Lords Sitting of 21 November 1979

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

EEC: BUTTER SALES TO USSR
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 how much butter has been sold at a subsidised price to the USSR by the European Community during the current year; what has been the cost to the Community of these transactions; and whether this practice has now been stopped.
The MINISTER of STATE, MINISTRY of AGRICULTURE, FISHERIES and FOOD (Earl Ferrers): My Lords, the Commission's provisional estimate of such sales for the first six months of 1979 is 66,308 tonnes. The cost to the Community resulting from the payment of export restitutions would be about £76 million. My right honourable friend the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food protested strongly in the Council of Ministers about cheap sales of butter to the Soviet Union, but there was no support in the Council for a ban on such sales.
Lord BOYD-CARPENTER: My Lords, while thanking my noble friend for that reply, may I ask him why, if it be necessary to produce in the Community more butter than can be sold at an economic price, it is necessary to sell this butter at subsidised prices to Russia with the consequence that they have of course more resources available for guns? Would it not be better, if this butter has to be disposed of, that it should go to the victims of Communist imperialism in Kampuchea?
Earl FERRERS: My Lords, my right honourable friend was most anxious to see that my noble friend's first point was met; in other words, that there should not be surpluses created. The only way in which you cannot create a surplus, it appears, is to lower the price. So he is trying to do that. He also expressed great concern to the Council of Ministers that, at a time when there could be a military build-up in Russia, the European Community should be selling subsidised butter to Russia.
Lord BOYD-CARPENTER: My Lords, would my noble friend add to that answer by telling the House what were the arguments which his right honourable friend's European colleagues used for this quite extraordinary decision as to the disposal of the butter to Russia?
Earl FERRERS: My Lords, the discussions at the Council of Ministers are of a confidential nature and I could not tell my noble friend what were the arguments used. But I will tell him this: if there is a surplus of butter, then that has to be disposed of throughout the world. It is a trading matter to dispose of it. The fact is that the Council of Ministers did not agree that there should be a ban on all sales to Russia.
Lord WALLACE of COSLANY: My Lords, is the noble Earl aware that butter prices in Britain are increasing every week, and that the situation is becoming so absolutely intolerable that it is sending housewives frantic? Is it not time that the Government did something about it so far as consumer protection is concerned?
Earl FERRERS: My Lords, the subsidy which all butter in the United Kingdom attracts at the moment from European funds is 12p per pound, which is the highest subsidy that has ever been attracted, and it is the result of my right honourable friend's negotiations this year. The noble Lord shakes his head, but it is actually a fact.
Lord WALLACE of COSLANY: My Lords, that may be so, but it is no consolation to the housewife who is putting up with increasing prices all the way round.
Earl FERRERS: My Lords, the noble Lord says: "Why do not the Government do something about it?" I was trying to tell him that the Government have done something about it which his Government did not do.
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, the Minister of State quoted the subsidy provided to British housewives on a pound of butter. Is not that rather less than is provided in subsidy for butter sold to the Russians?
Earl FERRERS: My Lords, the export subsidy on all butter which goes abroad is very considerably greater, but that is because it is going abroad.
Baroness GAITSKELL: My Lords, may I ask what has happened to all those jibes that we had in the last Session about good Europeans, and all the accusations that on this side we were bad Europeans? If the Government are such good Europeans why do they not do something about the cost of butter?
Earl FERRERS: My Lords, this Government are extremely concerned that they are good Europeans. What we wish to do is to see Europe as a whole proceed and be successful. Butter is extremely important, but there are very many more far-reaching things than butter to be considered.
Lord ORR-EWING: My Lords, would my noble friend continue to press Mr. Peter Walker, the Minister responsible, that he follows up and suggests that, instead of continuing exporting artificially cheap butter to Russia, we stop it and send it to the Third World countries which are desperately in need of nutritious foodstuffs? On the domestic front, would he put forward the argument that we might take the butter at the same price as Russia pays for it and, as a special instance, distribute it among the old-age pensioners of this country?
Earl FERRERS: My Lords, my right honourable friend is concerned and has pressed his colleagues in the Council of Ministers that there should be fewer surpluses of butter. This is the prime move to start with. He is also concerned
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to see, where possible—and he has asked them to do this—that more subsidised butter should be available within the Community. The fact is that if there is a surplus the only way to get the market right is to dispose of the surplus.
Lord SHINWELL: My Lords, the noble Earl just referred to a "good European". How does one define a good European? Is a good European somebody who provides Russia with butter at the lowest possible price, one who contributes more to the EEC than any other country in the Nine, or one who refuses to take our lamb? Is that how one defines a "good European "?
Earl FERRERS: My Lords, the definition of a good European might be similar to that of a clever politician: it is up to the individual concerned to make his own choice.
Lord SEGAL: My Lords, is the noble Earl aware that the good old English cream butter is no longer available, and that nowadays you cannot tell butter from margarine?
Earl FERRERS: My Lords, that seems to be an argument in favour of the margarine manufacturers, but I can assure the noble Lord that there has been an increase in the production of British butter.
Lord LEATHERLAND: My Lords, if we are to supply our butter at ridiculously low prices to the Soviet Union, could there not be a quid quo pro whereby we get caviar from the Soviet Union at similarly ridiculously low prices?
Earl FERRERS: My Lords, that, of course, is a matter for the traders; and those who trade between the European Community and Russia might well take on board the noble Lord's advice, but I do not know whether they would be successful.
The LORD PRESIDENT of the COUNCIL (Lord Soames): My Lords, I think perhaps after that singularly appropriate supplementary, we might move on to the next Question.

GAS CORPORATION: PRICES AND FUNDING
2.44 p.m.
The Earl of LAUDERDALE: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what they estimate would be the increase in repayment of loans advanced to the British Gas Corporation if it were encouraged to bring the price of gas into line with other energy prices.
The MINISTER of STATE, DEPARTMENT of EMPLOYMENT (The Earl of Gowrie): My Lords, the British Gas Corporation have repaid all their medium and long-term debt to the National Loans Fund. The timing of the repayment of other debt is a commercial matter for the corporation.
The Earl of LAUDERDALE: My Lords, in thanking my noble friend for that rather obscure reply, may I ask him whether he is aware that many people, observing the energy industry, applaud the Government's decision to stop the flaring of gas in the North Sea? But would he not agree that the artificially low price the British Gas Corporation have been charging in recent years has led to the threat of a very serious shortage both because of increased, unnatural and excessive demand on the one hand and because of disincentives to explore and develop in the southern area on the other?
The Earl of GOWRIE: My Lords, I am very anxious that my reply to my noble friend should not be obscure, so perhaps I should flesh it out a little. In fact, the capital liabilities of the British Gas Corporation have fallen steeply over the last two years from over £2,000 million in 1977 to only £800 million in March 1979, and this process and this fall are continuing. I recognise the force of his argument that the price of gas and other fuels should not be allowed to get too far out of line. Matching up supply and demand can become difficult when, as now, gas is much cheaper than the alternatives. Therefore, the Government are taking this aspect and this argument into account in their current review.
Lord AVEBURY: My Lords, while the matter of the repayment of loans by the British Gas Corporation is obviously a matter for the corporation itself, may I ask whether the general pricing policy of the energy industries is not a question in which the Government themselves should take a firm interest? Have not the Government power to issue a direction to the British Gas Corporation, if they wish to do so, to bring its prices into line with those of other fuels? Should the Government not take such an initiative, in the interests not only of reduction of public expenditure but of conservation of the supplies of gas in the North Sea, which may run out before the end of the century?
The Earl of GOWRIE: My Lords, I think the noble Lord may have misheard me. I agree with very much of what he said. When I said that the timing of repayment of other debts is a commercial matter for the corporation, I meant the cash-flow debt, which is very insubstantial. The original Answer was that the British Gas Corporation had in fact repaid all their medium- and long-term debts, but the other points the Government have certainly taken on board and that is why they are urgently reviewing the situation.
Lord PARGITER: My Lords, in view of the fact that they are committed to market forces operating generally, could the noble Earl say what is the Government's policy? Why have they other than market forces operating in regard to fuel supplies? Would the noble Earl also say what is an artificially low price?
The Earl of GOWRIE: My Lords, there is no such thing as market forces where you have a monopoly and therefore the Government have a direct interest in pricing in a monopoly industry. Regarding the second part of the noble Lord's question, we feel it has been confusing and that it is dangerous that gas prices have got right out of line with other energy prices at a time of short energy supply and high energy demand. We are therefore taking steps to rectify that situation.
The Earl of LAUDERDALE: My Lords, perhaps my noble friend could add to what he has just said, which has

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helped to clarify the situation. Is it not the case that the disequilibrium of the price of gas and other fuels is a confusing factor in the situation? If we are to understand that the Government are looking closely at this situation, could we also infer that, in doing so, they will consider whether the monopoly position of the British Gas Corporation is in the interests of energy production and conservation generally?
The Earl of GOWRIE: My Lords, I will certainly take my noble friend's point into account.
Lord LEE of NEWTON: My Lords, would the noble Earl keep in mind that when gas was not produced by a monopoly it was in grave danger of going out of existence altogether?
The Earl of GOWRIE: My Lords, we are talking, of course, of an earlier period when the energy crisis was not upon us in the forms in which it is upon us today; so that has to be taken into account.

WARNINGS BY PROCURATORS FISCAL: CIRCULAR 1643
2.49 p.m.
Lord WILSON of LANGSIDE: 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 it is the case that Circular No. 1643 was issued to Procurators Fiscal on 3rd May 1979 by an official of the Scottish Crown Office without the terms of the circular having been submitted to and approved by the Scottish Law Officers; and, if so, whether they consider this was appropriate, having regard to the content of the circular.
The LORD ADVOCATE (Lord Mackay of Clashfern): My Lords, the circular in question was issued at a time when the Crown Office was the responsibility of the Law Officers of the last Government. I cannot answer for the arrangements made between previous Law Officers and their
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officials. However, I now accept full responsibility for the instructions in the circular. In view of the interest which has been taken in this particular circular, I have made a copy available in the Library of each House.
Lord WILSON of LANGSIDE: My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble and learned Lord for that Answer, which will help to allay a good deal of concern and anxiety that has existed in Scotland on this matter.
Lord ELWYN-JONES: My Lords, is the noble and learned Lord aware that I enter the field of Scottish legal practice with apprehension, and I do so only because of the unavoidable absence of my noble and learned friend Lord McCluskey, who authorises me to say that he accepts constitutional responsibility for what occurred on the fateful date, 3rd May of this year? The noble and learned Lord has indicated his willingness to accept responsibility for the circular, but will he give consideration to its final paragraph which proposes a national register of persons who are warned, bearing in mind that there may be dangers in that and that it may run contrary to the spirit of the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act?
Lord MACKAY of CLASHFERN: My Lords, I have difficulty in believing that the noble and learned Lord has apprehension on entering any field of law. So far as the last paragraph of the circular is concerned, it expressed an intention eventually to maintain a national register. No decision has yet been taken to implement that intention and my present view is that we should await the deliberations of the Stewart Committee which is considering alternatives to prosecution, before taking this matter any further.

UNREGISTERED CHILD MINDERS
2.52 p.m.
Baroness VICKERS: 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 their attention has been drawn to the report by the Advisory Centre

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for Education in regard to the fact that there are 60,000 children a day being cared for by illegal child minders, and if so what action is being contemplated to improve this situation.
Lord CULLEN of ASHBOURNE: My Lords, we are aware of the estimates of the number of unregistered child minders recently published in Childminder by Brian and Sonia Jackson, formerly of the Advisory Centre for Education. Although there is some room for argument about the exact figures, the number of children cared for by unregistered minders is a matter for concern. We believe that the best way to tackle the problem is for local authorities to demonstrate further the benefits of registration. We have, therefore, encouraged them to develop support and advice services, including in-service training, for minders. We are also supporting the National Childminding Association, whose main aim is to improve the standards and status of child minding.
Baroness VICKERS: My Lords, may I thank my noble friend for that very good Answer, which is very helpful. Can he tell me how many registered child minders there are, and what is their average daily pay per child?
Lord CULLEN of ASHBOURNE: My Lords, there were 32,000 child minders registered with local authorities as at 31st March, 1977, and, incidentally, the number of children registered at that date was 72,000. The average pay that these child minders receive is about £3 a day.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord the Minister, in relation to the first reply that he gave to the noble Baroness, whether an added responsibility is to be put on local authorities to see that there is a reduction in the number of child minders who are not registered? I understood him to say, although it was not easy to hear what he was saying, that there is to be some kind of centre set up by local authorities. Will money be made available for local authorities to do this?
Lord CULLEN of ASHBOURNE: My Lords, I am sorry if I was difficult to hear. I hope that I am more easily heard
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now. The Government are considering whether, in view of the fact that the provisions for child minders are about 30 years old, further steps should be taken to amend the regulations which have been in force for so long.
Lord MELCHETT: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that the cuts in public expenditure and the effect on local authorities which these are already having—one local authority has apparently decided to stop having any nursery school places at all—will greatly increase the number of mothers who feel that they need to use illegal and inadequate facilities such as those referred to in this Question? What plans do the Government have to deal with the crisis which they are themselves responsible for creating?
Lord CULLEN of ASHBOURNE: My Lords, I was not aware of the case which the noble Lord mentioned. But there is no doubt that these arrangements cannot he isolated against cuts in public expenditure.
Lord LEATHERLAND: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that the expression "illegal child minders" is included in the Question, and can he define what an "illegal child minder" is? Would the definition include grandma, who looks after the grandchild while its mother is out at work?
Lord CULLEN of ASHBOURNE: My Lords, the position is that we are talking only about child minders who are rewarded for the work they do. There are, of course, many people who are either relations or friends and who do child minding for no pay. There is nothing illegal about that, but other people who are being paid are actually operating illegally if they do not register.

ZAMBIA: MOBILISATION
Lord GISBOROUGH: My Lords, I beg to ask Her Majesty's Government the Question of which I have given Private Notice. The Question is as follows:
" To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will make a Statement on the mobilisation of Zambian military forces against Zimbabwe-Rhodesia."
Lord DENHAM: My Lords, with the leave of the House, my noble friend Lord Trefgarne will answer this Question in the form of a Statement at a convenient moment after 3.30 p.m. This will be followed by my noble friend Lord Trenchard, who will be repeating a Statement on the National Enterprise Board and Rolls-Royce.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
2.58 p.m.
Lord SOAMES: My Lords, I should like to make a Statement on the business of the House for next week. The House was to have been occupied with the Committee stage of the Protection of Official Information Bill on Monday and Tuesday of next week. The Government have now decided that it would be right for the Bill not to proceed further in the present circumstances. The Committee stage will consequently be removed from the Order Paper. No new business will be tabled for Monday next. Tomorrow I shall move a Motion to advance the Second Reading of the European Communities (Greek Accession) Bill from Monday, 3rd December, to next Tuesday, 27th November. Other business will also be tabled for next Tuesday. The Second Reading of the Shipbuilding Bill will be postponed from Monday, 3rd December, to Tuesday, 4th December.
This means that, with the greatest regret, I must ask those with Starred Questions on Monday next and Monday, 3rd December, to withdraw their Questions for another day. I am particularly conscious of the fact that some noble Lords with Questions on Monday next have already been moved from Monday of this week. But I hope that they and the House will agree with me that it would not be appropriate for this House to sit on those Mondays only to take Starred Questions. By the same token, it would be undesirable to invent business purely to have extra sitting days when business is not particularly heavy for the rest of the week.
I should like to assure your Lordships that I do not relish having to ask the House to accept so many changes in the business. I hope noble Lords will recognise that the circumstances are, to say
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the least, unusual and that the Government are responding to what they believe to be the feeling over the Protection of Official Information Bill both in the House and outside.
Lord ELWYN-JONES: My Lords, I should like to thank the noble and learned Lord the Leader of the House—
Lord SOAMES: No, not learned.
Lord ELWYN-JONES:—but learning very fast, if I may say so—for the Statement which he has made in relation to the Protection of Official Information Bill. There will, I think, be great satisfaction, and not only on this side of the House, that the Government have taken on board the general view that the Bill was misconceived—a view which was very strongly advanced on all sides both outside the House and in the House, in particular when we had the Second Reading debate. We congratulate the Government on their late conversion to wisdom and their decision not to proceed with the Bill.
Lord BYERS: My Lords, I should like to associate myself with what has been said by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Elwyn-Jones. I think that it is very wise to have come to this decision, but may I ask the Government about their ultimate intentions so far as this Bill is concerned and so far as the reform of this particular aspect of our life is concerned?
Lord SOAMES: My Lords, I hesitate to reply to the last part of the noble Lord's question. However, may I say to the noble Lord, Lord Byers, about his question concerning the intention of the Government in the far future, that time for further reflection is going to be taken by the Government. What the outcome of that reflection will be I should not like to forecast. However, further reflection will be given to the matter and I would ask the House not to press me today too far on that. Perhaps we shall have more news later for the House. May I say to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Elwyn-Jones, that of course there was a lively Second Reading of the Bill. We all know that. The Government were expecting a number of amendments. However, as I have said, certain unusual and

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unforeseen circumstances have taken place between the Second Reading of the Bill and the proposed day for its Committee stage. These have led the Government to the conclusion that, rather than go forward and think in terms of what amendments should be made to the Bill, with an open mind, so as to make it better and more appropriate, the best thing for us to do would be to ask noble Lords to agree that the Government should withdraw it and give further reflection to the whole matter.
Lord BYERS: My Lords, without pressing the noble Lord the Leader of the House, may I ask him whether he would not consider at an appropriate time—not immediately—that this is a matter upon which we ought to try to get some form of consensus within the parties, and that in the process of reflection it might be a good idea to have both all-Party talks and non-Party talks?
Lord SOAMES: My Lords, I take note of the remarks and proposals made by the noble Lord, Lord Byers, without committing myself about them.
Lord BOOTHBY: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord the Leader of the House whether he knows that his Statement will have brought immense satisfaction and relief not only to the Press and the media but to the whole country, and that I can now withdraw the Starred Question which I have tabled for Answer on 11th December?
Lord SOAMES: My Lords, I rather regret that this has caused the noble Lord to withdraw his Starred Question, because I have no doubt that we should have had an agreeable, interesting and diverting debate. The reason for the withdrawal was not to give satisfaction to, for instance, the media. The reason for the withdrawal was that, following on (a) the Second Reading debate in this House and (b) the circumstances which have arisen since, the Government felt the matter needed further reflection. That was the reason underlying this decision.
Baroness LLEWELYN-DAVIES of HASTOE: My Lords, may I say that we on this side of the House very much appreciate that Her Majesty's Government
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are going to take time for reflection both about the business of the House and also, we hope, about the content of their policies.
Lord SOAMES: My Lords, so far as this Bill is concerned the content of the policies goes without saying.
Lord BARNBY: My Lords, as one of those victims whose Questions on 3rd December have been shot down, may I ask the noble Lord the Leader of the House please to indicate whether, if noble Lords put down Questions for Written Answer, they will receive an Answer in a fairly short time?
Lord SOAMES: My Lords, I had not noticed that my noble friend Lord Barnby suffered very much from being shot down, but any Question that he wishes to leave upon the Order Paper will of course receive a Written Answer.

UNEMPLOYMENT: APPOINTMENT OF SELECT COMMITTEE
Lord SOAMES: My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
Moved, That a Select Committee be appointed to consider and make recommendations on long-term remedies for unemployment.—(Lord Soames.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE: DETERIORATION IN USAGE
3.5 p.m.
Lord KINGS NORTON Lord KINGS NORTON rose to call attention to deterioration in the use of the English language; and to move for Papers. The noble Lord said: My Lords, I rise to call attention to deterioration in the use of the English language, and to move for Papers. There are 21 names down for this 150 minute debate. Allowing myself the privilege of a 17-minute introduction and allowing for the customary 20 minutes at the end for the noble Baroness, Lady Young, means an average of 5·95 minutes each for the rest. I know that your Lordships are looking forward to hearing the two maiden speakers, the

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Marquess of Ailesbury and Lord Perry of Walton, and I hope that the need to be brief accords with their intentions.
The English language is still a wonderful instrument for communication, but I am disturbed by the ways in which uncritical performers are using and modifying the instrument, and I believe that we have reached a stage at which it needs to be defended. I am, of course, not alone in my concern. Many others have deplored some of the changes occurring in our usage. In recent times, at least two eminent specialists have done so. That great, and now lamented, lexicographer, Mr. Eric Partridge, in the introduction to the recent re-issue of his Dictionary of Clichés, said:
" As we advance scientifically and technologically, and as standards of living improve, we tend to become lazier and slacker in our attitude towards speech and writing ".
And Mr. Philip Howard, who formerly wrote so entertainingly on words in The Times, and who I hope will soon be doing so again, wrote in the introduction to his book Weasel Words:
" A sort of Double Dutch Elm Disease seems to be nibbling away at the roots and branches of our language ".
So I knew, my Lords, when I put down my Motion some months ago that I already had distinguished support, and the list of speakers today means, I hope, that I shall discover many more.
I believe that our language confers two great merits on expressions—conciseness and precision. I suggest that in our common usage these two qualities are being more and more neglected. There are other trends of which many of us are critical, and I hope other noble Lords will deal with them. My chief concern, however, this afternoon is with conciseness and precision.
The conciseness of English is well illustrated by the parallel translations which we so often see in commercial literature—in, for example, directions for the use of apparatus. They are frequently given in English, French, German, Italian and Spanish. Almost always the shortest is the English version and almost always, if one studies it closely, it could be shorter still. It is not so easy to give an equally general illustration of precision. I shall illustrate it, however, by giving particular instances of its lack.
The extraordinary richness of the English language, a richness in vocabulary which I believe exceeds that of other Western languages, springs from the Norman Conquest. Had King Harold won the Battle of Hastings—and he jolly nearly did—our present situation would have been very different, certainly in language. Anglo-Saxon was a terse, compact language. King William I brought with him a language of admirable variety but with longer words. What has consequently developed is a language in which many things have more than one name, and most actions more than one verb. This is of course a great advantage, but one unfortunate consequence is that polite society in King William's time used the longer alternatives and left the shorter Anglo-Saxon alternatives to the rude mechanicals. Things indeed reached a position, in which we still are, in which some terse Anglo-Saxon words dropped out of polite usage, supplanted by their longer Norman-French equivalents, and preference for the longer word still continues, militating against the conciseness which I claim for English as a virtue. Too many of us prefer to commence than to start, to donate than to give.
I hope that your Lordships will not regard me as a fanatic in my desire for brevity and precision. I hope, too, that in advocating the use of short alternatives I am not thought to be critical of long words in general. I know, of course, the long word is often the most appropriate word. Frequently it is the way to the shortest expression. It is of the use of long words unnecessarily and of long words when short words are equally correct that I am critical.
In recent times, the tendency of which I complain has been even more noticeable in the USA than here and a great deal of the long-windedness and ambiguity which is creeping into our usage originates in America. Unfortunately, there are many uncritical folk here who think it clever to copy American usage. I became aware of what I now regard as a genuine danger many years ago when in the United States people began to use the word "alibi" to mean "excuse". An alibi is a special kind of excuse and to use it for "excuse" is to introduce ambiguity, and to diminish precision. If a man says,

