated private developments, that set one type of employee against another and make a rigid hierarchy within what should be not a homogeneous community, but a varied community of people of every kind.
What, in the minutes remaining to me, should we avoid? I think that we should avoid the grand design, the over confident forecast and the instant solution. I read in this excellent book, published by Child Poverty Action and called
1336
Rural Poverty, a phrase that made things I vivid to me. It was this, and I quote from their conclusions:
"Most deprived people do not live in deprived areas. The vast majority of the poor live outside of the decaying inner city areas and any other small geographical area".
I do not know whether or not that is correct. I am not a social scientist. But when we are thinking of rural deprivation, we have to get away from the mentality which says "You can zone this area blue, that green and the other red. We have got it all tidy. There it is. This one is good and this one is bad". Just as zoning within the inner city has destroyed the back-street shop, the back-street craftsman and the back-street factory, that give a feeling of variety and local employment, so the problems of rural deprivation are scattered and very different.
I should like to continue with the theme of encouraging local initiative by asking the noble Baroness, Lady David, whether what I am told is true, about the attitude of the present Government to grants for village halls. As other noble Lords have said during the debate, village halls can play a very great part—especially when the village is expanding or a new type of employment has come to it—in keeping people in the village and providing a place for young people to hold their own functions: to encourage youth clubs and so on. Is it correct that the grant for backing village halls has been cut by 55 per cent? If that is so, I think that we ought to get rid of a few more of Tony Benn's co-operatives and shove the money back into village halls, because they would be far more productive and would last much longer so far as the welfare of the community is concerned.
I want to turn to a whole variety of small matters. Where a demand has been shown for them, I have been informed that in some areas—in Devon, for example—banks have begun to open for one day a week in village halls. Obviously one cannot expect the noble Lord, Lord Northfield, or anybody else, to give them a huge grant to do this. Such a scheme must pay its way. However, any form of imaginative use of existing facilities, where there is co-operation between the private and the public, between the charitable trust and the local authority, between the

1337
Post Office and other profit-making organisations in the private sector, is something which we need to look at. It is very much the kind of task which the new Mr.X, whom the noble Lord, Lord Northfield, was trying to define at the end of his speech, will be looking at, if his job ever comes into being.
When we look at the subject we must do so with realism, but with confidence. If those in local and central Government will bolster up the great wealth of initiative and enterprise that in every village and hamlet is to be found waiting to be set alight, then the initiative will grow locally, with a little bit of fertilisation and a little bit of assistance from outside. It will remain local. It will not be an alien implant—as I am afraid so many new towns are—and will, perhaps, remain forever.
When we are looking at policies—this is a suggestion which I make in a purely personal capacity and it comes to me as a result of reading this book on rural poverty—many of the policies that we are thinking of for the vast majority of the working population and for the vast majority of families in Britain will have a dramatic and perhaps unexpected effect on those who are furthest away from towns, jobs and centres of population. What you do may be fine for 98 per cent. of the population, but it may have a totally unexpected effect by the time that it feeds its way through.
For example, we must think of the action that is planned regarding the road fund licence as opposed to increasing or lowering the cost of petrol. This will have a very marked effect. I should like the Central Policy Review Staff to co ordinate from a long term point of view, some form of planning and forecasting—very often wrong, probably, but at least attempting to do the job and publishing, in a Green Paper or some other form of discussion document, what the effects of a transport policy, or a policy for any other form of activity, might be upon those living within the rural community. By thinking ahead, we shall prevent the kind of rural deprivation of which we are speaking. That form of planning is far more useful, taking into account the side effects of what you are doing for other purposes, before it is too late. This, as I say, is far more useful than the imposition
1338
of blueprints upon little organisations and communities which do not want or need them because they can probably deal with the matter much better, provided they are given some encouragement.
May I conclude on a different note. Noble Lords might feel they have not had their 10 minutes' worth if I do not mention something to do with the European Community. I believe that the side effects of the Common Agricultural Policy on rural deprivation throughout the EEC, but particularly in this country, have not yet been fully examined. What we are speaking about in the Community is whether we are to go on reducing the the rural workforce. It has been slashed by 50 per cent. since 1958. That is fine if you have another job to go to. But if you come off a mountain in the Pyrenees and go on to the dole queue in Paris, what have you done? You have not saved public expenditure. You have helped to destroy a village community, where perhaps you lived at below starvation level, but where at least you continued a form of life which had existed for generations and which provided a landscape for the tourist to look at; otherwise it would have been submerged by brambles and bracken.
These are the problems of North Wales and the South-West. They are the same problems as those which are encountered over the relationship between tourism, agriculture and rural depopulation. I believe that those who are planning the Common Agricultural Policy and thinking only in terms of its next stage—that is, whether or not there should be co-responsibility levies—are missing some of the key points. It is the social aspects of the Common Agricultural Policy which have a very important bearing on today's debate. I hope that one message which will go to Marsham Street and to the bureaucrats in this country and which will also travel across the Channel to Brussels is that when we reform the Common Agricultural Policy—which must be done before it is submerged under an over-expensive wine lake or milk powder mountain—we must look at the social consequences for the rural communities and make sure that we get this right.
Even by the standards set by the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Leek, I think that

1339
I should sit down now and be quiet. When I fill in forms and am asked for my place of education, very often I feel, in my most honest moments, that I should put "educated by my step-children" or, if I am not feeling quite so bold as that, that I should put "education still continuing in the House of Lords". Today has been one of those occasions when I have enjoyed myself immensely. I look forward very much to hearing what the noble Baroness, Lady David, has to say.
7.19 p.m.
Baroness DAVID: My Lords, this has been an interesting, important and, I think on the whole, very encouraging debate. The subject of rural affairs is one which has rightly claimed a good deal of attention in this House in the past, and I am sure that it will continue to do so in the future. But the term "rural deprivation" is comparatively new and it represents a concept which I find particularly worrying, coming as I do from East Anglia, where some of our best farming land lies. This area of the country is, of course, very well known to the noble Lord, Lord Walston, who put down the Motion today and to whom I should like to pay tribute, not only for the quality of his helpful and delightful speech but also for his untiring work as the chairman of the Eastern Region Economic Planning Council. He has brought out very well the complexities of our rural problems.
Although rural deprivation may be a new term, it stems from the age-old problem of rural depopulation, which has been of concern to successive Governments since, and even before, World War II. These areas of rural depopulation contain less than 5 per cent. of our population, yet they cover about half the land surface of Great Britain, and there is a genuine doubt about the future of their communities. A conference has been held at the Café Royal in London on this subject over the past two days. Although I was unable to attend personally, I believe the noble Lord, Lord Elton, had a hand in its organisation. Delegates were invited from all walks of rural life, including agriculture, local government, police, the unions, social workers, teachers, parents, the catering and retail industries,
1340
planners and environmentalists, health services, transport and the Church, and the debates ranged over the whole field of countryside activities. The chair was taken by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Truro, and two other members of this House, the noble Baroness, Lady White, and the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, both of whom have a wealth of experience in matters of rural policy, contributed to the discussion. So it is most apposite that we should have this debate today to discuss the problems facing rural communities.
In the past few months there have been several notable initiatives in this field. Last August the Standing Conference of Rural Community Councils published a report on The Decline of Rural Services which provided a useful insight into the extent, and nature, of that decline. Based on a comprehensive survey, backed up by case studies, of villages in seven counties of South-West England, the report pointed out the special hardships faced by the elderly, and less affluent, in rural areas where services have closed or curtailed. It cited the fact mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Elton, that only 4 per cent. of villages in Wiltshire, and 8 per cent. in Somerset, now have their own dispensing chemist; and that in Cornwall 10 per cent. of villages lost their post office in the nine years to 1976.
The Association of District Councils have also recently completed a major study and published a memorandum entitled Rural Recovery—Strategy for Survival. Working from a survey of member councils, this set down a number of proposals for action which are now being discussed between the Association and those concerned in relevant Departments. There have been other studies too: and today this debate has provided a further contribution to fuller understand ing of these problems, I have listened with great interest to the views expressed by noble Lords and I shall ensure that their comments and suggestions are passed to the appropriate quarter.
We have had a full debate and I will not go over the details of the problems faced by those who live in rural areas; limited employment opportunities, declining public transport, the reduction in the numbers of schools and poor accessibility to services, entertainment and basic facilities have all been highlighted. Most of

1341
us would, I think, agree that by and large these problems are not of Government making. They stem basically from the growing efficiency of British agriculture. Fewer people are employed for a given output and there is a movement of labour out of agriculture. New types of employment have to some extent filled the gap and people have been drawn away from the countryside by the attraction of better incomes and services generally available in our towns. Thus economic and social changes occur and some rural communities have disintegrated, which in turn results in more emigration. Those that remain find that the reduced size of the community cannot support the services and amenities that they want. This causes more people to move away and the downward spiral of rural deprivation continues.
Of course, it would be wrong to overlook the benefits and attractions of life in the country. Sufficient evidence of this is provided by the number of people who live there by choice. But, at the same time, we must acknowledge that those with limited mobility may be as deprived—in terms of access to jobs, services and facilities—as people in some areas of urban deprivation. That is why Government policies generally must take account of the special circumstances and difficulties of people living in rural areas and should seek, so far as this can be done, to alleviate the adverse effects.
The key to maintaining a balanced social and economic pattern in our rural areas—and I believe that it is from this that all else flows—is new employment, as the noble Lord, Lord Walston, stressed. For, important as farming and forestry are in the countryside, the position today is that even in the more remote areas only a very small proportion of the population are employed in these primary industries. The main thrust of the Government's attack has been through the Development Commission, charged with promoting the economic and social welfare of rural areas. Through its agents, COSIRA (the Council for Small Industries in Rural Areas), and with the help of the English Industrial Estates Corporation, the Commission has in hand an impressive and effective programme of factory building from "nursery" units of 1500 sq. ft. to factories up to 10,000 sq. ft. The Commission works, of course, in the closest co-operation
1342
with local authorities, and in accordance with Action Plans prepared by the authorities, for the regeneration of their areas of depopulation. CoSIRA also provides credit, advisory and training services for small firms in rural areas. And in the rural parts of Development Areas CoSIRA assistance is also available for tourist accommodation projects. Some indication of the importance of such assistance is given by the fact that, at the end of the last financial year, more than £11 million was in the hands of borrowers.
The noble Lord, Lord Northfield, in his generally very encouraging speech, spoke of the work of the Development Commission and its plans for an expanded role in community and social development. The Government have already recognised the need for the Commission to look beyond the economic needs of rural communities, to do more than simply build advance factories and promote local employment. The long history and experience of the Commission over 70 years makes them a highly suitable organisation to perform this role. It is certain that they have the confidence of the voluntary bodies that are concerned with countryside activities. But any proposals which would result in a requirement for additional Exchequer funds naturally have to be carefully considered and we shall examine the Commission's proposals in depth when they are formally submitted.
The key role which the Government see for the work of the Commission is, I think, clearly demonstrated by the major increase in its fundings: from a programme of £6·1 million in 1976–77, the Commission has £15·5 million at its disposal in the present financial year. But jobs are only a first step. Many local authorities are also concerned about rural housing problems, and I know that to some it seems that the Government's policy of paying particular attention to the very serious problems of urban deprivation in our inner cities is causing us to neglect the rural situation. This is not the case; it was in order to allocate resources effectively in response to local needs that the Government introduced the housing investment programmes (HIP) system. Under this system, each local housing authority, both urban and rural, formulates a rolling programme of capital expenditure based on a comprehensive assessment of housing need in their area.

