Lords Sitting of 21 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 Derby.

LORD HILL-NORTON
Admiral of the Fleet Sir Peter John Hill-Norton, Knight, GCB, having been created Baron Hill-Norton, of South Nutfield in the County of Surrey, for life—Was, in his robes, introduced between the Lord Clifford of Chudleigh and the Lord Shinwell.
The Lord Hillingdon—Sat first in Parliament after the death of his kinsman.

TRADE UNION IMMUNITIES AND PRIVILEGES
2.48 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 whether the long written reply given by Lord Wallace of Coslany to his request on 21st February to list the countries other than the United Kingdom in which trades unions enjoy immunities and privileges in respect of the bringing against them of proceedings in courts of law can be properly summarised by the answer, "None".
Lord WALLACE of COSLANY: No, my Lords.
Lord BOYD-CARPENTER: In that case, my Lords, while thanking the noble Lord for his at least quantitatively satisfactory written reply of 21st February, may I ask him now to tell your Lordships which countries, other than this country, allow legal immunities to a trade union
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pursuing a trade dispute which permit it not to be taken to court in circumstances in which an injured fellow-citizen could otherwise sue it?
Lord WALLACE of COSLANY: My Lords, as I tried to indicate in my previous reply, it is dangerous to make facile comparisons between the complex and very different legal systems of the various countries. In many countries it has not been necessary to give trade unions immunities comparable to those in this country because of the different evolution of their legal systems and different history of industrialisation. In short, where many industrialised countries guarantee a right to strike, this country instead allows employers' associations and trade unions certain traditional immunities from legal action which, so far as trade unions are concerned, allows them to take effective, peaceful strike action.
Lord BOYD-CARPENTER: My Lords, does not that answer confirm that the noble Lord and the Government are quite unable to quote any other country in the world which grants these legal immunities, and is not my Question this afternoon therefore fully justified?
Lord WALLACE of COSLANY: My Lords, this is a case where Britain can set an example to other countries. Noble Lords should restrain their mirth until I have finished. There are a number of countries in Europe particularly—and I quote one, Sweden—which can even give us an example.
Lord BLYTON: My Lords, is the Minister aware that for over 60 years of my life in trade unions the Conservative party has always tried to destroy us either by legislation or propaganda? Is he further aware that, if the Conservative party today gets into power, there will be another trade union confrontation because of the policies it pursues? Is it not also the case that the Conservative party forgets the 1926 strike when it backed the coal-owners and crucified us, and it is now annoyed because the power is going to the trade union movement?
Lord WALLACE of COSLANY: My Lords, my noble friend has considerable experience and I accept what he says

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without any question. It is a fact that there is a remarkable difference between a Conservative Government and a Labour Government. Again I say to the Benches opposite—wait for it! There is this difference: The average number of working days lost during the period of office of the last Conservative Government was 1,279.000. The comparable figure for this Government's period of office, up to and including January 1979, is half of this: namely, 630,000. I invite noble Lords on the Benches opposite to laugh at that.
Lord ROCHESTER: My Lords, would the noble Lord agree that there are a number of countries in Western Europe where industrial disputes concerning agreements already entered into are settled, if necessary, almost invariably by arbitration or by recourse to courts of law?
Lord WALLACE of COSLANY: My Lords, there is an agreement announced between the TUC and the Government, and the Government's aim and the TUC's aim is to try to bring about a better situation in industrial relations. What the noble Lord says is true: there are some areas in our country where the same thing is done. Whether it can be extended is a matter for the unions and employers to settle among themselves, and the Government will give benevolent help, at least from this side.
Viscount TRENCHARD: My Lords, would the noble Lord not agree that the answer he has just given is not really answering the question of the noble Lord, Lord Rochester? It is true that in every country in the Free World agreements—which was the subject of Lord Rochester's supplementary question— are enforceable, and this country alone is the one where they are not enforceable and not defendable. Would the noble Lord say what bearing he thinks that has on the number of days lost in strikes, which is not, in fact, the point? The point is the constant strike threat position, which does not affect other countries.
Lord WALLACE of COSLANY: My Lords, it should be remembered that the Conservative Government's 1971 Industrial Relations Act contained a provision that every collective agreement made in writing
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after the passing of the Act was presumed to be a legally enforceable contract unless it contained a provision to the contrary. In practice, agreements made during the life of the Act contained such a provision, and the evidence is that employers are no more interested in legally-binding collective agreements than unions. It is open to the parties concerned to make legally-binding agreements if they so wish. They are free to do so.
Lord COTTESLOE: My Lords, is the Minister aware that he has given us an interesting dissertation that has no relation to the question asked?
Viscount ST. DAVIDS: My Lords, on the subject of the number of days lost through strikes, is it not clear that any Prime Minister can reduce the number of such days perfectly simply? If you surrender there is no need to fight.
Lord WALLACE of COSLANY: My Lords, that is hardly a supplementary question worth answering. I have given the facts, backed up by the ILO.

VICTIMISATION OF SCHOOL CHILDREN
2.57 p.m.
Viscount MASSEREENE and FERRARD: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they are concerned at the victimisation in State schools of children because of the way in which they speak.
Baroness DAVID: My Lords, Her Majesty's Government arc concerned about reports of any form of victimisation in schools, but my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Education and Science has no evidence to suggest that there is a widespread problem in this respect.
Viscount MASSEREENE and FERRARD: My Lords, while I thank the noble Baroness for that Answer, is she aware that I have experience of two

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cases? One was of a girl who had to be taken away from her school because of this victimisation. Would the noble Baroness not agree, bearing in mind the hope that in the future there will be little need for the racial discrimination Act, that it is essential that any intolerance at school as regards accent, race or religion should be curbed? Further, may I ask the noble Baroness whether—as I understand that we spend upwards of ·8,000 million a year on free education— she agrees that it would be wise to concentrate on the correct tuition of English?
Baroness DAVID: My Lords, I am aware of at least one case where a child has been taken away from school and has now been sent to an independent school. In that particular case the local education authority is thinking of taking action, and the headmaster of the school in question has already instigated proceedings, so I think it would not be fitting to discuss the case.
I should like to say to the noble Viscount that I think children are picked on for this or that reason in any school; they may be fat, they may be thin, their voices may be this way or that. I think children can be very cruel; bullying is something which, as I am sure many noble Lords will know, has gone on in schools of all sorts and kinds. So far as the teaching of English is concerned, if the noble Viscount had been at our debate last week—and I believe he was not—he would have learned that there has been a very marked improvement in the teaching of English, as shown in the results from tests which have been going on.
Lord BELSTEAD: My Lords, is the noble Baroness aware that we accept that responsibility for this must of course lie at the local level, and that we also accept the noble Baroness's point that children must be left, as it were, to look after themselves? But may I ask the noble Baroness this: since there has been a Government report on the teaching and use of English within the last two years, is my noble friend's Question not of direct concern to the Government? The Government have now set up an inquiry into mathematics. Would the noble Baroness be replying that it was not really the concern of the Government if a pupil
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were treated badly because of performance I in mathematics?
Baroness DAVID: My Lords, 1 am sure we should regret that, but I do not think what happens in mathematics is really connected with this Question. It is the teaching of English and the speaking of English and the use of the English tongue which seems to me to be what we are talking about.
Lord KILBRACKEN: My Lords, is there not as much or more victimisation among children in public schools as there is in State schools?
Baroness DAVID: My Lords, from what my friends who have been to public schools have told me, it is certainly sometimes quite horrifying. I do not have any absolutely up to date experience, but certainly in the past I think that that would have been so.
Viscount MASSEREENE and FERRARD: My Lords, is the noble Baroness aware that in my experience I never came across any incidents of victimisation or bullying at my public school?
Baroness DAVID: My Lords, all that I can say to the noble Viscount is that he was probably extremely lucky.
Lord ANNAN: My Lords, will the noble Baroness accept that it is, I believe, a fact that the victimisation by children of other children for speaking in an accent and in a manner which is not acceptable to the upper classes began around the 1680s and has been going on in our schools ever since? Would she not also agree that this is likely to occur not merely in State schools but in schools which are not in the maintained area, and that it is just conceivable that we may, at some time in the lifetime of some of the younger Members of your Lordships' House, achieve a state where a regional accent is as acceptable in this country as it is and always has been in Germany?
Baroness DAVID: My Lords, I do not have the historical knowledge to answer the first part of the noble Lord's question. However, I rather hope that regional accents will at any rate come back because I think that that would be a good thing. If I may give a personal anecdote,

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I have a grand-daughter who lives in Cumbria and who goes to a State school. She speaks with a Cumbrian accent when she is at school and when she comes to stay with me she will not speak in that accent at all. She can switch from one to the other. I think that we may be in for some interesting—I do not know about experiments, but at any rate developments.
Viscount MASSEREENE and FERRARD: My Lords, is the noble Baroness aware that I am certainly not criticising?

CENTO AND DEFENCE POLICY
3.3 p.m.
Lord BROCKWAY: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government when they propose to disband CENTO.
The MINISTER of STATE, FOREIGN and COMMONWEALTH OFFICE (Lord Goronwy-Roberts): My Lords, following the withdrawal of Iran, Pakistan and Turkey, Her Majesty's Government are reviewing the situation. Clearly CENTO is not effectively in operation. We shall naturally keep the House informed as the situation develops.
Lord BROCKWAY: My Lords, has not CENTO been a relic of the discredited confrontation policy of Foster Dulles? Would it not have been better to have ended it long before now when we have the humiliation of disbanding it because the four other partners in it have withdrawn?
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, I do not see that there is any particular humiliation in disbanding an organisation if the regional member countries decide that their defence and security can be provided better in some other way. Whatever that other way proves to be, we shall stand ready with our other friends and allies to respond as helpfully as possible. As for the first part of my noble friend's question, I think that a closer examination of the history of CENTO will show that for quite 20 years
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it did in fact help to maintain the peace and stability of the area it served.
Lord SHINWELL: My Lords, is one to understand from what my noble friend has just said in reply to the original Question that, if CENTO is disbanded, the problems remain? Do we not have the nucleus of some other effective organisation? CENTO concerned the Pacific and therefore we have Singapore, some of the Gulf States, Malaysia, Australia and New Zealand. Why not reconsider the position in the light of how the disbandment of CENTO affects the whole of the Pacific situation?
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, yes, indeed, I think that there is a good deal in what my noble friend says. CENTO of course, was the successor to the Baghdad Pact. We have seen the modification and the disappearance of SEATO. Out of the situation which has been created by the falling off of these two necessarily long-term temporary arrangements for defence and security, no doubt from among the Member countries concerned in that area—with the help of their friends in the West—there may well emerge an alternative and an even better system.

EGYPT/ISRAEL: PEACE NEGOTIATIONS
3.6 p.m.
Lord MISHCON: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they have any statement to make on the apparent success of the negotiations to bring about a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel.
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, the Government congratulate President Carter on the success of his efforts, which have brought a peace treaty so close. The momentum generated by this must he used to ensure that a treaty proves to be the first step towards a comprehensive settlement acceptable to all the parties, which will guarantee peace and stability in the area as a whole.
Lord MISHCON: My Lords, I thank my noble friend the Minister for his considered statement on the anticipated agreement which hopefully will lead next week to the signing of a peace treaty and thus create a turning point in the troubled history of this area. Would my noble friend also agree that, apart from the congratulations properly extended to the President of the United States for his pertinacity, congratulations should also be extended to the representatives of both countries for the courage that they have shown in reaching this stage? Furthermore, if the treaty is in fact signed, can we be assured, and in view of the Minister's obviously wise statement about the need to have a comprehensive peace in this area, that the efforts of Her Majesty's Government will definitely be used to ensure that other interested parties in this area—and at present we are thinking particularly of Saudi Arabia and Jordan—will be encouraged to support this treaty and to sit at a negotiating table?
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, I am most grateful to my noble friend for the helpful nature of his supplementary question at a crucial juncture in the negotiation of the first steps in what we all hope will be a comprehensive settlement. What he has said about the pertinacity of the American President and the courage of the two other partners in the negotiations will be well received, I am sure, both here and abroad. As to the assurance which my noble friend seeks, I can give it without reservation. We were among the principal architects of the two Security Council resolutions— Nos.242 and 338—on which a comprehensive settlement must be based. We shall do everything we can bilaterally in speaking to our friends in the Middle East, and we have a long record of close co-operation and friendship with the Arab world as well as with Israel, so that during the next few weeks and months this very hopeful achievement of the American President may lead to the comprehensive settlement which the Middle East and the rest of the world so badly needs.
Lord GLADWYN: My Lords, does the noble Lord think that the recent remarks of Mr. Begin and his Minister of Defence in respect of East Jerusalem and what is known as Judea and Samaria are particu-
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larly helpful to the long-term cause of peace in the Middle East?
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, at least as helpful as the supplementary question of the noble Lord. I think that, having regard to the longstanding difficulty of the situation in the Middle East and its crucial importance to the democratic West as well as to the rest of the world, we should all concentrate on encouraging those who have achieved as much as they have achieved so far.
Lord JANNER: My Lords, I should like to ask my noble friend whether he will enthusiastically support the agreement which will be signed, I hope, very shortly? Will he indicate to the civilised world that this is an important historical step forward and that in the long attempt by Israel to try and get an understanding and peace with her Arab friends, this is the first tangible step that has taken place in that direction and it is important to follow it as strongly as we possibly can?
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, everything that I have said endorses the views put forward by my noble friend Lord Janner.
The Earl of ONSLOW: My Lords, first, can the noble Lord please explain why Premier Begin refuses to speak to the Palestinian Liberation Organisation on the ground of terrorism, when his hands are stained with blood as no other terrorist's hands are? Secondly, is it not also true that Palestinian nationalism is just as much a cause of the conflict in the Middle East as is Jewish nationalism? Thirdly, is it not true that unless these two nationalisms can somehow be reconciled—and the statement of Mr.Begin yesterday in the Knesset made no concession to that—there will be no long-term peace in the Middle East?
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, I shall deal with the three points made by the noble Earl in reverse order. On the third point he made, I certainly do not accept that anything which Mr. Begin and his colleagues have said necessarily prejudges the possibility of future constructive concessions on both sides. Indeed, it will help if we talk up that street at this juncture and if we do not

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quote present and possible difficulties in a situation which for at least 30 years has bristled with difficulties.
I am peculiarly well-qualified to talk on the noble Earl's second point, nationalism. I agree with the noble Earl that to the extent that we can mitigate, if not abolish, the excesses of political nationalism, there is hope for the survival of civilisation. The agreement at which the present negotiations are aimed—namely, to bring together Arab and Jew, who belong to the same family and whose common economic efforts in the Middle East would literally turn that area into a garden—is a very fine objective to set before us. As to recriminations about who was guilty of terrorism and when, history is replete with examples in all directions of such events, and it is well to put them aside when we have the slightest chance of moving into a better future.
Lord SEGAL: My Lords, in view of the tremendous sacrifices that Egypt has made in the cause of peace, risking her virtual isolation from the rest of the Arabworld, cannot Her Majesty's Government show their approval in a rather more practical form? For example, can we not approach the Egyptian Embassy with a much more generous offer than we have made hitherto, and supply them with weapons of peace instead of weapons of war—tractors, lorries, buses and telephones, of which they are sorely in need at the present time?
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, I am glad that my noble friend echoed what my other noble friend, Lord Mishcon, said about the courage which has been shown by the leaders of both countries in putting their hands to this agreement. I particularly join my noble friend in his reference to Mr. Sadat. As to the proposal my noble friend has made, I have no doubt that such proposals will increasingly form part of the developing negotiations between the United States and her friends, of whom we are one, and the two Middle East parties to this agreement; that is to say, that part of a comprehensive settlement must surely be the economic rehabilitation and promotion of a common prosperity in the area as a whole.

AGRICULTURE AND THE COUNTRYSIDE: STRUTT REPORT
3.15 p.m.
Lord COLLISONrose to call attention to the Strutt Report, entitled Agriculture and the Countryside; and to move for Papers. The noble Lord said: My Lords, I consider myself fortunate to be able to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper. I am gratified at the number of noble Lords who wish to speak in the course of this debate. In a way it is a pity that it has to be a short debate, because noble Lords will have to be circumspect about the time they take in order to give the Minister time to reply. However, it is gratifying to see so many people interested in this subject.
The report of the Advisory Council which we are to consider, entitled Agriculture and the Countryside, is the latest in a series of reports to the Minister on subjects referred to us by him. I believe that this report is one of the most important of the many we have issued over the years. Initially, I want to pay my tribute to Sir Nigel Strutt, who has been the chairman of the Advisory Council since its inception and who has been a most admirable chairman—full of life and activity, but nevertheless kind and good to us. As noble Lords know, I also have been a member of the Council since its inception. So when I refer to "us" in the debate, that is shorthand for the Council and the panel which was set up to deal with this specific problem. In the case of the report which we are now discussing, I want also to pay tribute to my friend, Sir Gwilym Williams, who, with his wide knowledge and experience, his great background and wisdom, has perhaps been the most helpful chairman we could have had.
It was in May 1977 when we were asked:
"To advise on ways in which the Ministry could best contribute towards reconciling the national requirement for economic agricultural and horticultural production with the development of other national objectives in the countryside in the light of public interest in recreation and access and in conservation and amenity".
It was a most timely reference. As more leisure has become available, there has been a rapidly increasing demand for access to the countryside. It is a demand

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which will reach explosive proportions in the very near future. That is happening at the same time as there is an ever-increasing concern about the loss of good agricultural land to development; for example, for housing, roads, sports fields and so on. Indeed, I have heard it said that it may be well nigh impossible to reconcile the various interests.
The Council does not think so. We came to that view after a year's hard study and after receiving evidence—much or all of it oral—from over 80 individuals and organisations, and after going out and seeing for ourselves the kind of problems that can arise in the countryside. We went to the national parks; we went to Snowdonia, the Lake District, the Somerset Levels and the fringe areas of London and Manchester. In the course of those visits we spoke to many farmers, quite apart from the evidence which was given to the Council. In fact, we found a real willingness to understand the needs of others, which encouraged us to believe that, with the obvious goodwill and given the opportunity to talk to other people, reconciliation of the various interests is very possible.
It was to that end that one of our major recommendations was that effective consultative machinery should be set up on a local basis to bring together the major interests. It was suggested that the answer might lie in the establishment of a Ministry of Rural Affairs, but having thought deeply about that proposal, we rejected it as being too radical and perhaps too simplistic. It is hard to believe that the various demands on the countryside can be resolved by the creation of a single department of central government.
As I said, we think that the emphasis should be on a wider and more open consultation at local level. We should like to see a local forum in each county where all those concerned—for example, the local authority, the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, the Countryside Commission, the Nature Conservancy Council, the Forestry Commission, tourism and other interests—are brought together so that they can discuss the nature of their various problems and achieve understanding. Although we did not think that a new Ministry should be established, we did think that some collaboration at national level between the Ministry of
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Agriculture and the Department of the Environment would be helpful and might generate the push towards the creation of these consultative committees I have been talking about.
We also considered whether the Ministry itself could, and should, have a wider part to play in the field of conservation and preservation. We came to the conclusion that it should. Having come to that conclusion, we were clear that the help it could give would be through the Agricultural Development and Advisory Service—ADAS—and its officers. ADAS and its officers are well-respected in the whole farming community. Advice on farming practice is eagerly sought by farmers and it is willingly and expertly given. The ADAS official is seen as the friend of the farmer, and we believe therefore that advice on such matters as conservation, landscape preservation and other issues of that kind would be willingly accepted by the farmers from the ADAS man. Indeed, we found that the farmers' representatives and the farmers themselves were very conscious of the importance of these things and anxious to help. In passing, as a matter of equity we thought that if a farmer, for instance, loses some productive capacity in the interests of conservation then he ought to be entitled to compensation.
In relation to ADAS some suggestions were made to us by a few that the role of the ADAS officer to cover these new factors might put him in the eyes of the farmer in the place of a policeman, and the question was asked whether the role of policeman and friend were truly compatible. We felt on the contrary, that the ADAS officer would be the best source of advice. As I say, he is known and respected on the farm. He is welcome on the farm. The advice he gives has been most helpful to farmers in the past. He could help with advice on conservation matters. When it was understood by the farmers, we think it would be welcomed by them too.
We realised of course that the officers would have to acquire new knowledge; new knowledge to enable them to give useful advice to farmers and to landowners. We realised that they would need guidance, expertise, and criteria to help them make judgments and to decide priorities. To that end we believe that there is a case for the development of a degree of

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specialist conservation expertise within ADAS itself, perhaps located at regional headquarters. But essentially the great need mould be for ADAS to make full use of the considerable resources available in either one or another of the conservation agencies. I am thinking in this connection of both the Countryside Commission and the Nature Conservancy Council, whose work I greatly admire and applaud. We owe much to the efforts these bodies have made already.
It follows that, if such criteria are to have a bearing on farmers' improvement plans and the provision of grant aid for those plans, the question of the relaxation of the disclosure rule comes into the picture. The disclosure rule disallows details of grant-aided schemes to be given to other parties. To a degree, this rule would, I think, have to be relaxed, for the conservation agencies would have to be consulted by the ADAS officials and maybe by the farmers too. But, having suggested that, we insist that any such consultation must be on the strict understanding that private and personal information about the farm must continue, as at present, to be strictly confidential.
All in all the Council strongly recommended that such a role should be undertaken by ADAS. We found that farmers are willing to be conservation conscious, but many of them are probably unaware of the nature of the problems and the possible courses which could be taken which would satisfy both the economic needs of the farm and the amenity objective. A major matter of concern which was referred to throughout our inquiry was about the loss of good agricultural land for other purposes. A deal of criticism was directed at the different aspects of the planning process. We felt that we could not accept that the planning machinery, as we now have it, was wholly ineffective in preventing inroads into agriculture. Nevertheless, we certainly did feel that its operation often left much to be desired.
We also felt that the influence that the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food was able to bring to bear needed strengthening. We would wish to see the Ministry able to take a much more positive part in influencing development plans at regional, county, and local level.
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We were worried indeed about what we saw for ourselves on our visits outside, both generally and in the fringe areas. The most frequent criticism was to the effect that in planning at all levels the emphasis was unduly favourable to urban interests and that agriculture was always on the defensive, fighting a rearguard action against decisions made against their interests.
Consequently, the Ministry and its officials were criticised as well as being too defensive. But I do not think that that is too difficult to understand, bearing in mind the urban interests and the urban pressures which can be brought to bear. It is my view that the Ministry officials should not be criticised as much as one should recognise that they are often forced on the defensive. Again it was felt that planning decisions were taken without the Ministry being called in early enough; early enough at the planning stage, the structure phase in particular. Although we appreciate that with the population growth we are still experiencing there will be a growth in the need for housing, for factories, for other uses for the land, we were of the opinion that the planning procedures leave much to be desired.
We therefore made the following proposals. First, that agricultural and horticultural priorities should be clearly established and they should be stated in drawing up structure plans. We were gratified that this had already been done by some planning authorities; Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire and Kent and Merseyside County Council. Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire designate agricultural priority areas where agricultural needs are to take precedence over other matters. The council believes that the Minister's officials in the regions and divisions, the land officers, should be able more actively to represent the general agricultural interest and we hope steps will be taken to make that possible. We also believe the Ministry's interests should not be confined to grade 1 and grade 2 land and, knowing that much grade 3 land is of good farming quality, we applaud the exercise of sub-dividing grade 3 where that is important for agriculture.
The panel noted that, up to 1971, the Ministry of Agriculture was consulted on all applications for planning consent on