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" I have an alibi ", one does not now know whether he means that he has an excuse or that he was elsewhere when the act attributed to him took place. Other examples are the use of "anticipate" to mean "expect"; of "disinterested" to mean "uninterested" and a more recent neologism of this kind is the use of "hopefully" to mean "hope". To say, "I am hopefully going to Timbuctoo", used to mean, quite certainly, "I am going to Timbuctoo in a spirit of hope". Now it can also mean "I hope I am going to Timbuctoo".
There is also, harking back to long-windedness, a strange tendency to say "I am hopeful that" instead of "I hope that", an appalling desire to "meet up with "instead of" to meet", and a hope that actions will "pay off" instead of just "pay". The transatlantic liking for the long word of course has long been evident in the use of "apartment" for "flat", of "elevator" for "lift", of "assignment" for "job", of "location" for "place" and of phrases such as "mission accomplished" for "job done". But the liking for the long locution is, I think, more recent.
For example, for some time we have been aware of the spread of the word, "capability". It all started in the world of technology. An aeroplane had "a long-range capability" instead of merely "a long range". We have now reached the stage indeed of saying, "It has the capability of doing" instead of "It can do ". This sort of thing seems, in cold blood, incredible, but it is happening. Worse still is the prevalence of "currently". That is a word I feel very strongly about. The present is one of the few precise notions we have: It is the instant dividing the past from the future. It rarely needs qualification and if, for emphasis, it does, the word "now" is available.
We have reached a pitch, however, at which if I had said in my preamble this afternoon, "I am currently speaking to your Lordships on English usage", I doubt whether I should have attracted any criticism. More and more such unnecessary words are being inserted. People today no longer have just good or bad records; they have good or bad track records. "Track" is not only unnecessary; it is really rather silly, but it is
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in common use. In another place recently a Member referred to "the crisis situation". The word "situation" was unnecessary. Rather worse, in a broadcast report of the Pope's visit to Mexico, I learned that in Mexico City there was "an ongoing chaos situation", which meant, I suppose, "continuing chaos".
We indulge too, my Lords, in wholly unnecessary phrases such as "at this moment of time", "as of now" and "in this day and age" or "at present" or "now ". I will not bore your Lordships by continuing to give examples of the use of long words where short ones are equally accurate, of ambiguity, of two or more words where one is sufficient, of tautology, of jargon, of mispronunciation. There are hundreds of them. The Queen's English Society collects them in a sort of verbal chamber of horrors. I have, I hope, given enough to indicate the nature of my concern. But I do not believe that all is lost. I do not think the decline which I believe has begun cannot be arrested. But I do believe that unless we do something about it, the deterioration will worsen, or, in modern usage, "escalate". An attempt, as I think the French still make, to control the development of the language from an academic centre would not, in my view, succeed here, and if your Lordships are persuaded, as I hope you will be, that action is needed, then I think it must be voluntary action. It would be unreasonable to expect ordinary people to guard their utterances so carefully as always to be brief and accurate, but it is perhaps not unreasonable to expect them to be especially careful in their written work and when speaking in public.
But most important in the context of my anxiety, my Lords, is the teaching of English. Is the way in which English is taught today producing a proper concern for well-balanced usage? I take leave to doubt it. We seem to be less critical in our usage than of old and this must surely be, at least partly, a consequence of how we have been taught. In the distant days when I was at school I believe the way in which English grammar was taught and indeed the way in which Latin grammar was taught were, if somewhat severe disciplines, salutary ones. And if our teaching sometimes left us in

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later life uncertain of proper usage, there was—indeed there is—always the great work of Mr. Fowler to guide us.
In this connection, my Lords, there was published in 1975 a report of a Committee of Inquiry into the teaching in schools of reading and the other uses of English. It was called A Language for Life, and the chairman of the committee was Sir Alan Bullock, now Lord Bullock. I find it surprising that this massive work has not been discussed in your Lordships' House. I do not pretend to have absorbed it—it has 609 pages and weighs two pounds—but in my somewhat superficial study of it I noted that one third of teachers of English in secondary schools had no qualifications for teaching English. I also found myself very much in sympathy with the Note of Dissent by Mr. Stuart Froome which was critical of some aspects of our teaching methods.
But, of course, the broadcasting authorities have a great influence on our usage and sometimes I feel they let us down. Years ago I know that the BBC had a Director of the Spoken Word. They do not have one now. Whatever organisation has taken his place must be inadequate, because too often we hear mispronunciations and usages of the kinds I have been criticising. Perhaps the broadcasting media can be persuaded to take English more seriously. There is indeed some sign of their doing so, for recently, as your Lordships will know, BBC radio—not television—commissioned reports from three assessors on the present quality of English radio broadcasts.
The reports are not on the whole particularly critical of present BBC radio, but nevertheless they show a number of ways to improvement. They do not—I repeat, do not—deal with television which, in my experience, offends more often than radio. Dr. Burchfield in his report to the BBC quotes Professor Quirk as saying,
" The BBC should have the courage to give a lead ",
and,
" No other organisation has such an opportunity or such a responsibility to present a first-rate model of present-day English: precise phrasing, well-chosen words, soundly constructed sentences ".
Mr. Timothy, who is rather more severe than Dr. Burchfield or Professor Donoghue believes,
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"… that the BBC has a clear duty to uphold the standards of spoken English ";
and I hope your Lordships agree that we all have a similar duty.
It is indeed, my Lords, a matter which I believe we should all take very seriously. It is clearly important to express oneself with precision and desirable to do so concisely. But also, my Lords, language is the instrument of thought, and if we allow our usage of it to become imprecise as it changes and develops—because change and develop it must—we shall not be able to think clearly. We do not think all that clearly now and it might be dangerous if our performance became worse. Furthermore, as English is the major language for international exchanges it is vital that ambiguity in its usage should be as nearly as possible eliminated.
I believe there is still more to be done in comparing the results of different methods, including the old methods, of teaching English, and in this connection I should like to ask to what extent the 350 conclusions and recommendations of the Bullock Report have been accepted. And is the employment to teach English of teachers unqualified in English diminishing?
Finally, my Lords, I believe that material support should be given to the bodies which have been formed to stem the decline in English usage. I have already mentioned the Queen's English Society, whose concern is similar to mine, and there is the Plain English Campaign, whose chief and most laudable objective is the clarification of official forms. There is also, of course, the English Association, which for most of this century has been concerned with promoting knowledge and appreciation of the English language and its literature; but it also seeks to uphold the standards of English writing and speech. In this connection it has in membership 200 schools which receive its papers. This must be helping to slow the decline which I find so worrying. There may be other bodies in the field, but clearly the combined efforts of them all are not enough. They deserve the strongest possible support to extend the scope of their lectures and discussions. Most of all, however, I am convinced that their concern for our language must be diffused far more widely in the schoolroom. My Lords, I beg to move for Papers.
3.22 p.m.
Lord PERRY of WALTON: My Lords, I rise with great diffidence to address your Lordships' House for the first time and I crave your customary indulgence. I have spent my entire career being an expert of sorts, and experts of any sort are characterised first by their abysmal ignorance of all matters outside their own expertise, and secondly by their tendency to be controversial about any subject whether or not they know anything about it. There are, therefore, very few subjects for debate in your Lordships' House upon which I am competent to speak in a non-controversial way. My choice of occasion being so severely constrained, I very greatly welcome the opportunity provided for me by the noble Lord, Lord Kings Norton, in introducing this short debate, for I am confident that there can be little controversy about the assertion that there has been a deterioration in the use of the English langague.
I wish to draw your Lordships' attention to three of the multiple causes of that deterioration. A major cause of deterioration in the use of the English language is very simply the enormous increase in the number of people who are using it. It has for some time been the lingua franca of science. It is fast becoming the primary language of international communication in other fields. It is already the first language of many nations. It is already spoken by more people than is any other language save Mandarin Chinese. Increasingly it is being adopted as a second language by the nations of the world. As this happens it is quite inevitable that more and more people will use the language ineptly, for it is not an easy language to use well. I recall the rumour that one overseas visitor to Britain shot himself on reading a news headline "Beatles pronounced success".
I do not think we should deplore the deterioration that stems from the increasing use of English. We must accept it as inevitable and yet take what steps we can to ensure that the deterioration is not so severe as to make communication worse rather than better. The courses in English as a second language which are offered in many countries by the British Council are of the very greatest importance in this respect.
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A second cause of deterioration in the use of the English language is paradoxically to be found in the structure of the English school examination system. A-level examinations, while they serve to induce study in depth and to make possible the completion of an honours degree in 3 years—a task which no other country has the temerity to attempt—are very ill-designed to encourage general education. Indeed they have, by requiring too early specialisation at school, tended to produce a generation of illiterate scientists and innumerate humanists. Parsing is no longer taught in many schools, and very dull it was as I remember. But how can anyone construct a sentence safely if he is unable to analyse one? Few children study the classics any more. I never managed to read any classical literature in the original, but I did learn enough to know without having to think that antediluvian is spelt "ante" and not "anti" and to recognise hypodermic and subcutaneous as synonyms.
I suspect, my Lords, that few people are aware of just how greatly the present generation is missing just those bits and pieces of schooling which viewed superficially seem unnecessary as preparation for modern life but which actually are of considerable importance to the proper use of language. I suspect, too, that few people are aware of just how many of our most intellectually able university students are unable to spell, cannot correctly construct simple sentences and have no sense of style; or indeed how many are shocked to find that it is a mathematical necessity that about half the population should earn less than the average wage.
As a final example of the positive deterioration in the use of the English language I come to the mass media. The newspapers have too little space, television and radio too little time, to allow of leisurely and reasoned argument. The successful exploiters of these media are those whose skill lies in the production of the short, sharp assertion. In the space of time available the assertion cannot be logically refuted, so the only answer is to be found in an equally short, sharp counter-assertion. Both may be outrageous but the language employed by both sides is chosen so as to suppress reservations and doubts. It is a language that depends on generalisations which are

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usually imprecise and often deliberately ambiguous. It is a language that makes unblushing use of jargon wherever that can assist evasion. This is especially true of political assertion, where words like "capitalism", "socialist" and "bourgeois" can be used either in a pejorative or in an adulatory way with an underlying presumption—false in respect of the majority of readers, viewers and listeners—that its meaning is crystal clear.
My Lords, we could, if we wished, do something to counter these last two causes of deterioration in the use of the English language. I fear from my experience that we shall lack the will, for cure will demand radical reforms of some of our most favoured institutions. I hope that at some not too far distant future date we shall have the courage to meet that demand, but I confess that I am not over sanguine. However, unless we do have courage, I fear that we shall go on to see a further progressive deterioration in the use of the English language in respect both of its vocabulary and of its syntax.
3.28 p.m.
Lord DAVIES of LEEK: My Lords, my first duty is to say how much I have enjoyed listening to not a Celt but a Scotsman, and as a poor old Welsh peasant it is for me a privilege to follow that delightful maiden speech, with so many prefixes used as they should be used. Looking at his distinguished service to the Medical Research Council—I am myself interested in pharmaceuticals—and his professorship of pharmacology at Edinburgh, I am sure all of us on all sides of this House are looking forward to further contributions from the distinguished addition that we now have on the Cross-Benches, and I hope that we shall hear him many, many times in this House.
My Lords, having spent lamp oil trying to work out a constructive speech, I was then informed by my Whip, "You have got 5.9 minutes to speak". My danger is that I might take 55.9 minutes if I am not careful, so I must see that I do not do that.
I should like now to pay a tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Kings Norton. May I say that it is a compliment to this House that so many noble Lords with outside
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liabilities, and so on, have without any jocularity taken the trouble to put their name on the list of speakers. There is a long list of Members of this House who are interested in keeping alive the power and purity of the great English language. I believe that this House makes a contribution to keeping alive good English throughout the country.
It is clear that no language can be said to be spoken unless every word of it is meant to be understood. For example, parrots speak; tape recorders screech and scream these days; music centres drive us deaf and communication in words and pictures is now available to men and manikins from the earth to the rim of the universe. What has it done to us? Alvin Toffler said in his famous book Future Shock:
" People are being overwhelmed by change—we are failing to adapt ourselves to the future … The roaring current of change is overwhelming mankind, his language, his ethics—even his life is threatened "
by the rapidity of this change. Our images of reality are so rapidly changing and the machinery of image transmission is being speeded up to such an extent that sometimes it is incoherent. Words are changing and being modified more rapidly in this era than ever before, not merely on the slang level but in each technical—and, as the noble Lord, Lord Perry of Walton well knows—elcctronic, biological, medical, social or political advance. New words, new acronymns and new neologisms pour from the lips of everyone these days and they tend to creep slovenly into our journalism—which is the worst of the lot—and everyday speech. There is a journalist sitting behind me uttering derogatory remarks about that last sentence.
All that is true not only of English but of all languages, even in my Welsh. Flexner, the lexicographer of the Random House Dictionary of the English Language, which appears in the Library said:
" Of some 450,000 usable words in the English language today only 250,000 would be comprehensible to Shakespeare. "
He further tells us that words are being dropped out of the language and being replaced at a rate three times faster than in the period that he took in his studies to be the base period of the study of language—between 1564 and 1914.
We have modern communication systems that need now to change language.

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The juggernaut—that common thing that runs over our roads and ruins the peace of our villages—and its driver dominate industry. Kipling said that transport is civilisation. It does not look like that when one is on the M.1 or the M.6, especially like I was yesterday in a fog! Therefore, we have to have sign language and that is one of the things that ruins the purity of any language. It is happening in every country. Even in Wales we are setting up our signposts in two languages. When dear old George Borrow tramped through Wales he did not want two signposts. Now we make drawings for the juggernaut drivers.
Other words that creep in have caused man subconsciously to ask himself a question. Indeed, he did so in the 19th century. If any of your Lordships take the trouble to go into the Library and look at the 25th volume of The Nineteenth Century, your Lordships will see that there was a long argument on: Can we think without words? Max Muller wrote a long piece that is fascinating and interesting. He considered that there was an algebra of language far more wonderful than the algebra of mathematics. Muller defined thought as language minus sound. Time will not allow me to go into this in depth, but I am sure that the House would be interested if we could do so. I am sure that noble Lords know the issues as well as I do, and I believe that the slovenly thought that we have today and slovenly thinking lead to a deterioration in our language.
Am I right in assuming that in an age tortured by uncertainty with respect to religion, God, family, self, money and property, there is a worldwide collapse of not only the values of the past but of our language which, more and more in the world of men, tends to be vague, indecisive, careless and often callous? I was delighted to hear the noble Lord talk about parsing. I guarantee that there are not 10 boys in the sixth form—and the sixth form usually comprises about 30 these days—who could parse a sentence like we had to with Shakespeare when we were young. Those things are of value, because otherwise when does one know to insert a comma or to inflect one's voice? Language has beauty with sonority. One wants sound with it and one wants it in the right places—not the wrong ones.
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Therefore, we are witnessing a breakdown, and far from bureaucracy increasing the trouble is that bureaucracy is breaking down. The very business systems of the industrial society in which we live are breaking down partly because of lack of thinking. I was delighted to hear the noble Lord, Lord Perry—he did not actually use the phrase—using abstract nouns. Let me give an example of a perfect abstract noun that people bandy about. Marxism was at one time not an abstract noun, but now it is. Some forms of Marxism are utterly intolerable, but Chinese Marxism is now all right. It just depends. Nenni at one time was a Marxist, but later he could dine with the Queen. We use such abstract phrases and there is no real meaning to them at all, unless we are extremely careful. I have been speaking for eight minutes. I do not want to be interrupted because I shall take only another one and a half minutes.
Wars have influenced our language. As regards courtesy and scholarship, I must pay a tribute to our prelates. I misquoted once the words from St. John, Chapter 1. I said, "First the Word Genesis"—but then because of scholarship and decency of language no noble prelate who knew that I was wrong rose to correct me. That is another test of understanding and the quiet use of English language in the right place.
I now come—your Lordships will be pleased to know—to the end of my little speech. There are word fashions. At one time we had "parameters". I guarantee that there were not 10 people who knew the mathematics of a curve or a straight line where Y equals A plus B, or what a parameter meant. Nye Bevan, who I used to know and who was a great pal of mine, was fond of the word "dichotomy". It is only two years ago that this Chamber rebounded with the phrase "charisma". There are fashions in words and those fashions devalue the value of the coin.
How better to finish than by saying what eponyms can bring. Let us take as an example the word "Hovis". Hovis bread was invented by a baker in Stone. He is buried next to Marx in the cemetery at Highgate. He invented Hovis bread. He offered a prize for a name for his

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wheatgerm. A schoolmaster in Oxford won the prize with the phrase Homonis vis—in the genitive case—which means strength to man and the strength of man. They reduced the words and made Hovis. In other words manufactured words are now creeping into the language and sometimes they are most effective. Indeed, they are very effective because such words give a meaning to bread and a special type of bread.
Probably the best use of the English language is by the judges. I would pay a tribute to the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack who when he is not dealing with campanology makes excellent speeches on philosophy. I also include our own ex-Chancellor in that category along with judges and people like them who speak clearly and who keep the language alive.
Lastly, there are the poets. How better to finish than with three small verses; most of the words contain only four letters, although in one case there are seven. If the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, would not twist his features quite so much I should be much happier looking at him.
Lord TREFGARNE: My Lords, I would not be so happy listening to the noble Lord.
Lord DAVIES of LEEK: My Lords, that is very clever. If the noble Lord persists in that, I shall tell the Leader of the House and I shall take longer.
When Housman wrote his famous little poem he did not use more than four or five-letter words and his English is beautiful. It reads:
" When first my way to fair I took
Few pence in purse had I
And long I used to stand and look
At things I could not buy.
Now times are altered: if I care
To buy a thing, I can;
The pence are here and here's the fair
But where's the lost young man ".
In perfect English and simple phraseology the whole gamut of the problem of life is portrayed. My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Kings Norton, has rendered a service to the English language by raising this issue today.

ZAMBIA: MOBILISATION
3.41 p.m.
Lord TREFGARNE: My Lords, with the leave of the House may I now answer the Private Notice Question of my noble friend Lord Gisborough by repeating a Statement being made in another place by my right honourable friend the Lord Privy Seal about the mobilisation of Zambian military forces against Zimbabwe-Rhodesia. In particular I apologise to the noble Marquess, Lord Ailesbury, for intervening before his maiden speech. I hope that he will forgive me. The Statement is as follows:
" On 20th November President Kaunda announced the full mobilisation of his country's resources as a result of recent Rhodesian raids on bridges in Zambia. My right honourable friend the Prime Minister sent a personal message to President Kaunda on 20th November expressing her concern and the Government's determination to bring all such incidents to a speedy end. My right honourable and noble friend is seeing the Zambian High Commissioner this afternoon.
" As the House is aware, the persistent tension between Rhodesia and Zambia, of which this is the latest manifestation, is caused by the conflict in Rhodesia which we are trying to resolve through the Lancaster House Conference. We have come closer to a settlement than ever before. Any intensification of violence by either side at this stage is clearly contrary to the spirit of reconciliation which we are trying to create.
" There is a heavy responsibility upon all parties to the Conference to end the war quickly now that agreement on the political issues has been reached. And we call upon both sides to reach early agreement on the cease-fire on the basis of the proposals we have put forward."
My Lords, that concludes the Statement.
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, we are grateful to the Minister for repeating in this House the Statement made in another place. Will he agree that the implementation of the political agreement

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reached at Lancaster House last week very much depends on our achieving an early and genuine cease-fire? Moreover, will he agree that the attacks launched by the Salisbury régime—which is still an illegal régime—not only on guerrilla camps in Zambia but on the very fabric of the economy of that country, are bound to make the achievement of a cease-fire, without which a general agreement of a lasting nature is impossible, not only more difficult but perhaps impossible?
In paragraph I the Statement refers to representations in a personal and, I am sure, very friendly way, made to President Kaunda on 20th November about these latest happenings. Can the noble Lord tell the House whether similar and perhaps very strongly worded representations have been made to the Salisbury régime for launching the attacks which have disturbed President Kaunda so much that he has taken this action? Moreover, will he not agree that to continue with these attacks on Zambia, almost on the morrow of the signal contribution made by President Kaunda and Zambia to the success of the Lancaster House Conference, has an ominous and almost sinister air to it? It seems to be deliberately timed to make it perhaps more difficult, if not impossible, for that agreement to be implemented. Will the noble Lord confirm—and this is a very important point—that the High Commissioners of the Commonwealth in London, not exclusively the African High Commissioners in London, have, in assembly, strongly condemned the action of the Salisbury régime in launching these last attacks? Therefore, have the Government taken full note of what the High Commissioners have said?—as they, more than anybody were responsible for the fact that the Lancaster House Conference was made possible, and made a major contribution to its success.
Lord WADE: My Lords, I should like to add just a few words to the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Goronwy-Roberts. I simply want to emphasise one point and I shall put it in the form of a question. Is it not important that not only should we press both sides to cease the conflict which is taking place, but we should be seen to be pressing both sides equally? There might be some uninten-
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tional misunderstanding as a result of this Statement, and it is important that we be seen to put pressure on both sides equally.
Lord GISBOROUGH: My Lords, will my noble friend confirm that this is in no way a declaration of war by Zambia? Secondly, will he agree that the conclusion of the cease-fire agreement is now even more urgent? Can he given an indication of the current progress of the talks? Finally, can he say whether raids are still taking place by terrorists into Rhodesia, even up to the current time, in spite of the progress of the talks?
Lord TREFGARNE: My Lords, perhaps I may answer the interventions first. To take the point made by my noble friend Lord Gisborough, yes, I am afraid it is the case that cross-border raids from Zambia into Rhodesia are continuing. Indeed, Mr. Mugabe—whose forces are not, generally speaking, based in Zambia—actually called upon his supporters to intensify their raids only recently, and we regretted that very much indeed.
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, how recently?
Lord TREFGARNE: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Goronwy-Roberts, asks me how recently. Certainly within the last few days. I am not suggesting that the recent Rhodesian attacks into Zambia were a response to that, but certainly Mr. Mugabe's exhortations were not helpful. The noble Lord, Lord Goronwy-Roberts, also asked me whether the agreement so far reached was not conditional for its effect upon the further agreement of a cease-fire. Indeed, that is certainly the case. The noble Lord asked me about our specific protests to the Rhodesians as a result of these raids. The Government are very deeply concerned at the increase in tension which has developed between Rhodesia and Zambia in recent days and it is essential for all parties to exercise the greatest restraint at this crucial time. I hope that that conveys our feeling on this matter sufficiently.
Lord WIGG: My Lords, when the Minister replies he does it in a detached sort of way. Do he and the noble Lord the Foreign Secretary not realise that

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those in Rhodesia are in rebellion against the lawful authority of Parliament and the Sovereign, and that therefore President Kaunda has every right to look to the British Government to stop them?—as they are in a position to do if they want to, because aircraft piloted by officers of the Royal Air Force have landed in Zimbabwe-Rhodesia. if they do not do it, clearly they are identifying themselves—as I believe they have all the way through—with trying to secure the return of the Muzorewa Government at all costs.
Lord TREFGARNE: My Lords, no, that is not our aim. Our aim is to achieve a comprehensive settlement at the conference at Lancaster House so that elections can be held in Rhodesia and so that the Rhodesians themselves can decide who they should have as their Government. It is not true to say, as the noble Lord is suggesting, that we are hoping and expecting that the bishop will win the forthcoming elections. Our primary purpose now, having reached agreement on the political and constitutional matters, is to bring the war to an end. I would remind your Lordships that that war has now been going on for five years, 20,000 people are already dead, another 100 die every week, and many more are maimed, injured and bereaved. I hope your Lordships will agree that the Government policy, which is aimed at bringing that war to an end, is the right one.
Lord WIGG: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that this is not a war, it is a rebellion, and a rebellion against the lawful authority of this country? The Government have a duty to reimpose the authority, which they propose to do in a nominal way by sending a governor out there. But at the moment, as a result of the Government's passive attitude, the Rhodesians are acting as though they were a lawful Government, which in fact they are not.
Lord TREFGARNE: My Lords, it is also the case that there are major military operations being mounted from Zambia and other countries into Rhodesia.
Lord GRIDLEY: My Lords, may I ask my noble friend whether it is a fact that the Government of Bishop Muzorewa months ago offered a cease-fire? Is not the essence of the difficulty now that if
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there had been a cease-fire on the other side matters would have gone on very much more quickly and that we would not be in the situation that we are in today? Is it not desirable at this time to remove all tension? Can we not understand that probably President Kaunda is in a very difficult situation? But, so long as things go on as they are now, would it not be better if an appeal went out from your Lordships' House to both sides to respect a cease-fire?
Lord TREFGARNE: My Lords, it is certainly the case that when the conference opened at Lancaster House, 10 or 11 weeks ago now, my noble friend the Foreign Secretary invited all the parties to the conflict in that part of the world to agree to a cease-fire at least for the duration of the conference. The Salisbury parties agreed to that ceasefire, and it was a matter of great regret that the Patriotic Front did not. Certainly had they done so there would be a ceasefire now. We hope that the new proposals that we have recently tabled will soon commend themselves to the parties and that a cease-fire can be then brought into force.
Baroness LLEWELYN-DAVIES of HASTOE: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that on all sides of the House we echo the passionate desire for a ceasefire, and that we echo the noble Lord, and also the noble Lord, Lord Gridley, who takes such an interest in these matters, but that we on this side have a special anxiety to stop the bombing and the incursions carried out by the present Zimbabwe-Rhodesia Government? It is not aimed simply at community things. It is aimed at destroying bridges; it is aimed at destroying the means by which the Zambian people can actually eat. That is what it is all about. We should be grateful if the noble Lord could condemn that aspect of the activities of the Zimbabwe-Rhodesian Government.
Lord TREFGARNE: My Lords, I shall certainly condemn all military actions that are going on in that part of the world, including the actions of the Rhodesian Government and the actions of the other parties to the conflict.
Lord HATCH of LUSBY: My Lords, would the noble Lord not agree that his

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history this afternoon has been insufficient? The tension between Zambia and Rhodesia stems from UDI in 1965, when the Zambians were asked by the then British Government, and by successive British Governments since, to assist Britain in their economic war against the illegal regime in Rhodesia. Would he not confirm that there is not a single instance of a Zambian soldier being found on Rhodesian soil; that this series of attacks over the last few weeks, as my noble friend Lady Llewelyn-Davies pointed out, has been upon the Zambian economy and not on the Patriotic Front guerrillas; and that this is an attack on a friendly Commonwealth country which should be condemned by the British Government, as a member of the Commonwealth, like the rest of the Commonwealth has already done?
Lord TREFGARNE: My Lords, the noble Lord refers to the history of Zambian participation in the sanctions, and he is right to do so. Certainly they have been in the front line of the sanctions war in that part of the world. Indeed, they still are, as the noble Lord reminds me. I should perhaps tell your Lordships that we have recently agreed to supply the Zambians with 13,000 tons of maize, and rather more than half of this has so far been supplied. I say that in answer to the point made by the noble Baroness that their food supplies were being disrupted. We are asked to be more forthright in our defence of Zambia. I wonder whether this would really be helpful. We are quite persuaded that to appear one-handed in this matter would not help to reduce the armed conflict; it would intensify it, and it would certainly not help progress at the Lancaster House talks.
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, may I just add one suggestion, in the best possible spirit, arising from what we heard so cogently from the noble Lord just now. Has thought been given to the possibility of a joint Commonwealth representation to all concerned to implement the cease-fire of their own accord, now that the negotiations for a permanent basis for the political and the military agreements proceed? It seems to some of us that the Commonwealth in Lusaka showed great and helpful significance at this juncture, and has throughout the
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negotiations, so far as we can see, in many ways made very helpful contributions. It may be that the joint representations of the Commonwealth to everybody concerned in Zambia, and other countries as well as in Zimbabwe-Rhodesia, may have an effect.
Lord TREFGARNE: My Lords, as the noble Lord reminds the House, the Commonwealth Heads of Government at their Lusaka meeting earlier this year clearly laid down the lines upon which we ought to proceed. But the responsibility for doing so rests with the British Government, and we are now discharging that responsibility. However, I can say that throughout the Lancaster House talks our Commonwealth colleagues have been kept fully informed.

