Lords Sitting of 3 July 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 Carlisle.
Several Lords—Took the Oath.

PAY BEDS IN NHS HOSPITALS
The Earl ALEXANDER of TUNIS: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government how much of the taxpayers' money will be saved in the next 12 months by their policy of having pay beds in National Health Service hospitals.
Lord CULLEN of ASHBOURNE: My Lords, the provisional estimate of income received in 1978–79 from private inpatients in NHS hospitals in England is £29·7 million. We do not know how many pay beds would have been withdrawn over the next year if the previous Government's policy had continued, nor to what extent these withdrawals would have affected the level of income. Nor do we know how many pay beds there will be under our policy. I should point out that the Health Services Board, who have the job of making proposals for the withdrawal of beds, have just submitted proposals for the withdrawal of a further 58. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Social Services is obliged by law to implement these by 30th September. The board will be making further proposals in September for subsequent implementation. My right honourable friend will introduce legislation as soon as he can but I cannot of course say when this would come into effect.
Earl ALEXANDER of TUNIS: My Lords, I thank the Minister for his reply. Can he tell the House what is Her Majesty's
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Government's policy on private practice in National Health Service hospitals?
Lord CULLEN of ASHBOURNE: My Lords, the Minister of Health, Dr. Gerard Vaughan, has recently issued a consultative letter on the Government's proposals for legislation on private hospital practice and the future of pay beds. A copy of this letter has been placed in the Library, and all noble Lords who are interested in this subject would be well advised to read it. The detail of the proposals is in the letter, but, briefly, the proposals for pay beds are that the Secretary of State's power to allow NHS facilities to be made available for private patients will be restored and compulsory phasing out will end. It will be for individual health authorities to decide the extent to which facilities will be made available.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, will the noble Lord be good enough to inform the House how much of the tax-payers' money is lost every year as a result of people who use pay beds and do not pay their bill, and even bilk on their surgeon's and physician's fees?
Lord CULLEN of ASHBOURNE: My Lords, I have a feeling that the noble Lord knows the answer to that question, but unfortunately I do not.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord the Minister to accept the fact that I am satisfied that he acknowledges that this sort of thing does go on?
Lord HARMAR-NICHOLLS: My Lords, in order to help future decisions that will have to be made, would it be possible for the Official Report to record what has happened to the pay beds already phased out? How many have in fact been used as hospital beds? How many have been used for administrative offices, and how many are left empty?
Lord CULLEN of ASHBOURNE: My Lords, I am not sure that I have got all the answers there. I can tell the noble Lord that there were originally 4,444 pay beds before the phasing out began, and the present number that will be phased out is about 1,700 of those pay beds.
Lord HARMAR-NICHOLLS: My Lords, what has happened to them?
Lord CULLEN of ASHBOURNE: My Lords, I am afraid that I cannot answer that question, because many of those pay beds were underused at the time. Most of the pay beds which have been phased out were phased out on account of the fact that they were little used.
Lord WALLACE of COSLANY: My Lords, the noble Lord said that so much money would be lost if pay beds were abolished. Could he tell the House how much the average pay bed costs the country in provision of staff, nurses, doctors, facilities, and what have you?
Lord CULLEN of ASHBOURNE: My Lords, I am afraid I cannot. I can say that, of the £29 million-odd that the NHS received, a good deal would of course go in providing the service. There would be some profit on it, but not a very great one. On the other hand, if all the pay beds were phased out, those beds would have to be otherwise financed.
Lord ORR-EWING: My Lords, may I ask my noble friend to press the Government to proceed with legislation? It seems ridiculous to continue with an old, out-of-date policy which is against the present elected Government's Manifesto, particularly denying the money which comes from pay beds when modern equipment such as body scanners have to be closed down and sold off because hospitals do not now have the money to keep them equipped. This is a waste of effort and is totally unnecessary. Will legislation be coming forward fairly soon to reverse the policy of getting rid of pay beds?
Lord CULLEN of ASHBOURNE: My Lords, consultation is now going on and we are awaiting publication of the report of the Royal Commission on the National Health Service which is due to come out this month. Before that is seen and consultations have taken place no further decisions will be taken.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, the Minister said that £29 million would have been the figure to be received by the Government. Would he agree that it
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would be dependent on whether the pay beds in existence at that particular time had been in full use?
Lord CULLEN of ASHBOURNE: That is correct, my Lords.

RELATIONS WITH ARGENTINA
2.44 p.m.
Baroness EMMET of AMBERLEY: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what progress is being made with the normalisation of our diplomatic representation with the Argentine.
Lord TREFGARNE: My Lords, we are actively considering the level of our relations with Argentina. Our decision will be announced in due course.
Baroness EMMET of AMBERLEY: My Lords, may I suggest to the noble Lord—
Several noble Lords: No!
Baroness EMMET of AMBERLEY: My Lords, may I ask the Minister to consider that while there are certain differences between the Argentinians and ourselves, those difficulties would be much better handled and solved if we had an ambassador there who would give us a certain status which at the moment we do not have?
Lord TREFGARNE: I think my noble friend is quite right, my Lords, and that is why we are actively reconsidering our policy in this matter.
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, may I ask the Minister to accept from this side of the House—perhaps I might put this in an interrogatory form—the full support of the Opposition for the earliest possible resumption of normal diplomatic relations with a country with which we have had for some centuries ties of close friendship, both commercial and cultural? Perhaps from this House might go to our Argentinian friends, as proof

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of our desire to resume these relations, the fact that the ambassador designate in Buenos Aires is an officer of the highest credentials, of great experience of Latin America and of great personal friendship for the Argentine itself.
Lord TREFGARNE: My Lords, I am much obliged to the noble Lord for that helpful observation. I think we are actually continuing the policy of the previous Administration in this matter.
Lord MORRIS: My Lords, may I ask the Minister to be good enough to confirm that approaches were made by the Argentinian Government as long ago as February/March of this year, and would he further confirm that the reason for the delay can in no way be attributed either to the Argentinian Government or to Her Majesty's Government using the appointment of an ambassador as a bargaining counter?
Lord TREFGARNE: My Lords, of course we already have diplomatic representation at a lower level in Buenos Aires, but the appointment of an ambassador is an important matter and not to be rushed.
Lord AVEBURY: My Lords, is the Minister aware that on 19th June Members of both Houses received a deputation of the mothers of the Plaza de Mayo who were here to plead on behalf of the 15,000 persons who have disappeared in Argentina since the coup of March 1976 and whose relatives have been kept in ignorance as to what has happened to them? Would the Government, notwithstanding any change in the level of diplomatic representation in Buenos Aires, press for this matter to be laid before the United Nations Commission on Human Rights under the Article 1503 procedure as a gross and persistent violation of human rights? Will the Minister assert on behalf of the Government that the restoration of diplomatic representation at ambassadorial level is in no way to be taken as a derogation of the horror that the British people feel at the continued atrocities committed against the people of Argentina by the State?
Lord TREFGARNE: My Lords, our approval or disapproval of human rights considerations in various countries of the
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world does not necessarily affect our decision to appoint or otherwise the ambassador. If we took that as a criterion we should have hardly any ambassadors anywhere.
Viscount MONTGOMERY of ALAMEIN: My Lords, would the noble Lord not agree that the fact that there are more than half a million citizens of British descent living in Argentina, who are all God-fearing citizens, and the fact that there is great opportunity for trade and investment in the revived economic climate, give added reason to have an ambassador at an early date?
Lord TREFGARNE: That is certainly a special consideration, my Lords, but it is perhaps relevant and right for me to point out that the Argentine Government last year issued a decree calling on all religious organisations to register. Organisations which are considered a threat to public order, national security or Argentine morals or traditions may be refused registration and thus denied permission to practise. We are not very happy with that decision.

CHANNEL TUNNEL PROJECT
2.48 p.m.
Lord SWINFEN: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they are giving any consideration to the construction of a Channel Tunnel.
The PARLIAMENTARY UNDERSECRETARY of STATE, DEPARTMENT of the ENVIRONMENT (Lord Bellwin): My Lords, as noble Lords will be aware, a report prepared by the British Railways Board setting out the results of preliminary studies undertaken in conjunction with the French railways for a single-track rail-only Channel tunnel was published in February last. At the same time, the chairman of the board asked for an early indication of the Government's attitude. The Government are giving careful consideration to the board's proposals, but it is too early to say what view the Government will take of this new project.
Lord SWINFEN: My Lords, while thanking the Minister for his reply, may I ask whether he is aware that I would be grateful to know—and I am sure the House would as well—if any request has been made to the EEC for grants or loans to be forthcoming for such a project?
Lord BELLWIN: My Lords, a request as such has not been made, but discussions are taking place at the present time as to the commission's proposals for aiding transport infrastructure investment; but I understand that is still in the initial stages.
Lord GLADWYN: My Lords, have the Government ruled out any possible consideration of the construction of a Channel bridge?
Lord BELLWIN: My Lords, at the moment the Government are looking into the present scheme that has been put forward. They are not looking into the matter of a Channel bridge, and I should imagine that that would be done only if the present scheme were found to he not viable and if there were sufficient interest in a bridge, as such, being constructed.
Lord SEGAL: My Lords, we have been told that it is too early for the Government to reach a decision on this matter, but bearing in mind the fact that the earliest date by which even only a single track tunnel could be completed is the year 1985, is it not about time that the Government reached a decision, especially in view of the fact that the longer a decision is delayed the more the costs of the tunnel will mount up?
Lord BELLWIN: My Lords, I should have thought that that was a matter which the noble Lord might have taken up with the previous Administration, who were in office for a number of years and who presumably did not take further the matter as it then was.
Lord MERRIVALE: My Lords, can the Minister clarify a point for me? Am I not right in assuming that discussions were held yesterday, and are probably continuing today and for a few days more, with French experts and with representatives of the Ministry of Transport? Can the Minister say what exactly was the purpose of the discussions?
Lord BELLWIN: My Lords, at present the French Government's attitude is illustrated by the fact that the SNCF has joined with the British Railways Board in carrying out studies, and I understand that the French Government have given their blessing to the SNCF's continued involvement in the studies.
Lord SEGAL: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that the present issue of a single-track tunnel was never put forward to the previous Government for consideration? It has been raised only since the present Government were elected.
Lord BELLWIN: My Lords, I did not know the extent of the previous discussions, but it is interesting to note that the present proposals are to be discussed and taken forward in the way that is now being proposed.
Viscount SIDMOUTH: My Lords, in considering the revised scheme, will the Minister bear in mind that eliminating the Cheriton complex as well as the direct London rail link has met most of the objections which sank the previous scheme; that is to say, financially and environmentally? Will the noble Lord also bear in mind that by doing this the revised scheme becomes more specifically a rail link, as opposed to a rail-road link (which the previous scheme was) and that this might very well fit in with the present energy situation?
Lord BELLWIN: My Lords, I thank the noble Viscount for that observation. I am quite sure that it is that consideration which has encouraged the institution of the studies that are taking place at present.

MERCHANT SHIPPING ACT: REGULATIONS
2.53 p.m.
Lord SHINWELL: 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 the regulations embodied in the Merchant Shipping Act are to be published, and, if so, when.
Lord TREFGARNE: My Lords, the Merchant Shipping Act 1979 is largely an enabling measure. I envisage that we shall make the first orders or regulations under this Act well before the end of this year, and that we shall continue to use these powers for many years to come. All these orders and regulations will be published as Statutory Instruments.
Lord SHINWELL: My Lords, bearing in mind that he informs your Lordships' House that these regulations will be made before the end of this year, is the noble Lord aware that this matter was about to be raised just as the dissolution occurred, and that we were prevented from raising it because of that? Is it not important that the regulations be published immediately, in view of the fact that there has been ample time to consider them? Bearing in mind the Merchant Navy's somewhat precarious situation at the moment, is it not important to allay discontent, particularly among the navigating officers, who have been waiting for the regulations for quite a long time? Is it not possible to expedite the regulations, so that this matter can be disposed of?
Lord TREFGARNE: My Lords, the Merchant Shipping Act was not passed by Parliament until the closing days of the last Administration. It was hastened through on, I think, the very day that Parliament was dissolved, as noble Lords will recall. However, the new disciplinary arrangements were brought into operation on a voluntary basis from the beginning of this year, under the aegis of the National Maritime Board. It will take some time to work out the details of how best to extend the arrangements to cover the entire industry on a statutory basis.
Lord SHINWELL: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that, at the time that this matter came before your Lordships' House just before the dissolution, I was about to raise the whole subject of the regulations and intimate what particular regulations were desirable immediately in order to allay discontent? Is there any reason why there should be any delay at all?
Lord TREFGARNE: My Lords, the bulk of the regulations are in fact already in force on a voluntary basis. We con-
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sider that it would not have been possible to make the regulations immediately the Act became law. They could not have been made before the Act became law because they are made under the Statutory Order procedure which requires, among other things, that the Statutory Order has to be laid before Parliament and must remain before Parliament for a number of days—40 days, if I remember rightly—before it comes into force. While the voluntary arrangements are continuing—and these cover at least 85 per cent. of the British merchant fleet—we are content to continue negotiations leading to the final adoption of the regulations.

THE TOKYO SUMMIT
Lord DENHAM: My Lords, with the leave of the House, my noble friend the Leader of the House will repeat a Statement being made in another place on the Tokyo Summit, at a convenient moment after 3.30.
IPSWICH PORT AUTHORITY BILL
Read 3a, and passed.

CRIMINAL INJURIES COMPENSATION BILL [H.L.]
2.57 p.m.
The Earl of LONGFORD: My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. I rise to move the Second Reading of the Criminal Injuries Compensation Bill fortified by the attendance of so many noble Lords and, in particular, by the presence of so many right reverend Prelates; that is very encouraging. This must not be regarded as a solo effort on my part. It is the outcome of the work of a fairly small, but widely representative, committee that laid its findings before the House last year. We all worked hard, but we owed special inspiration to the work of Mr. Michael Whittaker, whose own daughter was foully murdered a good many years ago. We owed much to the assistance given during the research by the Dulverton Trust and the Matthew Trust. We had the advantage of the services of a

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former Government draftsman. I am told that his draft is a beautiful piece of work. If anyone questions that, he has only to look at the second page of the Bill and see whether he can make head or tail of the definition of " violence " that is given there. That is the essence of drafting—that one has everybody working it out, with some difficulty. At any rate it is a very professional job, though of course we must not hold him responsible for the final outcome.
The noble Lord, Lord Belstead, whom I welcome to office with even more than usual cordiality, will no doubt later be explaining the attitude of the Government. However, I take the liberty of quoting an extract from a letter written to me by the Home Secretary, Mr. Whitelaw, in reply to a letter of mine enclosing a copy of the Bill. The Home Secretary wrote:
" Your Bill will undoubtedly influence our consideration of the subject. But all I can say at present is that I fully share your sympathy with the victims of crime and particularly those who suffer injury through criminal violence ".
I am sure that that sympathy with victims of criminal violence is echoed in every quarter of the House, and indeed throughout the country.
My Lords, I go further. I submit that all of us, or almost all of us, would agree that, of the many categories of people who need assistance from the State, the victims of crime are the most neglected. There is something of a paradox here. Everyone says that we ought to do much more for victims. They say it particularly to so-called penal reformers, like myself, but they say it all over the place—" We ought to do much more for victims ". But in practice nothing, or hardly anything, is done. I pointed out last year, when I initiated the debate on the report of our working party on victims, that the last systematic debate here—also, incidentally, initiated by myself—took place 16 years earlier. That was in 1962—shortly before the present provisions for compensation were introduced. In the years between, the years 1962 to 1978, there was a steady and massive increase in crime, particularly violent crime. During those years the House discussed every topic under the sun, including all the main social issues, repeatedly. But, alas!, in regard to victims there was a deafening silence. It is worth thinking about that for a
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moment and then deciding that that silence should be terminated.
In one translation of the Gospels—I do not know which one is preferred by most of the right reverend Prelates with us today—a distinction is drawn between respectable people and outcasts; and, obviously, we ought to do what we can to be of assistance to both. The extraordinary thing about victims is that they are innocent people, respectable by definition, and yet we treat them, and force them to see themselves, as outcasts. Certainly that is how they do see themselves at the present time. None of us can be happy with that situation. We are often told in connection with, for example, penal reform that public opinion would not allow a Government to show much sympathy for criminals. No one will tell me that in regard to victims. No one will get up today and say, " I am afraid the public are rather anti-victim; I am sorry, you have chosen the wrong cause ". We cannot be told that this afternoon. I am sure that no other social improvement would arouse more general approval than fair play for victims.
I said in our debate last year that our report did not provide a complete charter for victims. To do so, as I pointed out then, would involve far-reaching improvements in our arrangements for law and order, for the prevention and treatment of crime. I repeat those observations today. But for reasons that will be readily understood, the scope of the Bill before the House this afternoon is not even as wide as the scope of that report. Nor, in the nature of things, does it contain various additional suggestions made in the debate last year by the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, and other speakers. Nor does it try to settle numerous points of detail which are properly dealt with by administrative action. Of course, it is open to your Lordships, if this Bill gets a Second Reading, to put in various recommendations which would apply the principles laid down in this Bill rather more closely; but on the face of' it this Bill could be accepted as it stands and then the details could he worked out by administrative action.
A few more words must be said about what the Bill does not do; in other words, about its limitations. In the first place, compensation is still confined to victims

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of violence. Secondly, the Bill does not attempt to extend the whole principle, to which many of us are dedicated, of reparation to the State and to the victim in our sentencing policy. We discussed that at some length last year. But the question of a new sentencing policy, or an adaptation of our existing sentencing policy, is not dealt with here. Thirdly, this Bill does not set out to provide support for the invaluable work being done by the growing number of victim support schemes. I will not set out to defend those exclusions. I think, however, that most noble Lords will agree that the present Bill puts enough on our plate for the moment. But if this Bill does not in itself provide an adequate charter for victims, it is the second major step taken in that direction. The first major step was the establishment of the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board in 1964, with power to make ex-gratia payments to victims of violence.
I have mentioned some of the things that the Bill does not do: let me mention some of the things that the Bill does do. In the first place, it puts the present scheme on a statutory basis. I will come back to that in a moment, if I may. In the second place, it makes the provisions which now exist on paper far more accessible in practice; much more likely to be used, and used effectively. For this purpose, Clause 2 is the most significant. At present, a claim made by a victim is considered on paper in the first place. If the victim appeals against the finding, he has a right of personal appearance before a tribunal of three persons; but I should emphasise that legal aid is not available, as I know from first-hand experience lately, for the purpose of this appeal.
I will not take the House through the Bill in detail, but I will quote a few sentences from Clause 2. Clause 2(2) runs like this:
" On receipt of such application—

(a) the tribunal shall refer such claim to a local board for hearing before which the applicant will have the right of personal appearance or representation.

(b) The applicant shall have a right of appeal to the main tribunal from such local board, and thence to the Court of Appeal as set out in Schedule …

(c) Legal aid shall be available to applicants for all these purposes "

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and at all these stages. Then:
" (d) It shall be the duty of the local Board as far as possible to call the attention of victims in their area to the existence of the machinery for obtaining criminal compensation ".
When I say, therefore, that compensation will be far more accessible in practice, I have in mind particularly, first, much greater publicity; secondly, personal access to local tribunals instead of correspondence with some remote head office in London; and, thirdly—and this is, of course, of the first importance—legal aid at all stases.
Moreover, my Lords—and this is the third main benefit—the Bill provides certain new rights. One is solatium: the right of a relative to compensation for loss of society, as in Scotland. I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Home of the Hirsel, will approve this attempt to bring us into parity with Scotland. At any rate, in Clause 13 of our Bill there is a list of relatives, which is almost entirely taken from the list which is used in Scotland, who might qualify under this head. The House must not jump to the conclusion that all these relatives—and there seem to be rather a lot of them if you look at Clause 13—would normally qualify. Whether they did or did not qualify for this solatium, this compensation, when some relative had been killed, would be for the tribunal to decide. In Scotland at the present time a parent who lost a dearly-loved child on whose earnings he was in no way dependent would qualify for compensation; that is, in Scotland at the present time, but not in England. In our Bill we seek to introduce the Scottish principle.
Secondly, at the present time victims of family violence are excluded. There seems to be general agreement in principle that they should now be included in the scheme, although an inter-departmental committee which looked into this and reported in that sense felt it necessary to make various qualifications. At any rate, in our Bill victims of family violence will qualify for the first time in this country. Then, thirdly, victims of violence will be able to secure compensation by instalments instead of, or in addition to, the present lump sum, if the tribunal orders it. Fourthly, victims with a criminal past will not be automatically excluded,

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as is more or less the case now. We shall exclude them in future only if the conduct of the victim contributed to the violent assault.
I think I am right in saying that when the leader of one IRA gang received a large sum in compensation because some other rival gang had given him severe maltreatment, there was a protest at the payment of that sum to someone living outside the law. Our rule would be that you would be excluded in this way not on the strength of your criminal past or just because you were, say, a prostitute—your way of life might be thought unsatisfactory—but because you had yourself contributed to the violent assault.
The Bill points the way to a new therapeutic treatment for victims. Much sympathy was aroused last year, not only in this House but outside, by the proposal in our report for therapeutic centres for victims. As I understand it, it would not be appropriate to set up these centres under the present Bill, but the Bill paves the way for their establishment. Ultimately, here and generally, the treatment of victims, including the levels of compensation, will depend on the concern of society as reflected in public and private action. This is true, mutatis mutandis, of all social services. The level provided rises as time goes on. But we see our Bill as a vital move if victims are not going to be left behind hopelessly as they are today.
I must return now to the fact that the Bill puts criminal injuries compensation on a statutory footing. It has always been assumed in my understanding that this would be done as soon as reasonable experience had been gained of the so-called ex-gratia arrangements. Fifteen years have passed since the ex-gratia arrangements were introduced. It would be difficult to claim that insufficient time for judgment has elapsed. The Welfare State as we know it today has been built up within a statutory framework and deserving persons of all kinds have been enabled in this way to receive State assistance.
Why should victims be treated differently? Why should they be discriminated against and allowed only an ex-gratia scheme? Why should they be treated for this purpose as second-class
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citizens? Is it because we do not take their plight quite seriously; that we think they are border-line cases who are not quite worthy of a full statutory scheme? I cannot believe that we would wish this to be said of us. If not, then the time has come to suit the action to the words and to put victims on the same footing as all the others who benefit, rightly, from our social services.
The interdepartmental working party which reported last year was working on the assumption (to quote its words) that:
" the scheme would be placed on a statutory footing ".
It was set up on that assumption. It came to the conclusion that most of the changes which it recommended—and I must say that they were very limited changes and certainly could not be said to cover the whole field—could be made within the framework of continuing the non-statutory scheme, the present ex-gratia scheme. But it clearly left it to others, its political masters, to decide whether legislation should or should not be introduced at an early date to place the scheme on a statutory footing.
The Pearson Royal Commission on Civil Liability and Compensation for Personal Injury, of which the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, was a distinguished member—and I am glad to see that he is to speak today—
Lord ELWYN-JONES: My Lords, the man himself, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Pearson, is here.
The Earl of LONGFORD: Yes, my Lords. I was referring to the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, and to his taking part in the debate. I hope that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Pearson, will himself feel drawn to take part.
What I was saying was that the Pearson Royal Commission on Civil Liability and Compensation for Personal Injury, which reported at about the same time as the Interdepartmental Committee last year, recommended in unequivocal language that the scheme should be made statutory. They say in their report that that is usually the situation in other countries. Their findings cannot, surely, be lightly put aside—and, certainly, not by me, with the noble and learned Lord,

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Lord Pearson, sitting within a yard or so of me.
The most obvious advantage of a statutory scheme would be that in the last resort there would be an appeal to the courts and much of the mystery that inevitably attaches to a bureaucratic scheme of the kind that we have today would be dissipated. Today there is much that we cannot discover, including, of course, the reason why claims are turned down. I went as a claimant's friend (the claimant was not allowed legal aid) before an appeal tribunal not long ago. The claim had already been turned down once after it had been examined on paper without the applicant being seen by anyone. This time a high official of the board (who must be deemed to have had a good deal to do with turning down the original claim) appeared in person against my friend. The result seemed like a foregone conclusion, and certainly the verdict went against us. No reasons were given. There was no appeal to the courts. Under a statutory scheme it would be more likely that justice would be done, and far more likely that it would be seen to be done.
In wider terms, the establishment of a statutory system would command much more confidence among victims, and certainly could be used to promote much more effective publicity. As time went on a statutory board would no doubt be better placed to exercise influence on behalf of more generous treatment for victims. I hope that I do not seem to disparage the devoted work of the officials of the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board from whom I have always received complete courtesy. They would be invaluable whatever form was taken by the new arrangements.
I shall naturally be asked how much this is going to cost. The change from an ex-gratia to a statutory basis would, as such, cost little. The main difference is the introduction of an appeal to the courts. Our own recommendations of local tribunals and legal aid at all levels would cost a little more, but the sum involved would still be minor. Our intention, however, that considerably more victims will receive compensation than do so at the present time would admittedly involve rather more expense. There is no use my saying that more people would get
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compensation and then saying that it would not cost any more. But how much more that would come to in money terms, nobody can say.
The board themselves, in reply to questions, feel unable to make any estimate of the proportion of those who could not claim and do not do so; and still less are they able to make an estimate of the people who might succeed if they were given legal aid and so on. We, the promoters of this Bill, cannot say how many people we are talking about when we refer to new claimants and to claimants who now fail to make good their claim and who, under our scheme, would succeed. But let me give some idea of the order of magnitude. According to the last published report of the board, £10 million was paid out in claims. Whatever percentage increase would take place under our Bill, the figures involved—the percentage increase on £10 million—ar relatively small compared with the total amount spent—and I am not saying for a moment that it is too much—on law and order, not to mention the other social services. Even in these times of stringency, we are surely not going to say that no expansion of any kind whatever in the social services, however urgent, can be permitted; that this great—and, may I say, wealthy—country cannot afford these few million pounds for people with their crying need.
It may well be that my commonplace words have not been able to bring home to everyone the widespread and often lifelong suffering that exists today among the many innocent victims of criminal violence. They are indeed a forgotten army. Moreover, they feel collectively that they are a humiliated army on whom society has deliberately turned its back through shame or embarrassment. The last thing I would claim for the present Bill is that it is in any way complete or perfect. If I were told that it is too modest I might be inclined to agree; but if that is the case, then the argument becomes all the more irresistible for doing at least this belated measure of justice.
Of course one will welcome suggestions from the House and, it may well be, additions and amendments to this Bill. I come before the House in no kind of dogmatic spirit but I beg the House to rise once again to a great opportunity.