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land of more than five acres. Subsequently, that limit was extended to 10 acres. We believe we should revert to the old five-acre definition and that the Ministry should be consulted on all applications for the use of land over that figure. We take the view that, where the Ministry finds that for good reasons it cannot agree, the call-in procedure should be operated and strengthened.
We were surprised to learn there was a shortage of agricultural information in regard to the number and type of holdings lost for agricultural purposes. We learned that, although local authorities were asked by the Department of the Environment some years ago to report land use changes, that system had not yet been properly implemented; so we believe urgent steps should be taken to ensure that we have more precise and accurate knowledge about the whole situation in regard to the use of land.
We spent a fair amount of time looking at the problem in the fringe areas, and much of what I said about planning applies to fringe areas, too. But clearly in the fringe areas there are acute problems due to the proximity of so many people to the countryside. Most townsfolk respect the land and the farmers and are careful not to disturb things, but some do not, perhaps because they do not understand, and there is the inevitable vandal. With that in mind, we noted with considerable interest and content the amount of educational work being done by, for example, the Countryside Commission and the body of which I have the honour to be president, the Association of Agriculture. Many farm visits are organised and pamphlets circulated for the use of teachers and children in school. Farmers in the urban fringe are obviously subject to these pressures, and by education and other means we must see that the use of land is profitable and healthy for the people who have a right, we think, to use it.
There is a great deal I have not had time to say and I hope other noble Lords will pick up some of the points I have missed. It is a huge report concerned with land utilisation, gravel winning, putting hack the land into proper agricultural shape, and much more. I believe it proper as my last word to express the hope that my noble friend Lord Strabolgi,
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When he replies to the debate, will tell us something about the Government's reaction to the report, which I commend to the House. My Lords, I beg to move for Papers.
3.35 p.m.
Lord LYELL: My Lords, noble Lords in all parts of the House and many people far from the House will wish to thank the noble Lord, Lord Collison, for giving us the opportunity to debate this subject and for enabling us to hear the many expert speakers who are to follow. The theme of the Strutt Report is agriculture and the countryside and, as a result, we shall listen with great interest to noble Lords with specialised knowledge of those subjects. I shall be content to ask the Government a few questions about what are euphemistically known as urban fringe areas.
In paragraph 204 of the report it is pointed out that such areas are not and cannot be properly used either for recreation or for agriculture, and I am afraid that that is true. It is also very sad, for these are precisely the plots of land which are capable of producing not only excellent crops of grain, potatoes or mere silage, but often vegetables and fruit from the allotments which are so dear to the heart of the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Coslany. There are also the acres which disappear each year for motorways, interchanges, links, spurs and other road-works.
It is estimated in the report that about 50,000 hectares are lost to agriculture each year. The figures may want for accuracy, but certainly half of such land has gone for buildings, houses, factories and roads, and the area which is taken for motorways or other road improvements will, unfortunately, tend to be of the highest quality. I know that my noble friend Lord Caithness will have some observations to make on the quality of land taken for development. I hope the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, will tell us what steps the Government can take to use more fully the derelict or unused land which is designated for development on the periphery of our great conurbations.
For me, the report strikes an especially sad note when it is proposing various measures and making recommendations; particularly we should look at paragraph

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208, where we see the plea by the committee to ensure that the Ministry of Agriculture requests the Department of the Environment especially to refer to it development around the urban fringes, and not to allow such development without the closest scrutiny of all derelict, unused and underused land within city boundaries. I believe nothing is more futile than large open spaces within a huge city where the wind blows and packs of dogs roam purposefully and effectively while first-class land outside the main city area is used for such developments as may be desirable, be they factories, houses or even roads.
One can understand that the main theme of urban planning is to ensure that people do not have to move far for a job and that, where possible, factories should he as close as is reasonable to houses. I believe that the Ministry of Agriculture should take a firm line in this respect, since the supply of British agricultural land is finite, and there should be no further delay in implementing the main recommendations of the report.
Paragraph 208 goes on to say that local authorities should make management agreements with any developer or farmer who wishes to develop arable land. Such agreement should ensure that land is farmed prudently and correctly, though, speaking as a farmer, I must say that such recommendations are tingedwith sadness because any person who has spent a lifetime or whose family may have been farming the same hectares, as we must now call them, for a hundred years or more will be very upset to see his life's work reduced or even destroyed bit by bit. Far more likely, the farmer will take his price for the land and hurry off to farm elsewhere, and that land will quickly become run down and unproductive and will become precisely the type of land which offends our conservationist friends: it will become an eyesore. This is a problem that cannot easily be solved, as farmland must have someone farming it, and that person must care. He must know the land, and he, or she, must have a stake in its wellbeing. As for urban fringe agricultural land there is no necessity, nor logical reason, to find a person who could, or would, farm the land as well as the previous owner, and I certainly consider that local authorities would have considerable difficulty
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in finding someone of such a calibre to farm the land as effectively and as prudently as the former owner.
The take of agricultural land each year from its normal use is about 50,000 hectares, but we are told that half of this loss is turned into woodland or upland forest. That loss is not so grievous, and in this respect we look forward particularly to the remarks of my noble friend Lord Dulverton, who I hope will be speaking later in the debate.
I was delighted to read in the report, as well as in a very valuable White Paper entitled, Farming and the Nation, of the great contribution to agriculture made by hill land and upland areas. Paragraph 17 of the section of the White Paper referring to land points out that upland areas provide 25 per cent. of the cattle and half of the sheep in the United Kingdom, and that these areas convert otherwise unusable feed into high quality products. Comments of that kind encourage farmers, and so I think there is all the more reason to preserve our grade 1 and grade 2 land, which unfortunately is often around towns in the areas which need to be developed.
I have touched briefly upon three subjects: upland areas and hill land, derelict and unused sites within cities, and the urban fringe areas, which I believe are the saddest of all. I hope that the Ministry will take careful note of the comments we make in the debate today. The deepest gratitude of those within the House, as well as those outside, is due to the noble Lord, Lord Collison, for giving us the opportunity to debate the Strutt Report. A lengthy list of speakers is to follow me, most of them more expert than I, but none care more than I for the wellbeing of our stock of arable and grazing land. I look forward to hearing their remarks as well as the reply of the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi.
3.42 p.m.
Baroness ROBSON of KIDDINGTON: My Lords, I rise to join in the welcome being given to the report and to the opportunity which the noble Lord, Lord Collison, has given us to debate it here this afternoon. When it comes to considering this matter I, like the noble Lord, Lord Lyell, belong to the non-experts in your Lordships' House, but I have a deep love of the countryside and,

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I must admit, a personal interest in the agricultural industry. I welcome the report because it is most comprehensive and deals with almost all the problems that face us in trying to reconcile the quite often opposing demands of the farming community as such and the people living in the urban areas, who have a complete right to the countryside on an equal basis with the agricultural community.
Therefore, I particularly welcome the recommendations in the report to extend the scope of the Agricultural Development and Advisory Service. I am absolutely convinced that this is the right way in which to take the farming community with us when we want to extend and expand their interest in conservation and amenity. A considerable proportion of the agricultural community has a resistance to what they call "the mad conservationists", and I believe that in this respect ADAS is the appropriate agency to use, though of course in consultation with the Nature Conservancy and the Countryside Commission.
At this stage in my speech I wish to apologise for the absence of my noble friend Lord Winstanley, who is chairman of the Countryside Commission. He has asked me to enter a caveat on his behalf, to the effect that he is nervous about the extension of ADAS's interest in conservation and amenity because he is concerned about the duplication of effort. However, I personally believe that what I have mentioned is the right way to go about the matter.
The chapter of the report dealing with management agreements in critical areas appeals to me enormously. The suggestion here is that further assistance should be given to the farmer for conserving the land that belongs to us all. However, there is one point which I cannot understand, and 1 very much hope the Government will look into it. I wonder why a management agreement which is entered into by a farm or an estate should not be an ongoing arrangement extending to the next generation, in much the same way that listed buildings are dealt with. Why should the agreement not be carried over where the land is sold to or is inherited by another person? I find it difficult to understand why it is not possible to work out a way to enable the arrangement to be
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carried over to the next generation, because I believe that this is the only way in which the agricultural community can be persuaded to help in the conservation of especially difficult areas.
The statutory planning process is, rightly, given much prominence in the report. I welcome the demand that structure plans should have to take account not only of top grade land, but also land of lower grade. In particular, I welcome the demand that land scheduled for development should be farmed in the interim if the development is not to take place immediately. That would go a long way towards removing some of the eyesores in the countryside.
I am a little disturbed about the reversion to an area of five acres in connection with the requirement that the Ministry of Agriculture has to be consulted by the planning authorities. I should have thought that an enormous amount of development takes place within much smaller areas, particularly in the countryside. I was going to say "acres", but I ought to say "hectares", though I cannot get used to the term. I have in mind here areas of one or two acres, or hectares. Over a period of time small developments of this kind can drastically change the countryside from an agricultural point of view, and I should have preferred to see the figure lowered to below five acres.
Finally, I want to refer to what I believe to be an omission from the report. I hope that the issuing of the report will ensure that the additional problem which I am about to mention will be looked at by both the Government and the advisory bodies. I have in mind the point that there is nothing in the report to question the agricultural policy which we have followed ever since the end of the war. This has been aimed at promoting food production and enlarging holdings to make food production more economic, which in many ways has resulted in the depopulation of the countryside is an integral part of the problem of agriculture and conservation, and has in many instances involved enormous State expenditure in trying to finance communities which in themselves are no longer viable. It may be that we should look at our policies in this regard.

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I also believe that this matter is important to the agricultural industry itself, because so often in this country there is a lack of a starting point for a young man who enters agriculture. It is very difficult for him to find a farm of the size that he can take on as he is starting out in life. We should consider whether in this country we have gone too far in enlarging agricultural enterprises, which has contributed to the depopulation of the rural areas. Apart from that, I would once again very much welcome the report and thank the noble Lord, Lord Collison, for introducing this debate on it.
3.50 p.m.
Lord SANDFORD: My Lords, agriculture is not enough. Although British agriculture has perhaps nearly two generations of continuous improvement in efficiency behind it, although it is still dominant in the British countryside and probably among the most efficient agriculture in Europe, it is not enough. It is not enough, alone, to sustain the rural economy; it is not enough to sustain a rural community; in many areas it is not enough even to produce a family income; and in many parts of the country it is not enough to conserve our landscape, the wildlife of the countryside or the traditions of the countryside. To do these things, agriculture needs to be combined and integrated with other economic drives, with other social activities, with other sources of income and with other policies for the countryside.
It is because they have been so successful in discerning and acknowledging this fact, and in working out its implications, that I should like to begin by congratulating the Advisory Council, its chairman, Sir Nigel Strutt, and its members, including the noble Lord, Lord Collison, who has been fortunate enough to secure this opportunity for us to debate its report. I should like to congratulate them for having had the insight to see the need for the Ministry of Agriculture to take a wider view of its responsibilities towards the countryside as a whole, and for having such clear insights into the role that ADAS can play as the prime agency in bringing this wider-angled vision to bear throughout the agricultural industry and among the whole farming community.
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It is clear from the study that as the members of the council and the panel went around they encountered a very widespread wish to see agriculture more effectively integrated, and more comprehensive and more coherent policies applied to the countryside. That I would have expected; and I was not surprised to see that they found rather less concord and agreement about how to achieve this integration, because it is indeed extremely difficult. I was glad that they early on renounced the transformation of the Ministry of Agriculture into a Ministry of Rural Affairs; and I was pleased to hear the noble Lord confirm this. Not only would that be too radical; I do not think it would help very much to achieve the objectives. I think the council were rightly sceptical about the practical benefits of tinkering in any other way with the machinery of government in Whitehall, because the kind of thing we are trying to do has to be approached from the other end. That is where their insights are so correct. I think the council were correct in settling for the vaguest possible recipe of consultation at national and local levels. That is about the sum total of what they managed to say in this area, and I am glad they did not go any further, because I believe it is right to be vague and open-minded on that issue at this stage. There is, in my view, far too little experience as yet on how best to progress and to advance towards an integrated rural policy. The fact that we can see the need for it is valuable: we have to proceed by trial and error.
All the experience there is shows that it is best to begin in a small way, from the ground, at local level, in very informal ways. One of the places where it is no bad thing to start is on the footpaths, by which in most cases the public gain access to the countryside, and on the footpath networks. I am glad that the National Farmers' Union, the CLA and the ramblers are effectively co-operating in a number of ways at that level, and I am glad that, in paragraph 203, the council identified this very simple, practical business of improving the footpath network as one of the ways to begin this process.
If one wants to look a little wider, it is not necessary to look beyond the Uplands Management Service in the Lake District, where five years ago a seconded officer from ADAS initiated experiments, which

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have now spread, which enable two men only to operate a management service throughout the Uplands in the whole of the Lake District. So that is some experience on which we can build, in starting and running an Uplands Management Service in other national parks. It does not make very heavy demands on manpower. As I say, two men can do it by mobilising and deploying the resources of the farmers in the Uplands, in one of the major national parks. This also has the benefit of generating a whole lot of permanent employment for a number of small, self-employed contractors. It is achieved with the minimum of red tape, and it is mainly undertaken by personal, on-the-spot discussion, at the minimum cost to taxpayers and ratepayers and considerable benefit both to the farmers and to the public.
This is, I would suggest, one of the most modest but firmest bases on which to build the proposals in this report. The main ingredient to build on, as the noble Lord, Lord Collison, has said, is the confidence and the trust of the farmer, and no service has that trust and confidence to the extent that ADAS has it already. So the Strutt Report recommends that the new role for ADAS and for MAFF should first be discharged in the national parks, and I agree with that. I should like to see the Uplands Management Service, which has already been pioneered, extended to the other parks, whatever else is done. I am not in the least detracting from what my noble friend Lord Lyell said about the urban fringe, because that is the second priority that the Strutt Report identifies.
The advantage of proceeding in the national parks is that each one of these now has a national park management plan for the whole of its land. This is the Lake District one, but there are nine others. They provide the framework, as well as the programme and the priorities, for the work that needs to be tackled, with the leadership and guidance of ADAS. These management plans, already produced in the national parks, provide models for what could be done elsewhere in the countryside—in the urban fringe, certainly; and in certain parts of certain areas of outstanding natural beauty—as a framework for the development of integrated rural policies elsewhere outside the national parks. I think the preparation of
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more of these management plans elsewhere in the country would provide a basis for the constructive co-operation which the Advisory Council advocates from the water authorities, from the Forestry Commission and from other public bodies which own large tracts of land to which the public desire access. It would also provide the framework for consultation which yet has to be developed between MAFF and the local authorities, and particularly the district councils.
Land management plans are not required by statute outside the national parks, so there is scope for plenty of flexibility and trial in deciding how they should be prepared. My personal preference would be for the district councils to take on the task in the remoter rural areas because they themselves have issued a valuable document which we referred to a few weeks ago entitled, Strategy for Survival, directly related to the needs of the remote rural areas. We already have the Uplands Management Service in the Lake District; we already have the land management plans in the 10 national parks as models on which to build and we also have the idea of management agreements, the theory and philosophy of which has now been published by the Countryside Commission.
As practical experience is gained at the scale and level of the Uplands Management Service in the Lake District, it will be necessary to develop them into the larger-scale, more permanent agreements envisaged here. We have to proceed slowly, and, for various other reasons, I expect MAFF and ADAS will want to proceed slowly. Confidence will have to be built up in the local farming communities which are not yet used to these things, from informal personally-agreed schemes worked out on the spot. As the habit of co-operation and understanding between agencies and departments, private landowners and private farmers grows through the production of a local plan of comprehensive land management, the moment will come for public authorities to enter into formal management agreements in writing with farmers and landowners, as the noble Baroness, Lady Robson, has been suggesting.
I should be glad to confirm to the noble Baroness, Lady Robson, that in the Countryside Bill now in the Commons

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We have a clause, Clause 6, I think, which will for the first time make it possible for public bodies and private farmers and landowners to enter into management agreements which are positive as well as negative and which run with the land, as the noble Baroness suggested is the case with listed buildings, rather than with the present owner only. This, coupled with other things that we have, will give the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and ADAS the opportunity to get on and negotiate these agreements in accordance with these plans and in the light of the experience gained in the Uplands Management Service.
This only leaves us in some anxiety about what the Minister will say about this plan. We are grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Collison, and his colleagues for having produced it. But what now is important is a clear statement of the Government's reaction to it. I imagine that we will hear that they accept it in principle. What I fear we will also hear is that in present circumstances, and particularly those of the restraints on public expenditure, it is going to take time to do anything about it. Certainly I do not think that anybody would expect the Ministry and ADAS to implement all these proposals immediately. That would he quite unrealistic. What is important is that we should get a clear statement as to the rate of progress we can now expect. It will not be good enough for the rate of progress in implementing this report, which is an internal report from the Advisory Council to the Minister, to be accepted and then allowed to proceed at a pace set by the internal priorities of that single Department.
This is designed to lead to a comprehensive and coherent approach to rural policy. It will not be good enough for the Minister to accept the report in principle but to implement it at his convenience. If the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food accepts this role, there must be agreement within Whitehall among all the Departments concerned, at the general rate of progress; there must be proper budgetary allocations for so many management plans, so many Uplands Management Services, so much for management agreements, so much for training of this, that or the other number
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of staff. Whatever the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, can say this afternoon, I hope that, if he is not able to be specific about that, he will assure us that sooner or later his Ministry will he. If that can be done, I think that this report will have served the countryside extremely well.
4.5 p.m.
Baroness WHITE: My Lords, I am in somewhat of a dilemma this afternoon. We have two cognate debates, one following the other. As chairman of the Land Authority for Wales, I feel that I have a certain obligation to speak in the second of those debates. On the other hand, as someone intensely interested in the matters dealt with in the report of the Strutt Committee and having had the honour of giving evidence to that Committee, it seems that I should perhaps endeavour to make a few remarks in this debate as well. If one looks at the summary of conclusions and recommendations at the end of the Strutt Report and the second paragraph thereof, one sees stated—in paragraph 180—very plainly:
"Changes in attitude hold the key to success, and they must accompany and sustain any substantial policy or administrative changes. In particular we believe that the Ministry of Agriculture should accept a responsibility to promote conservation and amenity, just as local authorities and other agencies operating in the countryside should have a duty to contribute to the nation's food production aims".
This is what one really wants to learn. It is now almost a year since the Strutt Report appeared. We have been waiting with increasing impatience for some official reaction from the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. I am delighted that my noble friend Lord Collison has obtained this opportunity for, unfortunately, only a short debate on a subject of very wide-ranging interest.
I am sure that my noble friend Lord Strabolgi will not take it amiss when I say that, while we shall listen with great interest and concern to whatever he may have to say, it might in some respects have been more appropriate if a Minister directly responsible in the Department had been in a position to make the first public announcement of the Government's attitude to this important report. I say this because within the last few weeks we have had two official documents issued from the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food—namely, the White Paper,

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Farming and the Nation, and the report on ADAS itself. I am sure we all have the warmest regard for the advisory organisation of the Ministry, but we have had a policy review of the Agricultural Development and Advisory Service and a report of the review group very recently to hand.
In the White Paper, Farming and the Nation there are two rather perfunctory references to wider responsibilities in countryside affairs in addition to the major preoccupation, naturally, with food production. That is not very much, my Lords. In the policy review of ADAS itself we have, of course, certain references which are germane to the recommendations of the Strutt Committee, but it seems rather curious when the Strutt Committee was so emphatic about the role of ADAS (a role with which most of us would concur) that one has a policy review for ADAS itself with virtually no reference to the Strutt Committee— understandably because there has been no official pronouncement on it. About the report which we are debating today, it simply says in paragraph 6.24:
"It is not for us to review the recommendations of the Advisory Council on Agriculture and the Countryside".
So one asks oneself just how much a wind of change has been blowing in the corridors of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. There has not been a great deal of evidence, so far at any rate, of the change in attitude which was— very properly, I think—made the prerequisite of' progress by the Strutt Committee itself. It would be fair to say that the farming organisations are far in advance in their assessment of the change in attitude that is required of the Ministry so far as we know it.
It is possible that my noble friend Lord Strabolgi will be able to be so clear and emphatic in his pronouncements that these suspicions may be laid entirely to rest. I very much hope so. I must confess that until I hear what he has to say, I remain sceptical. Therefore one must reiterate that it is for MAFF, if this is to remain in its hands, to take these matters not merely seriously but, one may hope, even with a certain enthusiasm. I appreciate that the Strutt Committee turned down—and rightly—the concept of Ministry of Rural Affairs. It would be too difficult as an administrative proposition. On the other hand, the whole
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tenor of the Strutt Report is that rural affairs are complex; they are not concerned exclusively with the production of food, important as that is.
Noble Lords in all parts of the House arc well aware that, with the changes in agricultural methods, depopulation of the countryside is still proceeding, and if one is going to have a live countryside one must find other outlets for the energies and interests of those who live there, otherwise they become geriatric dormitories, apart from the strictly food production exercises. A number of points have been touched on concerning planning of the urban fringe. That is something which is equally germane to the second debate this afternoon. I hope to say a word or two about that then. The uplands management experiments to which the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, referred and the national parks are admirable so far as they go.
Regarding management agreements, there are agreements and agreements; and I was very glad that the noble Baroness, Lady Robson of Kiddington, made her point. We have not yet had an opportunity of discussing the Countryside Bill in this House—whether it will ever reach us now seems a little dubious. That is a great pity because some of us would like to probe very much more deeply into the nature of some of these management agreements. The main one in reference to that Bill, the Glenthorne estate agreement, on my information, is very much less likely to be effective than some of its proponents would wish us to believe.
Therefore although management agreements have undoubtedly had their uses, and management schemes have had their uses, they are not in themselves by any means the full answer to the truly integrated development of our rural communities. I was very much encouraged, quite frankly, to see that the National Farmers' Union, who have communicated with several of us down to speak in this debate, point out that in certain areas at least something much more fundamental is needed; namely, a rural development board. I entirely agree that one does not require this at the Whitehall level. A Ministry for Rural Affairs, as I have said, would be too complicated.
There are certain rural areas where the problems are so acute that something