THE NATIONAL ENTERPRISE BOARD AND ROLLS-ROYCE
3.58 p.m.
The MINISTER of STATE, DEPARTMENT of INDUSTRY (Viscount Trenchard): My Lords, with the further leave of the House, and with my apology also to my noble friend Lord Ailesbury, may I repeat a Statement which has been made in the other place by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Industry. The Statement reads:
" With permission, Mr. Speaker, I should like to make a Statement on the relationship between the National Enterprise Board and Rolls-Royce.
" I have had in recent months to consider the relationship between the NEB and Rolls-Royce in the light of evidence of some friction over a considerable period. I have concluded that the friction is not a passing problem of personalities or a difference of opinion on the management of the company but is inherent in the relationship and would almost certainly survive a change of management.
" Rolls-Royce is a company of a scale and importance such that the supervision of its board by another board, however eminent and accomplished, is bound to give rise to strain.
" Moreover, it is a company with which inescapably Government has

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exceptionally close connections and where important decisions lie directly with Government.
" I therefore decided that in view of these two considerations, from which there is no escape, it would not be right to paper over the cracks but rather to plan to remove the source of the difficulty. Clause 2 of the Industry Bill now before the House will give me power to direct the NEB to transfer its shareholdings in Rolls-Royce to the Secretary of State, and I told the NEB of my intention to make such an order as soon as the Bill becomes law. This decision was in no sense whatsoever a reflection on the members of the NEB or their staff. Rather, it is a judgment that the role they had been given in relation to this major company was, in the last analysis, not an appropriate one. When I expressed to the NEB my intention I was told categorically that were I to adhere to my proposal all the members of the board would resign. I was asked to re-consider. This I did.
" Yesterday I told the board that I did adhere to my proposal. The House knows that the chairman, Sir Leslie Murphy, and all the members of the NEB have resigned from their posts. I have accepted their resigations with regret. The board was composed of distinguished people from business and trade unions who co-operated together to serve the country with dedication. I hope this form of co-operation will become possible in the new board.
" The NEB has, as the House knows, important disposals to arrange and other continuing tasks to perform. It will have a catalytic investment role, especially in connection with advanced technology and increasingly in partnership with the private sector; as well as its regional and small firms roles.
" I am glad to tell the House that Sir Arthur Knight, chairman of Courtaulds Ltd., has accepted my invitation to take over the chairmanship of the NEB with immediate effect. Sir John King, chairman of Babcock International Ltd., has accepted my invitation to become deputy chairman, and five other persons have similarly indicated their willingness to serve: Mr.
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Robert Clayton, technical director of GEC; Mr. Alec Dibbs, deputy chairman of National Westminster Bank; Mr. George Jefferson, chairman and chief executive of British Aerospace, Dynamics Division; Mr. Dennis Stevenson, chairman of Peterlee and Newton Aycliffe New Towns; and Mr. John Caines, secretary to the NEB. I am deliberately leaving some places vacant and I have today written to the TUC about this.
" The House will wish to know that following the recent announcement that Sir Kenneth Keith wishes to retire from the chairmanship of Rolls-Royce after seven years' service, Sir Frank McFadzean has indicated his willingness to accept appointment as chairman."
That is the end of the Statement.
4.3 p.m.
Baroness BIRK: My Lords, I would say that that was a very surprising Statement, except that we probably knew what was coming and, I would say with respect, I do not think anything that comes from the Department of Industry now and from the Secretary of State is surprising at all. The Secretary of State has said many times that he does not want to interfere with management—in fact he said last week, "I am no manager "—yet he has taken away a subsidiary from a holding company, which goes right against the grain of any proper corporate industrial organisation; and I would say that the new board, however distinguished, know very well that they will have no real independence. That is quite implicit in their appointment; they know very well how the cookie is going to crumble. It is also highly doubtful whether they will attract staff of the high quality which has been working with the NEB up to now, and which is one of the most important reasons for keeping the NEB in its present form.
The Secretary of State, as the Minister said, has written to the TUC. How can the Minister expect trade unionists to allow their names to be put forward for this weak substitute? The general secretary of the TUC and Mr. David Basnett, who has recently retired at the end of his term of office, have both said strongly that in these circumstances they cannot see trade unionists co-operating. I

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should have thought that the Government, in a situation where there is not very much co-operation between themselves and trade unionists, would have wanted to keep clear this area, where trade unionists, the Government and industry have been working harmoniously; but no, they have stopped that.
I would ask the Minister whether it is true that, when presenting the half-year's accounts, the chairman of the NEB, Sir Leslie Murphy, made critical comments about Rolls-Royce; and is it not a fact that the Secretary of State endorsed that statement before it was made public? Now the Government are adopting a stance as a result of being leaned on heavily by Sir Kenneth Keith, and I would say that what is good for Sir Kenneth Keith is not necessarily good for Rolls-Royce and the country.
Since there is a written agreement between the NEB and Rolls-Royce which gives a right to the NEB chairman to be present at all discussions with the Secretary of State, may we be told at how many discussions he has been present, minuted or unminuted, and what view will be taken about BL's bid for severance from the NEB in order that it can bed down in the Industry Department's protection?
Is the Minister also aware that Mr. Bruce-Gardyne, a very active spokesman on financial affairs on the Government Back-Benches in another place, expressed great concern that Rolls-Royce should be separated from the NEB, since Rolls-Royce had accumulated a whole bookful of orders without any clear prospect of fulfilment? I should like to know how this change will improve the efficiency of Rolls-Royce, which is really a major consideration. Sir Kenneth Keith referred to the NEB as a "bureacratic contraceptive". Using the same vernacular, I would say that in the Statement today we have now heard of the castration of the NEB, even though it has been packaged with new faces.
4.7 p.m.
Lord ROCHESTER: My Lords, we on these Benches wish to thank the noble Viscount for repeating the Statement which, like the noble Baroness, Lady Birk, we very much regret. We are not without
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sympathy for the Government in the predicament in which they must have found themselves in seeking presumably to reconcile the views of the NEB with those of Rolls-Royce, but our view consistently in this matter has been that there should be as much stability and continuity as possible in the operations of the National Enterprise Board, irrespective of the political complexion of the Government of the day.
That was why, in response to the Government Statement on this matter last July, we welcomed the undertaking that until such time as the vitality of the private sector was restored—that was the phrase used—the board would have a continuing role for those companies which had been in difficulties and for which it had a responsibility so long as the business concern had a prospect of viability and no solution based on the private sector was available. We could understand, even applaud maybe, a policy which returned Rolls-Royce to the private sector in a commercially viable way by merging it, as indeed it has been rumoured might be the case, with a company run as efficiently as GEC under Sir Arnold Weinstock, but that is not what we have been told is to happen.
With those points in mind I would ask the Minister a number of questions. First, given that for some time to come Rolls-Royce will need to be subsidised by the taxpayer, what makes the Government think that civil servants in the Department of Industry can monitor its performance better than people having as much commercial expertise as the members of the National Enterprise Board who have just resigned or, for that matter, those who are now, we are told, to replace them? Secondly—and here in a sense I echo what the noble Baroness, Lady Birk, has just said—is it the intention that British Leyland should now be treated in the same way? If that is not the intention, on the basis of what principle is it to be treated differently? Finally, I put a general question. Do the Government really believe that, in the light of this Statement, there is for much longer a worthwhile future for the NEB?
4.10 p.m.
Viscount TRENCHARD: My Lords, a very large number of points have been

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raised by the noble Baroness and the noble Lord, Lord Rochester, and so I hope that the House will bear with me if I try to go through them. First, my right honourable friend has no intention of interfering in management. The noble Baroness rightly described the NEB as a holding company, but we have here a situation involving an enormous organisation with 60,000 employees, a turnover of £700 million, and a board of its own of highly qualified people, and that board is asked to report through an intermediary to the Government, who, as my right honourable friend's Statement made entirely clear, cannot escape from certain essential decisions, particularly those regarding finance in the longer term. May I say to the noble Baroness that I have some experience of corporate organisation, and I have to say to her that it is not an example of normal corporate organisation to submit a board of the size, and with an operation of the size, we are talking about to an intermediary board before one gets to those who control the money for its operation in the last resort.
I should like to make one other point at this stage, and that is that the whole board of Rolls-Royce made it very clear to my right honourable friend that they were unanimous that the friction which had been going on for some time had reached the point where it was in fact endangering the current operation of Rolls-Royce. So we were dealing with a situation which had become serious and immediate.
So far as the staff of the NEB is concerned, Sir Arthur Knight is today having a meeting with the staff, and I should like to make clear that my right honourable friend has the highest respect for the staff of the NEB, as has Sir Arthur Knight. I believe, and hope, that the staff will continue to do the dedicated and loyal job that they have always done.
The noble Baroness said, if I have her words correctly, that she did not feel that any self-respecting trade unionist would join such a weak substitute. The NEB, as reconstituted—and all appointments are not yet made—cannot by any stretch of the imagination, against the list of names that I have read, be regarded as a weak substitute. We very much regret—
Baroness BIRK: My Lords, I should like to take up that point with the noble Viscount. What I said was that their independence would not be the same as that of the present NEB, because they knew perfectly well what the situation was. That is the point.
Viscount TRENCHARD: My Lords, I shall deal in a moment, if I may, with the continuing role of the NEB. We very much hope that the trade unions—and we are aware of the statements made, to which the noble Baroness refers—will, when the dust is settled (if I may use a colloquial phrase) see that the Government have taken a perfectly proper decision on a difficult and immediate large-scale organisational problem. I hope—and my right honourable friend hopes—that when they do appreciate that that is the situation, some of them will in the future play their part on the basis of their particular contribution.
The noble Baroness mentioned the question of criticism of the Rolls-Royce organisation. The Rolls-Royce board themselves, with Sir Kenneth Keith, would be the first to agree that they have not been perfect, that much remains to be done, that the full order book is only one part of the problem. In his letter of resignation, which he had long planned after his seven-year stint, Sir Kenneth Keith said to my right honourable friend that the main task for his successor would be in the organisational area, in the reduction of costs, and in the improvement of productivity; and I am quite sure that Sir Frank McFadzean will perform those duties and put this problem right from within a very large organisation.
I should like to turn for a moment to the question of consultation, which has had a long history. The consultations on the tricky questions of Rolls-Royce have been going on for a very long while, in the days of the previous Administration as well as of ourselves. These consultations continued, and, to cut the matter short, on 7th November my right honourable friend had an important meeting with the NEB on the problems before him, and he outlined the problems at that time. It was to his great regret that following that meeting the board made clear that it could not co-operate with the continued tasks of the NEB, which involved some 70 other companies.

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So far as BL is concerned, this is a separate company. I would say to the noble Lord, Lord Rochester, that we have not changed our policy since our July Statement. This situation has come about from friction building up and a decision having to be made. Thus, the BL situation does not at this stage arise.
My last point is that there is no question of there being an alternative between the civil servants and the NEB. Our belief is that on this size of operation the board of Rolls-Royce must deal with its own management affairs, and the Government—who have much less a role than the NEB was equipped to do because, as noble Lords have pointed out, the NEB had much management experience also—become the direct holder of the cash and the direct reporting point, and not a monitor in the sense that the NEB attempted to be.
Baroness GAITSKELL: My Lords, may I ask the noble Viscount a small question about co-operation with the TUC? What hope is there of Sir Keith Joseph, or the management, having real co-operation with the TUC? Is the Minister aware that a month or so ago Sir Keith Joseph spoke on radio about the three poisons which he applied to our national economy? The first poison, he said, was the TUC—the trade unionists. The second poison was egalitariarism—and he spat the word out. The third poison I cannot for the life of me remember—
Lord PEART: The Tory Party.
Baroness GAITSKELL: But I think that those two poisons together really show that there is not any hope of co-operation with trade unionists. Bearing in mind what has happened, is this not a fatal flaw in the whole of this argument for change?
Viscount TRENCHARD: My Lords, I, too, cannot remember what the third point was, but the first point was not about the trade unions themselves. He criticised certain trade union attitudes, but without reference to his speech I could not recall them. So far as this subject is concerned, if I may say so to the noble Baroness, we are talking about an impasse situation which arose between two great
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State bodies; and, as my right honourable friend's Statement made clear, we are talking about a question of judgment as to what to do about that. I believe my right honourable friend's Statement follows basic industrial logic, and I believe that in time the TUC—or, at least, members of the TUC—will come to see that. We very much hope that that will be so.
Lord ORR-EWING: My Lords, may I, from this side of the House, ask my noble friend to say what is going to happen when Rolls-Royce comes directly under the Minister? Will we be able to ask Questions in this House? I realise that my noble friend will need some reflection on this, but perhaps we could have a ruling after due consideration has been given to it. Because it would seem, now that there is no longer to be "a buffer State", that we may have the right, in both Houses of Parliament, to put Questions, not on the day-to-day management but on the broad strategy of Rolls-Royce. I should like my noble friend to reflect on that. May I also say that many of us have felt that British Leyland, and particularly Rolls-Royce, were out of place in the NEB context. It is not easy for any organisation to look after the well-being of 70 different companies which are so disparate—employing, at one end, 165,000 people and, at the opposite end, 10 or 20 people—and to give fair consideration all round. Therefore, one would support my right honourable friend's judgment, made on industrial and corporate policy lines, in allowing and backing the judgment of the board of Rolls-Royce. He had to back either Rolls-Royce or the board of the NEB, and he decided to back the Rolls-Royce board in their request that they should go direct to the Ministry. I am sure this is the right decision.
Several noble Lords: Question!
Lord ORR-EWING: I am going on to put a question, my Lords. This is a Statement, by the way, and not a Question. We can put a viewpoint following a Statement.
Several noble Lords: No!
Lord ORR-EWING: Then what was the point in the remarks about the TUC?

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Was that not a viewpoint, that you would not get co-operation? Was it a question? My Lords, in putting this point I would say that many of us support the need for an NEB. We are glad that my right honourable friend has been able to attract such a distinguished board, which will have an ongoing role in looking after industrial companies which fall on hard times and which need care and attention and financial assistance.
Viscount TRENCHARD: My Lords, perhaps I may deal briefly with those three points. I personally believe that, for those who like to ask Questions in Parliament, the removal of an intermediary is in fact an advantage. But I must make clear that, just as in the case of the nationalised industries at the moment, a very great number of questions usually refer to the management of the operation, and the Answer that may well be given is that that is a matter for Rolls-Royce, just as the Answer very often is, for example, "That is a matter for the British Steel Corporation" So I do not think the Question and Answer position will change; we can answer Questions only on those matters for which we are responsible.
I agree with the second part of my noble friend's question-cum-remarks. So far as the third part is concerned, the continuing role of the NEB is very important. We have made no secret of the fact that its role is gradually to increase the private sector involvement in many of its holdings, but at this stage in time it has 70 companies and a large number of holdings, and it has a very important disposal job to carry through, for which we need high calibre people—and I am glad I have been able to tell the House that we have been able to engage them.
Lord ROSS of MARNOCK: My Lords, can the noble Viscount tell me whether or not this change that is to take place—a very important one—can be made without Parliamentary action? Am I not right in thinking that this change is being made under a power in an Industry Bill which has not yet even come before this House and which certainly is not yet law? In other words, it was said that this was going to be done if the Bill was passed.
Secondly, can the noble Viscount tell me what has been our experience in the past
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in respect of matters of inportance for the country where responsibility has been retained by a Minister and his civil servants? I can remember the case of London Airport, where, after a Select Committee was appointed, it was decreed that civil servants could not do the job. Would it not have been far better to have given more time to this matter, and to have allowed us to discuss it before coming down on the side of Rolls-Royce rather than supporting the NEB?
Viscount TRENCHARD: My Lords, the legal position at the moment, as I understand it, is that there has to be an NEB. That is why, when my right honourable friend was given no option by a declared intention on 7th November of the entire board to resign, he was obliged in law to take steps to make sure that the NEB, which has certain legal functions, continued with its work, some of which is extremely urgent. That he has done. What he mentioned in his Statement was that, once the Industry Bill has gone through this House and becomes law—at that point in time—he will in fact require the NEB to transfer the shares in Rolls-Royce to him as Secretary of State. This is something which he will, by then, on the assumption that the Bill is passed, have the power to do. That will be done in the future. So far as the civil servants and their abilities are concerned, I am quite satisfied as to their ability, with the full qualifications and credentials that they have, to carry out the role that the Government retain. The management of Rolls-Royce, I have to say once again, will be controlled by the highly efficient board which Sir Frank McFadzean takes over.
Lord BOYD-CARPENTER: My Lords, does not what my noble friend so well said earlier about the organisational difficulties involved in interposing the board of the NEB between the board of a large company and a department apply equally and perhaps, indeed, a fortiori, to the position of British Leyland? Secondly, will my noble friend join with me in expressing admiration for and paying tribute to the work, which I saw at one time, done by Sir Kenneth Keith in obtaining the orders for Rolls-Royce without which that company would not be in existence today?
Viscount TRENCHARD: My Lords, I am very grateful to my noble friend

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for raising both those points. The whole concept of the NEB and its position as we inherited it was not one that we would have wished for. However, the last thing we wanted to do was to cause abrupt changes or a major disturbance, and we accepted things as they were. We worked out a policy for moving forward which we believe will strengthen the industry of this country and the NEB and its holdings. The only reason why we have deviated from that is that the crisis situation between Rolls-Royce and the NEB has forced us to do so. It follows that, while my noble friend is right in saying that there are many similarities, although not exact parallels, between the British Leyland situation and the Rolls-Royce situation, at the present time we do not contemplate any such following through, because we have not got an immediate thrust of crisis in that respect. I hope that that answers my noble friend's question.
May I add that I entirely echo my noble friend's sentiments on Sir Kenneth Keith, who has done valiant work in leading Rolls-Royce with an inspiration which has built up the order book. It is my industrial experience that it is easy enough to rationalise back and to rationalise down, but that if one wants an industry one has to have volume. Sir Kenneth Keith, backed by world-excellent products, has built up that volume. Much, as he acknowledges, remains to be done to turn that volume into profit. But I agree with my noble friend.
Lord WIGG: The noble Viscount is candid in stating that so far as the Government are concerned they want to see an end to the NEB. Obviously, decency prevented them from burying it until it was dead. So the process here is to kill it off. And they have been forced to face the issue a little prematurely because there is still life in the old dog. So, having got rid of the NEB board, they have fetched in a crowd of stooges to act as undertakers when the body is dead.
The Government's policy at home and abroad is, I am sure he will agree, aptly summed up by the two Statements today: sanctify rebellion abroad and applaud the rebels; and, at home, go hell bent on a policy of confrontation. That has to be faced up to by the Labour Movement and
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by all who work under its banner: if the Government want to confront, then give them a bit of their own confrontation.
Lord SOAMES: My Lords, I feel that the question-and-answer period and the period of Statements having taken over 30 minutes, it is perhaps time that we moved on.

THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE DETERIORATION IN USAGE
Debate resumed.
4.32 p.m.
The Marquess of AILESBURY: My Lords, I crave the indulgence of the House. I imagine that any normal maiden speaker rises in this House with a burning desire to sit down again. On this occasion the very long list of those waiting to speak gives me an exceptionally good excuse. I almost went on to say I am not the man to look a gift excuse in the mouth; but this is not the right debate for that sort of talk.
What is it that brought me to my feet? "That", as politicians say on television, "is a very good question". I have to thank the noble Lord, Lord Kings Norton, but I feel strongly about the subject of this debate. Perhaps I could illustrate how strongly I feel and how much trouble that sometimes gets me into. Your Lordships will remember the days when the noble Lord, Lord Stokes, was in charge of that jewel in our industrial crown which nowadays is elegantly styled "BL". In Lord Stokes' day, the company put out an advertisement which split the infinitive. This caused me such anguish that I actually wrote to the great man to complain. Looking back on that, I am amazed at my own presumption. I think I put forward the lame excuse that I owned a Mini. That was, at least, true; although it hardly excused my taking up his Lordship's extremely valuable time.
Those who are privileged to know the noble Lord will not be surprised to hear what happened next. The reply was swift; the reply was wholly delightful. It was so laden with charm that for some time I failed to notice that the subject of our correspondence had mysteriously

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changed. We were no longer discussing the luckless infinitive and what, if anything, might be done to bind up its wounds. Instead, we were both wondering how I could even contemplate resuming my underprivileged existence without having bought one of the more exotic models from the Leyland range. I fear that the moral of this story is depressing. The way of the pedant has always been hard but nowadays, at several thousands of pounds per infinitive, it has become exhaustively expensive.
Some people in high places ought to set a better example. I recall an unhappy time when Her Majesty's Minister of Transport—not the present incumbent of that office—conceived an idea for a new form of bus transport to be operated by "standee buses". If that meant anything, it meant, I suppose, a form of bus in which one would be stood on. Despite this commendable honesty of description, I am happy in the belief that nobody could be found to operate a bus service with quite so revolting a name, and therefore it has not been inflicted permanently upon the language.
I suppose that no speech on this subject would be complete without a reference to the BBC; and it could be argued that no reference to the BBC would be complete without a story about Lord Reith. It is widely known that in his day wireless announcers, as I still quaintly call them, were made to wear dinner jackets. I also understand that one evening one of these immaculate but invisible men was caught by Lord Reith chasing a typist round her desk. He was immediately sacked. It happened that this particular announcer was not only very good at his job but also, with the possible exception of one typist, was extremely popular among the staff. A campaign was mounted within the BBC to try to get him reinstated. The pressure on Lord Reith became so great that he finally conceded in terms of the immortal: "Very well, he may read the news but he is never to read the Epilogue '."
Although some of us may regard standards as rather splendid, I have to say that I do not think that they could have been carried forward into the post-war world. I feel that the proper colour for the modern BBC is pale grey—definitely not deep pink; but pale grey. It seems to me that if they were in the modern world,
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then, to be whiter than white, they might as well go away and re-classify themselves under the heading of "Foreign Languages".
I think that the real villains are the advertising profession. If I ever make another speech in your Lordships' House, I shall make a great effort to drag into that speech, however irrelevantly, what I really think about the advertising profession and the things that they do to the English language. But this is a maiden speech; I am not supposed to be controversial so I shall merely accuse them of murder and leave it at that. Many of us, alas! commit occasional manslaughter, but that is a totally different crime.
I will end by unveiling a pitfall which my fellow pedants and I must try to avoid. We must not reject all new words. Perhaps I may take two which possibly point the contrast. I suppose that the most reviled new word of modern times—and rightly in my view—has been "ongoing". As I have said before, some people ought to set a better example. I can remember seeing the Financial Times filled with top people's stockbroking firms wanting analysts for ongoing research. It occurred to me at that time that if there had not been any research being carried on, this sudden demand for very expensive analysts would have been totally inexplicable. It was, and is, an almost completely superfluous word.
My Lords, I can now reveal my tip for the next madly-fashionable word—a sort of "son of ongoing "—and that is "upcoming", as in the "upcoming Christmas holidays ". I must confess that I first read this with dismay. But then I thought that one must judge this on its merits. One must think what word it seeks to replace, or one must consider how one would express the meaning if one found that the word completely choked one. If you come to think of it, it means, surely, the same as forthcoming. "Forthcoming", I suppose, is an inoffensive word but it does sound rather archaic; so, until somebody points to the error of my ways—and, looking down the list of speakers, that may be sooner than I expect—I shall have to give at least two cheers for "upcoming ". But now, since the nine-minute marker is upcoming, it is time that my speech ceased to be ongoing.
4.40 p.m.
Lord MANCROFT: My Lords, in the course of his entertaining and most welcome maiden speech, the noble Marquess, Lord Ailesbury, made it perfectly clear that he does not like the advertising profession. As the director of an advertising agency, I should nevertheless like to thank him very much indeed for his maiden speech and say that no offence will be taken and I hope that in due course I may be able to correct some of the errors of his thinking.
When I first saw this Motion on the Order Paper I rather wondered how the noble Lord in whose name it stood was going to relate it to the responsibilities of Her Majesty's Government, which is primarily the purpose of debate in this House. The question, however, that I wish to put—and I only wish to put one—to the noble Baroness who is to reply is directly concerned with Her Majesty's Government's affairs. I want to ask the noble Baroness whether she will use all her powerful influence to make certain that Government departments, when they communicate through the media, pamphlets, or written instructions to ordinary humble men and women in the street, do it in much simpler language than they do at the moment.
We know perfectly well that in this House we frequently have to handle immensely complicated legislation, such as finance Bills, which none of us—not even the noble and learned Lord, the Lord Chancellor—can hope to understand. We take that for granted. I have a guilty conscience because I well remember in 1959 standing at the Government Dispatch Box, representing the Home Office, and trying to persuade your Lordships to accept Clause 39 of the Shops Bill, which took 19 lines of the draftsman's deathless prose to establish the principle that only a practising Jew or a Mohammedan could operate as a barber in Scotland on a Sunday.
However, these are the exceptional cases. What I am concerned with are the matters of legislation which we pass here and which are then translated into laws which the man in the street has to try to obey: simple things concerned with rates, his telephone bill, his pension, his savings bonds, "Ernie" and his driving
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licence. Many of these matters are drafted in language which is far too complicated for the average man in the street to understand. If your Lordships doubt my word, ask any village postmaster or postmistress how often they are approached by people who bring in some instructions from some Government department and ask for it to be translated into English.
I would therefore bid the Minister to make it strongly known to her colleagues that there is a necessity, not for them to try their instructions off on some other brilliant civil servant in the next office or on some senior wrangler, but to go down (if this sounds snobbish, I apologise) and try it on the lift man, try it on the lady cleaner, try it on somebody really simple, if needs be, like me, and see if we can understand it.
I say this with a slightly guilty conscience because when some years ago we were debating the introduction of the postal code, I begged leave to suggest that it was going to be far too complicated for the man and woman in the street to understand or to remember, and it would be years and years before it would ever be in wide introduction. I received from the GPO (as it then was) a most courteous and carefully reasoned letter as to why it was going to work. It was beautifully drafted and really very convincing. But it was delivered to a house in a road two streets away. Therefore, I would ask the noble Baroness again to see that all Government departments are impressed with the need for clarity.
I am just finishing a stint of 10 year's service on the Council on Tribunals. One of our tasks is to go round the country visting all the hundreds of tribunals that exist and see that all is well and that justice is being done. I am impressed times without number by the confusion, and possibly injustice, brought about by the fact that there has been a misunderstanding of the Government's instructions, which have not been drafted in sufficient clarity. I do not necessarily say that they should be short. That may seem a paradox but it will be remembered that George Bernard Shaw apologised to somebody for having to write such a long letter—he had not time to write a short one.

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Over-brevity in Government instructions can very often produce extra confusion. It is the clarity one wants, not necessarily the brevity. If, of course, the noble Baroness can get both, and get her colleagues to do both, well and good. I will give her one example if she wants one. About four years ago a will was contested in the high court of Texas. It was the will of a well-known tycoon and was challenged by his next of kin. They failed. The will was very short; it consisted of one sentence. It was correctly witnessed and signed. It followed the law in every possible respect. The will consisted of this one sentence:
" Give Mabel the works ".
I ask the noble Baroness and her colleagues in the Government to think frequently and carefully about Mabel.
4.47 p.m.
Lord SOMERS: My Lords, I will do my best to keep within my allotted 5·9 minutes; but I hope that the House will give me its indulgence if I take an extra 30 seconds in which to say how very much I appreciated the two maiden speeches which we have heard today, not merely because they both said things with which I wholeheartedly agree but also because they were extremely well put, and in the context which we are discussing tonight I think that is an excellent thing. I hope that we shall often hear them.
I feel very grateful to my noble friend for having introduced this debate. I think that it is an important subject, because as the noble Lord, Lord Perry of Walton, pointed out in his speech, English is becoming an international language, and one has to remember that foreign nations will learn it from us. It is up to us to speak it properly so that they may learn it properly. The BBC has a great responsibility here and, regret to say, that responsibility is not always fulfilled. In fact, it has become almost an insulting description of anybody's English to call it BBC English.
They certainly have propagated some very bad traditions. There are one or two mispronunciations which I could add to the examples that my noble friend gave which are becoming quite wide-
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spread and which I think originated at the BBC. One is "controversy", which I think is a most appalling word, and the other is "formidable". I hope that, despite the BBC, those will disappear. Both spoken and written English are important. The desire to preserve good written English does not imply a return to Shakespearean or even Victorian English. It is not generally realised today that modern English, if well written, can be very beautiful. We have all become so used to the chatty magazine English—and one has to remember that 90 per cent. of the population very rarely read anything els—that we forget that English can be beautiful. I quote two examples. One is a description by Osbert Sitwell of an Italian castle which he visited. That is quoted in Edith Sitwell's book A Nest of Tigers. The other example is the first chapter of Daphne Du Mauler's novel Rebecca. Both of those are perfect examples of beautiful, descriptive modern English. There is no need to make it academical or long-winded: the simpler the better.
Now I come to spoken English. I should like to make it quite plain before I go any further that there is nothing in anything that I say that implies class distinction. Some people think it does, but that is absolutely false. It has nothing of the sort to do with that. Anyone can speak English well if they try. Of course, young people are very largely influenced by the English that is spoken round them when they are young, as I well know. I spent the years from the age of five to 12 in America and I arrived home with an American accent that could be cut with a knife. I am very thankful to say that within a month or two it had completely disappeared and I can give your Lordships a guarantee that it will never cone back—because if there is a more hideous language on the face of the earth than the American form of English, I should like to know what it is!
I have no desire at all to do anything to the local dialects which are, after all, forms of English in their own right: in fact I believe it was the third Earl of Leicester—the grandfather of the present Earl—who had a broad Norfolk accent and did his best to cultivate it. Those things should be preserved; and those of

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your Lordships who are old enough to remember it will, I am sure, agree that cockney was the same. Real, good cockney was a dialect in its own right and it was full of wit and charm. Unfortunately, in the course of education, as it is so called, we have watered it down to a very disagreeable half-breed English which I, living as I do in northern Surrey, hear all round me every day. It is not one thing or the other: it is just bad English.
I have tried to analyse what causes this. A great deal of it, of course, is due to voice production. The very nasal production which one hears is partly inherited from cockney, which was a very nasal tongue. It is still there and it seems to he particularly prevalent among young women. I passed a group of young girls chatting to each other the other day and, quite frankly, it sounded just like a consort of cats. I have no objection at all to that noise, coming from cats—it is their natural language and their natural sound—but coming from human beings I find it extremely disagreeable. And have your Lordships noticed—I must hurry because I have already spoken for six minutes—how often one suffers from the glottal attack instead of a final t or k? That is becoming increasingly prevalent.
The question now arises: how are we going to battle against all this? It is an unfortunate fact that many of the teaching staff in our schools are themselves quite incapable of speaking good English. But surely we have enough teachers with a good knowledge of English who could act as what I believe today are known as "speech therapists". Perhaps every school should have one, and although I do not think it necessarily need be made compulsory, it could be there for anyone who wanted to improve their language to make use of. My Lords, as I am already over my time, I apologise.
4.53 p.m.
The Lord Bishop of NORWICH: My Lords, I, too, should like to pay my tribute to the wise speech of the noble Lord, Lord Perry of Walton, and to the witty speech of the noble Marquess, Lord Ailesbury. We look forward to hearing them often, and with the same beauty and wisdom that we have heard from them
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both. I was delighted that the noble Marquess broke into broad Scots because, as the noble Lord, Lord Somers, has just said, we must not lose our regional voices in England. When on Saturday in the directors' box at Carrow Road, my football team, Norwich City, were losing one-nil and were not playing very well, I said at half-time: "Nothing but a miracle will now save us". Those around me imagined that I meant I was going to do something about this! When Justin Fashanu scored an extraordinary goal, and it was rather an odd one, somebody behind me slapped my shoulder and said:
" Keep you going, bishop: keep you going! "—
and then he scored again! So I hope we shall not lose our regional accents and the beauty of our Norfolk and Suffolk voices—I speak in the presence of the noble Earl from Suffolk beside me.
At the same time the English language is a living language, and it is a hybrid with its background of Anglo-Saxon, of French and Latin and with a smattering of Greek; but it has so many varied uses, whether for legal accuracy, for clear precision or for lilting poetry, or the proclamation of eternal truth—the title of our Lord, "the Word", is an example of this—or for the solemn offering of praise and worship in hieratical language. That is where I felt I had better come in, because I have noticed recently that anxieties have been expressed about the way in which the Church is using language today, particularly concerning The Book of Common Prayer and the Authorised Version. As I use The Book of Common Prayer in my chapel every morning for the loveliness of the Daily Office, I am second to none in loving its beauty and its richness and the wide variety of its ability to express eternal truth.
But we have a particular problem about the English language and it is not, I think, necessarily deterioration if we find ourselves seeking to use modern language for eternal truth. I would give your Lordships one example, and that is the example of emphasis. That great writer of English prayers, Archbishop Cramer, had a delicacy of touch when it came to emphasis. We underline, we exaggerate, we put into capital letters and we use exclamation marks; but his way of emphasis was to put a double, or two

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words in the place of one, and the second word was delicately a little stronger than the first word:
" Dearly beloved brethren, I pray and beseech you to acknowledge and confess your sins and wickedness ".
In that way of emphasising, it was an emphasis on a double set of words which we understood in those days. In the "snippetyness" of our television interviews we find that hard to do. That is one of the problems we face when it comes to helping people to know and love The Book of Common Prayer. Let it be said that in the alternative services measure, provision is made for alternative services and not replacement services. No alternative service can be used in a parish church without the vicar and the church council agreeing to it. If there is difficulty and disagreement, it is referred to the bishop—and of course bishops, as we know, are wise people. I say that with all the humility for which we bishops are renowned!
Therefore it is probably a good thing that we are experimenting in the way that Cranmer did, because he sought to bring from the straitjacket of a Latin knowledge which was that for the few into the fullness of the English language—and, by the grace of God, he did it at a marvellous time and with great ability—and so The Book of Common Prayer stands today and I believe it will never not be used. But still his principle was to seek to use language which was understood by the people. And so we do the same and, as I have no financial interest in it, I should like just to remind your Lordships that the new King James's Bible has the best of everything. It has the rhythms and the patterns of the Authorised Version. It has "You" replacing "Thou", with a capital "Y", and I believe that this is the new bridge book which is going to be found acceptable to young and old, with the same beautiful patterns of the Authorised and with a delicate amount of revision which make it to me an absolutely thrilling book.
So I believe that, with the new King James's Bible, with alternative services which are well done and with the maintenance of The Book of Common Prayer and the Authorised Version, we shall not deteriorate in our language, but find that that language continues to he a beautiful, lovely and clear instrument for the worship of God.
5.1 p.m.
Lord BALLANTRAE: My Lords, I shall do my very best to keep within the straitjacket of five minutes, but I must add my congratulations to the deliverers of those two magnificent maiden speeches this afternoon. They are tremendous additions to this highly congenial and very selective group of Benches at this end of your Lordships' Chamber. I was grateful to the noble Marquess for adding to my repertoire of what he would not doubt call "up-throwing" expressions. But I am going to seize this debate, if I may, by the scruff of its neck and turn it into a quick commercial for the poor, long-suffering British Council. I declare a posthumous interest, in that I was Chairman of it for four years from 1972 to 1976. I do not haunt its corridors, but I still feel very strongly that it is something which must be preserved.
On 6th November—I was not here—I understand that the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, said:
" I cannot pretend that the British Council will be exempt from consideration in the cuts which we are making, but we shall certainly do our best to ensure that the effect of those cuts is kept to a minimum."—[Official Report; cols. 746–7.]
He refused to be drawn when that up-to-date Hound of the Baskervilles, the noble Lord, Lord Hatch of Lusby, leapt snapping at his heels and asked for an assurance that he meant more than mere words. I do not blame the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne. He repeated what he had said before, and sat down.
Everybody always claims to be a special case. When I was Director of Combined Operations and trying to preserve one of the Combined Ops training areas, I went all around the country. They said, "Yes, you must have one, but not here". They are all willing to bury nuclear waste on somebody else's doorstep, or to dig coal anywhere but in the Vale of Belvoir, or wherever they happen to live. The British Council has so far loyally accepted the principle that the Government has set, that the cuts must be spread right across the board. But they are still hoping that what my soldier-servant in The Black Watch used to call the "Sword of Damockles" will not fall.
At the moment, a high level committee is sitting to decide how these cuts will he implemented in the future, but your Lordships must realise the implications of

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phase one alone, which is being put across. It means an 11½ per cent. cut in total spending, or 15 per cent. in real terms. It is a tremendous lot. What does it mean for trade promotion? There are heavy cuts everywhere, cutting out most of the advisory tours by 15 per cent.; heavy staff cuts; the promotion of books down by 15 per cent.; the provision of books at libraries overseas by 30 per cent.; English teaching ceasing altogether in nine countries, and professional and academic exchanges down by 50 per cent.—that is, one-year scholarships down by 50 per cent., and all two-year scholarships abolished.
Commonwealth exchanges are to be scrapped, exchanges with Italy and Poland scrapped; all the machinery scrapped for finding overseas students accommodation in this country; arts promotion down by 25 per cent.; staff reductions in 8 countries; staff cuts of 360 posts for British-appointed people and 180 for people appointed overseas. These are swingeing cuts, and that is what is proposed for phase one alone, so Heaven help us with phase two and phase three! They are really too devastating to contemplate. They will mean closing all libraries throughout the world, and closing all United Kingdom regional offices in countries such as Brazil, Japan, Nigeria and Venezuela, with the loss of 700 posts.
I understand that a starfish can lose an arm or whatever it is. If you cut off an arm once, it will grow again. If you cut it off twice, it may grow again. But if you cut it off three times, even the starfish will be discouraged. The British Council has over the years been cut more than somewhat, and you cannot expect it to continue taking these near fatal cuts and go on surviving. We are in danger of killing off or fatally wounding a magnificent creation which has taken half a century to grow and which is unique. There is nothing like it. So I hope that the high-level committee which is now sitting will seriously ask itself whether even phase one needs to be implemented in full, realising what damage it will do. These are four times the cuts asked of the Foreign Service and twice the cuts originally asked of the BBC External Services, which have now been spared.
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I should have preferred to speak in the main stream of the debate, condemning slipshod English and giving your Lordships instances of such abuses as mixed metaphors and clichés. But I decided to use it instead for a commercial for the British Council, so I shall end with a mixed metaphor and a cliché, just to give myself satisfaction: I beg your Lordships not to throw out this particular baby with the bath water until you see the light at the end of the tunnel.
5.7 p.m.
Lord AIREDALE: My Lords, I should like to begin, as the noble Lord, Lord Kings Norton, began, with the need for conciseness, saving of course the attractive double emphasis of Archbishop Cranmer. The way I had stated this in my notes was "abbreviate whenever you possibly can" Only yesterday, I was reading an article about our liability for defective products, which is pertinent to one of our debates next week, which begins,
" Management attention tends to be preferentially drawn ".
I must say that my heart sinks at having to read a paper which begins like that.
I had noted the Americanisms; the Americans love for long alternatives for short words which the noble Lord, Lord Kings Norton, mentioned. But there is an exception, I think, to every rule and, because I thought that the noble Lord, Lord Somers, was a little hard on the Americans, I should like just to say that I have always thought that the American expression "Monday through Friday" is a great improvement on whatever the alternative is in English English. Company chairmen, in their annual reports, are always telling us that they "anticipate" such and such results. Nine times out of ten, what they mean is that they "expect" those results. The derivation of the word tells one that to anticipate is to do something about a future event which you expect. If I think that it is going to rain and recklessly do not bother to take my umbrella, I merely expect that it will rain. If I am careful to take my umbrella, I am anticipating a downpour. The media do not seem to appreciate this distinction.
We are often told now that people are going to restructure things. If they

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cannot rebuild them, why do they not reconstruct them? Why do they jettison the accepted verb and twist the noun into a verb form? The media tell us, for instance, that the Lancaster House talks "got under way" Even the BBC Overseas Service said something like that the other day. What do some of the foreigners listening to the service make of this three-word nautical expression which means" begin "?
The noble Lord, Lord Kings Norton, mentioned "pay off", to which may I add "lose out". If you made a losing bet in the old days, you lost. Nowadays you "lose out ". I suppose that by the time Royal Ascot comes around next year we shall be told that the bookmakers usually "win in". I think that the noble Lord, Lord Kings Norton, spotted the champion piece of current verbosity in "at this point in time" I must say I was a little shaken the other day to hear that expression used in this House by a former Lord Chancellor, so I thought that perhaps it must be all right. But twice on the radio I have heard American speakers say "at this particular point in time", and by the time they had finished saying it, it seemed to me that we had already reached a discernibly different point in time.
The other theme for my speech was: think clearly before you say what you have to say, and above all think clearly before you write down what you have to write down. Let me quote two short sentences from a Written Answer of last summer in Hansard:
"It is not possible to assess the effect of the export of live animals on hide availability.—"[Official Report; 12/6/79; col. 597.]
And, further on, at col. 598;
"… dates for supply of leather … are lengthening ".
At this time of the year we do know that the days are shorter and, likewise, that they lengthen, but I really do not think that dates can be said to wax or wane.
Then one hears so often nowadays "that is what so-and-so is all about". I never seem to think that I do understand what is being said. I think what is being said is this: "I haven't quite had time to think out what I mean to say. I therefore throw out this piece of flannel. I may get away with it, but if I am taken to task and asked what I really do mean I shall
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at least have these few valuable seconds in which to think out what I really do mean ".
My Lords, I must close. Let me simply say that when the noble Lord, Lord Kings Norton, mentioned "hopefully", I thought that a good example would be this: on the BBC's Overseas Service there was a talk which began:
" Hopefully, few people listening to this programme will have served a prison sentence ".
This is positively dangerous. If any foreign listeners think that "few people" means "a few people", they will have got the exact opposite to the meaning intended by the speaker. I was going to tell your Lordships what the noble Lord, Lord Raglan, said to me about the misuse of the word "unique", but I am afraid that this will have to await another occasion.
5.15 p.m.
Lord SIMON of GLAISDALE: My Lords, I should like to be associated with the expressions of gratitude to the noble Lord, Lord Kings Norton, to the two distinguished maiden speakers and to the other noble Lords who have made the speeches with which your Lordships have been favoured. We require, do we not? three things of language: first, that it should be rich, subtle and forceful at the highest levels of communications; secondly, that it should be clear and economical at the various ordinary levels of communication; and thirdly, that it should be easy to teach and learn.
So far as the first is concerned, the highest levels of communication, we have had in our own lifetime great poetry written in our language, and it seems to me impossible to say that there has been any such deterioration in our language as to prevent it fulfilling that first purpose. As for the second, communication at the many ordinary levels of meaning, that has been the main subject of your Lordships' speeches. I do not desire to add to them except to say that it seems to me that there are three particular diseases to which language may be subject: first, inflation; secondly, cliché; and, thirdly, the propaganda use of words. The first two have been abundantly illustrated in this debate.
There are many examples in history, of course, of words being taken over for propaganda purposes. We have had one very distressing, to me, example in our own time, and that is the use of "gay".