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It would not be the first time—whatever our critics might think or say—that we should have given a lead to the heart and mind of the nation. I implore this House, respectfully but firmly, to give this Bill a Second Reading this afternoon. I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be read now 2a.—(The Earl of Longford.)
3.22 p.m.
Lord BOSTON of FAVERSHAM: My Lords, it gives me great pleasure to commend my noble friend Lord Longford most warmly for giving us the chance to debate this topic and for moving the Second Reading of his Criminal Injuries (Compensation) Bill. By doing so, he has underlined the importance of not forgetting the victims of crime, and especially those who suffer personal injury at the hands of the criminal. My noble friend has long been widely known as a fighter for the rights of prisoners, for penal reform and for safeguards for the accused. What is perhaps not widely known—particularly outside your Lordships' House—is that for quite some time he has also been working behind the scenes supporting the cause of victims of crime.
Before coming to my noble friend's proposal, I want to mention briefly the background. Your Lordships will know that there are already several measures providing for compensation for victims of crime. There is the provision for compensation orders under Section 35 of the Powers of Criminal Courts Act 1973, as amended by the Criminal Law Act 1977, Section 60, under which magistrates' courts may award up to £1,000 and the Crown Court an unlimited amount. There is the power under Section 28 of the Theft Act 1968 to make restitution orders for property. There is Section 7 of the Criminal Justice Act 1972 relating to bankruptcy orders in criminal cases. There is the criminal injuries compensation scheme itself to which my noble friend has already referred, a non-statutory scheme providing a system for ex-gratia payments, as he has said; and there are of course civil remedies.
During the period of the last Government, my noble and learned friend the former Lord Chancellor, Lord Elwyn-
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Jones, was most anxious that the powers, particularly of the magistrates' courts, to order compensation to be paid by the defendants on conviction should be used to the full, and in fact he went round the country urging justices to do just that. Not only is it important from the victim's point of view that he should be compensated, but we are also strongly of the opinion—and my noble and learned friend was at pains to point this out previously—that the offender should be made to face up to his victim and face up to his responsibilities towards his victim. I believe that the more effectively these powers are used, and the more that the criminal comes to know that he will have to pay for his crimes in that way, the more chance there is that this will itself help to act as a deterrent.
I feel that at this early stage I should say that I will not go along with my noble friend in what he has suggested about nothing having been done for the victim. He has himself already referred to the existing non-statutory scheme, and he has quoted a set of figures about the amount paid out in compensation in the past year of the criminal injuries compensation board's work. We see from the 14th Report up to 31st March 1978 that in the years 1975 to 1976 there was a total of 16,690 claimants. In the following year, 1976 to 1977, it was 20,400; and in the year after that, 1977 to 1978, 20,826. Of course, the scheme covers both England, Scotland and Wales. The board said in that report that they were budgeting for 22,100 applications in the year 1978 to 1979.
Since the scheme began on 1st August 1964, as the report points out, over £502 million has been paid out. In the past three reported complete years-1975–76, 1976–77 and 1977–78—the amounts were £6,476,000-odd; £9,677,000-odd; and in the year which my noble friend quoted, £10,106,513. So not only have sizeable sums been paid out, not only have sizeable numbers of unfortunate victims been compensated and cared for by the board in what I venture to submit is a very humane way, but these numbers and the amount paid out have been going up all the time as well. We are now talking in terms of a scheme which costs in excess of £14 million. Of course we can expect its work to increase as time goes on, whether or not it is turned into a

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statutory body. I go along with my noble friend completely in this matter: there is room and need for improvement in the scheme for compensation. For that reason, among others, I should have liked to be able to give a warm and unqualified welcome to my noble friend's Bill. While I applaud many of his objectives and wholeheartedly support his concern for the victims of violence, as I am sure all of your Lordships do, I much regret not being able to support this particular means of securing improvements.
I shall come in a moment to ways of improving the scheme. First, I should like to deal with some specific points about the Bill. My noble friend has already explained the purpose of his Bill, to make statutory provision for the payment of compensation for injury directly attributable to an act of violence by someone else. There would be a criminal injuries compensation tribunal together with local boards to work out and make the payments. Under the present scheme we have the criminal injuries compensation board, set up in 1964, which makes the ex-gratia payments that we have heard about to those who suffer injuries arising from another's crime. The scheme itself and the detailed basis on which awards are made are clearly set out by the board. On the whole, the system has worked very well indeed. In fact, as a recent report indicated, there has been no major criticism of the way that the work has been carried out. So far as my noble friend's Bill is concerned—and he has made the point himself—this does not appear to alter substantially the circumstances in which compensation would be paid, for those eligible to receive it, nor the amounts to be paid, with perhaps some exceptions.
There is a further point I should like to make about the circumstances in which a claim for compensation might be entertained. In the actual definition of those circumstances there is in fact no mention in the Bill of " crime " or " criminal " but only of " an act of violence ". A reference is made to " a malefactor ". Under the existing scheme—and here I draw on Paragraph 5, D.3 of the statement of the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board's own interpretation of the scheme, and I quote—
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" A claim must be founded on a crime of violence and no matter how careless are the acts of the person who inflicts the injury, no award will be made unless they constitute a crime ".
I am not sure whether the absence of any reference in this context in the body of the Bill to " crime " or " criminal " is inadvertent or not, and of course it is true that the Long and Short Titles of the Bill do themselves contain the word "criminal "; so I assume that that is what is intended.
I should also mention that my noble friend's Bill does not include any reference to the need to report an incident involving violence. At present, the circumstances of the injury should have been the subject of criminal proceedings or have been reported to the police or, exceptionally, in some other way clearly defined, such as to an employer, without delay, although the board may at its discretion waive that reporting requirement.
The main changes the Bill would make would be in the administrative machinery, and I think my noble friend has made that clear. This would undoubtedly cost substantially more than at present, although we do not have any figures to go on. I must confess that I am very doubtful whether the Bill would confer material additional advantages upon the victim of violent crime. Costs would also go up considerably as a result of the provision in the Bill for legal aid. Of course, I can see that this has been included from the best of motives and I must also confess to being somewhat torn about this provision.
Here I had better declare an interest: I practise at the Bar and the prospect of more work for my profession is, to say the least, not an unattractive one. Far be it from me to want to deny my learned friends a feast—indeed, I do not know quite what is going to happen to me after this when I get back to my own chambers! But, in all seriousness, I wonder whether, in this particular sphere, legal representation is really necessary generally, and whether the cost of it can really be justified. There is already provision for a friend or representative to go along, as my noble friend has already pointed out. One of the great advantages of the present scheme is its comparatively informal procedure, and I think it works efficiently as well as reasonably economically. Under the Bill, legal representation would be bound to

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become normal practice, but I doubt whether this would be justified.
Again, on the administrative side, there are a number of features missing from the Bill which would seem to be essential for a statutory scheme. For example, the Bill does not lay down the constitution nor the functions of the local boards which would consider the initial applications; nor does it define their procedures or include powers to make rules laying down those procedures. It gives no indication of the basis on which compensation should he assessed and there is no clear rationale for including in the Bill some aspects of the tribunal's work while leaving other aspects to rules to be made by the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor.
A great deal of work has obviously gone into the drafting of this Bill, and that is highly commendable; but one is bound to conclude that the Bill, as drafted, contains substantial defects and, although it is always possible to carry out a tidying-up operation in Committee, I fear I am very doubtful whether it would be possible to remedy these in that way.
There is one other matter which should be considered before deciding whether the time has come to put the scheme on a statutory footing. That is that certain quite significant changes were announced recently in the present non-statutory scheme, following a thorough review of the scheme. On 19th March this year, my right honourable friend the then Home Secretary, Mr. Merlyn Rees, announced in another place that the then Government intended to extend the Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme to victims of violence within the family—they had been ineligible before—and several other improvements were proposed too. That followed the last Government's consideration of the report of an interdepartmental body, which I think was referred to by my noble friend. It was set up in 1973 by the then Home Secretary, now the noble Lord, Lord Carr of Hadley. That report, Review of the Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme: Report of an Interdepartmental Working Party, was published in March last year. I believe it was a model of clarity and presentation. The investigation itself was systematic and the findings were set out in a way which made for ease of reference.
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In his announcement, my right honourable friend the then Home Secretary said:
…in view of the considerable public concern over ' battered ' women and cnildren, the Government have decided to extend the scheme to victims of violence within the family, subject to the safeguards recommended by the working party and on an experimental basis in the first instance.
" The proposed safeguards are that applications should normally be considered by the board in cases of family violence only where the offender has been prosecuted for the relevant assault, that the injuries should be sufficiently serious to justify compensation of at least £500, and that the board should he satisfied that the offender would not benefit from the award.
" A revised scheme will be brought into effect as soon as the necessary administrative arrangements have been made. The scheme will remain non-statutory until there has been sufficient experience both of the revised provisions and of the operation of the extension to victims of family violence, to enable a statutory scheme to be drafted without any risk of a need for early amendment. Legislation to put the criminal injuries compensation scheme on a statutory basis will then be introduced when a suitable opportunity occurs ".
My right honourable friend also announced the Government's acceptance, subject to minor modifications, of the Working Party's other recommendations, most of which related to administrative improvements in the scheme; and he said the Government accepted those recommendations of the Royal Commission on Civil Liability and Compensation for Personal Injury, chaired by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Pearson—that is the Pearson Commission--relating to the Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme itself.
The Earl of LONGFORD: My Lords, may I intervene? He did in fact make some very ambiguous remarks about the report in that statement quoted by the noble Lord, Lord Boston, about the findings of the Pearson Commission. The fact is that the Pearson Commission unequivocally said that the scheme ought to be made statutory. The Home Secretary said that he accepted the Pearson Commission. I am afraid I found a complete contradiction between those points of views.
Lord BOSTON of FAVERSHAM: My Lords, as has happened on previous occasions, my noble friend has, with his customary expertise, anticipated passages in my speech. Also this afternoon we may be privileged to hear—if he will forgive the expression—from the horse's

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mouth something about these recommendations themselves. My right honourable friend indicated that he accepted those recommendations relating to the scheme, including—this was the point I was about to make before my noble friend's intervention—the suggestion that it be made statutory. That was made clear not only in another place on 19th March but also in a Press statement which was released by the Home Office jointly for my right honourable friends the then Home Secretary and the then Secretary of State for Scotland. The working party made 52 recommendations and your Lordships will be relieved to know that I shall not go through them all. Some were far more far-reaching than others. For example, No. 7 said that there should be a formal avenue of appeal to the courts from decisions of the board on points of law, and No. 9 said that the administrative aspects of the work of the board and its staff should be subject to the supervision of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration: quite a significant recommendation.
I have just one question to put to the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Belstead, who will be replying to this debate, about those recommendations and the announcement of my right honourable friend. I wonder whether he can say whether the Government intend to go ahead with the changes announced in March. I realise that there might not yet have been time to decide finally, but I hope he may be able to give some indication of how things stand tonight.
It is important to press ahead with improvements to the scheme, and my noble friend Lord Longford is to be complimented most warmly for seeking further reforms. That, too, was the precise and practical purpose of the last Government's recent decision, which included changes, some on an experimental basis, and the need to see how those worked out, before putting the whole scheme into legislative form. That decision prepared the ground for the period ahead for very valuable and, indeed, significant advances to continue and to increase the care provided for victims of crime. So our advice would be, as it was in March, to speed ahead with the reforms proposed and then see how those work out before embarking on legislation.

TOKYO SUMMIT
3.40 p.m.
The Lord PRESIDENT of the COUNCIL (Lord SOAM ES): My Lords, with the permission of the House, I will now repeat a Statement being made in another place by my right honourable friend the Prime Minister about her visits to Tokyo and Canberra. The Statement is as follows:
" On the way to Tokyo we refuelled in Moscow, and the Soviet Prime Minister, Mr. Kosygin, came to the airport to meet me. We had about one-and-a-half hours' discussion, during the course of which I impressed on him our deep concern about refugees from Vietnam and asked him to intervene with the Government of Vietnam. He did not give me much encouragement in this respect, but I remain firmly of the view that the refugee problem must be tackled at its source as well as by resettlement. I also told Mr. Kosygin that Her Majesty's Government hoped that the SALT II Treaty would be ratified.
" The Tokyo Summit met against a background of rising inflation and higher oil prices: and this was underlined by the decision which OPEC made during the course of the Tokyo Summit to raise oil prices still further. I am glad to report that the Summit faced this situation realistically. We were all determined not to print money to compensate for the higher oil prices and we were united in feeling that if we were resolute in restraining demand for oil in the short term, we had all the skills and incentives to enable us to reduce our dependence on uncertain sources of supply in the longer term.
" We welcomed and took full account of the decisions reached by the European Council in Strasbourg the previous week: and we agreed upon action designed to align the decisions taken at Strasbourg with corresponding decisions taken at Tokyo by the United States, Japan and Canada.
" The United Kingdom, France, Germany and Italy agreed to recommend to their Community partners that each member country's contribution to the Community objective of maintaining oil imports between 1980 and 1985 at an

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annual level not higher than in 1978 should be specified. The United States took as a goal their import level for 1977, and Japan and Canada goals relating to their particular supply position. There was also general agreement that domestic oil prices should be at world market levels.
" We agreed on a number of measures to ensure that we are better informed about operations in the oil markets.
" The Summit made it clear that the industrialised countries are ready to co-operate with oil producers in defining supply and demand prospects in the world oil market. I believe that such discussions could make a valuable contribution to the future stability of the oil market. We also discussed the position of the non-oil developing countries who will be hardest hit by rising oil prices.
" Finally, we stressed the importance of developing to the full existing and new sources of energy as alternatives to oil. We saw a special need to expand, with safety, nuclear power generating capacity. Without this, the prospect for growth and employment would be bleak.
" The Summit also issued a special statement about the plight of Indo-Chinese refugees.
" This was rightly a Summit which concentrated mainly on energy, and I believe that the fact that we could take these decisions together will contribute significantly to achieving our objectives in both the short and longer terms.
" Apart from the formal business of the Summit, the presence of the seven Heads of Government in Tokyo provided the opportunity of more informal discussions on matters of mutual concern. I had bilateral meetings with President Carter and with the new Prime Minister of Canada: there were also discussions between the European Members of the Summit.
" From Tokyo I went to Australia for two days and had talks with Mr. Fraser and his colleagues. The last time a British Prime Minister in office had paid such a visit was in 1958 and I was particularly glad to be able to visit Australia so soon after becoming Prime Minister
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myself. I was able to give Mr. Fraser an account of the Tokyo Summit and we discussed a number of other matters of mutual concern.
" During my return journey from Canberra to London I stopped at Bahrain and had a valuable discussion at the airport with the Prime Minister, Sheikh Khalifa, who welcomed the Declaration on the Middle East issued by the Nine EEC countries on 18th June."
My Lords, that concludes the Statement.
3.45 p.m.
Lord PEART: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord the Leader of the House for repeating that very important Statement in this House today. First, I would refer to the question of the Vietnam refugees, and especially the talk with Mr. Kosygin. I am very glad that we impressed upon Mr. Kosygin our concern about the refugees, and I am sure that the Government have the support of the Opposition on this question. I was also glad that the Prime Minister told Mr. Kosygin that Her Majesty's Government hoped that the SALT II Treaty would be ratified—quite a contrast to some of the attitudes and views which were expressed in our recent defence debate by some noble Lords.
However, I want quickly to deal with the energy matter, because that is the importance of the major Statement today. May I just speak about Britain's commitments and ask a few questions? Because of the increasing production of North Sea oil, the Summit commitment to restrict United Kingdom imports of oil to 1978 levels over the next few years should be easily achieved. However, it is not clear whether the Government have entered into any firm commitments about the United Kingdom's oil consumption. I should like to know whether we are really to restrict consumption, perhaps in conjunction with other members. Are we to have concerted action with our colleagues in the European Community? If so, how will this restriction be achieved? Do the Government have any intention of introducing a comprehensive plan for energy conservations; for example, speed limits and generous tax incentives for improved insulation?

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Again, in the short term, over the next few months a continuing oil shortage seems inevitable. Are the Government to rely on the price mechanism to allocate supplies, as the Minister implied yesterday? Many of us saw his broadcast and he seemed to be firmly supporting an entire reliance on the price mechanism to allocate supplies. It may be right and it may not be; we should like to know more details. Have the Government any contingency plans for priority allocation, if the situation gets worse? After all, there are many sections of the community—for example, the farming community—which could be badly hit. Will there be some preparation for contingency plans? Also, why do the Government not stop profiteering, by controlling the price of petrol?
Again, in the longer term, over the next few years Britain's energy strategy will need to enable us to have enough North Sea oil sold on the home market to meet the United Kingdom's needs. This is most important. I understand that, while the home market goes short, Britain is exporting about half of its oil production, mainly to Europe and the United States. Can we defend this? I should like to know what is the Government's attitude. Even South Africa is receiving a small amount of oil from the North Sea. What steps do the Government intend to take to ensure that North Sea oil can be more easily diverted to the home market in any future shortage? Again, can the Government give the House a categorical assurance that none of the oil supplied to South Africa will reach Rhodesia? This could harm attitudes in the forthcoming conference in Lusaka.
I now come to coal, which is so important. Already today there is a very important discussion going on in the miners' conference just outside our national boundaries in Jersey.
The Lord Bishop of WINCHESTER: My Lords—
Lord PEART: What is the Government's position on coal? The 1978 Green Paper on energy aimed for 170 million tonnes of coal production in the year 2000. Do the Government support this? If so, will the Government give an unequivocal endorsement of the invest-
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ment programme in A Plan for Coal? I have asked a lot of questions. They are very important ones. I hope that I shall get as good answers. Finally, on nuclear power, I know that the Government are reported as saying that they wish to be in this field, and I understand that there will be five new nuclear power stations by the early 1980s. Is there any truth in these reports?
Lord BYERS: My Lords, I would only say to the noble Lord, Lord Peart, that perhaps he ought to go back to university and look at those examination papers which state that candidates need not attempt more than seven out of 10 questions! However, there is much in the Statement which we welcome unreservedly, particularly the references to the appalling problem of the refugees. We are particularly glad to know of the reassurance which was given regarding SALT II.
Turning to the question of oil, may I ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will clarify the phrase in the Statement which relates to co-operating,
… with oil producers in defining supply and demand prospects in the world oil market ".
Is that really enough, confronted as we are with a world crisis in energy? Do we not need something much more positive? Do we not need to set up machinery for discussing with the OPEC countries the whole question of trade between OPEC and the West? There are many items which many of the OPEC countries need from the West—for instance, grain, high technology and armaments. Do we not need to adopt a much wider concept and much stronger machinery in order to set going the negotiations and the dialogue?
Lord SOAMES: My Lords, may I thank both the noble Lord the Leader of he Opposition and the noble Lord, Lord Byers, for their questions. The noble Lord the Leader of the Opposition touched on a number of topics relating to what is going to happen internally in this country. Although I did not, as the French say, hold the candle in Tokyo, I doubt very much whether those topics were a feature of the discussions there. However, the noble Lord touched upon some very important questions, which showed me quite clearly that soon there will be a need for a general energy debate in this House, when matters of this character can be discussed.
Several noble Lords: What about tomorrow?
Lord SOAMES: Yes, my Lords, we are going to have a debate tomorrow, and it will be a good opportunity for these matters to be raised and also, hopefully, answered. Turning to the allocation of supplies, the noble Lord is quite right in saying that it will be comparatively easy for us, compared with other countries less fortunate than ourselves so far as energy supplies are concerned, to live up to our commitment not to import a greater quantity of oil than we did in 1978. It will be harder for some countries than for others to live up to that commitment. At the moment we do not see the need, nor do we think it would be wise, to think in terms of rationing or allocating supplies.
The noble Lord referred to the exports of oil from this country. We must remember that we live in a world which is very short of oil. Although we are surrounded by a moat which is full of oil and although we can have all the supplies we want, we must not take the view that nobody else can have any of it. There must be trade in oil. There is a shortage of oil in the world. Therefore, countries such as ours which are well endowed with oil supplies must reflect this in their economies. Perhaps our economy will be less badly affected than those of other countries; our oil supplies will probably help us. However, I do not envisage a situation in which we would say that we were not going to export any oil anywhere but were going to keep it all for ourselves. This is quite apart from the fact that we ourselves do not want to use a great deal of this oil; we want to swap it for other kinds of oil.
I am glad that the noble Lord supported Mrs. Thatcher over what she said to Mr. Kosygin. I do not believe that the Prime Minister could have said more than she did. At least, however, she had the opportunity to do what I think the House will agree was very necessary; namely, to bring to the mind of the Russians the extent to which they carry a responsibility for what is being done in Vietnam. It is not only the Vietnamese Government. If the Russian Government could be persuaded to try to bring some pressure to bear upon the Vietnamese Government, this would be a matter not only of great
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importance but also of humanitarian importance to us all.
The main point which was made by the noble Lord, Lord Byers, related to cooperation with the oil exporting countries. He asked whether or not there could be greater co-operation and collaboration between the industrialised countries on the one hand and the OPEC countries on the other. In principle, the noble Lord is right; this would be very nice. It is not only the machinery—would that it were. We have tried this before, and we have seen how difficult it is, when the industrialised countries get together, to speak about energy. We have also seen how difficult it is for the OPEC countries to talk among themselves and reach agreement on energy. For the two to reach agreement together would be very nice, but one must remember that energy is to nations what bread is to individuals. When nations start to run short of energy, they sometimes, as when men run short of bread, react in a manner which is not wholly expected of them. Their reactions are not always what one would expect. Efforts have been made on previous occasions. I participated in the Euro-Arab dialogue, which barely got off the ground. Of course the noble Lord is right in principle; how lovely it would be in a perfect world. But there is not, alas! the machinery. And it is not just a question of machinery; it is a question of political will.
Lord WIGG: My Lords, there is one curious omission from the Prime Minister's Statement about which I should be very grateful to have the comments of the noble Lord the Leader of the House. Mrs. Thatcher spoke in Canberra—it was featured on television news on Sunday night—about Her Majesty's visit to Lusaka. The Prime Minister ventured to say that her advice had not been given to the Sovereign. It appears from the statement which has now been issued by Buckingham Palace that Mrs. Thatcher did not consult the Sovereign before she made that statement and it looks as though the Prime Minister, who is new to the job and who is still rather an apprentice, has not yet appreciated, in relation to Lusaka, that the Sovereign does not speak as Queen of England but as Head of the Commonwealth. Therefore, may I ask the noble Lord whether, before Mrs. Thatcher made that statement, which

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could be very damaging to Commonwealth relations, she took the precaution of consulting the Sovereign and also the precaution of consulting the other 40 members of the Commonwealth?
Lord SOAMES: My Lords, I can reassure the noble Lord, Lord Wigg, that if the Prime Minister is an apprentice she is doing pretty well as an apprentice. That is all I can say. As to the statement which the Prime Minister made about whether or not Her Majesty would visit Lusaka, she said that a decision would be taken when the time was right as to whether or not advice should be given to Her Majesty. The Commonwealth Conference is going to take place in Lusaka, and at the moment the position is that Her Majesty will be going there. Whether or not the position will change before that time, I do not know. Of course the Prime Minister is well aware of the fact that it is not only the Prime Minister of this country who has a say in this matter. On the other hand, it is the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom who must, when the Queen is in the United Kingdom, take the final responsibility for the advice which is given to Her Majesty. I have no doubt that this advice would not be given without the full and proper consultations which are constitutionally laid down.
Lord WIGG: My Lords, would the noble Lord the Leader of the House be good enough to confirm the point he is now making: that the final decision will be taken by the Prime Minister? Surely that is not so. The decision that the Sovereign will take will be her decision, upon the advice of the 40 other countries which are members of the Commonwealth.
Lord SOAMES: My Lords, the advice will be given in whatever form represents the proper constitutional practice.
The Lord Bishop of WINCHESTER: My Lords, I apologise to noble Lords that my earlier intervention was premature. However, I felt that I needed to point out to the noble Lord the Leader of the Opposition that the Island of Jersey is not only a deanery within the diocese of Winchester but that it is within a most loyal bailiwick which lies inside and not outside the national boundaries. If we continue in this vein, 40,000 Jersey-
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men will want to know the reason why—and I know a little bit about what that entails! Having said that, may I endorse what the noble Lord the Leader of the Opposition has said in his questions, though I would that he had reflected a little more stringently upon the growing minority of people who feel the deepest dismay at the tendency to put all our future eggs into the nuclear basket.
Lord SOAMES: My Lords, I do not think anyone is thinking of putting all the eggs into nuclear baskets, as the right reverend Prelate said, but I think the hard fact is that unless we prepare ourselves to be able to produce nuclear power in the world, this country and many other countries will fall seriously short of energy in the latter part of this century and the first decades of the next, so I think a lot of effort must be made. Of course all safety precautions must be taken and various points of view must be taken into account, but the hard fact is that the future of 60 million people living in these islands will depend very largely at the turn of the century upon the extent to which we have succeeded in bringing nuclear energy to an advanced stage.
Lord JANNER: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord first a question on the refugees? While I appreciate—and I am sure everybody here appreciates—the approach that has been made to the USSR, the fact still remains that there are very many refugees who unhappily are without any place of refuge at all. Will the Government consider approaching the various Governments of the world with a view to doing what Israel, for example, has done—a small State like that—to look after a proportion of the refugees who are still in dire peril on the seas?
My other point is this. The noble Lord made a comment about the resolution that was passed at the EEC some little time ago in relation to the negotiations which are taking place at the present time in respect of the agreement between Egypt and Israel. Does he not think that it was a disgraceful thing that a one-sided Statement should have been issued while these negotiations were taking place? Does he not think that that in itself is likely to cause differences

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—I am speaking of the Statement made at the EEC—and does he not realise that motions of this sort are really interfering with the negotiations which are taking place between two parties who at long last are prepared to come together and discuss matters in a reasonable way between themselves? Will the Government please look at this again and see whether they can influence other members of the EEC not to disturb the position by intervening at a critical time, or if they do intervene at least to present the definite decision they have themseves considered, that at long last these two parties getting together is something of infinite importance in so far as the Middle East is concerned?
Lord SOAMES: My Lords, in answer to the two questions, first on the question of the Vietnamese refugees I think the noble Lord, Lord Janner, will be aware that the Prime Minister took an initiative some weeks back with Mr. Waldheim, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, pressing for an international conference on this matter because it is of enormous proportions. We are speaking about a million—or even 2 million—persons of Chinese ethnic origin with nowhere to go and no one to accept them. First, the best thing would be to stop it, but if we cannot do that we must react as best we can. This is an international problem and the noble Lord may rest assured that Her Majesty's Government will continue to play their part in trying to get other countries to take this view. The trouble is that everybody tends to agree with this but when it comes to where the refugees shall go there are rather fewer candidates to take them in.
As to the second part of the question, the Statement issued following on the political co-operation meeting of the Nine on the Middle East, I agree with the noble Lord that the agreement between Egypt and Israel is an important step but it is by no means the only step which is needed in the Middle East. There are certain things happening out there and it would be much better if they did not happen in the longer-term interests of wider agreement. I myself believe and it is the view of Her Majesty's Government that this was a right and proper Statement for the European Community to make.
Lord GLADWYN: My Lords, no doubt rightly the noble Lord does not like machinery, but might it not be desirable for the nations represented at the Tokyo Summit to appoint some committee of deputies or officials simply to follow up the decisions taken there and to see whether it might be desirable to have another Summit Conference on the subject?
Lord SOAMES: Yes, my Lords. Steps are in fact taken to monitor the decisions taken at these Summit meetings.