1343
Local authorities are encouraged to set out their priorities and solutions for meeting housing need in a statement of their housing strategy.
Housing needs concern us wherever they occur. But there are, of course, questions of scale to be taken into account. The scale of difficulties of our inner cities calls for a concentration of activity by Government. The dimension of the problem in rural areas is not quite the same but we nevertheless believe that, in the system of housing investment programmes, we have provided rural authorities with an effective means of indicating their needs in order that the Government can respond to them.
Rural authorities will also be helped by a change in the procedures made by the Department of the Environment last month, in line with one of the conclusions of the Association of District Councils paper on rural recovery. Since 29th January the Department has been dealing with proposals for small housing building schemes—schemes of 25 dwellings or less—in a new way. Except for certain difficult cases authorities are now able to submit proposals for small schemes to the Department with a reduced documentation and the Department approves a yardstick after a rapid processing with a minimum of checking and delay. The Government have of course recognised that the time-consuming detail of the normal yardstick procedures needs revision, and they are looking at new general approaches with the local authority associations; but the acceleration of processing of the smaller schemes which I have mentioned has been taken in advance of these longer-term decisions.
Transport, of course, is another major problem area identified by several speakers in this debate, and in many people's view it is the key problem. Unfortunately, it is the case that rural depopulation, the large rise in car ownership, and increased operating costs have combined to make the provision of public transport in the countryside increasingly unattractive. The closures of unremunerative railway branch lines in the 1960s and withdrawal of many loss-making bus routes have restricted rural mobility; and, however high the proportion of car owners, there will always be a
1344
substantial minority without easy access to transport facilities of any kind, such as the young, some housewives, the handicapped and the elderly. The Government naturally share the feelings of the House that it is socially desirable that such people should be provided with transport, but it would be wrong to disguise the high costs that can be involved.
There is no panacea for rural transport problems, but the Government are taking action. This action is of two types, strategic—through public transport planning—and tactical, by easing the way to local solutions of local problems. First, the strategic action. The shire county councils play a prominent role in the Government's rural transport policy. The Transport Act 1978 emphasises their transport responsibilities, and they are now required to produce public transport plans which cover 5-year periods. The first plans must be produced by March 1979, and I understand all but one county will get plans in by then, and thereafter annual revision is to be carried out. In preparing these plans, counties must consult with other local authorities, transport operators, trade unions and consumer organisations. Most county councils have shown a lively interest in their enhanced transport planning role. This is most encouraging, and is an indication that the basis may have been laid for the provision of a more efficient and better co-ordinated rural transport system in the future.
Plans are, of course, no use without money, and so financial support has been made available in the form of transport supplementary grant. This is a block grant paid to county councils, assessed on the basis of their transport plan and 70 per cent. of their "eligible" planned expenditure above a certain threshold is paid by the Exchequer. The amount nationally available for bus revenue support is currently £150 million per annum, and an increase of £15 million is planned by 1980–81.
The Government's policy on rural rail services remains that there should be no more major cuts. At the same time, an element of flexiblity is obviously required, and the 1977 Transport Policy White Paper proposed that local authorities be given greater power to assess the cost-effectiveness of rail services against other

1345
possible options. Once the public transport plan system is established, discussions on this proposal are due to take place. The Transport Act 1978 requires county councils to take account of rail services in their plans, and they are empowered to enter into agreements with British Rail to support local services or provide new facilities.
Lord O'HAGAN: My Lords, if the noble Baroness has finished with transport—
Baroness DAVID: Not yet, my Lords. As for tactical action, where it is financially impossible to provide a conventional bus service, and public transport is inadequate or non-existent, the Government have opened the way for local initiative to fill the gaps. The noble Lord, Lord Mackie, asked for local authorities to use their initiative and this I think the Government are making easier in this way.
I should like to mention here the Norfolk community bus. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich mentioned some rather extraordinary attitudes perhaps on the part of some Norfolk villagers. They are the first county to set up a community bus and I think they deserve a lot of credit for that. It certainly can fill a gap in rural areas, but there is no doubt that it does take a lot of organising. I was very glad that the gentleman who set it up (I do not seem to have his name here) was granted an MBE just recently.
I had a further question from the noble Lord, Lord Elton, on the railways. He referred to the costing principles applied by British Rail to branch lines. I under stand that the Association of County Councils is pursuing this question with the British Railways Board, and in addition my right honourable friend has received a number of representations from Members of Parliament which he is considering. I have now finished with transport.
Lord O'HAGAN: My Lords, if the noble Baroness will permit me, she has spoken with pride of the Transport Act 1978 which laid down duties for county councils in preparing transport plans, and they have to be ready by March this year. Would she take the opportunity to convey to her right honourable friend that this
1346
House laid on the Government an obligation, which they accepted, to frame a policy for inland waterways. I understand that nothing has been started, and in reply to letters and written Questions I am given the information that nothing is being contemplated. If the Government lay duties on county councils and chase them up to do them, could they not set a better example by starting a policy on inland waterways, in regard to which they accepted an Amendment from this House?
Baroness DAVID: My Lords, I will convey what the noble Lord has said to my right honourable friend. I am sorry, I have not quite finished with transport.
Lord O'HAGAN: Inland waterways?
Baroness DAVID: No, my Lords, unfortunately not. I shall continue on transport; this is rural transport experiments. In 1977 we launched a programme known as RUTEX to assess the potential role of various non-conventional modes of transport acting as supplements to the ordinary bus network. Early results from RUTEX influenced the shape of the Transport Act 1978 which relaxed the public service vehicle licensing requirements so that social car schemes and community buses could operate.
May I commend to noble Lords and to any other interested persons the Guide to Community Transport recently published by the Department of Transport and available from HMSO for £1·95. I should also like to commend Rural Rides which is a very nicely got up document which has come out only in the last few days and is produced by the National Consumer Council. The Guide to Community Transport draws on the practical experience gained from RUTEX and offers invaluable advice for local authorities who wish to tackle their transport problems themselves. Other services which are central to the viability of rural communities are health and education. There is, I know, concern about the closure of hospitals in rural areas, although nothing has been said about that today.
As for education, the particular bone of contention is undoubtedly the closure of village schools. This has been mentioned by many noble Lords, and it is, of course, an emotive subject. But noble

1347
Lords will be aware that the persistent decline in the school population is a dominating concern in current educational policy. By the end of the next decade the size of the school population will have fallen by a quarter. Changes on this scale present wholly new challenges and opportunities and it was against this backcloth that this Government took the initiative and issued Circular 5/77, Falling Numbers and School Closures, in June 1977. This asks local education authorities to make the most realistic assessment possible of future school population trends in their own areas, and then, in consultation with the managers or governors of voluntary schools, to examine systematically the educational opportunities offered to children in their schools and to consider how the premises might best be used. The Circular underlines the fact that the curriculum may become restricted in small schools and it is doubtful whether small schools can attract or retain the quality of staff, or command the quantity of material resources, necessary to compensate for the restriction imposed by size. The noble Baroness, Lady Elliot, I am glad recognised the necessity sometimes to close small schools.
In addition, a recent survey by Her Majesty's Inspectorate of primary education in England concluded, on the basis of a very wide-ranging investigation, that there was clear evidence that the performance of children suffered when, because of falling rolls, classes of mixed age ranges had to be introduced. On the other hand, the survey also led to the conclusion that differences in class size of between about 25 and 35 children made no difference to the children's scores on the NFER—National Foundation for Educational Research—objective tests of performance. Small may be beautiful, but the oft-quoted arguments in favour of small schools are open to question.
It is, of course, only the local education authority who can propose the closure of a state school and they are rightly responsive to local views. Generally, they are well aware of the special place that village schools have in the affections of local people and the role they can play in village life. Before deciding whether to approve a proposal to cease to maintain a school, the Secretary of State takes into consideration all the relevant factors,
1348
including the social and geographical ones. But in the end that which weighs most heavily is the need to decide what is in the best educational interests of the children concerned.
There are many other forms of action by Government directed against rural deprivation, which I have no time to do more than mention. For instance, in the farming sector, there are special grants for those who farm in the "less favoured areas": in this context, the uplands. Then there is the range of support which Government give to promoting tourism—including the initiative to develop tourist projects in certain parts of the countryside with weak economies. And there is the community development programme of the Development Commissioners: for example, the pilot studies they have carried out to indicate how the economic work of the Commission can be complemented by social initiatives; and their aid to Rural Community Councils. It is important also to remind ourselves that some services to rural areas have, in fact, been substantially improved: for instance some 97 per cent. of properties in rural areas now have piped water compared with a pre-war situation in which at least a million people in the countryside lacked this basic service. I want to say something about the longer-term future.
Lord SANDFORD: My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt the noble Baroness, but before she leaves the miscellaneous items I point out that I mentioned in my speech that one of the shortcomings in the tourist area is that the tourist boards cannot make grants in remote rural areas unless they happen to correspond to industrial development areas. The noble Lord, Lord Northfield, led me to think that there was perhaps some movement in that connection and said that there had been a relaxation in respect of loans, which is helpful. Can the noble Baroness say whether there has or has not been a change in respect of grants from the regional tourist boards?
Baroness DAVID: My Lords, I have a little more information about that. I intended to give it at the end of my remarks, but as the noble Lord has intervened I shall tell him now. In November 1978 the Government extended the availability of assistance under Section 4 of the Development of Tourism Act 1969