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more specific and comprehensive is needed than the services of ADAS or planning arrangements. ADAS, after all, is advisory; it is not executive. It is now almost 10 years since the very modest experiment in the Pennines and Wales on rural development boards was wiped out by the 1970 Government, to the great indignation of many who knew the real extent of the problems in certain areas.
I seriously suggest that the recommendation made in the comments of the NFU on the Strutt Report, in which it says that the union records its view that the rural development approach to rural problems warrants very careful and sympathetic consideration, be taken seriously.
I do not know whether my noble friend Lord Strabolgi is going to be in a position to comment on that today; quite likely not. However, I am certain that there are sonic places in which one needs more than an advisory service, however admirable it may be, and that, as the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, suggested, we should carry out experiments, but experiments in depth in certain places. I hope that by now, when some of the political dust may have settled—10 years is quite a long time, after all—noble Lords in all parts of the House might agree that an arrangement of this kind in specified areas with intense problems should not be disregarded. My Lords, I revert to my opening sentiments: the Strutt Report in itself has received the warmest welcome from many of us who are much concerned with countryside affairs. We await to be convinced by the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, that it has been taken equally seriously in the highest quarters.
4.17 p.m.
The Earl of CAITHNESS: My Lords, I too am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Collison, for bringing forward this debate. I join with the noble Baroness, Lady White, in criticism of the Government. It is quite wrong that 10 months after such an important report as this has been published we have yet to receive any Government statement, and even this debate precedes one.
Between 1971 and 1978 the average recorded loss of land from agriculture was about 125,000 acres annually, but the
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projected figure is a reduced amount of about 75,000 acres per annum. Nevertheless, this figure represents over half of 1 per cent. of the total rural area of England and Wales. If this country's major industry is to continue to expand as the Government would wish, we cannot afford to lose this amount of land. Other areas of land must be found or planning rationalised to prevent such a loss.
Besides working more closely with the NCC and allowing more public access to the countryside, there are increasing pressures on the farmer to produce more from less land. This will lead to a critical situation. The need for higher output from land is illustrated by the fact that in 1977 our import bill for food and feeding-stuffs amounted to £6,300 million, of which £2,900 million was spent on types of food which we are capable of producing at home. From the NCC point of view, it is the first time in our history that our resources of wildlife will be reduced unacceptably unless we plan to maintain them, even though we have to pay more for them. A decision must be made as to priorities, and the closer all sides can work together, the better we shall be able to make the countryside for our grandchildren. I therefore accept the report's main recommendation that the MAFF has a wider role to play.
Regarding the loss of agricultural land, I was pleased to note the report's conclusion that the 10 acre threshold for consultation should he reduced to two hectares. It is also important that when loss of land is being considered the MAFF and the planners take into full account the "farmability" of the land as well as its inherent physical attributes. Grade 3 land does not mean that it is third-rate land, as some planners seem to think. It might be better to preserve for the future grades 3 and 4 land which are well farmed and being utilised in a highly productive manner, and let grades 1 and 2 land on the urban fringe be taken for an alternative use. In theory this might sound wrong, but in practice, where such land cannot be farmed viably, it would be for the benefit of agriculture, which is a longterm business, to lose the better quality land.
I have one major disagreement with the report. Agriculture is important wherever it is located, and the identification of

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Priority areas as recommended by the report implies that farmland outside those areas is of less importance and therefore more vulnerable to pressure to use that land for non-agricultural purposes. The MAFF should continue to support agriculture over the whole country and not discriminate in favour of any priority area, except where grants are concerned. I welcome the recommendations regarding closer working between the MAFF and the NCC as well as those for the need to encourage farmers and landowners to enter into appropriate management agreements with realistic compensation. There is scope here for further consideration, as we have already heard. In addition, there could be consideration to see whether any help might be given to a farmer or landowner with regard to capital transfer tax.
Paragraphs 164 to 168 of the report discuss water authorities. All the information available indicates that this is a prime example of QUANGOs engaging in activities for which they were not set up. Is there really any need for them to own I per cent. of the total rural area of England and Wales? If that need can be substantiated—and from the evidence I have available it certainly cannot—then should not the authorities be banned from farming land in hand? The land they own would be more productive and would save the taxpayer money if it were all let on a commercial basis on management agreements and with suitable covenants for both the authorities and the tenants.
I should like to say a final brief word about footpaths. I had hoped that the report would recommend a further re-organisation of the present system to suit modern needs, but as it does not I hope that the Government, in the interests of better land utilisation, will bring in some measures that will provide an easier and more flexible system to divert or close footpaths on a temporary basis, which would not in any way impinge on access to the countryside.
4.22 p.m.
Lord HYLTON: My Lords, paragraph 18 of the Strutt Report seems to hit the nail on the head. The final sentence says:
"This trend towards larger-scale, mechanised farming has also had harmful repercussions upon the viability of rural communities in certain areas in terms of reduced job opportunities,
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schooling and transport services, and upon social life generally".
The question of job opportunities is the one with which I am concerned today. I would suggest that is a national objective in the countryside and I very much regret that the Minister did not add the one word "employment" to the terms of reference of the council. Had he done so the recommendations from paragraph 189 onwards would have been much stronger and more positive.
The debate in your Lordships' House on 14th February and the remarks of my noble friend Lord Sandford, I think, have made it quite clear that farming alone is not enough in the countryside. I would suggest that tourism is a help but is not by any means the whole answer. If one looks at the county of Cornwall—a prime tourist county—one finds that it has a very short holiday tourist season indeed, and that during the rest of the year unemployment runs at about 14 per cent., rising in St. Ives to about 21 per cent., I believe. One also finds that the average wages paid in Cornwall are well below the national level. I suggest that we need a choice of commercial and industrial employment within about 30 minutes' travelling distance of where people are actually living.
It is in response to this need that a new kind of voluntary body has come into existence lately. It is called "a local enterprise trust". There are about 30 of them in existence throughout the country and they are trying to do something about high unemployment and about the need to replace dying and static businesses with new sources of employment. The Anglo-German Foundation has just published a study of six local enterprise trusts: four urban and two rural. The two rural ones were situated in West Somerset and in the Lleyn Peninsula of North-West Wales. These local enterprise trusts exist to give advice and encouragement to provide services, to negotiate and to help to organise small entrepreneurs and self-employed people. They are hoping to be able to develop the local economy in any appropriate way and in an appropriate way for any particular place. The question will arise: how can these trusts be financed? The suggestion I should like to put forward is that the model devised for parish halls may be appropriate. If a village wants a

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parish hall it must raise some money itself. This is then multiplied by funds provided from local and central Government.
As well as voluntary bodies, I think that Government bodies have a very considerable contribution to make towards giving us wide and varied employment in the countryside. We all know about CoSIRA and the Development Commission. I very much hope that whatever limitations there are on these bodies will be removed so that they are enabled to help small businesses and small employers, not only in small country towns but also in medium-sized country towns. I hope that the distinction between development, intermediate and other areas will be less, as indeed is suggested in the Strutt Report. The Bolton Report is also lying about on the table. I very much hope that its remaining recommendations relating to small businesses will soon be implemented.
I should like to turn now to buildings. It seems that new businesses and small businesses have the greatest difficulty in finding premises not only of the right size but also at the right price. I think it is generally agreed that there is throughout the country a shortage of "starter units"—places where someone can setup a business initially. I had experience of this myself when connected with an embryo printing business two years ago. Just in the last six months in East Somerset the widest variety of little businesses have been approaching me in the hope of finding premises: cattle food, small brewing, stained glass, builders, furniture, coach and lorry operators, and perhaps even bookbinders.
The one thing they have in common is that none of them seem to be able to afford the price of new purpose-built premises on trading estates. Mostly, they want to rent the premises they need. I suggest that we should look very carefully at redundant farm buildings as a possible source of second-hand but reusable accommodation for these small enterprises. I think we can expect that nationalised industries, particularly perhaps British Rail and the National Coal Board, can make available some of the buildings they still have in the countryside so that they can be put to productive use by others.
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I think, finally, that we need a change in the planning outlook and a presumption in favour of the use of existing buildings for workshops, for light industry and even for offices. No doubt there will have to be safeguards, but I hope the Government will be forthcoming on that one, as indeed on many of the other recommendations in the report.
4.29 p.m.
Lord MIDDLETON: My Lords, the membership of the noble Lord, Lord Collison, of the Advisory Council for Agriculture and Horticulture ensures that what he says today carries weight and authority. May I join with other speakers in expressing my gratitude to him for bringing this report to the attention of your Lordships' House and for the opportunity it gives to debate its contents and recommendations.
The last time we had a general debate on agriculture was nearly two years ago, and I remember pointing out then that there was at that time no firm strategy with regard to land use in this country, nor is there one now. I remember using the Government's own figures for loss of agricultural land to development of various kinds, which they then estimated at around 70,000 acres per year. I also referred to the report Land for Agriculture that had recently been produced by the Centre for Agricultural Strategy, based on Reading University, and I quoted these words from it:
"It is no exaggeration to say that without a more positive approach to land use planning now there is danger of land scarcity in the near future".
That debate was on 27th April, 1977, and in May, 1977, the Minister of Agriculture asked Sir Nigel's Advisory Council to report to him, advising him on ways in which,
"… the Ministry could best contribute towards reconciling the national requirement for economic agricultural and horticultural production, with the development of other national objectives in the countryside".
If the terms of reference had ended just there, then we might conceivably have now been discussing recommendations to Government on developing a national land use strategy, instead of these recommendations, excellent as they are, which are more limited in scope.
They are limited, because the Minister's instruction to the Advisory Council went

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on like this:
"… in the light of public interest in recreation and access and in conservation and amenity".
I should not wish for one moment to underestimate public interest in recreation and access and in conservation and amenity. Such interest is lively and increasing. The need for the 90 per cent. of our population who live in towns to enter into and enjoy a well-kept countryside is very great. As the report shows, this public interest has to be reconciled with efficient food production. But I have to confess to a feeling of disappointment that the Minister did not feel able, or did not then see the need when he drafted these terms of reference, to examine land use in greater depth. I accept that this might have been a heavy task for the Advisory Council. There is, however, an urgent need for a searching inquiry into not only the matters covered by this report, but those, together with all the other demands upon our precious and limited stock of land. It is necessary to examine all these demands and the ways in which they can be reconciled with the national objective of feeding our people.
Sections 2,3 and 4 of the report set out and explain clearly and concisely the role of agriculture, the machinery of administering rural affairs and the statutory planning process and its relationship and impact upon agricultural development. They are excellent and will serve equally well for the kind of wider-ranging survey that I hope for. I was particularly interested in the report's analysis of the planning process. I have participated in this process at most levels from regional planning downwards, and I have studied with much attention the way in which decisions are made that involve taking land out of agriculture.
My own experience leads me to conclusions very similar to those of the Advisory Council and I agree with the recommendations under Section 3. Machinery exists for ensuring that our industrial society uses our land resources wisely. There are, however, better ways of working the system and the report lists some of them. If I mention just three of the planning recommendations, it is because they are those which would help to ensure that the MAFF is able to present the agricultural case more forcefully than it already does.
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They are, first, that both structure and local plans should specify the priorities accorded to agriculture and horticulture. When the Regional Council, of which I am a member, looked at the draft structure plans of our counties, as is its duty, we examined one county council's document and there were many pages, but on not one of them did the word "agriculture" appear at all. So that I heartily endorse this particular recommendation. But most structure plans are now ready for approval and the report came out nearly a year ago. Secondly, the present calling in procedures should be strengthened to require the DOE, at the MAFF's request, to call in any case where there is an unresolved agricultural objection to a planning proposal. I should very much like to hear, when the noble Lord replies, the Government's reaction to this most useful recommendation. Thirdly, the present threshold of 10 acres, above which planning proposals affecting agricultural land must be referred by local planning authorities to the MAFF for advice, should be reduced to five acres. This is long overdue.
This is a short debate and I must resist the temptation to dwell too long on the planning process, but it is through this process that any long-term land use strategy will, in the end, have to be implemented. I turn, therefore, to the other recommendations. I welcome the suggestion that the MAFF should take on a wider responsibility for promoting wildlife and landscape conservation, and I accept that this has implications for its advisory, statutory and regulating work. Probably the ADAS is the best body to advise on how to achieve a balanced use of land. Integration of conservation with agriculture requires considerable skill and additional specialist staff will be required within the ADAS to advise. One does rather wonder where they will come from. There will clearly, as the report points out, need to be a much closer liaison between the MAFF, the Countryside Commission and the Nature Conservancy Council.
If it is decided to consider a change in the role of the ADAS, then this question needs to be answered. In the event of a difference of opinion between food production interests and conservation interests, how will the decision be made? Will there be an appeal procedure? One can envisage this kind of situation.

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A farmer applies for grant aid to drain a wet area. The advisory officer may say to him "This is potentially good land and, if drained, will yield three tons of wheat to the acre. On the other hand, wearing my conservation hat" he may say "I am bound to tell you that it is a breeding ground for a rare butterfly, so not only will you not get your drainage grant but you must not reclaim the land." The farmer may agree or he may say "I think that food production is more important and, anyway, the butterflies breed quite happily on that land next door." Somehow this kind of difficulty would have to be resolved.
With regard to management agreements, I welcome the recommendation that fair compensation be paid. But I hope that this would take the form of annual payments to cover the costs of conservation, rather than a once and for all capital payment. With regard to CTT, which has been mentioned by another noble Lord, there are under present legislation CTT concessions that would go with conservation management agreements, but there is at present a lack of certainty about what land would qualify. I believe that the Government have this in mind, and it may be that we can deal best with this matter when the Countryside Bill comes before us, if it does. I welcome, too, the recommendations for conservation in National Parks, but I know that your Lordships will attach far more weight to the observations of my noble friend Lord Sandford, than to anything that I may have to offer on that subject.
I also welcome the recommendations under the recreation and access section. The report rightly emphasises the problem of land use in the urban fringe areas. We must share the advisory council's concern, and that of my noble friend Lord Lyell, over the productive land that now lies idle and over the permanent loss to agriculture of much high quality land in those areas. Probably the most vigorous recommendation in this section is the one referred to by my noble friend Lord Lyell, that approval of proposals by local authorities for the development of agricultural land be made conditional upon its being demonstrated to the full satisfaction of the Secretary of State for the Environment that there is no suitable under-utilised or derelict land available
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for the purpose elsewhere in the conurbation, particularly in the inner city area. There is, however, at present a lack of the kind of information required for implementing and enforcing some of the recommendations in this section.
Finally, the Strutt Report sets out clearly the conflicts which occur between competing pressures on land. Implementation of the recommendations would help substantially in achieving much better reconciliation between food production and conservation, and in reducing the loss of land to urban development. I look forward to hearing what the Government have to say. I should have preferred wider terms of reference to he given to the Advisory Council, but within its terms this is a most useful report. I very much hope that it heralds the beginning of a process of inquiry from which a national land use strategy will evolve. There is little time to spare.
Lord WALSTON: My Lords, I have already apologised personally to my noble friends Lord Collison and Lord Strabolgi for the fact that at 5.15 I have to take the chair at a meeting elsewhere and therefore will not be able to remain until the end of the debate. I now apologise to subsequent speakers and to the whole House.
This is obviously an important and interesting debate. It has covered, and should cover, a very wide range of subjects. I shall confine myself to but two: to access to the countryside as it affects farmers and town dwellers, and to the maintenance and improvement of the amenities of the countryside, especially in so far as farmers can have an influence upon them.
With regard to the first subject, clearly it is most desirable that as many townsfolk as possible—and not only townsfolk but village dwellers as well who do not happen to own land—should have the opportunity to enjoy those things which the countryside can offer: walking, picknicking, riding and relaxing. I do not think that many farmers have any objection to this. In fact, I believe that most farmers welcome it. But one cannot escape the fact that a very large number of people use the amenities of the countryside—I do not say enjoy them, because I do not think they always do—without paying any regard to the needs of agriculture and

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without having any knowledge of what farming is about.
I do not believe that my experience is in any way unusual. I have frequently found, on a somewhat wet day, charming young ladies galloping their ponies across fields sown with young seeds, without realising that they are harming the crop. They think that in so doing they are exercising their horses, themselves, and their natural rights. When that happens, naturally farmers are not very happy about it. Nor are they happy when, as no doubt many of your Lordships have experienced, a happy young family park their car on the edge of a field full of young corn and play cricket, baseball, rounders or some other game on that growing crop. When—I hope politely—this is pointed out to them, the reply often given is, "Oh, we thought that it was just grass".
There is a lamentable lack of understanding on the part of the non-farming community of what farming is about and of the need to conserve and respect growing crops. I know that a certain amount of work has been done and is being done in schools to try to teach children about this. I know also that in certain areas the National Farmers' Union has attempted to do that job. But there is a very long way to go before we achieve a really happy relationship between the town dweller and the farmer.
I hope that the various bodies—the local education authorities, the Country Landowners' Association, the National Farmers' Union, the Countryside Commission and the rest—will devote more effort than they are at the moment to educating townspeople as to the right sort of behaviour in the countryside. They need to be educated not only not to leave their litter in the countryside but also not to throw their mattresses and prams into the shelter belts which exist on farms. I am afraid that this is normal procedure. Townspeople also need to be taught what farming is about, what crops are, and how they need to be looked after and respected.
My second point relates to the conservation and improvement of the amenities of the countryside. First, may I suggest to your Lordships that it is a very great error to think that in March 1979 our countryside has reached the pinnacle of its beauty and attractiveness. We love
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our countryside not only for what we see today—and for what those of us who are older saw 20, 40 or even 60 years ago —but because this is a dynamic process. The countryside is continually changing and adapting itself.
Just as some of us may regret that WC no longer hear the hum of the threshing drum and the wonderful noise that the steam engine made because it has been replaced by the clatter of the combine harvester, so I am quite sure that our fathers regretted that they no longer heard the very special noise of the scythe cutting against the stalks of corn as they watched the women and children following behind the men with the scythes and gathering up the corn into stooks. We cannot look upon the countryside as a museum that has to be preserved exactly as it is today, or as it was when we were somewhat younger and more impressionable. It must always be seen to be a growing and developing area of land, adapting itself to the economic needs of farming but—while preserving, where necessary and where it can—at the same time creating new sources of beauty, interest and enjoyment for those who live in the country and also for those who live in the towns.
How can we do this? To a certain extent it is a matter of taste. What makes the countryside beautiful to one person makes it less attractive to others. Some people, including myself, like the wide open spaces of the heathlands of East Anglia. Others like the small lanes and hedges of the West Country. We all remember the great outcry that there has been against the removal of hedges; yet much of the countryside is more beautiful as a result of hedges being removed, especially untidy and overgrown hedges. But that is a matter of taste, so we cannot be dogmatic about it. Nevertheless, I think we can all agree that it would be a shame if certain buildings were to disappear. I believe that we also all agree that trees of any kind must be preserved, that new trees must be planted and that dead trees, particularly as a result of elm disease, must be removed, as they are eyesores, and replaced by new young trees.
There is insufficient time to go into various other subjects. The farmer or the landowner—but more often the landowner than the farmer, although they may