CRIMINAL INJURIES (COMPENSATION) BILL [H.L.]
4.6 p.m.
Second Reading debate continued.
The Lord Bishop of NORWICH: My Lords, in returning to the Criminal Injuries (Compensation) Bill I should like to begin by saying how much I believe all of us stand in debt to the noble Earl, Lord Longford, for the steady, plodding way in which he has kept at this question of compensation for injuries for those who have suffered violence. I am glad that he reminded us that right back in 1962 as well as in 1978 he was seeking to bring this subject to us.
I must confess to not fully understanding the minds of noble and learned Lords. I was excited to discover, in the first half of the speech made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Boston of Faversham, that he appeared to be wholly in support of all that the noble Earl, Lord Longford, was doing. However, half-way through I began to realise that he was not exactly saying what I thought he was saying and by the end I gathered that he was not as enthusiastic as I had imagined him to be at the beginning. Being a simple Prelate of optimism, I prefer to listen to the first part of what he said rather than the second, but I noticed the point made by the noble Lord when he said that there were about 20,000 claimants to the Board and that at the moment the figure concerned was about £10 million. Whatever else this says, I believe it says one thing clearly to the conscience of the nation, that it is a much larger problem than perhaps appeared to us when we first began to read and study this Criminal Injuries (Com-

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pensation) Bill. I believe we might have thought that it was a large Bill for a small problem. It appears to me now to be only a complicated Bill for a large problem.
I have been a little helped by the ordinary newspapers, who summed it up rather well in one of their leaders this week, when they made two points. First, that this Bill aimed: (1) to put the present scheme for compensation on a statutory basis, allowing legal aid for claimants and permitting future victims to go to court to establish their rights; and (2) if it became law it would give relatives the right to be paid compensation from public funds and allow victims of family violence to be included for the first time. I gained some encouragement from that, and I looked at the report of the debate which your Lordships will remember we had in July of last year when the late right reverend Prelate the Lord Bishop of Leicester spoke. On all sides of the House I believe we mourn his passing; he was a great figure here and all of us younger Prelates learned much from him in this House. As I remember, he made two points. The first was that of course in court the question should be asked, how can we obtain the maximum possible contribution towards reparation from the offender? And, lest that should appear to be a narrowly reparation-centred view, he went on to speak about how he favoured the widening of the present Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme to include damage in the domestic scene generally, to curb malefactors, and to take more compassionate care of those who were in need through violence.
Your Lordships will know of the Bristol pilot scheme in 1974, of the victims' support scheme which began there, which is now working and has been copied in many places. But I think we must recognise that that pilot scheme is patchy and it depends on three things; on police help, on a national network of volunteers, which is very hard to find in certain areas, and on an information centre. All these three are useful and helpful, but are palliatives and partial rather than firm and nationwide. I hope very much, therefore, that the present Government will give, if not full-blooded support, at least encouragement and benevolent neutrality to this particular Bill, though I reckon that in a Bill as complicated as this there may well be need for
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suitable and even substantial amendments. I believe that, if your Lordships give a Second Reading to this Bill today, though of course it will be right and proper for amendments to follow, it will give immense encouragement to the not inconsiderable number of people who are hurt, harmed and scarred by being victims of violence, or members of families who are victims.
That figure of 20,000 claimants a year to the board shows something of the magnitude of the problem. I take comfort from the fact that the sub-committee of the Council of the Magistrates' Association, chaired by Professor McClintock of the Department of Criminology in the University of Edinburgh, when reporting on the compensation orders and the need for a central fund, recommended that the question of an adequate compensation scheme for victims of crime, whether or not the offender is brought to court, should be given further consideration by central Government. Therefore, I believe that the tide is running, if not quickly, steadily in the direction of this Bill, and I hope that much will come from this day's debate.
I must confess to a deep personal concern in this matter. In fact the late Bishop of Leicester hinted at it in the July debate. The main author of this report of the working party, who has already been named by the noble Earl, Lord Longford, Mr. Michael Whittaker, is a member of our own family circle, and when his small daughter of eight was dreadfully murdered 10 years ago I realised how deep can be the scars and the pains and the emotional and psychological and indeed spiritual hurt that can touch any member of a young family facing such a tragedy; and I am amazed at the compassion for other victims which positively has stemmed from that tragedy in the work of this working party.
I cannot, of course, argue the legal niceties. I believe that is something which more learned people than I must speak to, and there are plenty of noble and learned Lords who can do this. But I believe that living victims need continuing care and support, and families who are themselves within the circle of those who have been violently hurt need support and care, as your Lordships will remember we were doing only a fortnight ago in this place, in the judgments given by the Law Lords

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in the case of Dr. Lim Po Chou in a different way. I do believe that victims of violence and their families need a special caring, and I think it very proper that such a Bill as this should be discussed solemnly, seriously and unhurriedly in your Lordships' House. I believe it is the right place for such a Bill to start. Surely all Members of your Lordships' House, both temporal and spiritual, would feel that the passing of this Bill is in direct line with the long Christian heritage of our country. When all is said and done, the best known parable is probably the good Samaritan. We cannot bring the dead back to life, but we can necessarily seek to help to heal the scars, emotional and spiritual as well as physical, in such problems of violence and we can with the good Samaritan come close to the victim, however assaulted. By the action of giving a Second Reading to this Bill we can do what the good Samaritan did, which was to draw close and with sympathy and sensitivity, and incidentally with financial help also, if you read the parable closely; he poured in oil arid wine and sought to care for the victim of violence. I hope, therefore, that your Lordships will give a Second Reading to the Criminal Injuries (Compensation) Bill.
4.17 p.m.
Lord ALLEN of ABBEYDALE: My Lords, as the noble Earl said in introducing this interesting Bill, it is often said that those who are interested in questions of crime and punishment tend to forget about the victims of crime. I do not in fact think that that is true, but the noble Earl certainly continues to deserve our thanks for giving us this further opportunity of talking about this topic, following the debate he introduced rather less than a year ago. I fear that, like the noble Lord, Lord Boston, I do not go along with the noble Earl when he says that hardly anything has been done in this country to help victims of crime. I believe that this country does rather more than most to provide help for victims of crime, although certainly no one would for a moment claim that we have achieved perfection, or anything like it.
The noble Lord, Lord Boston, outlined some of the measures that have been taken, but I suppose that the most important single step was when in 1964 we decided to follow the example of New Zealand
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and set up the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board, to which all previous speakers have referred, a step, incidentally, which has since then been copied in quite a few other countries. Those who set up this scheme would, I think, have been surprised if they had known at the time that fifteen years later, and some tens of millions of pounds later, it would still be functioning on a non-statutory basis. I fear that the noble Earl's Bill does not, as he rather indicated in his speech, give statutory force to this existing scheme, indeed far from it. I think I must say a few words about that scheme if my comments on the Bill itself are to be intelligible.
The original concept, as I understand it, when the scheme was prepared, was that the ordinary processes of the civil courts for awarding damages against a person who injured another were simply not appropriate for crimes of violence because the perpetrator, even if he was caught and was, as it were, available, would normally have no funds. From that it followed logically that when the new scheme was set up, it was based, so far as possible, on the system of tort damages administered by the civil courts.
The Royal Commission on Civil Liability and Compensation for Personal Injury had a pretty close look at the scheme. I am not sure that I can respond entirely to the description of being " the horse's mouth " and I certainly speak with some diffidence in the presence of the noble and learned Chairman of the Royal Commission who I am very pleased to see here. However, may I briefly say that in its report the Royal Commission commended the scheme; agreed that it was right that the scheme should continue to be based on tort damages, but naturally taking account of any changes which were made in the operation of the courts themselves in the light of the Commission's findings; and recommended quite firmly that the scheme should be made statutory.
The Royal Commission was in touch with the official working party to which reference has been made and, as the noble Lord, Lord Boston, has explained, that working party did, in its turn, come up with certain recommendations for altering the scheme—notably, alterations affecting victims of family violence. As I under-

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stand it, the last Government, with those two reports before t hem, decided two matters which do not seem to me to be inconsistent with each other. First, they accepted the view of the Royal Commission that the scheme should continue to be based on tort damages; but, secondly, they decided against legislation until there had been a period of experimentation with the working party's suggested changes. We have not yet heard whether the present Government go along with those conclusions, but I hope that we may hear later this evening. What is clear is that the noble Earl's Bill does not go along with them.
The existing scheme spells out the procedures to be followed by the board in some detail, and I would not have been surprised by a Bill which set out these procedures and perhaps provided for the relaxation of some of them—for example, by raising the present limitation that compensation for loss of earnings is not to be more than twice average industrial earnings. However, as I read it, the Bill does not seem to do anything of the kind. It sets up a tribunal which I suppose is intended to replace the existing compensation board. But it says nothing about the tribunal being required to follow, with or without modifications, the principles and practices of the civil courts, but under the existing scheme there is a plain obligation on the board to do just that.
My basic difficulty is that neither does the Bill say what principles and practices the tribunal should follow. Perhaps I may illustrate the point that I am trying to make by calling attention to the provisions of Clause 6 which has the marginal note:
" Reduction in compensation where certain other payments are made to a claimant ".
Subsection (1)(a) of that clause makes no provision at all for deducting social security benefit from compensation awarded to the claimant himself. That means a complete departure from the present practices of the courts and from the practice of the board, and still more from what the Royal Commission thought appropriate for the courts. As noble Lords will probably recall, the Royal Commission recommended a complete offsetting of social security benefits against tort awards. However, the provision in
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the Bill would mean that the community could be paying, from public funds, to the same individual two separate and cumulative amounts for the same incident—one, calculated according to the detailed social security rules and the other calculated, I do not know how.
Even subsection (1)(b) of the clause, which chooses to treat the dependant differently if the individual dies, has its own problems. For example, the power to make deductions for pensions and social security benefits is permissive and not mandatory. Moreover, the definition of " dependant "—I think that it comes under Clause 13—goes extraordinarily wide and, as I recall my Scottish law in which I do not claim to be an expert, goes a good deal wider than the definition of " dependant " used for " loss of society "—
The Earl of LONGFORD: My Lords, it does not go very much wider. Only part of the clause goes wider. By and large it was copied directly from the Scottish rule.
Lord ALLEN of ABBEYDALE: My Lords, I stand corrected on that point, but it is news to me that a Scottish provision could go as far as to cover a sister's illegitimate child or an aunt's stepson. However, these are comparatively detailed points which we can leave aside for the moment.
The award and calculation of damages in the civil courts constitute a skilled task and the members of the present board, which has to follow the courts, are all legally qualified. But, when we look at the Bill, the only person who must be a lawyer is the chairman of the tribunal. Nothing is said about the make-up of the local boards and although I listened carefully to the noble Earl I did not hear too much information about their composition. The local hoards are very important and if one looks at the very last paragraph of the schedule one sees that their findings are binding on the tribunal and the tribunal cannot interfere with them unless the claimant or the victim appeals to the tribunal. I suppose that as there is no requirement on the tribunal and the boards to follow the procedures of the civil courts, it is natural enough that there should not be any detailed provision about lawyers. However, I

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wonder why, if so, the chairman himself must be a lawyer. And I wonder, again, what are the principles on which awards are to be based.
There are one or two other points about the Bill which surprise me a little. For example, it is silent on whether the tribunal comes within the jurisdiction of the Ombudsman. The provision about legal aid, which has been discussed by previous speakers, is certainly not free from controversy and would, I think, be the first occasion on which legal aid would be made available for proceedings before a tribunal—of which there are very many. Clause 1 distinguishes, in a way, between pecuniary and non-pecuniary loss. However, when one comes to read Clauses 4 and 6 the draftsman seems to have forgotten all about non-pecuniary loss. Clause 9, which is concerned with the Secretary of State recovering compensation when other payments have been made, does not, in fact, provide any machinery for the Secretary of State to discover when these payments are made.
However, in the end, I come back to my main difficulty; that is, the silence of the Bill on the principles which the tribunal and the local boards are to follow, granted that the Bill is drafted in such a way as to sever the connection between the tribunal and the civil courts. I very much hope that the debate will elicit some statement of policy from the new Government. I think that both the noble and learned Lord, Lord Pearson, and I would regard it as a bonus if we were given some indication of the Government's thinking on the recommendations of the Royal Commission as they affect the courts.
I hope, too, that the day will not be too distant when the Government themselves introduce a Bill to put the present Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme on a statutory footing. However, I am sorry to say that I fear that the provisions of this Bill are so far remote from what I think would be appropriate and from what the Royal Commission thought would be appropriate that it simply would not be possible to put it right by amendments at a later stage. Grateful though I am to the noble Earl for raising this topic, and sympathetic though I am to his general aim, I fear that I for one cannot support the Bill.
4.32 p.m.
Lord JANNER: My Lords, noble Lords present will have realised by now that there are some difficulties in regard to this Bill. However, in the main, we should consider what the effect of the introduction of the Bill will be, whether or not it passes its Second Reading. I am bound to say that, as someone who has been involved in this matter for some sixty years, I find it difficult to make a final decision on the Bill. Let me say at once that I can think of no one who has been in any way connected with this problem and who has not felt that the victims should certainly be entitled to proper compensation. I have never heard anyone say such a thing.
We are grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Longford, for having introduced the Bill and for his remarks on it. We know what a deep anxiety he has for humane and decent treatment of people who have been victimised. Everyone would accept that. I shall have difficulty in making up my mind on the timing. It may well be that the Bill passes its Second Reading and goes on to the Committee stage; it may be that the problems which have been raised, for example, by my noble friend Lord Allen of Abbeydale, will be sufficiently debated and, as a result, the Bill may proceed.
The right reverend Prelate the Lord Bishop of Norwich referred to what the Magistrates' Association has done. It follows, and has followed, the feelings of the noble Earl and others who are interested in this subject. It would be useful to refer in a little more detail to what that Association says about the present situation. Its sub-committee states:
" The number of compensation orders made by magistrates' courts has been increasing annually and now amounts to approximately ninety thousand each year, and more than 1 in every 5 sentenced for indictable offences at magistrates' courts were ordered to pay compensation. Furthermore, in almost a quarter of the cases in which a fine was imposed by magistrates for an indictable offence it was combined with an award of compensation payable to the victim. It is suggested that if the courts make more frequent use of their powers to order compensation in criminal cases, in due course a multiplication of the occasions on which requests would be made by the executive to cancel compensation orders might end in undermining the authority and prestige of the courts ".

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Briefly, I should like to dwell on a point that was considered very carefully by the Association. At the time a person is sentenced to imprisonment, orders are made which encourage him and, indeed, allow him to be freed from the compensation claim. Obviously, that is an absurd position and ought to be remedied; there is no question in my mind about that. Incidentally, the Magistrates' Association has made a thorough investigation into compensation. It is certainly not happy about the lack of certain provisions which ought to be included. I agree that it has been a tremendously long time since the suggestion of statutory provisions was made. Consequently, one wonders—and perhaps the Minister will be able to offer an explanation—why the submission of statutory provisions has been delayed in that way. I gather that this was still under consideration by my noble friends—Ministers at the Home Office and so on. I hope that it is under very careful consideration by the Government at present.
I do not want to delay the House for long, because others want to speak. To a considerable extent I agree with much that was said by the noble Earl. Incidentally, the Magistrates' Association has issued to magistrates guidelines in respect of this matter and the necessity of paying compensation, which are of a very strong nature. The sub-committee states:
" In its interim report the Magistrates' Association proposed that there should be some guarantee, when a court has made a compensation order, that the victim actually receives the sum awarded even though the offender defies the order, or is unable to meet the obligation due to drastic change in circumstances. It was suggested that a victim should be able, on hardship grounds, to apply to a central authority for payment of outstanding compensation, and in such cases the central authority would then be responsible for the recovery of the money from the offender (a procedure comparable to Social Security officers paying maintenance orders and where possible recovering payments made) The proposal was based on the view that through compensation greater attention by magistrates' courts should be directed towards helping the victim, and that victims should not suffer loss where an offender does not meet the obligation placed on him by the court ".
I am sure that my noble friend would agree that the authorities, the people who have been dealing with this matter, have done their best to meet the situation. The only question that really arises now—and there are many points I should have to raise myself on a Committee stage—is
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whether the Committee stage, in itself, would meet the case of those who feel like the noble Lord who spoke before me, or whether we should press the Government to introduce a Bill taking into consideration the arguments which are being used here.
4.41 p.m.
Lord MISHCON: My Lords, your Lordships' House, with its usual tolerance, listened to me making my maiden speech on the very matter we are discussing today. It was made in fact on the Unstarred Question on 18th July last which dealt with compensation for victims and aid to victims, then raised before this House by my noble friend Lord Longford. Often if one looks back on a speech previously made one regrets many things that one said. But I must say that, on looking back at least at the opening of the speech I then made, and which your Lordships, or some of you, were good enough to listen to, I certainly do not regret the opening remarks, which I should like to repeat.
" My Lords, I hope that my noble friend Lord Longford will not think me presumptuous if, when for the first time I address your Lordships' House … I pay him a tribute for bringing this urgent matter to the attention of the House tonight and for the usual humanity with which he has done so. Many of us who admire the noble Earl for the fervour of his spirituality and social work find it somewhat difficult at times to follow him down all the mental paths through which he would, with his gentle eloquence, beckon us. But none of us has the slightest doubt about the physical position of his heart. It is very much in the right place ".—[Official Report, 14/7/78; col. 265.)
I should like to re-echo those words now. In doing so I should like to be one of those who, without equivocation, would wish to support the Second Reading of this Bill. I say " without equivocation " because of the principle of the Bill before us. I share with other noble, and very much more learned, Lords who have spoken, doubts about some of the provisions; and I recognise the need for correction in regard to some of the clauses, but those are very much matters that can be dealt with on the Committee stage.
Many remarks have been made this afternoon about whether or not it is a good idea to include legal aid. My noble friend Lord Boston raised that point That is debatable. It does not go to the heart of this matter, but some of us find it

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a little Gilbertian that legal aid is available for the criminal who caused damage to the victim, whereas when the poor victim turns up before the board in order to argue a case—which I assure my noble friend is not as simple as he thinks—he finds himself of necessity often without any legal assistance at all. If one follows the recommendation, as I hope we shall, of the Pearson Committee—chaired, as has already been mentioned, by the noble and learned Lord who is with us this afternoon—and one has to award damages according to the law of tort, I pity the poor victim who has to read up the law of tort, and the various principles of damages which apply, in order to make his case for the damages to which he is entitled. But these are matters of detail.
I could add to them, if your Lordships will have the patience to allow me to do so for a moment, by saying that I am delighted to see—and other noble Lords have said so—that another recommendation has been carried through. I believe that, too, was in the Pearson Report. If it was not, it was in the inter-departmental working party's report. I forget for the moment which it was. It is that wives and relations should be brought into this scheme. While welcoming that, it is obvious that some sort of provision must be put in to ensure that either the matter has been dealt with before the courts or some finding has been made. One can well see that, be it a tribunal or a board, one will find that there are matrimonial matters of a type which are not really appropriate to a board or tribunal of that nature to be gone into, as to whether husband hit wife first, or wife hit husband, or whether indeed the wife fell over a chair in the course of a dispute. These things will have to be looked at.
However, what we are discussing this afternoon is whether we are doing justice by victims of crime at the present moment; whether we ought to be doing something more; and whether the setting up of a tribunal—which would, in the course of things, make this scheme a statutory scheme—is the proper way to do it. That is the principle: questions of details can be dealt with at a later stage. I hope, therefore, that no one will fail to support this Second Reading merely because of some learned, or indeed practical, point that has been put to your Lordships'
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House as to where this Bill, as drawn at the moment, may be defective.
Other noble Lords have talked about the sympathy shown to criminals, and the lack of care for the victim. It is quite wrong to think, even at the present moment (whether or not this country does better, as I believe we do, than many countries or most countries) that enough is being done for the victim when you have a voluntary scheme—forget for a moment the question of quantum—based upon the exercise of prerogative.
Obviously the first step must be—and this has been said for quite a long time; the word " experimentation " has been used, and we have had enough experimentation and experience—that this should be embodied in our legal system on the statute book as a statutory right. If ever there was a time when we ought to be thinking of making it a statutory right, it is a time when all of us, with great regret and pain, find the number of crimes of violence rising around us. If we grapple with that and say that it has to be a statutory scheme, we then go on to ask, " How do we make it properly a statutory scheme? Is it all right to have the present board a statutory scheme that that board will administer, or do you need a tribunal? " As soon as the board is given a statutory scheme, it will, within the normal way we work, become in essence a tribunal.
Again it is a little laughable to think in terms of someone who suffers the wrong of being unfairly dismissed from his employment finding himself before a tribunal—which tribunal, if it decides that unfair dismissal has taken place, is obliged, within certain rules, to award damages—but to say to the victim of a crime ," Well, you have to go before a board, and you have to submit your claim to a hoard. You have no statutory right. It is perfectly true that the board is accustomed to administer its jurisdiction with great mercy and with great understanding, but you have no rights at all. You cannot argue as of necessity that you are entitled. You cannot even say that this will remain as a board with rights for many years to come; other governments may take a different view."
Let us at this moment pause, as the noble Earl asked us to do, and say that we must carry this measure forward at

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least to see whether this Bill, improved as it may be in Committee, will give proper rights to those who are victims of crime. I believe we should be failing in our duty and the Government would be failing in their duty to our fellow citizens if either the Bill were not given a Second Reading or there was not a clear statement from the Government that they felt, having listened especially to this debate and to their advisers, that there were better ways of bringing this matter on to the statute book and that they were going ahead to do so.
4.52 p.m.
Lord SOPER: My Lords, I came to your Lordships' House this afternoon with the intention of thanking the noble Earl for proposing the Second Reading of this Bill and with an equally firm intention of voting for it if necessary, and nothing that has transpired over these hours has in any way disturbed that conviction. Indeed in some ways it has reinforced it.
I approach this problem from two angles which are perhaps not quite so acute as has already been demonstrated by noble Lords, first in the matter of an equivalence between an interest in and concern for those who are malefactors and those who are the victims of malefactors. Only a few days ago we were engaged in your Lordships' House in a debate on prisons and at one stage, I think quite properly, the interjection was made that nothing had been said about the victims, that we had been totally concerned with the welfare of prisoners. I think that was justified to the extent that our total attitude to those who are involved in illegality and wrongdoing, both the victims and the perpetrators, should be seen within a general area of justice and equality of perception, and indeed a realisation that they both belong to the same community, and to ignore either party is to distort the processes of such justice as is expected of such laws as can be formulated.
There is, I think, a perceptible danger that the interests of prisoners will not be safeguarded unless we take greater care to concern ourselves with the sufferings of victims of violent crime, and it is for that reason that I welcome the Bill, which seems to me to set the balance right or to set it within perceptible distance of
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being regarded by ordinary people as a correction of what they perhaps erroneously assume to be too much concern for those who are the evil-doers and too little regard for those who are its victims. Indeed, out of my own experience, which is long if not deep in this field, how many are those victims and how desperately do they need far more efficient protection and far more efficient machinery whereby something can be done to abate the misery they suffer and to recover them to some reasonable standard of wellbeing!
But there is another aspect, and it has been ventilated with great care this afternoon. It is the question of the legality, the jurisdiction, the statutory nature of what should be done for those who are the victims of violent crime. The one word that has not been mentioned today is the one which immediately leaps to my mind when I think of this matter, and it is the difference between charity and justice. For weird and wonderful reasons of psychological processes, it has been my experience that many people who are entitled to benefactions on the part of a civilised government seem to think it an abasement of their own personality and an insult to their own integrity if they avail themselves of what they conceive to be charity. It is in many cases not charity; it is in many cases a legitimate provision made on their behalf.
However, we are dealing with human beings and not with lawyers and people who can make rational judgments when they are afflicted by suffering of one kind or another. The thing that has stuck out in my experience is that in a previous debate in this House not long ago it was asserted that, for some of the benefits available in the Welfare State, fewer than 28 per cent. of those entitled to the benefits actually claimed them. There is a world of difference in the psychological reaction to a statutory provision and to any ex gratia payment—which does not necessarily suffer because it is in Latin but which very often attracts the assumption, however ill-based, that it is awarded not on the premises of justice but on the premises of pity or some kind of superior care.
Therefore, in my judgment, there are very good reasons for giving this Bill,

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which, as has already been advocated, provides a statutory basis for what has been the intention of previous Governments but which needs to be more fully undertaken, a Second Reading. It may well be that after that Second Reading there will be ample opportunity to deal with the highly complicated and comprehensive matters which have been raised by noble lawyers and on which, I am well aware, it is far beyond my competence at the moment to settle a judgment, but I see no reason, having some experience of your Lordships' House, why those matters should not be fully undertaken in Committee: they should not cripple the Bill but enlighten it.
I would add a few contributory reasons why I give support to the Bill, and the first belongs to the realm of personal and family violence. Again, if I may presume to talk about the psychological effects, it is a most curious and yet damnable thing that violence produces in those who suffer from it not necessarily resentment but, quite often, acceptance. And one of the most disheartening and desolating experiences of those who endeavour to deal with violence in the family is that so often those who suffer it become conditioned to its experience.
That is why I welcome with open arms the provision in the Bill for therapy as well as for the kind of financial payments which are obviously necessary and required. Therapy is part of the normal process of recovery and is inevitable if such process of recovery is to be extended and fulfilled. For that reason, I welcome the introduction of the principle that reparation by the community must include the continuous process of recovery of those who have been injured, not only in pocket or in person but in their whole psychological and spiritual make-up. It is for that reason that I believe the Bill is invaluable and is entirely right.
The Welfare State, in my view, is about the most Christian thing that has happened in my lifetime, but it has suffered from a kind of political skateboard experience—enthusiasm and rapture almost, followed by disenchantment and cynicism. Disenchantment with skateboards is entirely agreeable to me, but there is a deplorable impression abroad today that the Welfare State has been tried and found wanting. It has not. It has been found incomplete
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and difficult but not tried, or not tried in its sufficiency. One of the ways in which we can rehabilitate the whole concept of the Welfare State is to care for those who are in greatest need—to go to those who need you, as John Wesley said, and especially to those who need you most. I can think of no more pitiable group in the community today than those who are, in some cases, the accepting victims of prolonged periods of violent treatment, to say nothing of the violence of the street corner, the pub and the various other open spaces in which violence tends to take place.
I am not competent to speak at all about the niceties that belong to the Bill, but I have heard nothing that can disturb my own conviction that here we have a long-awaited and much belated expression of the statutory right, which ought to be encapsulated within a civilised community, to care for those who are victims, particularly of violence. I hope that the day will come when many a prisoner will be given the opportunity of making personal reparation to those whom he has so grievously harmed. Is it not obvious that when compensation is specified, stratified, and set within a statutory provision, it will become much clearer to many a criminal as to what that kind of reparation may be, and when once it is set before him, is it not much more likely that opportunities will be available and that we shall have opened the door to an even better form of rehabilitation and punishment than hitherto? It is for reasons like that that I invite your Lordships to subscribe to the Second Reading of the Bill, to amend it, if necessary, in Committee, and to set it upon the statute book; and I believe that the community will be grateful.
5.2 p.m.
Lord PEARSON: My Lords, may I add a few words in view of the fact that I was chairman of the Commission on Civil Liability and Compensation for Personal Injury. I am sure that everyone would agree it is quite right that the victims of criminal violence should be adequately compensated for the injuries which they have suffered. I believe it is also plain that the action of tort for damages is not adequate for that purpose for the obvious reason that the persons who commit these acts of violence very