1349
to intermediate areas as well as development and special development areas, to which it was previously confined. To have extended the scheme to the whole country would have required a very large increase in the staff of the board. Available finance would have had to be spread very thinly and many applications rejected. Two-fifths of England are now covered, but we shall review the eligible areas again in two or three years time. I have a Press notice which I can give the noble Lord later.
Lord SANDFORD: My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness.
Baroness DAVID: My Lords, I shall now move on to the longer-term future. Here, I think, the pattern must be shaped by efforts to reach a better understanding of the problems which face rural communities. Some may say that we know these all too well; and in one sense, of course, that is true. But what we see are symptoms of a deeper, more complex imbalance of factors, not all of which are, as yet, fully understood. If, therefore, we are to make a lasting and informed attack on these problems we need to explore their basic causes—and act on those, at source.
As part of this learning process the Department of the Environment has put in hand a programme of research. One project is concerned directly with rural deprivation, and will investigate its form and causes in the context of access to services and facilities, looking, too, at the effects on different groups of people in the communities concerned and variations between different types of community. Another project centres on the process of decision making by public authorities: its nature, the extent to which decision-makers take account of rural requirements and the implications and effects for specific rural communities. A third will look at planning policies, as they are applied to rural settlements. In particular it will examine the effects of "key settlement" policies which have tended to concentrate services on selected villages as a focus for the surrounding communities.
I am sorry that the right reverend Prelate is not present, because I think that the question of the key settlements is very much what he had in mind when he suggested his pilot scheme. I do not
1350
think there is any great merit in setting up his modern Domesday Book. It is not so much a catalogue that is required, as an analysis of the effect of the key settlement policies and I think that this research project will do just that. I should also mention two other studies, the first concerned with the role of the rural primary school in the wider social context of the village community; the second with the economies of rural communities in our national parks.
Finally, I come to the work of the Countryside Review Committee—an interdepartmental group of officials set up to look at the countryside at strategic level; to assess the pressures it faces and how far present policies can cope with them. Economic and social aspects have been crucial to CRC's exploration of this issue—though, of course, its remit goes wider, to cover all factors which make up the countryside equation.
CRC has pursued its work through the issue of a series of discussion papers. One of these, Rural Communities, dealt with the kinds of problems which we have debated today, and invited the submission of views and comments from the public in order to try to establish an agreed approach to these matters. That response—including the memorandum, to which I referred earlier, from the Association of District Councils—is at present under study and CRC will be drawing up, during the course of this year, recommendations for action. I cannot, of course, anticipate the Committee's conclusion. But one aspect on which they have previously placed much emphasis is the need to treat the problems of rural areas on a comprehensive, "across the board" basis: what, of course, we have termed a "total approach" in tackling the problems of our inner cities.
It is too early to indicate how this might be achieved. But we shall clearly need some means of co-ordinating policies to ensure that life continues in our rural communities. We do not want fossilisation. There is no evidence to suggest that depopulation will be halted in the foreseeable future and some aspects of the old rural society and the old cultures will continue to disappear. But we cannot contemplate with equanimity further emigration on a wholesale scale from the countryside to our congested towns.

1351
We have had a full debate; the problems of our rural communities will not disappear overnight. But I do think that, in the past few years, we have taken steps to stem the slide and that the future now holds growing promise for efforts to maintain the distinctive lifestyle of our rural areas. We owe much, in this respect, to the great interest displayed in this subject by a wide range of people, an interest which this present debate has served to stress and, I hope, to amplify. One or two other questions have been raised by noble Lords and I shall be happy to answer them in writing.
7.49 p.m.
Lord WALSTON: My Lords, it is quite clear that the whole House will agree with me when I offer congratulations to the noble Baroness, Lady David, on the masterly way in which she has summed up this debate, answered so very many of the questions raised and, on top of that and far more important, given us a very encouraging rundown of what the Government have done and are doing. For all those who are interested in this problem, and that is a great many people, it is very valuable to have all these activities put together so clearly and so concisely. I know that we are all very grateful to the noble Baroness for doing this. It is hard to believe that it is the first time she has made a speech from the Dispatch Box. I am, of course, also grateful to all noble Lords who have taken part, as well as to all noble Baronesses. Today, the House has shown, by those who have spoken, how very well equipped it is to deal with a wide range of subjects and how many noble Lords there are in your Lordships' House who, from their personal experience over a very long time, understand what these problems of the countryside are.
As I understand it, the general tenor of the debate has been an agreement that there is some form of deprivation in large parts of the countryside. Possibly the only exception to that was the speech by the noble Baroness, Lady Vickers, who seems to live in an idyllic village which, if she allowed us to, I am sure we should all dearly enjoy visiting. With that possible exception, I believe there is agreement that some form of deprivation exists.
1352
Some noble Lords have laid greater stress on one aspect than on others. Some have been rather more optimistic; some have been rather less optimistic. I must confess that to my mind some have shown undue optimism; but even those who have been the most optimistic all agree that more must be done. We are happy to know how much is being done, how much thought is being given to this and what good results are being achieved. I hope that this debate will encourage those who are doing these things, will stimulate those who, perhaps, are not doing quite all they might be doing and will lead to still further research work of the kind which the noble Baroness mentioned is being carried out, and then action. My Lords, I beg leave to withdraw my Motion.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

INDO-CHINA: REFUGEE PROBLEM
7.52 p.m.
Lord ELTON Lord ELTON rose to ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will take note of the tragic predicament of over 200,000 refugees from Indo-China still in search of permanent refuge, of the causes of this pathetic and still continuing exodus and of the implications which these have for British foreign policy. The noble Lord said: My Lords, my Question concerns the refugees from Indo-China. Fourteen months ago I asked your Lordships to consider the same matter. The situation then was tragic and now it is worse, and worse by a great deal. In South East Asia there are at present about 205,000 refugees from Indo-China alone, of whom incidentally over 100,000 are children. It is as though the entire population of Hounslow, or the whole population of Aberdeen and a tenth of the population of Dundee had been stripped of every possession and scattered along the coastline of Europe from Denmark to Portugal. Two hundred and five thousand is a very large number, but it does not include the 13,000 refugees in the tiny colony of Hong Kong. It does not include the 150,000 who fled from Cambodia into Vietnam before that country invaded their homeland. Of course, the terms of my Question exclude the huge numbers who fled from Burmah into Bangladesh.
In sizing up the scale of this tragedy, we must remember that the figures I have given are for the numbers of people who have succeeded in escaping from Indo-China since 1975 and who have as yet failed to find a permanent home. I have left out two other groups: first, those who have already been taken in by third countries. It does not include 130,000 taken in by the United States immediately after their retreat from Indo-China; nor the 142, 314, I think, who escaped later and who, by last December, had found permanent places of refuge.
If we add up all the people who have succeeded in getting out of Indo-China since 1975, we get a figure of roughly 490,000; that is more than the population of the cities of Edinburgh, Bradford or Bristol. If we add to those the number who have actually made it to Indonesia, Japan, Macau, the Philippines and even, incredibly, to Australia as their first call, as well as the 16 other countries their own small boats have taken them to, the total rises to over half a million—503,000. That is more than the population of the City of Manchester, and is a very formidable vote indeed by the people living in the lands now occupied by the Vietnamese or controlled by their politicians against the régime under which they have had to live.
Yet even that is not the whole story. I have not counted—and no one ever will count—how many thousands have perished in little boats unfit for sea and swamped by the monsoons; how many have been deliberately drowned—and I regret that that happens because I have eyewitness accounts of it—by robbers posing as friends until they overturn their boats in midstream of the River Mekong; how many have died at the bestial hands of pirates in the Gulf of Siam; and how many were shot down by patrols of the Khmer Rouge army or blown to pieces in the minefields and boobytraps with which they scattered their path to freedom. They would fill the cemeteries of Leeds over and over again.
But today we must concern ourselves with the living. The number of refugees in temporary camps is now greater than it was when I visited them in 1970 and told your Lordships of what I found. In Thailand alone there are over 140,000. I wonder whether that figure seems real,
1354
or is it merely a vague idea? I can tell your Lordships how to make it real. I shall tell you how to grasp the threat and the burden that this is for Thailand. Imagine such numbers arriving here. Imagine over 200,000 refugees pouring into this country in the space of under four years, and only 60,000 of them getting moved on. The outcry that it would cause is unimaginable.
However, the population of Thailand is smaller than ours and it is infinitely poorer. About 12 million of them have an average income of less than £50 per year, yet they bear more than half the cost of maintaining this crowd of refugees—some £4·5 million in the period 1st March to 31st December last year alone. In some ways the Thai people shame us with their generosity. By the end of last year over 70,000 boat people had landed in Malaysia. Despite a successful resettlement programme abroad, over 49,500 were still in camps, and still they came.
The Malays are a kindly people. Despite having an often unreferred to 90,000 refugees from elsewhere temporarily, they were foremost in taking in, educating and settling, the Moslems among those who first escaped Thailand by land. They actually went out and collected 1,400 of them, but they now have 60,000 refugees of their own. Their coastline is saturated and their despairing villagers pelt the pathetic arrivals with ineffectual showers of stones as they wade through the surf.
I should like to quote Tan Sri Ghazali bin Shafie, the Home Affairs Minister of the Government of Malaysia recently in Geneva. He said:
"As you may know Malaysia today is busily engaged in a programme of social engineering aimed at the twin objectives of the eradication of poverty and the restructuring of society. It is difficult enough already as it is, when with the world economic situation we have to sell cheaper and buy dearer than before, when we have to struggle with the problem of unemployment, when we have to uplift the living standard of our people whose expectations are high, when we have to maintain law and order, when we have to preserve our security and stability, when we have to integrate the various communities into a single Malaysian nation"—
and he did not say, of course, that the population of Malysia is part-Malay and part-Chinese—
"with a common and shared valuation system out of diverse cultures and creeds, these…by

