Lords Sitting of 13 March 1979

Preamble
The House met at half-past two of the clock: The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Rochester.
The Marquess of Tweeddale—Sat first in Parliament after the death of his father.

THE SHAPLAND REPORT: RECOMMENDATIONS
The Earl of AVON: 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 has been made in putting into effect the recommendations of the Shapland Report on the Territorial and Army Volunteer Reserve, and in particular the recommendations relating to bounties.
Lord STRABOLGI: My Lords, the Government's examination of the recommendations contained in the Shapland Report is at an advanced stage, and I would ask the noble Earl to remain patient for a little longer, until the Government are ready to announce their decision.
The Earl of AVON: My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord the Minister for that, I hope, satisfactory reply, in that one will have to wait for it. Is the Minister aware that the bounties were fixed in 1967, and that everybody in the TA is waiting breathlessly for the first ever increase in their bounties?
Lord STRABOLGI: My Lords, an increase in the training bounty is one of a large number of recommendations that the Government are considering.
The Earl of KIMBERLEY: My Lords, is the Minister aware, not only that the TAVR are happy with the report but that it would be very much appreciated if, if and when the decision is reached, the report could be published at the same time?
Lord STRABOLGI: My Lords, the report is an internal document which, regardless of its classification, which is "Restricted", it would not be appropriate to make available.
Earl DE LA WARR: My Lords, would the noble Lord bear in mind that the contents of the Shapland Report, though it is restricted, are known widely to one and all in the TA? Would he also bear in mind that, if the decision about levels of bounty is that they should be in any way less than what has been recommended by General Shapland, it will cause immense consternation in the TA and may well be counter-productive?
Lord STRABOLGI: My Lords, with regard to the first part of the noble Earl's question, the Department has not made copies of the report available to the Press. I cannot answer for reports which appeared in The Times when that paper was in circulation. With regard to the training bounty, the Government recognise the arguments for increasing the level of training bounties for members of the Volunteer Reserve Forces. The case for this increased expenditure must of course be weighed with other factors, but these are all being taken into account.
Lord SHINWELL: My Lords, do I understand from my noble friend that the report is restricted? May I ask him, further, whether, in the event of the Government arriving at some conclusions, it is not essential that we should know the reason why? Why should it be restricted?
Lord STRABOLGI: My Lords, it is, I can confirm, as I said earlier, a restricted document. It is an internal, departmental report made by the Ministry of Defence, though of course I may say that the Council of the TAVR Association was represented on the committee.
Earl DE LA WARR: My Lords, would the noble Lord bear in mind that General Shapland signed the report on 7th June 1978, and that there may therefore be a very good reason why its contents are so widely known—because nine months have elapsed since he signed it?
Lord STRABOLGI: My Lords, I am afraid I do not understand the implications of the noble Earl's question.

FALKLAND ISLANDS:SEISMIC SURVEYS
2.40 p.m.
The Earl of LAUDERDALE: 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 report from the seismic survey of the Falkland Isands area has yet been analysed, and if so whether it suggests the possible presence of hydrocarbons.
The MINISTER of STATE, FOREIGN and COMMONWEALTH OFFICE (Lord Goronwy-Roberts): My Lords, the data from the seismic surveys around the Falkland Islands are still being evaluated. Until that evaluation is completed I am unable to say whether it will offer the prospect of hydrocarbons being present in commercial quantities.
The Earl of LAUDERDALE: My Lords, in thanking the noble Lord for that reply, which does not differ very much from the one we had from Lord Strabolgi on the previous Question—namely, that consideration is at an advanced stage—may I ask the noble Lord whether he would not agree that it is unusual for a seismic survey to remain undigested very long, particularly if, as is widely reported in the trade at the present time, this is a very encouraging report? Why is it that its analysis has taken so long in this case?
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, I am advised that the science of seismic interpretation is such that anlaysis is a lengthy and continuous process as different techniques are applied to the data, to new information; but we expect to have an analysis of the data in the near future, although I cannot give a precise date.
The Earl of LAUDERDALE: My Lords, can the noble Lord go a stage further and tell the House whether there is any prospect of issuing licences for exploration?
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: No, my Lords, I could not possibly go that
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substantial step further, although I appreciate what lies behind the supplementary question from the noble Earl. I would ask him to be patient a little longer. My right honourable friend would hope, in due course, to indicate the broad results of the analysis of the surveys which have been made available to Her Majesty's Government.
The Earl of LAUDERDALE: My Lords, is "due course" a matter of weeks, months or years?
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, I said I could not give a precise date. Even a mathematician and a geographer of the noble Earl's repute should not press his luck too far.
Lord MORRIS: My Lords, bearing in mind the fact that some 70 per cent. of all NATO's strategic material and some 8 per cent. of the West's oil supplies come round the Cape of Good Hope route, are Her Majesty's Government satisfied with the current air/naval defence system along the Falkland Islands, South Georgia, Tristan da Cunha and the Ascension Island chain, thus protecting the great Cape routes?
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, these considerations, strategic and otherwise, are very present to the mind of Her Majesty's Government.

ACAS APPEAL: COST TO PUBLIC FUNDS
2.43 p.m.
Lord BOYD-CARPENTER: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government when they propose to honour the undertaking given by Lord Wallace of Coslany on 17th January 1978 to provide information as to the cost to public funds of the appeal by ACAS to this House in the Grunwick case.
Lord WALLACE of COSLANY: My Lords, I would remind the noble Lord that I wrote to him as recently as 12th

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February on this matter. I said then that I appreciated his concern that he had not received an answer to his question and that the reason for this was, as I understood from ACAS, that the question of costs was still before the Taxing Master and that as yet ACAS had not received a bill of costs. That remains the position. As I said in my reply on 17th January 1978, I will write to the noble Lord when the information is available.
Lord BOYD-CARPENTER: My Lords, while I thank the noble Lord for that Answer and indicate the breathless anticipation with which I await further communication from him, may I ask whether his Answer means that ACAS have no idea now, 18 months since the dismissal of their appeal, what their persistence in this appeal has cost the British taxpayer, and also whether the private citizen successful in these proceedings has yet received his costs?
Lord WALLACE of COSLANY: My Lords, I am unable to answer immediately the last part of the noble Lord's supplementary question. So far as ACAS is concerned, the whole matter rests with the Taxing Master. The Government have no influence or powers to deal with the Taxing Master. He must decide; and until that decision is reached we are unable to help the noble Lord. Heaven knows! I should be only too pleased to be able to give the noble Lord information on this matter, for I appreciate his anxiety.
Lord HARMAR-NICHOLLS: My Lords, is the noble Lord in a position to say how much ACAS have earmarked in their reserves in anticipation of what the Taxing Master may decide?
Lord WALLACE of COSLANY: My Lords, I cannot do that. We cannot direct ACAS, as we cannot direct the Taxing Master. Whether ACAS has put any money aside, I am not prepared to say. I do not know. Therefore, the noble Lord will have to think of some other supplementary question.
Lord HAILSHAM of SAINT MARYLEBONE: My Lords, may I help with that further supplementary question? Is the noble Lord quite right in saying that the Government cannot tell us a little
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more accurately the state of play over the taxation? Will he perhaps take the best advice available—the source of which is sitting now smiling at me on the Woolsack and, no doubt, wondering what led the noble Lord to be so ignorant of the matter?
Lord WALLACE of COSLANY: My Lords, I shall be only too delighted to consult with the smiling adviser on my left, but that will have to be after Question Time. The noble and learned Lord would not expect me to give an immediate reply.

THE PENAL SYSTEM: ADVISORY COUNCIL
2.48 p.m.
Lord McGREGOR of DURRIS: 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 when the members of the Advisory Council on the Penal System will be appointed, and what questions will be referred to them.
The MINISTER of STATE, HOME OFFICE (Lord Boston of Faversham): My Lords, my right honourable friend the Home Secretary has the question of the reappointment and work of the Advisory Council on the Penal System under active consideration and hopes to make an early Statement.
Lord McGREGOR of DURRIS: My Lords, while thanking the noble Lord for that encouraging reply, would he not agree that this body, constituted by people of exceptional experience and knowledge in penal matters, has built up a remarkable record of service over the last 11 years and that, with the exception of its most recent report, all its major reports have been implemented in full or in part; and that its suspension for the last 12 months has denied the Government and the public a most valuable contribution in penal matters in a period of anxiety about crime and punishment? May we hope that the noble Lord's statement will be implemented very quickly?
Lord BOSTON of FAVERSHAM: My Lords, so far as the first part of my noble friend's supplementary question is concerned, I will certainly confirm what he has said about the importance and value of the work of the Advisory Council and of its members and, without going into specific detail, I can confirm that some of the nine reports in particular which have come out over the past 12 years or so, have led to substantial changes and improvements in policy matters.
So far as the further point of my noble friend is concerned, I am happy to be able to confirm what I have already indicated: that a Statement by my right honourable friend is hoped to be made quite soon. So far as the delay that has occurred in recent months is concerned, there had been an intention, as my noble friend will know, to invite the council to consider a particular matter concerning prisons, but there has intervened in the meantime the report of the sub-committee of the Expenditure Committee in another place which led directly in part to the appointment of the May Committee of Inquiry. Both of these bodies are dealing with those matters.
Lord HAILSHAM of SAINT MARYLEBONE: My Lords, may we not have a sweepstake on which of these stalled horses is going to win the race: the Shapland Report, the Falkland Islands hydrocarbons, the taxing of ACAS or the Advisory Council on the Penal System?
Lord BOSTON of FAVERSHAM: My Lords, I regret to have to confess to the noble and learned Lord that I am not a betting man; but there is one Member of your Lordships' House who is frequently here who perhaps can give us both advice on this important matter.
Lord BROCKWAY: My Lords, referring to the original Question, may I ask whether the questions which will be referred to the council will include the whole of the penal system, in view of its absolute failure today, the number of recidivists, the crowded prisons and those prisons which ought to be pulled down now as being utterly unable to deal with the problem of crime?
Lord BOSTON of FAVERSHAM: My Lords, so far as prison matters
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directly are concerned and the particular points in relation to those that my noble friend has referred to, many of those matters are within the remit of the inquiry now being conducted by Mr. Justice May. I am afraid I am not able to say precisely what the council, when reconstituted, will be invited to consider; but I can go so far as to indicate that it is likely to be a non-custodial matter in character. One possibility which has been suggested by the Advisory Council itself has been connected with financial penalties. Without pre-empting anything that my right honourable friend may decide, I believe that is one of the matters he is considering as a possibility. I shall bear in mind what my noble friend has said.

KIRIBATI BILL AND MINISTER'S VISIT
2.51 p.m.
Lord ELTON: My Lords, I beg leave to ask Her Majesty's Government a Question, of which I have given Private Notice. The Question is as follows:
"To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will make a Statement on the recent visit of the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs to the Pacific in connection with the Kiribati Bill."
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, my honourable friend Mr. Luard, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, returned yesterday from his visit to the Pacific, where he had discussions on Rabi Island with the chairman of the Rabi Council of Leaders, before an audience of some 500 members of the Banaban Community; with the vice-chairman of the Rabi Council in Tarawa; with the Prime Minister of Fiji, the right honourable Ratu Sir Kamesese Mara, in Suva; and with Ministers of the Gilbert Islands Government in Tarawa. I should like to pay a tribute to my honourable friend for undertaking this arduous engagement at short notice.
On Rabi Island, the chairman of the Rabi Council read out to him a letter underlining the strength of Banaban feelings that they should be separated from the Gilbert Islands before the latter became independent. My honourable

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friend replied to the points raised in his letter, and made three specific proposals: first, suggesting wider powers for the Banaba Island Council; secondly, to establish an independent commission to review the safeguards for the Banabans, and, thirdly, a treaty with another Power or Powers concerning the rights of the Banaban people. He emphasised that Banaban rights would be protected irrespective of where sovereignty lay. He also expressed the hope that the 150 Banabans who were shortly to leave for Banaba would conduct themselves on the island in an orderly way. The chairman of the council replied that the council was not prepared to discuss anything but separation.
In his discussions with the Prime Minister of Fiji, the latter made clear that his Government did not wish to accept a role which would involve having to choose between their Gilbertese and Banaban friends, by participating in international arrangements to safeguard the interests of the Banabans within a unitary Gilbert Islands State.
Finally, my honourable friend saw Gilbert's Government Ministers in Tarawa. They reaffirmed that their people could not agree to the separation of Banaba; but they were ready to enter into a treaty with another Commonwealth Government concerning the rights of the Banaban people. In particular, they stated that they were willing to make arrangements whereby another Commonwealth Government should act on behalf of the Rabi Council so that claims or complaints concerning their rights should be resolved amicably or by independent mediation or by judicial process. Furthermore, the Gilbert Islands Government confirmed they were ready to agree to an independent tribunal reviewing the special Banaban constitutional provisions three years after independence. The Ministers also agreed to examine the Fiji Ordinance which sets out the powers of the Rabi Island Council as a possible model for the Banaba Island Council.
My honourable friend's visit demonstrated once again Her Majesty's Government's determination to explore all possible avenues of agreement. The Gilbert Islands Government have demonstrated their willingness to consider any proposals to protect Banaban interests. If the
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Banabans will only give it a chance, I am sure that they will not find any of their fears for their future on Banaba are justified.
2.56 p.m.
Lord ELTON: My Lords, in thanking the noble Lord for that reply, may I ask whether he is aware that we are also grateful to the Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs for undertaking this journey and very sensibly going to look at this very difficult problem on the spot? Is the noble Lord aware that we also appreciate the intense difficulty in resolving this problem in which the only acceptable solution to one party involves fragmentation of a small part of a small community and its dependence on another community no less than 1,400 miles away? Does he agree that the nub of the problem is the unwillingness of the Banabans to accept that any guarantees can be relied upon, and will he accept our willingness to try to demonstrate that this is not necessarily the case, possibly in one of the ways which have already been outlined by the Minister in the Statement? If the noble Lord will forgive me a fourth supplementary question, may I ask him whether those three proposals were made before or after the Banabans stated that they would consider nothing but independence? As it is written in the Statement, it would appear that it was made after that Statement. One would imagine it might better have been made before.
Lord McNAIR: My Lords, may I say—
Lord MOWBRAY and STOURTON: This is a Question, not a Statement!
Lord McNAIR: We on these Benches are sorry that the visit of the Under-Secretary was unproductive. Am I right in understanding that we are not to have another Statement before we take the Committee stage of this Bill on Thursday? If there is anything more to be said by the Government, it would be enormously helpful if we could hear it before Thursday. May I ask the noble Lord, in conclusion, whether he has considered the possibility in this increasingly explosive situation, which seems to be deteriorating rapidly, of a cooling off period and postponement of independence, which might enable the

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two sides to get closer together, which is the wish of us all?
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, I am most appreciative of the tone and content of the two supplementary questions put by the noble Lord, Lord Elton, and the Liberal spokesman. If I may address myself to what the Opposition spokesman said, he has put the essence of this difficult problem very fairly indeed. I greatly appreciate the measured and temperate terms in which he has put it to the House. As to guarantees, within the accepted position of transferring this territory as it is to independence, which is common form in the practice of Her Majesty's Government, whatever Government are in power, there is no limit to the length to which Her Majesty's Government themselves will go to reassure this community on the right of access and landholding, which is not in question at all. In my fairly lengthy experience these reassurances are really without precedent as they now stand. But we are most receptive to anything which is suggested which may gild the lily (if I may put it that way) and so are the Gilbert Islands Government. They have proved to be most forthcoming to my honourable friend in the conference. So on the question of guarantees, I cannot imagine what further guarantees he or I could invent but, if anybody can invent them, I am wide open to any suggestion.
As to the present situation, I cannot substitute one explosive situation for another. What we have now is admittedly a small community with very strong feelings, whose demands are entirely at variance with the equally deeply-held convictions of a much larger community; and it is poor practice to seek a solution in the face of threats of violence. One must examine the facts, do one's best and try to achieve a solution of battles which gives something to everybody even though it is quite impossible to give everything to anybody.
I hope that the House, which, if I may say so without presumption, has a reputation for looking at these very difficult constitutional questions, will join me in Committee stage on Thursday and hear us out. Let us give this excellent Bill a fair wind, because there are other stages here and in another place where the
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continuing negotiations, as I see them, following what my honourable friend has been able to achieve, can proceed without prejudice to the final outcome of the Bill. I think we shall have rendered a service to Parliament and to this country if we send this Bill in due course to the other place, because there are elongated stages in both Houses when all these questions can be minutely discussed. I will do my best to meet the views of the House in this matter and, indeed, in response to the Statement I have given, a number of noble Lords have referred to the possible involvement of this country beyond independence in assisting the implementation of these assurances. I think noble Lords will realise that, without being able to be quite specific, I have indeed listened to what was said on Second Reading.
Lord BROCKWAY: My Lords, while appreciating that Her Majesty's Government have taken almost unprecedented steps to try to resolve these problems within the association of Ocean Island with the Gilbert Islands, is not the result of this visit quite clear—the Banaban people will not accept anything except their independence from the Gilbert Islands? Would not Her Majesty's Government therefore do better now to pursue the search for a method by which that might be satisfied without leaving the terrible problems of Ocean Island unrelieved?
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, as the House knows, I have very great respect for my noble friend's record and judgment in these matters; but when he says to me that the outcome of my honourable friend's visit to the area was to re-emphasise the strength of feeling of the Banaban community, I must say to him that the visit also emphasised once more the overwhelming rejection by the Gilbertese community of fragmentation. Here we have an excellent Chief Minister who regards this country with affection and respect, and his fellow Ministers, anxious to move without further postponement to independence within the Commonwealth, and enthusiastic for it. It is a question for my honourable friend and for me: do we substitute for the satisfaction of a profoundly concerned minority the dissatisfaction of an equally profoundly concerned majority? I am sure that my noble friend, who has taken

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part in Africa and Asia in similar discussions and who has contributed notably to constructive compromises, will look again at his own Amendment. It is not for me to advise him—he has always advised me and continues to do so—but between now and the Committee stage I hope that my noble friend and others will look at the Amendment standing in his name, and ponder in fact whether this is the way to do the maximum possible good for the Pacific area as a whole.
Lord GISBOROUGH: My Lords, while recognising that every possible safeguard has been offered, can the Minister spell out how in practice it would be possible for another Commonwealth country to intervene in the Gilbert Islands should the worst fears of the Islanders—however unlikely they are to happen, and they are unlikely—be realised? What could they do?
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, the Gilbert Islands Government—that is the self-governing authority in the present dependent State of the Gilbert Islands—have themselves said to my honourable friend that they would accept the appointment of a Commonwealth country; and, bearing in mind what was said in the course of the Second Reading debate in this House, may I remind your Lordships that the United Kingdom also is a Commonwealth country. They have said that they will accept a Commonwealth country which, as a friend of the Banabans, could supervise the implementation of these very massive and intricate guarantees as to access, land holding and all the rest of it. They, a prospective independent sovereign Government, have said this. It is an example to many more developed countries, because they are prepared in the interests of amity to accept an outside friendly intrusion to supervise how this works for three years, say, and at the end of that to agree to a special review body, perhaps nominated by two Commonwealth countries and probably with a chairman—I do not know—nominated by the Commonwealth Secretariat, to make an assessment on how this has worked and at the end of the day to say, "It has worked pretty well" or, "It is not good here and there but it can be improved" or, "It has not worked".
There is the way to bring together the deeply-felt convictions of the Gilbert
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Islanders, who number 56,000, and the Banabans, who number about 2,500. Let them proceed together, possibly under the supervision of a friendly Commonwealth State, and then at the end of, say, three years they could have an independent assessment of how it has worked. This may well be a good example from the Pacific to the Atlantic and other parts of the world on how to do these things. I profoundly hope that the Banaban community and their leaders—sincere and deeply religious men—will ponder very carefully before they return to Ocean Island and try to promote their case, however deeply felt, by violent action. My honourable friend has given very good advice to them. Their interests and their future will be very carefully considered by this House, by this Government and by any successive Government, but I profoundly believe it is within the confines of this Bill—an excellent Bill for all these Islands—that this can best be done.
Lord HALE: My Lords, can my noble friend take this a little further? I am not trying to press him on controversial matters; I am seeking an explanation. We are to have a debate in two days' time about which we ought to know something. Is the proposal that this Bill should be passed in this Session substantially in its present form? If it is, how can a review take place after three years without the consent of all the parties, which does not seem probable? In relation to the question of some semi-fiduciary interest by a Commonwealth State, was any particular State discussed as appropriate—for example, Nauru?—or was it left just at large that the many nations of the Commonwealth, now very many, could furnish some suitable State?
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: Yes, indeed, my Lords. My honourable friend, who had a wide-ranging discussion with all concerned mentioned, and his partners in the discussion mentioned, from time to time a number of possible countries, including this one, such as Fiji and Nauru; and, of course, as we heard last night, there are 40 members of the Commonwealth. So we are not in any way nominating anybody—we should not want to do that from this House—into another independent country. All I can say is that I certainly will not rule out the United Kingdom. We do not

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want to intrude, but we are ready and willing to do anything. I do not think there will be any lack of nominations. Perhaps there might be a little difficulty in persuading the nominators to act. It is one thing to argue a case; it is quite another to come forward afterwards and say, "We will lend a hand". We have argued a case in this country, as so often we do. We also say that we will come forward and act and help. I can speak for the United Kingdom. But other countries were suggested.
As to the constitutional and legal point which my noble friend, quite rightly, raised, the Bill does indeed go forward. If there were to be this arrangement about a supervisory friendly Power coming in, then I imagine that it would be by agreement or treaty, with a separate document. I also imagine that there would be a separate document for setting up the review body at the end of, say, three years. I do not think there is any difficulty about the modalities of this. I hope that there is no difficulty about everybody concerned agreeing to this course. I can answer for this country. I believe that I can answer for the Gilbert Islands Government. I very much hope that the friends of the Banabans, and I count myself as one, can in due course answer for the Banaban community to join in on this. It will be well worth their while to do so.
Lord ELTON: My Lords, as we are bound by the procedure of a Question, and as a number of solutions put forward obviously require discussion in detail, may I ask the noble Lord whether it would not be to the convenience of the House to conduct this discussion at a clause stand part stage in the Bill, when we eventually get to it?
The LORD PRIVY SEAL (Lord Peart): Yes, my Lords; I think that that is a constructive suggestion. My noble friend has fully answered many questions, and we are to discuss this at Committee stage. I hope that we can now proceed.
Lord LEE of NEWTON: My Lords, will the noble Lord opposite—
Several noble Lords: No!
Lord PEART: My Lords, may I say to my noble friend, whom I admire so much, that I hope he will appreciate that we have had quite a long discussion on this subject. Let us proceed, as we have a lot of business.

NURSES, MIDWIVES AND HEALTH VISITORS BILL
3.13 p.m.
The PARLIAMENTARY UNDERSECRETARY of STATE, DEPARTMENT of HEALTH and SOCIAL SECURITY (Lord Wells-Pestell): My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now resolve itself into Committee on this Bill.
Moved, that the House do now resolve itself into Committee. (Lord Wells-Pestell.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
[The Lord Aberdare in the Chair.]
Clause 1 [Constitution of Central Council]:
Lord SMITH moved Amendment No. 1:
Page 2, line 7, at end insert (",and not less than four shall be registered medical practitioners appointed by the Secretary of State after consultation with the medical profession.").
The noble Lord said: In moving this Amendment to Clause 1, I think it will be helpful at the outset to say that the arguments that I shall put forward are precisely those which I shall employ later on in relation to the Amendments which are in my name to Clauses 4, 5 and 7. It will therefore save much of the time of the Committee if I am permitted to advance these arguments in detail now in relation to Clause 1, and when we come to Clauses 4, 5 and 7 perhaps I may move those Amendments with some brevity, without repeating in detail—
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: Will the noble Lord allow me to interrupt? As I understand the Marshalled List of Amendments, if the noble Lord is to speak to the first Amendment, which he is in the process of doing, I think it will be necessary for him to speak also to Amendments Nos. 6, 7 and 8.
Lord SMITH: I thank the noble Lord. May I so do? I think it will save the time of the Committee if I deal with these arguments in detail now, but not on a second, third and fourth occasion later on. Each of these four Amendments relates to a failure of the Bill to draw any distinction between the medical profession and other disciplines which might provide members of the Central Council, the boards and the midwifery committees—very important committees indeed—and I should like to explain why it is my belief that it is necessary to alter this state of affairs.
I should start by saying that it is important to me to make clear my motives in moving Amendments, so that they should not be misunderstood. The objectives of the Bill, which surely are those we would all support, are to provide the best possible training for nurses, midwives and health visitors and, provided that all three of these groups are satisfied that their interests are properly looked after, then I and, I am sure, other noble Lords will be very anxious to see the nursing profession achieve their ambitions through the swift passage of the Bill. Having co-operated with and helped colleagues in the nursing profession for a great number of years, and enjoyed doing this, I should not want in moving Amendments to be seen to be introducing conflict where I believe none exists, and I hope that when I have spoken the Minister may agree to look again at this matter without dividing the Committee on the issue.
In referring to the membership of these important bodies—the Central Council, the boards and the midwifery committees—what the Bill says in regard to the Secretary of State's own appointments is this:
"The Secretary of State's appointments shall be made from among persons who either are nurses, midwives or health visitors or have such qualifications and experience in education, medicine or other fields as, in the Secretary of State's opinion, will be of value to the Council in the performance of its functions".
It is not too much to say that the medical profession was unanimously appalled at the thought that, in the organisation of the training of the nursing profession, the whole of medicine can he regarded as just one of a number of possible disciplines
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that might be useful, lumped together in the Bill under the general heading:
"… education, medicine or other fields as … will be of value".
I should regard it as quite impossible to contemplate the organisation of the training of the nursing profession, other than in the context of the total care of the sick.
The reason why these two professions are so interdependent is that those within them have a common objective—not degrees. not diplomas, not the intellectual satisfaction of examinations, not the advancement of science for its own sake, but, much simpler than that, the interests of patients. This is why the nursing profession is the closest of all to the medical profession. Indeed, modern medicine would be as ineffective without good nursing, as would modern nursing be irrelevant, except against the background of enlightened medicine. We are linked together as no two other professions are, and to ignore this close and key relationship is a serious omission which I believe should be corrected before the Bill passes.
I am, of course, well aware of the arguments which have been put forward from time to time against singling out the medical profession in this way. One of them that I have heard is put like this: that surely this would place doctors in a special, different and privileged position and that therefore others would want the same. But doctors are already in a special and different position when it comes to helping the nursing profession. They always have been so. When the noble Lord, Lord Briggs, spoke at Second Reading, he rightly called this a key relationship. So far as the argument that this would place doctors in a privileged position is concerned, certainly it would not do so. I believe that there is only one group of people who should be privileged; namely, the patients.
The second argument that I have heard is that if doctors were singled out in this way, they would want to dominate the scene; they would want to dominate the nurses, whereas they should be running their own affairs. But the Central Council will have 45 members. If one inserted a minimum figure of four, as is done in this Amendment to Clause 1, although one knows that in another place