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be the same person—must take an interest in them. I believe that most farmers and landowners take that interest. Even those who do not take that interest are changing their attitude towards the countryside, because of public interest in the subject which is increasingly being expressed. So that matter is already taken care of.
However, one must have knowledge of how to look after the countryside. It is not just a question of sticking a sapling into the ground and hoping that it will grow. Knowledge of trees is needed, and knowledge of siting, too. Therefore I support the suggestion that ADAS should be brought in. I do not see any contradiction in ADAS promoting the efficiency of agriculture and at the same time reminding their clients, the farmers, of the importance of the environment and giving them professional advice, or putting them in touch with those who can give it.
Money, however, will be needed. I do not want to stand before your Lordships and say that the farmers are always short of cash and are having a very hard time. All I would say is that if the public at large, the urban dweller, expects the farmer to cut down dead trees, to have tidy hedges, to plant new copses and to retain and renovate old buildings, it will cost money. That money can come either—but God forbid!—from Government sources or out of the farmers' own profits. But if the profits of farmers are unduly squeezed, they will not be able to carry out this work. We have only to look at the deterioration of our countryside in the years between the two World Wars to see what happens when farmers' profits are unduly squeezed. We only have to look today, when farming is more profitable, to see that a lot of money is being spent by farmers in the maintenance and improvement of amenities.
So I would say to your Lordships that we must accept that the landscape is continually changing; we must do what we can to ensure that it is changing in such a way that those things which we really cherish are maintained; that the changes that do take place enhance rather than detract from the beauty; that farmers are encouraged to do this and are helped through professional advice to do this,
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and that the consuming population—the urban population—should realise that all these things that they are asking for cost money and that, in the final analysis, it is the farmer and the landowner who have to pay for it.
4.51 p.m.
Lord DULVERTON: My Lords, in following the noble Lord, Lord Walston, I should like to say how much I have enjoyed his delving into nostalgia for the past as well as his very commonsense warning about being too much influenced by it in our treatment of the country in the future. I should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Collison, very much for giving us the opportunity to have this most interesting debate this afternoon, to which I intend to contribute hardly a speech but just one point. I hope that noble Lords will not feel that I am too single-minded in referring once again, as I have to your Lordships on numerous other occasions, to the position of forestry and the sort of problems about which we have been speaking this afternoon. At any rate, I hope that if your Lordships think I am too single-minded I shall be absolved from any accusation of being narrow-minded about it.
Without touching upon so many of the general points which crop up in this report and which are the concern of us all, myself included—and I would say in passing how much I agree with and admire the way my noble friend Lord Middleton put things a few minutes ago—I jump straight to my point because I want to be as brief as I can in this short debate. Section two of the Strutt Report, paragraph 10, tells us that grades 4 and 5 land amount to 34 per cent. of the land in England and Wales. That of course is the poor upland pastures of the marginal lands and the hills themselves. It follows up in paragraph 11 by saying that over the past years 3,900—is it hectares or acres?—have been going out of agriculture into forestry and woodland and that this is mostly taking place in the grades 4 and 5 land.
The report goes on to say that this figure in relation to forestry is expected to stabilise. I just wonder what led Sir Nigel Strutt and his Committee to come to that conclusion, because in the light of what we have all now come to refer to as the

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Forestry Commission's blue book there are strong arguments advanced for giving consideration to a considerable increase in the forestry acreage. We are expecting at any moment now the report on forestry by the Centre for Agricultural Strategy at Reading University. We do not know what they may be suggesting, but I guess that they may not be very far away from the arguments advanced by the Forestry Commission.
There is no time to go into the arguments or the evidence suggesting the need to double the acreage of our forests. The arguments are there and this is not the occasion to debate them, although I hope perhaps your Lordships will find time to do so before this year is out. This, and the very low level of farm productivity prevailing over that 34 per cent. of the land in the uplands, point to an urgent need for encouraging by every possible means an intensification of pastoral agricultural methods. That means capital investment in such things as fencing and grassland improvement by the use of fertilisers, re-seeding techniques, the provision of roads, the renewal of buildings, et cetera. Such measures, if they were adopted, would make possible the production of livestock at existing or even at enhanced levels from a fraction of the land which is now being used for the extension system of grazing.
The corollary to my last statement, that one could do it on smaller acreages, is obvious. Land in adequate measure could thus—and I suggest only thus—become available for the sort of expansion of forestry that some say we need. As a small and heavily populated island, we cannot afford to leave our hill areas under-utilised as they are at the moment. Investment by both public and private sectors towards greater productivity of the hill country is a need which the Government and the country must face up to and tackle, and the productivity must come from farming and forestry integrated together as primary products of the land.
Paragraph 28 of the Strutt Report touches on capital grants for farm improvements. Are they enough, and arc they of the right sort to produce the required action in the hills? Is ADAS—an organisation to which the report pays very proper tribute—doing enough to
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encourage these desirable developments in adequate degree? If the answer to these questions is "yes", why is it not happening? It is not happening at all fast.
I commend these thoughts to the attention of your Lordships. The rate of return from investment in hill-land improvement, whether forestry or farming, may be low but it is an investment that we, in our present position in the world, must make for our successors, if not for ourselves. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, who is always so courteous and helpful, will bear these considerations in mind in replying to the debate.
4.58 p.m.
Lord DAVIES of LEEK: My Lords, this has been an excellent debate and I sincerely hope that I shall take a lesson from the rest of your Lordships and discipline myself to speak for a very short period though we have not had a general debate on agriculture for a long time and I think that we should have at least the opportunity for a full debate on agriculture in the very near future. Nevertheless, with other noble Lords I congratulate my noble friend Lord Collison on raising this issue today.
I pay tribute to all who worked on the Strutt Report but I wish to add one little semantic criticism. I am tired to death of Government reports being loaded with acronyms—all these letters! There should be a dictionary at the beginning of a report. In one Committee on which I sat I insisted that we put at the beginning what all the acronyms meant. A lot of people are laymen and we want the laymen in agriculture to understand, so for God's sake let us at least put the full title at the beginning of a page so that if the reader has forgotten what "ADAS" stands for—and I can think of other things that it stands for, too—there is a definition.
As an old hand at politics I have always bought the Conservative Guide. It is marvellous stuff. I am not being facetious. If I wanted the best political information for my election campaigns I would get the "Conservative notes for Labour candidates"! Of course I was frightened to death at one time, although it is good information. At page 343 of the Campaign Guide for the 1970 Election, just before we were rolled into the Common Market—

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and I will show your Lordships its relevance to the Strutt Report in a moment —it says:
"The Commission's Vice-President, Mr. Mansholt, published his reform proposals [for agriculture] in December 1968. They drew attention to the growing problems if policies remain unchanged—the 'butter mountain' (surplus) will soon run out of storage space".
Not that the mountain would run out but that the storage space would run out was the problem. It has done it for cabbages, too. This sentence frightened me to death:
"The cost of financing present policies could rise to £5,000 million by 1985. Apart from proposals to adjust current prices (notably to cut the butter intervention price by 30 per cent.) Mr. Mansholt's long-term proposals are farseeing and drastic, involving the retirement of"
wait for it—
"five million farmers by 1980".
There is a modern word; this is just kitsch, pretentious nonsense. I want to know what is going to happen to the farmers whom we say in the Strutt Report we are going to try to improve. Or are we going to eradicate the little man completely? Listen to the next bit:
"taking out of production agricultural land equal to the area of Belgium".
We are now in the Common Market. What powers have we to run some of these excellent suggestions without being told what we can do and cannot do inside our own country? It is no good pretending, no good at all. I shall leave it at that and pick up some points in the next five minutes which I am allowing myself.
The great question asked in the report is how the Ministry of Agriculture can reconcile various interests, and the chairman's foreword demonstrates that we need co-operation. He says:
"We have found it impossible to restrict ourselves to agriculture during the course of our inquiry, encountering as we did so many areas of concern to other Departments".
He then mentions the eight main areas: machinery and its administration in rural affairs, statutory planning, landscape and nature conservation, recreation and access, the urban fringe. I was delighted with Lord Lyell's report and that of another noble Lord on the intelligent use of the urban fringes which could produce lots of food.
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The other main area was land owning and public bodies. That brings me to the Treasury. I should have liked to see two other bodies consulted by Strutt. Was the Treasury called in? Was the Ministry of Education called in? An appeal was made by the noble Lord, Lord Walston, an informed temperate and tropical farmer: how do you expect to encourage a unity with agriculture if you are going to destroy all the rural schools in Britain and cart little children miles away to the so-called central schools? There is a certain age at which the rural child can have as good an education in a small class in a rural school as he will get if he is carted through the snows of the Derbyshire Peak District. From those local schools many of them get to universities, get their A-levels and get their Higher. The organisation of the rural school should be reassessed in relation to the Strutt Report, in relation to modern agriculture and in relation to the modern understanding of our land.
I was delighted and gave a hearty hear, hear! to the reports on factories. There are two other reports that we should have. Please do not think I am being didactic. Farming and the Nation is of paramount importance, and an analysis of the possible patterns of agricultural production up to 1983 is also of vital importance. But I put the Treasury's relationship with all these organisations in first place. If we take the Council for Small Industries in Rural Areas—its acronym is CoSIRA—it found lots of work and lots of rural arts and crafts. I had better give the council a little praise. Country Life, which I read regularly, on 14th December 1978 had a leading article on rural renewal. It said:
"Perhaps the silliest of all Treasury rules governing the use of public funds is that money not spent in one financial year cannot be carried forward to the next; it must either be disbursed during the allotted 12 months or it is forfeited".
That is the cause of a lot of waste of money in the National Health Service, because they spend the money to get rid of it. The Treasury should have been brought in.
"That encourages extravagance because administrators, being human, prefer money spent to money returned to the Treasury, for not only is unspent money lost during the financial year but an equivalent amount is liable to be lopped off the subsequent annual grant".
The Council for Small Industries in Rural Areas and to a lesser extent, the National

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Council for Social Service and Rural Community Councils are aware of this. I am now summarising because I have spoken for eight minutes and I think I had better finish at that point.
I really and truly believe that what this House has said about agriculture having a say in five acres (to use this terrible word "hectare"—and a hectare is 2¼ acres) should come back again to what it was before 1970. We should have a Ministry of Agriculture really having a say before land use changes. Finally, we should somehow or other get the Treasury to realise that this silly rule of theirs does not save taxpayers' money but destroys the possibility of constructive action, particularly as regards the countryside. There was an appeal not to make the countryside a rural museum. One of the ways not to make it a museum is to encourage rural arts and crafts and small businesses and factories to come to Britain's countryside. I have no fear ultimately about the success of the British people, but, in seeking that success, for God's sake watch the bureaucracy in the Common Market.
5.8 p.m.
Lord SKELMERSDALE: My Lords, I mean the noble Lord, Lord Collison, no disrespect if I start off by referring to the very beginning of the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Leek, whom I have been privileged to listen to on many occasions recently in your Lordships' House, and his speech was none the less enjoyable today than it has been on previous occasions. I would invite him to set up with me an organisation with the title BAN—Ban Acronyms Now. He and I share exactly the same point of view on this particular subject.
We are of course indebted to the noble Lord, Lord Collison, for introducing this very important subject for discussion this afternoon, and for introducing, if I may be allowed to say so without condescension, in such a clear-cut way what is such a very all-embracing report. The debate has moved along in a swiftly flowing stream and (shall I say?) on a rather temperate level. The temperature was slightly raised just now by the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Leek, in his inevitable way. But I must say that this report is the only one that I have seen that really had my
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blood boiling. Again, I mean no disrespect to the chairman of the Advisory Council for Agriculture and Horticulture, Sir Nigel Strutt, nor indeed to the noble Lord, Lord Collison. But the Council was set up, we are told—in fact, it is not actually contained in the report but is just a general introduction to the subject—
"To consider and report on agricultural and horticultural matters within the field of responsibility of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food".
That is fair enough and your Lordships may well ask what made my blood boil. At page 2, paragraph 7 of the report proper says:
"Yet agriculture (together with horticulture) still makes a significant contribution to the national gross domestic product (about £2,760 million in 1976)".
That is all very fine, but of that total horticulture amounted to a gross total of £593 million. I would say that an industry producing items—whether food or not—of that size is entitled to be called an industry in its own right. I agree that there are problems in determining where agriculture stops and horticulture begins —for example, potatoes are now regarded as an agricultural crop; cabbages on many sites are regarded as agricultural crops; second grade roses which are available are now regarded as agricultural crops, whereas formerly we would have called them horticultural crops. However, as I have said, the amount is no mean amount and to lump the two industries together in that way is something which has gone on in the public mind for far too long. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, will follow the lead of his Department and, with me, try to put a stop to it this evening.
I do not want to speak for too long. However, there is one matter which illustrates what I am trying to say and that concerns the pressures of land. Horticulture is found to a large extent, although I would admit not totally, on the fringe areas around urban developments. Nowadays one whizzes to London Airport on the M.4, but before that road was built I was a regular mover along the A.4, which was the main road. Between the outskirts of London and Heathrow Airport there are large amounts of horticultural land, producing, of course, horticultural crops for the metropolis. London has expanded and that land has shrunk; the airport has expanded and that

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land has shrunk. One could well say that those are also the problems of agricultural land.
However, horticultural land has another competitor and that, of course, is agriculture. It is expensive to get hold of small parcels of land. I believe that at present the average price is somewhere between £800 and £2,000 an acre for agricultural land. In small areas of less than five acres it can, in my part of the world in West Somerset, be as high a £5,000 an acre. One must produce a great many crops to be able to justify overheads of that kind. I feel very strongly that, when agriculture and horticulture are looked at in a report such as this one, agriculture swamps horticulture, which is not only unfair but manifestly unjust.
Finally, I note, again from the report, that the Advisory Council was set up in 1973 for three years and was reappointed in 1976 for three years. It is now 1979 and I hope that it will be reappointed for a further term and that the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, will have something to say on that matter. When it is reappointed I hope that it will look much more carefully at the dissimilar problems of horticulture which, of course, come very directly within its remit.
5.15 p.m.
Lord STRABOLGI: My Lords, in company with other noble Lords, I should like to thank my noble friend Lord Collison for choosing this very important subject for debate and for introducing it so clearly and so well. We have listened with great interest to the points which he and other noble Lords have made, and I was particularly interested in my noble friend's account of the evidence given by the many organisations which the Strutt Committee consulted on a countrywide basis.
The Strutt Report is a major contribution to a greater understanding of the importance of agriculture and agricultural production on the one hand, and of conserving the natural beauty and amenity of the countryside on the other; and the importance of reconciling such conflicts as may from time to time arise between them. Here I should like to pay a tribute to Sir Nigel Strutt and his Committee,
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of which, of course, my noble friend Lord Collison was a distinguished member.
As the report makes clear, the problems arising from the multiple use of the countryside are not easy of solution. The report says that only imaginative action, and adequate resources of manpower and money, will ensure material progress towards their resolution. There have been a good number of speakers today —I am very glad that there have been—and my time is short. Perhaps I can use it best by summarising the Government's response to this extremely important report. I hope to answer my noble friend Lady White and the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, and to go rather further than perhaps both of them expected.
My right honourable friend the Minister and the Secretaries of State for the Environment and Wales have accepted the central recommendation of the Advisory Council that the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food could and should play a more positive role in countryside affairs. They also accept in principle the recommendation that they should extend the existing knowledge of ADAS in environmental matters, and develop its capacity to provide guidance to farmers on conservation. My right honourable friends point out, however, that it would be wrong to take on this new task without being sure that the necessary resources can he made available. They will therefore have to consider whether the necessary training programme and a continuing extra workload can be undertaken in the light of calls on other public expenditure and without prejudice to the Service's other important tasks, particularly the basic one of helping to improve the efficiency of the agricultural industry. As and when it becomes possible to do that, it will be done, for, as my noble friend has said, the ADAS officer is seen as a friend of the farmer. Meanwhile, ADAS will continue to act in consultation with the local authorities and statutory conservation agencies and give full weight to environmental aims in the course of their normal work.
My right honourable friends fully endorse the Council's recommendations on promoting a better understanding between town and country-as referred to by my noble friend Lady White—and

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on the need for consultation and co-operation at all levels between all those concerned with rural affairs. They hope that, both at county level and below, local authorities will take the lead in bringing together the many interests concerned. The two Agricultural Departments will take part in projects of this kind to the extent that resources allow.
My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for the Environment and his right honourable friends are agreed that the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food should, as the council suggest, take an even more active part in the planning process but without disturbing the present responsibilities of central and local Government. He points out that as living standards rise there is bound to be a continuing demand for land resources for new, socially desirable uses, and the planning system continues to offer the most appropriate mechanism for guidance and control. At the same time existing legislation offers new opportunities for local planning authorities to relieve pressure on agricultural land by developing derelict, vacant or under-used land within existing built-up areas whenever this is reasonably practicable.
If agricultural land has to be taken, the amount should be no greater than is reasonably required. Land of a higher quality should not be taken where land of a lower quality can sensibly be used. My right honourable friend regards these guidelines as extremely important and will normally expect to call in for his own decision proposals for the development of good agricultural land which depart significantly from development plans and to which there is an outstanding objection by the Minister.
The Secretary of State and the Minister stress that when preparing their local plans, local planning authorities should carefully weigh the needs for development of land against the need to retain land for food production whenever possible. Ministry of Agriculture officials will be available to help authorities in considering the agricultural aspects. In order to help any local planning authority which is in need of advice on applications for the developing of smaller areas, the Minister has instructed his officials to accept requests for advice on areas down to five acres of agricultural land.
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The problems of the loss of food production from the under-farming of land awaiting development, referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Robson of Kidding-ton, require further consideration. The complex problems of the urban fringe, on which the council lays particular emphasis, call for a long-term study, such as is now being made by the Countryside Commission.
The noble Lord, Lord Lyell, asked what steps we were taking over derelict land. Grants are payable to local authorities for the reclamation of such land under various Acts: the Land Employment Act 1972, the Local Government Act 1966 and the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949. Grants are either capital grants or they are revenue grants paid annually over 60 years on the basis of 50 per cent. of notional annual loan charges. My noble friend Lady White asked about the Rural Development Board. This was, and still is, an interesting concept which has many supporters. The Strutt Report hoped that in considering the report's proposals for a closer integration of the various interests in the country areas, the Minister would have regard to the concepts and objectives of the Rural Development Board. The Strutt recommendation is for a consultative machinery at local and national level, aimed at a better co-ordinated approach to the problems of rural areas, with special regard to reconciling conflicting interests. I dealt with that in general terms earlier in my speech.
The noble Lord, Lord Middleton, raised a number of points. He asked about manpower implications. If the recommendations to give an enhanced role to ADAS are implemented, they will require an estimated 100 man years, but that is tentative only. It is very difficult to estimate over the long term what the advisory, promotional and grant aid administration will entail. We also fully agree with the Council that the formulation of detailed local plans is a vital step in the planning machine. The MAFF is fully alive to the opportunity here for influencing local strategy and is already closely involved in consultations at this stage. The noble Lord, Lord Middleton, also asked about capital grant schemes for conservation. Capital grants are payable to farmers under the Farm Capital

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Grants Scheme, the Horticulture Capital Grants Scheme and the Farm and Horticulture Development Scheme. Where additional expenditure is incurred, in order to conform to conservation or amenity requirements, the grant payment can take account of this. Examples would be the shape, colour or materials of farm buildings, the planting of screening belts, the provision of access roads to take account of special siting requirements and walling to match landscape. Those works attract grant at the same rate as the main agricultural works with which they are connected.
The noble Lord, Lord Dulverton, asked about forestry grants. Forestry grants are made under the Basis I, Basis 2 and Basis 3 Schemes. The latest statement of forestry policy and grants was made in 1977. I am glad to say that there has been a pleasing and increasing take-up of these grants. Amenity considerations are taken into account by the Forestry Commission when applications are made to them under these three forestry grant schemes.
The noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, took my right honourable friend the Minister and the council to task for not giving, as he thought, sufficient emphasis to horticulture. Both horticulture and agriculture were referred to in the Minister's request to the Advisory Council. Although it is true that horticulture is not specifically referred to in the report—except in the way the noble Lord quoted—what is said there applies, of course, to horticultural interests and activities as much as to those of agriculture itself, as the term "agriculture" is normally taken to include horticulture. The report examines how to reconcile differences of view. The detailed examination of agriculture and horticulture is contained in the White Paper Farming and the Nation. I hope that that has done something to reassure the noble Lord that we attach as much importance to horticulture as he does.
The most important change of all is the need for a change in the attitudes among certain farmers—fortunately, a small minority—and members of the public. The farmer should understand and accept that he does not have exclusive rights over his land to the exclusion of all other interests. He is the custodian of a vitally
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important part of our national heritage, and he must realise that others as well as himself have an interest in that heritage. The visitors to the countryside—particularly those from the towns, who may not always be used to country ways, as described by my noble friend Lord Walston—must learn to accept that the primary task of our farmland, whether it be arable land or the open hill, is the production of food for the nation and is not there solely to provide them with an afternoon's recreation, as the Strutt Report emphasises.
Changes of attitude are often the slowest and most difficult of all things to bring about. I feel sure that they will be brought about, given the necessary leadership and help by the Government Departments and countryside agencies and, above all, by goodwill on all sides. We are grateful to Sir Nigel Strutt and to his Advisory Council for their extremely interesting and far-seeing report.
The Earl of CAITHNESS: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, will he please answer the point I raised about water authorities? Can he give us some sort of time-scale on the considerations of finance that the present Government are giving to this matter?
Lord STRABOLGI: My Lords, I am afraid that I cannot. If I may, I shall write to the noble Earl.
Lord DULVERTON: My Lords, I did not want to interrupt the flow of the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, but it seems that I failed to make myself clear when I referred to hill farming improvements. It was the grants and the incentives for improving hill farms, not the grants available for forestry, about which I was really concerned when I spoke. I do not expect the noble Lord to be able to answer off the cuff now, but I should be grateful if he could give the matter his attention after the debate.
Lord STRABOLGI: Yes, my Lords; I shall certainly take note of what the noble Lord has said with his great knowledge, and pass this on to my right honourable friends and go into it and write to him, if I may, at a later date.
5.30 p.m.
Lord COLLISON: My Lords, in my speech I said that I hoped that my noble

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friend would be able to give us some indication of the Government's reaction to the report, and other noble Lords did so as well. I am grateful to him for speaking as he did and giving us an indication of what is the Government's reaction. I want to study what he has said very carefully. It appears that a number of the recommendations that the Strutt Committee made have been accepted: the more positive role for agriculture, the ADAS in principle. But here Lord Sandford's worry about the availability of cash was also quite evident. Nevertheless, in principle the Strutt Committee recommendation that there should be consultation at all levels has been accepted; again to be dealt with as resources allow. The five-acre threshold has been accepted. I am extremely grateful.
As I said, I shall study the report very carefully, and I am sure that Sir Nigel Strutt and the rest of his Committee will do so too. The response from noble Lords has been generous and heartening. No one raised any strong objection to the recommendations made in the report, and what was said was encouraging to me and I am sure will be encouraging to Sir Nigel and the rest. I am grateful to your Lordships. I beg leave to withdraw the Motion for Papers.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE (EMERGENCY PROVISIONS) (SCOTLAND) BILL
Brought from the Commons; read 1a, and to be printed.