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often have no money or other resources, and of course they are not insured. So unless there is some provision for State compensation, the victims will not get compensation.
For quite a long time now there has been the method of compensation on an ex-gratin basis by the existing Compensation Board. I should have thought that to date the board has worked fairly well, but I would also agree that at the appropriate time the right to compensation should be recognised as a statutory right and should be put on a statutory basis. Indeed, that is what we said in our commission report. For that reason one is glad that a Bill has been brought forward for that purpose, but my worry is whether or not the present Bill will be helpful, because there are very difficult problems of co-ordinating the different systems of compensation. I can think of at least four, and there might be several others.
One is the system of social security benefits whereby injured people receive industrial injury benefit, or if they do not qualify for that in a particular case, they may receive the other benefit, which is sickness benefit. That is one system. Another system is that the courts, when they adjudicate on the criminal offence that has been committed, can award compensation to be paid by the malefactor to the victim. Again, there is the question of whether the malefactor will have sufficient funds to pay any substantial sum which is involved. Thirdly, there is the existing system of damages in an action for tort. That has been in existence and in full play for a very long time, and an elaborate system of practice and procedure has been introduced.
Now comes the Bill, adding a further complication to an already very complicated set of subjects. I would not at the moment agree with the way in which the new system has been set up. It seems to me that the provisions are incomplete. The easiest example of this is in Clause 1(4), which defines the meaning of the expression " loss " in the case of loss to the victim, but it says nothing about what " loss " means in the case of dependants of the victim. That is an obvious loose end.
I entirely agree with what my noble friend Lord Allen of Abbeydale said with
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regard to Clause 6. It is not in accordance wih the present system by which tort damages are assessed, nor is it in accordance with the system which we believe to be better, which was recommended by the Royal Commission. It is a new and different system now being set up; and how does one co-ordinate the two? There is an attempt at co-ordination in Clause 9, but I repeat the very acid question which my noble friend Lord Allen posed: How is the Secretary of State to know whether or not damages have been obtained? We received evidence from the insurers that an enormous proportion of claims for tort are settled by agreement out of court between the insurance company, on the one hand, and the advisers of the person who is claiming, on the other. There is no provision for the Secretary of State to find out. There is no obligation placed upon the victim who is receiving, prima fade, double compensation to disclose that fact to the Secretary of State.
For those and other reasons I feel considerable doubt as to whether the Bill is a very convenient method of giving statutory force. I observed the suggestion that it might be desirable to keep the present scheme of ex-gratia compensation on foot for a little while longer in order to try out some new developments which are being introduced. I should not agree with that if it were to postpone for a long period the introduction of a proper statutory basis, but if it is designed as an experimental measure to see how the developments work in a way that can easily be altered, and that the intention is after that to introduce a statutory right, I should think it entirely reasonable that those experiments be tried. So at the moment I am in a state of considerable doubt as to whether or not I welcome the Bill as it stands. I entirely agree that there should be some such Bill and that the statutory right should be created. I shall listen with interest to what the final speakers have to say.
5.7 p.m.
Lord REDCLIFFE-MAUD: My Lords, I hope that your Lordships will allow me to speak; I gave an indication that I would be speaking, but the list of speakers had already been stencilled. I will detain your Lordships for only a few moments. I speak as a layman in every sense of the

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word, and not as a lawyer. I was relieved to hear the noble and learned Lord who has just sat down describe himself as being in some doubt. I have listened most carefully to the whole of the debate and I, too, find myself in some doubt as to how I hope the House will determine this matter. There is no doubt that we are all indebted to the noble Earl, Lord Longford, for having brought the matter to our attention this afternoon and for all the trouble that he has taken over many years—and not only in respect of this Bill—on behalf of the victim as well as the malefactor. That is no news to me; since we were at school together he has always treated me with equal courtesy and compassion in whichever capacity I happened to find myself in relation to him.
But I was deeply disturbed by the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, for whom I have the greatest respect which goes back not as long as my respect for the noble Earl, Lord Longford, but certainly for a long time. It seemed to me that we were in a real difficulty, not as to the principle that sooner or later we must have a statute, as the Royal Commission itself recommended, but as to the timing. I should like to take this opportunity of saying how glad I am, as we all are, that the noble Lord, Lord Belstead, is seated on the Government Front Bench and that he will be replying to the debate. I hope that the noble Lord will be able to give us the indication which was sought by the noble Lord, Lord Boston of Faversham, in his most valuable speech, as to what the Government's intentions are, quite apart from their attitude to this Bill.
It seems to me that, ideally, the Government should take very serious account of this Bill as it stands, and should see whether they wish to make amendments which would bring it nearer to the recommendations of the Royal Commission and more consistent with what the late Administration set in hand in the light of the interdepartmental working party to which reference has been made. We should then indeed find that, at the end of the day, in this House a Bill would become an Act which would represent the wisdom, not only of this House and of the previous Administration but of the present Government. It seems to me impossible at this stage, with my limited legal knowledge, to say whether, out of this Bill, it is going to
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be possible to find a structure which can be so amended and improved as to meet both what the Royal Commission wanted and the widsom that has come from that interdepartmental working party.
On the other hand, I must confess to your Lordships that, in my experience, no time is ideal for reform. There are always good reasons for further experiment, or for giving the latest working party's report a chance to work itself out; and those of us who have been interested in local government or, indeed, in support for the arts I think would all agree that the present is never suitable, is never ideal, for a forward move. Therefore, my own very strong feeling is that, unless the noble Lord, Lord Belstead, tells us things which make us change our minds, at this point in time we should definitely give this Bill a Second Reading, in the determination that we can improve it and, in that way, can prove not only that in some things we are ahead of another place but also that this is a very valuable part of Parliament.
5.13 p.m.
The PARLIAMENTARY UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE, HOME OFFICE (Lord Belstead): My Lords, those of your Lordships who have spoken in the debate this afternoon will be familiar, I think, with the report of the working party on victims, which was chaired by the noble Earl, Lord Longford, last year. Your Lordships will know, therefore, that the noble Earl would doubtless have wished to have incorporated some more sweeping changes than have been included in the Bill which is before your Lordships' House this afternoon. I should like to express my gratitude to the noble Earl for, as I see it, his realism in assessing the extent to which money can be devoted even to this cause—a cause for which there must be widespread sympathy. Indeed, in the letter from which the noble Earl had the kindness to quote, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State made his concern for the victims of violence crystal clear. I would also, if I may, congratulate the noble Earl on the drafting of a Bill which I am sure, if I may say so, Parliamentary counsel would be happy to claim as his own.
The introduction of a Bill on this subject reminds us, I think, of the consequences of

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violent crime and the shock and distress which can be caused to the victims and to those who are near to them. We cannot be reminded of these things too often. But there is a very real stumbling block in the path of this Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Boston, in his speech at the beginning of the debate, explained it, and, if your Lordships will forgive me, at the end of this debate I should like briefly to repeat it. It is this. In 1973 the then Home Secretary appointed an interdepartmental working party to review the working of the Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme. The working party reported in March 1978, and on the 19th March of this year the previous Home Secretary, Mr. Merlyn Rees, accepted the working party's recommendations and announced in another place that a revised scheme would be introduced as soon as possible, that a trial period for the revised scheme should ensue, and that that should ail be followed by legislation, as has been recommended by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Pearson, who of course was chairman of the Commission on Civil Liability and Compensation.
The Earl of LONGFORD: My Lords, may I interrupt the noble Lord? The noble Lord will agree, I hope, with what I said earlier, that the working party themselves did not pronounce on the question of whether legislation should follow immediately. They left that to their political masters. That was not part of their findings.
Lord BELSTEAD: That is quite right, my Lords; I confirm what the noble Earl has said. My answer to the noble Lord, Lord Boston, and indeed to other noble Lords who quite rightly want to know the Government's position in this matter, is that although the recommendations are being considered urgently—and when I use the word " urgently " I mean urgently—certainly it is the case that we have not yet been able to give our response to the recommendatons of the working party. But today I am in a position to say that undoubtedly there will have to be a revised scheme in which the Government will be accepting certainly the more detailed administrative improvements recommended by the working party, but it would obviously be wise to have a trial period before moving to legislation. But I join
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with the noble Lord, Lord Redcliffe-Maud, in saying that, for the reason that I have just given—simply that, although we are looking at the matter very urgently indeed, we have not been in time to make a pronouncement on this matter before the Second Reading of this Bill—I think the timing of this Bill is difficult.
I have to add that I think the content of the Bill also presents difficulty, because I am bound to say that the working party's recommendations, based upon the existing scheme, are different in several respects from the Bill which is before the House today. That working party may not have been right in all of the 52 recommendations which it made, but it was a working party which had the advantage of a wide range of official advice, and it took evidence from more than 50 people and organisations which had special knowledge of the law relating to compensation, to the problems experienced by victims of crime, and to the way in which the Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme works. The report was widely circulated; comments were received; and, finally, the previous Secretary of State accepted the recommendations. Thus it is that the working party's report is crucial to a consideration of the noble Earl's Bill; and, briefly, I should now like to compare the main provisions of the Bill with the recommendations which were made by the working party. In doing so, I am concerned to explain, not only to the noble Earl but also to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich, that it is the terms of the Bill and not the noble Earl's objectives with which the Government do not agree. I am also concerned to seek to explain to the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, the position in which I am, which is that I believe that the differences of view on this Bill are fundamental differences, and not just Committee points.
The two major changes which the Bill makes in the way that the Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme operates are, first, to make the initial decision on the amount of compensation payable rest on a personal hearing before a local board; then, the applicant shall have a right of appeal to a compensation tribunal, and one member of that tribunal has to be medically qualified.
Because the noble Earl spoke a long time ago, may I give a brief indication of

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how the existing board works? In the first instance, the victim makes a written application which is referred to a single member of the board for a decision. The applicant is involved in no expense except for the stamp that he or she places on the letter. Each board member is a lawyer and each decision of a single member is made on the basis of common law damages. If the applicant is not satisfied with the decision of the single member, he or she has the right to a hearing before a panel of three other board members; and the single member has the right, an important right, to refer a case to the panel if he considers that he cannot alone reach a just and proper decision. Then the applicant and a member of the hoard's staff have the right to call and examine and cross-examine witnesses; but the procedure is kept completely informal, a matter which the noble Lord, Lord Boston, commended.
What is the result of this? During the financial year 1977–78, 16,432 cases were resolved; but only 1,356 went before a hearing. Nearly 15,000 cases, therefore, were resolved by single members of the board without a decision being queried by the applicant. The noble Earl and the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, were right to draw attention to the fact that legal aid is not available in these cases. I should like to say that since the introduction of the Legal Aid and Advice Act in 1972, limited legal advice and assistance has been available to applicants of limited means. This can cover advice on whether to make an application at all or whether to accept the single member's decision, and can include legal aid and assistance with the application form. The absence of legal aid all through the process does not seem to have inhibited applicants from being represented at hearings. In 1977–78, 48 per cent. of those appearing at hearings were legally represented and only 33 per cent. represented themselves. The fact is that legal aid is not generally available for administrative tribunals. When the relevant provisions of the Legal Aid Act 1979 come into effect, provision will be made for regulations specifying proceedings before tribunals, in relation to which legal aid and representation may become available. It is at that moment that legal aid for criminal injuries has to be re-considered.
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The working party considered whether the initial decision of a single member of the board should be replaced by the decision of full-time assessors, but considered—and it is important that your Lordships should be reminded of this—that the existing arrangements were effective and economical. More important, the working party took the view that if compensation was to continue to be based on common law damages, it was essential that the decisions should be made by lawyers, who should have the benefit of advice from doctors where necessary.
I was interested in and listened carefully to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Pearson, and the noble Lord, Lord Allen, who was a member of the Pearson Commission. Both, in essence, said to your Lordships that it is not clear from the Bill what the basis for assessment is to be or whether, as I understood the noble and learned Lord, an unscrupulous victim could obtain what, in effect, would be double compensation. For myself, I am certain that, in general, it would be wrong for the scheme to pay either more or less than an individual might expect to obtain at a civil action.
I find it difficult to see how one can disagree with the working party's conclusions that decisions should continue to be made by fully-qualified lawyers—which is not the effect of this Bill—who are currently engaged in the assessment of common law damages. That is not the effect of the Bill either. What the Bill is doing is to provide for local boards. I thought that the noble Earl was going to propose that these local boards would be manned in some particular way. Because no particular mention was made either in the Bill or in the noble Earl's speech of the extra money which will be needed for manning the boards all over the country, I assumed that the noble Earl would recommend that the boards should be manned by volunteers. If that is the case, I wonder, speaking for myself, how volunteers can be expected to plunge into the intracacies of tort, how they could achieve consistency of decisions; how such a new system could do other than lead to an ever-increasing number of appeals, which Clause 2 provides are to go to the main tribunal and then on to the Court of Appeal.

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I accept that it is the noble Earl's intention to make this scheme as accessible as possible; but I venture to suggest that the noble Earl's proposals might have an opposite effect. I would guess that victims do not want publicity and that many would shrink from the idea of having their cases heard locally. I would also guess that most people would find it easier to have their applications decided on a written basis in the first instance than to have to take the time off work and travel to what—
The Earl of LONGFORD: My Lords, I do not see any reason why anybody who preferred it to be handled on paper should not do it in that way. There is nothing in the Bill which compels one to be represented.
Lord BELSTEAD: My Lords, I am delighted to hear that. The fact is that if the noble Earl is going to the trouble of setting up boards around the country, he is, in fact, jettisoning the very cheap, economical, straightforward and informal system existing at the present time.
Your Lordships might be interested to hear that, if the 1977 figure can be used as a guide, if they were not able to write a letter to a single member, nearly 15,000 people would have need to go off to attend a hearing. I would emphasise also that, in 1977, less than one-third of the hearings were in London: the other two-thirds of the board's activities were held in different parts of Great Britain. The noble Earl suggests also that local involvement would mean that more people would become aware of their right to apply for compensation. Once again, there is nothing between the Government and the noble Earl in that objective; but I venture to suggest that the expense involved in servicing local boards in meeting the cost of applicants and witnesses involved in local hearings and in paying for the increased number of second-round hearings (which undoubtedly would be caused by local variations in the amount of compensation awards) would pay for national publicity on a much larger scale than anything which could be envisaged by our most competitive commercial firms.
During the course of each year, the board despatches some 65,000 items of
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informative literature concerning its functions to the public and voluntary bodies which offer to provide information to inquiries on the board's behalf. The board believes—and I share their view—that the most effective way of ensuring that victims are aware of their rights is to see that information is in the hands of each victim as quickly as possible. Therefore, the board is currently considering the distribution of a revised version of the information leaflet to go to hospitals, victim support schemes, the DHSS local offices, the WRVS, citizens advice bureaux, police stations, magistrates' courts, probation officers and public libraries. And do not let us underestimate the publicity of the noble Earl's own action in initiating this debate today.
My Lords, may I finally turn to the actual payment of compensation. The noble Lord, Lord Soper, referred, as did other noble Lords, including the noble Earl, to the fact that family violence will be brought within the scope of this piece of legislation. It is recommended—and this was particularly picked up by the previous Government—that family violence would be brought into the scope of the scheme as recommended by the working party. I am sure that your Lordships in all parts of the House will support that general intention. The noble Lord, Lord Soper, made the point in his speech that he was particularly glad that this Bill brought within its scope the giving of therapy (I think it is in Clause 3) to victims. Noble Lords will wish to know that the giving of payments for therapy already falls within the scope of the Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme. The existing Criminal Injuries Compensation Board has complete discretion to pay compensation for any expenses incurred as a direct result of the injury, and this would include any therapy or treatment considered necessary.
On the question of the actual payments of compensation, I am worried that some clauses in the Bill appear to have an adverse effect on the rights of applicants to compensation. The existing scheme, for instance, allows applications to be made in respect of any incident occuring since 1st August 1964; the interdepartmental working party recommended that applications should normally be made within three years of the incident; but the noble Earl's Bill requires applications to

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be made within one year of the incident or six months of the death of the applicant, whichever is the longer.
In saying that, I am beginning to go into detail. The point I am trying to make is that the stumbling block to the further progress of the noble Earl's Bill is of this nature. We have a Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme which has worked effectively for 15 years; we have the recommendations of the working party, as the result of a lengthy and well-informed review which recommended modifications to the scheme. The previous Government accepted this policy just over three months ago with a view to legislation after a trial period. If this is to be the way forward, there would be some substantial differences between the provisions recommended by the working party and the provisions which are to be found in the noble Earl's Bill.
The noble Earl may well say that he does not wish to wait. I am not asking for lengthy delay; my right honourable friend is now receiving advice about the working party's report and should be in a position to give his conclusions soon. Obviously, there are still decisions which have to be taken. For instance, it is not so easy as may appear from the noble Earl's Bill to determine what should properly be set out in substantitive legislation on this subject and what can reasonably be included in subordinate legislation, such as the rules suggested in Part I of the Schedule to the Bill. Therefore, if your Lordships were to be asked to take this Bill through Committee and Report stages now, it would be against the view which the previous Secretary of State expressed as recently as only just over three months ago: namely, that a trial period should elapse in order to evaluate changes to the scheme before further legislation is attempted.
Today's debate has been valuable because it has afforded an opportunity for the plight of victims of crime to be drawn once again to public attention. I am not just being polite when I say that I am sure that in considerating the recommendations of the working party on the Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme the Government will take account of the particular concerns that have prompted the noble Earl's Bill, and that both the Bill and this debate will very much
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influence the Government's thinking. Meanwhile, I seriously ask the noble Earl not to proceed this afternoon with this Bill, which in important respects departs from the way in which the scheme should be administered, as recommended by the noble and learned Lord's Commission and the interdepartmental working party as well.
The Earl of LONGFORD: My Lords, may I interrupt?
Lord BELSTEAD: I will give way in a moment. If the noble Earl will agree to do this, his Bill will have helped in a practical way the victims of violence.
The Earl of LONGFORD: My Lords before the noble Lord sits down and before I attempt to reply, may I ask him in what way our Bill differs from the findings of Lord Pearson's Royal Commission?
Lord BELSTEAD: My Lords, on the assessment how compensation is to be paid.
The Earl of LONGFORD: My Lords, we do not deal with that explicitly so I am afraid that I do not accept that particular correction.
Lord BELSTEAD: My Lords, if the noble Earl will forgive me, it is absolutely fundamental.
5.35 p.m.
The Earl of LONGFORD: My Lords, may I explain to the noble Lord that we are all grateful to him. He has been very kind to me and I shall be kind to him back. I do not share his view of working parties as though they deliver the Tablets from Sinai. For many years I have been a member of lots of working parties, some official and some unofficial, and I have never heard them treated as quite such sacred cows as they have been treated this afternoon. I will come back to that in a moment. I am deeply grateful to noble Lords, beginning with the noble Lord, Lord Belstead, and all other speakers who have taken part in this debate, for their contributions. Naturally the speeches of those who supported the Bill in principle, the right reverend Prelate the Lord Bishop of Norwich, the noble Lords, Lord Soper, Lord Mishcon and

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Lord Redcliffe-Maud, are the speeches which appealed to me. The other speeches made me think the harder because obviously they cannot be passed over lightly.
I am very glad that on the whole we have not heard much about cost this afternoon, although the noble Lord, Lord Belstead, touched on it. I had thought that we should be told that in these stringent times any advance of this sort was impossible. That has not been the argument which has been raised against us, so I will not dwell on that now. I knew we should have something about timing, because the noble Lord, Lord Boston of Faversham—inevitably, perhaps—quoted what was said by the former Home Secretary, Mr. Merlyn Rees, that a period of time should elapse before we could introduce a statutory scheme; that we had to see how the scheme, as amended, would work. This scheme has been going on for 15 years.
In 1973 the working party was set up with the explicit instruction of proceeding on the assumption that we were going to have a statutory scheme. That was six years ago. The idea that we need a further period because of some relatively minor changes which are being suggested I find a feeble argument. The noble Lord, Lord Belstead, spoke most charmingly, but I did not interpret Lord Redcliffe-Maud's speech in this way. Lord Belstead felt that Lord Redcliffe-Maud said that this was a difficult time. I think the noble Lord was speaking with a touch of irony; but the noble Lord, Lord Belstead, took it literally. However, we can discuss that at some other time.
One is bound to take very seriously—as one does any of his remarks—the speech made by the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale. He brings to this topic, as he does on many matters, a special expertise and, in particular, the expertise of someone who was a member of the Pearson Commission. Some of his points were minimal and were obviously points which could clearly be improved in Committee. I do not doubt for a moment that there are many such points, as I said when I was speaking. He raised one important issue which the noble Lord, Lord Belstead, also touched upon. In drawing up a plan of this kind it is no
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I doubt difficult to say what should go into the main scheme and what should be left to administration. I realise that that is an important point. If I am told that our scheme is too exiguous, that it does not go exhaustively enough into a lot of questions, then I am bound to admit that argument. Those matters in so far as they must be incorporated in the Bill, can clearly be added at the next stage. So I would not accept that as a fatal obstacle.
May I go back to this working party? The working party were all very well; they were human beings, not any more expert in these matters than noble Lords; they are well-meaning people. The idea that I in one or two respects ventured to differ from them leaves me unextinguished. I am not worried by that particular argument. There we are. There are people who have spoken in favour of the Bill much more eloquently than I can. If we feel an obligation to victims and if we feel that a big step forward should be made, there has been no argument brought forward this afternoon which says that it should not be made now. Therefore I say that we should be betraying victims if we did not seize this opportunity. I venture, therefore, to ask the House to give this Bill a Second Reading.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER (Lord Der-went): My Lords, I could not quite hear the last words of the noble Earl.
The Earl of LONGFORD: My Lords, I venture to ask the House to give the Bill a Second Reading.
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

LAW REFORM (MISCELLANEOUS PROVISIONS)(SCOTLAND) BILL [H.L.]
5.41 p.m.
The MINISTER OF STATE, SCOTTISH OFFICE (The Earl of Mansfield): My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. This is the second Bill dealing with reform of Scots law to be introduced by the Government this Session. The other Bill, the Bail etc. (Scotland) Bill, was introduced in another

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place last month. The two Bills together, I would submit, indicate that the Government are determined to push forward with law reform.
Clauses 1, 2 and 3 and Schedule 1 are concerned with the qualifications of persons to serve on juries in Scottish courts. The existing legislation, dating from 1815, which regulates the qualifications of jurors for jury service in Scotland, is scattered across the statute book. The most important of the statutes on the subject is the 150-year-old Jurors (Scotland) Act 1825, which has undergone numerous amendments, many of which are now as out of date as the parent Act. This Bill consolidates and updates the existing legislation on the qualifications of jurors, their duty to attend in response to a summons and their right to be excused from service. It also sets out in specific terms the penalties for jurors who fail to attend when summoned or who serve on a jury knowing that they are in one of the two categories specifically excluded from serving.
The present law regarding qualification for jurors was criticised by the Thomson Committee on Criminal Procedure in its Second Report, which was published in October 1975. At present the minimum age at which a person may serve on a jury in Scotland is not 18, as it is for other civic duties, and for jury service in England, but 21; and jurors are in theory required to own heritable property to the value of £5 per annum or movables worth £200. The Thomson Committee recommended that there should be a general provision making all persons between the ages of 18 and 65 registered as parliamentary or local government electors and resident in the United Kingdom for five years eligible to serve as jurors. They also recommended that there should be set out in statute the classes of persons who were ineligible for service; disqualified for service; and entitled to claim exemption as of right on specific occasions. Clauses 1, 2 and 3 and Schedule I carry out these recommendations.
I do not think that I need say much about Clauses 4, 5 or 6. Under Sections 8 and 9 of the Succession (Scotland) Act 1964, the husband or wife of a person dying intestate has a prior right to certain sums from the estate. Until those sums are paid, he or she is entitled to receive interest on them, but only at the rate of
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4 per cent. per annum. This is clearly not realistic when interest rates generally are high, and leaves the spouse in an unfavourable position if payment of the balance of the estate cannot be made quickly. Clause 4 therefore enables the rate of interest to be altered by an order made by the Secretary of State. This order, like those enabling the Secretary of State to alter the amount of the prior rights themselves, is to be made by Negative Resolution procedure.
Clause 5 has been included in the Bill to rectify an anomaly created by the Succession (Scotland) Act 1964, and which came to light in a recent court case. Until 1964, the heir of the last surviving trustee in any trust could establish his own right to act as a trustee by proving himself to be the legal heir of the last trustee. However, the 1964 Succession Act repealed the provisions of the Titles to Land Consolidation (Scotland) Act 1868 which allowed this, and there is now no form of machinery by which an heir's character as trustee can be recognised. This clause fills the gap in the law by reviving the provisions of the Titles to Land Consolidation (Scotland) Act 1868.
Clause 6 removes the duty of the Registrar, Capital Taxes Office, Edinburgh, to preserve inventories of the estates of deceased persons without limit of time. Clauses 7 to 12 continue, and substantially complete, the task commenced by the previous Conservative Government when it passed the Sheriff Courts (Scotland) Act 1971, of implementing those organisational and civil law recommendations which require legislation, contained in the report, published in 1967, of the Grant Committee on the sheriff courts.
Clause 7 makes clear that the power given to the Secretary of State by Sections 10 and 11 of the Sheriff Courts (Scotland) Act 1971 to authorise a sheriff principal to act in another sheriffdom or to appoint a temporary sheriff principal enables the Secretary of State to make such an appointment where a sheriff principal, for some particular reason, is unable to take a case, although he is able to do the rest of his duties fully. Clause 8 provides that the sheriff court has concurrent jurisdiction with the Court of Session in both ordinary and summary Acquestrations.