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a minority gets its own way, surely that would not be so with a minority of four among 45, quite apart from the fact that in my experience doctors have no very great reputation for unanimity about anything.
Ever since 1931 when, as a medical student, I became aware of what the nursing profession did in hospitals for patients, it has been quite apparent to me that to try to get one's own way against the judgment of just one senior, experienced nurse is not worth the attempt. As a junior, I was too frightened to try, although as a junior I knew that I was always right. As a surgeon in my middle years, I did not bother to try because I knew that I should be defeated and that this could be because the case which seemed so good to me might not appear to be so good as all that to others. And as a senior in this position, I would first examine my own judgment to see where I might perhaps have gone wrong.
So far as dominating a roomful of the most experienced of senior nurses is concerned, I would venture to think that few Members of this noble House have had the experience of attempting this, and I can assure your Lordships that it is just not on. I have frequently had the pleasure and privilege of sitting in committee with colleagues from the nursing profession and, one among many, I have invariably found that within minutes I appeared to have got them just where they wanted me. Domination of the nurses by this small number of doctors among 45 is not only something which could not happen but also something which doctors would not seek in any way. They seek to be co-operative and to provide highly specialised advice at a time when medicine is becoming more and more complex. Year by year this specialised advice becomes more and more important.
The third argument which has been put forward is that to insert any figure at all would tie the hands of Ministers in their later appointments by order. But, in that it has been conceded already that there will be doctors on these important committees, how can it be wrong, if one grants that there is a special relationship, to insert a minimum figure of some kind? Some would go further and specify the particular kinds of doctor who are needed,
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on which particular committees they should serve, and so on. I believe that this would be going too far, but to specify a minimum number seems to me to be right.
Frankly, I am hopeful that the degree of difference between the arguments I have put before your Lordships and the Government's stance at the moment is not so great as is apparent. The Government's view, as expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, at Second Reading, is the same as mine on the importance of medical representation. But the Government's view is that it can be safely left until after the Bill has been passed to appoint by order any doctors who should sit on these various committees, whereas I believe that we should in some way emphasise the unique importance of the co-operation between these two professions. It seems to me that to insert a minimum figure is probably the simplest way, the actual figures being based upon the present representation of the profession on the bodies which are going to be replaced by these new committees. It is because the end point appears to be the same that I hope very much that the Minister may indicate some willingness on the part of the Government to look again at this matter, so that a Division of the Committee may be avoided and so that there may be some prospect of closing this gap in the Bill before we consider the matter again at Report. I beg to move.
3.27 p.m.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: I am sure that all your Lordships have listened very carefully and with considerable interest to what the noble Lord, Lord Smith, has said. May I try to correct what may well be some misunderstandings. Very few of the Bills that I have been concerned with which have been before your Lordships' House have resulted in more discussion between the people concerned than this one. A good deal of thought has been given to what should go into the Bill.
I should like to remind your Lordships that the main purpose of the Bill is to establish a United Kingdom Central Council for Nursing, Midwifery and Health Visiting and to establish four national boards. The Central Council is to prepare and maintain a central register for qualified

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nurses, midwives and health visitors and to determine, by means of rules, education and training arrangements. This is essentially a Bill for nurses, midwives and health visitors, and its purpose is to enable them to prepare for education, training and registration.
If one looks at the Bill, one finds that membership of none of the bodies to be established is prescribed, not even that of the council and the national boards. The detail and composition will be set out in subordinate legislation. The Bill does no more than give a general indication of the kinds of people to be appointed. For example, in the case of the Central Council, a maximum membership of 45 is set, and it is stated that the majority of the members are to be nominated to the council in equal numbers from each of the four national boards. This is designed to give the maximum flexibility for the future in deciding the precise composition of the boards.
I have listened with great care and I have had an opportunity—albeit a short one—of discussing this matter with the noble Lord, Lord Smith. The whole purpose of the way in which the Bill is phrased is to enable the widest possible discussions and exchange of views to take place between the Central Council and the national boards as to who should be on them. This discussion has not yet taken place. It is merely the bones of the whole thing that we find in the Bill at present. If the composition was set out in detail on the face of the Bill, it would not be possible to alter it without an amending Act, and at the present moment we do not know, other than the fact that the membership of the Central Council and the national boards must consist in the majority of members of the three bodies for whom the Bill is designed.
I accept that it will be necessary to appoint people from the medical profession, from the educational field and from various other fields that have a real concern in nursing and midwifery and health visitors, but at this stage we do not know how many; we do not know what fields of skill and competence will be needed. If one sets out in the Bill the number of people to be put on these various boards and the Central Council, we may find ourselves in the difficult situation of not having enough room for
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certain important interests and too much for the others. I said that, if the composition was set out in the Bill, it would not be possible to alter it without an amending Act, whereas if it is enshrined in subordinate legislation it is a relatively simply matter to make adjustments to meet the changed circumstances. Therefore, it would seem right to preserve this flexibility so far as possible.
I think it was the noble Lord, Lord Smith, who pointed out, during the debate on Second Reading in relation to the reference in Clause 4 to representation of the general public, that it would be wrong to spell out part of the composition of the new bodies without giving the full details, and, as I said earlier, to give full details would destroy the flexibility for the future. There is no doubt whatsoever that there will be medical representation on the council and on the four boards. In fact it is to be found explicitly stated in Clause 1(4) and in Clause 5(5)(b). It is clearly set out there that this is so. Furthermore, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State and my right honourable friend the Minister of State have given assurances to that effect and have said in a letter to the Joint Consultants Committee—of which the noble Lord, Lord Smith, was a member at the time—that there would be full consultation with the medical profession on the proposals for membership and on nominations, and this has been accepted by the profession. They know this and they have accepted the situation, but to set even a minimum number of medical members without any reference to the overall size and other representation on the bodies would create what could well be an impossible situation.
As I have said, it is enshrined in the Bill; it has been clearly stated by my right honourable friends and the medical profession and they have accepted this. I want to say to your Lordships, with great respect, that this is not the time to put in the Bill explicitly that there should be four or there should be three or there should be two representatives. That there will be representatives from the medical profession is not in doubt, but when the new structure is being established we must look at the requirements of the national boards and the Central Council and then appoint accordingly.
Baroness YOUNG: I wonder whether I might press the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, a little further on his reply. I think he made the point that no Bill has had more discussion beforehand than this one, and I am sure he is absolutely right and that it has had a great deal of discussion. But, judging from the amount of correspondence that I and my noble friends have received, it suggests that whatever the discussions may have been we have not altogether reached total agreement on how the Bill should proceed, because there seem to be a number of areas which are still not quite settled.
I should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, for sending me notes on clauses which of course are very helpful, and naturally I looked at the note on this particular subsection to see what it said. It is interesting that the wording is slightly different in the notes on clauses than it is in the subsection. It begins by explaining that the council will need to draw on expertise outside the nursing professions, in particular both medicine and general education, so that it actually reverses the order of the professions. I do not know whether there is any particular significance in that or whether it is just a drafting point. But it leads me on to wonder—as the Amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Smith, is much more tightly drawn, either than the proposal in the Bill or the explanation given in the notes on clauses—whether the experts' advice in medicine could be from people with medical qualifications who are not doctors and whether he envisages a situation in which it would be possible, within the terms of the Bill as it is now drawn, not to have any doctors on it at all and still to have medically qualified people.
Reading again the report of the noble Lord, Lord Briggs, it seems to me that it is intended in his proposal which is set out at page 190—where it says,
… non-nurse members should include, among others, doctors, people with knowledge in the field of general education, health service administrators, financial experts"—
to make it quite clear that it is doctors who are being referred to. It is important that we should clear up the point. We are talking about doctors, and not somebody with just a medical qualification but who is not a doctor.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: If I may, I should like to deal with that point. The noble Baroness drew attention to the fact that she has received, and she knows that I and others have received, a vast amount of correspondence; but I would suggest that she has not received one letter in which there has been a demand for a specific number of doctors on any of the committees. I certainly have not had one.
To answer her other point, let us be quite clear about it: When we speak in the Bill of medicine and the medical profession it means what I should have thought it was quite clear that it should mean; that is, that this is a medical practitioner—not an educationalist with a medical degree or anybody else with a medical degree but somebody who is a practising member of the medical profession. Having regard to the importance of the Central Council and the national boards, I should have thought that it would need to be somebody who had a very real skill and competence over many years. That is the understanding on my part, and it is the understanding on the part of my colleagues, the other Ministers in the Department and everybody I have met so far.
Lord WYNNE-JONES: I have listened with considerable sympathy to the argument adduced by the noble Lord, Lord Smith, in regard to having medical practitioners represented. However, I should like to ask him a question about the wording of the Amendment. It refers to:
"… not less than four shall be registered medical practitioners appointed by the Secretary of State after consultation with the medical profession".
What exactly is meant by "consultation with the medical profession"? I can fully understand that there ought to be medical practitioners there, and I also accept the reasonableness of my noble friend's argument that it is almost inevitable that there will be and that the number will probably be in excess of four. I think the total number that there can be of these appointed members is something like 21; I think there have to be 24 from the other bodies, unless I have done my arithmetic wrong. Consequently, there are bound to be a number of medical practitioners. But if they have to be appointed after consultation with the medical profession they

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will then be put into the same category as those people who come from the different branches of the nursing profession, which are actually nominating their people. Here one would have a further degree of nomination, and I should like to ask: Who would do the nominating?
Lord SMITH: If I may answer that question, the normal method of consultation in regard to matters of this kind is, of course, through the channel which exists between the Department and the Joint Consultants Committee. I was not going to refer to this committee, but the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, has already done so. I therefore feel that it is perhaps not irrelevant to say that the medical profession has been most anxious to make its views known in this matter during the two years that the Briggs Co-ordinating Committee has been preparing for the future legislation. The only trouble was that every attempt by the medical profession to be represented was not accepted, and during the course of these two years' unavailing struggle a letter was received which did not exactly cause a great deal of pleasure among the profession. It said:
"The Committee recognise the part the medical profession could play in nurse education and training".
We thought "could play" a rather offhand dismissal of the traditional help and co-operation which the profession has always sought to give and continues to wish to give. I imagine that, if indeed these appointments occur later after consultation, it will be the normal consultation which exists now through the Joint Consultants Committee.
Lord BRIGGS: At this particular stage in the bringing into life of a council which has not existed before, I find it very difficult to conceive of the Secretary of State himself being willing to nominate less than four members of the medical profession. I should like, too, to reiterate that certainly when I produced my own report the committee was considering not merely people who are concerned with medical education but representatives of the profession actively involved in different aspects of medicine, and related indeed to the different groups of committees which are set up or proposed in this structure. I do feel, however, that
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at this particular stage and after very long discussions it would be extremely unwise to add clauses referring to numbers of particular groups. It seems to me that it would be much better to work on the basis of trying to secure some kind of effective understanding between now and the time when the first members are appointed. If any one particular group of people seeks in relation to this rather complex structure to secure statutory numbers for itself, this seems to me to be rather the wrong way of setting out to secure the objects of the legislation.
I regard the relationship between the doctor and the nurse as being a key relationship, and this goes far beyond the question of nursing education to the actual conditions of work in which the nurse finds herself or himself. But, if one once begins to put numbers in, there will also be difficulties in trying to lay down, for example, how many people should he concerned with education, where they should come from, and what should be the consultative groups with whom one would have to discuss in relation to those people. One of the most serious problems in relation to the future of nursing is the improvement in all kinds of ways of nurse tutoring and the taking of a really effective look at the role of the nurse tutor in terms of changing conditions in medicine and changes in the nature of the educational system and the way in which this approaches the learning process.
I am disturbed, therefore, although I fully understand Lord Smith's concern, that at this particular stage there should be a wish to insert numbers and to refer to a formal consultative process. I cannot conceive, however, of any Secretary of State ever finding himself in the position where, with this size of council, there would be fewer than four people concerned with medicine, not in its educational aspects but in its scientific and other aspects. There, it seems to me, the key relationship stands.
Lord LEATHERLAND: I want to ask my noble friend whether this particular subsection (4) is not too loosely drawn to be really effective in the way we want it to be. Let me read a passage from it:
"The … appointments shall be made from among persons who either are nurses, midwives or health visitors …".

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It does not say there shall be nurses, midwives and health visitors; it merely says that they shall be drawn from among those classes, which does not seem to me to be an all-inclusive way of expressing it. Then it goes on still further to cast doubts as to whether those three classes are legitimately entitled to be on the committee, because it says:
"or have such qualifications and experience in education …".
So on the one hand you have somebody who is among the nurses, midwives and so on, and on the other hand you have people who are qualified in education. It goes on again "or other fields …", as the Secretary of State may decide.
So first of all you have three classes mentioned, and then you choose somebody from among those three classes; it does not stipulate that you shall include somebody representing each one of those classes; then it goes on to say you shall have that or something else, and then you can have something else. It looks to me as though we want a little more precision in the drafting.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: If the noble Lord will allow me, in case others have not read Schedule 1, I should say that the subsection to which my noble friend has referred has to be seen in relation to Schedule 1, which says under paragraph 1(2):
"The persons nominated by each of the Boards shall include at least two practising nurses; one practising midwife; one practising health visitor; and one person engaged in the teaching of nursing, midwifery or health visiting ".
So it is clearly set out and that is the compulsory minimum. The composition of the boards will, of course, include many more of each of those.
Lord DRUMALBYN: May I ask one question, to which I think I must know the answer, but I feel it would be relevant in enabling the Committee to make up its mind. Would I be right in supposing that the Secretary of State would make his appointments under subsections (4) and (5) only after the nominations had been received from the national boards, and that he would have in mind the possibility of representing all those who need to be represented on the Central Council? Secondly—this will depend very much
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on the maximum that is set—is it envisaged, as a possibility at any rate, that the national boards might nominate a doctor?
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: We must bear in mind as regards the setting up of the national boards and the Central Council that the Secretary of State will have a good say about the nominations. As I have already pointed out, he has made it perfectly clear that certainly the medical profession will be represented. However, at this stage I cannot say what the proportion will be. My noble friend who sits behind me, Lord Wynne-Jones, when referring to 45 said that there must be a majority of 23 as against 22. One must envisage that the membership of the national boards as well as the Central Council must have a much higher number of health visitors, midwives and nurses because it is their particular concern. Therefore, one envisages that there will be more than just a simple majority of 23 to 22 because, of necessity, there must be more nurses, midwives and health visitors.
As regards the question of whether the national boards will be able to nominate a doctor, at this stage I do not know because in the early stages it will all be done by agreement with the Secretary of State until the whole matter is established. Once it is established the Bill provides for elections every so often.
Baroness ELLIOT of HARWOOD: I should like to ask a question arising on Schedule 1. It lists the numbers and types of nurses, but it does not mention the district nurses. It may be that, as I am to raise the matter on Amendment No. 3, we should discuss it then, but it is extremely important that the list of nurses in Schedule 1 should certainly mention district nurses, because that is a most important and slightly controversial matter that has been raised in connection with the Bill.
Furthermore, I entirely support what the noble Lord, Lord Smith, said about the relationship between the medical and nursing professions. It is obvious that he is entirely right about that. I also support the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, in not wanting to insert a number. I think that it would be better to leave the number out. However, not to mention the medical profession, as the noble Lord, Lord Smith, has said, is a grave error and I hope that

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it will be clear to anyone who reads the Bill after it has become an Act of Parliament that the medical profession is a vital ingredient. If that is not so it will be a one-sided Bill.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: I do not think that one is entitled to suggest that the Bill does not specifically mention the medical profession. It says:
"Qualifications and experience in … medicine",
but that is interpreted to mean the medical profession. If I may say so, it has been made perfectly clear time and time again, by both my right honourable friends the Secretary of State and the Minister of State for Health when they have discussed this matter, that there is no doubt whatsoever in the minds of the people who have been closely connected with the matters—the co-ordinating body and all the other people with whom we have been associated—that that is precisely what it means; it means medical profession, and not someone who has a medical qualification as an offshoot of something else.
The noble Baroness, Lady Elliot of Harwood, mentioned the question of district nurses. There are various types of nurses but they come under the heading "nurses". A moment or two ago I set out under Schedule 1 the minimum number of two nurses and one each from three other groups. However, there are mental nurses, district nurses and ordinary general nurses, but they are all nurses. I think that the various factions of the nursing service will, in fact, find their way on to the national boards and the Central Council.
Baroness YOUNG: I am sure that we have all listened very carefully to what the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, has said. No one doubts for a minute his great sincerity about this matter. However, it is the job of the House during a Committee stage to make absolutely clear what in fact the Bill will say. The noble Lord is right in saying that it is not his intention, the intention of his right honourable friends in another place, or indeed of anyone who has been involved in the drafting of the Bill, that "medical profession" shall not mean what it is generally taken to mean—that is to say, qualified medical practitioners—and that they are not to be included on the General Council. That, I think, is the point that
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is being made by the noble Lord, Lord Briggs. The fact of the matter is that, as we know, when people come to interpret the law they do not read Hansard and take into account what has been said during the Committee stage of a Bill, or indeed at any other stage; they take into account what the Bill actually says. It is our job in law to make clear Parliament's intention. For, should a case arise where something was being put into effect not as Parliament intended, there is nothing, so far as I can see, to prevent it from happening.
I absolutely accept that perhaps Clause 1 is the wrong place in which to move the Amendment, and perhaps it ought to be moved in relation to the Schedule to the Bill, or drafted in a somewhat different manner to include somewhere in the Schedule to the Bill "qualified medical practitioners", or whatever may be the precisely correct terminology. However, I wonder whether the noble Lord would take the matter away and look at it again in the light of the general discussion which has been expressed in the Committee. I am sure that we are all absolutely in agreement on the principle of what we want to achieve. Our doubts are that the Bill may be so drafted as not to make that clear at some future date. We feel that we ought to try to get the Bill drafted as correctly as possible. I wonder whether the noble Lord would take the matter away and look at it again?
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: That is not a device, if I may say so with the greatest respect to the noble Baroness, that I want to accept. In the ordinary way if there were any real doubt or a possibility that anything that I had said was not likely to take place I would he happy to do so. I point out to your Lordships that I said at the very beginning that the composition of the boards and of the Central Council will be set out in subordinate legislation. That means that an order must be laid before both Houses of Parliament. It will be a negative procedure order. It will be available for some considerable time. If any Member of your Lordships' Committee feels that it does not reflect accurately what I have said today and that it is in any way suffering from any shortcoming, there is no reason why that order should be accepted; it can be rejected. Bearing in mind that there is no doubt in the mind of

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the parliamentary draftsman who has drafted the Bill, and no doubt in the minds of my right honourable friends that it is the medical profession and it will be the medical profession, I should have thought, with very great respect, that it would not be unreasonable for me to say to the noble Lord Smith, that I hope he will feel able not to press the Amendments, but to withdraw them because I feel that I have given all the assurances that it is possible for anyone to give. If the subordinate legislation seems to fall short then the remedy is in the hands of both this House and another place.
Baroness YOUNG: There is always a difficulty about subordinate legislation on a Negative Resolution. One would have to vote against the entire order, and if one disagreed with just one particular point, one would not wish to vote against the whole order. I take the noble Lord's point. Of course, it is possible for this House to vote against an order, but it would be an unusual procedure. What one cannot do, of course, is to amend an order, and, if one did not like it, that is probably what one would wish to do. That is why it is very important to try to get this matter right at this stage.
Lord SEGAL: There is one very important reason why we should support the whole principle of flexibility at this stage. As I see it, the representation on the council should not be entirely on the basis of all the interests affected by this Bill receiving adequate representation. What is so important from the point of view of the training of nurses is not only the qualifications of members on the board, but that they should also have a gift of teaching and an understanding of the difficulties under which our nurses of today have to work. The question of teaching arises in addition to their manifold routine duties of nursing in the wards and the care of patients. As I see it, it is not so much an essential principle of representation as a full understanding of the difficulties facing the nursing profession.
That is why at this stage, when there is such a wide consensus of opinion, I think that it would be wise to preserve the principle of flexibility. Although it would be quite wrong for me to make
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any suggestion at all to the noble Lord, Lord Smith, who moved this Amendment, if it requires further consideration, perhaps it might be withdrawn at this stage and, if necessary, be considered at a later stage of the Bill.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: Perhaps this suggestion would help the noble Lord, Lord Smith, and the noble Baroness, Lady Young. If the noble Lord feels able to withdraw these Amendments, perhaps he and I—and, if necessary, anyone else—could meet between now and the next stage to see whether we can clarify the situation.
Lord SMITH: Until the very last moment I was seriously disappointed that we had not got any further and that the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, did not appear to believe that the Government could look further at recognising this very important relationship between two professions. However, a great many important remarks have been made. It is now clear that we are talking about medical practitioners. We are all agreed that there must be a sufficiency of those on all these important committees. The contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Briggs, was particularly helpful.
I welcome the suggestion that between now and the next stage of the Bill there can be some further conversations so that these matters are put into their right perspective, and so that this relationship, which is so important to me and to many Members of this Committee, is strengthened. In view of that suggestion, and because I shall want to read the record of this debate carefully, it would not be right to divide the Committee at this stage. However, if necessary, I shall return to the matter later on. Therefore, I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
On Question, Whether Clause 1 shall stand part of the Bill?
Baroness YOUNG: I should like to raise one small point here. It arises in relation to Clause 1(6). I think I am correct in reading Schedule 1 as saying that the chairman, who would be appointed initially by the Secretary of State, would serve for a term of three years. Is that correct? It does not seem to be specified

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in the Schedule. As the first chairman is an appointment made by the Secretary of State, it would be helpful to know for how long the appointment would stand. If the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, cannot immediately answer that question, perhaps he would be good enough to write to me about it.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: I think that the noble Baroness is perfectly correct. That is my understanding of the position, but, if that understanding is wrong, I shall certainly let her know.
Clause 1 agreed to.
Clause 2 [Functions of Council]:
4.6 p.m.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL Lord WELLS-PESTELL moved Amendment No.2:
Page 2,line34,at end insert—
("( ) The powers of the Council shall include that of providing, in such manner as it thinks fit, advice for nurses, midwives and health visitors on standards of professional conduct.").
The noble Lord said: I beg to move the second Amendment. The purpose of the Amendment is to make clear that the council has the power to provide advice to the professions as a whole and to individuals on matters relating to professional conduct. The Amendment fulfils a commitment made in another place by my right honourable friend the Minister of State.
I think I am right in saying that the original Amendment was moved by the Opposition in another place on Report and required the council to provide guidance for the professions. I understand that that was not acceptable because of the likely difficulties that would arise in interpreting the legal status of such guidance. Some might interpret that what was not expressly prohibited with regard to professional conduct might, by implication, be permitted. Guidance provided by the council could not, however, be expected to cover all the circumstances where misconduct might arise.
The present Amendment has much the same wording as is to be found in Section 5 of the Medical Act 1978. Debate on that Act covered the identical ground, and it was finally agreed then by both Houses that the best approach in that case was
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for a power rather than a duty to provide advice. I beg to move.
Baroness YOUNG: I am sure that the whole Committee would wish to accept the explanation for this Amendment given by the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, and to agree with the point that he makes. I rise really to say that it seems perhaps ironic that this should come as an Amendment at this stage—although one appreciates the reason for it—when, in a very disturbed society, the one group of people who seem to be exercising the highest of professional conduct are, of course, the nurses; they are setting an example to everybody. It would be a good thing to place this on record at this time.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
On Question, Whether Clause 2, as amended, shall stand part of the Bill?
Lord WYNNE-JONES: With regard to this clause, which sets up a new authority which will, I understand, take full charge of training and standards of training throughout the nursing profession, I should like to ask my noble friend Lord Wells-Pestell what will happen in the interim period. Presumably this new council will not be set up overnight. At present I think that there are some five or six bodies which control the education of the different branches of the profession. Is it visualised that these will disappear—as the Bill says they will—when the Bill becomes an Act, or is it supposed that they will continue in existence and that there will be a period before the new council is set up?
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My noble friend Lord Wynne-Jones is perfectly right; the dissolution of the six main existing bodies—which I shall not set out—is to be found in Clause 21. There are also three smaller bodies: the Joint Board for Clinical Nursing Studies, the Joint Board for Clinical Nursing Studies in Scotland and the Panel of Advisers for District Nursing Training. Like all the other existing training bodies, they will cease to exist once the new bodies are fully operational.
As I said a moment or two ago, Clause 21 provides for the dissolution of these bodies. However, there will have to be a hand-over period during which the