SECOND LAND UTILISATION SURVEY
5.32 p.m.
The Earl of ONSLOW The Earl of ONSLOW rose to call attention to the Second Land Utilisation Survey, and in particular to the creation of extra waste land both urban and rural; and to move for Papers. The noble Earl said: My Lords, perhaps it is slightly unlucky that we are having two debates on much the same subject in one day. However, we cannot but be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Collison, for his debate. I think that the Strutt Com-
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mittee's Report and I have the same interests, which I believe to be those of the country as a whole.
In the lands of Essex and Kent that surround the Thames Estuary waste land has increased from 5 per cent. to nearly 10 per cent. of the total in 10 years: that is 5 per cent. to 10 per cent. of the total area. Commercial office and residential building has increased by only half of one square kilometre. That is a bad bargain for posterity, even if we take into account the small increase in roads, public open space, industry, and mineral extraction. Does this confirm Lord Strabolgi's confidence in the planning procedure?
There is in fact more to come. I became interested in what we did with our land because of what I saw about me in Surrey, through my limited travels about the Kingdom, and through a countryman's feeling of threat from urban and suburban pressures. My great grandfather recognised it a hundred years ago, because when building new tenant farmers' houses he built them big because he said they would make good houses for good middle-class doctors when London spread.
This interest and concern has been confirmed and elucidated by the Second Land Utilisation Survey and, above all, by the passion and missionary zeal of its director, Dr. Alice Coleman. This passion and zeal arose in her as a result of statistical and scientific study revealing the waste and profligacy with which we treat our countryside. The study has shown that agricultural land is being used at a terrifying speed. If the loss was for a good reason perhaps it would be worthwhile, but the majority is just going by default, as I have already illustrated.
Another example, not from the Second Land Utilisation Survey but from my own observation: Corby in Northamptonshire is due to suffer a socially devastating closure of a large part of its steel plant. In the town there are new houses boarded up and uninhabited. Soon there will be large tracts of industrial wasteland. Not eight miles away from Corby I saw last week a hoarding advertising the sale of 99 acres of greenfield site for industrial use. Why? Is that good planning?
I come into London by train to Waterloo. I see round Nine Elms and Battersea large tracts of unused wasteland, part no doubt of the 80 square kilometres of the wasteland in the GLC area. Yet pressure still grows on the Green Belt. Why? Is this good planning? Basildon New Town has been built on agricultural land to the east of Basildon. Yet idle waste scrub has been left idle, wasteful, and scrubby to the west. Why? Is this good planning? The problem of wasteland and its creation, and the consumption of agricultural land, are further complicated by what Dr. Coleman calls "rurban fringe". It was alluded to in the previous debate. This "rurban fringe" is defined as the surrounding, isolating penetration and consequent sterilisation of farmland by urban development. A train ride to Windsor from Waterloo will show it at either its superb best or horrifying worst, whichever way your Lordships would like to look at it. It is the opposite of in-filling.
As a result, farming costs increase from vandalism, trespass, and, in some cases, pests, and thus this can lead to the farmland being abandoned. It very often gets taken up by what is called "horsey-culture", which is rather bad ponies grazing on bad land. Obviously they give great pleasure to the people who own them, and so they should. But it seems to me a waste of land.
Dr. Coleman has produced figures and maps to prove this abandonment of land and this creation of "rurban fringe". What is most unfortunate is that she has made these marvellous coloured maps but only 15 per cent, of them have been printed. It would be of great benefit to councils, planning authorities and, if I may say so, Government, if these could be printed. But a grant would be necessary for that to happen. I believe that it would cost something in the region of £3 million to finish the printing of these maps. The "rurban fringe", she has shown, extends round most urban cities over more than twice the compact townscape area. The problems of waste "rurban fringe" and consumption of agricutural land are so interlocking that they are as a harem of problems where it is impossible to choose one lady for attention because of the offence given to the others.
My Lords, planning arose as a result of Dudley Stamp's First Land Use Survey and the conviction that uncontrolled development created slums and sprawl, squalor and waste. The Second Land Utilisation Survey has shown that the problems identified by Stamp are still with us. Planning has not reduced sprawl. The reverse. Planning has not diminished waste. The reverse. Planning has not abolished squalor. The reverse. There are the slums that have been created in the set of tower blocks in Kirkby, which the local authority are going to have to give away, I believe, because they cannot find a buyer, the problem is so bad. The wasteland would still be recognised by Goering's photo-reconnaissance pilots if they flew over Liverpool. It is still there. The sprawl of Milton Keynes, with its concrete cows set in deodorised fields, is a phenomenon all of which has arisen since the advent of planning. The Isle of Dogs has suffered from urban blight. Renewal and reincarnation were definitely necessary. Houses were to be built on attractive riverside frontages and old industry moved. Unfortunately, industry was easily moved to cheaper new town and thus greenfield sites and no new industry came. Unemployment rose, rates rose, the needs for taxes rose, and the tax income fell. An air of decrepitude was all pervading, driving away private money, and financial constraints were applied to public authorities.
In Tower Hamlets, dockers who had accepted money as a result of decasualisation wanted to buy their houses, but the local authority would not let them and consequently they migrated, to the general impoverishment of the borough. Even though the population density per acre is much lower than it was before the war, I believe the population density per room to be exactly the same.
We now recognise that tower blocks produce vandalism among the young, depression among middle-aged mothers and fear among the aged. We also know they do not have the community spirit of the old terraced slums. Is it not odd that houses originally built from a pattern book for the working classes in Chelsea, Fulham, Kensington and Islington now fetch high prices while others are being pulled down in other boroughs to make

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way for newer and possibly less satisfying types of housing?
The construction of roads is extravagant in the use of land. Incidentally, the Government do not have the figures of land lost to agriculture in this way. Verges are wide, curbs grandiloquent and bits of field are left between motorways and railways; I have seen this both on the M.1 and M.5 in the last 14 days. Surrey County Council has widened a road which passes through my farm. Why does a carriageway need a wider verge, nearly its own width, when this carriageway is turned from a two-way to a one-way? We cannot afford land extravagance such as that.
The argument that we can always go on producing enough food for all with a reduced acreage, as Robin Best, reader at Wye, asserts, is an illogicality based on a short-sighted, penny-pinching, pound foolishness. In spite of our mountains of butter, lakes of wine and olive oil and occasional surpluses of beef, Europe is a net food importer. We are effectively farming large areas of the United States for animal food protein. When we sort out our mountains and lakes, which is surely within the wit of man, if they can avoid the temptation to make emotional squeaks and huffs in order to try to keep their leprous fingers on the levers of power, then the food situation in Europe will be apparent.
Between 1945 and 2000 the world population will probably double. The growth economies of the newly-industrialised countries will demand higher nutritional standards and consequently much more proteins and carbohydrates per head, and above all more meat. The United States eats only 10 per cent. of the grain it consumes, the rest goes to animal food or exports. Incidentally, it also uses 2 million tons of nitrogenous fertiliser on gardens and golf courses, a useless piece of information which I thought might amuse your Lordships.
From where will this food increase come? Europe will have to become self-sufficient, and so will we. This means we must not use land at the rate of 70,000 acres a year; 191·78 acres a day, or 191·25 in a leap year. Those are Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food figures, while Dr. Coleman's are
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higher. When I started reading up about land loss I did not realise quite how many other things were involved; sociology and economics, conservation and politics, transport and energy, food and mineral extraction—all and many others are mixed up and most clash. Sometimes they meld strangely like the peregrines who have taken to nesting in an office tower in Wales.
A perfect example of this clash, I suggest, is the Vale of Belvoir. The social cost of mining the Vale of Belvoir and the economics appear different to the Coal Board and the people of north-east Leicester. Belvoir is good quality agricultural land, there is no unemployment to speak of and it is a settled and prosperous community with few social stresses. Selby is being mined, some would say unnecessarily, as the Central Electricity Generating Board has forced the Government to subsidise Drax B, which it does not want. United Kingdom energy demand in 1975 was 341 million tons of coal equivalent, and in respect of the year 2000 there are at least three forecasts. The lowest band of the lowest forecast is 11 million tons less of coal equivalent than the present consumption. The highest part of the highest band is 650 million tons; surprise, surprise—that comes from the Coal Board! The Ministry forecasts in the figures I last saw were 450 million to 560 million tons of coal equivalent. Incidentally, during the Windscale inquiry the CEGB altered its electricity needs forecast two or three times.
On the other hand, we know that North Sea oil is due to run out early next century, but we are still finding new oil reserves, admittedly more expensive to extract. However, oil reserves as a multiplier of annual use is much smaller now than it was in 1945. Coal is a great national resource and must be used, but how can it be used without disturbing old communities, how can it be used to revitalise other old ones and how can we extract it without mining the Vale of Belvoir or sinking the Vale 10 feet, thus breaking all the drainage, imposing a large migration of population on others, dumping 2,700,000 tons of waste material a year on the best part of 2,000 acreas of good agricultural land? If we really need the extra energy, I suggest we go for coal gasification, expensive at the moment but environmentally much more attractive. It would

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allow the exploitation of thinner and deeper seams and seams under the North Sea. It would not involve slag heaps. If man can get oil from the bottom of the sea, he can solve the admitted problem of coal gasification.
How can we balance an increasing and better off world population and a possible increase in energy demands without overrunning agricultural land? Robin Best, reader at Wye College, leaves agricultural land as not in danger faction. Even his figure extrapolated—admittedly, unchecked—uses up all agricultural land in the United Kingdom in 900 years; the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food shows 360 years; and Dr. Coleman gives 200 years. Therefore backwards to the invention of income tax for Dr. Coleman; to the supremacy of common law and the triune parliament by Lord Justice Coke for the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food; and, ironically, backwards to the Domesday Book for Mr. Best.
In this country we must set an example. No more Green Belt land taken until the 80 or so square kilometeres of derelict land in London has been developed. Let us fill in the worst of the "rurban fringe" and make sure that the road lobby takes into account others' views and realises that we are not building on vast Saharan open spaces but on England's green and pleasant land. Let us build nice modern houses not unlike those of the 18th and early 19th centuries which satisfied the territorial imperative of man. When coal-mining and other mineral extraction is necessary, let us make sure that waste goes to fill other scars of extraction. We must not in any circumstances follow the example of Corby, making waste the town and using 99 acres of agricultural land eight miles away. If man is as stupid as that with this earth, he does not deserve to inherit it. I beg to move for Papers.
5.48 p.m.
Baroness YOUNG: My Lords, I wish at the outset to thank my noble friend Lord Onslow for introducing this debate. It is timely and it is interesting that the House should be debating the Strutt Report on agriculture on the same day as the report which is before us. One might coin a phrase and say that both
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debates cover much of the same ground. My noble friend has outlined Dr. Alice Coleman's interesting report on the Second Land Utilisation Survey, and in that report she has outlined in sequence five areas of concern. The first must be the depopulation of the towns with jobs and people moving out into the country. That affects the edges of the town and country leading to what she has described as the "rurban" fringe with the population migrating into green field sites. That in its turn leads to a third phase because of course it affects agricultural land and what she has called the "farmscape" with a loss of farming land of up to 40,000 acres annually.
As the farm land is diminished, it leads to a fourth phase in which in turn marginal fringe land is affected as farmers take increasingly the marginal land for development purposes for farming, and the marginal land is upgraded to farmland. That, as I understand it, finally in a fifth phase, affects what she has described as the "wildscape", and so there becomes a diminishing proportion of land as it is in its natural state. I have no doubt at all that when in your Lordships' House we debate the Countryside Bill this will be the kind of area that we shall be discussing.
The report's prosaic title, the Second Land Utilisation Survey, belies its extraordinary and important content, for not only has Dr. Coleman outlined a number of problems, but she has asked a question: Have 30 years of land use planning produced better land use? Such an important question is difficult to answer, first, because it is never possible to do a controlled experiment and to see what would have happened without the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act and its successors, and to compare that with what we have today. Secondly, as in all such major questions, it is not possible, I believe, to give a "Yes" or "No" answer. What I think is right is that the question about planning should be asked, for after 30 years of planning legislation it is possible to measure some of its results and to question at least some of the assumptions on which much of it is based.
Perhaps at this stage I ought to declare an interest. When I was in local government I served on a planning committee for 12 years, undertaking work which I

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found extraordinarily interesting, and perhaps I may be permitted to make two or three general observations about the planning system. I should say that planning has been successful in great measure in relation to development control, and has been effective in avoiding some of the eyesores that might otherwise have emerged. Its weaknesses—and they are very real weaknesses—have been, first, its inability to take account of people's actual needs and wishes. The enormous development of pressure groups and amenity societies of all kinds and descriptions, often, I accept, having entirely contradictory objectives, suggests that many planning assumptions have been wrong. The new development of planning and ecology are I believe attempts by planners to put right the basic mistake that they have made; for the fact is that people do not want to live in tower blocks. They do not want to be cut off from the shops. They do not wish to see the wholesale redevelopment of their area and the break-up of their community. No matter how good, how green, and how pleasant the new town appears, the area which they know and is which they have lived, and the people whom they have lived near, appear to them far more important.
I believe that the reason that planning has got into this difficulty is that what appear as good and sensible assumptions when they are made do not in fact always work out as expected. I should like to give just one example. Let us consider the zoning of land for particular purposes and agree that in principle it is desirable to do this. We find, for example, that the zoning of residential property in a residential area means that the factory next door constitutes a non-conforming use and must be removed. Eventually the factory or the business goes, and then due to the fact that the area is zoned as residential land, no new industry can be set up there, and so whole areas of cities are entirely without employment and people have to commute miles to work or face being unemployed. This cannot have been the intention of the plan when it was drawn up, yet it is certainly one of the ways in which it works in practice.
There is also the enormously long time lag between the concept of a plan and its actual coming into being, and in the long intervening period—which can be
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five, 10, or even 15 years—attitudes and assumptions change. When what originally seemed an excellent idea actually comes into being, the assumptions on which it was based have altered.
Dr. Alice Coleman's report, and the lecture that she gave following upon it, based upon the Second Land Utilisation Survey, have I believe brought a new dimension to all this discussion. If I may say so without sounding presumptuous, it seems to me that her point that during the 1930s the unplanned sprawl of development ate up thousands of acres of agricultural land represents a problem which has not been fully, or even partly, resolved by planning; and in identifying the problem she has been helpful to us. The fact is that by some estimates the country is still losing 17,000 hectares of agricultural land each year, while other estimates suggest that the figure is rising to 40,000 hectares each year. At the same time as we are losing agricultural land there remains an enormous amount of derelict land in cities and towns as well as in the countryside throughout the whole of Great Britain.
In a reply on 8th February 1978 in another place the right honourable Mr. Shore said that the 1974 survey showed that there were 106,000 acres of derelict and despoiled land in England. That figure does not include land classified as unused, as there is no commonly agreed definition of that term. The Civic Trust report on urban waste makes the same point. The report followed work carried out largely by amenity societies which were trying to identify waste land which they describe as "dormant" land. Most of the land described became dormant in the 1960s and the 1970s, and they suggest that as much as a quarter of a million acres of land in Britain may be dormant.
No one will be satisfied either with this picture or with the fact that our knowledge of what is actually taking place remains, as I believe, so limited; and perhaps that is the greatest criticism of all of our system. Despite all the care taken over planning, we still do not have a completely accurate record of where we are and of what is going on. People will not be satisfied that the planning system is working as it should.
In her report Dr. Alice Coleman does not propose the end of the planning

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system. She suggests that its procedures could be hurried up, and I feel that anyone who knows about planning would agree that one of its deficiencies lies in the time that procedures take. I am sure that Dr. Coleman is right on this point. Here I should like to ask the noble Baroness, Lady David (who is to reply to the debate), what has happened to the Dobry Report, and what proposals the Government have on planning procedures and the length of time they take.
Dr. Coleman also suggests a much more imaginative use of planning by planners. I have already indicated some of the ways in which I think planning is moving, and judging from debates we have had in your Lordships' House on the environment there is no doubt that there is considerable interest in the new ecology movement, the impact of ecology on planning, and the whole area of environmental impact statements and the risk impact statement which is also a new development. I am sure that we need to look at all these matters.
But in approaching the basic problem with which we are confronted—namely, the using up of good agricultural land, while concurrently a considerable amount of land in cities lies vacant—our solutions do not seem to be as effective as they should be. In your Lordships' House we debated at considerable length the Inner Urban Areas Bill, and one point that emerged from that debate is that, although undoubtedly the Bill will do some good, there is nowhere near enough money to tackle the problems of the inner cities, and what there is has been spread around too many authorities. Furthermore, I believe that far too little emphasis has been placed upon the role of private enterprise and private business in bringing back life to the cities. In this matter planning must have a role to play—and there must be a much more flexible development of planning at that. I should go so far as to say for myself that there may be much to be said for much more piecemeal planning in cities in order to revitalise the centres, rather than waiting always for some grand design which is unlikely ever to emerge. The Civic Trust, for their part, have made a number of useful suggestions, particularly on the temporary use of vacant sites, and they have indicated how important
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voluntary organisations can be in helping, particularly, in the tidying up and temporary use of vacant or dormant sites.
In all this work, not only are local authorities criticised but so are nationalised industries for holding on to enormous amounts of land which appear to be unused. In discussions—and perhaps I should declare an interest at this point—British Railways have made the point to me that one of the bad effects is the incidence of development land tax, which has prevented them from developing a number of vacant sites as they would like to do. Furthermore, it has had the curious effect that, where they have land which is next to vacant land belonging to a local authority and they would like to carry out joint development, whereas the local authority does not pay development land tax the nationalised industry does. Whatever the merits or otherwise of the two systems running side by side, it seems to me that this is a matter which ought to be looked at if it is holding up development and so encouraging the kind of situation that we have today.
My Lords, this is a Short Debate this afternoon, but it covers an enormously important area of our life. As my noble friend Lord Onslow has said, we look at our very beautiful countryside and our still beautiful cities, and we want to see that we are making the best use of the precious land that we have. Endless debate is not the answer to these problems: a great deal of action is needed to make much better use of the derelict land, to save the good agricultural land on which to grow the food which we all need, and to make our country use to the maximum the valuable resources that it has.
6.2 p.m.
Baroness WHITE: My Lords, in introducing this debate the noble Earl, Lord Onslow, referred to the passion and zeal of Dr. Alice Coleman, whose Second Land Utilisation Survey is the basis for our discussion this afternoon. Of course, he is quite right; she is a superb propagandist, and that is an essential and most valuable ingredient in any democractic society. We could not operate, even moderately successfully, without dedicated and articulate gadflies who prick the body politic from time to time to try to induce further action which they consider to be desirable.

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Unfortunately, of course, the Second Land Utilisation Survey itself raises certain doubts in one's mind. Dr. Coleman had an article published in the chartered surveyors' magazine in December last in which she herself quite honestly described the methods by which that survey was compiled, and in which she referred to the help of 2,000 voluntary surveyors. Of course, the trouble was that she did not have the resources to do the kind of survey in depth which one would have ideally desired. A number of these voluntary surveyors were untrained and unsupervised students. They were the best means that she could obtain at the time. But those of us who know something about the way in which some of these exercises were carried out are, I think, a little sceptical as to some of the precise results.
A little later on in this same article she mentioned that, while the Ordnance Survey takes 530 man-years to area-measure England and Wales, her land utilisation survey had to devise inexpensive methods which took only eight man-years; and, naturally, the results are not entirely scientifically reliable. On the other hand, the doubts which I think one must inevitably cast on the validity of many of the conclusions drawn from this survey do not vitiate the fact that it (very graphically, in her hands) points to trends; and with a great many of her social conclusions I would entirely concur.
It is, I think, disturbing—it must be disturbing—to all of us, to realise that the planning procedures in which many of us have placed very great faith and confidence have not worked out as satisfactorily as we might have hoped; and one would like to have, I think, a much more dispassionate and thorough examination of just why. It is quite true that there have been difficulties in interpreting what the public, the consumers of the end products of the planning process, really want; and I think Dr. Coleman most graphically describes many of the weaknesses and failures of our current practices.
Nevertheless, I do not think that these difficulties should always be laid at the doors of the planners. For example, to take high-rise flats, with which I had a very early acquaintance (in company, as it happens, with the right honourable lady the Leader of the Opposition in
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another place), we had a committee in the very early 1960s examining this problem of high-rise flats, which we had identified quite firmly as being socially extremely undesirable. But I believe it was not the planning committees so much as the housing committees of the local authorities who were pressing ahead with the high-rise flats and making demands for their construction.
I believe it would be extremely valuable if we could have an examination of some of the difficulties outlined by Dr. Coleman in her various publications—and a number of them have been touched on by the noble Earl this afternoon. But I do not think we should delude ourselves into supposing that that analysis will necessarily lead to easy solutions. It is extremely irritating to all of us, I am sure, to see in our inner cities areas which one believes ought to be developed, and certainly ought to be developed before one encroaches still further on agricultural land. But the problem is not merely one of lack of will on the part of the local planning authorities.
I have to declare some interest here. As the House knows, I am chairman of the Land Authority for Wales, in which we administer the Community Land Act on a somewhat different pattern from that which obtains in England or Scotland. We are very much aware of the conflicts of interest which arise in dealing with both urban and rural land. We have the responsibility under the Community Land Act for endeavouring to promote what is known as positive planning, and to do so, of course, in such a way as also to be economically viable. We have naturally come across a number of situations in which one wishes to develop an urban site but where one finds that there are a great many obstacles in one's way; and it sometimes takes a quite lamentable period of time in which to achieve one's objectives.
But, my Lords, within the last few months we have agreed to fund a survey in the Principality through the University of Wales Institute of Science and Technology in Cardiff, under the head of their planning department, Professor Bruton. It is a survey of what the Civic Trust calls dormant sites, as well as of derelict land. In Wales, at least, derelict land is in some ways less of a problem, in so far as we have a