1355
themselves are challenges of immense magnitude if they are to be actualised within the time frame of one generation which we promised ourselves. If the problem of the boat people is added to this then our vision of a united, democratic and a just society that will be Malaysia will become an impossible dream".
Next door, in Singapore, the problem is minimised by strict regulation. There is an arbitrary ceiling of 1,000 refugees in camp at any one time, and the thousand and first has his boat repaired and is asked to move on. I shall not comment further on that because I am not familiar with the situation—I did not see it.
We then come to another small State, Hong Kong, about which the noble Lord, Lord Geddes, will be speaking later. I will tell your Lordships by way of preamble that 6,460 refugees had arrived before the "Huey Fong" and the "Tung An" had dropped anchor. There were 8,000 awaiting settlement when "Skyluck" arrived with perhaps 3,000 on board. We do not yet know. There were over 5,000 arrivals in 1978, and there have been as many again this year. If you know Hong Kong you will realise that 13,000 unheralded arrivals in addition to the normal influx is a serious matter. The city is already as full of people as a hive of bees, and into that hive moves a continuous stream. Hong Kong had absorbed 100,000 arrivals from mainland China last year alone. That flood alone places a huge strain on the education, health, housing, and other social services of the Colony. Many other communities would regard that alone as an intolerable situation, but they bear it without complaint. To add a new source of immigration, and one with no very obvious limit, causes alarm even among that stoic people. They have done well to accept it. They are right to look for assistance.
In a forceful leader last Friday the South China Morning Post expressed a point of view which may come as a surprise to many in this country. The writer is referring to a belief that we here expect that, thanks to British representations, the Vietnamese may limit the exodus from their country to 1,000 a month. I dare say that the noble Lord will have something to say about this when he replies. I quote:
"while officially the Hanoi Government may invent some purchasable exit permit for such a number, the unofficial exodus is likely to continue
1356
indefinitely, as it has done with China. For in neither country are officials capable of controlling the exodus. Nor do they show much interest in doing so".
I think this is what your Lordships need to take on board:
"As for the woeful record of overseas countries in receiving refugees from Vietnam for resettlement, it must be strongly doubted that the Skyluck's arrival or indeed that of any other vessel, will make any appreciable difference.
"For there is no reason to doubt that Hong Kong's benevolent attitude will be as cynically exploited by the prosperous Western (and Asian) countries who could relieve us of a large part of this problem as by those who have saddled us and other parts of Southeast Asia with it".
I shall return to this view and what I think our reply should be at the end of my speech.
If, my Lords, that is still a little distant pray be patient. It is a very heavy tale I must tell, and I cannot hurry with it. Let us look at the origins of this astonishing phenomenon. What possible reason can there be for half a million people to flee from one pleasant, beautiful, and fertile corner of the world? Why should 100,000 families abandon their homes and the whole of their property and fling themselves on the mercy of total strangers? In Cambodia we saw a kind of madness in which one part of the nation gained the upper hand and was caught up in killing the other, and freely admitting to one million corpses as the price their fellow countrymen had to pay for not sharing their political views. A grim total, amounting to one in every six people who had survived the war in that country. In Vietnam I believe the disease to be the same, but it takes a colder and more calculating form and I think it takes longer to work itself out.
Last Saturday I visited some refugees who arrived three weeks ago from Vietnam. They were boat people. One of the minority of this vast tide who are boat people. Let me tell your Lordships a typical story. A tailor and his wife had eight children and a shop in Saigon. When Saigon fell and the Communists took power the police came and they boarded up the shop and removed the stock, and the next day they put the family, the tailor and his wife and his eight children, on a lorry and they drove 96 miles into the forest. When they let the tailboard down they said, "This is a new economic zone". It looked like

1357
any other part of the forest. They were given spades, and they were told to get on with it. They had to build themselves shelters out of bamboos and leaves. They had to clear the forest, and they had to grow their own food. They had been allowed to take some luggage with them, and therefore they had some wealth. With this they had to purchase their food to sustain them until the crop came to maturity and could be gathered.
It was at the point as she remembered the next thing that the mother of the children began to weep as she told the story. It was 21 kilometres on foot to the nearest place they could buy food, and they had to till the ground as well. Eventually, and it was something of a triumph—even for a farmer it would have been a triumph—the crop matured and they gathered it. For this they were thankful. Then they did the arithmetic and saw that it was not enough to sustain them until the next crop, and the money would not hold out. At that point they began to look for a way out; they found others and they went to the coast and bought a boat. One hundred and twenty of them bought a boat, some 12 ft. longer and 4 ft. wider than a boat on which I took six children on a rather crowded trip down the Avon River two years ago in the summer. One hundred and twenty of them boarded that vessel in the dark giving the equivalent of £100 per head bribe to the coastguards to let them go, and they went off into the night in confusion and haste. The full horror dawned on this poor woman as the dawn rose and she realised that her husband was not on the boat. She is now in a hostel in this country in a state of understandable shock.
What had happened to that family? The truth of the matter is that the Communist Government of Vietnam had turned it out deliberately into the wilderness to starve. Why? They had committed the two sins of having been capitalists in a very small way in a Communist country and, please note, of being Chinese in the country of Vietnam. There is in that country a desperate shortage of food and a grave economic crisis, and of course it is convenient to a Government to reduce the population and to focus discontent on a readily defined sector of the population. The
1358
business sector is easily identified as it is primarily Chinese in origin.
This therefore is in fact a racist decision. Whether somebody had read Mein Kampf I do not know, but the Communist answer is extraordinarily like an answer we saw put into effect in Europe in the 1930s. These people are being sent out of the country, and it is now I believe almost certain that the going rate for a safe conduct on to a ship as opposed to a boat is somewhere around 2,000 dollars US currency, or the equivalent. That is the product of the Communist philosophy in that corner of the world, and by its fruits shall we know it.
Let us not forget the role that Vietnam has in the balance of power in the area. Let us not forget the similarities there are between that and the role of Cuba in Africa. It is a grave and dangerous precedent, the African precedent. If it is followed to the letter and without hindrance it will go badly indeed with the Free World. It will open the door to tyranny so wide that we shall feel the draught in Europe. We must not think—to return to the refugees—that once a refugee reaches a camp his problem is solved. A camp is a temporary structure with inadequate amenities, dangerous to health, and corrosive to morale. Above all, it is a place one wants to get out of. The burden of refugees on most countries of first asylum is intolerable. The problem therefore is to settle them somewhere else. We have seen that since 1975 142,000 have been settled. Different countries have different standards of admission. I would refer you to the Press releases from Geneva rather than detain you with the differences, because it is taking too long, except to say that I notice that the Swiss, to their eternal credit, accept as a priority those with least claim to go anywhere else.
Those who are left behind are very often the least skilled and the least acceptable to other countries. Therefore, the present unwilling host countries rightly fear that they will be left with the unfit and unadaptable, and they urge a pool system whereby countries will state their quotas in advance and take whoever is next in the queue regardless of qualifications. There must obviously be limitations. There must be modifications to that as to at least language

1359
and relatives already settled, but preferences should be minimal. I was glad to see that this was favoured at Geneva. It will not in any way alter our policy. I understand that we have already accepted disadvantaged people.
In the camps there is a crisis of morale and it gives a great sense of security and purpose to a refugee if he is able to embark on the process of qualifying himself in some way to be a more acceptable person in a new country. In last week's debate on children, the noble Lord, Lord Ritchie-Calder, made it clear that in these circumstances self-help is best for self-respect and security. In one case it is done by the refugees themselves; they become more effective as these volunteers gain experience. However, this puts an extraordinary strain on their loyalty to their fellow-sufferers, for if they have spent a year or more in training their fellows to qualify and they see their fellows going and they themselves have an opportunity to go to another country, obviously to give up that opportunity is asking a great deal of their charity and courage.
I have in mind two outstanding men, both of whom I have met, at present at work in Thailand; Mr. Tith Sarun and Mr. Hay Peng Sy. They both come from Cambodia and it seems to me that, where there are people of their calibre willing to do this work, means should be found of guaranteeing them entry to this country and residence here without their having to come to the United Kingdom to claim it. They can then continue work of very great value secure in the knowledge that their own eventual settlement is guaranteed, and I hope Her Majesty's Government can arrange for this to be done. It would give a real help at no cost whatever to ourselves.
The work of the voluntary agencies in the field is very valuable indeed and too varied for me to list tonight. I pause only to applaud the decision of Her Majesty's Government to support with their own funds on a pound-for-pound basis the work of those agencies where it is approved in the field. But there is an aspect of the problem that is beyond the voluntary agencies and which may be beyond ourselves on our own. I have already spoken of the acute poverty of some of the Thai people. Your Lordships
1360
can see that, where there are, I think, 11 million people living on the equivalent of less than £50 a year on one side of the camp wire toiling every day that God sends to produce a square meal most days of most weeks for their families, for them to see other people on the other side of the wire getting a handout which keeps them in health without doing a hand's turn is a politically and socially dangerous situation. In my view, that situation should be changed.
I note that our financial aid to Thailand in 1977—the last year for which we have figures—was £741,000, not a large figure, and it was devoted to replanting rubber trees. I would like to see a feasibility study of a plan to open out new areas for the cultivation of food crops; to connect them to existing areas by road and to market centres as well; to make additional allocations of land to the existing population as well as new allocations on a smaller scale to such refugees as may become semi-permanent members of that community, but that number should be kept to the absolute minimum.
Assistance with the provision of water and irrigation and the introduction of a basic medical service would enable a more prosperous community to grow up exactly where, in political terms, it is most needed; that is, where there exists both extreme poverty and a neighbouring Communist State bent on subversion. In this respect our overseas development policy seems to me to be the most effective arm of our foreign policy and the one that can be most positively strengthened by co-operation with our partners in Europe.
Let us beware of the alternative and popular method of development. Have we not just seen in Persia, in the most dramatic way, what happens when a rural and agricultural population is transferred by artificial pressures into an urban and industrial way of life? Is that not the strongest possible evidence that agricultural rather than industrial development should be the prime target of our aid? The world needs food urgently. What the peasant population needs most urgently is enough land to occupy their labour and a decent harvest year by year. Roads and water will supply both needs at once when the soil is located; the problem then is to see that any sizeable increase in the yield of the

1361
crops does not bring about a sizeable fall in the prices at which it is sold, in which case they will be running faster and faster to stay in the same place.
Here we touch on the whole question of single commodity agreements versus a common fund. In view of the fact that the whole of the Third World unanimously wants a common fund, I think we should satisfy ourselves as to its management and application again, and then seriously reconsider whether we cannot agree to do it in some form or another. As to the increase in productive capacity in rural employment, I do not think we have sufficiently considered the link between agricultural advance, rural stability and earning power in the ASEAN group and our own industrial and commercial interests.
There are, I believe, 250 million people in ASEAN. Their incomes are rising by, I think, over 4 per cent. GNP per annum. This is a huge market and one which we and Europe cannot afford to neglect. Thailand is threatened and, if we do not look out, that threat will threaten the whole of ASEAN. I do not want to prolong or broaden the debate; we have had a long day already, but I cannot resist pointing out one point in that context. I understand from the Press that we have recently lost an outlet for a good deal of our armaments manufacture. If the Thais make a reasonable proposition to us, I would remind the Government that a man carrying a sword is less likely to be attacked than a man carrying a stick, and I do not think we should be unreasonable in replying to any request they make.
This is an urgent matter; the economic matter is urgent, too. I will truncate what I have to say further but not to the exclusion of a plea that we may now consider again the numbers of refugees who may come into this country. One of the voluntary agencies at least have said off the record that they think they could place 5,000 themselves if they had the financial resources to do it, to support their reception centres. I would remind your Lordships that when the first publicity came to us about the boat people and their crisis, one of the first offers of housing came from Birmingham. If anything was calculated to scotch the fear that there may be a racial problem here,
1362
that was it. A policy which settles small groups large enough to give them security together, small enough to avoid a ghetto mentality, seems to be the least we can do.
There is another aspect of this to which I think the noble Lord, Lord Geddes, may refer. But, in case he does not, I would refer to the suggestion now widely applauded in the Far East that, since the pressure on the countries of first asylum is becoming intolerable and dangerous and there is no prospect of catching up with the backlog of refugees for a number of years, the United Nations or an agency acting for it should obtain an island of its own and that the present refugee camps could become staging posts to that camp.
That has obvious dangers. If the journey out is made too comfortable and attractive, the problem is enormously increased. Your Lordships may not quite have grasped the implications of what I said about the ethnic factor in Vietnam. There are between 1½ million and 2½ million Chinese in Vietnam and they are now poised, like the tidal wave which broke over Portland yesterday, over the tiny economies of Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia. There is a real chance that this may come and we must use diplomatic pressures to resist that, and they must balance the attractions of the island to which I referred. However, whereas a week ago I was against the idea, I now believe the alternative may be worse.
Noble Lords have been very patient and have listened to a long and sad story. There is so much sorrow in the world, let us do a little to reduce it. Our foreign policy in South-East Asia should be founded on economic good sense and informed by compassion. That means that we must recognise and favour the growing economic ties between Europe and ASEAN. We must contribute to raising the standard of living of ASEAN's poorest people, and to some of the destitute and dispossessed we must offer our friendship and a home at the time of the greatest crisis of their lives.
8.20 p.m.
The Lord Bishop of ROCHESTER: My Lords, I know that it would be the wish of many noble Lords that I should begin my speech by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Elton, for having raised this