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new bodies prepare to take over the work of the present bodies. I think one realises that this will be a complex operation as there will be a need to harmonise the differing practices—for example, registration, the use of computers—between the various existing bodies. Only when this process is completed—and I want to emphasise only when this process is completed—will the present bodies, including the General Nursing Council, be dissolved. I am not going to try to predict the exact timing of this hand-over, but I think one has to face the fact that it may take two years; thus, the General Nursing Council is unlikely to be dissolved before the end of 1981, as we see the situation.
Lord LEATHERLAND: I wonder whether my noble friend can give us a satisfying assurance on the little point I shall raise. What will be the status after this Bill has passed of, first, State registered nurses, and, secondly, State enrolled nurses? Will they have the same standing in their profession that they enjoy today?
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: Under the new structure there will be the registration of all nurses. At the present moment the registration applies to the State registered nurse, but under the new structure it is envisaged that all groups of nurses, whether they are State registered as we understand the term today, whether they are enrolled nurses, whether they are mental nurses, and so on, will be registered. As the noble Lord will know, one of the recommendations of the Briggs Committee was that there should be a common training given to all nurses. I think the Briggs Report, if I can quote it accurately, suggested that the common training for all nurses should be about 18 months, and then they could go on for higher qualifications and specialisation. In answer to my noble friend, the registration will be a registration for all nurses and the new structure will mean that they will all have in future the common training.
Clause 2, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 3 [Standing committees of Council]:
[Amendment No.3 not moved.]
4.13 p.m.
Baroness YOUNG Baroness YOUNG moved Amendment No.4:
Page 3,leave out line 8.
The noble Baroness said: I have not moved Amendment No. 3 because it has been overtaken by Amendment No. 4. For the convenience of the Committee, I should like to speak at the same time to Amendment No. 14. These two Amendments in fact cover the same point as Amendment No. 3 but I think on a better drafting of it. The history of these Amendments is quite a long one but they deal quite specifically with district nursing, and they of course refer to the point that my noble friend Lady Elliot referred to under Clause 1, among other matters.
We are all grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, for bringing forward the Government Amendment No. 10 on the Marshalled List, to which we shall be referring later, and that deals with the complicated question of health visitors. The other complicated question has been that of district nurses. It is a matter on which I am sure we have all received a great many letters. I think that these two Amendments would meet what they are seeking; namely, to have their education and their professional body which would be of a similar status to that of both the health visitors and of the midwives. I understand that their particular reason for seeking these Amendments is that the panel of assessors of district nursing (the body which is at present responsible for district nurse training) in fact covers the whole of the country and gives uniformity to district nurse training nationally, and district nurses are keen to maintain this particular arrangement that they have at the moment.
I think that they have been under some misapprehension and some concern about what happened in another place. They believe that the right honourable friend of the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, Mr. Moyle, undertook to set up this joint committee. I hope, therefore, that in putting down these Amendments the Government will view them sympathetically and that this may be something that they will feel able to look at and, if the Amendments are not correctly drafted, would feel able to come back at a later stage with corrected Amendments. I beg to move.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: I shall not deal at this stage with Amendment No. 10, which I shall be moving in due course. What I want to say to the noble Baroness, Lady Young, is that we gave her Amendment a good deal of consideration and we have looked at it from every angle. If I may put it like this, we think that it is reasonable and we agree with it in principle. Ministers have, in another place, repeatedly given undertakings that they would use the powers in Clause 8(4)to establish a joint committee for district nurses which is what the district nurses themselves want. Though the present wording of the Bill is quite sufficient to achieve this, the continuing reference in Clause 3(3) to district nursing as a possible Central Council-only committee is a little confusing and may have cast doubt on what precisely Ministers intended to do. Let me be quite frank about it, the noble Baroness's Amendments clarify the situation and are therefore acceptable in principle.
We realise that district nurses have for some long time wanted to see some clarification of this kind in the Bill. There have been certain difficulties, but I have taken advice on the wording of the noble Baroness's Amendment. I understand that it is not so much defective—I think I am right in saying that—but that it does not appear in its proper place in the clause. I am bound, if I may say so and your Lordships will understand, to accept the advice that I am given. If the noble Baroness is prepared to withdraw Amendments Nos. 4 and 14, then we shall certainly come to your Lordships at the next stage with these particular Amendments worded as we understand from parliamentary draftsmen they should be worded and in the place in the Bill where they should be found.
Baroness YOUNG: I should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, for what he has said. Not being a lawyer, I have never yet managed either to draft myself or to get anybody else to draft an Amendment which parliamentary draftsmen considered to be correct. Therefore, I am only too happy, once the principle has been agreed, to leave it to him and his advisers to redraft the Amendments and, more important, to insert Amendment No. 14 into the correct part of Clause 8. What is important to
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the Committee, and what we are all grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, for—as I know, his personal intervention in this matter—is that the principle is agreed. I am sure that the district nurses will be grateful for this. On those assurances, I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
On Question, Whether Clause 3 shall stand part of the Bill?
4.19 p.m.
Baroness YOUNG: On the clause as a whole I have been approached and I have had some considerable correspondence on the subject of training of nurses for the mentally ill and those with mental handicaps. Clause 3(3) is really an enabling clause in that it enables the Secretary of State to constitute other standing committees, including mental nursing; district nursing will have its own committee, but mental nursing remains in this category. First, the fear is that this is simply enabling legislation and that there is no guarantee it will happen. Secondly, nursing care for the mentally ill and those with mental handicaps is of course extremely important. There' is no doubt that where there have been difficulties in hospitals which have called for inquiries, they have nearly all been mental hospitals and many people are concerned about the training and qualifications of everyone undertaking what must be very difficult and worrying work. Perhaps the Minister would comment on those points. Again, if he does not wish to do so at this stage of the Bill, I should be happy if he would either discuss it or write to me on the matter. The point about the training of those involved in mental nursing is important and it would be helpful to have the Government's view on the matter.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: There is no problem in my replying to the noble Baroness, Lady Young. She is right to say that this is enabling legislation and that there may be doubts in people's minds as to whether there is any intention to create such a standing committee. In Clause 3(3) five are set out—training, clinical nursing studies, district nursing, mental nursing and occupational health nursing—and they are there because it is recognised that they are each making a

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very important contribution to the community. At present we in the Department are engaged in giving a good deal of attention to the problems of the mentally ill and mentally handicapped and have come to the conclusion that much more needs to be done in this field so far as training for mental nursing is concerned. If I remember rightly, this point is made quite strongly in the Briggs Report.
The reason why we are not setting up standing committees specifically at this stage is that this is a matter in which a good deal of work has been done and a good deal of thought and consideration is being given at this stage to the mental situation, if I may call it such. When we are looking at the construction of what is necessary in the future we want to be better informed and better armed than we are at present, but I can assure the noble Baroness that we feel strongly about this, and I am in a position to say that, in view of the time which the Department is giving now to the whole question of mental nursing.
Baroness YOUNG: Before we leave this point, may I ask the noble Lord if he feels that the national boards will be so constituted as to include someone who has experience of or is qualified in this particular matter of mental nursing and the nursing of the mentally handicapped? I ask that question because not in the Schedules, not in Clause 1 and not in this clause, is it made clear. Is this something else that would be left to the judgment of the Secretary of State or the council?
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: This is one of the reasons why I was asking that we should remain flexible. Many interests have to be provided for so far as the national boards and the Central Council are concerned and I should be very surprised if, in the setting up of the national boards and the Central Council, for which my right honourable friend the Secretary of State will have a large measure of responsibility in the initial stage, something so important as mental nursing will not be considered because of the situation we find the country in at the present time.
Clause 3 agreed to.
Clause 4 [The Midwifery Committee]:
The CHAIRMAN of COMMITTEES (Lord Aberdare): In calling Amendment No. 5, I have to point out that if that Amendment is agreed to I shall not be able to call Amendment No.6.
4.25 p.m.
Baroness VICKERS Baroness VICKERS moved Amendment No. 5:
Page 3, line 20, leave out from ("midwives") to end of line 22.
The noble Baroness said: I realise that I shall perhaps be twitted by the Minister for this Amendment because he will realise that this was one which was introduced by the Opposition and discussed in Committee in the House of Commons. I am therefore, entirely on my own, going against my colleagues in the other House. I regret that this provision states that two members of the general public shall be added to the midwifery committee. I think this is based on the misunderstanding that the midwifery committee have control over trends in obstetric practice and the provision of facilities for home confinement, whereas that is not the function of a statutory body. The addition of two lay members could seriously reduce the midwives' majority. I feel very strongly that if some midwives were unable to attend, for example because of their professional commitments, there would be a majority of non-midwives, and that might result in decisive votes being cast by lay or medical members and thus it would be very difficult to ensure that the midwives have responsibility for their own professional affairs.
All will agree that we are of course always interested in having consumer interests taken into account, but one must remember that midwives are themselves consumers in this profession, and if this is to be achieved by direct representation written into the Bill, then surely all the other committees referred to in the Bill should have similar representation, not just midwives. I am glad to see the noble Baroness, Lady Robson of Kiddington, in her place because she commented on this matter, as we see from paragraph 1659. If the Minister cannot accept the whole Amendment, I hope the woman will be taken out because we do not want statutory women on these committees.
We are getting tired, particularly since the Sex Discrimination Act, of the placing of women into special categories. I am also fortified by what the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, himself said in column 1681:
"If the council and boards are to make sensible decisions which affect midwives, they must be aware of the problems facing midwives and understand their unique position and needs".—[Official Report, 19/2/79.]
That cannot be achieved if the midwifery committees are hived off as a separate enterprise. I believe that what is happening is that certain organisations—the National Childbirth Trust, the Birth Centre and the Association for the Improvement of Maternity Services—are thinking that if this goes forward as it is everybody will be forced to go into hospital, and they are very much against that. I believe it is a misconceived idea and I therefore hope the Minister will agree that these points should be thought about again with a view to removing what in my view is a totally unnecessary and unfortunate addition to the Bill.
Baroness MASHAM of ILTON: I apologise for not being here for the Second Reading debate; I was delayed in Dallas. Having been the president of our local midwives and knowing that our future generations will be reliant on the skill of the midwives for safe delivery into the world, I believe Clause 4 needs amending rather than that we should simply leave out from "midwives" in line 20 to the end of line 22. In stating that one of the lay members should be a woman, it leaves this appointment open to abuse and any woman, whether or not she has any interest in or knowledge of childbirth, could be nominated. Surely it ought to be stated that the lay members should have a special interest in improving the maternity and childbirth service.
Like the noble Baroness, Lady Young, I have received many letters from midwives and health visitors throughout the country. They are concerned for their specialised professions. They do not like the Bill, and they already feel that there has been much disharmony between the nurses, midwives, and health visitors. It seems that the Bill is already doing the opposite to what it sets out to achieve. Instead of uniting the professions, it is putting up barriers of defence. I hope
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that, after the Bill leaves your Lordships' House, the professions will be happier.
Lord BRIGGS: I strongly support the noble Baroness, Lady Vickers, in her attempt to delete the last part of the phrase in question. Having received many letters from people concerned with the midwifery profession, my impression is that there is not the degree of discontent that has just been suggested. When the Briggs Report was produced there was a considerable number of midwives on the committee, and the report has received the support of most of the midwifery organisations. I feel that the idea of having two members of the general public, at least one of whom must be a woman, is really quite wrong, and rests on a misapprehension of the nature of the midwifery committee. This is the only place in the Bill as it stands where the phrase, "general public" is used. It is very difficult to see why at this particular point in the logic of the reorganisation the general public should be mentioned in this part of the Bill, if they are to be mentioned, and not mentioned elsewhere. I dislike very strongly the proposal that one of the members must be a woman, and I hope that we shall get rid of the last part of subsection (1) of Clause 4.
Baroness ROBSON of KIDDINGTON: I rise to support the Amendment and I find myself in rather a similar position to the noble Baroness because certain members of my party supported the Amendment in the other place. I believe that they did so because they had misunderstood the purpose of the Bill itself on the question of the representation of women and the general public on a teaching and training council. I find it difficult to accept that the present wording should remain in the Bill, particularly in view of the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, in our debate on the first Amendment, which laid great stress on retaining the complete flexibility of the establishment of the various bodies and committees. I believe it is essential that your Lordships should remove the words in accordance with the Amendment.
I believe that there has been confusion in the minds of some people about the purpose of the Bill, and that the fear that the entire practice of home confinements might be influenced by the Bill is a

531
mistaken assumption. People ought to be reassured if they consider what has happened in the past. A letter in the Guardian from the Birth Centre supported the Amendment because it was felt that there was a risk that community experience in midwife training might be curtailed, but it should be borne in mind that it was in 1960 that the practice of hospital deliveries was established as the trend in obstetrics. That was the aim at that time. Nevertheless, as late as 1977 the new syllabus for midwifery training, which was circulated to the training schools, contained exactly the same length of community training as previously. Therefore, I believe that people can be reassured that no midwife would want the kind of training in which she was not capable of functioning both in hospital and in the community. Furthermore, I consider that the references to the statutory woman and the general public in the clause are quite wrong.
Lord LEATHERLAND: The speeches of the two noble Baronesses have indicated that this is not a party matter. Both the other parties are split on this question, and probably there will be differences of opinion in the Party for which I speak. The Royal College of Midwives is absolutely against the provision as it appears in the clause in its unaltered form, and the college has suggested that the two lines which the noble Baroness wishes to have deleted, should be deleted. It may be asked why is the provision about lay membership of the committee to be applied only to midwives. It is not to be applied to any of the other categories dealt with by the Bill. Nothing is said about applying the provision to health visitors, mental nurses, or district nurses. It applies merely to midwives. Why should they be singled out in this way? That is what the Royal College of Midwives is asking, and it is also asking that the provision be deleted.
I have never personally required the attendance of a midwife, and I do not suppose that I ever shall. But I was for many years the president of my village's district nursing association and I got to know a considerable amount about the activities and duties of the midwife. The poor girl had to turn out at night on her bicycle and ride across fields. She
532
had to carry it over ditches and so on. Thus, I have very great sympathy with midwives, and I feel that the attitude which the Royal College of Midwives is now taking is the right one.
I do not ignore the value of the general public, but in this respect their views can be made known in other ways. There is something to be said for having a few men and women on the nursing committee in a local village nursing association, but here we are concerned with a national committee with statutory authority, and in view of the fact that the Bill endeavours to make the midwives masters or mistresses of their own destiny, they should be left alone and allowed to get on with it.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: I am glad to establish yet again that this is a Government of sense and reason. We accept the Amendment.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
On Question, Whether Clause 4, as amended, shall stand part of the Bill?
4.38 p.m.
Baroness YOUNG: Along with other noble Lords, I have received many letters about the clause, which was inserted in another place at the Committee stage. In its original form it read rather differently because it was further amended on Report, when subsection (3)(c) was removed. There is no doubt that this has caused considerable concern to the midwifery profession, and I have received a great many letters on the point. The writers feel that what they were promised in their original discussion on the clause as it then was—involving a midwifery committee of similar standing to the present committees—has been watered down. Thus, under the clause as it now stands the midwifery committee will in effect be able only to make proposals to amend and revoke the rules which are referred to in Clause 15. This situation has caused concern to midwives. Would the noble Lord care to explain to your Lordships why the changes have been made to the original clause, and does he feel it is true that the functions of the midwifery committee have been altered and watered down by the subsequent Amendments made on Report in another place?
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: I was not aware that the noble Baroness was going to raise this, but in point of fact I thought it might well be advisable at this stage, and whether or not the matter had been raised by the noble Baroness, to say something about the relationship (if I may use that expression) between the midwifery committees of the Central Council and the national boards, and the extension to midwives of the Amendment in relation to health visitors in Clause 8. I welcome this opportunity because I hope it will clear up some of the misunderstandings and perhaps soften some of the feelings which have been expressed.
When what is now Clause 4 was introduced in the Commons, it originally provided for direct consultation on matters relating to midwifery practice between the Central Council's midwifery committee and those of the national boards. This arrangement was strongly opposed by the non-midwife interests, who felt that it was not constitutional for there to be formal links between a subordinate committee of one body and a subordinate committee of another: formal contacts should be between the parent bodies. Such an arrangement would tend to give the midwives a sense of independence and a sense of total separation, which would be counter to the fundamental unifying intent of this Bill.
My right honourable friend the Minister of State accepted that, by providing for what amounted to a parallel hierarchy, albeit in a relatively narrow field of responsibility, midwifery was in effect being hived off, and thus the aim of unification was being undermined. The clause was subsequently amended to make it clear that the formal process of consultation lies between the parent bodies, the Central Council and the national boards. This is not to imply that there will not be a great deal of informal day-to-day contact among the various midwifery committees, which will be of great value; it merely requires that, when it comes to the stage of formal consultation on the making of rules, this should follow the procedure through the parent bodies, who have the ultimate responsibility.
In looking at the revised wording (I am talking now of the present wording) in Clause 4, it is important to look at the wording of Clause 7(4). Clause 4 deals
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only with the requirement of the Central Council to consult national boards on the recommendations of the Central Council's midwifery committee, but if one looks at Clause 7(4) one sees that a clear duty is placed on national boards, when they are consulted in this way, to seek the views of their midwifery committees. That is very clearly set out. Thus, all the midwifery committees will have an opportunity to comment, and the net effect will be much the same as under the original wording, except that the national boards will also have had an opportunity to express the views of their own committees—and that would seem to be perfectly reasonable when each of the national boards has a midwifery committee. This must surely be to the advantage of all concerned, as the national boards, having been obliged to play some part in the preparation of midwifery practice rules, will have to become aware of what is involved and will gain a greater understanding of the unique features of midwifery, which in the long term can only be to the good of midwives.
I think that perhaps there is no need for me to say much more, unless I refer briefly to the Government Amendment to Clause 8, which specifies what is involved in the procedure of consultation so far as the health visiting joint committee is concerned; that is, that when the committee has been consulted on any matter the council or board shall not act until they have received the recommendation of the committee on that matter. The midwifery bodies, including the Royal College, argue that if it is necessary, in the case of the health visiting joint committee, to spell out what is involved in the process of consulting—that is, in Clause 8(3)—it is equally necessary to do so in Clause 4(2) and Clause 7(3), dealing with the midwifery committees, the wording of which is virtually identical. This is an argument which I think it is on the face of it difficult to resist. I do not think there is need for me to say anything more, and I hope I have given a satisfactory answer to the noble Baroness.
Baroness YOUNG: I am very grateful for that reply. It is, I think, a very important matter. Following up the last point that the noble Lord made, there is a difference in fact, as I understand it, between the provisions. The difficulty so

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far as the midwives are concerned is, if I have understood it properly, that in Clause 7(4) there is in fact no obligation on the national board to forward the views of the midwifery committee to the Central Council, whereas in Clause 8 there is an obligation. In that sense, there seems to be a difference of treatment from one body to another. If there is a difference, perhaps the noble Lord would look at it; and perhaps this again is a matter about which we might consult before the next stage of the Bill, when he will have had the opportunity to take advice on this point.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: I should be glad to do that, because I am not sure there is really any fundamental difference. I should like to look at the wording and take advice on it.
Baroness MASHAM of ILTON: May I ask the noble Lord to whom the midwifery committee is responsible? I think this is the question, is it not?
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: As far as the Central Council is concerned, there is a midwifery standing committee appointed by the Central Council, and therefore it has some responsibility to the Central Council. But there are, as the noble Baroness knows, four national boards and each of the national boards, for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, also has a midwifery committee which will feed its views and observations into the national board. The national board is represented on the Central Council, and there is no reason why the midwifery committees should not feed the midwifery standing committee. So I should have thought that there was ample opportunity and ample scope for the midwifery discussions at the national board level to go not only to the midwifery standing committee but also to the Central Council
Clause 4, as amended, agreed to.
[Amendment No. 7 not moved.]
Clauses 5 and 6 agreed to.
Clause 7 [Standing committees of Boards]:
[Amendment No. 8 not moved.]
4.49 P.m.
Baroness VICKERS moved Amendment No. 9:
Page 6, line 4, leave out ("or by the Secretary of State by order").
The noble Baroness said: With regard to the midwifery committee again, I feel that there are too many regulations in this particular clause. First,
"Each Board shall consult its Midwifery Committee on all matters relating to midwifery …";
and then,
"the Committee shall, on behalf of the Board, discharge such of the Board's functions as are assigned to them by the Board or by the Secretary of State …".
I do not see how they are ever going to get anywhere when they do not know whether their functions are going to be assigned to them by the board, which I think should be the final body dealing with this matter, or by the Secretary of State.
I should like the noble Lord to let me know at what time the Secretary of State might come in and perhaps change, or not agree with, some of the functions which had been agreed by the committee on behalf of the board. Perhaps he could let me know why in this Bill so many functions are undertaken by the Secretary of State by order. I dislike all these Secretary of State orders in so many Bills. It depends upon the Secretaries of State at the time whether they are sympathetic to the objects or not and whether they have enough time to look into all the details. In this Bill there are many clauses which are guarded or finalised by the opinion of the Secretary of State. I should like to ask how Clause 7(3) will work. I beg to move.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: I think that there is some misunderstanding here. It is not that the midwifery committee, or for that matter (going down to Amendment No.2) the council and each of the boards shall consult the joint committee and so on; this will be the normal functioning of (shall I say?) the committees and the joint committees. It is that the power vested in the Secretary of State to assign functions to standing committees as well as to their parent bodies is there very much as a kind of reserve, a long-stop, as a safeguard for the minority or specialist groups for

537
whom the committee is established. In the case of these Amendments, they are the midwives and the health visitors. It is to be expected that the parent bodies will assign functions to their specialist committees which will have the necessary expertise; and there is no reason to doubt that they will do so.
However, in the unlikely eventuality of a parent body not assigning a particular function to its committee when perhaps it should do so, there would be the possibility of the Secretary of State making that assignment to ensure that the specialist committee has a proper remit. It is merely done to give protection to minority groups who may have certain things that ought to be considered. If the matters that they want considered are not going to be considered by, say, a particular board or joint committee, and the Secretary of State's attention is drawn to it, he can then say: "Please consider this matter". There is no ulterior motive in this. It is a power which I am sure the Secretary of State would be glad not to have to use. But it is important. I am tempted to say that I do not think that the noble Baroness realises how important it is. The Secretary of State should be in a position, if his attention is called to something which affects one of the minority groups within the nursing, health visitors and midwifery organisations—a matter that ought to be considered and which for one reason or another is not considered—to give a direction.
Furthermore, there are so many things going on outside: reports coming out which impinge upon the medical profession and on the nursing professions and which are things that ought to be considered; and if they are not being considered the Secretary of State in the interests of the community could ask for them to be considered. It is a power which I know he himself would hope he does not have to use. It is a good safeguard, first, for the community and, second, for the minority groups. I hope that the noble Baroness in the light of what I have said will feel it desirable that the clause should remain unamended.
Baroness ELLIOT of HARWOOD: I realise and understand what the noble Lord has said, but it could work the other way. If the council want to do something and the Secretary of State did not want it
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to do so, could the Secretary of State overrule what the council, whether it be the midwifery or the Central Council, recommend? Has he an overruling power? If he has then that seems to me to be rather dangerous.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: I have read the Bill—not that I understood it after reading it the first two or three times, and I would not pretend to know it fully now—and I know of nothing in the Bill by which the Secretary of State could countermand. The whole purpose is to create a structure (as I said at the beginning) for nurses, midwives and health visitors to do something for themselves about their own professional situation, standing, training and so on. This is all it is about.
Baroness VICKERS: I thank the noble Lord. He said it is something that they can do for themselves. Now we know that the Secretary of State has an overriding power. When he speaks about other legislation perhaps being necessary as the reason for having the Secretary of State involved, I hope that we shall not be having any other legislation in the near future that will affect this Bill. But in view of what the noble Lord has said, I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 7 agreed to.
Clause 8 [Joint committees of Council and Boards]:
The DEPUTY CHAIRMAN of COMMITTEES (Baroness Wootton of Abinger): I have to call the attention of the Committee to the fact that if Amendment No. 10 is agreed I shall not be able to call Amendments Nos.11,12 and 13.
4.57 p.m.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL Lord WELLS-PESTELL moved Amendment No.10:
Page 6,line 31, leave out subsection (3) and insert—
("(3) The Council and each of the Boards shall consult the Joint Committee on all matters relating to health visiting and shall not act on any such matters before receiving a recommendation of the Joint Committee which shall be made within such period of time as the Council or Board shall specify; and the Committee shall, on behalf of the Council or of any Board, discharge such of the functions

539
of the Council or the Board as are assigned to it by the body otherwise charged with those functions, or by the Secretary of State by order.").
The noble Lord said: I should like to begin by saying that I have been able to discuss this Amendment with the noble Baroness, Lady Young, and also, although I have not been able to discuss it personally with the noble Baroness, Lady Elliot, or the noble Baroness, Lady Vickers, I wrote to them fully on this matter because I think that one can say that we are of one mind on this. This Amendment, which has the virtually unanimous support of the organisations represented on the Briggs Co-ordinating Committee, including those representing health visitors—that is, the Health Visitors' Association, the Royal College of Nursing, and the Council for the Education and Training of Health Visitors—has been introduced to fulfil the commitment given by the Minister of State in another place that if a better form of words could be found by the health visitors or anybody else that was acceptable, it would be written into the Bill.
In fact, a satisfactory form of words has been found; hence the Amendment standing in my name. It will resolve one of the major problems which has faced us in the Bill: the need to give reassurance to, and allay the fears of, health visitors. Health visitors are in a very special position within the nursing professions. Whereas the vast majority of nurses are concerned with curing ill health, the primary role of the health visitors is its prevention. This means that they work in a very different way from their hospital colleagues, and in a way that is not always fully understood by those used to working in hospital environments. This, I think, makes some of them feel somewhat isolated and vulnerable. Throughout the preparations for this Bill they have expressed anxiety that if their training was the responsibility of bodies on which hospital nurses predominated, their special needs for training might not be fully recognised. That is why the Bill provides for a specialist committee—the Health Visiting Joint Comittee—to be established under Clause 8 so that there can be a single source of expertise available to all the new bodies; that is, the Central Council and the four national boards.
However, despite the existence of this expert committee, the health visitors continued to have real and serious reservations. They wanted to be sure that the joint committee would indeed be a powerful body, whose views and advice would be given the greatest possible attention by the parent bodies. This anxiety was, I think, understandable, though I do not think it was justified. However, in its turn it lead to an anxiety on the part of other groups, especially those representing the broad range of general nursing specialties, that the health visitors were seeking autonomy, or at least a right of veto over the decisions of the new bodies, something which would destroy the fundamental, unifying purpose of introducing a new structure. If the new Central Council and national boards did not take the ultimate authority on all matters relating to the education and training of nurses, midwives and health visitors, they argued, what was the point of creating them? Thus, the understandable fears of the health visitors became—and I am not putting it too highly when I say this—a major challenge to the Bill.
That is why I am so pleased that, at this relatively late stage in the Bill's passage, agreement has been reached on the form of words which does not constitute a threat to the supremacy of the new bodies and yet gives health visitors that all-important assurance that their committee has a real role to play. The Amendment achieves this by requiring that the council and boards shall not act on any matter on which the joint committee has been consulted until a recommendation has been received from the committee; and to ensure that work is not unduly delayed by this process, the council and boards are required to specify a period of time within which a recommendation is to be made. Obviously, this will vary according to the subject-matter in hand, and no doubt the council and boards, on the one hand, and the committee on the other, will be able to come to some arrangement if the time initially specified does not prove sufficient. These are matters to be settled between the bodies, and not prescribed in the Bill.
To summarise, the Amendment provides a neat formula which puts beyond doubt the position of the health visiting joint committee, and demon-