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Clause 9 gives the sheriff court concurrent jurisdiction with the Court of Session to appoint a trustee under Section 22 of the Trusts (Scotland) Act 1921 or to authorise completion of title in a lapsed trust under Section 24. Clause 10 provides that the sheriff court has concurrent jurisdiction with the Court of Session to appoint judicial factors. Clause 11, by removing the present financial limit of £50, enables the sheriff court to deal with all the comparatively rare actions for suspension of charges.
Clause 12 substitutes for the present rather narrow provisions relating to the remitting of actions from the sheriff court to the Court of Session a general right on the part of either party to apply to the sheriff for a remit on cause shown. It also gives to the sheriff a power to remit to the Court of Session of his own accord actions relating to the custody and adoption of children. This clause departs from the recommendation of the Grant Committee in so far as that committee recommended that the application for the remit should be considered by a Lord Ordinary. In the course of consultations on this matter it was suggested that the sheriff who has dealt with the case up to the point when an application for a remit is made would be in the best position to decide whether an application for a remit is justified, and this clause provides for the application to be considered by the sheriff.
Clauses 13 to 18 are concerned with a variety of matters. Clause 13 meets a need in our present arrangements for resolving disputes by arbitration by empowering a Court of Session judge to act as an arbiter in commercial cases.
Clause 14 fills a gap in the powers of the Lands Tribunal for Scotland. At present some statutes laying down that compenastion can be awarded by the Lands Tribunal state that the Lands Tribunal can award interest on whatever award of compensation they make. An example of this is the Lands Clauses (Consolidation) (Scotland) Act 1854, as read with the Land Compensation (Scotland) Act 1963. However, there is no general power given to the Lands Tribunal to award interest, which means that when the Lands Tribunal, for example, makes an award of compensation for
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revocation of planning permission under Part VIII of the Town and Country Planning (Scotland) Act 1972 it cannot award interest. This clause gives the Lands Tribunal the necessary general power.
Clause 15 deals with vexatious litigants. I think it might assist the House if I explain a little about the law regarding vexatious litigants. Under the Vexatious Actions (Scotland) Act 1898, the Lord Advocate may apply to the Inner House of the Court of Session to declare that a person is a vexatious litigant: that is, a person who has habitually and persistently instituted legal proceedings without any reasonable grounds. When a person is declared to be a vexatious litigant he can always apply to a Lord Ordinary of the Court of Session for permission to raise specific legal proceedings. At present that person can appeal again to the Inner House of the Court of Session against the decision of the Lord Ordinary refusing him leave to institute these new legal proceedings. This clause provides that the decision of the Lord Ordinary is to be final
Clause 16 makes general the power which the Court of Session has at present to entertain an action of reduction of a decree granted in any consistorial proceedings, whether or not the court would have jurisdiction under other grounds. An action of reduction is used where a party wishes to annul a decree granted by a court, when that decree has been obtained by fraud or when there was some other fundamental nullity. The present situation is that such a decree must remain in being simply because the parties to the action are no longer subject to the jurisdiction of the Scottish courts and the clause removes the jurisdictional requirement.
Clause 17 remedies certain defects in the Licensing (Scotland) Act 1976. Under that Act it was intended to impose liability for offences relating to clubs upon persons who were the official members of the committee of management or governing body at the time of the contravention. It was thought that these persons could be identified by reference to the register of clubs kept by the registrar under Section 102 of the Act, but one of the subsections of that section provides that the only official or member of the committee of management or governing body of a club

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whose name appears in the register is the secretary. This situation is now remedied by Clause 17 which amends the 1976 Act by requiring that a list containing the name and address of each official or member of the committee of management or governing body of the club is to be lodged with the registrar of clubs, either along with the application for certification of registration under Section 103 of the Act, or when changes are subsequently made to the previous list.
Clause 18 is a simple removal of doubt measure. On one reading of the Marriage (Scotland) Act 1977 it might be thought that if a registrar issues a marriage schedule within 14 days of a marriage notice, or issues a marriage schedule more than seven days before the date of the intended marriage, the subsequent marriage shall be void. It would be rather harsh for such a consequence to flow from the administrative failure of the registrar, and the provisions of the 1977 Act are amended to make sure that it could not happen. This provision is made retrospective to safeguard the validity of all marriages solemnised under the 1977 Act.
These then, in broad outline, are the matters dealt with in this rather technical Bill. I hope that I have been able to give your Lordships a reasonable explanation of them, though I fully appreciate that in a Bill dealing with so many different subjects as this one it is difficult to cover every item fully in a Second Reading speech, unless one were to enter into the type of detail which is more appropriate to the Committee stage of the Bill. My Lords, I beg to move that the Bill be now read a second time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2.a—(The Earl of Mansfield.)
5.53 p.m.
Lord HUGHES: My Lords, may I start by extending my congratulations to the noble Earl, Lord Mansfield, on occupying the position which he now does occupy, and by expressing my condolences with him on the fact that he may be embarking on an experience which fell to me over many years, of finding that the Law Reform (Miscellaneous Provisions) (Scotland) Bill was something which cropped up with monotonous regularity. However, he has an advantage that I did not have, in that he is a lawyer and there-
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fore, probably, approaches these measures with a greater degree of enthusiasm than I was able to muster.
I must say that in the remarks which he has just made in explaining the Bill, he has removed many of the items about which I was far from clear in reading the Bill, even when I referred to the previous Acts which are being amended. So I must thank the noble Earl for making the provisions of this Bill much clearer to your Lordships.
If I may just touch on a very few of the items, it seems to me in regard to Clause 4 that, particularly at a time when minimum lending rate has reached a figure of 14 per cent., there could hardly be a better time to remove from the Statute Book a permanent provision that a spouse should be entitled only to interest. Through no cause of her own, this might cover a fairly extensive period, and 4 per cent. seems nowadays to be a rather niggardly basis of giving help. On Clause 6, I cannot imagine why it should have survived so long that there should be a necessity to preserve in perpetuity inventories of the estates of deceased persons. I cannot imagine that any of your Lordships would want to disagree with the removal of that obligation.
When I looked up the Act of 1971, I could not understand exactly what was the difference between what was in the Act and what is in the present Bill. However, I gather from what the noble Earl has said that the difference is confined to the possibility that a sheriff principal might regard himself as not being qualified to conduct a particular part of his duties at a certain time, rather than the previous provision which enabled another appointment to be made because of the illness of the sheriff principal, or because for some other reason he was unable to perform his duties. The noble Earl has made that aspect of the matter perfectly clear to me.
He referred to those clauses which continue further the provisions of the 1971 Act, and which give concurrent jurisdiction to the sheriff court on a variety of matters. It has become clear to me on the Royal Commission on Legal Services in Scotland that there are mixed views about the desirability of concurrent jurisdiction. But I must say that I cannot

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find any reason for disagreeing with the extension of the concurrent jurisdiction which these clauses include.
After what the noble Earl has said, there are no doubts in my mind about any of the other items which I had marked. However, before leaving the Bill I should like to refer to something which is not necessarily in the Bill itself, but about which I ought to say something. Clauses 1 to 3 relate to jurors. One of the things which have emerged in recent weeks is the difference in the practice in Scotland and in England about the way in which juries are expected to operate. We have had the spectacle of a jury down here considering their verdict over a period of two and a half days, while almost at the same time a jury in Scotland was out for, I think, some 10½ hours.
As I understand the position, a Scottish jury is not allowed to stop its deliberations until it has reached its decision, which might he regarded as a hardship in itself. One must, of course, remember that a Scottish jury is entitled to come in with a simple majority verdict, and, presumably, one of the reasons is that at some point, perhaps during a lengthy absence, they will come to the conclusion that they cannot get any nearer unanimity and will come in with their majority verdict. But, whether or not that is reasonable, what I think—and I had not realised this until reading what happened in recent weeks—is that a jury is not even entitled to get any food sent into them during that period. While it may be that there should be every encouragement given to a jury to reach a verdict as speedily as possible, I doubt very much whether in existing circumstances it would be regarded as reasonable that they should be starved into an agreement.
I do not know whether this Bill would be an appropriate one for amending this situation, and perhaps making more reasonable provision for the comfort of the jury during their absence to consider the verdict. Perhaps the noble Earl could give me some guidance on that. But in a Bill which is laying down the duties of a juror, the obligations of a juror and the penalties to which he may be subjected, it might be regarded as a reasonable quid pro quo that we should give some consideration to the comfort of jurors while they are deliberating on a case.
Lord CAMPBELL of CROY: My Lords, before the noble Lord leaves that point, I wonder whether he would also comment on the fact that perhaps there is an association between what he has said and the fact that a jury in Scotland can bring in a verdict of not proven.
Lord HUGHES: My Lords, whatever the verdict that they arrive at may be—guilty, not guilty, or not proven—it ought not to be one to which, at the end of the day, they have been driven by the pangs either of hunger or of thirst.
The Earl of MANSFIELD: My Lords, may I begin on a personal note by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, very much for his kind remarks. He sat in this position, if I may so call it, for longer than most, with great distinction, and he knows precisely what the job entails. Of course, the noble Lord perpetuates the popular myth that lawyers of any sort can deal with anything. However, let me tell him that it is no asset, in my particular circumstances, to be a lawyer, because I am a lawyer in the wrong country. Therefore, the language is even worse than it would otherwise be, and I start, in fact, from a subordinate position.
I am very glad that the Bill as a whole commends itself both to the noble Lord and to the House. When one looks at the matter, it represents a tidying up of what probably has been ripe for some kind of reform for quite a long time. I very much take the point which the noble Lord expressed about jurors and their duties and comforts. As I understand it, the rights—or, rather, the lack of them—of a Scottish jury stem from an Act of 1587 which in 1979 could, I suppose, be considered to be rather archaic.
The position is that modern trials have become increasingly lengthy and, indeed, complex. I do not suppose that this situation caught up with Scotland as quickly as it did with England. However, I know from my own professional past that even 10 years ago the position had been reached, partly because the Crown now likes to get so many people together in the dock, that juries had to turn their attention to all manner of difficult assessments of fact before reaching their conclusion. Even if they addressed their minds to their task with all speed, it took a

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great deal of time. It may be—I am only speaking personally now—that this is beginning to catch up with the Scottish legal system, too.
The Government will have to consider, therefore, whether amending legislation is necessary. Having, in the words of the noble Lord, had help from the Box, I can go so far as to say that is even now being considered. Whether it can be considered in this Bill I just do not know. The Long Title is one of the longest which I have ever seen, but whether we can slip something in I do not, as I have said, know. If I may, I will take counsel about the matter and communicate with the noble Lord in some way, because I agree wholeheartedly with him that this is something which needs to be amended, and amended fairly quickly. However, I am not sure whether it will be possible to do anything about it in this Bill.
Lord HUGHES: My Lords, one advantage of having such a Long Title is that anything which had to be added to it would, on a percentage basis, be very small.
The Earl of MANSFIELD: Yes, my Lords, but so far as jurymen and their refreshment is concerned it is very important that we should get it right. Having said that, I am glad that this large and somewhat cumbersome but nevertheless useful Bill apparently commends itself to the House.
Baroness WARD of NORTH TYNESIDE: My Lords, before the noble Earl sits down, may I ask him whether there is likely to be a Bill relating to English juries, or whether England is supposed to be perfect while Scotland needs a new Bill?
The Earl of MANSFIELD: My Lords, even though I am an English barrister, I would not say that the criminal law of England is perfect. However, I shall bring my noble friend's observation to the attention of my right honourable friend and point out to him that it appears that in certain directions the law of Scotland has now advanced further and in a better direction than that of England.
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

PUBLIC RECORDS AMENDMENT BILL [H.L.]
6.5 p.m.
Lord TEVIOT: My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. In doing so, I have to declare two interests. One is that I obtain my living very largely as a genealogical record agent and the second is that I have had the privilege of serving as a member of the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor's advisory council on public records for some years.
There must not be thought to be any reflection on either the importance or the interest in this Bill in the fact that only the noble Lord, Lord Boston of Faversham, is sitting on the Front Bench opposite. I am very glad that he is to speak. I sympathise with the noble Lord in having to make two speeches in one afternoon, and also with my noble and learned friend who is going to be kind enough to reply.
The Long and the Short Titles of the Bill look rather vague, so I shall begin by explaining them. Basically, this Bill would make the registers of births, marriages and deaths in the custody of the Registrar General into public records when they become 100 years old. This means that these records would be transferred to the Public Record Office, where they could be seen on microfilm. At the moment, all registers of births, et cetera, are specifically excluded from the Public Records Act 1958.
Noble Lords may be wondering why I am persisting with this Bill, considering the present economic climate. They may remember the Second Reading during the last Parliament, in November, when the noble and learned Lord raised doubts as to the validity of the cost involved. That occasion was unfortunate, in as much as it was heard one and a half hours before it was forecast, much to the consternation of myself and the then noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor.
The situation regarding costs is now much more restrictive than it was then. At one time I was diffident about reintroducing the Bill. However, this Session is to be much longer than usual, which gives more hope for Bills of this kind surviving. I was advised that not even to proceed with a Second Reading would be

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unnecessarily reticent, because implementation is carefully safeguarded in Clause 3 of the Bill which seeks only to remove a legal obstacle.
On the last occasion, I gave noble Lords a brief history of general registration which I hope they will forgive me for not repeating, although I wish to add a little more in order to explain the current situation. However, may I refresh your Lordships' memories by saying that general registration began in the year 1837. This was the start of the Office's long and distinguished history which, among many other things, has produced so much essential statistical information, including the 1861 and subsequent decennial censuses.
Public access has always been allowed in the search rooms, and until 1898 members of the public were allowed to inspect the register themselves. Incidentally, this rule remains in Scotland. Since then, members of the public have been permitted to inspect only the indexes. In order to obtain any more information they have to purchase a certificate. This charge remained for many years at 3/9d. The current charge for obtaining the same information from the public search room, in person, is £2·75 and by postal application £6·50.
Apart from the obvious need for persons wanting copies of birth and marriage certificates, and death certificates for their immediate forbears, for legal and other purposes, there has been a steady increase in the last decade—very sharp indeed in the last year or so—in the number of people having a desire to trace their family history. This interest has grown in people who come from all walks of life and not only, as some noble Lords may think, from those who have pretensions. It is a genuine and natural interest, and I must admit that it has also been encouraged by the media. Last year it was encouraged by the American television programme " Roots " and, more recently, by the BBC television series presented by Mr. Gordon Honeycombe. I gather that the BBC have had no fewer than 10,000 letters arising from it and have thought it fit to repeat the series.
All this has produced an intolerable burden on the General Register Office and has produced a crush of people in
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the search room at St. Catherine's House, which is often unbearable, without exaggeration, not only during the summer but the whole year round. This congestion is especially bad during school holidays and half terms and again between the hours of 12 and 2, when many more people rush in and pursue their hobby instead of taking lunch.
Genealogy, family history, or call it what you will, plays a great part in the field of tourism. Many people visit this country from the United States of America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and from Southern Africa specifically to discover their origins. The Tourist Board are fully aware of this and have published a pamphlet called Tracing your Ancestors. When and if this Bill becomes law, members of the public will be able to consult microfilms of the original registers. The microfilming is still in progress but is well on the way to completion for the period concerned. Births and marriages are almost finished and there only remain the deaths to be done.
Here I must take the opportunity of saying that the explosion of genealogical interest has had repercussions not only in the search room at St. Catherine's House, but also in the Census Room at the Public Record Office, which I believe is causing much concern to the keeper there. At busy times that room is full to overflowing and I think I am right in saying that there were no fewer than 750 readers in the four days following the Whitsun Bank holiday, and on one day there were no fewer than 200 readers. It is a situation that cannot be allowed to continue. Also I think I can speak for the office, but anyway for the Advisory Council, who are alarmed at the present position regarding the economic cuts. The under-manning of staff could well lead to a serious deterioration of services at present offered to the public.
I am sure that my noble and learned friend will explain the financial implication of this Bill and this being the case I will touch on it only briefly, while not belittling its importance since it is the whole crux. Since the last Bill there have been meetings with the Treasury, the Civil Service Department and the Property Services Agency. While this operation was under way the extra costs could be quite small. I will not say

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minimal, but small. I believe it is the instituting and installing of equipment and the accommodation, the costs of which are quite high, which cause the real problem.
I now come to the Bill itself. Clause 1 amends the Public Records Act of 1958 to include registers of births, marriages and deaths where they were previously excluded, where they have been in existence for 100 years or less, deposited in the General Register Office under or in pursuance of any enactment. There are numerous minor consequentials covered by this with which I need not bother your Lordships, except to give one or two examples—namely, the consular returns; regulations made under the Civil Aviation Act as regards births, deaths and missing persons on hovercraft, which might sound rather bizarre; the Moscow marriages from 1826 to 1856 and the Ionian Islands Acts from 1816 to 1858. There are many extraordinary matters like that.
Your Lordships will notice that registration of adoptions and stillbirths is still excluded. You will appreciate that the nature of those documents makes them particularly sensitive and that the registers started only in 1927, so even if they were not excluded they would not become available until 2027 or 2028.
So far I have not mentioned that there is a great deal of important historical and demographic work proposed to be done on these registers. Some economic and social historians are disappointed that the period will remain at 100 years. I have discussed this matter with many groups but have come to the conclusion that it is better, because of the sensitive nature of these records, that the 100 year rule should remain. However, subsection (3) allows for this period to be shortened should the climate of public opinion change and should it be thought to be desirable without resorting to further legislation. Here I can say that the Public Records Committee are currently looking into the changing use of records such as that by demographers, whose branch of history has grown, having been previously left out of account by the Grigg Committee of 1954.
In conclusion, the preparation of this Bill has been most agreeable. It has been drafted by a distinguished and well-known Queen's counsel and I am very grateful
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for the co-operation that I have received from both the Government Departments concerned and other interested persons. This Bill has the backing of the Advisory Council, because its chairman, namely, the Master of the Rolls, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning, would have been here in person today if he were not a spectator at an annual sporting event in South-West London, which no one could deny him the pleasure of attending.
I appreciate that my noble and learned friend cannot give me a very encouraging reply, in which case I should like to have his advice on how to proceed. I had hoped that the Bill could be accepted as there is a commencement clause, namely Clause 3 and thence after the Bill had passed through all its stages here I would try to find a Member of the other place to take it on there. If that is not acceptable I should like to know of an alternative, otherwise this little Bill will become a hardy perennial and will get nowhere. Perhaps my noble and learned friend may suggest that the Government would like to take it over at a suitable time. I am open to offers, and therefore I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Lord Teviot.)
6.17 p.m.
Lord BOSTON of FAVERSHAM: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Teviot, is to be congratulated on having lost no time in introducing his Bill into this Parliament. His previous Bill, which received a Second Reading in your Lordships' House on 23rd November last year, was a victim of the Dissolution and now remains a matter of what might indeed be called in the current context " historical public record ". But now the noble Lord's speedy action has brought the Bill forward again. I was not able to be present on the last occasion, but I have read that debate and it is clear that, just as it did then, the House has again benefited from the noble Lord's knowledge and expertise in these matters.
There is no doubt that people are showing increasing interest in public records and in tracing their family history. On the last occasion the noble Lord referred to the " regulars " who go to consult records at St. Catherine's House and elsewhere, and although it is not perhaps something on which an interest has to be

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declared, I must confess that my wife is one of the fairly frequent customers. As a fourth generation Australian she is keen to trace her forbears. Although she has not actually said so, I suspect she is secretly hoping that one day some public record or another will bestow upon the family what is, to an Australian with origins in this country, the ultimate accolade in family history terms and reveal that one of her ancestors went to Australia as a POHM—a prisoner of His Majesty, as it then would have been. But I am afraid it is a forlorn hope since what they actually did was to go there and help to found the Methodist Church in Victoria.
The subject of public records is one in which my noble and learned friend the former Lord Chancellor took a close interest, as indeed does the noble and learned Lord the present Lord Chancellor. My noble and learned friend took part in that capacity in the last Second Reading debate and he is sorry not to be able to take part today. As he pointed out then, two main issues arise in considering this Bill: whether it is right in principle and whether the proposals are practicable. On the point of principle, the effect of the Bill will be to give the public free access, as we have heard from the noble Lord, to all the births, deaths and marriges registered over 100 years old, and that certainly seems to be desirable. My noble and learned friend went on to explain that acceptance of the principle would mean splitting those registers into two categories, with those over 100 years old going, under the Bill, to the Public Record Office while those under that age would be in the care of the General Register Office. He acknowledged that the merits of the principle may outweigh the possible disadvantages of splitting the registers into two groups.
On the second issue, whether these proposals are practicable and can be given effect to now so that it would be appropriate now to legislate, my noble and learned friend mentioned that there are plainly considerable administrative and financial implications in what is proposed. It is perhaps not necessary for me to spell out the administrative aspects. It is probably quite sufficient simply to recall that my noble and learned friend said that he had suggested that the administrative difficulties could be resolved. But he was
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less sanguine about the early resolution of the financial implications. Again, I will not detain your Lordships by going over the details, but noble Lords will recollect that my noble and learned friend Lord Elwyn-Jones pointed out that the Bill would involve additional burden on public funds and added that these funds had not yet been authorised, and could not be, because they could not be quantified at that time. It may be that the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor may wish to say something further about this tonight.
My Lords, I ought also perhaps to mention very briefly three other reservations that my noble and learned friend expressed in the last Second Reading debate. The first was on whether or not there should be an appointed day provision in the Bill. There is a temptation, as we know, sometimes, for instance, when the money cannot be found immediately to do something, to put a measure on the statute book but to delay its entry into force until an appointed day. He was not at all keen on that idea. Again he confessed that he was not at all happy about the Short Title of the Bill, and the noble Lord, Lord Teviot, has referred to that in his speech today. It was not, and indeed is not,—and I think the noble Lord accepts this, too—very revealing, and perhaps a more precise and informative title might be the one which was suggested during the course of the last debate, something like the Births, Marriages and Deaths Registers (Public Access) Bill, or something similar to that. I do know, and the House knows, of course, that the noble Lord, Lord Teviot, has had the guidance of learned counsel on this point.
Finally, my noble and learned friend raised a reservation about Clause 1(b) which would enable the 100 years' period to be reduced. It was reassuring, I think, to hear the noble Lord, Lord Teviot, agree that the 100 years rule should be maintained, and certainly it remains our view that a firm decision now on the appropriate period would be better than having the period altered from time to time.
My Lords, while we are still unable to give full support to the Bill at the moment because we feel it is somewhat premature, we hope that it will not be too long before it is possible to achieve what the noble Lord seeks, and I would join in commending him for the way in which he has presented this proposal to your Lordships.
6.23 p.m.
The LORD CHANCELLOR (Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone): My Lords, I congratulate both noble Lords on two admirably succinct speeches about this little Bill. In particular, I am sure the House is fascinated on this occasion, as I expect it was on the last although I had not the good fortune then to be present, by the expertise shown by my noble friend in discussing this rather recondite subject, on which he is a much greater expert than I am. He disclosed two interests. He really only needed to disclose the first, but he did disclose the second. I should like to take the opportunity of thanking him for the public work he does on the advisory committee. We are very glad to have him there and we are grateful for what he does. It is not in the technical sense an interest, but I am sure the House was glad to know from his own lips as well as from mine of his service in that respect.
He also is entitled to claim, and he did claim, the support of the Master of the Rolls, who I think is the chairman of that committee but who is otherwise occupied at this moment. He has not been very well lately; he had a slight accident to his knee about a month ago, so I think none of us would grudge him a little relaxation before he resumes his full parliamentary duties. I am sure the House is very glad to know that he is sufficiently well to be able to take that relaxation on this particular occasion.
My Lords, the actual subject matter of the Bill was so fully and accurately dealt with by my noble and learned predecessor so recently that I think it really would be a work of supererogation on my part to repeat what he said. With his customary geniality, he concealed what was really rather a dusty answer behind a friendly and forthcoming manner. My Lords, I took the precaution of seeking to soften the blow to my noble friend by indicating to him that too, am driven by the force of circumstances and against my natural generous inclinations to give him an answer which is only marginally, if at all, less dusty than that of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Elwyn-Jones, a few months ago.
Of course, my noble friend has put his case not only with clarity but, as one would expect, with perfect fairness. First,
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perhaps I should say, although readers of Hansard will already know from my noble and learned friend's utterance, that this Bill has nothing whatever to do with open government. The registers of births and so on which are dealt with in the Bill are in the general sense open to inspection. That is to say, the public are entitled to look at the index and are then entitled to demand and receive, on payment of a small fee, a certified copy of the entry in the original register. For obvious reasons, they are not entitled to handle the registers themselves as of right. Obviously the originals are of great importance and one does not want them either disfigured or damaged in any way.
The public are, as it is, entitled to a certified copy of the register once they have inspected the index. At the moment the index and the register are not under the general tutelage of my department—it is that of the Registrar General—and they go to a place called St. Catherine's House, which I think might well be described as a sort of annexe to Somerset House, to inspect the index and get their certified copies. Owing to the great increase in custom, the space available, I believe, is both inconvenient and over-crowded, and that, I gather from my noble friend's description, is a perfectly fair criticism to make of it.
If this Bill were to be passed and implemented—and they are two quite separate processes—what would happen would be that registers under 100 years old would continue (if I have got it right, which I hope I have) where they are, subject to exactly the same rules as at present and subject to whatever fee the Registrar General, under pressure from the Treasury or elsewhere, would impose. On the other hand, those which are over 100 years old would be transferred to the Public Record Office, which for this purpose is not in Chancery Lane but at Kew.
Therefore, if someone wanted to look at a number of records for the purpose of tracing his own or someone else's ancestry, he would have to go to two places instead of one. He would have to go to St. Catherine's House and pay a fee there and then go to Kew and look at the older one. Whether that would be quite as convenient as my noble friend thinks, I do not know enough about the subject to say. Obviously certain people

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who wanted to inspect a number of entries would find it less convenient because they would have to go to two places and be under two entirely separate jurisdictions. As I understand it, when they arrived at Kew they would not get quite the type of certified copy that they get now, but they might get what was marginally more valuable to them—at least my noble friend would know better than I whether it would be marginally more valuable to them: they would get a microcopy of the original register.
Lord TEVIOT: My Lords, I hesitate to interrupt my noble and learned friend. If they went to Kew, what in fact would happen is that they would be able to inspect the register themselves and obtain the information there without having to buy a certificate which they do not necessarily want.
The LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend. They would not have to buy a certificate, but if they wanted to take anything away with them they would have to get a microfilm. Whether that would be a preferable process to looking at the index and then getting a certified copy, is a question which only experts can answer. Some might argue one way and some might argue the other.
I do not think that there can be any objection in principle to splitting the records—if that is what people want—and making them go, according to when the register was filled in, to an annexe of St. Catherine's House or to Kew. I have heard some rumours and I do not know whether they are true or false. If St. Cathe ine's House were to be moved under the decentralisation programme, which previous Administrations have had—and I have heard rumours that it was to be moved to Stockport or somewhere—I think that the disadvantages of a split register might be rather bigger than they would he as between central London and Kew. But that again is something which only those who use this kind of documentation could find out.
Personally, I am not at all hostile—and hope that I have made that plain—to my noble friend's suggestion. I like to think that the Record Office is a more attractive place to him. I am responsible for the
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Record Office and I like to think of it as being slightly more attractive to him and to others than that which is presided over by another department. I am complimented, or rather on behalf of the Public Record Office I am complimented, by this preference, but it would, of course, depend on the accommodation and the service which we could provide.
Here I am sorry to say that I come to the same awkward fence at which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Elwyn-Jones, shied when he came to go round the course on behalf of the last Government, and that is the well-known fence called "expense". I am told that the capital cost of doing what my noble friend wants would be £300,000—a small figure when one is dealing with £70,000 million or whatever figures are now dealt with from the Treasury Bench. However, to a humble little department like mine, and especially to one of its outstations like the Public Record Office, it is a tidy sum. It is a sum for which I would have to fight tooth and nail and which—under the unaccountable method of accountancy which successive Governments have pursued for over 100 years (and who am Ito question either tradition or matters of high finance?)— would have to be voted in whole in one financial year if the work were to be undertaken. Frankly, I do not have that money for the current financial year and I shall not have it for the next. That puts a very serious bar against my noble friend's legitimate ambitions, if they be legitimate.
Moreover, to that £300,000—and I am told that the figure may be larger than £300,000 and will certainly not be smaller than £300,000—one would have to add what I am advised would be an annual increased cost of £105,000 a year. Again, it is a trivial sum in comparison with those of the great spending departments, but unfortunately my outstations are not great spending departments. Indeed, one of them, the Land Registry, is able to hand over to the Treasury a modest profit every year, so I appear with some degree of sanctity when I come to deal with these matters. However, I would still have to find what I have not—namely, £300,000, minimum, of capital expenditure and an additional expenditure on servicing of £105,000.
I think the argument might be that that could be found by charging fees. It will