1363
urgent and tragic subject in your Lordships' House tonight. We are extremely grateful to him for his very well-informed and deeply moving speech, as we were for his contribution to the debate last week on the International Year of the Child. Few of us can rival his knowledge or his recent experience of visiting the countries concerned, but none of us can fail to be moved by the desperate situation which he has described to us so vividly tonight. As the noble Lord has made clear, the magnitude of the problem is now such that it is quite beyond the best efforts of the voluntary agencies to deal with it unaided, but it is about their contribution that I shall speak briefly.
In the last 40 years refugee service has been a major commitment of all branches of the Christian Church, not least of those Churches associated together in the World Council of Churches, which in turn work very closely with the United Nations High Commissioner for Regufees, as does the Roman Catholic relief organisation. In this country Christian Aid, which is the Churches' own agency for relief work, has recently made an emergency grant to support the Malaysian Red Crescent's work among Vietnamese refugees in that country. This grant, made in response to an appeal by the League of Red Cross Societies, will, it is hoped, assist the recruitment of technical personnel for the medical and general welfare programme.
It will also help to finance a tracing programme in Malaysia set up by the International Committee of the Red Cross, which is aimed at reuniting families who have become separated in the course of leaving Vietnam and arriving on the East Coast of Malaysia. This may seem a very small thing to set against the whole horrific situation, but it is by such personal ministry to individuals, deprived not only of their home but of their family ties as well, that some small measure of self-confidence can be restored to desperately unhappy people.
In Thailand the Church of Christ in Thailand, a presbyterian body, has been grappling for several years with a steadily escalating refugee problem. It has received help through the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, especially in the supply of food for seriously under-
1364
nourished people. But it remains the task of the voluntary agencies to organise and to pay for a substantial proportion of other commodities, such as clothing, tent mats, blankets, and medical facilities. Refugee service, undertaken in the name of the Christian churches, also aims at providing elementary education for children, as well as some rudimentary vocational training for young people.
In Hong Kong the Christian Council, of which the Anglican Bishop is the chairman this year, has a long history of service to refugees. It is at the moment looking after more than 8,000 Indo-China refugees in transit camps at the same time as it is helping to care for the thousands of refugees who enter Hong Kong every year from China itself. Again, the services offered include training in languages and vocational skills to prepare refugees for resettlement elsewhere. On the occasion of the Chinese New Year at the end of January the Churches in Hong Kong gave family gift packets of fruit and sweets to Indo-Chinese refugees in the Kai Tak camp as a gesture of sharing in the joy of the New Year celebrations. That is a tiny symbolic act, but one which transcends all differences of nationality, language, and belief.
As I have said, the role of the voluntary agencies cannot but be a limited one now that the number of people involved has assumed such huge proportions. However, I am sure that your Lordships will agree that the maintenance of the kind of personal ministry, of pastoral care, and, where possible, of practical help to adjust to a new life should be the special responsibility of the voluntry agencies in the areas concerned, and that it is the duty of those in other parts of the world, however hard pressed they may feel themselves to be, to continue to assist this work, so much of which is done in their name.
But we must face the fact, my Lords, that the crying need is not for relief, but for resettlement, as the noble Lord has made so clear to us tonight. A letter just received from the Bishop of Hong Kong says:
"Our concern is that the nations which can should take concerted action as soon as possible so as to prevent a 'running sore' appearing in South East Asia".
We all hope that Her Majesty's Government will continue to play their part in promoting such concerted action.
8.26 p.m.
Lord MONSON: My Lords, if I may echo the right reverend Prelate, I would say that I am sure that the entire House is grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Elton, for drawing our attention so powerfully, so comprehensively, and indeed so passionately, to this important and tragic problem, the full magnitude of which has been far too little appreciated in the West generally, and in this country in particular. The noble Lord's Question draws attention to the predicament of the 200,000 refugees and asks about the causes of the exodus and its implications for British foreign policy.
I shall take the causes first. I am sorely tempted to run through the history of the past 30 to 35 years in order to demonstrate how very wrong the "fun revolutionaries" were; how wrong the ill-informed students of Berkeley, of Nanterre, of the LSE, and of West Berlin (of all unlikely places) were to cast aspersions upon American motives. They were perfectly entitled to criticise American strategy and American tactics, as did many of us who, in broad terms, supported America. (What a tragedy it was that the Americans had nobody of the calibre of General Templar, with his sensitivity to local conditions.) But they were not right to criticise and impugn American motives, inspired as they were by the highest ideals of the Kennedy era.
However, your Lordships will hardly welcome a lengthy analysis at this late hour. Therefore, suffice to say that over a generation ago, when Ho Chi Minh came to power in the North, over 2 million Vietnamese—most of them Roman Catholics, but not entirely so—fled South. In contrast, virtually none fled in the other direction. Whatever one's assessment of the merits of both contending sides, the proof of the pudding is surely in the eating. To cut a long story short, I should say that the uneasy truce evolved into a war, initiated not by the Americans, but by the North Vietnamese Communist Party, as a Labour Member of Parliament then representing an Essex constituency, and now a junior Minister, made clear to the House of Commons at the time.
When Russian-built tanks rumbled into Saigon in April 1975 it was perfectly obvious to me (and to many others) that history was going to repeat itself, the
1366
only questions being: when would the exodus take place, and exactly what form would it take? Of course, there were a great many naive optimists in this country and elsewhere who thought that a new era of peace and concord was about to begin. To be fair, they were in good company. What was known as the Third Force in South Vietnam, mainly but not entirely Buddhist, who disliked the Thieu Government and the Communists equally, thought that they would be able to reach a modus vivendi with the conquerors. But, alas!, my Lords, Stalinists do not change their spots, and the members of the Third Force became sadly disillusioned people, and have joined the exodus in large numbers.
The predicament of these peoples, referred to in the first part of the noble Lord's Question, or of a small segment of them, was something I was able to see almost exactly two years ago, when my wife and I visited, on two occasions, the refugee camp in Songkhla, Southern Thailand, on the Eastern part of the isthmus, fairly near the Malaysian border. The camp consisted almost entirely of boat people who had made the perilous journey across the Gulf of Siam. I use the word "made" in both senses of the word, because many of them had made it, many of them had not. I have also used the description "refugee camp", but I think one really ought to call a spade a spade and refer to it as an internment camp, because that is in fact what it is. I suppose most refugee camps fall into this category, with the possible exception of those in the Near East.
I imply no criticism of the Thais at all in this matter. I agree entirely with what the noble Lord, Lord Elton, mentioned about the poverty of Thailand. I think it is all too easy to forget that the quadrupling of the oil price at the end of 1973 hit the poor countries of Asia, of Africa and of Latin America almost as badly as, if not worse than, it hit the industrialised West. In addition, the Thais have to cope, with not only the influx from Vietnam and from Cambodia, which is fairly recognisable and to some extent can be contained, but the influx from Laos. The people of Laos are ethnically and linguistically not very different from the peoples of North-Eastern Thailand, and in consequence they can slip across the border very easily without being