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It seems to me virtually impossible today for a modern poet to write:
" The choir of gay companions ".
What has happened is that a word has been used for propaganda purposes in a way which has destroyed its useful meaning in English.
I want mainly to deal with the third thing that we should demand of language; namely, that it should be easy to teach and to learn. In many ways, English is of course easy in comparison with other languages, mainly because of the loss of inflections due to the several sources from which English has been drawn. Nevertheless, it is notorious that English is appallingly difficult to teach and learn because the spelling gives no or little guide to the pronunciation, or vice versa. That has been known for a long time. The Americans in 1828 spelt "traveller" with one "1" and spelt "favour". and similar words, without a "u". During the ensuing century, the Germans brought their spelling and their pronunciation into line, but nothing has happened in this country, even about adopting the American reforms. Why? This is where Ministers can, I think, help.
The reason is that in spite of two great men and many others—the two great men being Shaw and Bridges, widely different in outlook—having campaigned for an improvement, the Board of Education and its successors have shown unhesitating and unremitting hostility to any reform. We have had Royal Commissions on this and that and we have had departmental committee's on the other; but here, led as we have been by these great men, where every body recognises the imperfection of English, nothing has been done. I respectfully suggest to your Lordships that the first thing that can be done by Ministers is to get their department off our backs in this respect.
Then there are the grammatical forms. Children are taught that one should say "I shall" and "we shall" but the rest of the future tense is to be "will". That is very difficult. It becomes even more difficult when we have "would" and "should". Fowler has pages, almost incomprehensible, of the various distinctions. Why do we need that? Does it make English easier to teach and to learn?
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I have mentioned the spelling. If you have "favor" spelt in the American way think of all the saving that there would be in the time of printers and typists. Can the noble Baroness, Lady Young, show anywhere else in her sphere of responsibility where one can so easily get a 12½ per cent. increase in productivity? Robert Bridges in The Testament of Beauty spelt "have" h-a-v and nobody had the slightest difficulty in understanding. That represents a 25 per cent. increase in productivity, quite apart from the fact that that is the only "ave" form which is pronounced with the short "a", so that children and foreigners have to learn that.
I have mentioned the grammatical form of the future tense. There are various irregular verbs which we still have, to our confusion. The old past tense of "reach" was "raucht"; we quite happily now say "reached". But we have to tell children and foreigners that of all those words ending in "each", "teach" alone should not be "teached" but "taught", in spite of the fact that Shakespeare used "teached". Again, with "catch" and "caught"; Shakespeare used "catched" and Scotsmen at various times have used "catched". Why should we not regularise our irregular verbs?
Although I have said that there is a ministerial function which is negative, I venture to suggest to your Lordships that there is in addition a necessity to set up an appropriate institution to see how English could be improved, with particular reference to the ease of teaching and learning, and that is to set up a language commission on the lines of the Law Commission, to have widespread consultations with teachers and institutions and publishers and printers, and so on. If we can achieve that by this debate, my Lords, it will have served an even more useful purpose.
5.24 p.m.
Lord EVANS of HUNGERSHALL: My Lords, I am confident that all noble Lords are grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Kings Norton, for putting down this Motion this afternoon. It has been a great delight to me that the noble Lord, Lord Perry of Walton, chose this occasion for his maiden speech. He has been able to put a new continent to literature in his lifetime through the Open University. I

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am sure we were all equally delighted by the speech of the noble Marquess, Lord Ailcsbury.
I have to declare an interest in this matter; I am chairman of the Linguaphone Institute. I will be brief by dealing solely with the international side of this question. If it were not for the English language we should be internationally as important as, say, Norway. For over two centuries the influence of English has expanded and its range has increased, even in my own lifetime. Fifty years ago when I was in Cairo all the upper classes spoke French, probably due to the short but brilliant visit that Napoleon paid to Egypt; but now the language is English, as we know from President Sadat. The English language is part of the legacy to the world of our imperial heritage, and I have never been able to understand why the English, admitting so freely all the wrongful things that were done under colonialism, failed continually to emphasise the positive contribution it made to world civilisation; and it made no greater contribution than the spread of the English language.
The only chance for the future lies either in annihilation or in some form of world understanding and, however hostile the auguries may seem today, there is no greater hope for the world than that English should become a universal medium of communication, as indeed the noble Lord, Lord Perry of Walton, indicated this afternoon. Sadat could not speak to Begin except through interpreters if it were not for English. India has only one language that is acceptable throughout the whole country. Even today, I am told that the Indian Congress—I have not visited it myelf—cannot function without English. When a Hindi speaker goes on too long the non-Hindi speakers bang their desks—a form of interruption which is not permitted to your Lordships.
The noble Lord, Lord Carrington, whom, if I may say so with great respect, we all admire for his patient, long and prolonged conference at Lancaster House, could not have held it at all if it had not been for the fact that the African members, many of them probably missionary trained, spoke English. This world distribution of English is not without its problems, and it is here that I would speak not so much of deterioration but of change. I listened with great interest to all that
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the noble Lord, Lord Kings Norton, had to say about America, and the even more severe things that the noble Lord, Lord Somers, had to say. I was glad to hear that later they were modified a little by the noble Lord, Lord Airedale. But let us remember that English would not hold the place it does in the world if it were not the major language of the American people. Unfortunately, there is something called "black English" in America but I will omit that in order to try to finish my few remarks.
I will turn for a moment from America to Africa. The only possibility of breaking through tribal divisions, which are Africa's main problem, is through English, and it is significant that Nigeria, with its 70 million to 80 million people—the richest State in Africa—has recently in its constitution declared English to be the national language of the whole country.
To move further afield, I am told by Professor Quirk, who has already been mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Kings Norton, and who is certainly the most travelled and the most widely informed expert of our generation on English overseas, that he had a recent talk with Chairman Hua and the Chairman told him that English was the only possible foreign language to be helpful in his great programme of proposed modernisation. In Japan they find English difficult to learn. But learning English has been the greatest investment that any commercial nation has made in our time. They are able to manufacture, they are able to sell, because they have painfully gone through the business of learning English; something that is only paralleled by Ben Yehuda's effort to lead the Israelis from the Yiddish of the Diaspora hack to the new Hebrew, but he did it for quite different reasons.
What must we do in all this? First, as a renegade London Welshman who learned English as a second language, I would wish the English would treat their language more seriously. The point has been made already. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Simon of Glaisdale, said that the writer of our time who felt most deeply about English, and incidentally made the most money out of it, was the Irishman Bernard Shaw. Shaw felt so deeply about the language that he was

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prepared to give his whole fortune for its furtherance, unfortunately in a plan that was quite unpractical.
I would only wish to add one word about the British Council, which, fortunately, has its great champion Lord Ballantrae here today. Although we know that British Council grants must be cut as part of the national policy, and it is no good moaning about it, we might at the same time realise that the Council does make earnings, it does even make a certain profit on its English work, and it would be very hard indeed if that side of its work were diminished. I should like to add one suggestion which I am sure will be unpopular with everybody. I do not see why bodies which receive large block grants from the State, the British Council, the Arts Council and others, should not be subjected from time to time to something like a benign Public Accounts Committee of both Houses.
I sometimes wonder, for instance, whether the British Council is not just a little too traditional. Why, for instance, do they need that splendiferous place in Paris when there is a British Institute in Paris as well? And we all know that no member of that delightful country has ever been influenced throughout the centuries by any motive except self-interest. Why should not the grandeur of Paris be transferred to somewhere where the need is greater?
Finally, my Lords (I apologise that I am two minutes over time) I repeat from Lord Kings Norton's speech that we must cherish our language, and let me quote Bernard Shaw's preface to Pygmalion:
" The English have no respect for their language and will not teach their children to speak it. They spell it so abominably that no man can teach himself what it sounds like. It is impossible for any Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman despise him".
Well, of course, this may be a little excessive, but then Shaw believed that it was only by being a little excessive that one could make the meaning sink into the average mind.
5.34 p.m.
Lord ARDWICK: My Lords, may I say with what great pleasure I follow the noble Lord, Lord Evans of Hungershall.
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I have been a Member of this House for nearly nine years and in those nine years I have received much wise advice from him, but this is the first time I have had the pleasure of hearing him speak in this Chamber. I hope that from now on he will cease hiding his very bright light beneath a bushel and speak more often, as indeed I hope the noble Lords who have made their maiden speeches, Lord Perry of Walton and Lord Ailesbury will, too. Why they imagined it was possible to make a non-controversial speech on the English language, I do not know. Indeed, I must not contest what the noble Lord, Lord Perry of Walton, said, but I must disagree with him, when he criticises those newspapers which have short and rather assertive leaders and compares those with the "posh" papers. I think from long study of the latter that they are not always as reasonable as they might seem. They sometimes couch their violent assertions in circumlocutory language and in a kind of architectural syntax.
I want to speak today as a professional writer, as a journalist who for 40 years has hacked out millions of words sometimes for select readerships, sometimes for mass readerships. It is very hard work; in fact, you take more out of yourself in an hour at the typewriter than in a whole day of administration. In this task of writing English I have been disciplined by generations of brutal subeditors who cut down the cumbrous sentence and are swift to cut out the flowery phrase and the pretentious adjective. They are known as the butchers of our trade. I have also benefited from the cruel insistence of several distinguished editors on intellectual rigour in anything I wrote. I was much influenced, too, by the logician Susan Stebbings who wrote Thinking to Some Purpose; and by Robert Graves and Allan Hodge in their manual The Reader over your Shoulder; plus, of course, by Gowers.
But the hardest lessons I had came to me after I had edited two newspapers; they came to me late in my career when by the accident of the greatest take-over in the history of Fleet Street I found myself working as political adviser to the Mirror group. Occasionally I produced a piece not just for the private eye of the chairman

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or the editors, but for the enormous readership of the Daily Mirror, a readership—not circulation but readership—of over 14 million a day. Then the editor, the late Lee Howard, would ask me in, invite me to pour myself a drink, would take up my piece, and before the liquor had touched my lips would say, "What does this sentence mean?" He would then read out a few words which to any other paper in the English-speaking world would have been regarded as acceptably lucid and say: "Our readers will not understand that. What on earth do you mean? "Then I would labour to explain the obvious in terms that even a backward child could understand." Fine ", he would say, "Then why not write it so-and-so like that? " "So-and-so" represents one of those terse Saxon words, mentioned by the noble Lord who initiated this debate, which have passed out of polite usage. Anyway, I did write it like that; and he was right to insist that I should do so.
In my day as editor I, too, was regarded as a stern taskmaster, as the noble Baroness, Lady Jeger, who is sitting at my side will agree. She has had good cause to know. There is much criticism today of our national tabloid Press, and I cannot defend it against all the current charges, but there is one fault that nobody can accuse the tabloid newspapers of; that of failing to use the English language with clarity and vigour. Look beyond their horrid headlines and the lovely girls, and read the text; and do not just read those stories of sin and passion and bizarre eccentricities which the papers collect so assiduously. Do look at the words of the features and of the serious items of news. One criticism one can make of the serious items is that there are too few of them and even those few are too short.
The tabloids achieve their results, these successes in communication, only by unremitting, disciplined toil and by a determination to communicate with people of all kinds and of varying degrees of intelligence. I wish, as the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft does, that our bureaucrats displayed the same skill and the same determination in conceiving their messages to the citizens. At the highest level of our civil service we have, of course, a splendid tradition of writing very clear minutes and concise prose, and our White
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Papers are usually admirable. Nevertheless the White Papers are meant for the educated minority. Occasionally a brief and popular version is produced, but only then by leave of the Opposition, for a popular document is always open to accusations of serving the propaganda needs of the party of Government and is something perhaps which ought to be left to Conservative Central Office or Transport House.
When the late Richard Crossman produced his pension plan, a long and complex paper, which was immediately understandable only to actuaries, he asked the Mirror to produce an official popular version which could be understood by the workers' representatives who served as trustees to occupational pension funds. It needed Opposition consent, but that was given because there was a precedent. The job was a very difficult one and two of us went out of town for 10 days to sweat it out. The Minister and his staff were quite pleased with the results. We had managed to get it right. A Cabinet Minister told us that if he had had this document before him instead of the White Paper it would have saved him hours of labour.
On another occasion there were anxieties because the family income supplement was not being taken up by many people who were entitled to benefit from it. It was thought that they had failed to apply for benefit simply because they did not understand the forms that the Ministry made available through the Post Office. Again the Daily Mirror was asked to do a translation job and on that occasion it was printed in the newspaper.
The difficulties that the Government departments face are very real difficulties, especially if they are talking about a pension that is available. If they put it in popular language and put a foot wrong they could receive claims from people who were not strictly entitled to make them. So it is not an easy job. However, it can be done, provided there is the will to do it and provided they are willing to put in an immense amount of work and to have it supervised by very senior officials.
In the last week there has been produced a document from the Department of Healh and Social Security which says:

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" From 12.11.79 the components of pensions will be increased by the percentages shown in the list below. (For the key to abbreviations, see the reverse of the tear-off portion of your payable order.) "
That document is addressed to old age pensioners. There is then a list of: BC, BC1, DEP. They are all bracketed together and it says "increased by 19.5 per cent." Then it sets out: IVA and AA increased by 17·5 per cent.; and then it says that GRB, AC, AC1 and PUGMPI are increased by 17·5 per cent. I do not know what on earth it means. It talks about the "standard basic component" and the "married woman's standard basic component" and so forth. That is really—I do not want to use the term "a disgrace to the Ministry "—something of which the Ministry ought to be ashamed.
I should like to send a message to the Minister. Will he in future insist that, before forms go out to the public, especially to potential beneficiaries, he vets them himself and ensures that they are in lucid English and in terms which ordinary people can understand? They should also be in big type because many of the recipients may not be able to find their glasses. There must surely be laid down a rule in those Ministries dealing with the public that the forms they send out are comprehensible. After all, they pay vast sums to the people in their public relations department and they ought to be able to get the job done properly.
Lord DENHAM: My Lords, it would probably be useful if I say something about procedure. This debate must end at 6.26. My noble friend Lady Young has of right, under Standing Order, 20 minutes to reply. In view of the shortage of time, my noble friend is prepared to take only 15 of those minutes. Even so, she must get to her feet at 6.11 p.m.
5.44 p.m.
Lord DUNLEATH: My Lords, in view of what the noble Lord has just said, I shall keep my remarks extremely brief. However, I would like to join in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Kings Norton, for having initiated what has turned out to be a not only very interesting but a very entertaining debate. Unlike some noble Lords I think that there are two categories of people who can be excused for abusing
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the English language. First, there are those who abuse it deliberately, tongue in cheek, which is quite commendable. Secondly, there are those who abuse it because they know no better and who frequently succeed in being very funny.
In the first category I am sure was the Poet Laureate who—when the Monarch was suffering from ill health—wrote in the early years of telephonic communication:
" Across the electric wires the dismal message came He is not any better, in fact he is much the same ' ".
With more sincerity, but with rather less deliberation a poetess who used to live near my home and contributed regularly to the local paper wrote an offering which I think was inspired by a period of inclement weather. The first verse went as follows:
" Fog, fog, fog, fog,
No-one goes out, not even a dog,
Oh, how I wish the weather were finer,
Nothing can move, not even a liner; "
I think that even the great McGonagall could not have done much better than that. Then there was the famous conductor Karl Richter who I think deliberately misused the English language, largely I imagine because he resented the way we British expect everyone else to learn our language and if the foreigners cannot understand us we just shout at them more loudly. He apparently was rehearsing in the Albert Hall with the London Philharmonic Orchestra or one of the major orchestras, and the rehearsal was not going to his satisfaction. He tapped his desk to stop the players and addressed himself to the second flute who he reckoned was responsible for the error. He reproved him as follows:
" Twice or once your damn nonsense I just can stick but sometimes always, by God, never ".
Whether that admonition made it all right on the night or not history does not relate.
Where, however, I do think that abuse of the English language is not justifiable is among those whose professional training should make them know better. The brattle—that is an authentic onomatopoeic word—of splitting infinitives is something that I think is offensive in journalistic writing. I was glad to hear the right reverend Prelate make reference to the beauty of the literature of the Book of Common Prayer. If my information is

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correct it took from 1534 to 1549 for Archbishop Cranmer to produce his first liturgy. Since the war our theologians and churchmen have been working for almost as long, if not possibly longer, to produce revised versions of services. I am sorry to say—and I say this with respect—that many of them have got all the vitality, rythm and literary architecture of a bus timetable.
If we must have a revised service—and after all Cranmer was lucky enough to live in perhaps one of the best periods of English history for literature, music and architecture—other than the Common Prayer Book, which I sincerely hope will not go out of usage, could we not look back to 1549 which was perhaps slightly better than 1662, rather than look forward to something which sounds as though it is the output of a civil servant?
5.48 p.m.
Lord KILMARNOCK: My Lords, I have received a note from the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, saying that sadly he is unable to speak. That should have freed another 5·95 minutes for consumption by other noble Lords, but, in fact, it was all consumed by the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Leek. Therefore, I shall not take my one-twentieth part of it. In giving examples of deterioration in the use of the English language. Everyone will have his favourites or perhaps I should say bêtes noires. I happen to share the suspicion of the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Leek, regarding "parameter"—borrowed from mathematics and crystallography. I suspect that in most cases such terms are used to add a spurious ring of scientific accuracy to some line of thought derived from an entirely different subject or discipline.
Of course, there is no adequate way of policing a language except by a voluntary force of special constabulary, to which I hope we all belong. I should like to pay a sincere tribute to the model introductory speech of the noble Lord, Lord Kings Norton, which could have been shortened, I think, by only six words. He did, in fact, use the phrase "in this connection" three times and I think that it was permissible once. But that does not in any way detract from our enormous gratitude to him for raising this very important subject. I should also like to pay tribute to two excellent maiden speeches.
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I wanted to deal with two aspects of English as a vehicle of international communication, which has already been referred to this evening. I was going to start with some thoughts on translation from other languages into English, which is having an increasing, but not always beneficial, effect on the English used abroad. I shall leave that for another occasion to concentrate on the more urgent question of the British Council and join the flag of the noble Lord, Lord Ballantrae, as a member of the British Council Volunteer Defence Force. The Council is unquestionably the most effective single body teaching English or advising on the teaching of English overseas. Under the first round of the proposed cuts in its budget, the 40,000 students taught directly at British Council centres will be reduced, and centres or advisory services will be closed in a number of countries including Brazil, the Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Zaire and Costa Rica.
The total saving to be achieved in 1980–81 is £4·7 million. The elimination of 368 posts for British and 179 for locally-engaged staff will contribute a net saving of £2·1 million in the first year, that is, after subtracting redundancy payments and associated expenses. But this is merely the thin end of the wedge because these redundancies will give rise to a continuing commitment to fund the pensions of redundant staff members under 50 years of age not covered by the British Council's superannuation scheme. Therefore, further staff will have to be cut to foot the continuing bill for the first round of cuts. This further shedding of staff will, in its turn, generate continuing and mounting liabilities. A snowball effect will develop whereby minimal savings are achieved at the cost of increasing damage to the Council's services and its long-term capacity to stage a come-back.
I believe that the Council has accepted the first round of cuts, but it is very properly concerned about the future. It fears that the snowball effect which I have described will lead to the closure of direct teaching centres in Germany, Morocco and Venezuela, and to a cut-back in advisers assisting local bodies in a very wide range of countries indeed. There are, of course, private enterprise schools teaching English abroad, but they are often under-financed, unable or unwilling

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to pay the proper rates for locally recruited staff and, therefore, unable to engage the best teachers, and in some countries they run into work permit problems not faced by the Council, which is accorded semi-diplomatic status.
A further contribution to the £4,7 million cut in 1980–81 is to be made by eliminating all British Council fellowships for overseas graduates, thus saving £296,000, and 50 per cent. of the British Council's scholarships—of which there are 580 at the moment—saving £416,000. At the same time fees to overseas students are to be raised to a full-cost level, which will make British universities, on average, more expensive than their American counterparts, if not the most expensive in the world.
Some universities whose grant is to he cut are expected to make up the shortfall by charging overseas students these higher prices. But they fear, understandably, that they will simply be forced out of the market and that courses which previously depended for their viability on overseas students will be wound up. The overseas student, faced with a higher course fee and fewer British Council scholarships to help him overcome this, will simply turn to the United States or Germany. But the British students may well be left without a course.
I fully understand that the Government have a commitment to cut back public spending and they were elected partly on that commitment. I am not asking for a volte-face in Government policy, but I urge them to look very seriously at the spin-off effects, if I may use a jargon term, of the relatively small savings that they will achieve by these cuts. I have an uneasy feeling that they may cause severe damage to other activities which they do not strictly intend to affect. I have no interest to declare; I have never worked for the Council, but I have seen its work abroad. As long as English is used as an international lingua franca it is absolutely vital that it is taught to the highest standards—nobody can beat the Council at this game.
5.55 p.m.
Lord HAYTER: My Lords, it is about time that I brought a note of discord into
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our conversations today. Just to be argumentative I shall maintain that there has been no deterioration of the English language. What has happened—and I look studiously at the ceiling—is that we have been surrounded by fuddy-duddies who have not been able to keep up with the times. They do not realise that the word "lerve" is the word they used to know as "love". They do not realise that in the medical profession so many new words are being introduced that when I go round this country on medical matters I take with me a nurse's medical dictionary. They have not kept up with the scientific language of micro-processing. They do not know what "floppy discs" are or what "opto-couplings" are which has a slightly odd connotation.
When I visited one of my research establishments the other day I received a report on a new product. The breadboard version of this new product was originally produced with an EPROM memory of 16K nibbles. After proto- typing, the memory was converted to 2 x 4K bytes of RAM memory. All production versions of the machine are subjected to a rigorous shake and bake operation, followed by a burn-in period of 96 hours.
These same fuddy-duddies have not got used to the changes in business language. Noble Lords might think that some of it is not a language at all. Most of us will know the phrases "CBI", "TUC", "NEB", "EEC", and perhaps even "MLR". Noble Lords certainly know what "Quango" and "Neddy" stand for. But in this world we seek common objectives, common sense and common understanding, and as long as we get that, I could not care less what the language itself sounds like.
The difficulty today is that in modern life we have to express ourselves so well. As the right reverend Prelates will know, the Lord's Prayer contains 56 words; as they will know, the Ten Commandments comprise 197 words; the American Declaration of Independence has 304 words; but the European Economic Community Directive on the import of caramel and caramel products comprises 26,911 words.
Let us always remember that we must have a common language for use in this

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country. As Lewis Carroll once said:
" I said it in Hebrew,
I said it in Dutch,
I said it in German and Greek,
But I wholly forgot (and it vexed me much)
That English is what you speak! "
I plead there that we should give up many of the programmes that are on the BBC for foreigners in foreign languages, and make all the efforts we can to bring them up to date with the common language that is spoken in this country. This is particularly important in the Health Service where, if you are a patient and in the course of a week you have five or six different nurses who come from different parts of the world, it is sometimes very difficult to make them understand what you believe is wrong and what they think should be done about it.
I turn to the Bible. I do so with a good purpose, as your Lordships will see. The twelfth chapter of the Book of Judges reads:
" Then Jephthah gathered together all the men of Gilead, and fought with Ephraim … And the Gileadites took the passages of Jordan before the Ephraimites, and it was so that when those Ephraimites which were escaped said, Let me go over,
That the men of Gilead said unto him, Art thou an Ephraimite? If he said, Nay; Then said they unto him, Say now Shibboleth: and he said Sibboleth; for he could not frame to pronounce it right. Then they took him, and slew him at the passages of Jordan: and there fell at that time of the Ephraimites forty and two thousand ".
There is a curiosity there and I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Kings Norton, will have spotted how it moves from the singular to the plural. But the whole point is that the word "Shibboleth", which in those days meant just a stream, has now become a word which the dictionary describes as testing a person's nationality or social class or orthodoxy; and it is also a party catchword. So it ill behoves anyone from the Cross Benches to bring out a party catchword in the sense of trying to teach me how to pronounce words ill accents which they like. I would not endeavour to do that to any of your Lordships. Finally, I make a plea that to the extent that it is possible in our educational system, let us try quite seriously to see that at the earliest possible age children are taught to speak in public. By "public" I mean speak among their fellow students. I was luckily at a prep school where I was taught to speak at the age of nine. I made a silly mistake;
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I pronounced the word "picturesque" as though it was "picture-esqueue". They laughed at me, quite rightly, and I never forgot it. But if you can do that, it is going to be an action which is going to serve you through the rest of your life. The only thing is that you may want to speak too long. I am not going to speak too long, but I commend that thought to our Minister—that we should try to bring to all our children the subject of speaking in public at an early age.
6.1 p.m.
The Earl of KIMBERLEY: My Lords, I should like to join in congratulating the two noble Lords on their maiden speeches this afternoon. Once upon a time there was a pirate whose biography was written by James Thurber. The pirate hated the letter O as his mother had been drowned when his ship sank, as she was stuck halfway in and half-way out of a port-hole. This pirate owned an island and he ruled over it very benevolently, but because he hated the letter O he had it abolished from the alphabet. This made life very difficult for courting couples, as "I love you" became ILVEYU. It was even worse for a girl called Ophelia Oliver, as her name became Phelia Liver. The inhabitants finally rebelled and the pirate reinstated the letter O, and everybody lived happliy ever after. Before this happened, the beautiful English language was completely ruined and bastardised, as it is so often today.
I should like to re-emphasise what my noble friend Lord Kings Norton said on conciseness. I believe categorically that we should all thank my noble friend Lord Kings Norton for being so highly intelligent as so cleverly to put down this highly desirable Motion for a not-too-long debate in this Chamber of your Lordships. For indeed it is a subject that is with us twenty-four hours in the day, and a subject that is even right now suffering many indignities in the too often improvised standardisation from what often seems to be perpetually hurled at us by newspaper journalists, as well as and at the same time (or should I say, simultaneously?) by the radio and television, who in my opinion, humble or not, ought to know better. But then you cannot really blame them if they are allowed to get away with it, because for some reason that escapes all speculisation