541
strates its importance, but leaves the powers of the council and boards unchanged. It has widespread support from those most closely concerned, and I should like to place on record the Government's appreciation of the strenuous efforts that have been made in order to resolve this tricky problem. The professions have, by their willingness to build bridges and reach agreement, enabled us to get this new structure in being and to work together for the future. This fulfils a pledge which my right honourable friend has given all along. I am grateful to all those who participated. On behalf of the Government, I should like to thank the health visitors for their consideration of the matter, and also to thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Young, Lady Elliot of Harwood and Lady Vickers for their co-operation. I beg to move.
Baroness YOUNG: I am sure that I speak on behalf of my noble friends as well as myself in saying that we are most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, for bringing forward this Amendment at this point. It is very gratifying to everyone that it is an Amendment based on agreement between the professionals and one which they are happy to accept. This is the most important point of all about it. We on this side of the Committee are very happy to accept it, and in those circumstances, because the point has been so well met, we shall of course withdraw our Amendments. I am very happy to support this Amendment.
Lord REDCLIFFE-MAUD: May I say on behalf of all those who have been interested in this Bill in a totally inexpert way—in contrast to those who have moved Amendments—that this is an excellent example of how the Government and the various groups which had points made to them (which the Government did not at first seem to have met in the Bill) have collaborated and so have produced the result in which we all rejoice. From these independent Benches I should like to show my admiration for the work which has been done by the groups who put down Amendments, and for the work done by the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, in making it possible for those groups to come together and to have that extra time which has enabled this result to be achieved. In passing, we in the Committee might pat ourselves on the back, because
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in the other place they did not find time to get the agreement which, through the collaboration of both sides, has been achieved here.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
The DEPUTY CHAIRMAN of COMMITTEES: We now pass to Amendment No.14.
5.5 p.m.
Baroness YOUNG Baroness YOUNG had given Notice of her intention to move Amendment No.14:
Page 6, line 38, after ("Boards") insert ("in particular a District Nursing Joint Committee").
The noble Baroness said: The substance of this Amendment has been accepted by the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, so I do not wish to move the Amendment at this stage.
Clause 8, as amended, agreed to.
The DEPUTY CHAIRMAN of COMMITTEES: The Question is, that Clauses 9, 10 and 11 shall stand part of the Bill?
Lord SANDYS: On Clause 11, there is a problem of clarification. I may be incorrect here but I think there is a misprint in the Bill. I should like to draw the Government's attention to what was said on Report stage in another place at col. 488, when the noble Lord's right honourable friend Mr. Moyle introduced an Amendment. It would help both for record purposes and in regard to the Amendment if I repeated his short speech. The Minister said this:
"I beg to move Amendment No. 35, in page 9, line 8 after 'kingdom', insert 'or elsewhere '.".
He went on to say:
"This amendment is aimed at clarifying an amendment of my honourable friend the Member for Brent, South (Mr. Pavitt) in Committee which I accepted in principle, so as to make crystal clear the conditions under which people from overseas could be accepted for registration in this country. Unfortunately, my honourable friend's amendment was technically defective because it omitted the words 'or elsewhere'. This amendment puts the position right".—[Official Report, (Commons) 7/2/79.]
The Minister moved this Amendment in another place but it now, unfortunately, does not appear in the Bill, despite the fact that it was agreed to. I do not know whether the Government would like to comment.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: I am not in a position to comment. When I get Hansard tomorrow I shall have to read what the noble Lord has said. I shall look at the quotation and write to the noble Lord.
Lord WYNNE-JONES: This point which has just been raised—
The DEPUTY CHAIRMAN of COMMITTEES: The Committee is really out of order. Clauses 9 and 10 have not yet been agreed to and we have jumped to Clause 11. The Question is, that Clause 9 stand part of the Bill?
Clause 9 agreed to.
The DEPUTY CHAIRMAN of COMMITTEES: The Question is, that Clause 10 stand part of the Bill?
Clause 10 agreed to.
On Question, Whether Clause 11 shall stand part of the Bill?
Lord SANDYS: I do not know whether it will assist the Government if I remind them that this was on the Report stage in another place on Wednesday, 7th February.
Lord WYNNE-JONES: Regarding the question of registration of people living outside the country, this is something which can be of considerable importance and it would be of great value to your Lordships if the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, would explain what the situation is going to be. There must be very many qualified nurses who are living outside the country and if they are not put on the register, if they return to this country their whole position is jeopardised.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: I am in some difficulty. I cannot reconcile what has been said in regard to Clause 11. I shall look at this and let both noble Lords know.
Clause 11 agreed to.
Clause 12 [Removal from, and restoration to, register]:
Lord SANDYS Lord SANDYS moved Amendment No.15:
Page 10, line 9, leave out from ("constituted") to end of line 10.
The noble Lord said: We turn to the issue raised in Clause 12 as to whether proceedings should be held in public. It is our view that this should not be the case. We believe that the Amendment, as set out, will represent an improvement and that the Government were wrong to make this proposal in the Standing Committee in another place. I beg to move.
Baroness VICKERS: I should like to support the noble Lord, Lord Sandys, on this. I think that nurses are particularly vulnerable to persons making accusations against them. Having been on hospital committees for some years and also now being a member of the League of Friends, I realise that somebody in a mental hospital may make an accusation which is quite unjustified but which has to be taken into consideration. Also, there are people who, when they are not well, feel abused in some way or other and accusations may be made by one individual nurse against another. I think it is unfortunate to have proceedings in public because the Press get hold of such a hearing and it is probably magnified unnecessarily and makes the life of nurses, even if they are acquitted, very difficult indeed. I hope the noble Lord may think that it would be very much better to keep these things out of the public eye. He may say that it has been done publicly before. On the other hand, we have not always had the media or the press so anxious; one remembers several recent incidents in Bristol, and I think it would be much better if things were done by the people themselves and then the results could be publicised. If the person is innocent nothing more need be said, but if they are found to be guilty then the findings can be made public. I hope very sincerely that the noble Lord will consider this, because I believe it would be beneficial for the nurses. They are having a very hard and difficult time at the moment and I do not think we want to add to their difficulties by having this in the Bill.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: The Amendment would remove the requirement that proceedings for a person's removal from the register should be held in public except in such cases as the council's disciplinary rules may specify. That requirement, if I may remind the noble Baroness, was originally written into the Bill at Report stage in another place in response to an

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earlier Opposition Amendment. The noble Baroness, Lady Young, referred to this provision in the debate on Second Reading and suggested that disciplinary proceedings for members of other professions were not held in public. That suggestion is not correct in relation to the medical profession. Rules now made under the Medical Act 1956, as amended, require proceedings to be held in public except in so far as the rules provide—more or less the same words as in Clause 12. Where a particular delicate case was to come before the Central Council's disciplinary committee, there is no reason at all why it should not be heard in camera if the rules so allowed, and the rules could allow that. The main grounds allowed under the Medical Act rules for the exclusion of the public are where, in the view of the disciplinary committee, persons involved
"… would suffer undue prejudice from a public hearing",
or where
"… the circumstances and nature of a case make a public hearing unnecessary or undesirable".
The same approach could be taken by the Central Council when they come to make their rules. There is no obligation at all on the Central Council for saying that this proviso cannot be put in. They are free to make their own rules and they can adopt the same rules as are made in relation to the Medical Act, as I say. It could be public for those hearings where it is not going to do, shall I say, unnecessary or undesirable harm, and where it is, it could be heard in camera.
The important point is that by removing the requirement for proceedings to be held normally in public, the Amendment would not automatically lead to all proceedings being heard in camera. The Council would still be left to determine what they thought was best. The disciplinary committee of the General Nursing Council for England and Wales (the principal body currently concerned with standards of discipline and conduct in the nursing profession) at present holds its proceedings in public. There is a strong indication that the profession would wish to see public hearings continue, and there is a strong argument, in such cases of professional discipline, for justice not only to be done but to be seen to be done.
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I think the noble Baroness ought to bear in mind that in the last analysis the Central Council can make or adopt rules of conduct, in certain conditions as already appear in the Medical Act, and can decide the kind of thing that must be heard in camera, and other things may be heard in public. I think that from a public relations point of view it would be desirable for that to happen, and that this Amendment should not be pressed.
Lord SANDYS: If my noble friend Lady Vickers agrees, I think it may at this stage be prudent to look at what the noble Lord has said and to make comparisons with the stipulations of the Medical Act 1978. As he rightly says, there is a close comparison and we should like to consider this further. With the leave of the Committee, I would seek to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 12 agreed to.
Clauses 13 to 16 agreed to.
Clause 17 [Attendance by unqualified persons at childbirth]:
On Question, Whether Clause 17 shall stand part of the Bill?
Baroness VICKERS: I should like to ask the noble Lord whether he could explain to me Clause 17(2):
"… a man who is a registered midwife shall not attend a woman in childbirth except in a place approved in writing by or on behalf of the Secretary of State".
I should like to know why this has been put in. I thought now that we had no discrimination and that it had been agreed that men can practise as midwives. It is going to be very difficult to follow this provision. Supposing the woman is in labour and is having her baby and the man is the only person there, how will he get approval in writing from the Secretary of State?
I did not put down an Amendment, but I should like to know the reason for including this. Surely, by now, sufficient men have been trained to be midwives]—I gather that a lot of them are very good at it—and I should not have thought that it was a very practical statement that a male midwife should have to get permission

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in writing. Women do not always have their babies at an exact time. Will a man have to apply months beforehand? Will he have to send a telegram to the Secretary of State? How will this provision be enacted? I should be very grateful if the noble Lord could tell us why it is necessary to have this subsection in the Bill.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: I recollect that some considerable time ago—it could be three years ago—I had to introduce some legislation in respect of the training of male midwives, and I believe that it was restricted to two places as an experiment. Subsequently, there were provisions controlling the use of male midwives and what is in Clause 17(2) is merely a continuation of the existing transitional provisions, which were made some time ago. If the noble Baroness looks at subsection (3)(a) of Clause 17, she will see that there are exceptions in cases of urgent necessity. But, as I say, this is merely continuing the provisional arrangements which were made some time ago, with the consent of the bodies concerned, and until this gets off the ground it is considered advisable to continue those provisional arrangements, bearing in mind that under subsection (3) (a) there are exceptions in cases of urgent necessity.
Baroness VICKERS: I thank the noble Lord for what he has said. Does that mean that a man does not have to get permission, if the case is exceptional? It seems to me that three years is rather a long time, and surely, by now, it must be known how many men are trained and how many are capable of undertaking this work. Perhaps the noble Lord could look at this and at Report stage give me a slightly more definite answer, or write to me stating when we are likely to consider bringing male midwives on to the same basis as women midwives.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: With great respect, this is not really a matter for this Bill. If the noble Baroness wants to know the position of male midwives, and how many there are, that could be answered by putting down a normal oral or written Question.
Clause 17 agreed to.
Clause 18 [Jury service in scotland]:
On Question, Whether Clause 18 shall stand part of the Bill?
Baroness ELLIOT of HARWOOD: I had no idea that midwives serve on juries in Scotland. Do they?
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: I think that the answer must be, Yes.
Lord AUCKLAND: In respect of this rather curious clause, which I must confess I have only just noticed, what is the position of other members of the medical profession, such as physiotherapists, nurses, doctors and so on? Does the noble Lord know whether in Scotland, in England or in Wales there is exemption from jury service? If not, as my noble friend has suggested, perhaps the noble Lord could tell us at the next stage of the Bill why this rather discriminatory provision has been introduced.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: I understand that this clause is needed to replace the provision of the 1951 Midwives (Scotland) Act. Provision for the exemption of midwives in England and Wales was made in Part III of Schedule 1 to the Juries Act 1974 and in Northern Ireland under the Juries (Northern Ireland) Act 1974. Practising midwives are exempt, because they may be called upon to attend their patients at short notice.
Clause 18 agreed to.
Clause 19 [Finances of Council and Boards]:
5.25 p.m.
Lord PONSONBY of SHULBREDE Lord PONSONBY of SHULBREDE moved Amendment No. 16:
Page 12, line 31, at end insert—
("( ) No person undergoing or seeking training, qualification, examination or certification as a nurse, midwife or health visitor shall be charged a fee under the provisions of subsection (1)above.").
The noble Lord said: Clause 19(1) provides for the Central Council and the national boards to charge such fees as they determine in connection with the training, qualification, examination and certification of nurses, midwives and health visitors. At present, as I understand it,

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some nurses pay their own examination and registration fees, while others do not. Midwives and health visitors do not pay these fees. The effect of this clause, therefore, is that some nurses, midwives and health visitors will now, for the first time, be charged fees. The Government will say that they are protected, as the terms and conditions of service negotiated by NALGO and NUPE on the appropriate Whitley Council provide for the employing authority to pay the fees, and they will claim that this is a more effective protection than could be provided by an amendment of the Bill.
Inevitably, some part of those fees will go to the administrative costs of the central bodies. Local government officers feel strongly that such costs should be borne by central government or employing authorities, and not by individual employees. As the Boards are being established in the public interest, so that standards can be maintained, it seems only right that the public and not the employees should pay these fees. Local government officers feel that the protection offered by the Government is insufficient. If they are unable to accept the Amendment as tabled, I wonder whether the Government might consider an Amendment along the lines of a guaranteed reimbursement of fees. I beg to move.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: The Government are by no means certain that this is what the professions, as a whole, want. Behind the Amendment is an essential question of principle; that is, whether or not nurses, midwives and health visitors should as a profession have the right to run their own affairs. The major bodies representing the professions feel strongly that they have that right, and that is a major reason for having the Bill. I suggest that the Amendment is undesirable, because I think that it would, to a very large extent, undermine that principle.
Those who spoke to the Amendment in another place argued that it was wrong for individual members of the profession to be expected to bear the costs of running the new machinery for governing the profession. The purpose of the machinery, it was suggested, was to provide an essential protection for the public against negligence or malpractice by those entitled to practise as nurses. As ultimate responsibility for ensuring that the public
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has that protection rests with the health authorities who employ the nurses, the costs incurred, it was argued, in registering and disciplining the profession and in seeing that high standards of training are set, should be met not by individual employees but by the employing authorities or by the Government directly. That is the point which my noble friend Lord Ponsonby has made.
The flaw in that argument is that it does away with the basis for any claim made by the profession that they should have the right to control their own affairs. My understanding of the situation is that a very large number of nurses, midwives and health visitors—I shall not say that I am talking about the majority, because I just do not know; we often use the word "majority" when we are not entitled to do so—view this as a kind of independence. It is their show; they want to run it, and they are prepared to pay the dues. It is a principle which is accepted by all other professions.
The proper and more effective way to solve the question of whether and to what extent Government should contribute towards the cost of the governance of the profession is through the Whitley Council negotiating machinery. Through the Nurses' and Midwives' Whitley Council, the Government have already agreed that examination fees incurred by nurses in training should be met in full by their employing authorities on the students' behalf. Similarly, under Whitley Council agreements, health authorities pay 50 per cent. of the cost of student and pupil nurses' index fees. These arrangements are part of the terms and conditions of service of the nurses concerned. It is important to note that the fees, although paid for by Government funds, are in fact charged and credited to the individual nurses concerned. The arrangements do not apply to nurses in the private sector who themselves have to meet the full fees.
If there is concern that the provision in Clause 19(1) allows the Council and boards to charge individual fees without check, it is quite unwarranted. The provision empowers the bodies to charge fees only at such levels and in respect of such matters as the Secretary of State approves. The new bodies do not have a blank cheque, even though the Bill does

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not state what fees nurses, midwives and health visitors can expect to pay in the future. The Secretary of State is bound to have very much in mind the possible repercussion of any proposals for drastic increases in fees. The whole question of fees, and who pays what, will be some-think which Ministers will in practice wish to watch with considerable care.
Again I have to ask your Lordships to return to the scope, the function and the purpose of the Bill, which is to provide an organisation for the three groups for their benefit so as to enable them to arrange their training procedures, et cetera. In the circumstances, it does not seem to be unreasonable that the Central Council should have the opportunity to charge a fee. I think I am right in saying that at present one has to pay a registration fee, and I do not envisage that the practice will extend much more widely than that.
Lord PONSONBY of SHULBREDE: I accept a great deal of what my noble friend Lord Wells-Pestell has said. I realise that there is an impasse, but I was hoping that my noble friend might be able to say that one could look at the question of the reimbursement of fees by local authorities. I know that the view is that this question is better dealt with through the Whitley Council machinery than by writing it into the Bill. In view of my noble friend's remarks, inevitably I must withdraw my Amendment, but I shall have to consider whether or not to move a different Amendment on a later occasion.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 19 agreed to.
Clauses 20 and 21 agreed to.
Clause 22 [Central Council rules]:
On Question, Whether Clause 22 shall stand part of the Bill?
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: I think it is necessary to say something about this clause in view of the correspondence that has been received by the Department relating to Clause 22, and in particular subsection (3). The clause is of a technical nature. There is one feature of the clause to which I should like to draw your Lordships' attention, since it represents
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a significant change from the present position—namely, the requirement placed upon the Central Council, when making rules, to consult not only the national boards—that is obvious and almost goes without saying—but also more widely. Consultation is to cover the
"representatives of any group of persons who appear likely to be affected by the proposed rules".
This consultation would extend not just to professional and other associations but to health authorities. which have a very real interest in any proposals that have resource or manpower implications for the National Health Service.
In the past, there has been criticism that the Service has not been involved early enough in any proposals for change in training which could affect the way that the Service is run. The provision in Clause 22(3) should help to remedy the situation. We should certainly expect the Council to consult health authorities when they are contemplating major developments, but there is a further safeguard for health authorities. The Secretary of State must approve the rules before they can come into effect. I can assure your Lordships that it is not the habit of Secretaries of State to approve anything without consultation beforehand, certainly not in cases like the present one where there could be serious resource implications for the National Health Service. Thus, there are two points at which authorities can have an input and make their views known.
It is our belief that this arrangement will lead to a closer relationship and a better understanding between health authorities and the training bodies for nurses, midwives and health visitors, something which in the long run must be in the best interests of the Service, the professions and the patients. As I have said, we have received a certain amount of correspondence relating to this point which I thought I ought to bring to your Lordships' notice.
Baroness ROBSON of KIDDINGTON: I am grateful to the noble Lord for his explanation, because I was going to ask for clarification of this point. Having heard what the noble Lord has just said, I am somewhat reassured. However, it seems to me that the wording "representatives of any group of persons" cannot

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possibly include health authorities. It is not "any group of persons" but a particular body, an authority, that has to be consulted. As I say, I feel slightly reassured by the statement that has just been made, but I still have some reservations as to whether or not health authorities should be specifically included here.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: Perhaps the noble Baroness will allow me to look at this point to see whether we have gone far enough.
Clause 22 agreed to.
Clause 23 agreed to.
Clause 24 [Citation etc.]:
5.39 p.m.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL Lord WELLS-PESTELL moved Amendment No. 17:
Page 16, line 7, after ("Act") insert ("except section 21(2)(which shall come into force on the passing of this Act)").
The noble Lord said: Clause 21(2) provides for persons who are members of either the General Nursing Council for England and Wales, the General Nursing Council for Scotland, or the Northern Ireland Council for Nurses and Midwives to continue in office after the passing of the Act until the relevant commencement order is made bringing into force the rest of the clause and dissolving these bodies. The amendment to the commencement provisions in Clause 24(2),as your Lordships will appreciate, is a necessary consequence—a point overlooked in another place—and it allows Clause 22(2) to come into force automatically on the enactment of the Bill. I beg to move.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 24, as amended, agreed to.
Schedule I agreed to.
Schedule 2 [Constitution et cetera of National Boards]:
5.41 p.m.
Lord SANDYS Lord SANDYS moved Amendment No.18:
Page 19, line 22, leave out ("two years") and insert ("one year").
The noble Lord said: I beg to move this Amendment on behalf of my noble friend Lady Young. In Schedule 2 we are dealing with the electoral scheme under which the Secretary of State has presented to him a situation whereby the boards are properly furnished with members. This is set out of course under Clause 5(1) and the four national boards—three of which, for England, Wales and Scotland have 45 members each and the Northern Ireland Board has only 35 members. As the Bill is drafted all of those have to be presented to the Secretary of State as nominations within two years.
It is our submission that two years is too long a period for this. For instance, if the Bill suggested that it was a period of, shall we say?, three years or more, the natural tendency of any body when originally set up—any major council—would be to say, "We have got plenty of time. Therefore, we shall not, in our initial work, attempt to make these nominations. We shall see how the committee settles down, we shall think about it, and then probably in the last six to nine months of the period to which we are committed"—that is, two years in the case of the Bill—"we shall put forward these nominations". I think the Government ought to give us very concrete evidence whereby the period of two years must be adhered to. We have listened to what the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, has said on Clause 2, under which the functions of the council are dealt with, and of course it is one of their functions to ensure that the scheme is put forward. We believe it is a great pity if the Government extend the period beyond one year to two, and we hope that they will reconsider this matter. I beg to move.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: I say this very kindly; I do not think the noble Lord, Lord Sandys, is being realistic about this. When we consider what is involved, I believe it really is a physical impossibility to achieve in one year everything that is set out in this Bill. First, the creation of four national hoards; each of those boards to have its own midwifery committee, its own finance committee; there is a health visitors joint committee, there is the central committee and there is a finance committee of that; there is a standing committee and, as we have discussed this

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afternoon, there may well be other committees. It is an enormous organisation. This has to be—not planned, because it has been planned—carried into effect. The present bodies have to continue. Once it has more or less taken shape there must be an appreciable hand-over period, and I think it is expecting far too much to expect to achieve that in one year.
Having said that, I should like to make it abundantly clear that the existing provision of two years is a maximum. I do not share the view of the noble Lord that because one sets it at two years people will not move in the matter for some considerable time. From my point of view, there is every reason to suppose that they will because the Secretary of State is personally involved in this, and it is expected—and rightly—that the council will give priority to the preparation of this scheme and will be able to submit a scheme to the Secretary of State in a reasonable period, well within the two-year period.
To insist that the task is completed in one year would cause a lot of difficulties, and it might easily result in an unsatisfactory scheme coming forward for approval. Preparatory work will need to be carried out by chief officers of the new body, and it will not be possible for the necessary staff to be in post and ready for work until some months after the bodies have been established. In arriving at the figure of two years—originally in the Bill and now restored as a result of a Government amendment at the Report stage in another place—I want to stress that advice was sought from the General Nursing Council of England and Wales, the only profession with any experience of preparing an electoral scheme on a large scale. We consulted them and we were advised, although I agree that their electoral scheme is not on so large a scale as will be necessary under the Bill, so that will add some considerable time. Their advice was that it would be unwise to accept a lesser period.
We have taken their advice because we thought it was prudent to do so. They have had experience and that is their advice; that is why I am saying that it ought to be a maximum of two years, but obviously everybody would like to get it out of the way much sooner. I hope that will go some way towards reassuring
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the noble Lord, and, if I may say so, he is quite right to raise this matter. There has been much evidence in the past as to when this should come into effect, and perhaps sometimes we have not paid sufficient attention to it.
Lord SANDYS: The noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, has been very forthcoming in this particular case in advising your Lordships of the discussions which have taken place outside. In view of the fact that he has given us this information, that it was on the advice of the General Nursing Council and the other important considerations which he has stressed, I think it would be for the benefit of the Committee if I were to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Schedule 2 agreed to.
Schedules 3 to 5 agreed to.
Schedule 6 [Adaptations for Northern Ireland and its National Board]:
Lord WELLS-PESTELL Lord WELLS-PESTELL moved Amendment No.19:
Page 25, line 14, leave out ("and 3,") and insert (",3 and 4,").
The noble Lord said: In moving this Amendment, with your Lordships' permission I should like to speak also to Amendment No.21. These Amendments are of a technical nature, but I can take them shortly. Schedule 6 contains the adaptations to the Bill which are necessary to meet the different constitutional position in Northern Ireland. These Amendments are consequential on Amendments introduced elsewhere in the Bill at Report stage in another place on qualifications of auditors. I beg to move.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
5.50 p.m.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL Lord WELLS-PESTELL moved Amendment No.20:
Page 25, line 24, column 1, after ("(5)") insert ("(6)").
The noble Lord said: This is a similar Amendment. There should be a reference in that part of the Schedule to Clause 5(6). Clause 5(6) was added to the Bill at Report stage in another place, but the necessary cross-reference in Schedule 6

557
was omitted. The Amendment I am now moving makes good that omission. I beg to move.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL Lord WELLS-PESTELL moved Amendment No.21:
Page 25, line 45, at end insert—

("Schedule 4,Paragraph 3.

The Secretary of State.

The Department of Commerce for Northern Ireland.

Schedule 4,Paragraph 3.

Section 161(1)(a)of the Companies Act 1948

Section 155(1)(a)of the Companies Act Act (Northern Ireland)1960".).

On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Schedule 6, as amended, agreed to.
Schedule 7 agreed to.
Schedule 8 [Repeals]:
Lord WELLS-PESTELL Lord WELLS-PESTELL moved Amendment No.22:
Page 32, line 14, column 3, at end insert ("Schedules 1 and4.").
The noble Lord said: With your Lordships' permission, in moving Amendment No.22 I should like to speak to Amendment No.23 also. These are technical Amendments. They are repeals which became necessary following the introduction of this legislation, which had been overlooked earlier. I beg to move.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL Lord WELLS-PESTELL moved Amendment No.23:
Page 32, line 41, at end insert—

("1967). 80.

The Criminal Justice Act 1967.

In Schedule 3,Part I, the entries relating to the Midwives Act 1951 and the Midwives (Scotland) Act 1951.").

On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Schedule 8, as amended, agreed to.
House resumed: Bill reported with the Amendments.