1367
spotted and merge into the population. The North-Eastern part of Thailand is an arid, infertile and consequently very poor part of that country, and therefore the problems of their entry are quite considerable.
My Lords, to revert to the internment camp or refugee camp (call it what you will) at Songkhla, at the time I arrived there were just over 1,000 people crammed into a space about three-quarters of the size of this Chamber. It was what was laughingly called the dry season. There never really is a dry season in that part of Thailand, the rubber-producing and tin-mining area, so it was only relatively dry. Accordingly, it was reasonably dry underfoot, but I hate to think what it would have been like in the really rainy season. The huts were constructed of corrugated iron, bamboo and woven reeds, and would have been quite inadequate to keep out a really heavy rainfall. It was good to see that the inhabitants were adequately fed—in quantity if not necessarily in quality—and were adequately clothed. The older people, the adults, had worn but clean clothing; the younger children were decked out in bright new T-shirts emblazoned with the sort of slogans that one sees in the Kings Road or in Kensington High Street. The UN, I think, had provided the food; and magnificent work was being done by a Scandinavian couple. I later heard that they were Swedish missionaries, and if indeed they were Swedish that certainly partly atones for the "radical chic" support of Sweden for the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese, and its disgraceful refusal to admit any of the victims of Communism within the last few years.
But the real problem, apart from the despair and the worry of the people about the safety of their relations—whether they had drowned or whether they were suffering in Vietnam in re-education camps, or whatever—was the question of space. It was not so bad for the babes in arms, of whom there were a few, or the older people, who possessed that valuable Buddhist stoicism, whether or not they were in fact Buddhists: many of them were in fact Roman Catholic. Many of the older people, some of whom spoke French or English, said to us, "It is worth undergoing any hardships because we are free; that is the important thing". The really poignant thing was seeing the plight of
1368
the children of school age and of the teenagers, who had no space whatsoever—healthy young people—in which to kick a football, to roll a hoop or even fly a kite, which is a popular pastime in that part of the world. It was really tragic to see young lives being wasted away like this month after month, year after year, with nowhere for them to expend their energies.
In addition, there was the problem of the locals gawking at the refugees. The locals were not totally hostile, but they were certainly not friendly, either. I am not sure that it was a question of envy, as the noble Lord, Lord Elton, implied was the case in the camp that he visited, because Songkhla is a fishing port and there is enough to eat; but ethnically and culturally the Southern Thais are very different from the Vietnamese. They are very much darker and their form of Buddhism is quite different from the Vietnamese form of Buddhism; and, as I said earlier, many of the Vietnamese are Roman Catholics, anyway. They would stand round the wire all day, gazing and pointing at the people inside, staring at them like monkeys in a zoo, and for a dignified people this must have been a most upsetting experience. I had of course read about refugee camps in various parts of the world, and had seen them on television, but until one actually visits one in person one cannot conceive of the atmosphere of despair that pervades them.
My Lords, what about the implications for our foreign policy?
Lord ELTON: My Lords, if the noble Lord would be kind enough to allow me to interrupt, I wanted to put a gloss on what he said about conditions at Songkhla, which I have not visited. I wish to do nothing to detract from the impression he has given, but it is the case that since I was in Aranya Prathet just over a year ago the Thai Government have undertaken the education of children inside the camps; and, in fact, the policy which was introduced on 2nd November 1977, of not allowing anybody outside the camp for any purpose, has been relaxed. I think we should not underestimate what the Thais are doing; and they do in fact pay for just over half the cost of every refugee every day, every year they are there.
Lord MONSON: My Lords, I am extremely grateful to the noble Lord for that intervention. I am very glad to hear what he has said, which was, of course, complete news to me. While I was there the children were being educated by their own parents or relations, but, of course, I did not know about their being allowed out, which makes all the difference in the world. I was quite ignorant, too, I am afraid to say, of the fact that the Thais are paying half the cost of the food themselves, which is extremely commendable. The whole world owes a great debt of gratitude to Thailand for this, I think.
My Lords, what about the implications for our foreign policy? I think I should deal with our home policy first. Almost two years ago I asked whether this country would admit a few more Thai refugees, at least to match the Latin American refugees in number. I regret to say that I was met with almost deafening silence from all quarters. However, the position has now been relaxed, and to his great credit the Home Secretary has agreed to let in a considerable number (by our standards) of these people. Naturally, we are an overcrowded island; and it is vital, I think, not to make the mistake that Governments did in the 'fifties and' sixties of contemptuously ignoring public opinion, as they did over the mass New Commonwealth immigration. We must keep in step with public opinion, and I am sure the Home Secretary is playing his cards extremely well here. I think he is going along hand-in-hand with public opinion on this. I think that if the numbers are kept to reasonable proportions, there will be no difficulty in that respect. Apart from this, the admission of a few thousand of these people will set an example, I hope, to other countries which are less overcrowded than our own—and now, of course, we come into the realms of foreign policy. France is doing extremely well in this respect. It is true that they have long-standing connections with Indo-China; nonetheless, this does not detract from their admirable record: I think that some 50,000 or more refugees have settled in France.
What about our other EEC partners? Is it not possible that they could be doing more? Australia is doing well, I think, despite combined opposition from the Communists and the National Front in
1370
Australia. It is not the first time that the extreme Right and the extreme Left have joined together for nefarious purposes; but Australia is doing extremely well in relation to her population—as is the United States, for fairly obvious reasons. What about South America? Very few refugees have settled there, as far as I know; and one would hope there might possibly be an outlet there. Israel has accepted a few; there is possibly an element of public relations in this, but none the less the gesture is to be welcomed. It might be expected that Taiwan would accept a substantial number of the ethnic Chinese refugees. But if Taiwan is to be treated as an international outcast—and I touched on this yesterday—I fear that we can hardly expect co-operation from this quarter. However many countries step up their quotas, this could only scratch the surface of the problem. The vital thing is to stop this continuing exodus.
My Lords, the omens are not good. The Daily Telegraph, in a report by Denis Warner on 27th December last—a report quoting from a Communist Party newspaper—reported that there were plans to take over the property of seven million farmers in the Mekong Delta who would lose their homes and the title to their lands. Such people will either fight or flee. They will probably flee because the Mekong Delta is not good guerrilla territory. I believe that every form of financial and other pressure must be brought to bear on Vietnam to relax their relentless pressure on their own people—including the withholding of the merchant ships which are financed with taxpayers' money and which still are going to be delivered to Vietnam according to an announcement yesterday in the other place—because, given the most conservative estimate, one out of every two of the boat people drown or die of hunger, thirst or exposure, are attacked by pirates or eaten by sharks before they reach land; so that we are not just talking about people driven from their land of birth (which is bad enough) but about mass murder, in effect about genocide. We must subordinate all other considerations, and certainly commercial ones, to the necessity, in conjunction with all other friendly nations, of putting a stop to it.
8.42 p.m.
Baroness VICKERS: My Lords, I feel diffident in speaking in this debate for we have had such experts when I myself have not been there recently. The idea was that, having dealt with refugees both in Europe and Indonesia, perhaps it might be helpful if I were to give a little of my experience. I should like to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Elton, on his most moving speech and on the great deal of trouble that he has taken in visiting these camps—when he has a very busy life in this country—and showing his compassion for these people.
We have a great many voluntary organisations in this country which are doing the best they can. There is the Standing Conference of British Organisations for Aid to Refugees. I should like to speak briefly on the question of Save the Children. They have been working there since 1976 and are still there. They are doing a valuable job with their medical work in connection with mother-and-child health. They already have five camps there. One camp has 38,000 people in it, mostly children. I thought that when I had to deal with a camp of 10,000 people in Indonesia that that was a great task, but the task there must be beyond anybody's abilities to do much. It must be very upsetting for them. However, they have medical teams and are training Thai doctors to help. There are quite a lot of expatriates working there. Unfortunately, the numbers are coming in even more quickly, I understand, at the present time. I have no breakdown by nationality of the inmates, but mostly they are from either Laos or Cambodia, although some are from Vietnam. In August 1978 there were 114,887 people in these camps. Now the figure has risen to over 140,000.
I should like to thank the Government, through the noble Lord, Lord Goronwy-Roberts, for the grant that they make. I gather that the organisation, themselves, are spending about £75,000 per annum on the work, but the Government are also granting about £37,000. For this they are grateful. The problem of these camps is that more are coming in than are going out. This is a great problem for the Thai Government who are doing a magnificent job at the present time in helping where they can.
1372
The Disasters Emergency Committee which met on 5th February last to discuss the problem sent a cable to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in which they expressed great concern in regard to this matter and asked for immediate action. I wonder what contact the Government have with the Governments concerned to see whether there is a possibility of allowing the British Red Cross or, better still, the International Red Cross, to go in to see what the conditions are. I understand (and I may not be right) that they cannot go in unless the Governments concerned invite them. I was very pleased that the Government of Indonesia invited me and the International Red Cross to visit the camps. With the permission of the Government we went round the various camps—and, of course, the people are in camps and are kept there. They were mostly Asians, but there was quite a number of Dutch, also.
The Government said, in effect: "If you can get them to sign an agreement that they will be faithful to our Government we will let them out gradually. If they will not sign, we will see that they will get out in an orderly way". Some 75,000 opted to leave. We did not bring them out too quickly; we wanted to plan the thing; and this was allowed. Is there any chance that, in talking to the Governments concerned, we might get some action taken on these lines. It would be beneficial to everybody. First, they would get rid of the people who were not keen to stay, and, secondly, they would be able to get supplies for those who do want to stay there and to look after them better in the future. I tried to persuade most of them to stay. I felt and still feel that for these people the climate in many countries to which they go now is not suitable for them and probably will not be beneficial to their health. Tuberculosis, we know, is rife in some of these countries. I should have thought that the thing to do would be to try to get some agreement—this may be quite impossible; I am merely putting the suggestion forward—with the Governments concerned.
There are a number of countries that we know of like Guyana which are very under-populated and which already have a mixed population. What approach has been made to some of these countries? I merely give that one as an example. Mr. Jones went there with all his "crew".

1373
They are under-populated and they need more people in their country. These refugees are hard-working and I am sure that they would fit in well. In Trinidad and Tobago—and I am not suggesting they take any—the Chinese, the Indians and the African stock all get on very well together. I should like to know from the Minister concerned whether anything has been thought of in this way.
Lord MONSON: My Lords, I do not think that these people would like to go from one Marxist frying pan into another Marxist fire.
Baroness VICKERS: My Lords, they will probably get on very well together. I do not think it is fair to say that Guyana is a Marxist country. They have quite a stable Government. The noble Lord, Lord Goronwy-Roberts, may correct me if I am wrong, but I would not say that it is a Marxist country. Neither would I say Belize or these others were Marxist. After all, these people will be so grateful that I do not think they are going to start political trouble when they go to other countries. They will be grateful for their chance to earn their living and live, I hope, happily and peacefully, creating a new life for themselves. I do not think this is a political matter in any way and I am very sorry that the noble Lord raised that point.
There are other organisations, like the Ockenden Venture, who would be perfectly willing to set up children's homes in the countries concerned, if they could get permission. This is something else that I should like the noble Lord to think about. I am anxious that as many people as possible should settle in their own country; it is much the happiest way for them. Perhaps we could do something and have Government-to-Government talks if this is possible or, through the International Red Cross, find some way in which these people can live happily among their relations rather than in the dreadful conditions to which the noble Lord, Lord Elton, referred, with the tragic loss of lives particularly among the boat people when they are trying to escape. I am putting this forward as an idea. It works in Indonesia. People have said very rude things and unfortunate things about Indonesia, too. I do not know whether the noble
1374
Lord is interested in Indonesia; it also has been criticised. It works very well; things have settled down happily. I hope this point may be given consideration.
8.52 p.m.
Lord SEGAL: My Lords, I feel that we are all very grateful indeed to the noble Lord, Lord Elton, for having initiated this debate, one which is long overdue. In my view, it is far more important than the debate which preceded it. We are discussing this evening not merely a matter of deprivation but the sheer saving of human lives, and very valuable human lives at that. The noble Lord, Lord Elton, speaks from a direct involvement with this terrible problem, having seen at first hand the sufferings of the refugees. I can only speak from my personal impressions of having visited South Vietnam on three occasions prior to its fall into the hands of the Viet Cong.
The tragedy that has followed in the wake of this so-called "liberation" is painfully known to all of us: the battered old hulks, laden with their grizzly cargoes of desperate refugees, seeking asylum anywhere on dry land so long as it is not in Vietnam. It is a bitter tribute to the agonies that these people have had to endure. What is not known to us and may never be known, as the noble Lord, Lord Elton, pointed out, is the number of the countless thousands of refugees who have been drowned in the desperate efforts to escape from their former homeland, now converted into a living hell, or the fate of even more countless thousands uprooted from their urban homes and dumped into bare, rural areas without adequate subsistence and little hope of survival. It is a degree of rural deprivation and sheer inhumanity that is almost beyond the power of words to describe.
I remember very vividly seeing a propaganda film by the Viet Cong shown in Vienna two years ago when they showed with a sense of triumph and achievement lorries rounding the streets of Saigon with people being forced into them: the old, the young, the crippled and the maimed. They were dumped in open bare land, given spades in their hands and expected to survive. The same film showed a classroom in a primary school where the desks were occupied by former