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they have utterly forgotten what they were supposedly taught or learnt at school, especially conciseness which I hope noble Lords will appreciate from what I have so shortly said.
I have one brief suggestion: that on the minute monitor—and I have thought about this for a long time—the first five minutes should be in green, the second five minutes in yellow, and the third in red, and after that it should flash. I most wholeheartedly support my noble friend's Motion for this almost unique debate in your Lordships' Chamber tonight.
6.3 p.m.
Lord MONSON: My Lords, quite why standards of written and spoken English should have fallen so much is hard to explain. The noble Lord, Lord Perry of Walton, in one of the two really excellent maiden speeches that we have heard today, advanced one possible explanation. I suspect that the fads and the trends of the 1960s, which still linger with us, also have something to do with it. By "the trends of the 1960s," I mean, for example, the rejection of traditional values and standards, the idolisation of the uncouth, the Marshall McLuhan cult, and the cult of the "white heat of technology ", which was meant to supersede such reactionary ivory tower concepts as accuracy in the use of one's native tongue. Whatever the reasons, the legacy is a dismal one, I think we all agree, with the possible exception of the noble Lord, Lord Hayter.
When people talk about bad English nowadays they are broadly thinking of clichés, catch-phrases, vogue words, and the like. I dislike "relevant, ongoing, viable, supportive situations, at this moment in time," as much as the next man, but mainly because Private Eye's public spirited lampooning of such terrible jargon does nothing, alas, to dissuade the practitioners. It only makes people like myself tie ourselves into knots trying to avoid using the word "situation", even in those rare situations when the use of the word "situation" might be entirely appropriate.
However, far more important, because this is a relatively new phenomenon, is the decline in the standards of spelling, of grammar, and of verbal accuracy among
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those people and institutions who ought to know better, who ought to be setting an example to the rest of us. Only yesterday I spotted on the Press Association tape machine in the corridor the headline, "Blunt admits appaling mistake". It was not only Mr. Anthony Blunt who should have admitted an appalling mistake—because the word "appalling" had been spelt with only one" 1 ".
This seems to be infectious. Even the Daily Telegraph, of all newspapers, in a leading article a few weeks ago, spelt "all right" as one word: a-l-r-i-g-h-t. This is a word that certainly does not appear in my edition of the Concise Oxford Dictionary. Similar examples can be found a dozen times a day. The misplacing of apostrophes is notorious, even in advertisements put out by major public companies. It is evident, too, that many schools nowadays totally fail to teach the use of the colon and the semi-colon. This is deplorable because both the colon and the semi-colon play not only a useful but a vital part in assisting the comprehension of what others are trying to tell us.
Lastly, we come to the problem of verbal inaccuracies. I am certainly not one of those who believe that the English language should remain rigid or static. Often new words are coined (including slang words) which are both vigorous and apt, and welcome additions to our tongue. It is the lazy and careless use of existing words I object to. Among the best-known examples is the misuse of the word "infer for "imply". Another, perhaps less important, example is the use of "decimate" when "annihilate" is intended: I suspect that this is mainly because most people are not quite sure how to pronounce "annihilate". But worse still is when inaccuracy joins hands with inelegance. My heart sinks when I hear Cabinet Ministers, and ex-Cabinet Ministers, speak of " 45 pee ". After all, "pence" is just as concise and monosyllabic. Let us call a spade a spade. A penny is a penny; a pee is merely one possible way of spending a penny.
Two things are needed. The first is to bring the standards of English teaching in the average school nearer to the standards of the best schools in this particular field; and the best do include

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many State schools as well as private schools. The second is that those at the top, whether in big business, the Government, the Civil Service, in journalism or whatever, should set a better example in their use of our language.
6.7 p.m.
Lord REILLY: My Lords, I have time for only one short point. I hope it will please the noble Lord, Lord Kings Norton. I have been invited to draw your Lordships' attention to the formation of yet one more voluntary organisation, called The English Language Society, shortly, it is hoped, to become The English Language Foundation, the sole purpose of which is to combat the very corruptions and deteriorations which we have been debating today. As I have no interest to declare, other than admiration for the energy and enthusiasm of the young founders of this society, I should be glad to send their name and address to any noble Lord who might feel like supporting them. I am grateful to them for reminding me of just one quotation, which I hope I shall be allowed. It is not in Mandarin Chinese but it is from Confucius. It seems that he was once asked by his disciples what he would do first if he were to have the power to set right the affairs of his country. He answered,
" I should certainly see to it that language is correctly used ".
6.8 p.m.
Lord DONALDSON of KINGSBRIDGE: My Lords, I have prepared an elegant speech in, I think, extremely good English, but I shall not deliver it because the time is not appropriate. May I quickly say how much I enjoyed the two most witty maiden speeches, and how delighted I was that two noble Lords should put the case so well of the British Council which, to me, is the most grievously affected at the moment in a series of grievous cuts. I also agree with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Simon of Glaisdale, about the total horror of the word "gay" in its new use.
I do not think that the English language is suffering as much as some people think it is, and I quote Dr. Burchfield, to whom the noble Lord, Lord Kings Norton, referred. He says:
" It is self-evident that the language has not bled to death through change. Vulgarity finds its
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antidote, old crudities become softened with time distinctions, both those that are useful and those that are burdensome, flourish and die, re-flourish and die again ".
I think that probably is the truth.
I must have a little fun and I will quote a splendid passage from George Orwell:
" I returned and saw under the sun that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all "
He said, in other words: "Objective consideration of contemporary phenomena compels the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with mate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account ".
I believe there is something we can do to stop that, and I ask the Minister to ask her right honourable friend the Prime Minister to instruct every Permanent Under-Secretary to give an order that every private office has a copy of Gowers and that every private secretary reads it; secondly, that no secretary shall be appointed to a commission or make a report—this is very much what the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, was saying—without being made to read Gowers. Gowers is the simple one: it is all there and if you read it you are all right.
Only one minute remains to me to speak. I was very disappointed that the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, did not speak because he was going to attack the Church's function, which we heard something of from the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich. I believe there are two kinds of people; there is the one sort who dislike ceremony and requires very simple worship, and the other sort who are helped by ceremony. Those people who want simple worship can get it in the Free Churches. The function of the Church of England in my belief is to preserve the traditions that we have inherited over the years and about which many people have spoken. I believe that Christianity is a minority body in this country. The Church of England is not more than half that minority body—I do not have the right figures—and I believe it to be totally wrong that there should he a movement away from the ceremonial we are used to. Of course the

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churches must be allowed to do what they want to do, but I would like the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury, who under the Queen is our head here, to say that every church must have one service every Sunday in the traditional form. If we did those two things we should have done something about the British language.
6.13 p.m.
The MINISTER of STATE, DEPARTMENT of EDUCATION and SCIENCE (Baroness Young): My Lords, I am sure we are all grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Kings Norton, for introducing this debate and I too wish to add my congratulations to the two maiden speakers, who I thought were both forthcoming, upgoing and, for maiden speakers, not at all uptight. We may not all agree with Max Beerbohm when he wrote in 1898 a letter to Robert Ross in which he said:
" It is horrible to find a misprint … on page 24 of my works. There is a misplaced comma which has darkened much of my life, and has often made me appear more bitter than I really am ".
Nevertheless, such an attitude of perfection is often to be preferred to some of the sloppy and misleading English we read today. I looked for some recent examples in my incoming post. An employer wrote, "It may be that you are already informed about the … relatedness between education and employment". And an article in a pamphlet asked me to "co-operatively consider" something. But is it really fair to suggest that all is getting worse?
In preparation for this debate I re-read that standard work, Sir Ernest Gowers' Plain English, and the noble Lords, Lord Mancroft and Lord Ardwick, will appreciate one of his quotations which is of a Government order of 1943:
" The Rags (Wiping Rags) (Maximum Charges) Order 1943 (as amended) shall have effect as if in Article 1 thereof for the figure ' 8 ' where it occurs in the last line there were substituted the figure ' 11½ ' ".
Such language gave rise to the need for a translation which was later to be called an explanatory memorandum. But just in case we should feel that all is not as bad as we thought, my second quotation, for which there is no translation, is an American quotation which reads as follows
" Diffusibility of knowledge throughout the environment in which the families are to move is
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essential if the full expression of their potentiality is to become explicit in action ".
We should be able to do better than that. I therefore start by quoting the opening words of the report of the noble Lord, Lord Bullock, on 'A Language for Life', to which Lord Kings Norton referred. He said:
" In any anxiety over a contemporary situation there is likely to be a wistful look back to the past, with a conviction, often illusory, that times were better then than now. And the times people claim to have been better are generally within the span of their own lives ".
It is evident from the speeches we have heard today that noble Lords are anxious about changes in the use of English in what I may call social and cultural terms—all, that is to say, with the exception of the noble Lord, Lord Hayter, and indeed we can all point to examples of the use of language in the Press, on radio and television, in official statements and so on which appear to fall far short of what we would expect. But I think it only fair in the defence of the Civil Service, to which the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson, referred, to point out that Sir Ernest Gowers had a rather nice passage in which he says:
" When the official does not know his Minister's mind, or his Minister does not know his own mind, or the Minister thinks it wiser not to speak his mind, the official must sometimes cover his utterance with a mist of vagueness ".
It could not have been put better. It is, I suggest, important to distinguish between those usages which can properly be called "wrong" in matters of speech and those which are merely "different". We have examples of language usage from radio, television, the Press and magazines constantly before us and people have far more varied social and working lives, and in addition English is now a multinational language and we ourselves are increasingly a multi-cultural nation.
The noble Lord, Lord Simon of Glaisdale, suggested a language commission and it was not until Lord Hayter spoke that we heard that new English word Quango, but of course it is difficult to accept a Quango in any circumstances now; but perhaps I do not have the time to stop and define it or say what it might be. To suggest therefore that we can attain a standard pattern of usage is surely unrealistic in the circumstances I have described. What I think there should be is a generally accepted usage

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which enables us to communicate beyond our immediate community and within our own country. I agree that accepted patterns of grammatical usage and a uniform system of spelling are desirable objectives, like reading itself, which should be pursued. Children at school should be taught, in the interests of communicating widely and effectively, to follow these conventions. But it is difficult to assess the achievements of schools in language teaching because it is not easy to find a satisfactory basis of comparison with the past.
The view taken by the Bullock Committee was not that standards had deteriorated but that the demands of society had risen, and we must all agree that this is so. The report of the National Survey of Primary Education found that in the area for which comparative material on reading attainment was available—the reading scores of children of 11 between 1955 and 1977—standards had risen. I shall be surprised if similar evidence is not also found when the report of the National Secondary Survey becomes available in a few weeks' time. However, there is room for improvement.
In the not very distant past a high proportion of "language" time in the curriculum was spent in teaching the skills of spelling and grammar at the expense of developing in pupils a sensitivity to language. A reaction against this in recent years may well have resulted in a more imaginative but less accurate use of language; there are indications that schools are trying to achieve a better balance. The two objectives are not mutually exclusive, but different aspects of the same problem. There is also an inevitable need for the schools to meet the increasingly sophisticated demands of society in terms of new language usage, and indeed the points that have been made about computers and micro-processors illustrate this.
The noble Lord, Lord Kings Norton, asked what has happened since the publication of the Bullock Report. Its many recommendations were of course addressed in large measure to local education authorities and the teaching profession, and as such depend on local, rather than central, action. But the report placed primary emphasis on the
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development of a systematic language policy across the curriculum in schools. That concept, which I regard as fundamental to good language teaching, has been pursued in discussions which Her Majesty's Inspectors have had up and down the country with local education authorities and schools since the publication of the report. My Department's recent report on Local Authority Arrangements for the School Curriculum was published last week. Authorities were asked about their policies on the report of the noble Lord, Lord Bullock. The replies showed that they had undertaken a wide range of measures to promote English language development in schools in the light of the findings of the report and its recommendations. Early in the new year I hope to start discussions with the local authorities and the teachers on a framework for a core curriculum, and the learning of English will be central to this.
The noble Lord, Lord Kings Norton, also asked about teachers. We aim to improve standards both for initial training and, through in-service training, for the existing teacher force. As from September, 1984, all newly qualifying teachers will be required to have held, on entry to their course of initial training, a grade A, B or C in O-level English language, or an equivalent qualification. Although the possession of such a qualification is now almost universal among entrants to teacher training, this formal requirement will help to ensure a minimum standard of competence.
After 1982, all newly-trained teachers will be graduates, except for a few who have completed one year certificate in education courses in certain shortage subject areas, which courses will be continuing until 1983–84. In-service training programmes on language development have been initiated; specialist language centres have been set up; there have been many conferences to discuss the problems of language teaching; and in many areas machinery has been established for identifying and helping those children with specific language difficulties. It would be wrong, therefore, to assume—as is sometimes done—that proper attention is not being given to language teaching, particularly in terms of basic reading and writing skills.

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However, the debate has not been concerned simply with written English, but with spoken English, too. Here I believe that it would not be fruitful to lay down guidelines for schools on this vexed question of acceptable patterns of speech and usage, even if we were in a position to do so. The consequence would be to reduce much of the richness of our culture, and it would be of questionable value in improving communication skills. Indeed, it could seriously damage the pithiness and flexibility which has always been a characteristic of our language.
However, I agree that there is such a thing as slipshod spoken English, regardless of accent, Coherent, consistent and intelligible, correct speech forms are important. Spoken communication is as important as written communication; often more so in the day-to-day personal contact with others which makes up so much of our lives. Standards should be upheld by our major institutions, and I an glad to hear that the BBC, for one, is seeking to do so, even if, to quote Mr. Burchfield's report on radio English, Robin Day
" felt that the language was going to the dogs ".
I am told that many schools are not as effective as they should be in encouraging children to be articulate in speech, and in encouraging dialogue. Consideration is being given to this at the moment by the Schools Council, among others. I would again hope to see a joining of the best of the old and the new practice, of the traditional question-and-answer approach, with a new development of learning dialogue.
In conclusion, it must be recognised that schools reflect society. If speech is casual in the home and in the street, it would be unrealistic to expect schools to remedy this. If literacy is less prized, it will be less well taught. And if literature, in the widest sense, is degraded, literary studies will suffer. These are some of the issues to which this debate has drawn attention. They are issues of the greatest importance to those who are concerned to teach, to use and to preserve what is the best in the great heritage of our English language.
Lord KINGS NORTON: My Lords, there is no time for me to comment on the excellent debate that I feel we have
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had, beyond to say that I am proud to have initiated it. All that remains is for me to withdraw my Motion.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

A NATIONAL YOUTH SERVICE
6.25 p.m.
The Lord Bishop of LONDON The Lord Bishop of LONDON rose to call attention to the need for a National Youth Service; and to move for Papers. The right reverend Prelate said: My Lords, in introducing a short debate on the need for a National Youth Service I am only too aware that I have to cover a very wide area of concern in a very short time. A number of noble Lords have indicated their desire to speak, and I am anxious not to deny them the opportunity of taking part by taking too much time myself. If, therefore, I appear to be telegraphic or superficial in my presentation, it is because there is so much to say and so little time in which to say it.
We are witnessing the traumatic effect upon our society of the loss of our status as a nation as one of the great world powers. Most of us here were brought up with atlases in which a greater part of the world was coloured red and, as we imagined, belonged to us. Whether or not that was a justifiable state of affairs is beside the point. What we have to remember is that the British Empire was a focus of national pride and provided at every level of society opportunities for employment, for experience, for travel, and for service. Many of our ablest young people went into the Indian or Colonial Civil Service. Their Armed Services provided opportunity for adventure. Our Navy, Army and Air Force were the means by which our young folk went all over the world, met with other people of different nations and cultures, had a vision of service, created friendships, and inherited loyalties. It is easy, of course, to romance about these things. There was the other side of the coin, as we can now appreciate. Our status in the world often gave rise to arrogance, to paternalism of an undesirable kind, to long separations, to harsh conditions of life. But despite these things, our people found, through our status, a pride and satisfaction which enriched their lives.
In a bewilderingly short period of time all those opportunities have disappeared. They have been replaced by a sense of national purposelessness and insecurity. This malaise has been boosted by the growing fear of unemployment at every level of society, by anxiety about the future of a world bedevilled by inflation; to say nothing of the overriding possibility that our world may be utterly liquidated by means of destruction which man has devised. The first victims of this process are the young. It should be of no surprise that so many of them exhibit in their behaviour all the marks of a rootless society and a purposeless existence.
It is, my Lords, a solemn duty of Government to use every means in their power to arrest this trend and to ensure that opportunity is provided for young people to train and use their gifts in a way that will give them a sense of service and satisfaction. I am of course aware of the many efforts in a wide variety of fields to provide for the needs of young people. Indeed, in commenting on my Motion one noble Lord has remarked, "We already have a youth service ". Noble Lords will be aware of the work of the Manpower Services Commission, with its ancillary agencies to help young people to find training and employment. They will know of the opportunities provided by the Armed Services and by the many voluntary youth organisations. They will have heard of the many projects in different localities, such as that promoted by the Birkenhead Council for Voluntary Service, or here, in London, by ILEA. They will know of the work of the National Association of Youth Clubs, the National Youth Bureau, VSO, the Duke of Edinburgh Award, Community Services Volunteers, and the National Working Party of Youth Volunteer Organisers.
I have been greatly interested in the information I have received about the seminar which was held at the Royal United Services Institution in February 1971, which led to the conference at Ditchley in October of the same year. Out of that conference arose the Trident Trust, with its three-pronged objectives of work experience, community service and adventure-type training. This work continues mainly for those in their last year at school or for those who need its help
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in the year immediately after leaving school. So we should not in any way denigrate what is already being done; and we should be deeply grateful to that army of men and women who are devoting their thought and care to these problems, and in so many instances giving voluntary and self-sacrificing service themselves.
It is because there is this clear recognition of need and this admirable effort on so many fronts to meet it that one is aware that much more is required. Some of those efforts are, frankly, cosmetic. They are designed to remove the misery and dangers of unemployment. But so much is unco-ordinated and concerned only with its own affairs. I quote from one experienced youth leader:
" Do we have the imagination, in this country, to go one step further? The basis of a young people's community service agency exists in most areas—the current picture is of everyone going it alone ".
In other words, these varied organisations and efforts need to be brought together in a recognisable entity, so that they can be seen and acknowledged by the nation as a whole as a way by which young people are given opportunity and encouragement to devote some part of their lives to the service of the community of which they are a part.
I believe that the time is right and ripe for leadership of this nature. We have come through the cynicism of the 'sixties, and there is a new sense of responsibility abroad in the land. Those who work among and with young people tell me that there is no lack of idealism, and that when they are presented with occasions for service, however demanding and unpleasant it may be, there is no shortage of volunteers. When they have done the job, they find a real satisfaction in what they have achieved. Now is the time for Government to give their encouragement for the creation of a national youth service which will, as a national effort, and not as a number of voluntary efforts, set before our young people the chance of finding a use for their gifts and a pride in their country and their service. For should we not be sensitive to the fact that Great Britain is the only West European nation which requires no service from its youth?
I do not minimise the problems or the scope which confront such leadership, but

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I believe it is essential that it should be undertaken now. It will need Government-sponsored study, but I trust we shall not use the examination of the issues as an excuse for doing nothing. I understand that a start could be made by asking the Royal United Services Institution, again, to undertake a pilot investigation.
In such a scheme there are three elements which I believe to be important. First, there must be the element of compulsion. I know that this is controversial. I agree that, ideally, we should rely on voluntary response. But if we are to instil in our young people the need and the satisfaction of service to the community, then all must be involved. The flaw in a purely voluntary service is that it does not involve those who need it most. In the debate in this House on the humble Address on 30th November 1976, almost three years ago, the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, reminded the House that over the last 20 years or so only about one-third of teenagers had been attracted of their own accord to any organised leisure programme which had been provided for them, and that this figure had remained constant. He went on to say:
" These are facts which no initiatives by local authorities, no initiatives, many as they have been, by the voluntary youth organisations have succeeded in altering over the years."—[Official Report, 30/11/76, col. 220.]
The noble Lord's eloquent plea on that occasion for stronger leadership in extending youth service programmes well deserves further consideration. As a very experienced worker in voluntary service has remarked to me, "Surely if community service is worthwhile for unemployed youngsters, it is equally worthwhile for the captains of industry and permanent secretaries of 20 years hence.".
Secondly, it must involve the requirement of residence for a period. There is no better way of breaking down barriers of social differences than by living together. For a few months during the war I served as chaplain at HMS "Collingwood", which at that time was giving initial naval training. Every week a hundred young men entered the gates. They were soon dressed in square rig and living together—boys from public schools, boys from the slums. Twelve weeks later they left, having profited greatly from having shared the same mess decks and the same
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training. The element of living together is essential, for community service means not only service to the community but service by a community.
Thirdly, it must be international. Though we no longer have imperial responsibilities, we all have greater and ever-growing responsibilities towards other nations, especially those poorer and less privileged than ourselves. Our own selfish affairs occupy far too great a proportion of our time and energy, and we must instil in our young people, as part of their training for their life's work, the vision of a world that is in great need materially and spiritually, a world of which we are all a constituent part, a world which needs our service. It is the duty of Government to ensure that opportunity is provided for fulfilling that duty of service.
In May 1978 the American Ambassador, Mr. Kingman Brewster, delivered 'a remarkable lecture at St. George's, Windsor, on the theme of power and responsibility. In it he expressed the view that the Welfare State, in response to the pressures of democracy, had come to stay. He called it the "Entitlement State ", because people no longer go to the State for help as suppliants; they regard that help as their right. If we are to avoid the dangers and pitfalls which such an attitude brings in its train, he said, then society needs to learn certain lessons and needs, not so much the "moral equivalent of war" as the "social equivalent of war"; and one of those lessons is the necessity to bridge what the Ambassador calls,
" the gloom of uselessness and the satisfaction of usefulness ".
In other words, we have all to learn that the Welfare State is not all take and no give.
He went on:
" I urge the requirement of under-compensated, publicly-useful service for all men and women before they enter their lifetime careers ".
He ended:
" I say the requirement of publicly-useful service should apply to all men and women in the conviction that no privilege, let alone the mere fact that you are otherwise engaged, should offer immunity from the obligation. The purpose is not just to cure ' youth unemployment ', although it would go a long way to do that. The purpose is not just to be able to afford adequate levels of social services, human and environmental care, without

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having to pay for it at market prices. The most fundamental purpose is to offer each generation a shared social experience of service in a common national cause without regard to birth, race or wealth ".
In those words, the Ambassador sums up what I have in mind, and to those words I say, "Amen". My Lords, I beg to move for Papers.
6.40 p.m.
Lord EVANS of CLAUGHTON: My Lords, from these Benches may I welcome the initiative of the right reverend Prelate in putting down this Motion for debate on a subject which to me—and, I am sure, to most noble Lords—is one of transcendent importance in the present state of this country, the present high level of unemployment, particularly in urban areas, that we are suffering at the moment, and the feeling which the right reverend Prelate mentioned, of dissociation among so many young people.
I felt justified in speaking ill this debate for three reasons. First, when the right reverend Prelate was in Chester before being translated to London I had the privilege of working in a very minor way in the same field. I was chairman of the Birkenhead Council of Voluntary Service which he mentioned in the earlier part of his speech. Many of the initiatives which I hope to mention later that that particular body undertook under its secretary and present chairman are in line with that whe right reverend Prelate has said. Secondly, as long ago as 1969—and I am sure that this is not widely known in this House—there was a resolution carried at the annual assembly of the Liberal Party—and, unusually for that assembly, carried virtually unanimously—along very much the same lines. Thirdly, in a book written by David Steel before he became Leader of the Liberal Party he said, in what is a key passage in terms of this debate, the following words:
" There is surely a case for providing realistic grants all round irrespective of parental means in return for one year's national service. This could be, by choice, military training, voluntary service overseas, community work, nursing, or assistance to the police or prison service. All of these are crying out for manpower and it seems a reasonable return for the benefit of higher education ".
Those are three good reasons why I should speak generally in support of the Motion that we are debating.
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As the right reverend Prelate has said, in the days of our vast Empire—and I am old enough to remember when we were shown in school that nearly all the map was red; and what a good thing it was generally—and in an age which passed before that, an age of great industrial expansion, and an age of prosperity we have recently passed out of, there were plenty of challenges, plenty of opportunities and plenty of excitement for young people in the world and in this country. The right reverend Prelate quotes from the American Ambassador. I think of the words of a former great Secretary of State of the United States, Dean Acheson, who said:
" Britain has lost an Empire and failed to find a role ".
Indeed, sadly, that aphorism is still true. Many of us hoped that Britain's involvement in Europe would provide that role. Although to many people this has been an opportunity, it has not provided quite the same kind of opportunity, certainly for young people, that the Empire and the general role of Britain in the world used to provide in an earlier period.
There are many people who will say—I sure that your Lordships will have heard it said—that what we want is a reintroduction of traditional National Service so that these chaps can get a "short hack and sides" and learn a bit of discipline. One very often hears this. I was one of those people who did the traditional two years' National Service and, although I went into it with trepidation, looking back on it, it was probably the two best years of my life—certainly a more enjoyable, a more exciting time than I had at school or at university or even in politics. One was away from home and that is a very important point. One had a certain element—very often, we thought, too great an element; a mindless element we sometimes called it—of discipline; but we learned self-reliance and adventure.
I suspect that such form of traditional National Service is neither practical nor desirable at this time, although it may be an appropriate and a suitable type of service, possibly on a three-year or four-year period, for some of the young people of this country. In the area where I live, we have the notorious Oak and Eldon Gardens, recently demolished 15-storey flats. The young people of Birkenhead used to swing on fire hoses