SHOPS (SUNDAY TRADING) BILL [H.L.]
5.57 p.m.
Lord PONSONBY of SHULBREDE: My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be read a second time. This Bill was originally to have been introduced into this House by my noble friend Lady Phillips, but, unfortunately—or luckily for those of us in London—she now holds high office as Lord Lieutenant of Greater London, and therefore it was inappropriate for her to introduce the Bill on this occasion, as she did when this matter was last discussed in your Lordships' House some three years ago. Before that, your Lordships may recall that a Bill of a similar character was introduced on two occasions by the noble Lord, Lord Derwent.
These Bills have all derived essentially from the report of the Craythorne Committee in 1964, which was appointed in 1961 by the then Home Secretary, Henry Brooke, to review the law relating to Sunday entertainments, sports, pastimes and trading. Since 1957, when the then Government introduced a Bill amending the 1950 Act in relation to closing hours and found it more controversial than they expected, successive Governments have treated Amendments to the Shops Acts as best left to Private Members' legislation, because of its controversial nature, and the history of subsequent attempts at legislation suggests that the subject has become no less controversial over the years.
Since a Bill to amend the 1950 Act was last under discussion in your Lordships' House various discussions have taken place between different organisations involved, trying to find a mutually acceptable formula for a Bill. Unfortunately, it has been found impossible to reconcile all the various viewpoints. However, I think it fair to say that the current Bill has more organisational support than ever before. That organisational support includes the National tourist authorities, and as chairman of the London Tourist Board I support the view that this Bill would be of benefit to tourism. This additional support has come about not only because of amendments to take account of various viewpoints but also because of changes in trading patterns that have taken place unrelated to the law. For example, the National Federation of Fish Friers for

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many years resisted attempts to change Sunday trading law because friers contended that the restriction on Sunday sales of fish and chips helped them to retain Sunday as their day of rest. However, with the spread of Sunday sales by other traders this has eventually led to Federation policy being reversed so that they are now committed to trying to get for fried fish and chip shops the same freedom to sell fish and chips as is accorded to other traders.
This is not a wildly radical Bill which will bring about vast changes in people's life styles. It is a Bill which is aimed at placing on the Statute Book an Act which is easily understandable and enforceable, one which will remove various anomalies in the present Act and legalise various abuses of the 1950 Act which public opinion appears to have accepted should be allowed. The Bill has been drawn up by the Institute of Shops, Health and Safety Acts Administration, after widespread consultation. The Institute feels a duty to provide an Act which is understood by shopper and shopkeeper alike, is capable of enforcement and, while reflecting the times in which we live, preserves the basic purpose of the 1950 Act. The Institute itself neither advocates nor opposes Sunday trading. One of its main objects is to provide for uniform and proper administration of the Acts as they exist. The Institute has to be impartial but is particularly sensitive to and disturbed at the current abuse and exploitation of the provisions of the Act, particularly those related to Sunday trading, and what is more, is embarrassed by having among its membership those whose employing authorities have either stated publicly or covertly that they will not enforce the Act.
Why is there this confusion about the 1950 Act? The 1950 Shops Act allows the sales of meals and refreshments on Sunday, and this has been interpreted by the courts to mean that a person can buy the ingredients for a whole meal on Sunday. As early as 1939, in the case of London County Council v. Lees it was laid down that the Act did not prohibit the sale of bread, flour, confectionery, such as jam tarts and cream buns, veal and ham pies, as being within the expression "meals and refreshments" to be eaten on that day. A loaf of bread was held
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to be a refreshment. Later, in 1956, Lord Goddard, then Lord Chief Justice, held that a raw kipper could constitute a meal or a refreshment, but packets of tea or matzo flour could not be used for refreshment until they had been treated in some way, and therefore could not be sold as single items.
In 1959 Lord Chief Justice Parker held that a pound packet of sugar could not be sold on a Sunday as a single item, but it could be purchased along with other articles of food when it was part of a "meal or refreshment". Such inconsistencies in the law make it very difficult for shoppers and shopkeepers to understand the law exactly. The particular anomaly to which I referred earlier—how one can legally buy fried fish and chips from any take-away food shop which is not a fried fish and chip shop?—highlights the situation. We also have the situation where a butcher can be open on Sunday to sell poultry, sausages, eggs, pies and game, but he may not sell beef, pork, veal or lamb. However, if one lives in Central London, one will not have much difficulty in buying packaged butcher meat from a delicatessen which is open on a Sunday. That, technically, would be an illegal purchase.
Another anomaly which arises under the Act is, of course, the special privilege granted to those of Jewish faith under Section 53 which also applies to the Seventh Day Adventists, which allows shops which are closed on a Saturday to open on a Sunday. However, despite that situation the shoppers and the shopkeepers do not have much to fear if they make or buy illegal purchases, because local authorities appear in some cases to have given up trying to enforce the Act. For example, on 10th July last year Mr. Stillwell, the town clerk and chief executive of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea wrote to a Mr. David Sandler in the following terms:
"Local authorities throughout the country have for some time been expressing their concern over the Shops Act 1950, which require action to be taken against shopkeepers who, although nowadays meeting a wide and increasing public demand in circumstances of changing social behaviour, nevertheless are operating outside the permitted hours. This is a dilemma which local authorities have not yet resolved, and the problem has therefore been brought to the attention of their representative body, the Association of Metropolitan Authorities, requesting representations to the Home Office with a view

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to amending legislation being introduced, which will allow a shopping service to the general public commensurate with the present demand.
In view of the special circumstances, including the widespread disregard of the relevant sections of the Shops Act, this Council have decided that, pending the outcome of their representations, it would be inappropriate to take action on specific contraventions brought to their notice in this Borough".
So, the Act is not enforced. On 31st October the Association of Metropolitan Authorities' General Services Committee decided to support the Bill. While the committee of the AMA considered that the Bill did not meet many of the points which had been raised by different member authorities, the Committee accepted that the Bill would at least remove the anomalies in the present legislation and facilitate the enforcement role of authorities. The Association of District Councils has also fully supported the aims and objects of the Bill.
I think that we should all be very concerned that there is an Act of Parliament on the Statute Book which is not being enforced. Either local authorities should be made to enforce it or it should be amended. I have already shown that enforcement is very difficult because of the terms of the Act. It should, however, be added that changing public attitudes to shopping on a Sunday does not encourage enforcement, particularly when unreasonably low fines tend to be imposed by magistrates for such breaches of the Act as there are.
The current Act does not apply to Scotland, as it was held at the time of the passing of the Act that it was unnecessary for an Act to be put on the Statute Book for Scotland in view of the influence of the kirk in stopping Sunday trading. Notwithstanding that, a situation has arisen where departmental stores in Scotland have opened on the three Sundays before Christmas to sell ranges of goods which they would be prohibited from selling if they were open in England. There has also been the establishment of Sunday markets in Scotland by market operators from this side of the Border, due solely to the fact that the Sunday trading provisions of the Shops Act do not apply to Scotland.
Faced with that situation one must consider whether it would be right to amend the existing Acts in line with current
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public needs or to scrap them altogether. Certainly any proposal for a free-for-all would meet with overwhelming opposition. The Bill seeks to liberalise Sunday trading fully in respect of food and drink and medical, surgical and personal toilet requisites. It does not liberalise trade in such categories of goods as furniture, carpets, domestic appliances and clothing.
Only last week the National Consumer Council published a survey showing that public opinion had dramatically changed with regard to Sunday opening. A Home Office survey in 1970 showed that there was little support for the Sunday opening of shops. The National Consumer Council research was concentrated on what use shoppers would make of Sunday opening. The National Consumer Council also co-operated in a broadly similar piece of research carried out by Woman magazine. The respondents to the Woman survey were, not unnaturally, nearly all women. They also tended to be younger, better-off and more likely to live in the South-East than the random sample researched by National Opinion Polls. However, since women are more likely to be mainly responsible for household shopping than men, their answers may be more indicative of shoppers' attitudes than the national random sample.
In the National Consumer Council survey the percentage in favour of longer shopping hours in general was 33 per cent.—very much the same as in the earlier Home Office research. Interestingly enough, the Woman samples were much more strongly in favour: 65 per cent. of respondents wanted longer shopping hours. The NCC survey showed a marked difference in the general response by age: 52 per cent. of the under-25 age group were in favour of longer shopping hours, about 42 per cent. of the 25 to 39 age group. Not unnaturally, people who were working and people who had children were more likely to want longer shopping hours than those who were not working or who were without children.
The most important finding of the NCC research was that the percentage of people wanting to take advantage of Sunday opening was now substantial. The results from the survey showed that 21 per cent. of people would use food shops if they were open on Sunday. The Woman survey reported 43 per cent. As regards

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chemist shops, the figures were 22 per cent. and 37 per cent. All the other categories of shops had percentage answer figures that were about half of those figures. The National Consumer Council believes that that shows that there is a substantial demand from consumers for shopping on Sundays, particularly for food and chemists' goods.
It is interesting to note that 46 per cent. of those in favour of longer shopping hours saw the main advantage as being "Giving working people more choice", while 45 per cent. of those against thought that people should be able to shop in the hours provided. That ties in closely with the fact that those who are working are those who are most in favour, and the people who are not are those who are most against.
One question inevitably raised is the likely effect on prices if more shops were open on Sunday. That is of course a matter of controversy. Some retailers suggest that prices are bound to go up because of the extra expense of staying open on Sunday with no increase in total overall sales. Other retailers suggest that spreading the shops' fixed costs—such as, premises, rates and so on—over longer opening hours will be more economical and that total sales will go up and prices will come down.
I know that these are matters which are of great concern to my noble friend Lord Allen of Fallowfield. I am glad to see that he is to speak later in the debate. I know that he holds the view—and I have heard him use the argument on many occasions—that any extension in trading hours will inevitably lead to higher costs. In a sense that is true. Those of us who patronise late-night or Sunday-opening food shops in London know well that we have to pay more for our staple items of food there; and we are prepared to pay for that convenience, while doing the bulk of our food shopping during normal working hours.
Having been closely associated with the work of the Shopworkers' union for many years, I shall have much sympathy with and understanding of many of the things that I know will be said later in the debate by my noble friend Lord Allen. However, my view is that the union's opposition to this Bill is based on a false
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proposition; that is, that the effect of the Bill will be to make seven-day trading the norm. I do not believe for one minute that that will happen. I believe that the multiples will keep to their present trading hours, partly because the Bill would prevent them from selling non-food items on a Sunday and partly because, to keep their competitive edge, they would not open on a Sunday. I am very pleased to see that my noble friend Lord Sainsbury is also to speak; no doubt we may hear from him on this aspect of the matter as well. However, I believe that the Bill would lead to a spread of the small, higher-price convenience food shops, such as we know in central London at the present time.
In a statement circulated to various of your Lordships by the union, the union states that attitudes within the union,
"range from an uncompromising objection to the whole idea of commercial activity of any kind being permitted on a Sunday, to a belief that whilst modern conditions make some modification inevitable, these should be confined to demands of necessity and that the State should take appropriate measures directed to ensuring that Sunday does not, in effect, become just another trading day".
It is because of this that the Bill is here to ensure that Sunday does not just become another trading day. It is for that reason that much of what the union says about the working conditions of shop workers is unlikely to apply. Shopkeepers will not open for long hours on a Sunday at a loss. It is interesting to note that in Scotland, where the present provisions do not apply, I am told there is no evidence of higher prices.
The National Chamber of Trade has taken very much the same view as the union, but acknowledges the need for some change, particularly in relation to the sections in the existing Act relating to holiday resorts and fish and chip shops, and also for some changes relating to exhibition centres. Recently we discussed the West Midlands Bill which contains a clause to take the Birmingham Exhibition Centre out of the provisions of the Shops Act 1950. This is something which we shall have to examine further, because I have received representations from other exhibition centres saying that if these special privileges can apply to Birmingham, they should also apply to other exhibition centres.

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I should now like to turn to the terms of the Bill. The Explanatory Memorandum states:
"Clause 1 substitutes for Schedule 5 of the Shops Act 1950 a new Schedule listing the transactions for which all shops may be open on Sundays. The main change here is that the new list includes the sale of all kinds of food, including butchers' meat, for consumption on or off the premises.
"Clause 2 enables any local authority, by order, to allow shops within their area to be open for the sale on Sunday of the articles listed in Schedule 2 to the Bill".
Those articles are intended to be articles with a recreational purpose.
"This replaces Section 51 of the Shops Act 1950 which gave similar powers in respect of districts frequented as seasonal holiday resorts but which only applied to a maximum of 18 Sundays in any one year".
The reason it is suggested that this amendment should be made and the powers should be universally held is that it has become increasingly difficult to draw a
"distinction between a 'holiday resort' and other towns. Visitors are found on Sundays not only in the traditional holiday resorts but in many other tourist centres throughout the country".
As your Lordships were reminded in the debate which we had on tourism last year, the Shops Act 1950,
"is seriously hampering the development of tourism in inland areas. While … any inland area can obtain a designation as being a resort and therefore be entitled to open on 18 Sundays a year, this is unsatisfactory since, from a retailing point of view, consistent opening all the year round is necessary".
"The inland areas of England do not have the heavily seasonal pattern of visitors which is characteristic of the seaside resorts.—[Official Report, 25/1/78; col. 420.]
In the circular to which I referred earlier from the Shopworkers' union, the union states that the orders under this clause are at the discretion of the local authority. That is not so. The local authority may not and will not be able to make these orders without a direct request from the shopkeepers in a given area. If they agree, then the local authority must make the order whether it likes it or not. It is entirely up to the majority of traders involved. The Explanatory Memorandum continues:
"Clause 3 extends the existing arrangements for compensatory time off for shop assistants and certain catering workers employed on Sundays to all persons employed about the business of a shop on Sundays whether or not the shop is open for the serving of customers".
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At present the Shops Act 1950 protects only those shop assistants employed on a Sunday in a shop which is open for the serving of customers. Shop assistants employed on stocktaking, window dressing and so on in a shop which is not open for the serving of customers under the present Act are not protected. The Bill will protect all shop assistants employed on a Sunday about the premises of a shop, whether or not the shop is open for business. This clause also substantially increases the penalties for contravention of the Act. Then,
"Clause 4 amends the Shops (Airports) Act 1962 so as to permit shops to open on Sundays at airports in England and Wales as designated by the Department of Trade".
We believe that this will help the tourist trade.
"Clause 5 provides for minor and consequential amendments to the Shops Act 1950 and for the repeals listed in Schedule3".
Finally, I should like to speak from the point of view of the tourist trade. We find that there is increasing competition from many other countries striving to encourage tourists to visit their territories. Therefore, it is most important, both for the British residents and for overseas visitors, that facilities available here should compare not unfavourably with those outside Britain. The present Sunday trading law can be annoying and irritating, both for shopkeepers and for their potential customers.
Although simplifications would be largely to the benefit of British residents, who make up the bulk of the visitors to places or centres of interest, they would also be to the benefit of overseas visitors. The relaxations enabling shopkeepers, if they wish, to provide an improved service on Sundays could help a growth in the visitor trade which would enable us to have more people profitably employed in hotels, restaurants, shops, places of interest and so on. I hope that I have managed to outline some of the pitfalls and problems which the present Shops Act faces, and hope that your Lordships will give the Bill a Second Reading. My Lords, I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede.)
6.20 p.m.
Lord LYELL: My Lords, I am sure the whole House will be extremely grateful to

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the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, first of all, for bringing forward this Bill and, secondly, for the clear and concise way in which he has outlined its provisions and has gone into the details and the effects of the provisions of the Bill. The House will, I am sure, look forward to the maiden speech of my noble friend Lord Norrie. For my part I know that he has no small knowledge of the Bill's main provisions as they affect various sectors of trade which might be, and indeed are, carried out on Sunday.
From these Benches my comments would be brief. First, because there is a lengthy and expert list of speakers, and, secondly, since this appears to be fairly familiar ground for debates in your Lordships' House on this particular subject. I am reminded of a similar provision that was brought forward in your Lordships' House in 1936. I think there are various relevant items in the particular debates there. The noble Marquess of Dufferin and Ava introduced a Bill designed with the same objectives as the one before us today. Throughout its passage in your Lordships' House legal anomalies were produced. I regret to say that most of the anomalies which were produced then are still with us today 42 years later.
In those days problems arose over what was or what was not fresh produce, or what was food. The hoary question of tinned goods alongside similar fresh goods caused some dispute. But there was one valuable comment thrown up during the debate in 1936 and it was, as I understand, de minimis non curat lex. I understand this to mean that the law should not concern itself unnecessarily with trivia, but a Bill such as we have in front of us today is, I am afraid, very much concerned with trivia.
The noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, has explained most of the detail very clearly. I believe though that the trivia can have a serious bearing on the lives of thousands of people who are employed in shops and the distributive trades. Some of the trivia and the anomalies have been covered in various communications and one from one of the bodies mentioned by the noble Lord, the Association of District Councils. I think that they mentioned the case of Newberry v. Cohens (Smoked
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Salmon)Ltd.,1956. During the course of that case the late Lord Goddard, who was then the Chief Justice, Pointed out that the Shops Act 1950, and its Schedules, was to a large extent unworkable. He continued:
"It is not fair for the shopkeepers, it is not fair to the inspectors who have to do their best to carry out the Act, and it is not altogether fair to the magistrates who have to try to interpret the law".
Further, there was the case of Binns v. Wardale in 1946. In this Mr. Justice Humphreys said that he was very much averse to the notion that any person should be convicted in this country—and this of course was England and Wales—on the terms of an Act of Parliament which was obscure and which even lawyers could not construe clearly. From my studies of the 1936 debate in your Lordships' House this question of Sunday trading went right back to 1677, so it has been with us for 300 odd years, and I see that the anomalies are perenially with us.
There were further anomalies that came up in the debate of 1936. One concerned a toothbrush which apparently was not an item to be sold on a Sunday in a chemist's shop since it was not a medical nor a surgical appliance and was not medicine. Further, a trader could not sell a ball alone; he had to sell a ball with a raquet or bat, or some means of propelling the ball. In 1936 apparently any trader who chose to sell one lone ball was liable to a fine of £5—a considerable sum in those days.
The debate in 1936 went further and there was a question as to what was food, what was fresh, and indeed the question of food gave rise to fodder which was given to domestic animals. A debate ensued as to the definition of a horse, whether it covered a donkey and/or a mule. Further, the definition was extended to cover domestic animals right down to dogs, and one noble Lord—indeed I think it was the ancestor of one of my noble friends, Lord Onslow—pointed out a defect in the 1936 measure that dogs were not covered, and could he not give his dog its dinner on a Sunday. The mover of the Motion, the Marquess of Dufferin and Ava, pointed out that cats came into the same category and it was unreasonable that dogs should be treated as a separate item, and possibly a man who took a cat into a restaurant and gave

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it a drop of milk would not expect to sec on his bill something described as "fodder for cat".
These may appear to be mere trivia, but I would suggest that it is the interpretation of these trivia that the Bill, as so clearly spelled out by the noble Lord, seeks to overcome and seeks to interpret in a reasonable way. I believe that the Bill has very serious effects on the lives of thousands of people employed in the distributive trade, but also on thousands of small shopkeepers and traders. It is this category of the trade which I find in general has welcomed the Bill and its aim of legalising what is done on a Sunday—and I regret often in defiance of the law—and where there seems to be a clear and strong desire for such trade to he carried on. It is this particular category of shopkeepers and traders which seems to me to deserve some consideration.
The Association of Metropolitan Authorities and, as I have already spelled out, the Association of District Councils, have both given their strong support to this Bill. This is indeed reasonable since these local authorities have the specialised local knowledge of conditions in their particular areas, and these authorities take the responsibility of enforcing the law as it affects Sunday trading, and the authorities, and their inspectors above all, wish to be realistic in what can and what cannot be tolerated in the 1970s, 1980s, and possibly the 1990s.
I know that many butchers, both individual and organisations, are unhappy about butchers' meat being included in the provisions of the Bill, and other noble Lords will have detailed knowledge of the meat trade. I do not know whether the noble Lord, Lord Sainsbury, has special knowledge. I suggest that he would. We for our part certainly understand their fears that one small butcher could open on a Sunday and this would lead to general opening of all butchers, or shops, in that particular area, spreading throughout the land, since I would suggest that no one dare miss out on the opportunity for further trade.
It seems that general opening is not necessary, especially since this would entail seven day working, which would raise labour costs as well as causing pressure by employers on their employees
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to work on a Sunday as a matter of course. Problems of this kind are especially clear in the larger chains of supermarkets. But the Bill is one which aims to clarify the law, and I believe that we can all be grateful for that, and the more so the interpretation of the law. So far as meat is concerned, I wonder where the definition of butchers' meat starts or finishes. For example, is a shopkeeper in breach of the law when he cuts some cooked meat for a customer who happens to be collecting his Sunday newspapers, and indeed picks up and buys the meat at the same time from the same counter. We have already heard from the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, about the sale of pies and pastries containing meat. We heard about veal, chicken, and pork, but I believe the sale of associated meat products is also of very relevant concern to the students of the Bill.
In general, Sunday trading is of growing interest to many of your Lordships, but is it reasonable to find the law so unclear and capable of so many differing interpretations? Surely the Bill deserves support since it seeks to bring the interpretation and the meaning of the Shops Act 1950 into line with what the law should mean, and does mean to those of us who need some special service or substance on a particular Sunday. The noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, spoke of abuse and exploitation of the 1950 Act. I believe that these two words "abuse" and "exploitation" spell out his case very clearly, and certainly I could not do better than to thank him for his tremendous efforts with this Bill and to commend it to your Lordships' House.
6.30 p.m.
Earl GREY: My Lords, I look forward with interest to the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Norrie. I believe he is a market gardener and thus well qualified to contribute to this debate. I welcome the Bill. It is as long overdue attempt to rectify a situation in law that in practice is ignored, and I hope the necessary steps will be taken to remedy this.
In spite of the hard work of many Members of your Lordships' House to bring us up to date, there are still many problems for a shopkeeper as to what he is allowed to sell. For example, growing flowers, shrubs and plants are allowed to

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be sold on a Sunday, but not so artificial plants and I do not see the logic of this. Under Schedule 1 we are told that:
"Flowers, plants, shrubs (other than artificial)"
may be sold, and Schedule 2 refers to:
"Articles which may be sold on Sunday pursuant to orders made by local authorities",
and then paragraph 3 mentions:
"Works of art and reproductions of works of art".
I suppose artificial flowers could come into that category, so that aspect must be looked into. Accessories for aircraft, motors or agricultural machinery can be sold, but apparently not the machines themselves. I am at a loss to understand why.
The Crathorne Report on the law of Sunday observance looked at entertainment, sport, pastimes and shopping on Sundays and recommended that local authorities should have complete discretion in deciding how many Sundays in a year shops could open. The recommendations called for an increase from 18 to 26 in the number of Sundays a shop could be open, but that has never been implemented and is still not law. The noble Baroness, Lady Phillips, in 1976 introduced a Sunday Trading Bill in which she referred to the Crathorne Report, urging those recommendations.
I realise that Sunday is a day of great importance to the Christian way of life and that many people wish to preserve its meaning and identity. The Lord's Day Observance Society strongly opposes the Bill in the fear that Sunday will become just another day of the week and that our values will be lost. I do not believe that that would happen any more than at present. Nor do I think that Sunday should be devoted entirely to God, with everything closed. What about public houses that are open seven days a week, offering the same services irrespective of the day? Sunday is the one day of the week when the family is together, and should be enjoyed as such, whether the family goes to church, wishes to visit an open air market, watch or play cricket or take advantage of other sports facilities.
One argument may be that shop workers may be exploited, but that aspect and their protection is covered in
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the Bill. It should be a matter for individual shopkeepers and staff. If staff wish to work on Sundays I see no reason why they should not; neither should they be made to work on that day if they do not wish to do so. Many small family shops use Sunday opening to help them combat the strong competition from the larger supermarkets, and their existence may well depend on opening on this extra day. We in the Liberal Party have always been in support of the smaller business, and we welcome the Bill. I support the argument for Sunday traders to be allowed to sell their normal range of goods without restrictions and would welcome some legislation for free enterprise proposed by a Labour Government.
6.34 p.m.
Lord NORRIE: My Lords, it is with much humility that I rise to speak this evening and I realise that in choosing such a controversial subject for my maiden speech I cannot refer to the difficulties which already affect the horticultural trade, particularly nurseries and garden centres, in respect of which I must declare a personal interest. All I can do is draw your Lordships' attention to a number of key problems which affect or might affect extended Sunday trading. To do this I shall speak briefly about the Shops Act and then suggest what might be a possible chain of events should Sunday trading enlarge or develop into a free-for-all.
Let me deal, then, with the intention of the Shops Act; that is, that Sunday trading should be distinct and different from trading on ordinary days. Even though the majority of the population may not hold strongly expressed religious views, there is still a large body of opinion favouring the traditional English Sunday as a day of rest. The Bill does not seek to abolish restrictions on Sunday trading generally. Nor does it seek to increase those classes of shops which may open. It attempts to allow those businesses presently open to sell the whole range of goods that they would sell on other days. The Bill would help to ensure efficient trading and would safeguard the jobs of those already employed.
When it comes to enforcement, it is the local authorities which are responsible and they have the task of appointing shop inspectors. At present the attitude of

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the authorities varies enormously; some appear to turn a completely blind eye until a complaint is lodged, which is usually done by another trader. Not surprisingly, certain boroughs openly admit that they do not have sufficient manpower to enforce the law. The only effective sanction is an application to a court for a civil injunction. If criminal proceedings are taken a fine will result, but the breach will continue. This is arguably a strong case for legal reform, but whatever views your Lordships hold on Sunday trading, it would seem reasonable to recognise that any law must be capable of enforcement and be in line with present working, leisure and commercial conditions.
There is always a great deal of comment about the anomalies of the present restrictions on Sunday trading. It is inevitable that there will be some conflict of interest when deciding what is or what is not essential or desirable in the interests of the general public, but there is a vast difference between catering for a specific need and a Sunday free-for-all. In Scotland, where the Shops Act does not apply except to barbers and hairdressers, Sunday seems to have retained its own particular character without legal restrictions on trading.
Your Lordships may now consider that the traditional Sunday in England would remain unaltered if legal restrictions were less narrowly defined. With the law as it stands, no one need starve, go without medical supplies or be deprived of newspapers, tobacco or confectionery. Housewives may be irritated by not being able to buy cosmetics, books, greetings cards, some ingredients from food shops or even fish and chips to eat at home. Traders in holiday areas may feel that the 18 Sundays on which certain transactions may take place are not sufficient to cover the entire season. The anomalies inherent in the Shops Act 1950 have been aggravated by time. New recreational activities have developed such as yacht marinas, which have been considered as providing for a sport—namely, sailing—but others have been restricted, like nurseries and garden centres, which offer a weekend service to the family and which can still sell only certain of their goods on a Sunday. Reform would bring the law more up to date, and this the Bill attempts to do.
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Before putting before your Lordships the possible chain of events, should there be a substantial extension of Sunday trading, there are certain questions I would pose. Who will actually benefit if restrictions on Sunday trading are reduced or lifted? Will the advantage to the housewife be outweighed by the disadvantage to the trader and his workforce? Sunday has always been the day of rest and relaxation and, leaving out all religious consideration, might it be that increased Sunday trading may only disrupt further family life for the shopper and retailer alike? Shops can at present open any time after midnight on any weekday and generally speaking can remain open until 8 p.m. with an extension to 9 p.m. on one week night. The permitted trading hours may therefore be as many as 121 out of a total of 168 during the week, including Sundays. Furthermore, is it an accurate assessment that a large number of working housewives find it difficult or impossible to shop in conventional hours?
Your Lordships may feel that this is very much the case, and that the only opportunity the full-time working housewife has for shopping is during her lunch hour. Saturday may often be taken up with household chores which leaves little time to shop with her family. Certainly those who advocate increased Sunday trading do not believe that there are sufficient hours for shopping; that is according to the opinion polls that they have conducted. But they have tended to concentrate on questions such as: "Would you like greater opportunity to shop on Sundays?", and, not unnaturally, many housewives have said, "Yes". But had the question been rephrased to read: "Would you be willing to pay higher prices if more shops were allowed to conduct increased Sunday trading?", it is doubtful whether the answer would have been the same.
The reason for these higher prices could be as follows. To enable the trader to recover the extra costs caused by extended Sunday opening, he might be forced to increase his prices because the average customer tends to have a fixed amount of spending power and this would be spread over seven days, instead of six as at present. The only alternative might be to economise on staff, which would hardly be to the advantage of the customer, and still less