1375
Vietnam staff generals being indoctrinated in the ideals of communism: another so called triumph for this liberation of the land by the Viet Cong.
Perhaps it is not widely known—and it ought to be more widely known—that Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, was formerly a city of more than 2 million inhabitants, one of the finest, most beautiful cities in the Far East, even after the ravages of more than 20 years of war had left their scars. The most industrious part of this vast city of 2 million inhabitants was its Chinese quarter. These Chinese were not communists, rather the reverse. They were mostly small traders or honest labourers wishing only to be left with their families to run their small businesses or pursue their occupations in peace. South Vietnam in those days, despite the war, was a beautiful, fertile country, one of the great rice growing areas of the world.
The Vietnamese had a great culture of their own, with an art and literature dating back for centuries, a culture of which any country might be proud. Now millions of inhabitants long to escape, seeking a refuge anywhere beyond its shores. Here I must pay tribute to what has been done in this country to give refuge to these unfortunate people. But in admitting something like 3,000 of these refugees—double the number that we have accepted only recently—I feel that we have not done nearly enough. Will my noble friend, when he comes to reply, inform the House how many refugees from Indo-China have been received by France? I recall vividly stopping at Charles de Gaulle Airport outside Paris when planeloads of these refugees had already arrived: the look of relief on their faces, some of them having had to wait between 12 and 14 hours until the voluntary services came to take them away to reception centres, the women and children huddled together but with a happy expression on their faces at having left Vietnam.
How many of these refugees from Indo-China have been received by Australia, and even by Hong Kong with its total population of only 4 million people crowded into a tiny, over-populated area? Of course, I cannot expect my noble
1376
friend to give us all these figures right now off the cuff; but perhaps later it may be of interest to others than myself to know what figures of refugees from Indo-China have been received into other countries. Why I am so desperately anxious for far more refugees from Indo-China being admitted into this country is not only on urgent, humanitarian grounds, but because they are a most diligent, honest, hard working people who will more than repay any helping hand that we can hold out to them.
I have often wondered why so many people from the Philippines are employed in this country on domestic work, especially in our hard-pressed hospitals. Their plight is not so urgent or so desperate as that of the Vietnamese. They are refugees from poverty, not from physical or political persecution. Surely we have our priorities of compassion a little out of context. Can my noble friend quote the number of Philippine nationals who have been granted permits to work in this country? How many are in the hotel and catering trades, in domestic work or working as hospital ancillaries? On every hand we see advertisements for Filipino staff seeking domestic work in this country. There are even employment agencies catering specifically for Filipino immigrants. Their work varies a great deal in efficiency, and many have proved to be indifferent workers, who may have found it difficult to adjust themselves to working conditions in this country.
The situation is totally different with the refugees from Indo-China. They are desperate to find work in this country, as in any other country. They will prove themselves a steady, hard-working labour force, especially if recruited to work in our hospitals, where I am sure they would never go on strike. Can we not admit into our population of over 50 million at least 10,000 of these unfortunate people? It would be a bold, merciful, humanitarian gesture, even if it only touched the tip of the iceberg. Especially, it would be a gesture on the part of our Labour Government, and one which would pay handsome dividends. It would be a gesture that I am sure we would never regret. On the contrary, they would return our confidence by loyal, diligent and hardworking service and they would prove a great asset to our community.

1377
Therefore, I would appeal to my noble friend, whose heart is as warm as his head is cool—and no greater tribute could possibly be paid to him—to respond whole heartedly to the pleas we are making to him today from all sides of the House. If we cannot admit these refugees from Indo-China into six figures, which is rather too much to expect perhaps, can we not hold out a helping hand to numbers of them running at least into five figures?
9.3 p.m.
Lord GEDDES: My Lords, I had not originally intended to speak in this extremely important and topical debate, not because of any lack of interest in the subject but rather because of a fear, which others have been kind enough to tell me is illfounded, that in instancing the position of Hong Kong in this context I was in danger of over-exposure on one particular subject. On the other hand, as previously advised, I have lived in Hong Kong and in relative terms, therefore, I have a certain firsthand knowledge of Hong Kong and its problems, not the least of which is its constant one of attempting to get not so much a quart, but rather a gallon, of population into a pint pot. Then this morning I was given the final push over the brink of participation on receiving information that the noble Lord, Lord Rhodes, was not able to speak today, being snowed up in the depths of Lancashire. In no way would, or could, I presume to substitute for the noble Lord, but I did speak with him this morning and he has asked me to say how disappointed he is that he cannot be here today and is therefore unable to illustrate, inter alia, Hong Kong's position in the context of this very important debate, on which I, too, would like to add my thanks and congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Elton, for bringing it to our attention.
A comment that was made in another place on 15th December last, compared the density of population of Earls Court to that of Hong Kong, as being in the ratio of 7 to 1. I am aware that the honourable Member concerned has been advised that, comparing like with like, his statistics were perhaps miseading. My purpose in raising this point is not at all to draw attention to that honourable Member's slip of the tongue, put rather to advise your Lordships that he ratio should have been not 7 to 1 but
1378
at least 1 to 8: in other words, Hong Kong has substantial areas where the population is over 800 to the acre, and in many parts of the older urban areas the density is as high as 2,000 to the acre. Hong Kong, as has been said by other noble Lords, is close to bursting at the seams and certainly, in this context, the United Kingdom Parliament in its broadest sense has, at the very least, a moral obligation to mitigate any exaggeration of that problem.
The problem of refugees is far from new. Even Moses had his problems with Pharaoh, but at least he had somewhere to go and he had control, directly or indirectly, of marine energy to help him get there! Today's refugees have no less need of both, but I suggest that the world has got complacent, perhaps to an extent through over-exposure of the always pitiful trails of people carrying all that they have, or all that they can, across the face of our television screens. The problem of refugees is surely now an international one, and if this debate achieves nothing else it will continue to bring that problem to people's attention.
Today, the Indo-Chinese refugees are a focus of attention, and here I would mention two particular facets. The first is the question of numbers. Just under a year ago, twin moves—the one physical and the other financial—by the Vietnamese authorities started an exodus wave, particularly of ethnic Chinese, from that country. In the period April 1978 to January 1979, it is very roughly estimated that at least 400,000 ethnic Chinese and Vietnamese have fled from Vietnam. Noble Lords will, I am sure, appreciate the difficulties of obtaining accurate statistics, but to reinforce the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Elton, the breakdown of that 400,000 is perhaps 150,000 to China; 140,000 to Thailand; 60,000 to Malaysia; 20,000 to Hong Kong; and in excess of 30,000 to the other South-East Asian countries. Four hundred thousand is already a very large number but, as I think the noble Lord, Lord Elton, said, it is but the tip of a vast iceberg.
In an article in the Far Eastern Economic Review of 22nd December last year, it was reported that:
"Few of the Chinese who have fled so far come with more than one or two members of their immediate families, and almost all who were interviewed indicated that they expected their family members still in Vietnam to try to join them".

1379
As we have heard, it is estimated that there are between 1½ million and 2½ million ethnic Chinese in Vietnam. Add to that the many ethnic Vietnamese who also wish to leave, and the potential numbers of refugees from Vietnam could be on a scale that almost defies today's imagination.
I mentioned two facets. The first was sheer numbers. The second, which, if true, is disgraceful in the extreme, is the alleged connivance, and perhaps even active involvement, of the Vietnamese authorities in accepting—that is, charging—between 2,000 and 3,000 United States dollars payable in gold per head to allow refugees to leave Vietnam. I would emphasise that such allegations, although widely reported by authoritative journalists, have yet to be proved and should therefore be treated with corresponding caution. The noble Lord, Lord Goronwy-Roberts, in reply to a supplementary question on 31st January from the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, referred to,
"the enormity of the guilt of those who are responsible for this massive enforced exodus".—[Official Report, col. 134.]
If the Press reports to which I have refered are proven, how much greater is the enormity of that guilt?
On the same occasion, the noble Lord, Lord Goronwy-Roberts, referred to the excellent, but increasingly difficult, task being performed in this context by the Hong Kong Government. I should like to re-emphasise the praise given to Hong Kong for both its approach and its action. The appalling dilemma, certainly for Hong Kong, is that it just cannot continue. As well as the arrival in Hong Kong in the last six weeks of some 10,000 refugees from Vietnam, a further 13,000 refugees from China have arrived over the same period. If that kind of rate continues Hong Kong will, by the end of this year, have taken in, whether permanently or temporarily, an extra 200,000 refugees in 12 months.
To put that figure into certainly one kind of perspective, the United Kingdom, with a population rather more than 10 times Hong Kong's, would be faced with a refugee influx of 2 million in 12 months. I am not suggesting that the United Kingdom has any such obligation. I am
1380
suggesting that the United Kingdom Government have a very strong obligation, both to emphasise the problem of Vietnamese refugees on the international stage, not least by continued representations in the strongest terms to the Vietnamese Government, and, more particularly, to honour their obligations to Hong Kong in doing their utmost, in discussions with other Governments and the United Nations, in relieving Hong Kong of its increasing burden.
The noble Lord, Lord Elton, mentioned the possibility of what might be called an interim island. Such an island would certainly be a precedent—and I, too, have the same or very similar doubts to those expressed by the noble Lord—and it would be a risky precedent. But, it must be asked, would it be any more risky than an escalation of the present ad hoc situation? I can really do no better than end by quoting from the same editorial as that instanced by the noble Lord, Lord Elton, that of the South China Morning Post of 9th February, which read in part:
"Unless we"—
that is, Hong Kong—
"are careful, humanitarianism for these new comers can breed social problems in the future. The Vietnamese influx, in time, will only exacerbate the problems created by the current Chinese influx. So while expressing our utmost sympathy, let us not allow such sympathy to blind us to the reality of the consequences of accepting increasing numbers of people, quite apart from the more obvious fact that by opening up our territory with its very limited resources we can only progressively dilute the quality of life that our people have struggled so hard to achieve in recent years".
9.14 p.m.
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, the House will indeed be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Elton, for giving it the opportunity to debate this important and poignant Question and for the powerful and informed speech with which he opened the discussion. Hundreds of thousands of refugees have fled various countries in South-East Asia since the events of 1975, suffering great hardship, losing their possessions and, indeed, losing life itself in many cases. The British Government, the British people and Parliament have expressed in practical terms, as well as otherwise, their profound sympathy for these refugees, and tonight we have again emphasised our profound concern about the continuation of this terrible situation in that part ot the world.