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from one 15-storey block to another, to the terror of their parents and to everyone. One old person said to me, "Those boys are the Commandos of 10 years from now." They are. They need this stimulus and excitement; and this is the thing they are not getting at the moment. For some young people, that kind of military service might be ideal and suit them down to the ground. I do not think it could be done on a basis of one or two year's National Service. Even in the period in the 1950s when I was doing National Service it was not popular with the professional soldiers and was regarded as a nuisance and wasted time and money.
Today we live in entirely different times, times of extremely high, totally unacceptable youth unemployment; and, for most of these unemployed young people, a time of very real personal, inward-looking concern whether they have a future at all. This is the really dreadful part of the present position. Young people in the 1960s at a time of prosperity, were willing to look outwards and to be concerned with Vietnam and so on. Now they are getting appreciably and obviously more inward-looking because their natural concern is to find out whether there is a future for them in this country or anywhere else in the world. It is vital, therefore, for the 16 to 18 year olds to be involved in creative, rewarding and interesting social and community work.
It is interesting that national opinion polls conducted over the last few years have shown—contrary to what I suspected was a widely-held opinion—that over 50 per cent. of young people world welcome an involvement of some kind in voluntary work after leaving school and before going to their first job or university; and that over 60 per cent. of young people of that age group would accept compulsion provided that their friends and mates also had to accept compulsions—in other words, provided that the compulsion was shared and not selective. This gives rather the lie to the concept that many people have that only the children of intellectual readers of the Guardian have a social conscience and a wish to look outside their own selfish interests. If between 50 per cent. and 60 per cent. are willing to do voluntary work this shows a very wide spread, throughout all classes, of young people who are willing to be
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involved, and a large number who are willing to accept (so long as it is shared) a form of convulsion.
In 1969 my party, at its annual assembly, passed a resolution which recognised, even then, the importance of the subject and the willingness of young people to do community work between school and their first job or further education. That resolution was passed overwhelmingly and had the distinguished support of such people as Peter Hain, who has since left us for other fields. The resolution proposed, first, to set up community responsibility courses while the boys and girls were still at school and co-ordinating courses for community work for boys and girls still at school so that they could go straight into this at some schools. Certainly the school to which my son and daughters go has that kind of basic concept already, but it is not true of all schools. Secondly, the resolution suggested one year of community work after school as a recognised option eligible for grant, keeping it on a voluntary basis. Thirdly, it suggested the setting up of regional community service centres to provide basic knowledge, training, tests for suitability for particular kinds of social work and for co-ordinating that work at a local level thereafter.
Although since 1969 the scene has changed, as I have said, with youth unemployment now at its highest level, many of those principles enunciated in that resolution are still applicable today. Since then there have been the changes in the job creation programme which has been established in this country. It is notable that such youth employment programmes have generally been most successful when they had been based on voluntary organisations at present in existence, such as Community Service volunteers. I hope that any future scheme which might result from this debate or further discussion will be based wherever possible in this country on existing voluntary organisations with the experience and knowledge to carry it out. I am in a difficulty because basically as a Liberal I am opposed to the concept of compulsion in voluntary work. It would be an enormous task if we were to introduce compulsory service because on any reasonable assessment at any particular time there are between 600,000 and

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700,000 young people of the 16 to 18 age group. It would be an enormous task to require compulsory service from a number as large as that.
The second matter that concerns me is that if it were to be introduced compulsorily, the approach of many of the young people compelled into youth service might be coloured, and their attitude in their future life to helping in community organisations might be coloured by the fact that they were compelled to it at an early stage. In some ways, it rather smacks of the kind of compulsory national youth work that some of the Third World and Eastern European countries have in those areas, ones that I do not think are immediately acceptable to the British public. I think that it would be better if one could do it on a voluntary basis by providing grants during the period of service at a higher level than the social security benefit—or "dole" as it is widely called by young people of this generation. I should be willing to consider that if the kinds of problems that the right reverend Prelate mentioned occur, and people most in need of this service do not go in for it voluntarily with the incentives—the "carrots"—that I have suggested, then we might have to consider, after the matter has begun through voluntary organisations and on a voluntary basis, whether compulsion might not be the answer if it does not work in a substantial way on a voluntary basis. I agree entirely with the proposition that there should be a residential element in whatever scheme is introduced and an international, an overseas, element. I do not think there would be any dispute about that. That would be a vital part.
When one compares the schemes in this country with those in other parts of the world—perhaps in the United States, where one finds that young people act as front-line firemen, that young people act as assistant teachers in primary schools—one is brought up with a very sharp brake against the problems that we would have in doing that in this country. It would he a very useful development, but the problem is the one that the trade unions would make in that area because they would regard it as competition for jobs for the full-time workers in the social and other spheres, the fire service and so on.
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One of the greatest tasks that we have to face is to persuade the trade unions to realise that this is not a means of obtaining cheap labour, but of helping the disadvantaged and people with a sense of hopelessness to get a sense of purpose and involvement and of doing things for which staff and money is not available from national or local government sources. All of us can think of so many ways in which jobs are not being done at present which could be fulfilled by young volunteers of this kind.
I am conscious of the time and, as the right reverend Prelate said, one could speak for a great length of time on this, and I should have liked to underline, if time had been available, the initiatives that we have taken in the Birkenhead Council of Voluntary Service. I will finish by saying that I think it is extremely important that this debate has been initiated. I only hope that after the debate has taken place there will be some action taken by Her Majesty's Government to start something along these lines. Anyone who is involved in inner urban areas, such as I am, and anyone who is involved almost anywhere in the community, must realise that we have a very serious and tragic problem on our hands with the levels of youth unemployment. I believe that some kind of system, whether voluntary or compulsory, along the lines of the Motion would do a great deal of good for the health of this country.
6.56 p.m.
Lord SOPER: My Lords, the House will be grateful, I am sure, to my noble and ecclesiastical friend for initiating this debate. Let me quickly say how ardently I concur with his appeal that there should be a comprehensive attempt to deal with this urgent problem. The haemorrhage of usefulness and happiness among youth is intolerable, and no one should underrate the traumatic effects upon the youth of any community when that youth is beset with so many of the problems of which we have already heard in some detail.
It is my belief that, before we can adequately treat this question, we must discriminate between the service which we render to youth in order that, in its turn, it may serve the community, and the claims that we make upon youth that

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they should undertake service, either voluntarily or compulsorily. I believe that the prior question is what we should now offer to youth in the various difficulties under which it suffers, and thereafter—as the right reverend Prelate has clearly said—expect from youth that kind of response which I agree is forthcoming when a sufficiently inviting and exciting prospect of co-operative effort is laid before the youth of today.
But I must confess I have immediate reservations when I find the contrast between what was supposed to be the British Empire of the past and the problems which stand in such clear contrast in the contemporary situation. I do not believe that at every level of society the youth, 50 or 60 years ago, had available to it the opportunities of service, the exciting prospects of an imperial future. It is my experience as a social worker that those who are very much older than I am have told me time and time again that this opportunity was largely confined to a comparatively small group in the community; and for the working classes—if one can regard them as a whole—nothing of this sort really prevailed. I do not feel that it will help very much to think nostalgically of the great days of the past—and many of them were bad old days. Neither do I believe that there is any future in the suggestion that we should compulsorily attempt to cure this problem by some kind of national service.
It is comparatively easy to construct a national service on the basis of military training. The objective is clear: whether is is reprehensible or desirable is another matter, but it is not complicated. The issue has an immediate appeal which at least can be translated in terms of flags and in terms of exhortation and has a reasonable place in the thinking of those who are not, as I am, a pacifist. But to think that we can somehow create a national service for youth without any of those compartments of training and preparation which were proper to military service is a false dawn, even in contemplation.
As I would so heartily agree with the last speaker, when you begin to examine what you would do in order to provide, as was said so very well in the penultimate
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passage, "the social equivalent of war", you are embarking upon a very different project from the specific preparation for young men to defend their country in martial arms. I think it is much more likely that we shall proceed by looking at the various kinds of youth need rather than endeavouring to provide an overall blanket answer to problems which are not only various but quite distinctive and, in many cases, cannot be confined in one general proposition.
I have no doubt that other speakers will say something about the intolerable situation of youth unemployment. I ask myself, I hope not sentimentally, what sort of person I would have been at the age of 18 or 20 if nobody wanted me, if I had very little skill to offer and no one was prepared to like the services that I could render as being worthwhile. I think the disintegration that almost inevitably would have accompanied that process in my life only adds to my admiration for those who, in similar circumstances today, do seem to get over it and to master it. Nevertheless, perhaps for many of them, and certainly for a large proportion of those who now leave school at 15 or 16 years of age, it seems to me that to incorporate a voluntary sort of training in the active education currently with some kind of oversight is not only splendidly exemplified in some of the voluntary organisations which now exist, but offers a means of escape from the treadmill of unwantedness "which so often corrupts and, it seems to me, is increasingly likely to corrupt the lives of young people.
For a great many youngsters the best kind of service that can be offered to them is the necessary equipment which will enable them later on to render an adequate service to the community in which they live. Therefore the schemes which are now voluntarily exercised in order to provide the opportunities of learning and of developing skills, whether they be mental or more physical skills, are surely a practical answer to the question: How do you expect youth to render service to the community in which it lives unless you provide the encouragement to facilitate the production of the skills by which that service can be rendered?
I think there is a place for compulsory service for the delinquent. I have a rooted objection to the whole concept of

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prison life, which I feel is futile and degrading; but I have no use for those who say, "Then let them go free". I realise there are others in your Lordships' House who are far more competent in this field than I am, but I have some little experience of it and I feel that compulsory service in the community for the delinquent is justifiable and part of the necessary reparation he should try to make to the community which he has ill-used.
I want, however, to speak a little about two other groups. One of them is the group of the youngster who opts out; and I think this is an increasing menace. I believe it was Arthur Koestler who said that, having made his excursions into the Far East and having discovered the wisdom of the East, he came back with the feeling that all he had really gained was the virtue of a gentle smile and a predilection for the patter of some kind of very obvious and unspecific morality. I find it very difficult to look with anything but intellectual contempt on the protestations of the Maharishi, who is not so much one who gently smiles as one who giggles, as far as I have watched him, and on those who run up and down Oxford Street crying out "Hari Krishna", and those who go in for a kind of transcendental meditation, because I believe that such concepts are intellectually practically worthless.
But I must be very careful not to blame those who suffer from this malaise, because I think I understand something of the way in which they have come to this attitude—to look into their own eyes, when they are more concerned to consult the optic nerve than to look out upon the world, which they find distasteful. It is a distasteful world for those who are suddenly confronted with the menace of armaments and with the almost insuperable problems which seem to confront all except those who are the strongest and sturdiest. It does not surprise me that many of these young people find in a retirement from the struggle and a compensation within the internal areas of their own thought and substance something which is at least an escape, and a not dishonourable one.
Youth can only be rescued from such an introspection by the provision of a community in which it can feel it can join a team, rather than continue in the
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isolation of what is called enlightened self-interest. Perhaps the greatest service that can be rendered to youth is to recapture that which the right reverend prelate has exemplified in one form in the traditional belief, shall we say? of a group, and the highest ambitions—and some of them were pretty high—of what we call the "colonialist and imperialist role" which Great Britain played. I do not subscribe to that but I do understand it, and I believe that to find some compensatory, or rather some kind of alternative, sense of community is perhaps finally the only way in which we shall serve the present age and in which we shall indeed recover the opportunity of youth, in general terms, to play its part in a regenerated society.
It is a question which obviously must tax the imagination and thought of all who ask themselves how it is going to be done. If I may, I would suggest to your Lordships that the value of a debate like this is that we appreciate the problem and that we, wisely I think, reject those methods which in the past have proved either unsatisfactory or totally futile. I therefore pin my hope to a resurgence of the sense of community, and in that sense of community I believe that the voluntary organisations will play an ever more predominant part.
I finish, wearing the collar that I do and making no excuse for saying this, by saying that we should not underrate the value of the Church as an institution which, quite apart from its worship, can provide the kind of stimulus to a sense of public responsibility. That is where I learned it—such as I have. It is within that fabric of general concern and the emergence and the stratification of moral values that I believe there is hope for youth today, which is aimless, in many cases has a great deal of opportunity for idle pleasure and in some cases far too much money and very little sense of what to do with it. It is in that central area of churchmanship that I would want to be included in the general voluntary system, and if my words are heard outside this Chamber I would earnestly invite my fellow clergymen to embark upon such programmes. They will find a very much more considerable response than perhaps they believe. They will find the power of that, if I may end with a quotation, from Wesley's hymn:

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" How to serve the present age
My calling to fulfil,
Oh may I all my powers employ
To do the Master's will ".
That is still, in my judgment, the ultimate and final authority for the recovery of the youth of today and every youth of every age.
7.10 p.m.
Viscount ROCHDALE: My Lords, may I first, along with other noble Lords who have spoken, thank the right reverend Prelate for introducing this very important debate, and may I say how extremely privileged I feel to be able to take part in it. The noble Lord, Lord Soper, will perhaps forgive me if I do not follow him entirely. I agree with so much of what he said. I would merely say that his eloquence and very deep sincerity, whether here in your Lordships' House or elsewhere such as in the media, I for one always admire tremendously.
As I understand it, we are talking about an age span of between 16—the normal school-leaving age—and 23. We are including both young men and young women. But it is necessary—at least, I found it necessary before attempting the subject—to see the measure of the problem in figures. The noble Lord, Lord Evans, mentioned a figure. As I understand it, the figure of young people leaving school every year at the age of 16 is upwards of 700,000 today, is likely to increase slightly during the years immediately ahead but is then likely to fall very substantially later in the 1980s. A point that I discovered, when deciding what I was going to say, was that of that number something like 75 per cent., or perhaps rather more, find employment within three or four months of leaving school. Therefore, one must assume that for the remainder there is a potential unemployment problem. What I want to talk about, which is really part of this debate, is not whether they are unemployed or employed but the whole lot of these young persons.
I am, of course, very well aware of the excellent work that the Manpower Services Commission are doing. The right reverend Prelate referred to various aspects of that and I shall not repeat what he said. Then there is the work of the great number of voluntary organisations, all doing magnificent work in one programme or another.
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As I see it, they seek to offer young people, many of whom are clearly bored with the schoolroom and yet cannot get work outside, some work experience, an introduction to a craft or skill, a better opportunity to choose what their career later on should be—and that, to my mind, is very important—a purpose in life and a feeling that they are needed and have something to give and that there is a worthwhile job for them to do and not merely one that has been mocked-up in order to keep them off the streets. All that is excellent and immensely worth while but, as I see it—and I hope I am right—the purpose of this Motion is to go rather further than that.
If I have any reservations at all about the work of the Manpower Services Commission and the voluntary organisations, they are not in any way related to the excellence of their programmes or to what they endeavour to do, but are about the possibility of their application over the country not always being equal and consistent. Bearing that in mind, it seems to me that with some kind of universal national service—I noted that the right reverend Prelate used the term "a recognisable entity", which is much the same thing—to which everyone would he liable, whether already employed or not, we should go a long way to evening out this inconsistency or haphazard nature. So one must ask oneself: what kind of national service should one go for, how long should it be and on what terms of remuneration?
National Service in the early post-second world war was for two years and was essentially military. My own feeling is that I would give individuals a fair choice of various options, as opposed to exemptions. They should have an option as to when they should do this service, because some would go to university and some would have other interests which they did not want interfered with. But unlike, possibly, the noble Lord, Lord Evans, I should put greater emphasis on military service. These options could well be built on the work of the Manpower Services Commission and the various voluntary services. They could include work in this country, as well as work overseas—VSO and so on.
But a very important consideration, which was hinted at in the reference which the right reverend Prelate made to the

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United States Ambassador's speech, is that the national service rate of remuneration, which might be lower than the going rate, however it was calculated, should be reasonably comparable with every other type of service rate, so that no one who opted for one type of service would feel that he was getting a better financial deal than he would get if he went into something else.
I now want to say a word about why I put greater emphasis on the military side. I am not unaware of the opportunities offered by the Territorial Army, both to the individual and to our national security. I say that, having served almost 25 years in the Territorial Army. But the Territorial Army of today is but a fraction of the size of the Army as envisaged in 1910 by Lord Haldane, or as it was when it was doubled in the 1930s. It is today better trained, better equipped and more professional, though I am sure, I hasten to add, no more enthusiastic than we were in the past. It has a different, more exacting and more immediate role and is certainly not for everyone. Therefore, while I realise it is there, I do not think it really contributes a great deal to the point I want to make now.
I believe that when young people leave school most of them are anxious to get away from the teacher-pupil, the "we" and "they", atmosphere. They want to be treated as equals, and that is more likely to be achieved when their immediate leaders and instructors are, as it were, almost of themselves; for example, the young NCO and the junior officer, who may be only a few years senior to them, with a very similar outlook on life.
Having said that, I am not suggesting that the older instructors of these people cannot gain the confidence and respect of the young. Undoubtedly they can. When they have what is obviously great craft, skill and experience and an aptitude for leadership, they can do that. But as a general rule, I believe that the young today are more likely to react to those who are not too much older than themselves and with much the same outlook. From that experience, I should hope that there would emerge a better understanding of what "leadership" means and, where latent, an aptitude which many of them can develop for themselves. This is
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important in regard to what they are going to do later on.
It is not insignificant, as I think a number in industry would agree, that junior management in industry—and leadership is, of course, an essential ingredient of good management—has tended to go down as the years of war and the years of National Service have receded. It is not without significance—I think this has been mentioned—that all our NATO allies, with the exception of Canada, the United States and Luxembourg, have a national service. Those countries—Germany, France, Italy—are among the most keen competitors with whom we in industry have to compete. That is not without significance. Again it is not without significance that I understand (this was hinted at by the United States Ambassador in the quotation) in the United States, where the draft ended with the ending of the Vietnam war, there seems to be a growing trend of thought in favour of what we are talking about today.
Of course, there would be many problems to be overcome. In the minds of many young people—but by no means all—and possibly also of their parents, there may be a suspicion, a dislike of the military. There may be fears that this year of service, if it were to be a year, would be lost to the learning of a craft. I suspect, however, that with modern, highly technical Armed Services, this need by no means be the case, provided that the standard of skill gained in the services could be recognised by and acceptable to industry, including the trade unions. This would be a very important point. Employers would undoubtedly need to rearrange their recruiting programmes.
Taking the problem as a whole, the introduction of any mandatory service where young people are liable for some sort of communal work, whether civilian or military, would of course, as other noble Lords have pointed out, demand an enormous, a massive piece of organisation and planning. It would take a long time and it would be costly, though I imagine there could be some immediate financial offsets. But as a long-term investment, both for the individual in his career, wherever that may take him, and for the country, it would I believe be

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vastly well worth while, and in the shorter term it would offer really valuable service.
I admit, as has been pointed out, that the circumstances are very different. The success that the late Field Marshal Sir Gerald Templer had with National Servicemen in Malaysia indicates what is possible there. I hope, as do other noble Lords, that young people would do this service away from home where they would meet others from totally different backgrounds; where they would learn more of the outside world, much more than it is easy for them to learn either at home or in the sheltered atmosphere of the classroom; where they would find plenty of interest to learn, to work hard, and to play hard; where they could improve their personal standards of behaviour and bearing; where they would come to understand and accept the meaning of service as opposed to subservience; and where they would gain that degree of self-confidence, self-discipline and self-respect which is so needed but which is not always apparent in some of the youth today. I very much hope that this debate will sow the seeds for much greater thought—and urgent thought—on this difficult, complex, but exceedingly important subject, and again I should like to thank the right reverend Prelate for having introduced it for debate.
7.25 p.m.
Lord HUNT: My Lords, I should like to do rather more than indulge in the very pleasant convention in your Lordships' House of thanking the right reverend Prelate for putting down this Motion. Without further ado, I enthusiastically declare myself to be his ally in supporting the principle of the proposal—we may disagree about the details—which he has put before your Lordships' House. Indeed, I should like to reverse our positions—and the right reverend Prelate has encouraged me to do so—by saying how delighted I am to find that he is my ally. That will sound pretentious, so I ask his pardon for that. But it is a fact that I have said much the same thing on many occasions both inside and outside your Lordships' House. The right reverend Prelate referred to the debate on the Address in November 1976; and as recently as last July, in a debate on juvenile delinquency, I made the same
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kind of proposals. In agreeing with one ecclesiastical speaker I have, in a sense, to disagree with the other, but I think that I really am not disagreeing with him. This is the difference between the ideal and the pragmatic, and I come down in favour of the latter.
I am only one of many of your Lordships, and many other people of an older generation, who regrets that in terminating the total obligation of young men to do military National Service a golden opportunity was missed to establish the ethic of service to the community as a permanent and general feature of our national life—as basic and natural as a statutory obligation to attend school. The value of military National Service can be disputed. Indeed it was disputed at the time by professional Servicemen, and I was one of them. The noble Lord. Lord Evans of Claughton, has thrown doubts upon its strict value to our national defence.
Nor was military service an ideal arrangement for young men at that time. It made an awkward gap between their leaving school at 15 and their call-up at 18. It was partly to compensate for that gap that the Duke of Edinburgh introduced his Award Scheme in 1956. But what cannot be denied by anybody, I think, were its beneficial effects in helping young men to grow up, to gain in maturity and confidence, to acquire a sense of belonging to a wider community and, however subconsciously, to feel an awareness of a wider purpose in life than their own personal interests. To have some part and responsibility in that purpose was something that military National Service did for the majority of young men of those times.
It is this sense of responsibility which I believe we are so lamentably failing to impart to very many young people today. Our democracy is very strong on individual rights and personal liberties. It is very weak indeed on any sense of individual responsibility for any other person, or people, than "No. 1". Responsibility, I believe, is of vital importance to our youth, to their future and, one could say, to the very survival of our concept of democracy. This fact has been brought into sharp focus by the attainment of full rights of citizenship and the vote at the

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age of 18. However, there are several straws of change in the wind which lead me to believe now in the possibility, as the right reverend Prelate and others seem to believe also, of a radical and positive change in direction along the lines which the right reverend Prelate put before us.
Many of your Lordships can bear witness—indeed, some previous speakers have already referred to it, including the opener of the debate—to the positive response of youth to purposeful work when they are in structured situations and when called upon to do it, irrespective of background—and, in many cases, despite disadvantaged social circumstances.
Of course, there are some youth organisations which have received very proper praise in this debate. The fighting Services provide proof of that. But much more relevant to our theme today is the success which the noble Lord, Lord Soper, implied; namely, the success of community service orders fulfilled, as they have been, to the tune of at least 80 per cent. regularly spread throughout the country, by young people under 25 who, let us remember, comprise 76 per cent. of the total number of people on whom those orders are served by the courts. The most recent figure that I saw was in the 12 months which ended on 1st April last year, during which period 13,000 such orders were completed. I would say that it is a reasonable guess that in the 21 months that have elapsed since then a further 20,000 have fulfilled those orders successfully.
More important than that is the growing public concern about the ever rising incidence of hooliganism and vandalism and the failure to check this. And to check it by punitive measures alone will continue to be a failure. All these factors taken together lead me to believe that the time may be politically right—it is in my view overdue—to extend the existing obligations of schooling in a new direction and in a dynamic new sense. In almost every debate in your Lordships' House reference is made to the far-sighted measure, the Butler Education Act of 1944. One of its recommendations was that there should be an obligation on all young people to continue with a limited course of further education up to the age of 18. In that report the establishment of adult colleges was seen as a means to that
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end. I believe that the wisdom of that principle is as valid today as it was then, but the means and the nature of the obligation need now to be reconsidered.
My Lords, I believe that the concept today—and here I differ in degree from the right reverend Prelate and indeed from the noble Lord, Lord Evans of Claughton, and others who have advocated this—is that there should be a much more limited commitment to be fulfilled during the period of two years after the majority leave school, up to the age of 18. It should be presented not as further education, not in any sense as schooling, but as an induction to citizen status. It would take the form of some work of value to the community, normally (but by no means necessarily) in their own neighbourhood, in their own time or in time made available by their employers, if they are in a job, by day release or, for a minority, block release schemes or in other working time.
The point is that there could he an option to do something more demanding away from home, in the fighting Services if they so wish, but that should be an option for which they could volunteer. I am talking about a minimum commitment. For some young people who are already resentful and frustrated about being kept on at school until 16 and for no good purpose, I see no reason why their induction to citizenship should not begin by their being released during their last year at school.
I note sympathetically the view taken that there should be an element of residential training as a requirement. I agree with that in principle, but I believe that here is a case where the best could be the enemy of the good because of the enormity of the problem. In my view, the essential feature of the obligation is that it should not be detrimental to the child, nor to further studies. As the noble Viscount, Lord Rochdale, pointed out, there would be many difficulties; it would involve considerable cost, but I firmly believe that part of that cost would be offset against less expenditure on commitals to remand homes, to detention centres, to borstals and to our prisons. And let us not forget the cost of the damage and the disburbance which preceded and led to that form of punishment.