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be said, " After all, the Registrar General charges a fee at present in St. Catherine's House. Why should not the official at Kew charge a fee? " I am told that that shakes the Public Record Office to the core because it gives its services free. The idea that it should charge a fee is rather like suggesting that people should be charged a fee for entering a public museum. I remember only too well at the beginning of the last Administration in which I served in this House, what a row there was about that. I am told that there would be very great political difficulties in altering the policy.
Personally, I must say to my noble friend that I sympathise with the desire to charge fees, but it would raise what the Treasury calls with a shrill cry of alarm " repercussions ", if I were to do it in my own department. Therefore, I cannot make many promises about that. More-over, my initial briefiing was that the fees, if charged, to pay back according to the unaccountable system of accountancy, would be prohibitive in the sense that the humble genealogist, freed no doubt from the inconveniences, jostling and smells of St. Catherine's and admitted to the enlarged and fresh air of Kew, would none the less find the cost when he got there prohibitive—indeed, so prohibitive that he would not be able to pursue his inquiries. I am not altogether convinced by that argument, but that is what I am told might be the case.
That means that there is really rather a lot of difficulty about accepting my noble friend's suggestion. Very thoughtfully—and I admit that it was very thoughtful of him—he has included a type of commencement provision saying that it will only come into operation when the Lord Chancellor of the day (remembering as I do that the lives of Lord Chancellors, like the natural life of man, are " solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short ") begins to bring it in by some form of Statutory Instrument. That is all very well, but I think that a point of principle arises here. Unless one promises to do so within a rational period of time—that is to say this year, next year, but not some time or never—I do not think that one ought to do that kind of thing. I think that that is bad legislation. I have hideous recollections of my deceased and much beloved noble friend Lord Merthyr, I think it was, every
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year asking about the Easter Act 1928—which has still not been brought into effect after 51 years. Therefore, I resist on principle the idea that I could accept a Bill simply because it has a commencement date which I could not promise to implement within the foreseeable or definite future.
My noble friend asked me what he should do next. Again, I do not want to hold out any promises and I do not want to lead him in any way up the garden path. However, I hope that I have given him a sufficiently dusty answer not to have done that. I should like to assure him that beneath this rather unusual costume there beats a warm and loving heart, which will pursue this matter with colleagues in one way or another. If he withdraws the Bill, I shall see what I can do for him; I might even see what I can do for him if he does not. However, he should consider that with the expenditure of public money involved and the fact that when the Bill reaches another place the Government can ensure that it founders, he ought not to inflict on this House an undue Committee stage.
Of course, I congratulate my noble friend on having obtained professional assistance in the drafting of his Bill. It is no kind of criticism of his professional assistant in this matter. On the contrary, it is a beautiful little piece of work. I must remind him of a sad experience once had in another place when I, personally, drafted a Bill of one clause. I won the Ballot for the Private Member's Bill, and in those days I flattered myself on being an expert legal draftsman. On that occasion the Government accepted my Bill. It did not cost them any money; it only cost money to putative fathers and deserting husbands; so the Government were quite pleased to accept it. However, they handed my Bill over to the parliamentary draftsmen. The only words which remained in the little one-clause Bill which I had drafted were the Short Title, and that was only because the parliamentary draftsman was not free to alter it under the conventions which afflict another place. Therefore, I am afraid that the Committee stage could not be regarded as a complete formality. On the whole, I hope that my noble friend, having got the better of the argument—as I frankly admit he probably has—will now be a generous opponent and withdraw his Bill, trusting to

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the loving heart rather than to the for-bidding exterior.
6.43 p.m.
Lord TEVIOT: My Lords, this has been a most enjoyable experience this afternoon. I shall take with me to the grave the memory of my noble and learned friend's loving heart. I will deal very briefly with the matters which he raised. On the question of open government, I did not mean what he said at all. He can have my assurance that my views are very conservative. On the question of the two locations instead of just the one—that is, St. Catherine's House at the Aldwych and the location at Kew at the other end of the Richmond branch of the District Line—they are rather a long way away from each other, and it would be inconvenient for people to travel from one to the other. But people would be prepared to go there, pay a modest fee and be able to look at microfilms. They would not have to buy the microfilm; they would put it on a reader and then write down the details. That would be a very great advantage. Most of the functions of the General Register Office are being transferred to Southport—that was the subject of another of my little battles some years ago with other noble Lords—but the Public Search Room will remain in Central London.
I turn to the question of costs. I gather that the cost of £300,000 has increased in the last few months, but that is due to the necessity to strengthen a certain building by the Property Services Agency. However, the annual extra cost of £105,000 greatly alarms me, because the last time I heard about it, it was between £40,000 and £50,000 for being at Kew, and, if in Central London, between £70,000 and £80,000. However, one has to expect figures of that kind.
I should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Boston of Faversham, for his interesting intervention. I look forward to talking to him later or at some suitable time about Australian genealogy, in which I am no great expert. Sometimes I look up transportation records to trace ancestors, although it is rather a social cachet in Australia to have been descended from such a person.
I turn now to what I shall do. The best thing for me to do is to withdraw
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the Bill, but I do so very reluctantly. I shall simply wait for some joy to come at some time from my noble and learned friend. I do not see any point in battling on. I also hope that pressure may he brought to bear from the Department of Health and Social Security, of which the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys is an out-station, so that it may be included in one of its Bills. I thank noble Lords very much for a pleasant afternoon, and I especially thank my noble and learned friend. Therefore I beg leave to withdraw the Bill.
Motion for Second Reading, by leave, withdrawn.
Bill, by leave, withdrawn.

MEDICAL EDUCATION IN LONDON
6.46 p.m.
Lord ANNAN Lord ANNAN rose to ask Her Majesty's Government whether they are satisfied with the provision for medical education in London and whether the policies of the Department of Health and Social Security and the University Grants Committee could be further co-ordinated to meet the needs of the London Medical Schools and Institutes.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, as a Vice-Chancellor of the University of London, I must immediately declare an interest, because London is the largest centre for educating doctors and dentists. It possesses 12 general medical schools and five dental schools, which teach both undergraduates and post-graduates. There are two schools which teach solely postgraduates and there is also a federation of 13 research institutes of post-graduate medicine and dentistry. These schools and institutes educate one-third of all medical students in the United Kingdom. Indeed, because Scotland is somewhat over-generously provided with medical schools for its population, London University educates one-half of all the future doctors in England and Wales. The new provincial medical schools are, of course, developing fast, but the Department of Health and Social Security is still asking London to provide the same number of doctors annually. What is more, London's post-graduate reputation makes it the Mecca of medical scientists from all over

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the world and in a very real sense the secular Mecca of our friends in the Arab States who come to London to obtain medical treatment.
Yet this inevitable concentration of medical talent in the country's capital is now in a desperate state. Why is this? There are five reasons: first, the misguided criteria applied by the Resource Allocation Working Party, which is called, in the jargon, RAWP; second, the erroneous principles used in calculating the special increment for teaching, called in the jargon, SIFT; third, the 1974 reorganisation of the National Health Service, which caused the mismatch of the four Thames regions then established to the brute facts of the location and the number of teaching hospitals. The fourth reason is the failure in reorganisation to recognise the inevitable conflict between the needs of medical research and health care. The final reason is a certain inability of the right-hand of Government, the DHSS, to inform its left-hand, the DES and the UGC, what it was doing.
The proposition from which RAWP started was as follows. It assumed that London tries to educate too many medical students in relation to the available population. That is not so. In fact, London has a better ratio of students to population than any of the cities where new medical schools have been established. Even the ratio in Inner London, from which population has been draining, is more than adequate compared to that of other cities. I ask the noble Baroness, Lady Young, to consider the following figures. Cambridge has 250 potential patients per student; Oxford, 400; Southampton, 750; Bristol, 1,100; Leeds, 1,200; and London 2,000. Only Greater Manchester has more than Greater London, with 3,500. But if you compare Inner London and Inner Manchester, Manchester has 700 and London 750. The point is that the provincial medical schools rely on their regional rather than their city populations.
RAWP is a battlefield upon which many battles have been fought over the past four years. It is littered with the corpses of memoranda, and the combatants upon it stand dazed and deafened by the volley of reports. I shall not weary your Lordships' House by deploying élite troops of arguments which have made no
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impression as yet on the enemy's position. No one in London for one moment denies, or contests, the democratic fact that population is leaving London and that the new schools in the provinces need funds. But the Department of Health and Social Security seems to be under the impression that the teaching districts in London receive allocations in excess of the health services they provide.
May I take just one example to refute this. Would your Lordships consider the figures for the area health authority in which you are at this moment sitting? In 1977–78 the revenue allocation was 23 per cent. compared with hospital expenditure of 25 per cent. The deaths and discharges of patients stood at 23 per cent. The accident and emergency attendance stood at 25 per cent., and the total outpatient attendances 28 per cent. Those figures show that these hospitals are doing more work than they are given funds for.
The trouble is that according to the RAWP formula they are said, these medical schools, to be over-funded. Why is this formula wrong? RAWP insists that allocations should be based on standardised mortality rates as well as on population. This almost suggests that we are dealing with a national death service rather than a National Health Service. But this formula of SMR fails to take into account illness, disablement, loss of working time by ill health, social deprivation, and, above all, the commitment to commuters who use the London teaching hospitals rather than their home hospitals. These factors too ought to be taken into account, and they are not taken into account because they are so difficult to quantify.
RAWP fires with two barrels. It takes money out of London to finance teaching hospitals in the Midlands and the North. It also takes money out of the London teaching hospitals to finance hospitals in the home counties. Because money is needed in Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire, Charing Cross Hospital today faces an immediate cut of £660,000. If inflation rises at 15 per cent. it will face a cut of £1 million. The same fate, I would guess, would face St. Mary's, Hammersmith and the Middlesex in that region. It will also probably affect all the schools in the North-East and the South-East regions.
What will happen? Wards will be closed. The day unit, surgery and investigation, could be closed. The baby care unit could be closed. So could the rehabilitation unit. The cervical cytology service could be halved. There could be a 50 per cent. reduction of out-patients. Of course there is an alternative. The alternative is simply to close down the whole accident and casualty service. That would be a radical step. But whatever happens there will be fewer beds and medical students will just not be taught some subjects.
Now for the effect which the reorganisation of the Health Service has had on the medical schools. That reorganisation took no account of the peculiar situation in London. Of course there were consultations. In 1970 the noble Baroness, Lady Serota, was chairman of a London working group set up by Mr. Crossman to advise on the way in which the boundaries for health care in London might be drawn. Yet at the very first meeting, despite the pleas of my predecessor, Sir Brian Windeyer, the chairman ruled that London could be treated no different from any other part of the country. Although he and the deputy chairman of the UGC pointed out the absurdities that would result, I am afraid that no change took place. Nor, I regret, did any change take place after the change of Government in that year. I am afraid that the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, was equally inflexible.
What are these absurdities that I alluded to? The national pattern is to allot one medical school per region. But in London there are two area health authorities which contain three general medical schools and their hospitals, and there are three other areas with two medical schools in them. Only the South-West Region conforms to the national pattern, and even that has an additional so-called university hospital at Roehampton which is concerned with the Westminster Medical School.
This rigidity in the way in which the regions were planned means that, whereas in the provinces the region tends to regard the facilities and expertise of its medical school as a special asset to be supported and encouraged, in London the regions and the authorities take the medical schools for
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granted. For it is at area health authority that the real damage occurs. However, many medical schools there are in the area, they are allowed only one representative, whereas if there are several local authorities each nominates to the authority. A health authority has to consult very many organisations before it can change the use of the facilities of a hospital—and one body can stop it making the changes it thinks necessary. That body is the community health council which, by definition, represents purely local interests. It does not even represent the interests of the users of the hospital, because the users often come from other districts, and in, the case of London, from other regions in the Home Counties. You cannot close a single ward without consulting the community health council. But the area authority has no obligation whatever to consult the university or medical schools, even though its action could make it impossible for a school to teach some subjects in the curriculum.
Under the present set-up there is bound to be a hopeless conflict between the London teaching hospitals and the area authorities and community health councils. How can one reasonably expect local councillors and deeply concerned members of the public who know the deficiencies in their local mental hospitals, or geriatric treatment centres, not to take funds for these admirable causes from what seem to them well-provided teaching hospitals? The present National Health Service structure prolongs this hopeless conflict of loyalties. It is exactly like asking Balham how much our country ought to spend on defence. How can these participatory bodies recognise the long-term national interest and the responsibility for teaching the new generations of doctors? There is no longer any direct allocation to teaching hospitals; they have to fight for their share from the regions. So I beg the Government, when the Royal Commission on the National Health Service reports, to reconsider the regional boundaries in London and the whole of the substructure.
Someone at this point may be asking under their breath, " What about SIFT? "—the special increment for teaching. It is claimed that SIFT covers 75 per cent. of the median observed additional costs per student in the teaching hospitals due to teaching. I am very much afraid it does nothing of the sort. The additional costs

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in a teaching hospital arise not only from its undergraduate but from its postgraduate commitment. SIFT entirely ignores research. The additional costs arise from the inevitable expense of everything in London. They arise from the cost of dental schools, which carry an enormous load of service work—for instance, urgent dental treatment, radiology, and orthodontic appliances. Yet SIFT covers only a quarter of dental costs. SIFT recognises only local authority boundaries and it ignores demographic facts. So far from the London teaching hospitals being short of patients, patients come to them in droves because they have heard of the quality of the treatment there.
I can, naturally, understand the argument which runs, " The University Grants Committee gives the University of London a block grant and if its medical schools are suffering, it is the fault of the university, not of the Government ". The non-medical schools in the University of London and their institutes have over 36,000 students. The medical schools and their institutes have 9,000 students. Medicine takes 40 per cent. of the university's budget. We really cannot afford to give it more without gross injustice, yet there is no doubt in the minds of everyone that our medical schools and institutes are suffering from malnutrition.
That is why last autumn I asked Lord Flowers, who, as the Rector of Imperial College has no attachment to any medical school, to be chairman of a small working party which would have on it clinicians from outside London University and the chairman of a provincial regional authority. I asked Lord Flowers how we were to maintain the present standard of medical and dental education and research in London and meet UGC targets for student intake. I then told him that he should he prepared if necessary to recommend the closure or radical reorganisation of one or more medical schools or institutes and, if so, which those institutes and schools should be. I leave your Lordships to imagine the dismay that this has caused throughout the medical staff and the courage which the deans of the medical schools and their senior academic colleagues have shown in accepting the need for such surgery.
I shall not guess what Lord Flowers and his colleagues will recommend, but this
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I do know: to economise, you always need to spend additional sums initially. If we are to help the DHSS, we need their financial help, and we need them to co-ordinate that help with the UGC. It has not always been easy to get that help in the past, but matters have improved greatly this year and I want publicly to thank Mr. Parkes, the chairman of the UGC, for getting a settlement on a matter which has dragged on for three years—namely, what costs and what arrears the University of London should pay for the maintenance of the medical schools embedded in the newly-built hospitals.
I shall not drag your Lordships through that Serbonian bog, except to say that we now have a settlement, a rough and tough settlement which of course I shall contest, but nevertheless I am grateful indeed to the UGC and, I am sure, to the DHSS for any help they have given in this matter. But I must warn them that the UGC has told us that of the additional £4 million it is going to give London to settle its £9 million arrears, leaving us to pay £5 million, that £4 million will be paid at only £1 million a year. I shall find it very difficult to advise the University of London that they should pay the hospitals more than £1 million a year. We pay what we get.
There are two other public servants I should like to thank in the DHSS. One is Sir Patrick Nairne, the Permanent Secretary, and the other is the Chief Medical Officer, Sir Henry Yellowlees. I very much thank them for giving us such help as they have given over the setting up and work of the Flowers Working Party. Medical education is, after all, really financed from two sources, the UGC and the DHSS; the UGC through the block grant which the university receives, and the DHSS through the teaching which the National Health Service consultants and registrars provide. The closer we in the UGC sector can work with the DHSS the better we like it.
But let me say this to the noble Baroness: I am blamed by many of my medical colleagues in London for setting up this working party. They believe that if it does recommend the phasing out or reorganisation of one or more medical schools, the DHSS will once more reduce the student targets for London-trained doctors and force us then to close a

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couple more medical schools, and so on. I therefore urge the noble Baroness to explain to her right honourable friend the Secretary of State that, in the Flowers Working Party, London is giving a hostage to fortune, and that, if that hostage were shot at the Elephant and Castle, it would create a bitterness in the medical schools which would not only cripple the schools but bring an end to all co-operation with the DHSS. I ask the noble Baroness to remember how doctors can on occasions be roused, as they were when Mrs. Castle was Secretary of State for Health and Social Security.
There are a number of things the Government could do to restore the morale of the medical schools, and I shall list them. Naturally, I do not ask the noble Baroness to give an assurance on any of them, but perhaps I may give her a shopping list: abolish Area Health Authorities; re-examine the powers of community health councils; recognise that in medicine consensus management is the enemy of standards and progress; re-establish the old authoritative collaboration between the management of the hospital and the dean of its medical school so that decisions, and above all quick decisions, can be taken; give teaching hospitals the same exemption from the fight for priorities within the region as has been given to the postgraduate institutes—at the very least, can we not devise a better means of protecting their research and teaching budget by, say, the device of top-slicing so that whatever level of health authority makes the decision is not being asked to choose between national and local needs?
These medical schools, dating back, as Bart's does, to the reign of Henry I, are still (my pride must make me say this) the head and the heart of British medicine—acknowledging of course, as I do, the admirable standards set at Edinburgh, Birmingham, Leeds and the other medical schools outside London. It is inevitable that London will be the centre of medical education and research. It always has been and I like to hope it always will be. But it will not be if its blood supply is diverted by pouring money into small hospitals and participatory administration, with its proliferating committees. And, if the heart can no longer pump blood to the head, medical research and medical
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teaching are doomed in this country. I say to the Government: reform, reform, reform!
7.8 p.m.
Baroness ROBSON of KIDDINGTON: My Lords, I rise with great trepidation to follow that speech by the noble Lord, Lord Annan, on medical education; I am not a medical educationalist. I have to admit my interest in this debate as the regional chairman of the only London region that has only one teaching hospital in it, and therefore no doubt has less problems than some of the others. I could have wished that Lord Annan had phrased his Question slightly differently. I agree with him 100 per cent. that co-operation between the DHSS and the University Grants Committee on medical education is tremendously important, but he left out what it is all about, and that is the service we jointly give to the patient. I wish that would have been in the Question, though I know it was in the back of his mind.
I speak as a regional chairman and much of what Lord Annan said I agreed with completely, but he was, in my view, talking basically about undergraduate medical education in London and the undergraduate medical schools. As a regional chairman, I am responsible for providing in my region—this applies to all the London regions—not only the facilities for undergraduate teaching but also all the facilities for post-graduate teaching, which in many ways is one of the most important things that the region has to do.
The noble Lord, Lord Annan, very carefully explained the problems that face all the London regions under RAWP, and spoke of how we find difficulties in funding the increase of students in the medical schools in London as proposed by the DHSS. He touched upon the cost allowance per student that is given under SIFT for undergraduate education, which, as lie said, is 75 per cent. of the median cost between the teaching hospitals and 45 other hospitals taken at random in the country. Even if that calculation were correct—and it never can be—it still leaves an enormous sum of money to he found by the regions.
Apart from that, since reorganisation, the region is responsible for major capital development within its region, and my

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region happens to be one of the regions that is building a new teaching hospital, in our case at Tooting. Although the DHSS makes a 35 per cent. contribution to the cost of the building of that hospital, the cost bears no resemblance to the building of an ordinary DGH, and as a result there is an enormous and severe drain upon the capital resources which are at our disposal in the South-West Thames region; and the same applies to all the other London regions.
So we have this problem under RAWP. The noble Lord, Lord Annan, is quite right to point out that there are 12 medical schools here, that one-third of the medical students are trained in London, and that the London regions represent four of the five " losing " regions in RAWP. This will inevitably create problems because the money is just not there.
As a regional chairman, I am committed to medical education because, like all your Lordships, I believe that without medical education there is no future for medicine within this country. I am not saying that we are necessarily right in the way in which we are going, and before I sit down I should like to mention one complaint that I have against the DHSS and one that I have against the medical people in this country. It is desperately important that we should not let the standards drop, but in view of the fact that we have 12 teaching hospitals in London we cannot under RAWP keep up the standards. It is impossible under our financial allocation. To put it mildly, feelings of envy are created in the other Thames regions; they claim that too much money is going into teaching.
Although the Thames regions are considered to be rich regions, within those regions there are very poor areas. I hope that the Government will remember this and will take it on board. Our problem as administrators is almost insoluble. I believe that there will be an increasing trend to out-post medical students from the London hospitals into non-teaching hospitals within the region. The Government should be aware of this because the moment it happens there will be tremendous demands from the other hospitals for the upgrading of their facilities in order to be able to take care of medical education; and they would need those facilities so as to be able to educate the future doctors of
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our country. So because we have the 12 teaching hospitals (due to events in history) we are faced in the London region with an impossible situation.
Apart from undergraduate medical education, the regions are responsible for all post-graduate medical education, and that is funded solely out of the regions' normal allocation. It is true that most of the post-graduate hospitals are in London, but within the hospital service itself the amount of post-graduate education that we can afford to give is of the utmost importance because medicine is advancing at such a rate nowadays that five years after a person has qualified as a specialist in any discipline he needs more education; the science has moved forward.
So there is here a tremendous drain on the finances of the Health Service, and I believe that it is here that perhaps the DHSS, and the National Health Service as a whole, have made a mistake. We have tried to provide too much expert treatment at people's front doorsteps. In many ways we have gone too far in developing a large number of regional specialities, and as the noble Lord, Lord Annan, indicated, we should look at the whole of the Thames region. We should have fewer specialised centres, but at the same time ensure that it is easy for patients to get to them. This would have enormous advantages, particularly for medical education. First, the NHS could make the optimum use of all the expensive equipment that goes into a specialised unit. A much larger number of patients could be treated at such centres than can be treated in the smaller units around the country. This would have the greatest impact on medical education because it would mean that the clinicians, the consultants, and the students, in the form of senior and junior registrars, would have enough material in order to develop their expertise. I believe that this is an area where the NHS has fallen down— particularly since reorganisation—because of the demand for specialist centres everywhere.
In London we have 12 undergraduate medical schools, and I believe that in view of the financial constraints under which we live, these medical schools can no longer demand local access to all specialities. The medical schools must co-operate and set up London centres

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where the 12 medical schools can gain expertise.
The other day the Director of the Office of Health Economics, George Teeling-Smith, said:
" There is a clear balance in which convenience and economy play a relatively minor role and the issues of safety and efficiency are paramount. On this basis there seems to be a clear-cut case for highly specialist units covering very large areas ".
This is where the DHSS has fallen down in many ways and has not provided what is needed in medical education, despite having the best intentions in the world towards serving the patients.
I also believe that perhaps the medical schools themselves have not helped the DHSS as much as they should. As a regional chairman I often receive complaints that there are not enough senior registrar posts and that there are too many students chasing too few jobs. That is not true. In my opinion such complaints arise because the medical schools tend to turn out many students who want to become surgeons or physicians. We are living in a world where what we are going to need are a lot of other specialties. We need consultants in mental handicap, in child and adolescent psychiatry, in anæsthetics, in geriatrics, in radiology, in community medicine and in some sub-specialties of pathology. I can advertise for a consultant in mental handicap, for which I have seven vacancies in my region. I can advertise three times, and I get no applicants.
It seems to me that the whole attitude of medical education has to change, because what we are facing in the future is an aging population. We need people who will concentrate on these specialties, and they are not coining forward. I believe, not only that the Department of Health should look at the encouragement we can give—it may have to be financial—to get people to concentrate on these specialties, but also that the medical educators of this country have to accept that these specialties are interesting specialties, and must try to enthuse their students to go into them. They must become academically respectable, which so far they have not been. There are departments of social medicine and general practice in most teaching hospitals, but there is still a need to convince the clinician
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of the value of these departments, and really to integrate them into the training and into medical education.
Lord ANNAN: My Lords, may I interrupt the noble Baroness simply to say that the applications I receive from medical schools requesting the creation of posts in community medicine, in geriatric care, in radiology and in matters of that kind which the noble Baroness has just mentioned are innumerable. The trouble is that I have not got the funds to give to the medical schools to create these new posts.
Baroness ROBSON of KIDDINGTON: I am sorry, my Lords; therefore, let us ask the Department of Education and Science to produce the funds for that particular kind of education. But, on the whole, the balance is in favour of surgery and medicine, and I believe that in medical education we must look towards the future, where the needs in these unpopular specialties are enormous. For instance, when I talk to consultants in mental handicap they admit that it is because there is a resistance to accepting them on the same level as consultants in other specialties; and I believe that we might need to use financial encouragement. I should think that that was the tragedy. I believe that a change of attitude in the whole of undergraduate and postgraduate medical training could create the right possibilities.
7.23 p.m.
Lord COTTESLOE: My Lords, we must all be grateful to the noble Lord the Vice-Chancellor of the University of London for initiating this debate and for developing his theme so clearly and so forcibly. I suppose nearly everyone concerned in the administration of the Health Service would agree that, whatever it merits, the reorganisation of 1974, like the simultaneous reorganisation of local government, was an expensive mistake. Developed from a Green Paper by Mr. Kenneth Robinson and brought into effect by a Conservative Government, it was in general a bipartisan measure of entirely excellent intentions. But in practice it resulted in the introduction of an additional administrative tier that, in a service already short of funds, ate up monies which should have gone to modernising and rebuilding the hospitals;

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while the doctrinaire decision of the last Government to close paybeds gratuitously forfeited many millions of pounds while doing nothing to shorten waiting lists, which have increased.
In particular, administration by the Department, with an overriding emphasis, in itself laudable enough, on the district service, and a passion for egalitarianism which regards " centres of excellence " as a dirty phrase, has resulted, not in a levelling up but in a levelling down which has had deplorable effects, in particular on the teaching hospitals, whose morale and high standards are of vital importance to the wellbeing of the service. I speak as a layman but with some knowledge and experience of these matters, having been, like the noble Baroness, chairman of a regional hospital board administering 150 hospitals; having been, for more than a quarter of a century, on the board of governors of Hammersmith Hospital, the only general post-graduate teaching hospital in the country, and latterly, until the reorganisation, its chairman; and having been chairman for a decade of years of the Royal Postgraduate Medical School and of the British Postgraduate Medical Federation, a highly important school of the University of London, of which the school at Hammersmith is the largest constituent part.
Hammersmith Hospital is unlike the great and historic undergraduate teaching hospitals in having no substantial endowment funds to mitigate the effects of inadequate finance from Government sources. It was a poor law hospital. I had in my office there the last survivor of the original crockery, a saucer with the inscription, " Hammersmith Parish Workhouse ". That is what it was. Although Hammersmith Hospital and the Postgraduate Medical School there have a worldwide reputation; although they attract for specialist and consultant training qualified doctors from every country in the world to the number of 700 or 800 at any one time; although their work is so widespread that a few years ago there were no fewer than 50 consultants practising in the city of Melbourne alone, on the other side of the world, who had received their consultant training at Hammersmith; although the Postgraduate Medical School at Hammersmith is housed in fine modern buildings built by the school itself with monies raised from every part of the
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Commonwealth—in spite of all these things the hospital on which the school depends is still housed in the old poor law buildings, of which the most modern is 75 years old and the greater part very much older than that.
I hope my noble friend on the Front Bench, when she comes to reply—and I feel rather apologetic, for I know that hospitals do not themselves fall within her parish—will be able to tell us when we may hope for a start on the rebuilding of that hospital, the plans for which were agreed and approved, the necessary demolitions carried out and the decanting buildings set up before the reorganisation of 1974, when, overnight, reorganisation brought everything to a standstill. I hope she may be able to tell us how soon this most urgent rebuilding, without which the work of the school cannot be fully effective, will be able to go forward. Meanwhile, the effect on the morale of the staff and the handicaps under which they work are utterly deplorable.
There is one other facet of the existing arrangements to which I should like to refer. I think my noble friend who speaks from the Front Bench for the health services has a note of it, with a particular instance of its effect. It is the anomaly by which area or regional special services, which are inevitably expensive, are financed out of district allocations so that either the district service suffers disproportionately or these services cannot be adequately financed at all. Being area or regional special services, they ought to be financed out of area or regional allocations, if, indeed, they are not the subject of special allocation from central funds, as I think they should be. I hope that the Minister may be able to tell us that this very necessary change will be made.
What I have said may sound rather like a despairing bellyache, but before I sit down I must express my unqualified admiration for the staff who work unremittingly to overcome the ill effects of the unfortunate administrative set-up and the inadequacy of funds and who, in spite of everything, give a magnificent service to the public. For their work, no praise can be too high.
7.31 p.m.
Lord GREENHILL of HARROW: My Lords, it is an unusual thing for me to