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very active dereliectland unit now under the Welsh Development Agency, whose sole objective is to encourage local authorities to undertake, or itself undertake, the restoration of land which is physically derelict. That, although, it is a difficult problem, particularly when one continues to have dereliction following coal mining and other industrial processes, is one of which one can take the measure. It is the unused land, the dormant land, which causes one particular concern.
The Earl of ONSLOW: My Lords, may I make one point? Is it not possible to call dormant land something more pejorative? "Dormant land" gives the impression of nice, sleepy land. I think that land is too important a commodity to give it this euphemism, when it is basically unused.
Baroness WHITE: My Lords, with great respect, I think it is as good a term as any. If the noble Earl can provide a better word I should be interested to hear it. It indicates that the land is not incapable of use, that it is almost certain that it will be used but that for the time being it is not being used. Therefore, I should have thought that "dormant" was not an inappropriate term.
But we are proposing, not merely with the help of the local authorities to catalogue such sites in the urban areas, but also to undertake—or, the units will undertake on our behalf—to analyse a selection of these sites so as to show why they have been unused for a period of years. There may be legal difficulties; there may be problems of ownership which may be difficult to deal with and, perhaps, marketing factors. There must be some demand for a development of these sites before anybody, public or private, is likely to undertake it. There are problems which were discussed on the Inner Urban Areas Bill, of historic values which no longer pertain. No one has found an adequate way of dealing with those. There are considerable complexities of the market in a mixed economy, and we are going to try to analyse as far as possible, on a selection of sites, the reasons why sites which are apparently useful or should be available for development have not been developed over a significantly long period of years. This, I hope, will be helpful.
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We also publish annually (as we are required to do by statute) what is called a land policy statement, which is really a land acquisition policy statement; because the planning aspects rest exclusively with the local planning authorities and ultimately, in certain circumstances, with the Welsh Office. Nevertheless, such statements, which are published each year, again give the clue to some of the difficulties and problems which one has to face in land use.
My Lords, when I heard that this debate was to take place, I asked my officials to give me a brief analysis of the type of land that we have bought under the Community Land Act in the 2½ years or so in which we have been active. I was interested to find that in the period from September 1976 to February of this year we had bought (as I knew, of course) 1,230 acres of land. Of this only 2 per cent. I am assured, is land which was in fully productive agricultural use; that is to say, for something more than short-term grazing. That, your Lordships will agree, is a small proportion. That land has been purchased at the request of the farming interests in order to provide working capital for the farms.
In an area which has been zoned for future development—although, as the structure plans are still unconfirmed in every county but one of Wales, these are subject to change—2 per cent. only was fully productive arable land. Some 50 per cent. was land which in our view one might have regarded as being virtually lost to agriculture already; in other words, it was subject to short-term grazing tenancies and almost all of it already had planning consent for development. Some 12 per cent. was very low-grade common land which had not been cultivated at all; and 36 per cent. was land which one might regard at the moment as waste or derelict land, or land which had been developed but needed renewal—town centre areas which had become squalid and well below the standards required. The remainder of this was made up by land already under-developed, for housing particularly, but where developers for one reason or another had abandoned their efforts and where we took over unfinished sites to carry them on.
I mention these facts because it has been suggested by Dr. Coleman herself at one point that the Community Land

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Act was partly responsible for encroaching upon agricultural land. I think that I have shown that this is not so to any significant degree. On the contrary, because of the way in which our responsibilities are laid upon us, we are in a better position than most to balance the social needs with the economic incentives. The private market normally goes almost entirely for the economic profitability of site development; the public sector, on the other hand, considers land mostly from the functional point of view. We endeavour to make the Community Land Act do what it is intended to do—which is to try to reconcile the two interests.
I would hope very much that the sort of work we are endeavouring to do in the Principality will be extended more thoroughly to other parts of the country, because I am sure that in order to study these matters properly we need a very firm basis of information. This in no way derogates from the admirable efforts of voluntary organisations like the Civic Trust who have done us very great service; but they cannot be expected to do as comprehensive and reliable a job as, I believe, should be undertaken by public authorities. If this short debate stimulated by the noble Earl, Lord Onslow, should encourage the Government or local authorities further to undertake this kind of work, I think it will be to general advantage.
6.20 p.m.
Lord VERNON: My Lords, I do not share the scepticism of the noble Baroness who preceded me about the value of Dr. Alice Coleman's conclusions. I believe there is a great deal of evidence to support her. My noble friend Lord Onslow has, in my view, performed a signal service by putting down this Motion this afternoon. I am glad he was more successful than I was in the ballot when I put down my name on a similar Motion about two years ago. My noble friend has demonstrated effectively, I think, that we shall face a very serious situation in this country if the present Rake's Progress in the squandering of agricultural land continues. It is a relentless process; it goes on year in year out, and it is irreversible. Once land has gone down to concrete it will never again grow crops. That is the difference between land taken for urban development and land taken for forestry.
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I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Woolley, is not here to take part in our debate. I remember vividly in a previous debate the eloquence with which he described our agricultural land as our most valuable physical asset. We rely on it at present to feed 50 per cent. of our people. By the end of the century, when the population of the world will have doubled—that is, doubled in 25 years —we may have to rely on our land to feed all of us. What utter folly to misuse it in the way we do! It is not just a question of a few individuals with bees in their bonnets who are worried about what is happening; there is now a large amount of authoritative evidence to support this concern. There was the 1976 Report of the Centre for Agricultural Strategy and the Strutt Report which we debated earlier this afternoon. Both reports express grave concern at the present trends. These reports entirely endorse the views of Dr. Alice Coleman, who has made such an exhaustive examination of the problem, even if it was not quite so scientific as the noble Baroness, Lady White, would have liked. We shall ignore these alarm bells at our peril.
I should now like to say something about the position in my native Derbyshire. With a total area in agriculture of 190,000 hectares, the average land loss during the years 1971 to 1976 was between 500 and 550 hectares per year. This does not take account of the land on the urban fringe which, as we know, is largely sterilised for agricultural purposes because of vandalism and trespass. At this rate of 500 hectares a year, it would take a little under 400 years before all the agricultural land in the county was exhausted. The figures I have quoted are those which I have obtained from the Derbyshire County Council. However, when it is remembered that a large part of Derbyshire is taken up by the Peak National Park and by the uplands, and that development is confined to the higher quality land which provides most of our food, it is obvious that Dr. Coleman's estimate of 200 years before all the agricultural land is exhausted is very close to the mark.
Then there is the question of the rape of grade 2 land. I note that in the Derbyshire structure plan 22 hectares of grade 2 land is to be allocated for housing up to 1996. That may not seem a large

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amount but Derbyshire has very little grade 2 land—much less than the national average—and, when one reproduces what is happening in Derbyshire over the country at large, it would appear that a substantial amount of grade 2 land will be lost in the future as it has been lost in the past 20 years. To my certain knowledge the best grade 2 land in the East Midlands has been taken for urban sprawl on the outskirts of Lichfield, Nottingham and Grantham. I cannot see why Grade 1 or Grade 2 land should ever be taken for housing, and certainly not without a public inquiry.
I turn now to the question of grading. The vast majority of agricultural land is graded as 3. One might suppose it is third rate land and it is regarded as easy game for the planners. Yet this same land can grow high yielding arable crops and excellent grass for dairy herds. Some more realistic grading system is urgently required. I raised this in a debate early in 1977 and the noble Lord the Leader of the House was kind enough to write to tell me that discussions on this aspect of the report by the Centre for Agricultural Strategy were then taking place. That was two years ago. May we now please be told what progress has been made? If the noble Baroness cannot answer that tonight, perhaps she will write to me about it.
What is so deplorable about the present state of affairs is that the land loss seems to be largely unnecessary. We know from the report that I have quoted—the report from the centre at Reading—that 80 per cent. of the nation's housing needs up to the year 2000 can be met from derelict land. At the same time, we are informed by Dr. Alice Coleman that in London alone 80 square kilometres has been put out of use and is lying idle. My noble friend Lord Onslow has referred to this. I presume that the land is derelict land and what is known as dormant land. If the figures she gives for Tower Hamlets are representative of other London boroughs, the wastage is nothing short of a national disgrace. We all know why urban derelict land is not taken for new development. It is because a nice virgin cornfield is much more convenient and cheaper. Meanwhile, the inner cities with their large open spaces, often created with
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the best of intentions, lie neglected and vandalised.
Only the Government can alter this state of affairs. They can alter it by giving the necessary incentives to build in urban areas—my noble friend Lady Young mentioned the importance of the inner cities—and they can alter it by changing the existing planning procedure. The burden of proof should be on the Department of the Environment to show why urban and derelict land should not be taken in preference to agricultural land. I was very glad to note that in the previous debate the Government gave an assurance that the Ministry of Agriculture would now be consulted in cases of areas up to five acres, where as previously it was 10 acres. That at least is a big advance and I congratulate the Government on that.
Finally, I should like to say a word in support of Dr. Coleman's plea that consideration be given to building more houses with small gardens. The amount of food which can be grown in a few square metres of well tilled land is astonishing. I am sure it is true that many people want their own plot of land, however small. It satisfies a basic instinct and provides an interest which unkempt, open spaces can never do. I do not think any other densely populated country in the world would be as profligate in its attitude to the use or abuse of agricultural land as we are. That so few of your Lordships are taking part in this debate may perhaps be due to the fact that the previous debate was on a very similar subject, but I think it is also due in part to lack of interest. There is a lack of interest in Parliament; there is a lack of interest in the Government; there is a lack of interest in the media; and it is hardly surprising that the public should not be too concerned. I think it is up to all of us who really believe that something should be done about this matter, and I think we owe it to the generations who are to come after us, to give higher priority to our agricultural land in the future than we have in the past.
6.31 p.m.
Lord ENERGLYN: My Lords, I have been asked by the noble Earl to intervene at this point and to say something about the impact of coal mining on agriculture;

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but before doing so I should like to say that I have listened intently to the speeches. I do not wish to be impertinent or rude, but I must say that I have heard it all before. I was involved in the Dudley Stamp exercise, and really I must say that there was no need for any more surveys. I remember how Dudley used to be frustrated by the "talking shops" that were set up, and what we have seen since is an epidemic of planners and their talking shops. They are still at it and they will still go on, I would say to the noble Lord, Lord Vernon, and not listen to his plea. The noble Lord is quite right: they are not really interested in doing anything, but they are more interested in talking about it.
As an example, have we seen any attempt to subsidise some of the new ventures in soil formation that were invented in this country? Off the cuff—because I have not prepared a speech—I quote Krylium, which was a new synthetic substance that would break down clay into a soil "crumb", which is the beginning of soil fertility. Where did it go?— it went to America. If we think in terms of land utilisation, is it not about time that we used our ingenuity and great scientific expertise in accelerating what our forefathers have done? For example, it took the Dutch some 50 years to desalinate the soils they recovered from the Wash. We can do that now in a matter of two or three years by using a simple technique of electro-endo-osmosis.
These are realistic methods which engineers are using and which we could use to desalinate, for example, if the noble Baroness, Lady White, will permit me to say so, effectively places like the Cromlyn Bog in Swansea. Desalinate that area, and you would have about 10,000 acres which would be as rich as the soils of Norfolk within four or five years, and would at the same time create employment and revive the old dream of Lloyd-George to try to get people back to the land. Wherever I now roam in the world and talk to leaders, their great desire is to get their people back to the land—because the one thing the world acknowledges that it needs is food, and food in the right places. So I really am impressed by the plea made by the noble Lord, Lord Vernon, to put the Government on the hook. I would say: "Do something, please; show an
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interest, please; but do not talk about it any more".
I come now to the point which the noble Earl asked me to talk about, and that is the effect of mining on land utilisation. You have two potentials: you can open-cast a bed of iron ore or a seam of coal and you can restore the land progressively. In the case of iron ore, in Lincolnshire, you can create soils which are thicker and richer than they were orginally. This has been done, and praise should be given to the open-cast engineers who have done it. On the other hand, you can open-cast coal and create utter devastation, unless it is properly planned. By "planning", I mean engineering planning and not social planning.
When it comes to underground mining, there the big problem is roof control. If you undermine the roof beyond its bearing strength the ground begins to subside. If that is done in an uncontrolled way it will affect the surface drainage—I do not mean land drains, but the water table—quite effectively. But we now know so much about hydro-geology that there will be no danger, I can assure your Lordships, in the mining of coal in the Vale of Belvoir to the water table in the Vale of Belvoir.
The noble Earl mentioned a figure of some 2 million tons of coal refuse which has to be dumped somewhere. He visualises a great coal tip developing in that lovely part of the world—incidentally, I produced the first geological maps of the area, so let me declare my responsibility if not my interest. These tips need not occur at all, because the new method of mining on this kind of scale will be to take the waste material back underground to restore the supports to the seams. Therefore you will have subsidence but you will not have coal tips.
That brings me to something that I hope your Lordships will regard as being constructive. We believe that coal is simply a substance that we burn, that we boil water with and we use to create electricity: that is the be-all and end-all of coal. We romantically think of converting coal into oil. We can do that; eventually it will be done. But I must now declare an interest in that, in collaboration with the Hungarians, we have now enough evidence to show that coal can be

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converted back into the humus from which the coal was geologically formed: this means the humus soils of those geological times—in the case of Hungary some 90 million years old, and in the case of Britain some 250 million to 300 million years old. These humus compounds contain all the balanced trace elements that caused the verdance of leaf production which created the coal seams of those distant geological times.
Here you have a deposit, a substance, which is almost unique in its distribution of trace elements. What it lacks is nitrogen; and so I can prophesy that we shall see the use of coal as a fertiliser. It will work in a very subtle way: it will work just like Krylium, in that when it is ploughed into clay it will break down the clay into crumbs and there will begin to form the soil. It will also release into the soil substances which we have been able to show control the micro-organisms that will begin to develop in the crumb structure of the soil. From this, your Lordships will obviously have gathered that we have here a unique use for coal which will bring it into agriculture, and bring it into a position in this country that it has never occupied before.
Finally, coming back to the subject of planning, I wish to endorse what the noble Lord, Lord Vernon, has said. Please let us take some active interest. Let us do something about recovering this land. Let us sweep away these stupid planning committees and these silly laws, which prevent people from restoring this piece of land or refuse permission to build on that piece of land. Let us have some sensible pragmatism put into this picture, and then we shall see all the wastelands of Britain disappear. What is more, we shall have solved one of our biggest environmental problems, because in developing these ideas and in getting rid of the talking shops, we shall no longer have any problem of getting rid of our waste products, since these would become embodied in the solid wastes of mining and engineering and they would be put into the sea, methodically, to recover land from the sea, as the Dutch over the last 400 to 500 years have so brilliantly exhibited is possible. My plea to the Minister is this: please urge upon your Government to do something.
6.42 p.m.
Baroness DAVID: My Lords, the noble Earl, Lord Onslow, in raising this debate has given us a welcome opportunity to take stock of how we are using the land resources of this country. The debate has, I think, reflected the challenge which this subject sets. The Government are very well aware of the challenge, and I shall hope to show in the course of my speech what action they are taking. It is not long since your Lordships were concerned with rural deprivation. This debate, and the one earlier this afternoon, have brought us back to rural questions and reminded us that the majority of our land area is still used for agriculture, for forestry and for the recreation we seek away from our cities.
Undeveloped rural land is a precious thing in our small island: but it must be remembered, too, that most of us spend most of our time elsewhere, usually in the developed areas: that it is the urban land which carries most of our housing, schools, industry and services, and that we as a country draw most of our economic wellbeing from the fabric of our cities and towns—in which most of the population live and work. In a crowded island, land will inevitably be required for many different purposes and there will be conflicting interests to resolve. We have a responsibility to future generations to exercise our judgment not only for our own wellbeing, but prudently for them. My strong impression is that this debate may serve as a reminder of the need for constant vigilance and I am grateful to your Lordships for your contributions.
I am sure that we should be grateful also for the contribution of the Second Land Utilisation Survey, and the untiring efforts of its Director, Dr. Alice Coleman. The idea of the survey is no less than the recording of the use of every parcel of land. The size of the effort involved, and the application required to put that idea into practice over many years, are impressive. If the results of the survey could be fully codified and presented in statistical form, they would provide an important record of how the land of this country was used in the 1960s and a valuable source for everyone concerned with this issue in the future. Such a report would undoubtedly help to improve our understanding not only of

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how the use of land in this country has been changing, but of how it might change in the future.
Dr. Coleman's way of doing this is by the recognition of broad patterns in the way in which land is used. This is as much an art as a science and requires careful interpretation and judgment. The same material can suggest different patterns to different people, each of whom will be looking for different meanings. Dr. Coleman has taken a step along this road by her pattern of "stapes" and "fringes". Until the final report is available, it is not possible to assess how big a step this is. In her system, townscape and farmscape are in conflict. They represent the competing and conflicting claims of urban development and agriculture for land resources. Townscape encroaches upon farmscape through the creation of what she calls "rurban fringe". She argues that when development and agricultural land become intermixed, farmland becomes fragmented and degenerates —and, indeed, most of your Lordships will have seen examples of that disease.
Certainly we have to strike a balance between the competing claims for land of urban and agricultural uses. The Government have reiterated the priority they attach to the protection of agricultural land, particularly land of better quality, in their recent White Paper, Farming and the Nation. Indeed, the Government have not been short of advice on this subject over the last two years. It was of concern to the Agriculture Economic Development Committee in their report on Agriculture into the 80s: Resources and Strategy in 1977. The Advisory Committee on Agriculture and Horticulture also looked at this issue in Agriculture and the Countryside, published in 1978. The Countryside Review Committee, in their Topic Paper No. 3, Food Production in the Countryside, again in 1978, examined this question closely. It is encouraging that all these advisers seemed to agree that the existing planning machinery did provide the means for balancing these competing claims. Improvements were suggested. There were calls for better inventories of the use of land and of how it is changing, and, in particular, information on what is happening to better-quality farmland.
Here it may be helpful if I outline some of the main factors in the situation.
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England has more of its land under urban development than the other parts of the United Kingdom. The Agriculture EDC estimated that in 1976, 76 per cent. of the land in England was in agricultural use, 13 per cent. was used for forestry, woodland and miscellaneous purposes, and 11 per cent. was urban. Aggregate figures of this nature can be misleading. For example, this 11 per cent. in urban use includes the network of roads outside urban areas, and small towns and villages in the countryside which are part of the rural scene. Only about 8 per cent. out of the 11 per cent. in urban use is in towns and cities of 10,000 people or more. In these terms, our larger cities can be said to be more "efficient" in their use of land. Densities—that is, the number of people per hectare—fall rapidly as the size of towns falls, and it is our smaller towns which occupy land at low densities.
When we look to how land use is changing, other features emerge. The 1971 Census showed that the areas of highest density in our larger cities were losing population. It also showed that the areas of lowest density in our rural areas were also showing a loss. These areas losing population are largely the areas of most deprivation. There is another pattern. It is in the northern half of the country that the area occupied by urban development has been growing most rapidly. This stands in direct contrast to population growth, which has been most rapid in the southern half of the country, particularly in East Anglia and the South-West. It seems clear that the urban areas in the southern half of the country have been able to absorb population growth, without equivalent increases in the land area they occupy. In the north, the improvement of the conditions in which people live and work in the older industrial cities has been accompanied by a substantial increase in the urban area.
Estimates of the land taken from agriculture for all forms of urban development are derived from the mid-year returns made by farmers to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. Over the post-war period, the land recorded as disposed of to urban development has averaged 16,000 hectares a year. This compares with 25,000 hectares a year before the war. There has usually been accord between these statistics and the

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differences in the amount of land in agricultural use each year. In recent years, there have been large, unexplained differences between the two. These differences could suggest that the loss of land has been greater than estimated: but they may prove to be statistical in origin and capable of reconciliation. The Department of the Environment and the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food are co-operating on research to explain these anomalies. We have to acknowledge that the record, so far as we know it, is open to different interpretations, and it is right that we should debate it. But we must not forget that the record is most useful in helping us to look forward at what we should do.
What are the prospects for the future? We cannot establish with any exactitude how much land will be required for urban development in the future, and it would be foolish to try. What we can do is to look at the possibilities. We have moved from the era in which our plans were based on the expectation of large increases in the population. In 1974 the population fell for the first time. In 1976 deaths exceeded births. The increase in the birth rate recorded last year has not yet brought it back to the point where the population will replace itself.
We are inheriting the results of the increase in the birth rate which began over 20 years ago. We are experiencing a sustained rise in the number of young adults coming to maturity, seeking jobs and forming families. This will continue for the next decade. It seems unlikely that the pressures for further urban development will slacken during this time, but we may be able to look forward beyond this to a period when the numbers of adults will stabilise, and the need for additional land will be less acute.
The Department of the Environment has been developing its own sources on land use and how it is changing. The National Land Use Classification was published in 1975. Local planning authorities were requested to make returns of land use changes beginning in 1975 for 15 land use categories. Restraints on local government expenditure have so far meant that these returns are voluntary, and the coverage is incomplete.
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The analysis of aerial photographs for land use information has been undertaken. The Developed Areas Survey, published last year, sets out the amount of land in each county and district in England and Wales in five broad urban uses for 1969. The use of satellite imagery to provide land use information is being developed. Improvements in the resolution of the imagery and its interpretation should make it possible to measure the area in urban use and where changes are occurring at frequent intervals.
The noble Earl, Lord Onslow, has raised the question of the creation of waste land. The term "waste land" is perhaps the most emotive symbol of the prodigality and imprudence of which we, as a nation, may be judged guilty in our use of land resources. We do not know the real extent of waste land, except by approximation. The Civic Trust estimated that dormant land—I understand that the Civic Trust have given it the name "dormant land" and that it is land which is either unused or in merely temporary use—may exceed 100,000 hectares in the whole of Britain. Derelict land—that is, land which is incapable of beneficial use without treatment—in 1974 was estimated at over 40,000 hectares in England and Wales, but some 33,000 hectares of this were considered likely to justify restoration. I should like to say that the Department has in being a research programme on the reclamation of derelict land.
It is clear that some part of our future requirements for urban land will be met from this under-used resource. It is the Government's task to provide the conditions in which this can be achieved, as far as possible. By so doing, the demands on agricultural land can be reduced to the minimum that is practicable.
Unused and waste land is not created deliberately. It comes about for many reasons, not all of which we fully comprehend. For one thing, the process of developing land is not perfect, as it would be if land moved quickly and automatically from one use to another. Plans for future development, by both public and private bodies, may be based on assumptions which prove to be unfounded. Markets may not grow as quickly as expected. Finance may not become available to undertake the work. Land may lie idle until the conditions are right for