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to the employee. If only one housewife in 10 were to change just part of her shopping to Sunday, it is probable that the vast majority of shops would be compelled to open in order to protect their interests. As a businessman, I know that at least 50 per cent. of all retail operating costs are attributable to labour. Opening on Sundays would require additional staff or permanent overtime payments to existing staff. Employees are unlikely to work for less than double time on Sundays, so the costs in labour alone could be anticipated at an additional 40 per cent. on present costs.
If the same shopkeeper decided to operate six days by closing on a weekday and opening on a Sunday, there is still the additional cost involved in employing staff on that day. No employee will sacrifice a Sunday in exchange for a weekday without adequate compenation. Furthermore, he is protected by Section 22 of the Shops Act 1950, which states that staff working on a Sunday for more than four hours are entitled to a (lay off other than their statutory half-day holiday. In addition, they cannot be employed on more than two other Sundays in the same month.
My Lords, whether or not you believe that there will be substantial consumer demand should Sunday trading be extended, or whether you believe that the forces of competition would impel the majority of shops to open, one thing is quite certain: there would be a great deal of consumer traffic, whether it be for expeditions or for window shopping. Sunday trading would very much follow the pattern of Saturday trading. Increased public transport might be required, car parks might have to be manned, traffic wardens and police might find themselves under pressure in dealing with traffic congestion. Emergencies or failures in the shops of any of the public services—telephone, gas, water, or electricity—would require cover from engineers. Additional security precautions might be necessary to safeguard shop takings where banks are reluctant to provide weekend facilities. Thus, very many people who normally enjoy a relaxed Sunday would be required to work. Let us also not forget those who live near the main shopping areas, who would be denied the peaceful enjoyment of their domestic
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environment on what is now a day comparatively free of traffic.
Not even the Continental Sunday, which we hear so much about, provides a solution to the problem. Trading laws within the EEC are by no means uniform. In France, because of regional differences in law, there is often misinterpretation and confusion. In the larger towns you will find that there is very little Sunday trading, and what there is must be done at the expense of another trading day. This is because local authority permission must be sought, and it will depend on the shop being open on only six days in any one week. In Italy shops close on Sundays, and the same rule applies in Germany, except for specific trades in holiday resorts where even these are limited to festival days and 16 Sundays in the year. German law goes one stage further in forcing shops to close at 2 p.m. on Saturday, with the exception of the first Saturday in the month and the four Saturdays preceding Christmas. Any retailer in this country wishing to adopt the Continental Sunday without really being aware of these facts may now feel that it is better to operate under the existing law.
May I summarise the key problems which I believe merit further considration by your Lordships. First, there is the fear that widespread Sunday trading would lead to higher prices, and the fact that if this were so the general public would be resentful of the extra cost which in turn would adversely affect the trader and his workforce. Secondly, there is the grave possibility of family life being disrupted, not only for the Sunday shopper, but also for the trader and the ancillary services, and for those who live in the immediate vicinity of the shopping area. My Lords, I have already spoken far too long and I am grateful for your Lordships' patience. May I thank the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede, for giving me this opportunity to speak and assure him that I am looking forward to the Committee stage of the Bill, when I hope I may be permitted to speak quite openly on behalf of my trade.
6.47 p.m.
Lord ALLEN of FALLOWFIELD: My Lords, at the outset of my speech I wish to express my personal thanks and

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those of your Lordships' House to the noble Lord, Lord Norrie, for his maiden speech, the contents of which I personally thoroughly agree with. Whether one agrees or disagrees with it, I am quite sure that the House will accept that it was a speech of substance, and one looks forward to future contributions of that kind on other subject matter. I hope that in rising at this stage in the debate I shall be able to make myself audible because I am just recovering from bronchitis and a relaxed throat.
I rise to register my total opposition to the Bill. That will not be any surprise—or it should not be—to my noble friend Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede. Before I explain my grounds for opposition I am obliged, by way of some introductory comments, to put the issues involved in their true perspective and to shed some light on other matters of concern to myself and to those on whose behalf I speak. First, I must declare an interest. For the past 16 years—17 years by next month—I have been privileged to occupy the post of general secretary of the Union of Shop, Distributive, and Allied Workers, a union whose membership of close on half a million men and women will be principally affected by the provisions of the Bill if it is accepted. Secondly—and I mean this most sincerely—I must confess to considerable surprise (astonishment is perhaps a more fitting term) that the Bill is introduced by my noble friend Lord Ponsonby, whom I have known for a long number of years. Indeed, he is a member of the union that I represent, and until recent years was a member of the union's parliamentary panel—that was as recently as 1976. With this background I am sure that he will not mind my reminding him, in the event of his having forgotten within the last few years, that the provisions of the Bill which he is asking the House to accept are totally alien to his, and my, union's policy.
Moreover, if I can ask him to cast his mind back a few years—only as far back as 1976—he will recall attending the annual conference of the Union of Shop Distributive and Allied Workers in an official capacity as a member of the union's parliamentary panel. If he reflects deeply about this occasion—or, better still, consults the record of proceedings of that conference—he will readily acknowledge that resolution No. 68 on that
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agenda, which reaffirmed the union's total opposition to Sunday trading, was adopted without opposition. I was in attendance at that conference but have no recollection whatsoever, nor do the proceedings show, that my noble friend Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Mr. Ponsonby as he was then) opposed the union's policy on Sunday trading. Some of my friends are saying that the conversion of my noble friend Lord Ponsonby within most recent years makes the conversion of St. Paul on his journey to Damascus pale into insignificance. In the setting I have just described, the terms "surprise" and "astonishment" do not appear unfair or inappropriate.
My Lords, I turn now to the Bill itself. Clearly, it is a revised version of two earlier Bills which were introduced in this House on this subject-matter in 1968 and 1970 by Lord Derwent. Both Bills failed. I hope your Lordships will accept that this Bill is deserving of the same fate. It will be noted that Clause 1 amends Section 47 of the Shops Act 1950, and substitutes for the current Schedule 5 to the Act a new Schedule listing the transactions for which all food shops may be open on a Sunday. The main and most important change is that the new list would permit all food shops to open on a Sunday for the sale of food. Presumably, meat and butchers' shops would be classified as food shops, and their transactions would also be permitted on a Sunday. We hear a great deal from my noble friend and others about the great value of having a butcher's shop open on a Sunday, and all our large supermarkets and food stores—large, medium and small.
What a great incentive that would be for those who visit us from across the water, to come and see our shops open on a Sunday! Whereas, as has already been said by my noble friend Lord Norrie, it is a total misunderstanding for anyone to believe that the kind of Sunday we want to see here is the Sunday that we see on the Continent. Those of us who know anything at all about retailing know quite well that in France, in Italy and in Germany the shops are not, with, as is the case here, one or two minor exceptions, open on a Sunday. The extension of Sunday trading as envisaged in this Bill, beyond that currently permitted under the present legislation, inevitably raises issues

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of a special and diverse character which do not arise when dealing with the question of weekday shopping hours.
There is a growing fear among those who work in retail distribution—and may I say that they are not an irresponsible section of the British community; they are a balanced and responsible cross-section of the working populace and a section of the working populace that has served the British consumer well and consistently, with very little exception by way of break for one reason or another—that those who from time to time attempt to meddle or tinker with shops legislation do so with little, if any, practical knowledge or understanding of the retail trade.
I ask your Lordships to examine seriously and in depth all the issues that emerge from a consideration of this Bill. They range from an uncompromising objection to the whole idea of commercial activity of any kind being permitted on a Sunday to a belief that, while modern conditions make some modifications inevitable—and I am not arguing that there is not a case for some modifications, although the method put forward by my noble friend seemed to me to compound all the difficulties that he mentioned rather than to deal with them—if there is need for a change it should be confined to demands of proven necessity, and the State should take appropriate measures directed to ensuring that Sunday does not, in effect, become just another trading day.
Another widely-held objection to the Schedules to this Bill is their failure to recognise that there are deep and profound social objections which, if the provisions contained in this Bill were accepted, would all have an adverse effect on those who would be expected to staff the shops, and their families. If this is the issue that we are going to face tomorrow, so to speak, then I submit that the family Sunday in the United Kingdom as we know it now will be destroyed. The vast majority of those who work in most other occupations have both Saturday and Sunday for family and social activities. This is not the case in the retail trade. Saturday as a day of leisure is ruled out. For the shop worker, it is part of his or her working week. Nor is there any special payment or recompense for the disadvantages of Saturday working. The
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employee has a weekly day off on some other day of the week, with the exception of a very small minority of cases where Saturday half-day closing appertains or the day off happens to be rostered. Consequently, Sunday is the one day of the week which offers the opportunity of a common rest day with the family. The man or woman whose family is home at the weekend but who would be required to work on both Saturday and Sunday would be at a considerable disadvantage. Young persons, of which the distributive trades take the greater proportion as school-leavers—and badly paid they are, too—would bitterly resent having to work on Sundays as well as Saturdays.
My Lords, it is my view, based on a long number of years' experience in dealing with the retail trade, that young people today will not put up with it if you expect them to work on Saturday and Sunday. That view, I feel confident, is shared by many established employers in the trade. I deliberately use the term "established"; I am not thinking of the get-rich-quick overnight operators or the whizz kids who very often do irreparable harm—yes, to our tourists—in the name of the so-called retail trade. And what about the social implications for married women in employment? They represent a considerable and growing proportion of the labour force in retail distribution. If they are expected to work on Sundays in addition to Saturdays they would be faced with considerable problems. Over 70 per cent. of the labour force in distribution are women. A high proportion of these are married women with families and domestic responsibilities. In cases such as that the social disadvantages would be most acute.
Anyone who knows anything at all about the practical problems in the retail trade will know that staffing difficulties are already most acute. Sunday opening would make matters in this respect worse with a serious effect upon efficiency and service to the consumer. When I hear those who support this Bill saying: "If they don't want to work on Sundays, they can please themselves, although the shops will be open"—then I submit to your Lordships that that reveals a total and abysmal ignorance of how the retail trade must operate in the society in which we live at the present time. I want to say

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that Sunday opening would meet with the strongest opposition from those people at present employed in retail distribution. I have no doubt in my own mind that it would result in many of them leaving the retail trade rather than put up with Sunday working in addition to their present Saturday working.
My Lords, as far as one has been able to ascertain through close association with members of my association and others, and with employers who are in close and constant touch with shoppers, and through inquiries that they have made, there is no evidence of a genuine or widespread demand on the part of the majority of the shopping public for extended shopping facilities on Sundays beyond those already permitted under the current legislation. If you ask people: "Would you like to see the shops open?"—then, of course, you get the answer, "Yes". Some of them find it pleasing to have a look at shops because they have nothing else to do with their time. But if you put the question in another way and ask: "Would you, as a housewife, be prepared to pay more for the production of these goods and the distribution of those goods over the counter because of the shop having to open in the winter, because of heating, electric light and overtime?"—then I think you will get a different answer. My noble friend Lord Ponsonby knows that as well as I do.
My Lords, I think that one is entitled to ask whether the lobby wanting to alter the law of Sunday trading really have the consumers' interest at heart as they claim to have, or whether their motives are pecuniary and commercial. Shop workers are impolite enough to hold the latter view. I take the view that apart from the religious objection—which I sincerely respect—to the provisions of the Bill, together with some of the social objections which I have touched upon earlier, a fundamental and most important consideration now raises its head: namely, the economic factor involved in an exercise of this kind. The retail trade is a highly competitive business. All the experience of the past proves conclusively and beyond any shadow of doubt that increased shopping hours, particularly the provisions of the Bill to extend from six-day trading to seven-day trading, will not increase turnover, will result in high operating costs and will require the
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involvement of shop workers in unsocial hours of working.
The argument is adduced by some advocates of Sunday trading that it is practicable without imposing longer hours on shop staffs or increasing operating costs. They try to support this argument by vague references to shift working and staggering of hours. This shows a lamentable ignorance of the circumstances of retail trade. If shops are to be kept open around the clock for seven days a week, no over-all greater volume of goods would be sold, for the housewife's purse is not elastic; it is not a bottomless pit. It would simply mean that the same volume of sales would be spread over a longer period of time with increased labour costs and overheads. Extended trading hours must in the long term mean longer hours over which the staff are deployed, involving regular overtime, increased staff, shift work or all three. I am sure your Lordships will recognise how difficult or impossible this would be when I tell you that over 70 per cent. of shops in the United Kingdom employ less than four persons, including working proprietors and manageresses. This figure serves to illustrate the very high proportion of the retail shops in the country where the application of a shift or rota system would be totally out of the question. It could only become a practical proposition by a substantial increase in the labour force in the distributive sector.
The alternative would be to lengthen the working hours of the shop staff. This would involve regular overtime working. Either way, the higher labour cost involved would be substantial—a cost which I submit could not be covered by an increased volume of turnover and which in the final reckoning would be passed on to the consumer in higher prices. Conversely, shopping extended to seven days a week without higher prices is possible only by unfair exploitation of the labour force in shops. I am sure that there is no one in your Lordships' House who would want to support legislation of any kind that reinforced what in some places at the present time is still undue exploitation. These higher food prices would follow at a time when all responsible people in the community are anxious to see the annual rate of inflation restricted to single figures and would have to be paid for by the housewives, irrespective

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of whether they made their purchases during normal weekday shopping hours—which is still the practice, I am glad to say, of the majority—or on a Sunday, which would be for the minority to whom unlimited shopping hours would appeal or who were desirous of making their purchases on a Sunday. Let there be no doubt—none whatsoever—that increases in costs of retailing and distribution as a result of the provisions contained in the Bill before this House at the present time would fall on the consumer by way of increased prices. At no stage have any of the supporters of the proposed change in the legislation indicated how this important aspect will be dealt with.
Given the emphasis and efforts by the Government directed to trying to control inflation and, where practicable, a reduction in food prices, and their recently-declared intention to continue to do so, is my noble friend—and those who support his Bill—now seriously suggesting that it would be in the national interest to legislate for increased retail prices on the questionable ground of a supposed demand as yet unproven for a seven-day shopping service?
I heard it said—and no doubt this is perhaps the motivation of my noble friend Lord Ponsonby—that it will be good for British tourism. I have before me a pamphlet which is carrying the title Who's Who of British Tourist Boards. I know that my noble friend Lord Ponsonby is the chairman of the London Tourist Board. I also note:
"Britain earned an estimated £2,763 million in foreign exchange from tourism in 1977. Overseas visitors spent £12,179 million within the country and a further £584 million on fares to British air and shipping lines. Total tourist earnings represented an increase of 28 per cent. over 1976. There were an estimated 11,500,000 overseas visitors to Britain in 1977, an increase of 14 per cent. on 1976. The British Tourist Authority estimates that a similar number of overseas visitors came to Britain in 1978".
My Lords, I put it to my noble friend Lord Ponsonby and those who, I believe mistakenly, want to follow his Bill, that there is no evidence here—even if British tourists have no attraction—that people are staying away from Britain because food shops are not open on a Sunday, because it is not possible to buy a lamb or a pork chop on a Sunday. All the evidence is that the attraction to come to Britian is there
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notwithstanding the fact that food shops and butchers' shops are closed on a Sunday. I believe it is a very commendable performance by the Tourist Board to clock up a record of this kind. I do not believe that the opening of shops will in any way enhance the figures that I have just read out to this House. For that reason, and those reasons that I have advanced previously, I hope that this House will treat this Bill in the same manner as the two previous Bills in 1976 and 1978, which were presented by the noble Lord, Lord Derwent.
7.15 p.m.
Lord MONSON: My Lords, I should like to join the previous speaker in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Norrie, on a most impressive, challenging and powerfully delivered maiden speech. We look forward to hearing from him again soon. I am afraid that I take an entirely different view of this Bill from that just expounded by the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Fallowfield. I warmly support this Bill, not only for its intrinsic merits, which are considerable, but also for what it symbolises.
We have had far too much restrictive legislation over the past 10 years or so, restrictive legislation which necessarily involves providing for fining people, sending them to prison or awarding large sums by way of damages against them, and we have had far too little legislation of a liberalising nature—liberalising in the true rather than the debased modern sense—legislation which removes restrictions and adds to the sum of individual freedom. Into the first category comes legislation on crash helmets, seat belts, race relations laws, sex relations laws, and so on. The aims of such legislation are doubtless laudable but the means provided for attaining these objectives are, perhaps inevitably, coercive and smack of authoritarianism.
Regarding the second, liberalising, category, since the 1967 Sexual Offences Act and the Abortion Act which followed soon afterwards I can think of only one useful but modest Bill to relax the Sunday trading laws in holiday resorts to which the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede, alluded, which was introduced by the noble Baroness, Lady Phillips, in your Lordships' House, plus the Bill recently

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introduced here by the noble Baroness, Lady Wootton of Abinger, to relax certain restrictions upon marriage and re-marriage—but that Bill has many hurdles to surmount before it becomes law.
Quite disgracefully, both major political parties have, when in office, totally ignored the excellent recommendations of the Erroll Committee for the reform of the licensing laws, doubtless for fear of the temperance lobby. Equally disgracefully, many tens of thousands of people had their New Year's Eve ruined 10 weeks ago (with dances cancelled, and so on) because both major parties appear to be terrified of the religious extremists of the Lord's Day Observance Society, tiny minority though they are. Luddite attitudes are also persistent, although those are diminishing. This is why this Bill is so important in a symbolic sense, because apart from anything else it recognises the strong swing in public opinion against such restrictive attitudes.
I need not spend much time in itemising the specific merits of this Bill; its advantages are more or less self-evident. However, apart from conferring greater freedom of choice upon the individual, I believe that this measure would produce a very satisfactory "spin-off", or bonus, from the national point of view. If it becomes law, I suggest that this measure will tend to help very considerably the dispersal of industry away from London and the South-East, where—whatever the law may say—almost anything goes in practice (certainly so far as food shops are concerned) mainly, although not entirely, because of the large number of highly entrepreneurial Asians, Cypriots, Italians and so on who tend to congregate in this part of the country and to run small shops.
I believe that more liberal Sunday trading laws will, albeit in a minor way, help to tempt industry into the development areas, the intermediate areas and small towns or large villages which are trying to attract industrial development in order to help dwindling employment prospects because of the growing mechanisation of agriculture, and so on. Human nature being what it is, industrialists will be reluctant to move to such areas, whatever the tax inducements proffered, unless they can find the amenities that they used to
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find in cities like London. In this way, as in others, this Bill will contribute to the sum of human happiness, and I wish it a swift and successful passage.
7.20 p.m.
Lord SAINSBURY: My Lords, as has already been stated, the Bill before your Lordships' House this evening is a revised edition of the one that was considered at the end of 1970 and the beginning of 1971. I spoke against the Bill at its Second Reading on 10th December 1970, and on re-reading what I said then I find my views unchanged: in fact I was tempted to repeat the speech I made then, being sure that no noble Lord would remember what I said on that occasion. I should like to make it clear, as I did eight years ago, that I am speaking in a personal capacity and that my views do not necessarily reflect those of any trade association or of the firm with which my name is associated.
Let me say at the outset that the present regulations relating to Sunday trading are unsatisfactory, complicated, full of anomalies and draw arbitrary distinctions between food that can and cannot be legally sold. In addition, the present regulations are difficult, if not impossible, to enforce. Therefore, my Lords, you may ask why, set against these considerations, I oppose the Bill before your Lordships' House. I do so primarily on humanitarian grounds and, secondly, on economic grounds. The noble Lord, Lord Derwent, when introducing the Bill at Second Reading on 10th December 1970, said this at column 1095:
"I do not believe that this Bill will lead to any increase of Sunday trade in so far as shops that are not now open on Sunday will, as a result of the Bill, open".
I did not agree with that statement then and I do not agree with it now, if the same argument is used about the present revised version which we are discussing today. I think it may lead in the course of time to a steady increase in Sunday opening by food shops and supermarkets because of the fear of the retailer that some of his trade will be taken by his competitors opening on Sundays. With my knowledge of the retail trade, I feel that, despite possible difficulties to obtaining staff or having to pay a higher rate of wages, we may in time arrive at a situation in which the majority of food shops will

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be open for trading on Sunday, instead of, as is the case now, Sunday opening being the exception to general practice. No matter what staff arrangements are made with regard to shift working, it will have the effect of increasing the number of people in food retailing who work on Sundays. A large proportion of those so engaged are married women, and Sunday is the day on which the family, as my noble friend Lord Allen of Fallowfield has said, can be together, both young and old.
So far as young people are concerned, Saturday working is a handicap in recruitment. If Sunday trading is added, recruitment will become more difficult. When it comes to the small family-owned shop, some may be driven out of business or may have to sacrifice more of their already restricted and hard-earned leisure time. I note that the National Chamber of Trade, which represents a large number of small shopkeepers concerned with all commodities, food and non-food, is very much opposed to the present Bill. Quite apart from religious considerations, I do not believe that the community has the right to expect more shopworkers and more small shop-owners to forego their Sunday rest.
Coming now to economic considerations, the extension of Sunday opening is undesirable. It is bound to put up the cost of distribution because, as American experience has shown, total trade will not be increased but merely spread over a longer period of time, namely, seven days instead of six. This will lead to higher labour costs and to increased prices that inevitably will be paid by the customer on whatever day of the week she shops. As has already been said, the public purse is not elastic. Extending the purchasing period to seven days will not mean that the housewife suddenly has more money to spend, and increased prices are no help in the battle against inflation to which both Government and Opposition parties are committed.
Who wants Sunday trading extended? It is claimed that a majority of British families want Sunday shopping; but I suggest, as the noble Lord, Lord Norrie, did in his excellent maiden speech, that if they were told it would lead to higher prices the answer would be very different.
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The workers, whose views were so powerfully stated by my noble friend Lord Allen of Fallowfield, are vehemently opposed to the extension of Sunday trade. The small shopkeepers are opposed and so are many of the bigger chains, and also the meat trade. In fact the large number of people actually involved in the business of retailing and who understand the economics of that business are opposed.
I am in no way suggesting that our present law is satisfactory, as I have already said; but this Bill goes far beyond tidying up anomalies and would lead, in my opinion, to a very major extension of Sunday trading, resulting in far-reaching social and economic consequences for this country. Therefore, if it goes to a Division, I shall feel obliged to vote against the Bill.
7.29 p.m.
Baroness HORNSBY-SMITH: My Lords, first, may I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, on his courage in introducing this Bill. If I may say so, I do not think I have ever heard a Member being more offensive to another than was the noble Lord, Lord Allen, to his noble friend—and I have been in this House for four and half years, and was in the other place for 20 years. So I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, on pursuing a course which he believes in this day and age to be right.
I speak with two hats: first, I am very proud to be a vice-president of the Association of Metropolitan Authorities, which supports the Bill. I am also a member of the Parliamentary group of the Retail Consortium which, as the noble Lord, Lord Sainsbury, said, when he so vehemently expressed his own views, opposes the Bill. So that my brief comments will be entirely my own. Also, my father was a very small one-man shop-keeper.
Universally and statutorily, if this Bill was applied by Parliament throughout the country I would oppose it. But this Bill is selective, and it recognises the immense diversity between different areas of the country. If St. Albans or other central areas wish to remain closed they will do so, because the demand is not there. That is why I welcome the fact that under this Bill the local authorities, who, as my

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noble friend Lord Lyell has said, know their areas intimately and are on the spot to assess demand and to effect an order where there is a demand by a majority of those with premises which would be affected by the provisions, can make the decision.
I accept and sympathise with the views of the great chains and stores, of which the noble Lord, Lord Sainsbury, is a great pioneer, who oppose on the grounds that it would be costly for them. I also accept the fact that the Bill is firmly opposed by USDAW. This is where local demand and trading requirements should be the criterion, and that is why I support the Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby.
Legislation already exists to help holiday areas, and when the Bill was brought in many years ago it was centred on seaside resorts. Today, tourism is so immensely bigger and has become lucrative business. It has shifted to many inland points of focus. The EEC has produced huge numbers of daily shoppers who take advantage of cheaper prices in the United Kingdom, with no customs and duty-free goods, and, in effect, this has boosted our United Kingdom export sales quite enormously, as is frequently published not only by the Tourist Board but also by Ministers of the Government.
As a one-time Kent Member, I never expected to see the day when a proud cathedral city like Canterbury would become an overseas shoppers' target but so much so, within range of the Channel ports, has this proud city developed, that, quite rightly, the great firms and chains have gone there in the last 10 years in order to get their share of this valuable trade. In season, many of those great chains advertise in the Canterbury and Kent newspapers, begging the locals to shop in comfort from Monday to Thursday, as loads of European shoppers would be flooding in at the weekend. Sometimes, they say that over those three days there will be 50 coaches or 50 ferries coming in with shoppers from France and Belgium; so, too, in both Dover and Folkestone. I also understand, though I have not myself seen them—I have seen the trippers in Kent—that weekend trippers from Scandinavian countries flock into Newcastle.
Like the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, I deplore people making an ass of the law
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and, as he rightly said, many local authorities have given up the unequal struggle. I invite any of your Lordships to go to Oxford Street, Kensington or Victoria on a Sunday and see how they honour the nine o'clock closing, six days a week and one late night. About a year ago, at a purely social function, I ran into four very small local shopkeepers whose premises were in the Victoria area. They harangued me fairly vehemently about the fact that they had either got to break the law or go bust. They pointed out to me not one but dozens of immigrant-owned shops.
They argued, "We employ two staff. It costs £4 in insurance when they come across the threshold, and then we have their wages to pay. We cannot afford six staff. On a crowded Saturday, people will leave the shop and go opposite where six members of the family, of whom only two are registered employees, are working. Any night of the week you can see several children of the family sticking little price labels on all the tins, and then on Sunday they make a killing. We keep the law because if we open seven days a week, if we blatantly advertise in the local paper, or on our plastic bags which customers can buy if they have nothing in which to transport their goods, that we keep open every day of the week from 8 o'clock in the morning till 10.30 at night—and I have seen one shop open at night hundreds of times—then we should be before the "beak" next week. Either insist that the Shops Acts and the Wages Council arrangements are kept, or change the law".
I took up their protest with the local authority and I received a long, detailed and, with great sympathy I say, pained reply from the chief officer. He pointed out to me that it had taken him and his staff, who were dealing with such legislation, four months to get a blatant and excessive offender before the courts. He was then fined £10, but what it had cost the ratepayers in time and money was far greater than that. We all know that shopkeepers are blatantly breaking the laws where there is a demand, and where there is good and lucrative business to be done. So either we enforce the law as it is and do not penalise the law-abiding, or we face the facts of new customs, new and enormously increased and more penetrating tourism, and let each local

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area of shopkeepers choose for themselves where they believe there is a demand, because they are the people who will have to operate this new legislation and open their shops.
Recently I went on a Sunday morning to my local newsagent to get a certain Sunday paper which I do not normally have. The shop was packed to the doors with French tourists, buying like crazy. After waiting 10 minutes, I found that the shop did not have the paper I wanted, so off I went to Victoria Station and then I walked around. I could have purchased food, alcohol, toys, handbags, luggage, tights, dresses, coats and sweaters and, if I had gone North of Hyde Park, a suite of furniture or an exotic oriental carpet and, like the old song, ivories, apes and old tin trays.
I believe that we have to deal with the circumstances as they are today, and where the majority of shopkeepers in a given area think that there is a reasonable demand—and they will not open, unless it is worth their while—then we should leave it to the wisdom and common sense of the duly elected local authorities to make that decision in the interests of their own locality. For that reason I shall support the Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby.
7.39 p.m.
Lord ROBERTSON of OAKRIDGE: My Lords, I should first like to join those who have congratulated the noble Lord, Lord Norrie, on his maiden speech. He had obviously given considerable thought and study to the subject. He was able to draw on his personal experience and, as a result, was able to pose a number of relevant questions for our consideration. One of the chief things I have learned about this subject is what a difficult subject it is. It is only too easy to say what should not be done, but once one tries to find a way forward one finds oneself in a minefield. I think that the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede, deserves great credit for venturing into that minefield. I say this, even though I have reservations about the solution which he has put before your Lordships' House today.
I should like to offer an assessment of the proposed Bill against what I believe to be its effect on the quality of our life,
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and in particular on family life. I hope to do this in the light of what I feel to be Christian teaching. First, however, may I say a few words on the thorny question of anomalies.
Much has been said in this debate, and outside your Lordships' House, about anomalies—and rightly so, for they bring the law into disrepute. However, I believe that when we look at the Bill in Committee, if it goes that far, we shall need to look very closely at the changes proposed by it to see whether such significant changes are indeed necessary and appropriate for dealing with the specific anomalies that there are. Furthermore, that there would still be anomalies if the Bill were to become law can scarcely be open to doubt.
For example, supermarkets would be allowed to sell food on Sundays but not hardware, and there would surely be a grey area in between. Then one can take the case of such a mundane article as a flowerpot. Paragraph 1(d) of Schedule 1 allows the sale on Sundays of flowers, plants and shrubs but not garden equipment. Therefore, I imagine that if you want to buy a flowerpot under the new arrangements you will need to buy a flower to put in it before what you are doing is legal. I say this not in any way to be clever but to foreshadow debates in 10 or 20 years' time in your Lordships' House which base the need for further change on the anomalies in the law that we might or might not be about to pass. On this subject of anomalies, I believe that the proposal in the Crathorne Report—that a shop, if allowed to open on a Sunday, could sell any of its goods—seems possibly to be a more effective way to deal with anomalies.
In assessing the effect of the Bill on the quality of life, I took as my starting point the two main points of Christian teaching. I think it is worth remembering that when our Lord spoke about the Sabbath He set His seal of authority upon it and emphasised that the day of rest was made for our benefit but that of course things should be kept in proportion. The two points, as I see them, are, first, that one day a week should be set apart by society for worship, rest and relaxation and, secondly, that so far as is reasonably possible no employee should be obliged to work on the day of rest.