1381
We also deeply sympathise with those territories in South-East Asia which are having to shoulder immense burdens in coping with the influx of these refugees. The rapid and increasing exodus from Vietnam in particular has placed an intolerable strain upon some countries in this region. The Government fully support the action being taken by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to try to find solutions to this most difficult and complex problem, and we warmly applaud the success he has already achieved in resettling tens of thousands of refugees from Indo-China.
Unfortunately, however, as the noble Lord quite rightly pointed out, the number of those still requiring resettlement grows larger every day. I believe that this was a point which was emphasised by the noble Baroness, Lady Vickers. It is, indeed, estimated that nearly 70,000 boat people, as they are called, still require to be resettled. Most are in Malaysia, but large numbers are also in Hong Kong and other territories in the region. Apart from these, there are nearly 140,000 refugees in camps in Thailand. The High Commissioner needs the assistance of the whole international community, not just the assistance of a few countries, in trying to help these unfortunate people. I shall, of course, respond to the request of my noble friend Lord Segal for figures as to the contribution made to resettlement by various countries. My noble friend asked some detailed questions and, as he suggested, these are for reply, perhaps in the next few days.
The British Government are playing their part and have encouraged other countries to do likewise. Since 1975, some 1,400 refugees from Indo-China have been accepted for settlement in the United Kingdom. My right honourable friend the Home Secretary announced in another place on 17th January his decision—to which the noble Lord, Lord Monson, I was glad to hear, paid tribute—to admit to the United Kingdom a further 1,500 Vietnamese refugees over the next 12 to 15 months. I am urged to do better. We shall certainly continue to study the matter to see how much more we can do.
I would remind the House, of course, that we have certain obligations of entrance to others in various parts of the world who live in the former Empire
1382
and who have claims upon us. They number something like 70,000 a year. These are not refugees, but they have claims upon this country and upon our resources. I believe that more than one noble Lord has emphasised that in extending the hand of humanity to the refugees we must be careful to do so in such a way that we do not neglect to meet other rightful claims upon our hospitality from other quarters.
Lord ELTON: My Lords, I wonder whether the noble Lord would allow me to ask him a question on this point? May I ask him whether the refugee quota is subtracted from the overall quota of people coming to this country for settlement? Secondly, may I ask him whether he would respond to the request of countries of first asylum that we might announce rather longer ahead the quotas which we would accept? I regret that I omitted from my speech a whole passage of thanks to the Government for what they have done in various spheres. I join with the noble Lord in this. Would it not be possible, by extending forwards the programme and having a steady flow, to assist the unwilling hosts that these people are staying with now to plan the eventual exodus?
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, on the second point, I certainly think that can be studied with sympathy. It seems to be a point of practical interest to us all. On the first point of whether the so-called quota is subtracted from the total entry I have not the information to hand at the moment but it is a point of importance and I will see that the noble Lord and the House are given the right information on that.
The noble Baroness, Lady Vickers, and my noble friend Lord Segal, made a number of other suggestions which I have noted very carefully. It would perhaps take too much time this evening for me to discuss them at any length, but I will certainly ask my right honourable friends to consider what has been suggested. One aspect of the problem which is sometimes overlooked is the immense cost of maintaining and caring for the refugees while they are awaiting durable solutions to their problems. Britain is a leading financial contributor to international refugee programmes. During 1978 we

1383
pledged nearly £7 million to the High Commissioner for Refugees for various refugee programmes throughout the world. Of this, over £2 million was earmarked for his programmes in South-East Asia. Most of the High Commissioner's funds for the South-East Asia programme have been expended on Thailand, which is at present coping with a greater number of refugees than most other countries in the region.
Funds have also been made available by the Government, as we have heard, to British voluntary agencies working among refugees in Thailand. The Government recognise that many voluntary agencies, international and British, secular and Christian—or should I say secular and religious? I do not know whether there is an appropriate distinction in this matter—will recognise that all these are active in supplementing the work in Thailand of the High Commission itself. This year grants, usually up to 50 per cent. of project cost, have been made, or are likely to be made, for projects promoted in that part of the world by the National Council of the YMCA, the YWCA, Project Vietnam Orphans, Save the Children Fund and the British Red Cross. The noble Baroness raised the question of access by voluntary organisations, agencies, to refugee camps. I have no record of complaints received from voluntary agencies on this score but in the light of the remarks made by the noble Baroness I will certainly look into the matter.
Most of the projects to which I have referred are direct supplements to the basic help given to refugees by the High Commissioner and they provide primary and secondary education, vocational training and health care. It is outside the mandate of the High Commissioner to assist the local population where these voluntary agencies operate, but I am sure that in helping the refugees as such, the voluntary agencies certainly do not pass by on the other side of the road if there are cases among the indigenous population in which they can help. It is sometimes a real problem, which we must recognise, that refugees in camps of this kind, though by no means living in comfort, nevertheless can be better off than the local population in their vicinity. So there is this virtue in voluntary agencies, that they are resilient, they are flexible
1384
in their operation as well as their approach. Their humanity is not over-bound by strict rule.
The noble Lord, Lord Geddes, I was glad to hear, drew particular attention to the position of Hong Kong. Hong Kong, which is already overcrowded, is bearing a particularly heavy burden in coping not only with the steady stream of Vietnamese who arrive in their own junks, or even rescued at sea and brought there by merchant vessels, but also with the daily flow of immigrants from China, all told about 100,000 last year.
The Colony's population has grown from about half a million in 1945 to nearly 5 million today, a tenfold increase. It is greatly to the credit of the Government of Hong Kong, and perhaps particularly to the credit of the present Governor of Hong Kong, that the tremendous task of providing for this rapidly increasing indigenous population has proceeded so successfully while at the same time coping with this massive influx of refugees of opportunity as well as others who have come into the Colony over the past 20 or 30 years. Since 1975 the Hong Kong Government have arranged for 4,800 former residents of Vietnam to come to Hong Kong to join close relatives there. A further 5,700, who have made their own way to the Colony, have been allowed to settle even though they had no special claim on Hong Kong. In addition, there are now over 10,000 people who have been granted temporary shelter in the Colony and who are awaiting resettlement elsewhere.
The Hong Kong Government's policy towards such refugees has been to allow all those who make their way to Hong Kong in their own boats to land temporarily until they can be resettled in other countries. Hong Kong has also provided temporary shelter for any refugees picked up at sea by vessels whose first scheduled port of call is Hong Kong. The arrival of the "Huey Fong" just before Christmas created a very serious problem for the Hong Kong Government. Hong Kong was not the ship's first port of call, and while still 1,000 miles away from Hong Kong and about the same distance from Taiwan the master was warned that he would not be allowed to enter Hong Kong and should proceed to his original destination, which was in Taiwan. He

1385
ignored this message and efforts to persuade him to sail for Taiwan failed. This is the background to the "Huey Fong" incident. The Hong Kong Government's decision to allow the passengers of the "Huey Fong" to disembark in the Colony was taken, therefore, for humanitarian reasons.
There is, however, a limit to the numbers Hong Kong can absorb, and there is real and very understandable concern among the people of Hong Kong that other vessels might be encouraged to adopt the same action as the "Huey Fong". Indeed, their fears have been borne out, and another vessel, the "Skyluck", with some 3,000 people aboard, has now entered Hong Kong waters. I agree with my noble friend Lord Segal when he said that the exodus of refugees from Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia is a grim testament to the conditions in those three countries since Communist and totalitarian regimes seized power in Indo-China in 1975. In South Vietnam, in Laos and in Cambodia we have seen not only a drastic fall in the standards of living for many people but also the imposition of systems which violate basic human rights. I do not need to recount the terrible violations which have occurred in Cambodia. I am glad to say that this Government took the lead in bringing those events in Cambodia to the attention of the United Nations by raising them at the Human Rights Commission in Geneva. Since then the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia has imposed yet more burdens on the long-suffering Cambodian people—one dictatorship imposed upon another. Noble Lords will have seen the international condemnation that the Vietnamese action has caused.
The situation in Vietnam and Laos continues to give profound cause for concern. Many Vietnamese and Laotians are still detained without trial in so-called "re-education" camps. There have been reports of the forced movement of people in Vietnam to new economic zones and of many restrictions on personal, political, religious and other freedoms. The awful risks to life which many thousands of boat refugees who flee from Vietnam are prepared to run show clearly that it is not poverty alone from which they are fleeing. Moreover, it is most disturbing that there are credible reports—I must say this in response to my noble friend Lord Geddes
1386
—that Vietnamese agencies have been organising and profiting from the departure of these refugees. These reports relate that refugees, on payment of gold, board large ships or small boats and, deprived of all their possessions, leave on hazardous voyages to neighbouring countries which have no wish to receive them. It is appalling that any Government or country could permit, let alone encourage, such a traffic in human lives.
The Government are particularly concerned at the reports of an organised scheme whereby large ships are chartered, through the connivance of Vietnamese officials and unscrupulous entrepreneurs, to pick up thousands of refugees directly from Vietnam and then sail unbidden to neighbouring countries. Noble Lords will have read the articles in the Observer of 11th February and the Daily Telegraph of 10th February about this cynical arrangement. I believe that those articles give a good and true impression of what is going on. It is scarcely possible to believe that organised departures on such a scale could be taking place without the full knowledge of the Governments concerned.
My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs recently summoned the Vietnamese Ambassador to express his concern about such reports and to say that these practices should be stopped. The Government's concern was reiterated by a senior official of my office to the Ambassador again, on 13th February. Indeed, my right honourable friend had previously told the Ambassador of the concern felt by the Government and the British people as a whole—including many who were not unsympathetic to the Vietnamese during the Indo-China war—about the overall human rights situation in Vietnam. I regret to say that there is no evidence that the Vietnamese Government have significantly altered their policies. As I have said, a further vessel, the "Skyluck" has now arrived in Hong Kong with another 3,000 refugees. Other vessels may be on the way. The consequences of this are under consideration, and they must inevitably affect a wider relationship with Vietnam. Obviously there has to be some order in dealing with this massive flow of refugees from Vietnam. The Vietnamese Government have said that they will co-operate

1387
with the High Commissioner for Refugees in taking measures to allow those Vietnamese who wish to do so to leave Vietnam in an orderly fashion. It remains to be seen whether that statement represents a genuine change of heart and, if so, how it will work out in practice.
We in this House tonight, in this debate, and myself, speaking on behalf of Her Majesty's Government, have once more made absolutely clear how we regard this situation, which is not new but which has evolved in terrifying proportions in the last year or so in South-East Asia. I emphasise that it is not susceptible of solution by one country alone. It is an international problem which must be tackled internationally. Conscience is indivisible, and it is the conscience of the world which is gradually being aroused by these practices of mass persecution and mass expulsion, because that is what they amount to.
I am grateful to noble Lords for their contributions to this important debate, and I greatly hope that this debate will help to persuade those who are responsible and those who can make the biggest contribution to a solution of this problem to listen to the voice of humanity and reason, as it has been so clearly raised in this House tonight.
Lord ELTON: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down I should like to ask him whether he has taken on board what I regard as an important proposal; that is, that the Government should look at the means of economic aid to rural development in Thailand as a means of supporting that country, as a strategic as well as an economic concept.
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, yes, indeed. When the Thai Prime Minister called on our Prime Minister a week ago last Saturday—and I was privileged to be present at the meeting—he raised this matter. We undertook to look into it to see how much more we could do. My right honourable friend the Minister for Overseas Development is in fact actively examining the possibilities. I think I may say that the upshot may well be favourable.