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intervene in a debate on a subject of this kind. I do it with great diffidence, especially after the vigorous and expert speech of the noble Lord, Lord Annan. My interest arises from my chairmanship of the King's College Hospital Medical School. This school, as your Lordships will know, is acknowledged to be one of the leading institutions of its kind in the country. I must admit from the outset that my knowledge of these subjects falls far short of that of others who have spoken and who will speak in this debate and who have spent their lifetime in medicine and university administration.
In considering Lord Annan's Unstarred Question, I should like to make five short and rather elementary points. First, London has an enviable reputation for its medical schools. I know this very well from my experience in the Foreign Office. There were several times in our foreign relations when almost the only friendly link which existed between this country and certain other countries was the professional medical link based for the most part on long-established contact with our London medical schools and hospitals.
Anyone who has lived in the Middle East and the Far East could not fail to be aware of this. In my view, it would be a great pity if the Government adopted policies which had the effect of diminishing the reputation of London as a highly respected centre of medical education. I am in principle sympathetic to provincial claims, but not at the expense of accepted and acclaimed institutions at the centre. This country, I believe, is small enough in size for us not to find it necessary to indulge the provinces beyond a certain point.
The second point that I wish to make is that there can be no doubt that the cuts imposed by the Resources Allocation Working Party will result in a reduction of beds in the London teaching hospitals, with an inevitable reduction in the facilities for teaching. This is a serious matter. There is undoubtedly a fall in the population in the centre of London although, in the King's College health district, we find it very difficult to reconcile the Government figures with what is happening on the spot. Moreover, will not the fuel situation also delay, if not reverse, the movement of population from London? Furthermore, King's College Hospital accepts regional and supra-regional commitments to the
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tune of nearly £3 million per annum, for which we receive inadequate financial recognition.
Thirdly, the noble Lord, Lord Annan, looks for further co-ordination between the Department of Health and Social Security and the University Grants Committee. If I do not know much about medicine, I nevertheless know a little about bureaucracy and the ways of Whitehall. I have an instinctive sympathy for the excellent civil servants of the Department of Health and Social Security and the members of the University Grants Committee who know that a call for co-ordination is more easily heard than acted upon; and, from my short experience it seems to me that the present organisational machinery of the Health Service is at fault and is certainly an impediment to proper co-ordination. I hope that the Royal Commission will propose reforms and revisions which will remove the inevitable conflict of interests between too numerous authorities.
Fourthly, may I make a special plea on behalf of my own medical school? I am advised that since the re-organisation of 1974 there is in practice great difficulty in financing capital schemes, the cost to be shared by the Department of Health and Social Security and the University Grants Committee. We have plans for the extension of the dental school in King's College Hospital and the need for it has the full support of the University Grants Committee and of the regional health authority. Yet there appears to be no means by which the apportionment of the cost can be defined; and progress is consequently held up. I would ask the Minister to look at this particular case to see whether we can proceed with what is an accepted and agreed requirement for enhancing the facilities at the medical school.
Lastly, any newcomer entering this particular field of activity cannot fail to be impressed by the zeal of the majority of people who work in it. At this moment of time they are a little bewildered by the number of committees considering it: the Royal Commission, the Flowers Committee and what I believe is known as the London Consortium. The sooner these uncertainties come to an end, the easier the co-ordination for which the noble Lord, Lord Annan, looks can be achieved.
7.39 p.m.
Lord HUNT of FAWLEY: My Lords, when I received a month ago an invitation from the noble Lord, Lord Annan, to speak in this debate, I wrote to the deans of our 12 London medical schools, to the deans of our 13 institutes of the British Postgraduate Federation of the University of London, to the Presidents of the Royal Colleges and to several others. All of them kindly replied almost at once and at length. Some were kind enough to invite me to go and speak with them. My remarks this evening will he based on some of the points that they have made and I hope that they may be of some little use to the noble Lord, Lord Flowers, and his Working Party on Medical and Dental Teaching Resources. I shall not mention many names, either of individual deans or hospitals or of the post-graduate institutes.
First of all, may I say something about the problems of our medical schools. Not all the deans agree with the reason that has been given by many for the need for some of the schools to be closed down. That reason is that so many people have left London, that there has been a movement of residents out of London, and that has left too many medical schools for the remaining population. One dean has suggested that London has in fact as favourable a population/clinical student ratio as had any of the other cities in which new medical schools have been established, indeed as have many other cities. Medical schools outside London rely to a large extent on regional rather than city populations, so it is asked: " Why cannot London do this, too? "
Another important development is that because of daily travelling difficulties and the expense of getting to and from work, more and more people are now coming back to live in Greater London. Points which suggest that a medical school might be moved, combined with another, or even closed, include: How many patients will live in or near its drainage area? Has it a pre-clinical school? What is the range of its clinical and academic departments and how good are they? Has it a department of general practice and community medicine? How old are its buildings? Will they have to be rebuilt in the near future? How much strain will be put on one medical school by the entry of a
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number of students from another who may join it? How much money will have to be spent on such a change? All these and many other points will need to be taken into consideration, including an intangible factor such as the tradition of public service which the school has given to the community and for how long, and how many people will be badly upset if it is swept away?
We are assured that, whatever schools are affected by these changes, the total output of doctors in medical schools will not be changed and we are also told that the total funding of schools after the changes have been made will be the same as it is now. We are told that the cost of producing a doctor in London is very much less than it is in the provinces. Many of the deans and members of the medical school staffs feel very strongly indeed about much of this. One of them, writing about the proposed move of St. Bartholomew's and the London Hospital's medical schools to Queen Mary College, said that in his opinion: " It will be an incredible waste of money ".
It has been asked: " Should the number of post-graduate institutes of the British Postgraduate Medical Federation of the University of London be reduced perhaps from as much as 13 (that includes the Institute of Dental Surgery) to about seven? Should some of them move? Should any of them join up with a medical school or with another institute? These institutes have been playing a unique and magnificent pioneering role in post-graduate medical education and research in Britain. Of the doctors who attend them, about 55 per cent. are from London, about 35 per cent. from the rest of Britain and about 10 per cent. from overseas. They are highly thought of in the Commonwealth and other places overseas. They may well give us an opportunity to exercise leadership in the European Community. Every effort should be made to preserve them.
One dean tells me that he could fill his course at any time with doctors from the Arab countries alone. But the institutes have recently been asked by the Government to reduce their intake of overseas doctors by 7 per cent. on the 1976 figure. One dean writes that it is incomprehensible that any Government should take such a step.

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We have read and heard a great deal about these institutes and their possible reorganisation, rationalisation, absorption, co-ordination, phasing out, abolition, amalgamation, incorporation, redeployment or relocation. We have even heard about integration which is a term that I do not like. Integration is what the cat offered the canary! That is not really a suitable term in this context. It is the earnest wish of all the institutes I think that, whatever changes are made and wherever they go, they must retain their identity and autonomy. They must keep their own management structure—with their boards of governors or their possible replacements—and must remain independent in deciding how they should spend their money in allotting priorities for research and so on.
If a post-graduate institute is absorbed into a medical school many people think that its important contribution to its special subject would almost certainly be reduced. On the other hand, the impact of a large and busy institute might easily unbalance a general medical school; the work the institute does may not be really suitable for teaching undergraduates or for general professional education.
Ideally such an institute should be based on a single site with room for expansion and with minimum travelling requirements for its staff. A good point was made to me by one dean: too much or too frequent reorganisation tends to lower the morale of a staff and impairs recruitment. For its research work an institute may need a considerable amount of laboratory space and expensive equipment. One dean suggested: " Small units cannot do epoch-making research I replied that Dr. William Harvey carried out his experiments which led to his discovery of the circulation of the blood 400 years ago by himself in a small room, and much of Charles Darwin's thinking and work on the origin of the species took place while he was sharing a cabin in the small ship, HMS " Beagle ".
Post-graduate institutes are very keen, naturally, on their own precious basic scientists who help them enormously, and the academic and scientific teaching of young doctors after vocational training is one of their main jobs. A leavening of academic work and some active research
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will help a young specialist, they say, quite rightly, to " think scientifically " and to encourage his critical faculties, especially during the first 10 years of his career. One dean wrote that he felt that in time this highly academic involvement, even if it takes an extra year of training, should be an obligatory part of the post-graduate teaching of all doctors. I would query this. For young general practitioners there is much learning to do to prepare them for their future jobs, and much of this is non-academic.
Some of the institutes have made a definite point—already touched on by the noble Lord, Lord Annan, and by the noble Baroness, Lady Robson—about co-ordination between the UGC and the DHSS. At present the division of financial responsibility between the two bodies is governed by a paper, HM(73)/2, allocating to the UGC support of undergraduate teaching schools and post-graduate courses up to Ph.D and M.Sc, while the courses organised by the university are regarded as those initiated by the regional postgraduate committees and should be funded by the DHSS. This has led to difficulties, the UGC feeling that it is not responsible for the support of those units for which the major undertaking is specialist post-graduate medicine, while the DHSS is naturally reluctant to take over anything more than it has at the moment. Some deans feel very strongly about much of this. One of them said to me: " To move this institute and to amalgamate it with an undergraduate medical school would be an unmitigated disaster ".
The noble Lord, Lord Flowers, asked for evidence from general practice. During the last few years there has been a swing towards a broad approach to medical care, both in hospitals and in the community, and an appreciation that this is becoming increasingly critical in a society where many opportunities for prevention lie outside hospitals and are related to the behaviour of our patients in their environments. I, and many others, hope that the Flowers Working Party, when looking at our diminishing educational resources and at what will be needed in future in London, will consider carefully and favourably those medical schools which are fostering this modern approach.
About half our medical students still go into general practice. When there, they treat about 90 per cent. of the medical

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problems of the population without sending them to hospital. What they need most in the later stage of their medical education is preparation for their own subject. Most of those who want to go into general practice have decided to do that by the end of their general professional training. They do not want highly academic teaching or to spend too much time with basic scientists or in being taught about highly complicated pathological processes or various specialised surgical, electronic or other super-specialist techniques: nor do they want to be involved in other highly academic exercises or in research, however much all this may be advantageous to the young specialist. Clinical competence is acquired by participation in medical care in the branch of medicine which a doctor chooses.
In their vocational training they want to be given expert advice from experienced general practitioners on all the community and behavioural aspects of their future work and on how they can care properly for the multiplicity of organic and psychological illnesses that they will meet later in their practices. These will set them thousands of problems, starting with the care of young children at home and ending with the proper care of the elderly, the dying and the bereaved.
Departments of general practice, which I was very pleased to hear mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Robson, with full-time staff, have been founded in five of the twelve London medical schools, with a full-time professor in charge of two of them. There are also sub-departments of general practice, with full-time staff, but without a professor, in all but one of the others. The two Chairs of General Practice in London are paid for at present not by the University Grants Committee or by the DHSS, but through private benefactions. These departments of general practice have a most beneficial effect on the standards of general practice in the districts around them. They are connected with one or more local general practices, all of them in poor districts; and, in these, members of the department work and take an active part in the practices, supporting the local community services. They have done in the past, and can do in the future, a considerable amount of useful research into the problems of their special branch of medicine.
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Medical schools in the United Kingdom outside London have done even better in this respect. They train about two-thirds of our doctors. The four medical schools in Scotland, one in Wales and one in Northern Ireland, all have full departments and professorial chairs of general practice. In England, the 12 medical schools outside London have 11 departments of general practice and five professorial chairs. In Canada, every one of its 12 medical schools has a full department of family medicine. London schools might well follow their example.
In conclusion, may I say that the attitude of most of the deans and others from whom I have heard about these possible changes has been very reasonable. One of them said to me: " If we are told we should go, we shall of course go; but we shall want to be shown very clearly that such a move is essential ". From a careful study of their reports I have begun to realise what an enormous and far from simple problem this is, and how some traditions must surely be broken and several people hurt and upset. But the matter is urgent and must be clarified very soon. The noble Lord, Lord Flowers, and his working party have an extremely difficult job. We look forward to reading their report, and I am sure that we all wish them well.
7.57 p.m.
Lord AUCKLAND: My Lords, the country as a whole should be grateful for the existence of your Lordships' House at the present time, if only because it has enabled the noble Lord, Lord Annan, in his customary forceful manner, to initiate a study of very great importance. His cohorts, if I may so call them, are Peers and Peeresses of enormous distinction in the medical field, in the social field and in senior positions of administration. Fools rush in where angels fear to tread, and I feel that in intervening here with my own somewhat limited experience of only having served on the house committees of a mental hospital and a children's hospital makes my qualifications on the subject of this debate perhaps a little suspect.
A short time ago I received an invitation to visit Hammersmith Hospital to spend a long time, and a very fascinating time, in their renal dialysis unit. I should like particularly to pay a tribute to the Dean of the Hospital and to Professor Peters, the

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Director and Professor of Medicine, for having been so helpful and having explained matters to a layman in as simple terms as possible during that particular visit. From the relatively little I saw there, I should like to bear out all that my noble friend Lord Cottesloe, with his distinguished associations with that fine hospital, has said.
Certainly some of the buildings are anything but conducive to the very fine work which is carried out. I think that is particularly true of the research laboratory departments, where I noticed three of four young men carrying out what were undoubtedly experiments of extreme importance in the kind of conditions which even those of us who work in Parliament would complain about most bitterly. Our working conditions in either House of Parliament are nothing to shout about, but those people were working in the most cramped conditions that one could imagine. One wonders how this work is carried out in some of our smaller hospitals. I find the position frightening, because I have seen some of it for myself.
The renal dialysis unit works quite wonderfully. I was fortunate enough to sit in on three or four case studies and noticed a lot of very long words, many of which I would not begin to comprehend, but I did, at least, manage to comprehend to a very large extent what was going on. Certainly, the presentations, not only from doctors from this country but from doctors from as far afield as India, Australia, the Commonwealth and other countries, were masterly.
I should like to quote the example of one young New Zealand girl who was over here on holiday. She is, in fact, a nurse by profession, but she took a job manning a petrol pump. I do not know whether it was due to that job, or whether the job exacerbated her condition, but the fact is that at the moment she has acute renal failure. Her kidneys are not working and she is receiving a very long period of dialysis. I shudder to think what might have happened to that girl, and I wonder whether she would be alive today, if she had not been discovered by a quite junior registrar in a large hospital near Slough and taken immediately to Hammersmith Hospital. If, as one must hope, she pulls through and is fit enough
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to have a kidney transplant in due course, much if not all of the credit must go to those who work very long hours at that great hospital at Hammersmith. That will not have been the first such case and it certainly will not be the last.
It impels me to ask my noble friend whether funds could he set up for round the clock renal dialysis, especially for young people who could do what is more or less a full job of work if they were able to have dialysis outside working hours, and whether the increased amount of work which they might manage to do at their own jobs would offset the cost of the necessary skilled labour.
We all know that just about every department in this country has to cut its budget. This would have happened which-ever Government had been returned a short time ago. But there must be priorities here and this is the kind of thing which could be very usefully done. Charitable foundations have shown enormous generousity and have given much to these hospitals, but at the moment they have more and more calls on them, so that funding for the schemes inherent in this Question, and in making the implications of the Question work, will undoubtedly have to come from central Government. There may be delays in the implementation of some of these schemes, but I hope that the Government will bear in mind the fact that those who work in these hospitals, in whatever capacity—whether as consultants, registrars, laboratory technicians or nurses—are those who ensure the health of people in this country.
The most valuable premium that one can pay for a healthy country, and a country which can increase productivity which is so badly needed not only in this country but the world over, can be paid only if we get the best possible medical results. In hospitals such as Hammersmith and the London teaching hospitals, we have the personnel and the equipment. As has been said by people who know more about this subject than I do, we need more buildings and more upgradings, and this is a priority which no Government, no matter how stringent the times may be, can afford to overlook.
8.8 p.m.
Lord GARNER: My Lords, in common with others, I express my gratitude to the

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noble Lord, Lord Annan, for initiating this debate, and particularly for the eloquent and forceful way in which he made his case. It is a subject that is near to my heart, not because I have any extensive experience of it, but because for the last seven years I have been connected with one institution; namely, the Royal Postgraduate Medical School at Hammersmith, about which the noble Lord, Lord Cottesloe, and the noble Lord, Lord Auckland, have already spoken.
At this stage, I fear there are few new points that can be made, and therefore I shall try to be very brief. I can only hope to underline some of the points already made, but I start with a general proposition. It seems to me that in the post-industrial age, when Britain is really looking for a new role, one of the major contributions that we can make is by using our skills and our experience, particularly in the arts, in literature, in the sciences and in education generally. Indeed, the Government have recognised this for some time; for example, in the assistance which they have given over the last 10 years to the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission, which has brought hundreds of outstanding candidates from Commonwealth countries for general training here. In this field, only the highest quality is good enough. I believe we have that, but we must concentrate on what we do really well and go for excellence.
I believe that nowhere is this more true than in the field of medical education, and particularly of that education in London. The Royal Postgraduate Medical School is an essential constituent in the complex of London's medical education. Indeed, in my view, it is really uniquely qualified to provide postgraduate medical education and to develop research on the basis of clinical practice, because of three things. First, the variety of the skills practised and the tradition of multidisciplinary co-operation which has been established; secondly, the very special and close links with Hammersmith Hospital, because the majority of the consultants are academic employees of the school; and, thirdly, the high quality of the staff which it has always been fortunate enough to attract.
The noble Lord, Lord Cottesloe, gave an account of the record of the school.
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I would add to what he said only one statistic; namely, that since 1970 the school has provided 55 professors, 58 readers and 83 lecturers. Those are quite remarkable figures and emphasise the importance of the role of the school in training teachers. And, of course, its record in heart research, in cancer research and in other fields is well known. Indeed, I recall very clearly that in the 1960s, when I was in Canada as High Commissioner, the reputation of the school throughout all the Provinces stood very high. Students from the school were practising throughout Canada. However, as we have heard this evening, present realities bring some chill winds. Most of the difficulties have already been mentioned and I have no desire to add to the gloom. The problems centre around organisation and finance, and finance is the pervading anxiety.
The reduction in real terms of the grant which the Postgraduate Medical School has received from the university since 1974 has involved drastic and continuing economy measures. It has led to the freezing of academic and technical staff posts, with, obviously, a serious effect on research work. At the same time, many of the policies of the Department of Health and Social Security have also had harmful effects. The implementation of the resources reallocation policy, when there has been no decline in the hospital workload, has this year seriously restricted patient services. That is serious enough in itself, but the long-term effects of the resources reallocation policy, if carried through, mean that development money would not be available to translate research into clinical practice.
Secondly, the reorganisation of which we have already heard and about which I strongly agree with the noble Lord, Lord Annan, means that there is an inevitable conflict between the national and long-term needs of training and research and the immediate short-term needs of patients which it is almost impossible for the area health authority to reconcile. Indeed, it is an unfair question to put to them. I believe that this presents a very real problem, and it is one which ought to be tackled very soon.
There are a host of other problems which affect medical schools. Some of them are, in my experience, quite new in degree. They stem from the growing

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complexity, in recent years, of administration and from the multiplicity of bodies which are concerned. It is not only a question of central government and local government; local government health services, universities, the University Grants Committee are also concerned. On top of all that, the maw of the investigatory process are quite insatiable. Committee follows on committee; working party follows on working party. And all the time there is a Royal Commission brooding over us so that our future is uncertain. The multiplicity of committees which senior staff have to attend, and the mass of memoranda produced, so alarm me that I cannot understand how any work gets done.
Underlying all this are the various constraints of our present discontents. At Hammersmith there is in particular the problem to which the noble Lord, Lord Cottesloe, referred of the constant delays over rebuilding the very old buildings at that hospital. There is also the disruption caused to work by the working out of what is at present euphemistically termed " the industrial relations position ". All of these things inevitably have an effect on morale, so it is obvious that a great deal needs to be done if we are merely to maintain our present standards, let alone advance them as we should hope to do.
It does not seem to me that anybody can be satisfied, in the terms of the Unstarred Question tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Annan, with the present state of the provision of medical education—least of all, perhaps, the Government. Equally, we all recognise the tremendous constraints imposed by the present state of the economy and the overriding needs in the financial sphere. Unless, however, the economy picks up, to the extent that considerably more finance can be made available for the kind of things which have been outlined, it seems to me that we shall indeed have to reconcile ourselves to being a second-class nation. And that, I am sure, is something none of us wants.
I do not wish to end on a negative note. Instead, I want to confirm what was said by the noble Lord, Lord Cottesloe: that those who are engaged in this work at the Postgraduate Medical School are
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men and women of determination, of imaginativeness and sometimes of brilliance. During a recent visit to the school I was delighted to hear one of them say that despite all the frustrations, difficulties and troubles, it is an exciting place to work in because something new happens every day. That, my Lords, is surely the spirit that we need. I am sure that the Government will agree with that, and I hope that they will go as far as they can to encourage it.
8.17 p.m.
Lord RICHARDSON: My Lords, the Unstarred Question which the noble Lord, Lord Annan, has asked the Government has two parts to it. First he inquires whether satisfactory provision has already been made for medical education in London. I agree most strongly with the noble Lord, Lord Annan, and the noble Lord, Lord Garner, that the Government cannot but feel that the provision is inadequate.
As a doctor, I was delighted to hear noble Lords so distinguished for their knowledge of medical matters speak so well of medical education in this city. The second part of the noble Lord's Question concerns co-ordination. I wish to speak about the co-ordination of education in the medical sphere and to confine myself to that point, because this is my present interest.
We all know that the practice of medicine, and its learning, has become increasingly complex. Everybody recognises that medical education is now a continuum. There has to be co-ordination between undergraduate, postgraduate and continuing education. In recent years, the concept of the university hospital has become manifest. It is the concept of a centre where education is given in basic matters which will equip a doctor to follow whatever bent he mazy have in his postgraduate period. It is essentially an educational period in the life of a young doctor at his medical school.
Those regions which have only one medical school are fortunate, in that their hospital can clearly be a university hospital. In those regions where there are many medical schools, they are under grave difficulties. This point was made by the noble Lord, Lord Annan. He also touched upon the difficulty of the

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coterminosity of medical services and local government services, distorting and twisting the natural spheres of medical educational interest that are required for the medical schools. This is surely a matter that should be looked into very carefully and one where co-operation and agreement could be reached if the principle could be conceded that the boundaries of the two interests need not necessarily correspond.
The noble Baroness, Lady Robson of Kiddington, rightly pointed out the necessity for academic training in the unpopular specialties. She suggested that they should be made academically respectable. That is clearly a function of the university hospital. She went on to suggest that there should be centres of excellence; they should be large, they should be adequate but they should not be numerous. This is a point that is clearly highly sensible, but there is an educational consideration here, particularly—I feel almost exclusively—in the undergraduate part of education, and that is that, if you have to move students a distance to go to these centres of highly specialised or highly expert training, time is spent, and their time is valuable. Equally, if you bring the experts to the teaching hospitals you infringe what is now regarded as n important educational principle of participation, of learning in groups and learning by discussion and you risk a didactic approach that is out of date.
Co-operation and co-ordination are absolutely essential now that general practitioners have accepted that they must have a proper training if they are in fact to become principals in the National Health Service. Here the institutes in London University have a great part to play, as indeed does the postgraduate hospital with its more general aspects. In particular, I think the institutes are of the greatest importance because they have three distinct spheres of activity and influence on the medical world—and I use the word " world " advisedly. Their international effect on our reputation and our fame is beyond question. Their part in London and London University medical life is also beyond question, but they have, too, a United Kingdom significance that is very considerable. It is this: they play—and in my view will play—an ever-increasing part in continuing education—the absolutely essential education for all
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doctors throughout the whole of their careers—and in so doing they can play a greatly significant part in helping to solve one of the great difficulties of this day, namely the assessment of competence to practice in a technical sense rather than the competence to practice in a medical sense, by which I mean illness or deterioration in the capacities of the doctor. It is extremely difficult to know how to do this and the one clear guiding line is postgraduate and continuing education.
These institutes and postgraduate education in general can have another very significant effect on one of the great problems of medicine at the present time; that is the imbalance between the number of young men and women in training and the number of posts and opportunities of a permanent career nature at consultant level that are available. One way in which that could be helped—not entirely solved, but significantly helped—would be to get these young men and women into permanent consultant posts with full inical responsibility at an earlier age. This could be done if it was accepted that, given a proper, adequate and efficient training, the great expertise that may be required of those particular persons to fill the job to which they are appointed, could be acquired in the post-appointment period—in other words, from continuing education. Here, in a national problem that worries us all greatly for the future of medicine, and indeed the Health Service, the institutes and post-graduate activities of London would play a national as well as a local part. For this reason, I beg that the Government and the noble Baroness, Lady Young, will consider that these institutes should have a national element as a part of their funding, because this does exist and it could exist very much more.
My last point is again on co-ordination. It was illustrated to me the other day by an interesting arrangement that has recently been achieved. The Camden and Islington Area Health Authority have succeeded in converting a geriatric consultant post into a university post, tenable at University College Hospital, by providing the money for a senior lectureship at University College Hospital, to be held in the department of geriatrics. In fact, the money has come from the Inner City Partnership Organisation but the principle is there of National Health money being

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used to fund and to supply a senior lectureship, held at University College Hospital but in fact service given at the Whittington Hospital, a district general hospital. The results are a higher quality candidate, a higher quality consultant, than would otherwise have been obtained for the care of the geriatric patients in the Whittington district. Another result is that the students of University College Hospital see practical geriatrics being tackled in the more real and usual setting of a district general hospital and at the same time there is close liaison with the academic centre of University College.
This is not a single or a unique example. There are others going on in London at the present time. I am told, however, that financial stringency will make this increasingly difficult, that, at any rate at the present time, it is a slow process, and that to embark upon the arrangement concerned means the expenditure of time and some delay. Here is, manifestly, co-operation between the UGC interest and the National Health Service interest, profitable to both, both gaining from it. Surely there should be some system whereby such co-operation can be facilitated and made quicker, more efficient and more usual; some means by which the real advantages to both sides can be discussed. I know little or nothing of the workings of bureaucracy; I cannot express a view as to how much co-operation there is over the big matters that the noble Lord, Lord Annan, and other noble Lords have been discussing, but over this beginning, this thing that already exists in the field of co-operation, I feel there is a great future. I hope that, when the report of the noble Lord, Lord Flowers, the Royal Commission report, comes out, and all the discussions take place, great thought will be given to this word " cooperation ".
8.31 p.m.
Lord HUNTER of NEWINGTON: My Lords, I also would like to pay a tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Annan. I sincerely believe that if this question can be resolved or alleviated he is the person to do it. We have to recognise that the relationships between London medical schools and their university was entirely different from relationships elsewhere between universities and medical schools. Medical educa-
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tion in London was for many years centred on the voluntary hospitals, and as some were founded well before the university they only came slowly to accept or even recognise university attitudes and ideas. Whereas in Birmingham the medical school functions as an integral part of a multi-faculty institution, and is indeed the university's faculty of medicine, this is not true of London. Under these circumstances, and I quote from the Royal Commission on Medical Education:
" It is not surprising that each of the independent medical schools in London have found great difficulty in attracting financial support comparable with that made available to other medical schools in Britain ".
This puts me in mind of the fact that between 1947 and 1952 there were earmarked UGC medical grants, and I just wonder whether in the circumstances the channels of communication in provincial medical schools were better and more of that earmarked money went there than into London. I suspect there were difficulties in London.
The Royal Commission also said that the situation should not be allowed to continue. It expressed the view that the general pattern of London medical schools was no longer satisfactory and would become increasingly less so in the future. They believed the time had come to forge stronger links with the university in order to give the medical schools access to the expanding world of scientific knowledge. They recommended that in future each medical school should aim to become an integral part of a single multi-faculty institution, similar, in other words, to other university medical schools.
Curiously enough, in all this detailed consideration the Royal Commission on Medical Education managed to complete its examination without considering the question of the delivery of medical care to the people of London, and gave no consideration, so far as I can determine, to the fact that the population of London has since the First World War markedly altered and is now substantially reduced. The population now has fallen to a little greater than it was in 1921, and the 1981 projection anticipates a further 10 per cent. reduction. The reasons the Royal Corn-mission recommended that the number of undergraduate medical schools should be reduced to six were primarily academic ones.