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In my own life, I find that it is sometimes difficult to put these two points into practice, but if one can apply them to present-day conditions I would draw three main conclusions. First, the law should protect the right of people, so far as is practical, to take part in worship and church fellowship on one day a week. In this respect, the opportunity to go into a service on the way to work or on the way back from work is not necessarily enough, because most churches have their main service and, indeed, their main fellowship in the middle of the morning.
Furthermore, I think it is worth mentioning that we are considering the rights of a sizable number of people. In 1976, the average number of people attending Anglican services each week in England and Wales was 1¼ million. I have had more difficulty in obtaining the figures for other denominations, but I think that, at a conservative estimate, they are about the same again, giving a figure of upward of 2½ million a week. To put this into perspective, the attendances last Saturday at the four FA Cup Ties and 40 League matches were 559,917.
The second conclusion that I draw is that Sunday work should be limited to essential or urgent business, including, of course, the provision of recreational facilities. Otherwise, we should be allowed the chance to rest, or at least to do something different from our normal work. For our own welfare, I feel that we all agree that we want to avoid extending the stress of working life to seven days a week.
My third conclusion is that the day of rest must, so far as possible, be the same one for everybody. It is not enough for people to be given another day in lieu of Sunday. In general, Sunday is the one day which offers the opportunity of a common rest day with one's family and friends. This applies in particular to parents and their children.
The effects of these three conclusions as they would apply to the retail trade have been dealt with by noble Lords who have much more experience than I, but I really feel that we must accept the judgment of the noble Lord, Lord Sainsbury, that, as it stands, the Bill would eventually bring about a major
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extension of Sunday trading. I know that initially the Bill only permits Sunday trading, but can one really doubt that competition would not in due course oblige more shops to open and, therefore, more shopkeepers and more employees to work on Sundays?
The particular ways in which these considerations bear on the retail trade have been very well covered by the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Fallowfield. He emphasised that for many people in the retail trade Saturday was not possible as a day of leisure. He emphasised the problem that 70 per cent. of the distribution trade employees are women. Therefore it is not surprising that there is such opposition to the Bill from those who work in shops and from those who run them and also from a considerable proportion of the major retailing chains. We should think very carefully before we ignore this opposition, or override it.
Finally, in assessing this Bill, I believe that we need to consider carefully the priorities upon which our quality of life is based. The British Sunday, which is part of our heritage, is not perfect, but I feel that we must think twice before making such a substantial inroad into an institution that has worked for our welfare over a long period. Also, I believe that we have to ask ourselves whether or not, if we made the changes to the British Sunday that are proposed, we should be taking a step nearer to a society where expediency and commerce were allowed to take precedence over people and, if I may say so, over our duty to God.
7.50 p.m.
Lord SOPER: My Lords, I should like to add my congratulations to others which have been voiced in the appreciation I felt of the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Norrie; the cogency of his arguments and the dispassionate characteristics of the arguments themselves, and we very much hope that on many future occasions we shall have the privilege of hearing him again. I should like especially to thank him for mistaking me for the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich in the couloir of this Chamber and now that the Bishop has arrived he will notice what a particularly spiritual look he has.
The arguments which have been deployed this afternoon and this evening,

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until the immediately preceding speech, to which I have listened with great approval, of the noble Lord, Lord Robertson of Oakridge, have contained within themselves a reference to the spiritual (or shall we say the religious?) issue that lies behind this particular debate and I will presume to say something about it. We do not regard Sabbatarianism as an expression of the Christian spirit—or we should not. It is of course true that Jesus revered the Sabbath as a practising Jew, but he also said that the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath and if it is necessary to refute the argument that we associate the Sabbath with the Sunday it is only necessary to point to the 15th chapter of the Book of the Acts of the Apostles to realise that converts to Christianity were not involved in the celebration of the Sabbath. The only two things they had to do as Jews were to avoid eating meat which had been dedicated to idols and not to commit fornication; and that is fair enough. But the fact remains that the Sabbatarian spirit has, I think, contaminated a great deal of Christian thinking about this particular issue as to what should and should not be done on Sunday.
I was brought up in that area. I very soon learned that my father's objection to buying a Sunday newspaper should have been an objection to buying a Monday one, and I also remember that during the days of the First World War when we bought no Sunday newspapers my father took the precaution of walking the long way round to church in order to read the placards about the various events that were going forward. That only demonstrates the difficulty—the impossibility—of fulfilling the Sabbath in a modern world and, in any case, the Christian celebrates the Lord's resurrection and not the Jewish background of law and circumstance.
Secondly, I believe there is great danger in the puritanical view of Sunday. The idea was expressed so well by Bertrand Russell: he thought it peculiar that because the Jews were prohibited from working on Saturday the Christians should be prevented from playing on Sunday; and I have to tell you that the best of evidence demonstrates that John Knox did in fact play bowls—a very austere game, I know—on Sunday morning
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before going to church. The idea that people should not enjoy themselves on Sunday but should spend their time in religious exercises is not only in many cases a work of supererogation, but also has been largely relegated in the kind of community in which we live today.
Because I believe that revealed religion fundamentally is built on a fundation of natural religion, I will presume to delay your Lordships by trying to say something about what is the ultimate purpose that lies behind the correct use of Sunday, and in that to endeavour to formulate a conviction which I have that this Bill is pernicious and should not go forward. We cannot ordain in the name of Christianity that everybody should go to church, but I believe we should make it possible for the largest majority of people who wish to spend Sunday in a different way from the rest of the week to be free so to do. We regard this as an element of democratic freedom which is of imperishable worth.
It is incontestable that for various reasons and in various religious cults one day has become different from others. I believe it to be a very important philosophical fact that unless life contains the rhythm of a periodic changeover from the curriculum of everyday life, then life loses a great deal of its savour and indeed may lose a great deal of its significance. And whether it be the Christian Sunday or the Jewish Sabbath, the rhythm of one day in the week which is separable from the others and on which people are encouraged to think of other matters and to pursue other pursuits, and in particular the pursuits of rest and worship—I believe this is not something which is imposed by revealed religion but a discovery which is quite fundamental to the best interests of the human species.
Furthermore, although I find it difficult to accept that the Christian Sunday is still the family coming together—I regret that in many respects over my life it seems to me that that kind of family life has tended to diminish in its significance—yet I believe it is of very great importance. I agree so heartily with the last speaker that it is no good saying, "You can have Wednesday or Thursday as your day of rest". Who knows better than a parson, who has at least been engaged in some kind of trading on Sunday for the last

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50 years, that you cannot compensate in the week for that opportunity which only conies to you at the weekend to share a family life with your family when they, too, are in the spirit and have the opportunity of leisure.
It is against that kind of backcloth that I look at this Bill and I do not like it a bit. In the first instance, I am persuaded that it will make Sunday much more like every other day and will tend to destroy that rhythm to which I have referred. In the second place, I am equally persuaded that a great many people who will claim to be free to do what they want to do on Sunday—to purchase and so forth—will in fact be under the servitude of economic requirements so that instead of being able to enjoy that freedom they will be compelled increasingly to contribute to the freedom of others, which implies a servitude for them. That contradicts a principle which I believe to be sacred, that the maximum number of people should have made available for them the opportunity of spending Sunday as a different day. These seem to me to be basic principles and principles against which this Bill will operate thoroughly unfairly and thoroughly badly.
From what little research I have been able to do I subscribe entirely to the proposition that, once this door is further opened, many people will pass through it and if this proposition should be agreed then there will be an increasing price to be paid for it, not only in terms of money but in terms of social convenience and, worse still, in terms of social benefit. I am equally persuaded that if this particular Bill goes through we shall not destroy the various anomalies which now persist, but that is no reason for putting into the place of one Bill another which may create—and I believe must necessarily create—even more anomalies and in the process will also destroy some of those virtues and some of those capacities for wellbeing which I believe should be enshrined within ally civilised society.
The hour is late and I will not delay any longer to present or to re-present what has been said so cogently by other speakers on the economic and, I think, social defects which are explicit in this Bill. I suppose that, normally speaking, a peroration for a parson might include a hymn. I would prefer a sonnet:
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"The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending we lay waste our powers".
I believe that if this Bill goes through it will further emasculate those spiritual and social powers which are necessary for a truly civilised life. Therefore, I do not wish to see it succeed, and if it is put to the vote I shall vote against it.
7.59 p.m.
Viscount INGLEBY: My Lords, I should like to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Soper, on his excellent speech. I do not always agree with him but I very much share with him what he has been saying tonight. I, too, would also like to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Norrie, on his maiden speech which, if I may say so, was the best that I have been privileged to hear since I took my seat in 1970. I should also like to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Fallowfield, on the very powerful speech which he made and I find myself much in agreement with my noble friend Lord Robertson of Oakridge. I share his view that Sunday is a divinely ordained day, divinely ordained for rest, for worship and to spend with one's family. A day when buying and selling should be kept at a minimum for those things which arc proven necessities, because any extension of this means that some people will have to work on Sundays.
The thing that strikes me most about this Bill, however, is that it is strongly opposed by those people who will be most affected by it, by the people who may have to work on Sundays as a consequence of this Bill. We have heard that there are half a million people who are represented by the union for which Lord Allen has spoken today, and that it is also opposed by the National Chambers of Trade. Those people already have to work on Saturdays, and, understandably, they do not want to work on Sundays, too. Seventy per cent. of them are women and half of those are married; so think what the effect would be on Sunday for them as a day to spend with their families. Lord Allen very clearly made the point that Sunday trading is inflationary, and, of course, the housewife pays the increased prices not only on Sunday but on all other days too.
We have heard that this Bill would hear particularly hardly on small shops and that 70 per cent. of our shops are small

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shops employing four people or less. I believe Sunday trading should be closely controlled in the interests of those who might have to work on Sundays in consequence, and I would just ask your Lordships to think what the effect on us might be if another place passed a Bill that we should work on Sundays.
8.3 p.m.
The Lord Bishop of NORWICH: My Lords, I wonder whether your Lordships will allow me to make my apologies for not being in my place when I should have spoken. My apologies are, first, to the noble Lord moving this Bill for not hearing his speech in support of the Bill; secondly, to Lord Norrie for not being able to hear his maiden speech, which according to the noble Viscount is the best since 1970, so I look forward to Hansard very much; and, thirdly, to your Lordships generally for the fact that the road from Norwich to London is beset with difficulties and takes time. I was not able to drive as fast as I would like to, but well within those limits provided by another place for Bishops, however fast they should drive; so I am here without further trouble.
If I might, therefore, be allowed in a very short truncated way to take part in the debate, I should like to do so, because I have tried to do a little research on what might be called the general Church view. The Church Assembly, the precursor of the General Synod, looked fairly closely at the issues concerning the type of points being made in this Bill by the noble Lord, and, although in the time of the Crathorne Committee's Report it showed some cautious support for some of the suggestions in that report, the resolution of the Synod did say:
"This Assembly is desirous of maintaining Sunday as a day of worship and recreation, and as far as possible Sunday should remain the normal day of rest".
I will not, therefore, weary the House at this late date with some of the further statements, though right reverend Prelates from this Bench spoke in similar terms.
I should only like simply to summarise the two other major points I would like to have mentioned more fully. That is the religious consideration. When I heard the acting Prelate of Norwich, Lord
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Soper—and it shows how ecumenical we are getting when such a distinguished and marvellous Christian orator as Lord Soper should be mistaken for me; it is very nice to know and I am much heartened to think that he was taken for the Bishop of Norwich, but I do not intend to let him have my See if I can help it—speaking about Sabbatarians and puritans I had a terrible feeling that he was describing me, but as he went on I found, No, all was well. I particularly want to underline his point on the broad religious consideration of the rhythm of life. I believe that this Bill does strike, admittedly a fairly small blow but quite a real one, against this rhythm of life.
I believe that the day of rest was a creation ordinance for all mankind and for man and beast, not only a religious ordinance, though it became one, that the rhythm of rest and work, of perhaps furious energy and then complete relaxation, the rhythm of night and day, winter and summer, is part of the beneficent plan of the Creator for all mankind, not only for those of religious outlook. Therefore, the religious consideration is a very real one in relation to this particular Bill. I believe that the Sabbath is a creation ordinance, but I also believe that the Christian Sunday is a continuation of this one day's rest in seven, with the extra privileges of worship and refreshment as well. Therefore, on the broadly religious ground I believe that we should not give ourselves in support of this Bill.
The second point I will summarise is that I think on social grounds we should not, because the impact and the attacks on family life are increasing today. More families are now going to church on Sunday than even five years ago. Family life is becoming more precious just because it is under greater attack. And the simple fact of the Sunday lunch is, I believe, a vitally important social factor in our lives. If the family does not hold together, the nation cannot hold together. The nation is really a lot of families and the family writ small is the nation writ large. As the interesting figures that Lord Allen of Fallowfield has sent to some of us very clearly show that many married women are concerned in the distributive trades, it seems to me that Sunday lunch in all its homely significance is going to be severely attacked by this Bill, and I believe it to be an important social occasion.

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It did strike me, though, as I was thinking about this, that on humanitarian grounds, with tinned goods and foil wrapping and refrigerators, let alone deep freezes, there is less and less need for little shops to be constantly open just to suit the selfish whims of lazy buyers. Why should we pander to impulsive shopping on our national day of rest? So you see, my Lords, I began to be carried away with my speech, and that is the shortest summary I can do. On general Christian grounds, on broad religious grounds and on humanitarian social grounds, I hope that we shall not feel that we should support this Bill.
8.8 p.m.
Lord BOSTON of FAVERSHAM: My Lords, I intervene mainly to offer your Lordships a brief statement of the Government's attitude to the principles underlying the Bill and to mention particular provisions in the Bill to which the House might wish to give special attention. But right at the outset I should like to offer my congratulations, together with those of other noble Lords who have already spoken, to the noble Lord, Lord Norrie, for his excellent maiden speech. He spoke, if I may say so, with great clarity, and he had the courage to speak on a controversial matter, but he did it in an unprovocative way in accordance with the best traditions of your Lordships' House. We are clearly going to hear from him in the future making a most valuable contribution to our proceedings.
I am sure that we would all like also to thank my noble friend Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede for giving the House another opportunity to debate the present state of the law on Sunday trading. Perhaps I could offer to him my apologies for having missed about the first 45 or 60 seconds of his speech, a speech which, I must add, he also delivered in a very clear and indeed in an entertaining way.
There has, I understand, been no Bill of similar scope on this subject before your Lordships' House since that which was introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Derwent, in 1970. The subject is one which, as we have seen, arouses controversy of a non-party political kind and a number of opposing views and interests are involved. Whatever the fate of the Bill it will have served, I think, a very
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useful purpose if it enables us to assess the extent to which opinion may have changed in the intervening years since the subject was last discussed and also the likelihood of any consensus of opinion emerging on this subject.
As my noble friend Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede has explained, the present law on Sunday trading is contained in Part IV of the Shops Act 1950. That was a consolidating Act and it reflects the wording of Statutes going back to 1936, as I think the noble Lord, Lord Lyell, indicated in his speech. Before then, the Sunday opening of shops in England and Wales was nominally regulated by the Sunday Observance Act 1677—another date to which the noble Lord, Lord Lyell, referred—but in practice I think that it was widely disregarded.
Over the years there has been a considerable amount of criticism of the present law and I agree with those noble Lords who have made that point. It has been regarded as out of date, confusing in its effect and difficult to enforce. The Crathorne Committee on the Law on Sunday Observance, which has already been referred to during the debate, and which reported in 1964, reached the conclusion that many of those criticisms were justified. While the Committee recommend that shops generally should still be closed on Sundays, it urged that the law should be clarified and the list of exemptions extended. The Bill seeks to implement certain of the recommendations of the Crathorne Report but, as I shall seek to explain, in some respects it goes rather further.
The Government accept that the present legislation has given rise to anomalies and that there is much to be said for a clearer and more rational system of law controlling Sunday trading. However, past exprience has shown how difficult it is to reach agreement on how best the law should be amended to achieve this aim and, in the absence of such agreement, successive Governments have been unwilling to take any initiative themselves. Like other apsects of the law of Sunday observance, the restrictions on retail trade raise, at least for some of us, issues of conscience which are best left to the judgement of individual Members of both Houses. Accordingly, the attitude of the Government towards the Bill before your

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Lordships tonight is one of neutrality. We shall do nothing to obstruct the progress of the Bill, and we shall follow its progress with great interest, and take note of reactions to it both inside and outside Parliament.
Turning to some of the details of the Bill's provisions, I shall deal first with Clause 1 and Schedule 1, which, I think, contain the most controversial proposals in the Bill. As other noble Lords have pointed out, these provisions have the effect of substituting for the Fifth Schedule to the Act of 1950 a new list of transactions for which shops may be permitted to be open on Sunday. The first transaction on the list, and the one which may perhaps cause most concern among your Lordships, is the sale of food and drink, and of ingredients for the preparation of food and drink. This proposal goes further than the corresponding Crathorne recommendation that shops should be allowed to open on Sunday for the sale of all food and drink for consumption on the premises, but only in special circumstances off the premises.
I would not attempt to deny that it is in the area of food and drink that many of the anomalies complained of have arisen, and I think that most noble Lords will recognise that a need exists for some clarification of the present law. Particular difficulty centres on the question of what constitutes "meals or refreshments" which under the 1950 Act can be sold for consumption on or off the premises. This has certainly been the cause of much litigation, as my noble friend Lord Ponsonby has said. As a matter of fact I must let your Lordship into a secret. I was going to serve up to your Lordships precisely the same tasty dishes as my noble friend Lord Ponsonby has already served up. I must confess that I was completely shattered to find that he did so. However, that being so, as your Lordships have already had one plate of raw kippers I shall be sparing your Lordships a second plate, at least tonight!
The effect of this fairly wide interpretation, to which attention has been drawn, of the term "refreshments" seems to have been that food shops can already sell a high proportion of their stocks without breaking the law.
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Nevertheless I appreciate that some may view with anxiety the complete removal of restrictions on the sale of food and drink on Sunday. They see this as encouraging the widespread opening of retail outlets, particularly supermarkets, without a corresponding increase in trade. This could result in increased overheads and less favourable working conditions for shop-workers. Whether or not those fears are justified is not for me to say; my concern is simply to help, like other noble Lords, to ensure that the House is aware of them.
I shall not delay your Lordships by dealing with all the other transactions listed in Schedule 1, many of which are non-controversial and are the subject of some of the minor recommendations in the Crathorne Report. However, I should join in drawing the attention of the House to the proposed removal of the restrictions on the sale of toilet requisites at chemists' shops. This differs from the recommendation in the Crathorne Report that a dispensing chemist be allowed to sell any goods in his shop on Sunday but only for a two-hour period. It will be for the House to consider which proposal it prefers; the main objection to that in the Bill seems to be that it would perpetuate a situation in which chemists' shops can open on Sunday, but are not permitted to sell the full range of their stock.
In Clause 2 and Schedule 2 the Bill seeks to implement a further recommendation by the Crathorne Committee. That would empower a local authority to make an order specifying any number of Sundays upon which shops situated in its area may be open for the sale of items of the kind which are usually associated with the holiday trade—another aspect of trade which has been mentioned during the debate. This provision will undoubtedly be welcomed by those concerned in the development of tourism in this country. I note that it goes further than the Bill introduced in 1976 by my noble friend Lady Phillips.
As regards the remaining provisions of the Bill, I do not think I need comment on them at this stage. I simply hope that these few observations about the Government's position will be of some help in pinpointing some of the main considerations as we see them.
8.18 p.m.
Lord PONSONBY of SHULBREDE: My Lords, I think that it is right to say at the outset that our debate has certainly proved that this matter is no less controversial than when it was first discussed some years ago. Before I begin to reply to the various points made in the debate, I should like to join with other noble Lords in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Norrie, on a very thoughtful maiden speech. He had obviously given considerable attention to the problems which the Bill faces and I thought that he made a speech which left us all with very useful thoughts as to what we should do about Sunday trading.
I should like briefly to go through the various comments which were made. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Lyell, for his support and for underlining the further trivia which exist. The noble Earl, Lord Grey, mentioned the sale of flowers, but not artificial flowers. The thinking here is that garden centres should be able to sell horticulural products, but not ironmongery, which is properly the purview of the ironmongery trade, for if what can be sold at garden centres were extended in that way there would be cause for concern by the ironmongery trade. Therefore, that was the cut-off point which was suggested.
Having listened to those two reasonably calm speeches from the noble Lords, there was then a blockbusting attack on me by my noble friend Lord Allen of Fallow-field. The interesting thing was that having made his attack, my noble friend then reverted to some of the earlier documentation, to which I had referred, which recommended that some modification was necessary. That, of course, is the whole point of the exercise today: that there is a necessity for modification. However, he did not deal at all with the problems currently raised by the fact that we have an Act on our Statute Book which is quite unenforceable, a fact which has been underlined by a great many of your Lordships this evening, no less than by my noble friend Lord Boston of Faversham in summing up. It seems to me that whatever views there may be about the particular Schedules and clauses of the Bill, your Lordships must face the problem that there should be an amendment to the existing legislation.
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Inevitably, in framing the Bill the Institute has steered a middle course. On the one hand, it has wanted to preserve Sunday as a special day; on the other hand, it has wanted to ensure that there is no free-for-all. That thought underlines the thinking behind the Bill. There is no intention behind the Bill to suggest that Sunday should simply become another trading day. In his speech my noble friend Lord Allen referred to the question of higher prices resulting from seven-day trading, and suggested that if the Bill were passed shops would be opening for longer hours than they do at present. However, I would remind my noble friend that if they wanted to shops could open a great deal earlier than they do at present, but they do not because it is uneconomic for them to do so. I suggest to him that, in fact, widespread further opening will not be an effect of the Bill.
My noble friend also quoted the British Tourist Authority figures, saying—I hope commendingly in a way—that we are doing quite nicely in tourism. Our fear in the tourist industry is that there is increasing competition. When the figures for 1978 are published we shall find that we have not done very much better than we did in 1977; we must be aware of the fact that we are in a competitive market. What I should like to have heard from my noble friend—and which I did not hear—are ways in which present legislation can be tidied up.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Monson, for his support. My noble friend, Lord Sainsbury, was against the Bill, but I was very pleased to hear him admit that the present regulations were unsatisfactory, arbitrary and difficult to enforce. He felt that the Bill went beyond tidying up anomalies. If that is so, these are matters with which we can deal in Committee in order to find some form of legislation which has general support. I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Hornsby-Smith, for her support.
The noble Lord, Lord Robertson of Oakridge, rightly said that I was entering a minefield. It has certainly proved to be the case that the question of Sunday trading is a minefield. Subsequent speakers spoke of the Christian aspect of Sunday. As I have said before—and I would direct this also to the noble Viscount,

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Lord Ingleby, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich and my noble friend, Lord Soper—there is no intention here to stop Sunday being a different day. The intention is to keep Sunday as a different day, as a special day in the week. This is an attempt to ensure that the legislation which is on the Statute Book is understandable by the shopkeeper, the shopper and the shopworker. It is for that reason that the Bill has been introduced. It is bad to have bad law on the Statute Book and we should do all we can to ensure that that bad law is cleared up.
Resolved in the affirmative, and Motion for Second Reading agreed to accordingly: Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

THE M.25 MOTORWAY
8.34 p.m.
Lord BEAUMONT of WHITLEY Lord BEAUMONT of WHITLEY rose to ask Her Majesty's Government whether completion of the M.25 will not (a) defeat the objective of the Government "to reduce our absolute dependence on transport" and (b) prove a major threat to the Green Belt. The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper. In doing so, what I am really doing is asking Her Majesty's Government whether they have really faced up to the problems which are caused by their plans for the London orbital road, particularly as they have been affected by recent developments and by a growing understanding of the problems of the transport programme in this country.
This is a controversial matter, but it is one of the tasks which your Lordships are particularly suited to perform; that is, to try to work out a formula for this problem. I hope that noble Lords will agree to give this Bill a Second Reading so that we can move into the Committee stage and try to sort out a number of the problems and difficulties which have been raised in the debate this evening.
8.26 p.m.
On Question, Whether the Bill shall be now read 2a?
Their Lordships divided: Contents, 22; Not-Contents, 11.

CONTENTS

Auckland, L.

Hornsby-Smith, B.

Paget of Northampton, L.

Beaumont of Whitley, L.

Kirkhill, L.

Pitt of Hampstead, L. [Teller.]

Cathcart, E.

Long, V.

De La Warr, E.

Lyell, L.

Ponsonby of Shulbrede, L. [Teller.]

Evans of Claughton, L.

Masham of Ilton, B.

Gregson, L.

Monson, L.

Rankeillour, L.

Grey, E.

Mottistone, L.

Ritchie-Calder, L.

Harmar-Nicholls, L.

Norrie, L.

Seear, B.

NOT-CONTENTS

Allen of Fallowfield, L. [Teller.]

Hampton, L.

Robertson of Oakridge, L.

Ingleby, V.

Sainsbury, L.

Barrington, v.

Morris of Borth-y-Gest, L.

Soper, L.

Blease, L. [Teller.]

Norwich, Bp.

White, B.