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its development. There is no simple answer which can be applied to all cases. Each will require separate assessment and action, which can only be undertaken locally in full knowledge of the possibilities.
Considerable experience has been built up in the reclamation of derelict land. Since 1966 all local authorities have had the power to acquire and reclaim such land. In Scotland and Wales, these powers are exercised by the respective Development Agencies. In England, the rate of grant to local authorities is 100 per cent. of approved costs in assisted areas and other derelict land clearance areas, and 50 per cent. elsewhere. In the past four years, over 8,000 hectares are estimated to have been reclaimed.
The Community Land Scheme is another means of bringing unused or waste land into development, and experience shows that local authorities are taking advantage of it. During the first two years of the scheme, over 300 hectares of unused land and land surplus to requirements of the nationalised industries and statutory undertakers have been acquired for private development. We do know that unused land, other than that which is derelict, tends to be concentrated in those two types of areas where change in land use is most frequent. One is the older areas of our cities, where much of the building stock is moving towards the end of its useful life. The other is on the edge of our towns, where land is coming into urban use for the first time.
Efforts to bring the land back into use are being encouraged under the partnership arrangements for the inner cities which have been mentioned by several speakers. Local authorities have been asked to review their land holdings and dispose of the surplus at the best price which can be reasonably obtained. The nationalised industries have been asked to survey the vacant land they hold in the inner city areas. Discussions on the results are continuing with the authorities concerned.
Greater priority has been given to assistance by way of grant for the reclamation of derelict land and buildings in inner areas. There has been an increased take-up of the available funds as a result. Last year expenditure was only 13 per cent. below the PESC allocation of
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£15·5 million, and this year there are hopes that the full allocation of £19·2 million will be spent. Special arrangements have also been introduced for land acquisition in inner areas under the Community Land Scheme. Priority is given to such projects and the normal financial criteria have been relaxed, recognising that projects in these areas will usually take much longer than elsewhere to show a profit. Moreover, where it would be beneficial for the local authority to carry out a certain amount of development (such as an advanced factory) on community land before disposal, this, too, can be funded exceptionally from land scheme resources. The noble Lord, Lord Hylton, referred to this in the previous debate.
In September of last year, "Operation Clean-Up" was launched to improve the visual environment of the 29 inner city districts in which the partnership and programme authorities operate. It consists of small projects which can be done quickly. This operation will include the recovery of vacant and waste land. Clearing of rubbish, provision of top soil, grassing, and planting of trees and shrubs are expected, and the local authorities are being encouraged to draw on the local community, including voluntary bodies.
Efforts are also being made on the urban fringe. Uncertainty about future land use policy in these areas is being reduced through regional strategies and the approval of structure plans. But this in itself is unlikely to be enough. We have to experiment in how to manage these urban fringe areas to make better use of the land there.
The Countryside Commission is pioneering the way. The experiments it has been undertaking in the Bollin Valley, Barnet and Havering have shown that it is possible to reduce the conflict between farming and other land uses, and improve the appearance of these areas. The Commission are drawing on this experience to mount a larger project for the countryside around a major industrial city, which has still to be selected. The project is to start next year and run to 1985, at a cost of over £1 million.
I have said earlier that the interpretation of the data is as much an art as a science,

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and the same is true of the application of remedies. There are no rigid principles that, once laid down, can infallibly direct those whose job it is to see that we use our land to best effect. Solutions will vary from place to place, and success will depend on the understanding cooperation of many bodies, some of which I have mentioned, and of many individuals in different places. The Department can provide information, advise, co-ordinate, mediate. It cannot direct, nor would it wish to. What we need most, however, as every speaker has emphasised, is to improve our understanding of the factors involved, and to disseminate the knowledge more widely. Dr. Coleman has contributed significantly to the first objective and it may be that this debate has assisted in the second.
I have, my Lords, a number of questions to answer. I do not know whether noble Lords would prefer that I should answer these now or whether I should take them up in writing later. I am in your Lordships' hands.
Baroness YOUNG: My Lords, I am sure it would be the wish of all noble Lords who have spoken that the noble Baroness should be good enough to answer the questions now.
Baroness DAVID: My Lords, the noble Earl, Lord Onslow, asked about the printing of the maps that Dr. Coleman had prepared. I am not inclined to think that meeting the cost of general publication in map form would be a worthwhile expenditure of public funds. The survey was, I understand, carried out in the 1960s and over a fairly wide spread of years, so that it is neither up-to-date nor all-of-a-piece in time. Maps of individual areas may well be found useful for specific purposes—indeed, an example sheet is, I understand, being included in Ordnance Survey educational map packs; but for general purposes the Director of the Survey may like to consider making the land use survey material available in its present shape or, as the case may be, with a final report, forming as it were, an archive available to those who can make use of it for study or for whatever subsequent presentation may best suit their individual needs.
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The noble Baroness, Lady Young, asked about the Dobry Report. This had as one of its main proposals to divide planning applications into two types so that simpler applications could be dealt with quickly. This has not yet been taken up and no action is proposed at the moment. There was a question raised on the amount of land lost to roads. We have no accurate and trustworthy measurement for that—nothing that is thought to be accurate enough to be trusted.
The noble Lord, Lord Energlyn, spoke about the reclamation of land. I understand that reclamation of land from the sea often conflicts with nature conservation and that conservation interests are always very high in those areas, particularly areas of marshlands.
There have been a number of estimates about how quickly agricultural land is being lost, but it seems that these are not always based on firm and trustworthy statistics and it is not thought that they are totally accurate. The noble Lord, Lord Vernon, said that the total extinction of agricultural land would happen in 200 years. I think those figures are based on a survey of change in the Thames Estuary which was made between 1962 and 1972. That was applied to the whole country and projected into the future and is not thought to be totally accurate.
Lord VERNON: My Lords, if I may interrupt the noble Baroness, the figure I gave was based entirely on Derbyshire. I said that the figure for Derbyshire bore out what Dr. Coleman said for the nation as a whole, which was 200 years.
Baroness DAVID: My Lords, I am sorry if I did not correctly take the point made by the noble Lord. I think that has answered the points that I have noted, but I will look carefully at the report of the debate and if I have missed any answers I will write to those concerned.
7.5 p.m.
The Earl of ONSLOW: My Lords, one or two things have arisen out of this debate which, if your Lordships will allow me, I should like to comment on. The noble Baroness, Lady White, cast doubts upon the quality of the survey

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of Dr. Alice Coleman. The surveyors' and geographers' work was checked, land use added up, and the total national area, with Government statistics supposedly collected by trained experts, added up to one and one-third million acres less than the national total. The area measurements were correct to 0·01 per cent., so it seems that they were reasonably accurate. The Ordnance Survey measures every field separately, and the second land utilisation survey has found a method of aggregating which has been widely copied by planning authorities and others for saving time and money without sacrificing accuracy; so perhaps the noble Baroness, Lady White, might like to tell us where the inaccuracies were.
The noble Baroness, Lady Young, produced what I thought was one of the most worrying points, namely, that nationalised industries seem to be sitting on vast quantities of land. The noble Baroness, Lady David, acknowledged this, but nothing seems to be done about it. One has the feeling that this has been complained about before but nothing seems to be done.
Baroness DAVID: My Lords, will the noble Earl allow me to intervene? I think I said that quite a lot was being done about it by way of grants, having eased the conditions, getting money under the Community Land Scheme, and so on.
The Earl of ONSLOW: My Lords, the actual amount of land which the noble Baroness said was being redeveloped was, I believe, a very small percentage of what was actually used. Of course one is trying to answer off the cuff and one could be wrong.
There is a point which needs to be agreed with the noble Lord, Lord Vernon, about the grading of land and Derbyshire using only 22 hectares of grade 1 land. Berkshire County Council in one of their plans say that one of the objects of the plan is to conserve grade 1 agricultural land. They then proceed to go through the whole plan and do not mention it again, for the simple reason that there is no grade I agricultural land in the whole county of Berkshire. Indeed only 2·8 per cent. of the total land in the United Kingdom is grade 1 agricultural land. So the point made by my noble friend Lord Vernon on land grading is a very important one.
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In a way, the most hopeful and at the same time the most depressing speech was that made by the noble Lord, Lord Energlyn. He produced a number of ideas and then said that Dudley Stamp said the same thing 30 years ago. Then the Government are saying that planning is working. It cannot all be right.
Finally, the one point that I wanted to make was about the quality of aerial photographs. I believe that they are not as accurate as proper surveys done by geographers on the ground, on foot. I wrote down what the noble Baroness, Lady David, said, which was that the survey would be useful if it could be codified and computerised. Would it not be a good thing if the Government could help this to happen? Finally, is it not possible for the Government to measure how much land they are using? It really is totally unacceptable if they just take land for roads and do not know how much they are using. My Lords, I beg leave to withdraw the Motion for Papers.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

LICENSED PREMISES (EXCLUSION OF CERTAIN PERSONS) BILL.
7.9 p.m.
Lord INGLEWOOD: 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 Inglewood.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
[The VISCOUNT HOOD in the Chair.]
Clause 1 [Suspension Order]:
Lord LUCAS of CHILWORTH Lord LUCAS of CHILWORTH had given Notice of his intention to move Amendment No. 1:
Page 1, line 13, after ("committed") insert ("or any other licensed premises within the area of the appropriate licensing authority").
The noble Lord said: As Amendment No. 2 standing in the name of my noble friend Lord Inglewood is in substance

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very similar to that which is in my name I do not intend to move my Amendment, with the reservation however that, in the event of the Committee not agreeing with the proposals contained in that Amendment, I have the opportunity to bring the matter to your Lordships on another occasion.
7.10 p.m.
Lord INGLEWOOD Lord INGLEWOOD moved Amendment No. 2:
Leave out clause 1 and insert the following new clause:—
Exclusion orders
.—(1) Where a court by or before which a person is convicted of an offence commited on licensed premises is satisfied that in committing that offence he resorted to violence or offered or threatened to resort to violence, the court may, subject to subsection (2) below, make an order (in this Act referred to as an "exclusion order") prohibiting him from entering those premises or any licensed premises within the licensing district where the offence was committed.
(2) An exclusion order may be made either—

(a) in addition to any sentence which is imposed in respect of the offence for which the person is convicted; or

(b) notwithstanding the provisions of sections 2, 7 and 13 of the Powers of Criminal Courts Act 1973 (cases in which probation orders and absolute and conditional discharges may be made and their effect), in addition to a probation order or an order discharging him absolutely or conditionally but not otherwise; and shall have effect for such period, not less than three months or more than two years, as is specified in the order.

The noble Lord said: I think it is the normal experience of Private Members introducing a Bill into one or other House of Parliament that they come to a stage when the experts query their drafting; they say that it is defective, so defective in fact that the adjectives "clear" and "precise" cannot honourably be attached. I think it is better in those cases to respond to the experts, as I have done on this occasion, and hence this long Amendment No. 2. Your Lordships will agree that precision and clarity are always important, and especially so when, as we are doing here, we are creating a new offence.
The Amendment needs just a little explanation although in fact it is not much more than a re-wording of Clause 1 as originally printed. First of all, you will see that the words "suspension order"
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have been deleted and the words "exclusion order" inserted. I feel sure that that is right because the word "exclusion" appears in the Title to the Bill, and we do not want suspension orders confused in any one's mind with suspended sentences. Secondly, your Lordships will see that an exclusion order can now be made in addition to a probation order. That may well be a suitable occasion to make an exclusion order, and there was doubt in the original drafting whether that was possible. Also at the end of subsection (2)(b) there are words which make it clear from which date an exclusion order is taken to run.
However, there is one difference which is much more important. In the Bill the exclusion order was limited to prohibiting a convicted person from entering the premises on which the offence had been committed. This redraft repeats that power given to the courts and adds a second but permissive power: an exclusion order may be made to apply to any licensed premises within the licensing district where the offence was committed. That seems only common sense. A court in cases like these, whether it is a Crown Court or a magistrates' court, is surely capable of exercising discretion as to whether a sentence excluding a person from licensed premises should more appropriately exclude him from all licensed premises in the licensing district, or the one where the crime was committed. The geography of this country is not uniform. In large towns the situation is entirely different from that in the country. It has been put to me that this punishment by an exclusion order can be made much more uniform as between town and country, small town and big town, by the addition of the words
"or to any licensed premises within the licensing district".
These words have the support of the licensed victuallers and also of the managers. Today I have received a telegram which will leave no one in any doubt about their feelings. They say:
"Licensed house managers in Britain endorse your very practical Amendment to the Licensing (Exclusion) Bill; signed Shindler, National Secretary".
That could hardly be clearer. The licensed victuallers, too, have confirmed with me that, though they would like wider powers, the Amendment that I am pro-

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posing would be acceptable to them. They would have preferred a wider exclusion, but, if I may put it this way, half a pint is better than no beer. Limiting the power of exclusion to one licensed house does not amount to very much. I wonder what the magistrates sitting in court and considering this problem would think. It is not for me to put words into their mouths, but I am sure they would prefer to have the discretion.
Now we come to the question of enforcement. It is no good our creating offences, by small Bills any more than by big ones, if we are also creating difficulties of enforcement. There is, of course, the question of identification, but I am told by the licensed victuallers that they do not anticipate any difficulty on that score. In fact, they say they know them all already over quite a wide area, and there are some parts of the country where it is already the practice to draw up an unofficial blacklist. They say that this will be no problem at all compared with some other difficult problems they have to face.
We then come to the problem of enforcement, and that is something shared between licensees and police. As I have said, the licensees say they have no problem, and they are the ones who are affected first because they see the excluded person coming into their house. I have taken the trouble to consult police of all ranks in different parts of the country, and I have met no police officer who has over-emphasised the difficulties of this. Some have said there will be problems of identification, especially for a young constable and there could be some confusion between the situation where a police constable is called to aid a licensee evicting a trespasser and where he comes into a licensed house under this Bill to deal with a man who has actually committed a criminal offence, albeit a small one.
I went further than this. I will not say where, but I went out not long ago with a very experienced police officer whom I have know for some time. He was in plain clothes, and we went to a large and very rough place. We walked the course, as it were. We did not in fact lay our hands on anyone, but we walked the course, going through all the motions of the licensee and the constable called in under these circumstances. Neither of us
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thought that the difficulties were so very great, unless, for example, a police constable had to go into a public house where there were 700 football supporters milling around, when it would be quite impossible for police, short of a big number, to extract the few troublemakers out of a big public bar.
I hope, therefore, the noble Lord, Lord Boston of Faversham, will not say that the police official view sees problems under the Bill which they would prefer to avoid. We all know that the police are the essence of caution, even more cautious than the Home Office. It is for the noble Lord to assess the weight of their views.
I would hope that the police in this case will agree with me that it will not take long, if this Bill becomes law with the Amendments in the form now before us, before this becomes an accepted routine.
The present position for police entering licensed premises is extremely vague, and it depends as much on policemanship, if I can use that word, as on simple understood rules of law. This Amendment makes the position of the police clearer, as I said on Second Reading, and hence is to the advantage of the police. This Bill had—and I hope I am in order in referring to this—a very rapid passage through another place, but, as was said on Second Reading, it was right and proper for us to explain then and now what it sets out to do, because we are creating another offence. We have, I am sure, support for the Bill on both sides of both Houses of Parliament. We have support from the licensees. I should like to think that we also have support from the police. With such backing, the Bill can go from this House to the other place and speedily become law. I beg to move.
The MINISTER of STATE, HOME OFFICE (Lord Boston of Faversham): It might be helpful if I were to intervene now and say a word or two about the Government's view of this Amendment. For the most part the Amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, is unexceptionable in the Government's view, and in many respects it clarifies the power to make an exclusion order. I would join him in the way in which he has commended that particular term to the Committee as being a very helpful one indeed. I should also like to interpose at this juncture a

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point which I emphasised in my speech on Second Reading and which is also relevant to this Amendment and this clause; namely, that the Government recognise and share the deep concern of the trade bodies to ensure that their members are protected from violence among customers of licensed premises. The noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, has presented his arguments in his customarily attractive way. Therefore, it pains me not to be able to recommend to your Lordships acceptance of all the elements of his Amendment.
As regards the Amendment itself the Government take the view that what it does not do is to take fully into account the position of the licencees themselves. As it is presently drafted, the personal property and trading rights of a licensee could be adversely affected. The imposition of an exclusion order on someone who is a licensee's close acquaintance or even a member of his own family, is possible under the terms of Clause 1, and I believe that that element needs further study with a view to our considering a further Amendment on Report. What we have in mind is the possibility of making a provision for the licensee to have a say in the making of an exclusion order and to apply to the court for it to be terminated if the circumstances since the imposition of the order have changed. That difficulty would, of course, be exacerbated, in my submission by extending the range of establishments to which an exclusion order would apply.
As the sponsors of the Bill will know, the Government have expressed serious reservations about the enforceability of a power to ban people from public houses. I think that that is known. So far as the police arc concerned, I am sorry not to be able to take up immediately, and in the terms in which he expressed them, the comments which the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, made about the police. We also have made some inquiries and I am sorry to say that I am unable to go along with the noble Lord in the way that he has presented their views. The Association of Chief Police Officers and the Metropolitan Police, whom we have consulted, also regard such a power as unnecessary against the background of existing powers which they consider adequate. But, enforceability—and this, I think, is the
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point to emphasise as regeards the Amendment—is at the heart of the matter.
The extension proposed, while not going so far as the national coverage provided for in the Bill as introduced in the other place also raises the problem of enforcement. A licensing district can contain a great many licensed premises and the problems of licensees being unable to identify excluded persons are, in our view, considerable and loom large. There can be no enforcement of an exclusion order unless the licensee knows whether a person who enters or who attempts to enter his premises is subject to a ban. A list of names of banned people would be of little use, in our view, and even the addition of photographs would not make the task much easier as there is no certain proof of identity. A licensee would hardly be able, in the normal course of business, to scrutinise each customer or even each customer whom he thought looked suspicious, and check him against his list. A licensee would have to be very confident of his ground to avoid the problems which might follow from mistaken identity.
It is true that the Amendment would allow the courts to be selective in applying the ban, but I submit that we must address ourselves to the question: on what basis could that selection be made? I believe that it would not be prudent to expect the courts to be able to impose a ban related to a range of licensed premises with such precision that its enforceability would not be open to doubt.
There is also the problem that the excluded person would not be likely to know the boundaries of the licensing area or might not know all the public houses included in it. That difficulty could, of course, be solved by the provision of a list of the premises concerned, but it is questionable whether that would overcome the enforcement difficulties.
Therefore, my advice to the Committee is that, in view of the potential difficulties we envisage for licensees, it would be right to have Clause 1 as it stands for the present, in the knowledge that the Government will bring forward an Amendment for consideration on Report. As noble Lords will know, so far as the general view of the Government on this Bill is concerned, it is as indicated on Second Reading, one of neutrality. But, for the

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reasons that I have given, I recommend the Committee not to agree to the Amendment as proposed.
Lord CAMPBELL of CROY: I should like to address myself to that part of my noble friend's Amendment which deals with the number of licensed premises to which an exclusion order might apply. I recognise that there is a dilemma, that the original text in another place provided for an exclusion order covering the whole country and that that was considered, for the type of reason that the noble Lord has given, to be impracticable and unenforceable. On the other hand, if the exclusion order can apply only to one public house, then in certain areas it could be hardly any penalty at all. Someone who has been excluded from that public house could simply walk into another one which could be at the other end of the street.
I congratulate my noble friend on piloting the Bill through the House because I think that the principle of the Bill has universal or very widespread approval. In my view, he appears to have found a satisfactory solution between the two extremes. The exclusion order which he proposes in the Amendment may apply within the whole of a licensing district. It does not have to do so: it could be restricted to one public house. However, it could also, if the court decided, apply to all of those within a licensing district.
The noble Lord, Lord Boston of Faversham, has put forward some objections in his immediate reaction to the Amendment of my noble friend. First, he has asked us to consider enforceability and the difficulty of knowing the borders of a licensing district. I agree that persons may not be familiar with them in some areas, or could not be expected to be familiar, but that situation could be provided for, as my noble friend has said, by a list.
I must point out to the Committee that geography plays a part. Perhaps I may turn to the part of the country where I live. In the Highlands of Scotland, it is quite normal for a public house to be the only one for about 20 miles, and if someone is excluded from that it could be a very heavy penalty. In other parts of the country, in cities, towns or built-up areas,
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exclusion from one public house could mean very little because there could be several licensed premises within walking distance of the one from which the person has been excluded. But the important point is that the Amendment of my noble friend is permissive. It allows the courts in the different areas to do what they think is fit and appropriate in their areas. For example, where there is difficulty about the boundaries of a licensing area, where there is a multitude of licensed premises and great difficulty in identifying a person who has been excluded, that might be a situation where the court would say that either there should be only one public house covered or the whole licensing area should be covered. Certainly this Amendment allows the court itself to take this decision in its own area. It must be a decision which can be taken by the people on the spot, who would recognise the strength of the kind of difficulties which the noble Lord has put forward.
It appears to me that my noble friend and the Government seem very close to agreement; there does not seem to be very much between them. Therefore, I was glad to hear that the noble Lord was in any case undertaking to table an Amendment on report. Unless my noble friend has a chance to see that Amendment and to consider it when it has been tabled, he cannot tell whether or not it will be satisfactory to him. However, I hope that there can be further discussions before the next stage, because some of this has happened in fairly recent hours, including the telegram, about which my noble friend has informed the Committee. Therefore, I hope that there can be further discussions before the Bill comes before us at the next stage, because I believe that there is ground here for an agreed Amendment in due course.
7.33 p.m.
Lord WILSON of HIGH WRAY: For some years I was the chairman of a licensing Bench, not so far from the residence of the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood. Naturally, I was extremely interested when he introduced the Bill. I took the opportunity of discussing it with a senior police officer and with the past chairman of the local branch of the Licensed Victuallers' Association, who was also a licensee. We were all agreed that the noble