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The noble Lord, Lord Annan, has referred to the London situation and the funding of teaching hopsitals and medical schools by the Department of Health and Social Security and by the University Grants Committee. May I also say straightaway that there is no doubt about the very great contributions that London medical schools and teaching hospitals have made, not to British medicine, but to world medicine. They are world-important institutions.
At the end of World War I, of the returning medical students, half went to Scotland and the other half came to London, and even today London trains nearly 40 per cent. of undergraduate medical students, though they go far and wide to get their clinical experience. Following the Royal Commission's Report in 1968 there was an increase in the University of London medical school's intake. More places were immediately required so that the programme of expansion in training medical students could achieve the recommended target. Whether this should continue now that the new provincial medical schools are well under way is one of the problems facing those who are inquiring into such matters. Already, in fact, the figures in London are tending to exceed the Royal Commission's projections against the background of a falling population.
Until 1948 those teaching hospitals were voluntary hospitals, and one important effect of the 1946 Health Services Act was that they came under central Government control through the board of governors system. The emergency medical services of the war had laid the foundations for such a change, which was inevitable, because the hospitals would have been quite unable to raise the necessary funds for their continuance in any other way.
The period 1948 to 1968 was the period of hospital development in the National Health Service and a substantial part was focused on London. But by 1968 important changes were in the offing. The plans for a hospital-based Health Service were in doubt. Moreover, an examination of the changes in the Health Service in that period showed that the development of the existing medical schools and teaching hospitals, our centres of excellence, to keep up with the advances in clinical medicine, had resulted in a situation where the rich became richer and the poor and under-provided remained so. Staff would not go
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to these areas. Some preferred to emigrate. Other major changes were taking place also. There was the growing realisation that so many illnesses were due to specific environmental factors at work or at home, and the realisation that preventive medicine and health education were necessary, desirable and also cheaper.
There were other changes. One was the development of the social services and the need to integrate them with the health services on a number of levels. Another was the complex nature of the provision for, and the delivery of, modern medical care. A whole range of professions, new and old, are now involved in this. The co-operative effort of a large and varied team is required. People have to be trained to do this vital task. The day of the doctor and the nurse acting substantially alone are over.
Views about medical education were also changing. Medical education had been traditionally divided into two parts, undergraduate medical education and professional training. The first was the prime responsibility of the university medical schools, the second increasingly part of health service provision, and depending very substantially on in-service training and maintenance of standards by the Royal Colleges. The Merrison Report of the Committee of Inquiry into the regulation of the medical profession recommended that medical education should be a continuum; there should he no artificial division between undergraduate and professional training. This view has now been accepted by the profession and we can look forward to radical changes, I hope, under the guidance of the noble Lord, Lord Richardson. Perhaps even the opportunity will occur of shortening the period from undergraduate to fully-trained specialists.
There is another change which is related to cost but has a much wider significance and is central to the London problem. That is the need to align medical teaching developments with clinical developments. We can no longer afford to create small inefficient units at high cost for the purposes of teaching medical students. Medical students in the future will have to go to those areas of the Health Service where the principal activities they are studying are centred. That, as the noble Lord, Lord Richardson, has

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said, means complicated and difficult changes in the teaching curriculum, but personally I think that it must come. And, of course, in those Health Service centres undergraduate and professional training could be seen as a continuum. Many long-established teaching hospitals which have become centres of specialist medicine—and thereby enormously expensive—are not very suitable anyway for the training of the medical student, and the costs can no longer be justified unless professional training is continuous in the same place and the centre is cost-effective from the Health Service point of view.
One feature about doctors is that they tend to settle where they are trained and there are large parts of the United Kingdom—including large centres of population—which are under-doctored. The situation in the East Midlands is being substantially rectified by the setting up of the Nottingham and Leicester medical schools. Scotland has four medical schools. The West Midlands, with a population similar to that of Scotland, has one of moderate size. The West Midlands is under-doctored and medically deprived. There are areas within it that cannot recruit doctors. It requires one, or perhaps two, more medical schools and clinical teaching centres. These are required for Health Service reasons to create and maintain quality medical care in the region. I believe that the public will demand the increased allocation of resources to make that possible.
London is a national centre for postgraduate and continuing specialist training. Should the undergraduate population here be cut, certainly some of the smaller, isolated, specialised institutions should be rehoused with the larger institutions. The constructive redevelopment of London medicine, in the light of the factors mentioned, is of the utmost importance to the whole country. However, the bill for doing that is so large that it will have to be phased, I believe, over a quarter of a century and the Health Service and education Votes at present cannot do that. There will continue to be demands for large provincial medical schools. They are essential regional centres for the development of the Health Service. London should concentrate on what is does best and is uniquely placed to do.
18.45 p.m.
Lord SEGAL: My Lords, I had not intended to participate in this debate and I must apologise for not having put my name down on the list of speakers. However, I confess that I was stung into speech by listening to the eloquent plea of the noble Lord, Lord Annan, about the starvation of our London medical schools. I was filled with horror when he spoke of the threatened closure of one of them. Previous speakers have emphasised, I cannot help feeling almost inadequately, not only the national standing of our London medical schools, but their international status as well. That is why I view with alarm the statement made by some of our legislators that London is over supplied with hospital facilities and that the crying need is to reduce those that exist in London and to siphon them off to those parts of the country which are under-doctored.
One can destroy a hospital overnight. However, to create a hospital—which, after all, in some cases is the work of centuries of successive outstanding figures in the world of medicine—takes decades, and perhaps even centuries. The tradition that attaches to the London medical schools all over the world is something that one cannot create easily in the provinces.
Others have spoken of the trememdous international reputation of our London medical schools. Of course, our provincial medical schools are also institutions of national standing, some even of international standing. However, London is fortunate in having its 12 medical schools centralised in a small area where there is close inter-communication and exchange of ideas which is of enormous value in terms of medical effort and clinical research.
Our main aim must be to maintain at all possible cost the excellence of our teaching and research. There is a real danger in reducing the annual intake of medical students. Various committees have been appointed and have reported from time to time estimates that vary enormously in their assessment of the future medical needs of our country. I believe that this is a subject which is totally irrelevant. Our duty should be to maximise the intake of medical students as much as we possibly can, and I say that for at least two

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reasons. The greater the number of medical graduates, the greater the pool of medical ability that can be creamed off in the directions of medical research. That is why it is of the utmost importance to try to increase, wherever possible, the number of medical students admitted each year into our various teaching hospitals.
It is a truism that no medical education is ever wasted. Even those doctors who have given up practising medicine and have gone into other fields have enriched their careers and the resources of our country through having received a medical education. In industry, law, literature, and even poetry, doctors' names stand out among the great figures of our time.
Equally, it is true to say that a nurse's education is never wasted. I am told that nurses make wonderful wives and marvellous mothers. Therefore, any type of higher education is bound to be of enormous value to the country. There are many instances that one can give of people who have abandoned medicine, but they are none the worse for that, although medicine itself may have suffered.
Another reason why we should maximise our medical intake is that there is no real danger of this country having too many doctors. Doctors can be useful in areas outside this country. They can, of course, serve in under-doctored areas within our midst, but there are so many under-doctored countries all over the world where a medical education in this country can be of enormous benefit. It is a two-way traffic. Other speakers have referred to the large number of English medical graduates to be found in the universities of the Commonwealth and other countries throughout the world.
With all the medical facilities in this country, with all the development that has taken place under the National Health Service, we find people from other countries who can afford to do so still gravitate to London for medical treatment. We know of vast new hospitals that have been built in the Arab sheikhdoms. But the fact remains that those who are able to obtain the benefits of medical treatment in this country will leave their own countries in the Arabian Gulf and come to receive their medical treatment here in England.
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We must ask ourselves what has happened to private benevolence. Other speakers have referred to endowments which our hospitals have received over the centuries. But now, under the National Health Service, apparently the flood of private benevolence has almost dried up. Many hospitals now obtain help from patients who have benefited by their services, and made voluntary contributions to the friends of the hospital. Many hospitals, including my own, have founded a trust for medical research in connection with their own medical schools. Surely there must be thousands of grateful patients, who now receive medical services free, who would like to show their gratitude in some outstanding manner and contribute in some way, I would hope, to the field of medical research and clinical excellence.
The other point which I should like to drive home as forcefully as I can is that this craze for economy can so easily be overdone. If we continually persist in parading our poverty, we are in danger of generating poverty. Money spent, perhaps on a somewhat lavish scale, in the field of medical research is not money that is ever wasted. One example of false economy may be cited in the story of a medical specialist who was said to have combined in himself the speciality of geriatrics with the speciality of paediatrics. It might be a form of economy perhaps, but it was said of him that he was born senile. In other words, senility is a disease which can easily afflict our legislators just as it has afflicted our hospital buildings. One would wish that our legislators might also be immune from the on-going process of senility, or, if not immune, one hopes that it will not afflict them too obviously.
8.54 p.m.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, it is not my intention to take issue with my noble friend Lord Annan because I am not unmindful of the strength of his case and his reason for addressing your Lordships in the way he has. I cannot help but believe that we must pass this way again in the not too distant future when the Royal Commission reports and when the Flowers Working Party, set up by my noble friend Lord Annan, also reports. It may be that the noble Lord felt that he ought to get in the first stone. Perhaps I ought to qualify my statement that I do

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not intend to take issue with him tonight by saying that, with some of my friends, I might well join him in seeking to abolish the area health authorities. However, I can assure him that he will be in for a great deal of opposition if he attempts to abolish the community health councils, which, for many of us, are the only safe-gards for the users and which represent the consumer.
Having said that, I find myself—at least, I think that I shall do so—in sympathy with the Government. For we are living in a fool's paradise if we think that in the immediate future there will be anything like the amount of money we need to put the National Health Service on the level which I believe everyone in your Lordships' House would like to see. There will certainly not be an inexhaustible source that will be able to supply money for new buildings. Unless we accept that as a fact of life, we shall be living in a fool's paradise.
I do not want to say anything about the Resource Allocation Working Party—commonly known as RAWP—because my noble friend Lord Annan dealt with it. But it is a factor. It was designed to try to give a fair and reasonable amount of money to the various regions. We may differ—as I am sure we do—in the actual amount. However, let us keep in the forefront of our mind one important fact; it is that the duty of every Government is to ensure that there is an adequate coverage of all medical services throughout the country—not a greater coverage in one area and little in another. I believe that that is the main task of Government in relation to medical services.
Time and time again, the noble Baroness, Lady Ward of North Tyneside, asked me when I was a Minister what we were going to do for the North-East. She was right to do so, because many areas were the poor relations of the big cities, and money from the better-provided areas had to be diverted to the North, to the Midlands, to the North Midlands and particularly to the North-East.
Reference has been made to the fact that here in London we have 12 teaching hospitals, two postgraduate medical schools and 13 medical institutes. It may be that I am naïve; it may well be that I
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really do not have a grasp of some of the situations. But it seems to me that there can be no justification at all for having 12 teaching hospitals in London, 11 of them until quite recently within a stone's throw—albeit a pretty long throw—of your Lordships' House. They are Westminster, Middlesex, St. Mary's, St. Thomas', Bart's, Guy's, London, University College, St. George's and, until recently, Charing Cross and the Royal Free. Can we really justify 12 medical schools of the calibre of each one of those—and I acknowledge their calibre—here in London within such a short distance of each other? I remember Aneurin Bevan saying as far back as 1948 that St. George's should go out of London. Half of it has gone to Tooting or Wimbledon (I am not sure which area) within the last two years, but the other half remains.
I believe that, deep down, the noble Lord, Lord Annan, realises that something has to be done about this. If you look at the terms of reference of the Flowers Working Party, you will see that they are to consider: the redevelopment of resources available for medicine and dentistry; in the event of closure, or radical reorganisation, of one or more medical schools or institutes, which these should be; and how you transfer students and staff to other schools without reducing overall student numbers.
I believe it is recognised that we in London are over-serviced. I do not think that there can possibly be any sound or reasonable argument for maintaining so many centres of medical excellence—and I accept that they are centres of medical excellence—or showplaces of high medical technology in so small an area. It is for that reason that I welcome the Flowers committee. Having listened to the noble Lord, Lord Hunter of Newington, I am sorry that he was not put on the committee. I found myself warming very much towards some of the things he said, and which I felt need careful consideration.
The terms of reference of the Flowers Working Party certainly envisage closure and reorganisation of some of the existing teaching hospitals. The argument about the effectiveness of our teaching hospitals, particularly those in the London area, has been going on, as every noble Lord

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in the medical profession knows, for some considerable time. But there has been no real attempt to research into the scope and function of teaching hospitals. It may well be that the Royal Commission will do it for us. It may well be that the Flowers Working Party will do it. But the sum total of the complaint made tonight by most, if not all, speakers points to the need for a re-evaluation of what is being done. The sooner that it is done, the better.
We have a situation in which a large number of teaching hospitals are each providing similar specialties. I am not, as is all too apparent to your Lordships, a member of the medical profession. My only interest in it is a long one: that of the working of the National Health Service, and the time that I had as a Minister in the Department of Health and Social Security. But I believe that providing such a large number of teaching hospitals in the London area, each offering similar specialties, is wasteful in time and money, and it is doubtful whether full use is being made of all those facilities.
I may be open to a good deal of criticism in saying that, but I know that three years ago, when it was important that I should be X-rayed urgently, living in Oxford, I could not get it done for seven weeks notwithstanding the urgency. But I was told that I would get it done in a London hospital immediately. So I brought my letter from my GP, not wishing to have any special treatment, took it to a London teaching hospital and was X-rayed immediately. Now perhaps I am drawing too much from that. We need to look at the needs of the country as a whole; the real need in particular areas. I believe there are large parts of this country starved of teaching hospitals. We ought to be thinking of opening teaching hospitals in areas where I believe there is a very real need. I am told that the London teaching hospitals draw 80 per cent. of their people from South-East England, 15 per cent. only from the rest of the country, and 5 per cent. from abroad.
Local residents in London must suffer, I believe, to maintain the teaching and research which is being done in our
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London teaching hospitals. The patients are not presenting medical problems and difficulties which would come under the heading of high technology. I am talking about patients generally. I am concerned at the number of beds teaching hospitals claim to be necessary in their discharge of the responsibilities of a teaching hospital. I think that there is too much weight given to specialisation and research in what is a belt of medical schools situated closely together. In fact, hospital beds for specialisation are rarely those needed by a population which is using resources increasingly as a result of age and psychiatric illness. Can we be sure that local residents do not suffer in order to maintain this teaching and research?
I am glad that one of the tasks of the Flowers Working Party, as I understand it, is to inquire into the commitment to academic work, its present form, and its present level. The point may be raised that if bigger but fewer units were established for training it would involve students in extra travelling. But would this really cause any hardship in view of the closeness of the existing teaching hospitals? I understand that already half the clinical teaching at the Middlesex Hospital is done at the Central Middlesex Hospital in Harlesden. I understand that that presents no problem at all.
It must be at least 10 years ago that it was proposed that the Middlesex and St. Mary's hospitals should be combined. The real question is whether it is right, having regard to the needs of the country as a whole, to have so many centres of excellence and medical high technology in London. I cannot think that it is right, and I hope that the Flowers Working Party will approach and carry out their task without fear or favour.
I look forward, as I am sure a large number of people do, to their findings and I look forward with some confidence to the recommendations of the Royal Commission on the National Health Service. I say sincerely that Lord Annan has raised this subject at a moment when we should begin thinking about the future and, if he has succeeded in doing nothing more, he has caused us to prepare our minds for the bigger discussion which is to come, and I hope it will come fairly soon.
9.9 p.m.
The MINISTER of STATE, DEPARTMENT of EDUCATION and SCIENCE (Baroness Young): My Lords, I am sure the whole House is grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Annan, for introducing this debate and indeed to the entire galaxy of experts who have taken part. Speaking as one of the non-medical people present, I can only say I feel like that thoroughly unpractised tennis player who has been knocking a ball about in the garden and suddenly finds herself on the centre court at Wimbledon—a somewhat alarming experience. However, I hope that whatever else I may do or not do, I will take to heart the words of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Fawley, and not use the word " integration " at all, and I shall use his nice little analogy of the cat and the canary in some other speech; I am sure it will come in handy.
It goes without saying that my department and my colleagues will study this debate closely and it will of course also be studied by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Social Services, Mr. Patrick Jenkin. Lord Annan, in introducing the debate, made five important points and at varying times all the other noble Lords who have taken part in the debate have either raised them in similar form or have further elaborated on them. I shall try to refer to them all in the course of my remarks.
The subject which Lord Annan has raised is of course of great importance to the country. The significance of the role of the University of London in medical education and research, both in the United Kingdom and internationally, cannot be over-emphasised, a point to which the noble Lord, Lord Greenhill, with his vast experience at the Foreign Office, drew our attention, as did the noble Lord, Lord Garner. It is currently responsible for the education of almost one-third of the country's medical students and has a great tradition and fine reputation to preserve. Her Majesty's Government recognise both this and the problems that now face the University's medical schools and institutes, which this debate has illustrated.
The noble Lord asked whether the Government are satisfied with the provision for medical education in London. It is clear, listening to the debate, that the situation which has been described
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is a difficult one and that a great deal of co-ordination will be needed to find solutions to the problems which have been discussed. I should like to record at the beginning of my remarks that I do not consider that these problems spring from a lack of liaison between the University Grants Committee and the Department of Health and Social Security. This was the fifth point made by Lord Annan. My understanding is that there is a great deal of co-operation between the two departments. But what is unfortunately a far more intractable problem is that there is a very real conflict of interest between the needs of medical education in London and the wider needs of the National Health Service, a point well brought out by the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell. Although I would not follow him in all his remarks, I was grateful to him for drawing our attention to the very real economic problems that underlie the difficulties of the National Health Service. I hope therefore that noble Lords will agree that the Government must give consideration to finding a balance between these interests and to trying to seek a solution to the problems now facing the University, and perhaps I may enlarge on that.
For mainly historical reasons, the London teaching hospitals are concentrated in a relatively small area. Many people from outside London are admitted to the teaching hospitals, but the majority of their patients come from inner London. The population of this area has been declining for a long time and trends show that this decline is likely to continue as more people move out to the surrounding counties. But there has not been a corresponding movement of acute hospital services; the concentration of hospitals in Central London still exists but new hospitals have not been built fast enough in the surrounding areas. As a result, there is a comparative over-provision in Central London—even when allowance is made for the specialist services provided by the teaching hospitals—and under-provision in places like Kent and Essex. The health authorities have a duty to build up the levels of provision in these areas so that people can get the general hospital treatment they need nearer to where they live.
At the same time, there are parts of the Health Service which are poorly provided

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for in London—a matter to which the noble Baroness, Lady Robson of Kiddington, drew attention. Services for the elderly, the mentally ill and the mentally handicapped in inner London leave much to be desired. These services, too, need to be developed and improved. Indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Richardson, drew attention to this point. I was very glad that the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Fawley, said (I think I am quoting him correctly) that departments of general practice had been founded in five of the hospitals in London. This seems to me to be the kind of way forward which the noble Baroness, Lady Robson, would welcome, and which I am sure is welcomed by us all.
The task facing the Thames Regional Health Authorities, which have to plan the health service in London and the surrounding Home Counties, is therefore a difficult one. It is made more difficult by the fact that these regions already have more than their share of the funds available. The policy for the distribution of resources to health regions is based on the recommendations of the Resource Allocation Working Party. It aims, over a period of time, to move towards a distribution of resources based on relative need, and regions are encouraged to adopt the same approach in allocating funds to Area Health Authorities.
I am sure that noble Lords recognise the fairness of this policy in terms of the access which people throughout the country should have to health care. But, because of the low rate of growth which we are able to give the National Health Service at present, the amount of money available for development in the Thames Health Region is not as high as we would like. The health authorities have, therefore, to look to the over-provided acute services in London to solve their problems; and it is only by rationalisation of these services that the shift of resources from acute to chronic care in central London can be achieved.
These changes are essential from the health service point of view but, as I said earlier, they may pose serious problems to the medical schools. While these schools would all wish to see better facilities for non-acute patients and would wish to improve the experience their students get
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of such cases, their main need for teaching purposes is for acute hospital facilities.
The problem is to find a balance between these conflicting interests. One suggestion has been that provision for medical education should be moved out of inner London. There are strong arguments for distributing medical education more widely across the country. The problems of conflict between health service needs and medical education which arise in London are less apparent in the provinces, and the existence of a new teaching hospital is bound to improve services in an area which is currently poorly served; and doctors who are trained in an area are more likely to continue to work there afterwards. The new schools which were established in Nottingham, Leicester, and Southampton in the 1960s are now beginning to produce results and will, in time, develop reputations and traditions to match those of the London schools. But there is a major stumbling-block. The building of a new teaching hospital and medical school involves expenditure in the region of £60 million, and we are simply not living in a financial climate where such sums will be readily available.
Ways of reorganising existing provision must also be considered. Many of the existing schools in London have taken steps to adapt to the movement of population and services. They are increasingly using hospitals away from central London to augment the clinical facilities available to them. But there are limits to this. The medical students must still be able to continue their academic work within the medical school environment, and this will be more difficult if their practical training takes place at a distant hospital.
It may also be possible to improve the use of educational facilities within central London. Concentration in fewer schools and larger units might lead to more economic use of both health and educational resources. Such a rationalisation of existing provision need not mean that the current level of entry would have to be reduced. We are still pursuing the national target of a student entry of about 4,100—this will be achieved soon—and London's intake is an important part of that total. But decisions about the long-term future will then have to be taken and, in view of the problems in London, any

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reduction in the overall total might well apply to London. Certainly if the overall total were to be increased, it seems unlikely that anyone would wish to add further to London's problems by increasing its intake. But in saying this one must recognise the points that have been made in the course of the debate, particularly the point by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Fawley, about the human problems which arise when we are actually talking about rationalisation and reorganisation of hospitals.
I have attempted to summarise the problems facing London's medical schools and some of the solutions that have been suggested. What, then, should be done? As several noble Lords pointed out, all these matters are currently under consideration by a number of different bodies and committees, and I sympathise with the noble Lord—I think it was Lord Richardson—who said that this really was a very complicated situation.
The university itself, as the noble Lord, Lord Annan, has explained, has set up a working party, under the chairmanship of Lord Flowers, to examine the use of resources for medical and dental education in London, and to see what redeployment is necessary to maintain standards of teaching and research. The Government welcome this, and will study very carefully the implications of the working party's report.
On the health service side, the London Health Planning Consortium has been set up by the Thames Regional Health Authorities, the University Grants Committee, the University and the Department of Health and Social Security. It is a planning body which is examining these and other major strategic problems to identify the options for achieving change. One of its main tasks has been to study the imbalance between the hospital facilities required to meet, on the one hand, the needs of a reducing population and, on the other hand, undergraduate medical teaching needs. The consortium proposes to issue a consultation paper later in the year which will identify and quantify the options for resolving this imbalance in order to seek the views of the University, the University Grants Committee, the health authorities and others. The consortium has a rather different standpoint
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in considering these problems from Lord Flowers and his colleagues. but I am glad that the two bodies have common membership and that Lord Flowers will be able to take into account the work which the consortium has been doing.
I should like to mention two other points which have been raised and which are said to contribute to the problems facing medical education in London. The first is the question of funding the teaching hospitals. I have already referred to the method by which resources for the National Health Service are distributed. I do not think there is any disagreement about the fairness of the principle that money in the National Health Service should be distributed according to relative need, but there are arguments about the pace at which it should be done, and we must give proper consideration to the costs of medical education and specialist services. The central problem here has nothing to do with the Health Service; it is simply our poor economic performance in recent years. The National Health Service has been able to grow only very slowly. As a result, efforts to redistribute funds to deprived areas have led to a sharp brake on development and something of a squeeze on those places, such as London's teaching hospitals, which had previously been accustomed to steady expansion. Her Majesty's Government believe that a levelling up of standards and provision is what is needed, but this will be dependent on our producing greater wealth to support it.
Following on that point, the noble Lord, Lord Cottesloe, and the noble Lords, Lord Auckland and Lord Garner, all mentioned the future of the Hammersmith Hospital. The North-West Thames Regional Health Authority, which is responsible for the Hammersmith Hospital, has included in its present plans provision for a major redevelopment scheme to improve poor facilities at that hospital, and the project is programmed to start in 1985–86. I hope this will be of some help to the noble Lord, though I am sure we would all wish that resources would allow us to do more, more quickly. The noble Lord, Lord Greenhill, raised a point about the dental school attached to King's College Hospital. I regret that I have no information available this evening, but if the noble Lord. Lord

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Greenhill, will bear with me I will write to him on this matter when I have an answer for him.
Finally, my Lords, there is the question of the National Health Service reorganisation, which, it is said, has made life more difficult for the medical schools. The arrangements which existed before 1974, under which the teaching hospitals were administered by boards of governors directly accountable to the Secretary of State, may well have had advantages for the medical schools. The teaching hospitals did not have clear service responsibilities, and could adjust the pattern of their work more easily to fit in with the needs of medical education. But this independence caused serious problems for the then regional hospital boards, which had the statutory responsibility for the provision of service. Many of the services which were needed, including particularly the more specialised services, were outside the control of the regional hospital boards. The proper planning and co-ordination of services and the control of development in the Health Service in London—and the teaching hospitals are primarily part of the Health Service—was much more difficult to achieve. The reorganisation of the National Health Service has overcome some of these difficulties, but not all of them. The Government, however, recognise that there are many shortcomings in the reorganised Health Service which have tended to produce an unnecessarily bureaucratic structure. Once the report of the Royal Commission on the National Health Service is available, we shall be looking for ways of simplifying the system and returning operational control to the lowest possible level. The Royal Commission's report may also have a bearing on many of the other issues raised in this evening's debate.
I hope that I have said enough to make it clear that the Government are fully aware of the real problems involved in this difficult area and of the important part that London and its hospitals play in the Health Service and in medical education in the country as a whole. In view of all the developments which I have outlined, I am not unhopeful that solutions will be found; but I should not like to pretend at this stage to be able to say what they will be. I should like to give
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the noble Lord, Lord Annan, the reassurance that the Government will be ready to play their part in bringing about the necessary changes; but I am afraid this will not be an easy process.