It seems to me that what happened was that once upon a time—and it is now a very long time ago—someone looked at a map and said, "Wouldn't it be commonsense to build an orbital road round London to let the people who have, at the moment, to go through London, go round it? "Whether or not it was commonsense at the time I am far from clear. It may have been merely one of those things which looked as if they were commonsense. After all, for quite a long time all of us, or a great many of us, lived in the belief that if you built more and better roads you would in fact relieve congestion, whereas we are growing more and more to realise that if you build more and better roads all you do is build up traffic and increase the total amount of traffic, and in a few years' time you will have the same congestion on the old road and you will have congestion on the new road as well. That is the kind of conventional wisdom which has now been exploded.
I think that there is still a lot of old-fashioned conventional wisdom about the orbital ring road, and particularly the

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M.25, that ought by now to have been exploded. It seems to me that now, in terms of modern conditions, it is nonsense to build this road, and if we were starting from scratch with a transport policy, and particularly if we had a coherent national transport policy—which I think it is almost universally acknowledged that we do not; the Secretary of State himself said so a couple of years ago, and I do not think that things have moved on very much since then—I suspect that it would not now be gone ahead with.
There are of course still times when the M.25 seems a good thing. In the middle of last summer I went, ironically, from Kent to an ecology meeting in Bath. I was one and a half hours late. By the time I arrived in Bath I was a strong supporter of the M.25. But possibly those things, even for a large number of people, do not outweigh the immense tasks and burdens of building a road like this one.
Equally, there is a problem with the 4 per cent. of heavy goods vehicle movements in London which are through movements. But again I would say that a £500 million motorway is possibly taking a sledgehammer to crack a nut, and that a combination of various other measures—including minor road works, the direction of lorries, much more encouragement on to rail—as suggested by the London Amenity and Transport Association might be a better solution.
We are told that the orbital road will help access to the ports, but I do not think that there is any proper study of the benefits, and certainly no rigorous and detailed one in this field. It is my case that, even adding that to the other benefits, they do not add up to outweighing the harm that will be done. It is quite clear that you should not build a road unless you have a very good reason for doing so. That is the difference between an under-populated and undeveloped country—as ours was, say, 200 years ago when to build a road was almost axiomatically a good thing—and the kind of country we have now.
Roads cost a lot. In this case I mentioned a figure which I think is more or less on the mark: £500 million, give or take a £100 million. They disfigure the countryside, and particularly motorways disfigure the countryside. They encourage
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traffic—and I think this is the main assault that can be made on them. They actually breed traffic by existing. They produce poisonous petrol fumes, and this road would go through several centres where lead in the petrol may have a serious effect on the children and people in the villages and towns concerned. Let us hope that will be solved by the Government getting rid of lead in petrol quickly, and I have some faith that that will be so, but for the present it is not. They use up valuable oil and encourage more and more transport by road at a time when we should be saving that extremely valuable, and increasingly valuable, commodity.
The M.25 will, like every other major road, do all those things, but in addition it will go clean against three wholly praiseworthy items of Government policy. First, it will, to put it mildly, do nothing to stop the dispersal from inner London of businesses and people. When this road was first envisaged that would have been thought to be a good thing, but now that we have an inner city policy which is rightly concerned to build up the centre of cities and to make certain they do not become the impoverished empty places we have seen in America and elsewhere, that particular function of the M.25 can now be seen to be against Government policy and to be a thoroughly bad thing in itself.
Secondly, it will endanger the whole Green Belt policy, instigating heavy pressure to develop wherever there are interchanges and access points; indeed a Minister of the Government has already said as much, but I will come to that shortly. In particular it will damage Green Belt facilities of a highly important recreational kind. For example, it goes along the side of Lullington Park and crashes through St. Andrew's Wood which 30,000 to 40,000 visitors visit each summer. Last Tuesday in another place there was a debate on what the M.25 is doing to Epping Forest. Not very much, but one speaker after another said he deplored intensely what was happening but would not vote against the Bill because we must have an M.25, and a little bit of Epping Forest was, although a price, a comparatively small one to pay. I wonder whether, when one considers Epping Forest and St. Andrew's Wood and all the other places, they do not add up to rather more. If they had not just been talking about a

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little bit of Epping Forest and one particular section of the M.25 but were adding up all the amenities that will be hurt, I wonder what attitude would have been taken and whether various Members of Parliament would not have been tempted to take a rather stronger attitude.
Thirdly, it will generate traffic. I have already said something about the tendency for building roads to do that, but in November 1978 the Parliamentary Under-Secretary in another place said:
"Once the M.25 is built, journeys will become possible which would not be undertaken at present and new patterns of industrial, commercial and social activity may be formed ".—[Official Report, Commons, 2/11/78; col. 354.]
Yes, George Washington, they will! The White Paper Transport Policy, Cmnd. 6836, said:
"For the future, we should aim to reduce our absolute dependence on transport".
Very sound, but we are enabling journeys to become possible which would not be undertaken at present, as was said by the Minister, and that is increasing our absolute dependence on transport. And in so far as we are forming new patterns of industrial, commercial and social activity, as the Minister also said, we are forming them in and around the Green Belt, and I do not believe that is good.
If it is the Government's intention and wish to accelerate and facilitate what will eventually be a large-scale loss of London Green Belt land; if it is their policy to ensure the location of industry and commerce on green field sites and areas of vital recreational importance; if it is their intention further to bleed the inner London area of commercial and economic vitality; if it is their policy to encourage industrial and commercial development remote from rail access and thus to deny to British Rail its appropriate freight share; if it is their policy to increase dependence on private car use; if it is their policy to undermine their own objective—to reduce our absolute dependence on transport—then they can be happy with the building of this orbital road.
If not, they should give consideration at once to the abandonment of all further planning and work on the M.25, so that at last we can have a full and proper analysis of the transport and land use
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requirements of London and the South-East region—not to mention one for the whole country while we are about it—and so that, in order to have that investigation, proposals to further that can be put in hand at the earliest opportunity, before we take this one more irrevocable step of building more motorways which, in the last resort, do nobody any good and do a lot of harm on the way.
8.47 p.m.
Viscount LONG: My Lords, when it comes to building a road, building an extension to a road or building a roundabout, not one of us in our selfish way wants it on our ground but always on somebody else's, and so I am amazed that an arterial road is ever built. I am therefore grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont of Whitley, for allowing us to discuss this important road, the M.25. I am grateful because my road home to Wiltshire is the M.4, and I am obliged to the noble Lord for opening my mind and eyes to the rest of the South-East, the link roads from the M.1 through to the M.4, the M.40 and so on, which I never realised were so vital to manoeuvring our transport in these very sophisticated industrial islands, as they have become. I am therefore grateful to the noble Lord for teaching me so quickly, since last Thursday, what it is all about.
Equally, I wish to thank the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman, for her kind help in obtaining for me last week-end maps and information to help me digest some of the problems and to see with my own eyes how big an area we are discussing. I thank her and her Department for that immediate help. I feel sorry tonight for the noble Baroness because she has been in bed for three days with a feverish cold, and if it was like the one I had 10 days ago she has all the sympathy I can give her because I know it is no joke. Perhaps I should apologise to her if I keep her up too long in making my speech.
The M.25 was thought of way back in 1937 by a gentleman named Hore Belisha, who felt in those days that London should have a ring-road because the traffic in 1937 was getting quite impossible. That was a long time ago, yet here we are tonight discussing a major road which has still not been completed. However, some sections of the M.25 have been completed,

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while others have not, and there is still a long way to go. The construction of the M.25, which is to relieve inner London of its immense traffic problems, involves the important linking-up, for instance, of the M.1 with the M.4, as well as link-ups north to south and east to west of London in order to get traffic out of inner London and on to the outer perimeters. Therefore, I am afraid that I cannot agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont of Whitley, has been saying. He has tonight utterly condemned the M.25. He has not paid the slightest attention to the industrial nation that we are today.
When one bears in mind the problems involving juggernauts and lorries, with traffic piling up, I regard it as no excuse to plead that land is being eaten up. I admit, with sympathy, that the Green Belt suffers, but here I recall an instance when, as an angry young man, I moved from Swindon to Oxford when a small road (which I now cannot name) was to be rebuilt through a wood. I thought that that was totally wrong, and that the landscape would be utterly ruined. I thought that the project would cause more traffic to go to Oxford. Yet when the road was finished I felt very ashamed that I had thought of obstructing the road, because the wood had been replanted and was tidier. Now the road itself looks tidier, and the volume of traffic on it seems to be very small, while previously it had seemed immense. So I do not go along with the noble Lord's view that roads of this type will cause obstruction involving heavy traffic.
When coming off the M.4 at the Chiswick roundabout and meeting up with lorries, I feel selfish because my progress to your Lordships' House along the Embankment is at times almost impossible, as it was this morning. I should like to see the M.25 completed, so that traffic moving south to north or north to south, as the case may be, is catered for by a new link road.
I have the strongest feeling that work has now slowed down for a number of reasons. It appears that in certain sections progress has not been as rapid as it should have been. I should like to see priority given to speedier construction of sections from the Staines area almost to St. Albans. It seems also that progress on the section from Chertsey to Reigate has
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slowed down or stopped, and the same seems to apply in the area from Godstone to Westerham.
When one looks at the map one sees the very beautiful Epping Forest. Here again, in my selfish way, as a conservationist I want to make sure that Epping Forest is absolutely safeguarded. I should not like one acre of the forest used up. If a road is to go through it, wild life should be protected, or if there is to be a road anywhere near the forest attention should be paid to landscaping. I should like to know from the noble Baroness what protection Epping Forest is to receive. I should be most grateful for an answer on that point. There is also within the forest the famous cricket ground of Bell's Common. It is a great cricket ground which was established in, I believe, 1878, and belongs to the Epping Forest Cricket Club, a very old established club which was granted a licence by the Corporation of London. I want to know how much work is going on in that vicinity, and whether the cricket ground will be protected.
In looking at the progress of the M.25, I wonder whether we are not seeing a slowing down of the construction as a whole. We are certainly witnessing a continuing massive build-up of heavy vehicles, such as juggernauts. We are asked nowadays to save energy. The noble Lord mentioned this point, but in a different way to what I have in mind. My theory would be that the M.25 would save energy for the future. I would regard that as an important consideration that we ought to be looking at at the moment. We are witnessing a slowing-up of the time taken in getting our exports to the docks, due to the massive build-up of traffic. The lorry drivers are tired or even exhausted at the end of their tourneys, to say nothing of the ordinary driver in a car. It would save money and time if there were a proper ring road.
We must also consider road accident figures, and bear in mind that young people are being injured because of the concentration of population in the South-East. I am sure that the public are suffering because of the present taffic situation, and that villages will continue to suffer from the vibration of vehicles. The slow progress could well be due to the

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actions of certain bodies of people; for instance, obstruction by local bodies in connection with inquiries into particular stretches of the road. Have we not witnessed 42 inquiries into the Reigate-Chertsey section? Those 42 inquiries involved 42 police interventions. In these circumstances one finds that costs go up, difficulties arise and progress slows as a result of the action of small public bodies—perhaps even involving Rent-a-Mob—which are trying to stop parts of the road being built. In fact I am told that even people who do not live in the area attend these meetings.
I think that the slowing down could probably be attributed to certain errors by the Government. Surely it was the Department of Transport which was forced to hold for a second time two separate public inquiries on different sections of the M.25, one relating to the A.12–A.13 section and another to the A.10–M.11, due to procedural oversights. I have no doubt that a year or more has been lost in that way. The noble Baroness might be able to assist me over that.
A further point about which I am getting more suspicious, looking at the facts, is that the Government are not using the full quota of money allocated by Parliament each year; and I am just wondering the reason why that should be when we have many of the sections already programmed or prepared. Why is this money not being spent at this stage? Perhaps the noble Baroness could enlighten me on that, too. Again, I have sympathy for the inhabitants of the villages South-East of London—villages like Eynsford, Westerham and Brasted in Kent, Waltham Abbey, Maple Cross in Herefordshire, Old Windsor and Effingham in Surrey. Those are the examples I was looking for just now, and I give them because they are longing for the M.25. They are all for the M.25, but they cannot get it yet because of the slowness of events.
The noble Baroness's honourable friend Mr. Horam, in a recent speech on the M.25, informed Members of another place:
"As has been said many times, we hope for the completion date of the entire thing by the middle 1980s".
That would be 1985–86. I sincerely hope that this is possible. I should like to see
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it brought forward; and if that were to be the case many people would be happier. Many of the problems caused by the irritations of driving through Inner London today would be eased for us all, and for industry; and, from the point of view of our architectural heritage, I am certain many buildings would be saved from the vibrations that take place.
I could go on for many hours on the subject of this road, and, unlike the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont, I can see the importance of it. But I am grateful to him for allowing me the opportunity to speak on it, and I very much look forward to the Government's reply. I hope that we are going to hear that the middle 1980s will be reduced to 1982, or in that area of time.
9.4 p.m.
Lord AUCKLAND: My Lords, with some trepidation I intervene in this debate because I happen to live in a village which is going to be considerably affected by this road—the village of Ashstead in Surrey. I have not, I must admit, studied the plans with any great care, because I have been rather too busy elsewhere; but I have been made pretty aware, by people I know in the village and its surroundings, of the dissatisfaction which they feel—dissatisfaction which I do not necessarily personally share. But there are two very great problems which have to be faced here. I should say that this particular matter is currently the subject of a public inquiry, so I am not empowered, in fairness, to say very much at this stage. The public inquiry itself is of a somewhat animated nature for various reasons into which I will not go now. I would only say that no inspector at a public inquiry has anything but an uneviable job; it is not the easiest of jobs. My noble friend Lord Long made reference to outside bodies, not connected with the village, taking part in these inquiries. They are entitled to do this, but it is sometimes questionable whether their activities are either helpful or, indeed, I would say, permissible. I suggest that the area in which I am concerned is an example of this, although in fairness I should say, as I said earlier, that I have not myself taken part in any of these meetings, and have no intention of doing so.
There is one very serious aspect of this which no doubt the inspector will con-

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sider but which I feel I should bring to your Lordships' attention tonight, and that is the question of the lead content of petrol, because one of the main sections of this road is going to cause a kind of spaghetti junction, as I understand it, near five or six schools where there are children of quite tender ages. This is causing, I think, quite reasonable concern. Of course, my Lords, when one is building a road or siting a spur road, or anything like that, there is always the problem of causing a disturbance somewhere; and, as I understand it, the alternatives to the present one which have been considered would mean demolishing a substantially larger number of houses—and there is a great need for houses in the Mole Valley area of Surrey, because industry is increasing there—whereas the present plan, with all its handicaps and problems, would mean a rather less blighting of property in that sense. I do not know how far the noble Baroness can go here as it is the subject of an inquiry, and I am not a lawyer, but I hope that her Department can take note of the fact that there are these children who are affected and that one or two quite eminent scientists have shown deep concern at the amount of petroleum lead which could cause damage to the breathing of these children and others and also, of course, the traffic danger particularly if heavy traffic is involved.
Having said that, I think the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont of Whitley, has performed a most useful service in moving this brief debate and I am quite sure that we have not heard the last of this road. But in the last analysis there comes the dilemma as to which road is the more important for the country: the M.24, the M.25, or whatever. And I am bound to say in conclusion that I can think of many parts of the country which may need priority roads more than we need the present, admittedly important, project which is proposed but which, I would think, with the present economic situation of the country—and this is not a Party point because it is going to affect all Governments—may not take place for some time to come; but this does not lessen the concern for those involved.
9.10 p.m.
The PARLIAMENTARY UNDERSECRETARY of STATE, DEPARTMENT of the ENVIRONMENT (Baroness Stedman): My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont of Whitley, for raising this subject this evening. I am glad of the opportunity to explain why the Government are committed to building the M.25 and why it has the highest priority in our road building programme. I am also grateful to the noble Viscount, Lord Long, for his concern about my health. I think I am going to live through this debate, but whether my voice will last is another matter.
The M.25 has three main functions. First, it will provide a convenient route round Greater London for through traffic, particularly traffic to and from the East Coast and Channel Ports, and Tilbury Docks. It will link them with the M.1 and A.1, and other roads to the Midlands and the North. Greater London, which is 30 to 35 miles across from east to west, is a major obstacle to this traffic, and the M.25 will provide a quicker and more convenient route and one that is far less prejudicial to the environment of the London suburbs. The new road, being purpose built and without pedestrians and cyclists, will be much safer than the existing roads, so there will be a considerable saving in accidents.
Secondly, the road will act as a general distributor, linking the main routes in and out of London, and enabling drivers to choose the most convenient exit road or to reach places in London without having to cross the centre or to use existing inadequate orbital roads. Finally, the M.25 will bring local relief for congested roads on the outskirts of London. Although only 23 miles have been built out of a total length of 120 miles, a further 16 miles are under construction, and planning is well advanced on a further 45 miles. Only about a quarter of the route remains to be settled. I expect that all except the north-western sector will be finished by the end of 1983—and that will delight the noble Viscount, Lord Long—and that the whole road will be completed in 1985.
The noble Lord, Lord Beaumont, has suggested that our intention to complete the M.25 will defeat our objective of reducing our absolute dependence on transport. We will not reduce our dependence on transport by not building new roads. The traffic is already there—using

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unsuitable and congested roads. If the whole of the M.25 were completed today most sections of it would be carrying about 40,000 vehicles a day. The lack of a proper orbital route has not prevented traffic around London from growing; it simply means that it forces its way through towns and villages on the outskirts of London, and residential and shopping streets in the suburbs, and indeed through central London itself.
Building an orbital motorway will have wide-ranging effects and we do not pretend that we can foresee all of them now. Some people, who are deterred at present from making local journeys on crowded roads, may find that they can move more freely. But that is not increasing their dependence on transport. It is simply a matter of freeing local roads from traffic they were never intended to carry so that they can serve their proper function of catering for the local needs. In turn, that will help to prevent drivers from using residential roads as rat runs. Once there is a proper route for through traffic, it will be easier for the local authorities to introduce traffic management measures to ensure that local roads are not used by traffic which has no business on them. Noble Lords may be aware of the difficulties which have arisen over the regulations made by the Berkshire County Council to keep lorries out of Windsor. It would be wrong for me to comment on their action because it is being challenged in the courts, except to say that measures of that kind will be much easier to introduce in the future when we have an orbital road round London.
It is possible that once the new motorway is built, some people will take advantage of it to make longer trips than they did before. It will become much easier for people living in the west of London to reach the Kent coast, for example. Similarly, foreign tourists who arrive at the Channel ports may be tempted to by-pass London and explore other parts of the country. I do not think that amounts to increasing dependence on transport.
The Government are anxious to encourage the conservation of energy and to avoid generating a great deal of extra traffic. Roads are planned to cater for the traffic which is likely to use them over
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the next 20 years or so. Even on pessimistic assumptions about the price of oil, traffic is likely to grow by one-third by the end of the century. Traffic will increase whether the M.25 is built or not. If the road is not built, conditions which are already intolerable in many places will become even worse. We simply cannot sit back and do nothing. Many road proposals in London have been dropped on the assumption that the M.25 would be built; for example, Ringway 3, which was dropped after the inquiry into the Greater London Development Plan. If the M.25 does not go ahead, then alternatives will have to be considered which will cause widespread blight and uncertainty.
I do not believe that the construction of an orbital road for London is in any way inconsistent with the objective of reducing our dependence on transport. That objective can be achieved only by influencing where people live and work, and how industry is organised. It requires changes which cannot be made very quickly. I cannot accept that it would be right to withhold the certain benefits which M.25 will bring for existing traffic and for the environment because of fears that it will lead to an increase in traffic—especially when that increase is unlikely to be substantial compared with the growth which is likely to take place anyway.
The noble Lord, Lord Beaumont of Whitley, also referred—and rightly—to the consequences for the Green Belt of building the road. He has stressed the importance of the Green Belt in preventing the sprawl of Greater London, and in providing an area for sport and recreation for London and other towns in the South-East. I should like to emphasise that, as the noble Viscount, Lord Long, said, when the proposal for a Green Belt was mooted and introduced in the 1930s and 1940s, it was always envisaged that there would also be an orbital road around London. However, the problem of development along major roads has been recognised for many years. Way back in 1935, Parliament passed the Restriction of Ribbon Development Act, which was designed to control building along the main routes. This preceded the Town and Country Planning Acts, which introduced for the first time a systematic control of development.

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In the recent Government Statement in response to the Strategic Plan for the South-East, published in December last year, we described our policies for land and development in the region. In this statement, we particularly stressed the importance of restraint policies in relation to the M.25. Unfortunately, it is not possible to build an orbital road for London without it passing through some Green Belt land. I agree that pressure for development near the intersections with other roads may well become intense; but the strategic planning authorities fully recognise the problems and are concerned about them. We consider it important that they should use their development control powers to resist pressures unless the development is consistent with the county structure plan, which, of course, has to be approved by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for the Environment. These powers are backed up by my right honourable friend's reserve powers.
The strategic planning authorities fully support the proposals for completing the M.25 as soon as possible. Building the M.25 is not a matter of making environmental sacrifices for the benefit of future traffic; it will bring much needed relief to many areas, such as Romford, Epping and Brentwood. A study of the section of the M.25 between Reigate and Godstone which was opened in 1976 shows that the existing A.25 was relieved of between 17 per cent. and 27 per cent. of its traffic. When the next section from Godstone to Sevenoaks is opened later this year, the centres of Oxted and Westerham will enjoy significant reductions in traffic. Similar benefits will arise on other sections of the road as they are opened. During a recent debate in another place, several honourable Members stressed how much support there was for the road in their constituencies, and urged us to finish it as soon as possible.
The noble Lord, Lord. Beaumont, suggested that perhaps the time had come to call a halt and have a look at the whole picture of our planning and roadbuilding again. The idea of a single inquiry might have been an attractive idea 10 years ago, though there would have been formidable problems in keeping it to manageable proportions; but to hold such an inqiury now is neither practicable nor in the public interest. The planning has gone ahead on
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the assumption that the road will be built, and to hold it up now would cause widespread blight while the suggested alternatives were being evaluated.
The noble Viscount, Lord Long, very dutifully gave me notice of one question he intended to ask tonight and then he did not ask it; but since he did give me notice originally that he intended to ask it, I shall be kind to him and I shall answer it. It is a question of the Royal Horticultural Society's gardens at Wisley. There had been some problems. The M.25 does not directly affect the RHS, but there are traffic problems on the A.3 which is outside the RHS gardens at Wisley. The gap in the central reservation there opposite the entry has been closed for safety reasons. It has caused considerable inconvenience to people visiting Wisley Gardens; for example, people leaving cannot turn right but have to make a five-mile detour to turn at the next intersection.
My honourable friend Mr. Horam undertook to meet representatives of the RHS on the site and he talked over the problems with them. He undertook to consider two possibilities. The first was that we might re-open the gap and control it with traffic lights; and, secondly, there was the possibility that we could build a flyover from the entrance to the opposite carriageway. My honourable friend has looked at both these possibilities. The first was found to be too dangerous, and we have a prime responsibility for road safety. It is a fast, straight stretch of road and the reservation is not wide enough to shelter vehicles waiting to turn. The second suggestion of the flyover was much too expensive, and it will also take longer than the completion of the interchange with the M.25 only one mile away, which will reduce the length of detour necessary to reach the opposite carriageway.
My honourable friend has written to the director of the RHS gardens to explain the position. There is no question of our failing to honour our undertaking, because none was given. We offered to look at these two possibilities. But we are building a footbridge to the opposite side of the road which will help the visitors to the garden who are using public transport, and we hope that goes some way towards encouraging people to use it—though,

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incidentally, I was told by one of the vice-presidents of the Society only a couple of weeks ago that, despite all the comments that have been made, their number of visitors had gone up in the last year when the gap had still been closed, so perhaps it is not quite as desperate as we at first thought it was.
Then we were asked about the question of under-spending. Some of the schemes that we had in hand had been delayed by inquiries. The noble Lord, Lord Auckland, referred to inquiries in regard to public participation. We wanted public participation, but we do not always like it when we get it because there seems to be too much of it sometimes, and not always from the quarters we expect. We do have inquiries; we do try to run them on a democratic basis; and they sometimes result in delays in schemes being put into operation. Then many of these schemes, when the tenders have come in, have proved to cost, very fortunately, up to 20 per cent. less than the original estimates—which is something we ought to be rather pleased about in these days of financial stringency. The conditions in the civil engineering contracting business have been very competitive over the past few years, and that has meant that some of our original estimates were higher than the tenders when they came in.
The noble Viscount, Lord Long, also asked about the question of Epping Forest. I am sure that he had read in the report of the debate in another place only a short time ago about the special powers for the City of London. He will know that the Department have leaned over backwards, in so far as preserving the Epping Forest part of the motorway is concerned. We are proposing to put a very long stretch of it into a cut-and-cover tunnel, so that the deer will still be able to go over the top of the motorway and, we hope, will not even realise that is underneath them. We have also given an undertaking that we will reinstate the Bell's Common cricket ground, and that we will build them a new pavilion. Who knows?—the club might do even better with the one they are getting from the Department of Transport then with their present one. So we really are concerned about what happens to the wildlife in those parts of the Green Belt which, unfortunately, we have to touch.
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I think the noble Lord, Lord Auckland, also referred to the question of lead in petrol. This is a national problem, and it is something of which we are very much aware in the Department. The question of what is the appropriate or safe level is also something which we have constantly under review. All I can say at this time is that any decision which had to be made would be a national one, and would not apply to just the M.25 and that area. But if the M.25, when it is completed in 1985, is used as we expect it to be used, then it will be taking away traffic from Central London and, therefore, the fumes in Central London are likely to be less obnoxious, because of the amount of traffic that will then be able to use the orbital road. But we are aware of the problem, we have it continually under review and I am quite sure that, if the necessity arises, there will be no tardiness on our part in trying to do something about limiting the lead in petrol.
The noble Lord referred to the public inquiries which are being held at the moment. He will appreciate that I am not prepared to comment on what is happening at public inquiries which are still in being. What I can assure him is that I will see that his views are made known to my colleagues in the Department of Transport. But we are aware of the problem as he sees it, in so far as these public inquiries are concerned.
The noble Lord, Lord Beaumont, has done us a very good service tonight in highlighting the problems of the M.25. The noble Viscount, Lord Long, reminded us that it was way back in 1937 that we started. With a bit of luck, we shall have the thing finished in 1985. I should have thought that 48 years from talking about the M.25 to completion is not something of which we ought necessarily to be proud, but it is also certainly not something on which we can be accused of hurrying and cutting corners. When it is opened, the new road will help to improve the quality of life for many thousands of people. Like the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont, I regret the price that has to be paid in terms of the effect on the countryside in those areas where it touches it. But I believe that it is a price that will be worth paying, for the convenience and the ease of movement which it will bring and the traffic which it will take out of Central London.

VAN DIEMEN'S LAND COMPANY BILL [H.L.]
Committed to an Unopposed Bill Committee.