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Lord's original Bill was practical, but we questioned its usefulness.
We then came to what I think is the main point before your Lordships' Committee—that is, can we extend the ban to licensing areas? The senior police officer I consulted said that in rural areas this could probably be done. He said that there they know most of the awkward customers and the ban could probably be enforced. However, I have no experience of built-up areas—of Merseyside, Humberside, Newcastle, Birmingham or London. It would appear to me to be almost impossible to enforce this ban in these very large areas.
In my particular part of the country, South Cumbria, we get football supporters and others who are jovial and well liquored-up making a disturbance and then departing. Nothing much can be done about it if they have assaulted the landlord or the barmaid, or broken the place up. I can only support what has been said, and agree that this matter requires very serious consideration. Both the police officer and the retired chairman of the Licensed Victuallers' Association thought that, with amendment, existing law could be adapted to cope with the situation.
We must appreciate that a landlord is not obliged to serve anyone. I could go immaculately clad and stone cold sober to the bar at the Savoy or somewhere like that and ask for a pale sherry, and the barman could say, "I will not serve you". He need not say, "I am sorry, I cannot serve you"; he can just say, "I will not serve you". There is nothing I can do about that; I simply have to turn round and walk out. Some time ago I was in the private bar of my local pub—which I visit from time to time in spite of my Quaker ancestry—and I heard a man come in. He spoke with a slight foreign accent, and said, "I want a quarter bottle of whisky and a large cider, please". The landlord looked at him and asked, "How did you come in?" The man replied, "Through that door". So the landlord said, "Right, turn round and go out through that door". An enormous amount depends on the landlord. I sometimes wonder whether the licensed victuallers and the breweries are sufficiently fussy about the class of landlord they elect.
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The noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, has said that the licensed victuallers are fully in favour of the Bill. However, I believe that there are good landlords and poor landlords, and that even if the Bill becomes law, there will be poor landlords who will continue to serve people who are as we say in the North-west, "on the block". When I was chairman of the local licensing Bench I had to address the licensees at the annual licence session—we used to call it the Brewster Sessions. I said, "If you get the awkward customers —and you all know them in your areas—put them on the block". They sort of agreed, but there were always some licensees who would not agree and who would serve such people.
The licensees have a responsibility which is not reflected in the literature which they have circulated and the telegram which they have sent to the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood. Therefore, I can only suggest that this matter be considered very carefully indeed from all points of view, particularly from the point of view of whether existing legislation cannot be modified to supply all that is necessary.
7.38 p.m.
Baroness HORNSBY-SMITH: I listened to the statement made by the noble Lord, Lord Boston of Faversham, and sincerely hoped he would say that deep thought had been given and compromise reached by the licensed victuallers, who naturally feel very strongly about this. An immense amount of discussion, consultation and compromise must have taken place in order to bring about a measure which we thought the Government could reasonably accept. However, I have no doubt that the Home Office does not want this Bill and would prefer to keep the status quo.
There have been three successive conferences of licensed victuallers and licensed managers, and each has asked for this Bill. A resolution was passed at the Trades Union Congress asking for terms in a much stronger form than are in the Bill. If we are to believe that those same licensees as reported through the Home Office, are now anxious not to have the Bill or are frightened that they cannot carry out its terms, they must have been quite idiotic for the last three of their

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conferences. I simply do believe that the view expressed by the Home Office advisers reflects the views of the licensing trade as a whole, which has to meet these people face to face.
The noble Lord mentioned just now that many licensees are very good at handling awkward customers. But last week I happened to go to a charity function and I ran into an old friend who is himself the owner of a country pub. He asked me how this Bill was getting on. His friend next beside us said, "What are you worried about, George? I have yet to see the drunk you cannot cope with." May I tell your Lordships that George is a fine figure of a man and in his younger days was a very handy amateur boxer. But he came out with the crucial difference. He said, "Oh, yes, if it is only fists I will hold my own with the next man, but if an undersized little runt is coming at me with a broken bottle which he is holding by the neck I cannot grab his shoulders. He has got a six inches to 12 inches longer reach than I have. If I try to grab his shoulders then I have either a face full of glass or have my throat cut."
There have been three years of campaigning at successive conferences. The noble Lord did less than justice to the serious telegram which my noble friend and I received today after a meeting of their executive, which is an acceptance that their total ban is not practical and, as responsible people, they have accepted the compromise. I have no doubt that they genuinely endorse it. We have heard about these reservations. How would they identify? I find Lord Boston's worries about this quite unconvincing. We have a fine police force, and they are not dim-witted.
First, the assailant in a pub is unlikely to be disguised, unlike a bank robber who may wear a balaclava and a mask. Are we to say that you do not chase them because you cannot identify them? Within the pub there will normally he witnesses. If the truculent person is the last person out, there will still be staff there. Frequently they will be personally known to the assailant, and they themselves will know him well, and there will be authentic identification. Eye-witnesses talk around the district. Further, in such serious cases the court proceedings will undoubtedly be reported in the local press. You
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could bet your last dollar that they will be well reported in the Morning Advertiser, the publicans' paper, and in the Licensed Victuallers' Journal, and every publican will know.
The cases are not so numerous that listing them will place a burden on the police in the stations in a licensing area. Unlike the noble Lord who has just sat down, I live in a densely populated metropolitan area; in the licensing area of the City of Westminster. Knowing people in another place many years ago, I had to pilot through the Street Offences Bill, the prostitutes Bill. Your Lordships should have seen the card indexes that the police stations had. They included far more habitual prostitutes than will ever appear as violent offenders under this Bill. If we got a dozen in London it would be well above the national average for this type of offence.
I feel strongly about the weight of support of staff and licensees. Remember, this matter was raised by staff members at the TUC conference and it was endorsed. I believe that it should not be virtually destroyed, and no due consideration given to this practical and compromise Amendment. We hear so often about how the Home Office wants to reduce violence. I believe that the Home Office, by refusing what is a practical and fair compromise, will certainly destroy the confidence of that section of the community affected by this Bill that they really mean what they say about reducing this type of savage and mindless violence.
7.46 p.m.
Lord AUCKLAND: We are living in an age of violence. I have no particular interest to declare so far as this Bill is concerned except that I have at least two relatives who are involved in the licensed victuallers' trade. I have consulted them. I have also visited the licensed victuallers' national homes in Buckinghamshire, and have not only discussed measures appertaining to my noble friend's Bill but also seen some photographs of publicans who have been injured not by fisticuffs but by broken bottles, broken glass, and so on. These are particularly nasty injuries. Some have caused partial or total blindness, and many other disabilities.
We have to look at this not only from the point of view of the publicans or that of

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the magistrates, but from the consumers' point of view. Most people going into public houses are law-abiding citizens. I imagine that the number of people who commit offences of violence, whether in punch-ups or worse, is very small. But if one gets an epidemic of this sort, no matter how large or how small, there are a number of areas where the publican will obviously lose business. That is very unfair.
I readily accept that enforcement is a problem. My wife is a magistrate and she sits on the local licensing committee. All the public houses in the area of Surrey where I live are frequently inspected. I do not think that there are many cases of violence. If there are, the magistrates deal with them as severely as the law allows. But, as my noble friends have pointed out, the fact is that the present situation is getting intolerable. Violence is increasing, particularly among some of the younger people. One gets motor-cycle gangs going into public houses, particularly at weekends. They are not necessarily under the influence of drink but they behave in a threatening manner which may not necessarily he terrifying to the landlord of the pub, who may be quite a tough character himself, but one has to remember that in some cases the staff may be quite young people and in some cases they may be girls. It is very unfair that they should be subjected to this kind of treatment.
It may be that my noble friend's Amendment is not word perfect, but I think that it is necessary to tighten up the law. The present powers which the magistrates have may be all right so far as a single, local public house is concerned, but, with all their modern technology and techniques, there must be means of identification by the police, and I ask the Minister to look at this matter again to see if the law can be tightened up to deal more strongly with this issue than can be done now.
Lord LUCAS of CHILWORTH: I have always thought that modest laws such as those embraced in this Bill were for the protection of society; in this case they are for the protection of those who serve society—landlords and their assistants—and I can find no objection to the suggestions made by my noble friend Lord Inglewood in the Amendment.
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If the Government wish to show some concern for the licensee, they must accept the views, limitations and responsibilities which licensees have accepted in endorsing the Bill and the Amendment.
I can see no great difficulty about enforceability because if a ban is put on a hooligan from a football crowd, it is not difficult, I am informed, for the police in the patch to identify him. In fact, it is surprising how often he is identified hovering on the outskirts wanting to get in. I therefore thought the Minister was adopting a soft option on this point. We charge licensees with being able to distinguish an under-aged boy or girl, and I do not know how they do it. They make a challenge and if they are sensible licensees they make it politely and take with a pinch of salt the answer they get, or do something about it.
The number of people who are likely to be excluded will be small. The same challenge, in the knowledge of what the answer should be, can be made by a responsible licensee or his staff. I see no difficulty about that whatever. I see no difficulty in the excluded person being identified in a patch, be it a patch in the Highlands of Scotland which reaches out 20 miles all the way round, in suburbia or in a city. The police forces which look after the various patches are most competent at identifying and registering offenders and potential offenders.
If the area is not enlarged in the way suggested (it might be a geographical area, but the licensing area seems sensible) then, when a person is excluded from one pub—and it is reasonable to suppose he will look for his refreshment somewhere nearby—it is more than likely that adjoining publicans will decide that in no way will they accept in their houses somebody who has had a conviction and is the subject of an exclusion order. They may take the law into their own hands, as it were.
Much has been written and said on television and in the Press about the job of the bouncers, and there is much concern about the bouncer, who is in some respects a part of the private army system. My fear is that, unless we make a law and give our authorised law officers the opportunity to deal with these matters under the cover of the law, we shall get more of this private institution law enforcement, and that cannot be of benefit to anybody.

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I was rather disappointed with some of the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of High Wray; I hope he will forgive me if I did not hear him aright. He suggested, I believe, that landlords were perhaps not all as they might be. That may he so, and it could be said of almost any profession, but it does not mean that they should not have the full protection of the law. From my conversations with some of them, what has been suggested is what they want. They see no difficulties and if they are asking, as my noble friend Lady Hornsby-Smith said on more than one occasion, for the law to be strengthened so they can ensure that their houses are orderly and are places where ordinary people can go to enjoy themselves, the Home Office should, under the provisions of this Bill, find ways of meeting any objections. That is what should he done, rather than looking for ways to reject what, as is quite obvious to noble Lords in Committee tonight and to the House when the matter was discussed on Second Reading, is required. No noble Lord has objected to a tightening up of the law or to this type of provision being made. I therefore hope that before Lord Inglewood decides what to do about the Amendment, the Minister will give further reassurance that positive ways will be found to meet what noble Lords are seeking.
Lord INGLEWOOD: I thank the noble Lord, Lord Boston of Faversham, for the kind remarks he made about me, but I fear I cannot thank him for the arguments he adduced. I thought they were exceedingly weak and I hope that after a good sleep tonight and upon reading tomorrow's Official Report, he will see that all the pressure from all quarters of the Committee has justification. The language noble Lords have used tonight may have been moderate, but there is clearly great strength of feeling that something should be included in the Bill over and above restricting an exclusion order to refer to a licensed house only. What I have tabled seems reasonable to me and to many, but I will not press that against other halfway house solutions that might be put forward.
I did not wholly follow all the arguments of the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of High Wray, my one-time constituent and twice my opponent at General Elections, though
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I think on balance this time he was my supporter. If, as Lord Boston said, he will do his best, between now and Report, to find a new form of words for Clause 1 which makes an effort to come some way towards our point of view, I would respond to him here and now; but if it is a case of rewording the new clause as printed on the Marshalled List, leaving out the words have included about the licensing district, and substituting nothing in its place, then I am sure noble Lords will want to divide on the Report stage. I hope, however, that the Minister will indicate that he wishes to come towards us if he can. I believe we all want to find common ground and that the division between us is not great. I am happy to see Lord Boston nodding in assent.
I should like to refer to what the noble Lord says about the police, and I hope that he will go hack to them and ask them to look more carefully into the advice that they have given him, following what has been said in the debate. It is a well-known argument among police forces, not only in this but in all countries, that on the smaller questions suggestions that come from anyone whom they call a politician must be resisted. When it comes to the professional questions, they are always out for more men and more power, but on the smaller questions they generally say that their powers are adequate.
I said gently in my earlier speech that where a police constable is called to licensed premises where there is someone whom the licensee does not want on the premises, the law is not clear. A solution depends rather on the skill of mature constables, and what one might wish to call "policemanship", such as is practised by long-serving constables, who in this country are becoming rarer and rarer.
I turn to the question of identity. I do not know whether the noble Lord had police advice on this matter, but I wonder whether he was exaggerating the difficulties of identifying the few people likely to he involved. Anyone who has been in a police station at about 10 o'clock at night, when men on night duty are being briefed, will have seen the rogues gallery on the walls of various rooms; and perhaps he goes into the collater's room too and sees lists and rows of photographs of local

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villains—far more numerous than excluded persons would ever be under the Bill. Often the sergeant in detailing men for duties at 10 o'clock refers to a lad in the district who has lost his driving licence and has recently been seen driving. He tells the men to look out for him and mentions the registration number and type of vehicle in which he might be seen. He may say that any officer who does not recognise the lad will find his picture on the wall. Such problems of identification are far more complicated than any which could arise under the Bill, and they are being handled—and handled successfully —every day. I put that point to the noble Lord opposite without any fear of contradiction.
The noble Lord, Lord Boston's arguments are not good enough. I believe that the noble Lord is as anxious as we are to find some common ground. I hope that he will tell us now that he does not have a wholly neutral position, but rather shares with us a wish to try to do something against the ever-increasing wave of violence. I should then be prepared to ask the Committee for leave to withdraw the Amendment. However, I must reserve my position and that of my noble friends so that if at a later stage we consider that the acceptable minimum has not been included in the Bill, we can settle the question by testing opinion in the lobby.
Lord BOSTON of FAVERSHAM: I am most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, for that invitation. The noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, and other noble Lords have suggested that there may be a possibility of exploring the position further in order to see whether there is any way of finding common ground. That is a very constructive approach. Clearly, there is in the Committee concern about this problem, and it would be quite wrong of me not to seek to respond in an equally positive way to the suggestion that the noble Lord and other noble Lords have made, to the effect that we can perhaps get our heads together and see whether we can satisfactorily resolve the problem. I should certainly be happy to do that. I bear in mind the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, that if the outcome of further considerations was not thoroughly satisfactory, the matters which are now before the Committee
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would presumably have to be put to the test at a subsequent stage. However, I would hope that in responding to the constructive suggestion in an equally positive way it might be possible to find the common ground which we all seek.
Lord INGLEWOOD: If I said earlier that I could not thank the noble Lord for most of his first speech, I can now say that I thank him most warmly for the generous way in which he has just responded to us. I believe that, like us, the noble Lord wants to find a solution to the problem. He has said that he will look into it with us, and in the light of these assurances I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 1 agreed to.
Clause 2 [Penalty for non-compliance with suspension order]:
8.5 p.m.
Lord INGLEWOODmoved Amendment No. 3:
Page 1, line 15, leave out ("fails to comply with the terms of a suspension order") and insert ("enters any premises in breach of an exclusion order").
The noble Lord said: We come now to Amendments which are much simpler than the one which we have just been discussing, and I do not think that the Committee need take much time in dealing with them. Amendment No. 3 is concerned simply with the language of the matter. It attempts to improve the clarity of the language, because in view of the fact that a breach of an exclusion order constitutes a criminal offence, it is important that there should be no doubt at all as to what in fact constitutes such a breach. In substitution for the words in the Bill,
"fails to comply with the terms of a suspension order"
we suggest that there should be inserted the words
"enters an premises in breach of an exclusion order".
This is quite clear, and I hope that the Amendment will have the support of noble Lords. I beg to move.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
8.7 p.m.
Lord INGLEWOOD Lord INGLEWOOD moved Amendment No. 4:
Page 1, line 18, leave out from ("both") to end of line 19 and insert—
("(2) The court by which a person is convicted of an offence under subsection (1) above shall consider whether or not the exclusion order should continue in force, and may, if it thinks fit, make an order terminating the exclusion order, but an exclusion order shall not otherwise be affected by a person's conviction for such an offence.")
The noble Lord said: This Amendment is slightly more complicated than the last one. It removes from the penalty provisions in relation to a breach of an order the alternative of imposing a further suspension order for a period not exceeding two years; and that I believe is wise. If a man who is subject to an exclusion order is prone to break the order it could easily lead to bringing the law into contempt. One order could be followed by another order and then by yet another. It would be much better to have a different penalty —a fine and possibly even a custodial sentence.
It is also necessary to provide for what should happen to an existing order if there is a breach; should it be allowed to run its course or should it be terminated? Subsection (2) of the clause enables the court to address itself to this question. If it thinks that it has no further purpose it can end it, or it can allow the order to run its course. I beg to move.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
On Question, Whether Clause 2 shall stand part of the Bill?
Lord LUCAS of CHILWORTH: In view of the fact that we are dealing with the amended clause, I believe that I have the opportunity to ask the noble Lord, Lord Boston of Faversham, exactly what he meant when he referred earlier to the licensee having some say in the imposition or the termination of an exclusion order. The amended clause gives the courts adequate powers to do a number of things dealing with an exclusion order. I am not quite sure what the Minister meant in his earlier remarks when he referred to exclusion orders and the role that a licensee may play in that matter, and I should like to ask him for a further explanation.
Lord BOSTON of FAVERSHAM: I ask the Committee to forgive me for not going into very much detail on this matter because it is the subject of closer examination and so I am not able to give precise details. However, the basic point that we had in mind here is that it would probably be unwise, or might be unwise, for a licensee not to have at least the opportunity to put before the court his own representations while the court was considering the making of an exclusion order, so that they had before them all the circumstances which they may wish to take into account in deciding whether or not, and to what extent, to make that exclusion order. What we had in mind there was really a protection for the licensee, to ensure that at least he had that opportunity to make representations. There may be certain other, slightly more detailed considerations behind this thought, but that was the basic thought. 1 hope that may be of some help to the noble Lord, Lord Lucas of Chilworth.
Clause 2, as amended, agreed to.
8.11 p.m.
Lord INGLEWOOD Lord INGLEWOOD moved Amendment No. 5:
After Clause 2, insert the following new clause:
Supplemental.
—(1) In this Act—
"licensed premises" means premises in respect of which there is in force a justices' on-licence (within the meaning of section 1 of the Licensing Act 1964); and
"licensee" in relation to any licensed premises means the person who holds a justices' on-licence for those premises.
(2) Where a court makes an exclusion order or an order terminating an exclusion order, the clerk of the court, or the appropriate officer of the Crown Court, as the case may be, shall send a copy of the order to the licensee of the premises to which the order relates.
The noble Lord said: This Amendment, again, is an attempt to make the Bill more clear. It defines "licensed premises", and it seems sensible so to define licensed premises as to leave out off-licences, wine shops and the wine and spirit counters of supermarkets, since the offence of drunkenness with violence is more likely to be committed in those straightforward licensed premises known as a "pub" than they are in a supermarket. It seemed clearer to limit the extent of the Bill in this way, and to define "licensee" to conform.
The second provision in this Amendment puts an obligation on the clerk of the court or on the appropriate officer of the Crown Court, as the case may be, to send a copy of any exclusion order to the licensee of the premises to which the order relates. That will help over the question of identification, of which I feel, without wishing to be too repetitive, the noble Lord opposite has made rather heavy weather. I beg to move.
Lord CAMPBELL of CROY: I should like to add my support to the first part of my noble friend's Amendment. By reducing the number of licensed premises to which an exclusion order would apply I think he has assisted the Amendment to come, we hope, which we discussed earlier on Clause 1, because it reduces the number of licensed premises to which an exclusion order would apply within a licensing area. I think most of us are satisfied that the kind of incident to which this Bill would apply is not one which is likely to arise in an off-licence shop or other off-licence premises. We are unlikely to see housewives running amok with broken bottles and attacking the shopkeepers; and I am sure this Amendment is to be welcomed.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 3 [Penalty for non-compliance with further suspension order]:
8.15 p.m.
On Question, Whether Clause 3 shall stand part of the Bill?
Lord INGLEWOOD: I should like to propose that Clause 3 be omitted from the Bill because it is no longer necessary. We have agreed in Clause 2 penalties other than extending an exclusion order or making further exclusion orders, because, as we said, a man who breaks one is likely to break others and bring the law into disrepute. In these cases it is very much better to rely on the penalty of a fine such as the offender will notice, or, in extreme cases, on the
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custodial sentence for which provision is made. This is in no way a weakening of, of withdrawing from, the position in which we stood when this Bill was originally drafted, but it does seem to be an unnecessary power, bearing in mind the earlier provisions in the Bill.
Clause 3 disagreed to.
Clause 4 [Short title and extent]:
Lord INGLEWOOD Lord INGLEWOOD moved Amendment No. 6:
("(2) This Act shall not extend to Northern Ireland.").
The noble Lord said: This makes it look as if we were a bit slack in the original drafting. We had included the words,
"This Act shall apply to Scotland".
I am now advised that it applies to Scotland in any case, and that it is not necessary to spell it out as we did. But it is necessary to spell out whether or not we wish the Bill to apply to Northern Ireland; and I submit to your Lordships that for two reasons it would be unwise to attempt to extend this Bill to Northern Ireland. The first is that, because of the unhappy times through which Northern Ireland is now going, I think it is quite inappropriate for us to do any such thing as to cause this Bill to extend across the water to them. Secondly, if one did wish to extend this Bill to Northern Ireland, I think the first step, which has not been taken, would have to be prolonged discussions with the authorities in Northern Ireland to see exactly how they thought it could work, what were its merits and so on. In those circumstances, I hope your Lordships will agree that we should leave out the words which would apply this Bill to Scotland and should insert in their place:
"This Act shall not extend to Northern Ireland".
I beg to move.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 4, as amended, agreed to.
House resumed: Bill reported with Amendments.