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I do not believe the problems would be insuperable if there were the political will. I believe the cost and the problems to be a price worth paying for the prospect of changing attitudes and for a new spirit in our nation. It would call for a great deal of co-operation within each community and not least from the voluntary youth organisations and other special service bodies; but that community involvement and the responsibility within the community for making this scheme work would, in my view, be one of its greatest values. There are already some examples which give grounds for hope that it might be forthcoming.
I see this proposal, as others of your Lordships do, as part and parcel of facing up to the stark prospect of fewer jobs, shorter working hours, shorter working weeks and fewer months working in the year for a great many people, and especially for school-leavers, with advancing technology, more spare time and the problem of how to cope with it and profit by it satisfactorily and not to be demoralised by it.
The noble Viscount, Lord Rochdale, made the point that real satisfaction depends—and he did not put the negatives—not simply on being entertained, watching sport, attending discotheques, gambling, let alone anti-social "aggro". It does depend on there being in every person's life an element of personal challenge, a sense of mattering and a sense of caring. I believe that all these vital ingredients for human satisfaction could be introduced into the lives of all young people and not be acquired only by those who are motivated to volunteer in one of the many ways that have been referred to in this debate. There is the real prospect that National Service by youth for the community on this minimum limited commitment basis, extended as a final step to becoming full-fledged citizens, could meet this need. I believe the hour calls for a challenge to youth, and to supply this challenge is the challenge to us all.
My Lords, I am sorry to end on a slightly different note, but I have to apologise to the right reverend Prelate for already being a little late for an appointment which I had undertaken before I knew that he was tabling this Motion. I shall not be here
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to listen to his reply so I have not put any questions to the Minister, to whom I should also like to apologise, but I hope he will feel able to respond sympathetically to the almost unanimous views expressed this evening on the right reverend Prelate's Motion.
Baroness GAITSKELL: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down I should like to ask him a brief question. I have the most enormous respect for the noble Lord who has just spoken, and I am not against or for National Service for any short period; but is not this a great evasion of the fundamental problem, which is not enough work, not enough employment for young people?
Lord HUNT: My Lords, I would entirely agree with my noble friend Lady Gaitskell that this is precisely so, but I also believe the harsh probability of life is that that lack of work is something that will be with us, if not for ever, for a very long time.
7.39 p.m.
Lord GLADWYN: My Lords, what my right reverend kinsman has so eloquently said in opening this debate will, I think, carry conviction with a great number of people who have the welfare of the nation at heart. It is an excellent thing—and I am sure we would all agree—that he has brought it to our attention at this rather critical moment in our national affairs. But even if all his arguments are accepted in principle—as I believe they should be—everything will, in practice, depend on what results from an expert examination of the subject which he very properly suggests might be undertaken under the auspices of the Government by the Royal United Services Institute.
Whatever the conclusions of such an investigation may be, it remains true, as the right reverend Prelate has himself observed, that in any viable scheme for youth service involving all young men there must be an element of compulsion and an element of residence. I know that my noble friend Lord Evans of Claughton, who knows more about this than I do, is rather doubtful about the element of compulsion, at any rate at the beginning of any scheme. But I do not see how, if

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you are going to have a youth service involving the entire nation, that can be disputed. But if it is accepted, it follows that if all those eligible are to be called up—for I suppose a compulsory scheme could not possibly be selective—it must (a) be on a very large scale, and (b) involve, presumably, provision for barracks, camps and suitable staff to maintain them. So it would obviously entail expenditure of a very considerable sum of money, which I think is recognised by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, though we can, I suppose, imagine that there might on balance be some saving on unemployment benefits during its operation and also there could be economies owing to the closing down of certain institutions that would be necessary if this scheme were in operation. Naturally, insofar as the service resulted in any useful work being done in the ecological and social spheres, as I am sure it would, it would involve in effect a very considerable national saving.
This must be a contentious point; but if this is not contrary to our sex discrimination laws, I believe there is a case for this service being limited to males, young women being, as I think, more properly restricted to voluntary schemes working in some way in association with the compulsory project. Alternatively, it would be necessary, I suppose, to provide for camps and barracks for young unmarried women between 18 and 20, which might in addition have certain disadvantages. In any case, it would more than double the cost.
All this, of course, requires a great deal of thought and work, and I repeat that in my view it should now be undertaken by the Government. Much of our present discontent—and I think this is recognised by almost all noble Lords who have spoken—arises from the fact that young men do not at an early stage in their lives get an opportunity for working together and thereby acquiring habits of discipline and self-control. I was for six months in a training camp as far back as 1918 and it did me a power of good, setting me up physically, and I think even mentally, for my subsequent career.
This brings me, not unnaturally, on to the question of national service of a military nature, from which I rather doubt that any scheme for youth service can altogether be dissociated. But in
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saying what follows I would emphasise that I am speaking entirely personally, the more official Liberal view having already been expressed by my noble friend Lord Evans of Claughton, who has recently been in touch with Liberal thought in various spheres on this subject. As I see it, any reversion to conscription, which was abolished I believe (and I believe Lord Hunt believes) for no very good purpose in, was it? 1957—anyway a long time ago—is usually opposed on the grounds, first, that the Services do not want it; then that it would be expensive; that in modern conditions—more particularly in the awful event of a nuclear war—it would be useless; that it would in any case encourage a militaristic attitude in our young men, who ought rather to be brought up to believe that any war would necessarily be disastrous.
Of these objections, the first—that is, the fact that the Services do not like it—may indeed be valid so far as it goes. It probably is. If enough volunteers can be assured, the Services may be better off with only professionals, at least on the assumption that there is a short war. That is a big if, but there it is. But the other arguments are obviously less compelling. Admittedly, the question of cost is a real one, but if on social grounds the case for some kind of national service can be made out—and I believe it has been very well made out by the right reverend Prelate—then we ought surely to accept it, more especially as there might be compensating advantages and economies from putting it into effect. Masses of young men hanging about with nothing to do during the formative years—I am afraid I rather agree with what Lord Hunt said in reply to Lady Gaitskell that, unfortunately, unemployment on a considerable scale may be with us, whether we like it or not, for a considerable number of years—might well in the long run he even more expensive.
Would some form of military national service, however, be useless as an exercise? Well, on the assumption that there is no likelihood of war, certainly it would be so. But that is an assumption that, unfortunately, very few of us can safely make. For the pacifist reason that all use of force by the state is wrong, again certainly. But then only a few of us are pacifists in that sense. On the assumption that the

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next war, if it comes, must inevitably be nuclear, certainly also, there would be no point in having any service whatever. But it is becoming increasingly possible, and I only say possible, that the next war, if it ever should happen, will not be waged with nuclear weapons. So apart from encouraging millitarism, which could perhaps be set against some diminution in terrorism if you have military national service, the main objection to any form of compulsory military national service, other than the present views of the Chiefs of Staff, is that it would be of no use even if the event of a so-called "conventional" war.
This is an argument which I think it is difficult to sustain. The existence, for instance, of some body of men who could be—this is rather a new idea—instantly available to protect our cities against attack by paratroopers, who would be very vulnerable if assaulted before they had time to deploy, might be an element calculated to fortify the conventional defence of these islands to a considerable extent, and therefore, in theory, would obviously raise the famous nuclear "threshold". I believe that there might even be enthusiasm behind the creation of such a corps as this.
It might in effect be a sort of Home Guard, but a Home Guard formed on modern lines, given some instruction in how to handle modern weapons, and no doubt in practice representing an extension of the present TAVR, the Territorial Army; that is, making use for training purposes of ex-regular officers, or anyhow ex-officers. It would not seem to require any provision for barracks, and therefore should not be terribly expensive. There would, presumably, have to be depots for arms and transport, and there would, of course, have to be occasional exercises. But why not? We live in a dangerous age quite different from those times which prevailed only a short time ago, and I think we ought to consider all ways of meeting what might be a real emergency.
So I suggest that if the Government do respond, and I hope they will, to the right reverend Prelate's suggestion that there should now be an inquiry into the possible establishment of a youth service on the broad lines that he indicated, they should also agree to consider some form
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of military service, perhaps on completely new lines.
If the Service objections could be overcome there might therefore be no fewer—I throw this in as an idea—than five options open to young men of, say, 18 to 20, as follows. A small, or very small, quota might be available for each of the Services—Army, Navy and Air Force. A much larger contingent could be taken in hand by the TAVR for training as Home Guards in the defence of our cities. And, subject to physical requirements, the great bulk of the 350,000 young men called up would be in the youth service which would also be open to all those who, on genuine religious grounds, of course, refuse to hear arms in any circumstance whatever.
I merely throw out these suggestions as matters for consideration. Some may well be thought to be impracticable, though I do not believe that they will be held as such to be undesirable. We live in times when we must, if possible, try to reorganise our entire society so as to meet both an economic and a physical challenge. Otherwise, like so many ex-empires in the past, we may plunge into some irreversible decline.
Nor is there anything either immoral or undemocratic about obligatory national military service. On the contrary, I believe that it responds to deep national instincts, and that its reinstallation on entirely modern lines, more particularly if it were associated with a large civilian youth force concentrating on such things as river cleansing, afforestation, and more generally on cleaning up the devastation caused by the industrial revolution, might have a profound effect for good on further industrial production and on economic performance generally.
Nor need it be a party matter. Whether we believe in free enterprise or in some kind of socialism, national service might well appear to he advantageous in itself. It is no longer in any case a question of subjecting young men to a lot of very boring drill: any new imaginative scheme would be likely to be popular, and in any case infinitely preferable to loafing about street corners and becoming a victim to drink or drugs.
About 150 years ago the French poet Alfred de Vigny wrote an excellent book called Servitude et Grandeur Militaires.

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I believe it is about time that we got round to encouraging such feelings. It is true that, towards the end of his life, I believe de Vigny also observed that "seul le silence est grand ". So, having launched those few ideas I feel that it is high time for me to sit down and to listen to what other noble Lords with much greater practical knowledge than I possess have to say on the subject.
Viscount HANWORTH: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, does he agree that, in the unfortunate case of this country being attacked by nuclear weapons, a trained force might be extremely useful in helping to clear up what would be, I know, an intolerable mess? Trained personnel might help. Does he agree with that point of view?
Lord GLADWYN: My Lords, I fear I cannot agree with the noble Viscount. I think that if there were a serious nuclear war we would all be in the next world and it would not really be relevant.
7.56 p.m.
Baroness HYLTON-FOSTER: My Lords, may I join with other noble Lords in thanking the right reverend Prelate for initiating this very timely debate. Youth needs helping and it needs encouraging to do something useful which will exercise both body and mind. Some get into trouble because they are bored; some get into trouble because there is no discipline or example in the home; and some get into trouble because there is difficulty in getting suitable and satisfying employment. Therefore, I believe that a period of some kind of obligatory, possibly voluntary national service, would help them to grow up and realise that our Welfare State is there to help those in genuine need and is not there just to be used to see what can be got out of it. There are so many gaps to be filled—with real job satisfaction—that volunteers can do and which young people are so very good at.
In some countries, for example, Egypt and Spain, which have compulsory military service, young people are allowed to volunteer to do work for voluntary societies and to do community work instead of military service. The right reverend Prelate drew our attention to the
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type of world that our young people are growing up in today—the worry on unemployment, the ghastly possibilities of nuclear destruction, and I would add the increasing number of accidents and worldwide disasters.
That reminds me and brings me back to a couple of years ago when the Ministry of Health and Social Security issued two circulars. One concerned the preparation and organisation of the Health Service in war, and the other the Health Service arrangements for dealing with major accidents. In both of those the voluntary organisations, that is, St. John and the Red Cross—and I must declare my interest as a member of the British Red Cross Society—are responsible for first aid posts in war and emergency help in hospitals in disasters. We in the Red Cross are already, throughout the country, training the public in both basic first aid and nursing, so that people can cope for themsevles and do not always have to look to other people for help. We are also doing that in schools and for other youth organisations. A great many young people help and learn how to be part of a team. Surely that type of training, and how to manage and look after handicapped people of all ages, is something that ought to be included in a young people's year of service.
I agree that national service, whatever form it takes, should be compulsory otherwise those who really need it probably would opt out. It is quite interesting that we in the Red Cross have found that young people who have not done very well at school and who have decided not to continue their education and go on to the sixth form, when given the opportunities to help with handicapped children both in clubs and residential camps, have done splendidly and shown a great sense of responsibility.
Although I urge that community service is an extremely important part, I also think that national service should start with some really energetic form of training, like Outward Bound courses; the reclaiming of land; the clearing of canals, joining the army cadets or sea cadets and so on, so that young people can get used to discipline and also working in a team, one with another. I should also like to include that they be given the opportunity

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of a variety of activities according to their skills and inclinations so that they can even at this stage in their national service have job satisfaction. I hope that the Government will give serious consideration to the Motion of the right reverend Prelate.
7.59 p.m.
Lord SANDFORD: My Lords, I too should like to thank the right reverend Prelate for this debate. However, I cannot help comparing and contrasting it with the youth debates of yesteryear. I took part in my first one some 20 years ago when we used to have annual debates on youth. At that time I was in my thirties and spoke because I was directly running a number of youth clubs. It is sad that we have not had that element here today in this debate. There must be a number of your Lordships of that generation or vintage who could have contributed that sort of experience.
Another contrast is that 20 years ago in each debate we heard of some new, bold, private initiative like Voluntary Service Overseas, Community Service Volunteers or the Youth Volunteer Force, being formed and providing opportunities on a private and voluntary basis for some of our best-motivated young people to make the best use of their transitional year between school and work. It seems to me that the context and the climate is totally different. Now, alas, the transition for far too many of our young people is a transition from out-of-school to out-of-work directly. I believe that it is this tragically large number of people, amounting to something like a quarter of a million at each annual peak in September, who deserve our attention.
I should like to follow the noble Lords, Lord Evans of Claughton and Lord Soper, in concentrating my remarks upon those young people. In doing so, I should like to declare my current interest. I am chairman of Task Force North, a charity formed some four or five years ago, which by now has gained five years' experience working in co-operation with the Manpower Services Commission's Special Programmes—first, the Job Creation Programme and latterly the Youth Opportunities Programme in the North of England. During this time, some 5,000 young people have passed
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through our hands and I hope have, to some extent, benefited themselves and the environment and the community in which we have deployed them.
The Motion of the right reverend Prelate calls for a National Youth Service. I submit that in the Manpower Services Commission's Special Programmes we have one. Personally, I should not like to see nationalisation in this area taken very much further. Here, in these programmes—and in the Youth Opportunities Programme in particular—we have something which has been centrally designed and which is centrally funded, but which I believe is very properly locally administered and locally implemented, with a diversity of patterns very positively encouraged. I believe that this is the right approach. In this way, the programme serves a diversity of needs and provides a diversity of opportunities according to the areas in which it is being implemented.
I believe that it is more on the local scene that youthful energies, passions, pride and concern can best be harnessed and focused. Such at least is our recent experience with those young people over the last four years. Like the noble Lord, Lord Soper, I believe that it is something of an illusion to think that more than a very small minority of our people ever were or ever could be deployed on voluntary service overseas. We are dealing with a quarter of a million of our young people who go straight out-of-school to out-of-work and to be realistic the opportunity of service for them has to be provided near at home. If we are to concentrate—as I believe we should—on this "out-of-school"/" out-of-work "group of young people, I believe that the Manpower Services Commission's Special Programmes offer the best national and the best local framework available in which to offer those young people help and in which to give them a chance to help others.
I believe that to provide a standard, universal, countrywide framework for public service by young people—whether or not they have been able to find proper work and whether or not they want to do it—is unrealistic and would be wasteful of our resources, which are not at present all that extensive. So I return to the view that the Special Programmes of the

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Manpower Services Commission are probably the best framework yet devised for the young people who are hardest hit at the present time. I speak in particular of the Youth Opportunities Programme.
Although this is the best we have at the moment, two things need to be done. The first is to consolidate those programmes and I shall say why in a moment; then we must go on and develop and make the most of the framework we have got. We need to consolidate because over the past four years the Special Programmes have consisted of the Job Creation Programme which, looking back, was not particularly well thought out. There was more money available than people really knew what to do with and the whole thing was put together in an ad hoc and rather hasty way.
The existing Special Programmes are a great advance. The Youth Opportunities Programme is full of promise. But that was devised only in 1977; it was launched in April 1978 and was not fully implemented until September 1978, barely a year ago. We have only now received the first review for a whole year—it was published last July. By that time the Government had changed; the policies of the Government had changed, and the whole Manpower Services Commission had had to look at its policies again. We have only recently reached a position where the new Government have agreed with the Manpower Services Commission to maintain the Youth Opportunities Programme and the STEP Programme but to confine them and concentrate them on a smaller area. This means that those new programmes have barely had time to work out satisfactorily and the new policies and financial constraints applied by the new Government have yet to be absorbed and applied. Nevertheless, it is quite clear that these programmes give good value. They are concentrated on where the help is most needed and they can be used to valuable effect on the environment and the communities where they are used.
However, before long it will be possible to think in terms of developing and making more of this framework. I would suggest that there are four aspects at which we need to look. I am sure that the right reverend Prelate is correct when he
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emphasises the value of a residential element in service by young people. I do not think that it is financially practicable to base the whole of a young person's service under the Youth Opportunities Programme on a residential basis. It is quite a lot more expensive than are the programmes where the young person works from his home, but it is highly desirable to introduce as an element for part of the time. I would hope that we would all strive to ensure that that is done to the extent that finance is available for it.
The second aspect is to consider the balance between environmental projects and social service projects. This quarter of a million young people, for whom the Youth Opportunities Programme is provided, are between the ages of 16 and 18. Not all of those young people have their skill in personal relationships sufficiently developed when they come into the programme to be able to carry out social service among, for instance, old people effectively and reliably. If that is to he done at all, it must be done reliably. I believe that for a very considerable number of them, probably a majority, an environmental project—where they are working in a team of 10 or 12 people, well supervised by good managers, with something constructive to show at the end of it—is more the mark for most of them. It is just as possible to develop a sense of civic pride and team spirit on an environmental project as it is on a social one. There is that balance to think about and get right.
Thirdly, there are all the things that can be done—and there are many—to use the opportunity of the months spent in the Youth Opportunities Programme to develop a sense of job satisfaction, to develop a sense of team spirit, to develop a sense of community spirit, of working for the community and also—and this has not been mentioned in the debate—to develop a sense of enterprise. It is most important that as many of our young people as possible should leave school and, when they do get work, look at everything they do with a sense of enterprise. The more young people we can generate through these programmes with a sense of enterprise, the better it will be for all of us. I do not believe that that can be done by compulsion. I do not believe that it is practical to have compulsion because, as the noble Lord, Lord Evans of

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Claughton, said, compulsion would be accepted only if it is universal. It is not regarded as fair if compulsion is applied to some people and not to others, and I do not believe that a universal programme is possible. Nor do I believe that a wholly voluntary service is possible in the sense of this extra effort being obtainable for no extra pay. There is quite considerable difficulty in a number of areas in recruiting people on to the Youth Opportunities Programme with the allowances as they are.
What I think needs to be studied in place of compulsion to provide some encouragement and incentive is the possibility of differential supplementary benefits. It might be possible—I shall be interested to hear what my noble friend has to say when he answers this debate on this point—to devise a supplementary benefit on the present basis for all those people who have good reason for not taking up work that is available to them; those people whose needs are genuine, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hylton-Foster, said: to have another rate of benefit slightly lower for those capable of doing work, with no good reason for not doing work, and not willing to take up an opportunity of work that was offered to them; and a higher rate of benefit for those who come into a Youth Opportunities Programme and do work which is of benefit to the community and to the environment around them.
I think this may be possible, though I can see that there are enormous difficulties in introducing it, as a way of providing some incentive to come into the Youth Opportunities Programme, gain its benefits and make a contribution to your community and to your environment in the process. I look forward very much to hearing from my noble friend Lord Bellwin how the mind of Her Majesty's Government is moving in this area of the development of the Special Programmes. I look forward to putting our experience over the past four years at their disposal if it is of any value to Her Majesty's Government.
8.12 p.m.
Baroness DAVID: My Lords, like other noble Lords, I should like to thank the right reverend Prelate for raising this matter today. I am sure every one of us
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feels that the present tragic unemployment position is at its worst where the young are involved. I was saddened the other day when talking to a friend who goes to teach at Gaynes Hall borstal. She said that she had been talking to two young blacks who were about to be released and they were in despair about what they were going to find when they went back home.
We have to look at what is happening today in the light of the cuts in local authority expenditure. The Secretary of State may say that he does not intend there to be cuts in the youth service. Speaking of expenditure plans for 1980–81 he said:
" I can tell you now that in drawing them up we did not assume any reductions in local authority spending on the youth service ".
Mr. MacFarlane said the same in the debate on the Youth and Community Bill the other day.
But alas, local authorities, in complying with the Government's request for economies in public expenditure, are intending to make cuts. Evidence is coming in from a number of authorities already. The Secretary of State may say:
" that investment in local voluntary organisations yields a large bonus in the sense of unleashing a store of voluntary effort. If support is withdrawn, that effort is lost. I think it would be a great pity if voluntary organisations were made a prime target of expenditure reductions ".
But local authority investment in voluntary organisations may just have to be cut if heavy pressure is brought to bear on the authorities to keep rates and expenditure down. Cannot the Government relate one thing to another? Their pretence that they are unaware of the consequences that are bound to follow their actions strikes me as downright dishonest.
In addition, voluntary organisations all over the country are often inadequately funded—no money for a mature experienced worker to keep continuity. Good schemes are at risk. Jane Bailey speaking of Chesterfield Task Force at a Youth Affairs Lobby meeting last November, said:
" It seems to me there is a tremendous irony about a situation where an agency such as ours which has been in existence for 10 years is threatened by the local authority with cuts in grant aid, and asked to reduce its team from four to three field workers. while at the same time large sums of money are being poured into community service within the Youth Opportunities Programme ".

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So here is the scene: More young people unemployed than for a very long time; less money available both in helping them to acquire education, work experience and training, and in helping them to help others in even less fortunate circumstances. It is well known that anyone helping those less fortunate than themselves is given a tremendous boost of self-confidence: borstal boys caring for crippled or mentally handicapped children, for instance.
We have no Minister for Youth. We have a Minister for Sport, and we have six departments responsible for young people. Co-ordination is desperately needed, as the right reverend Prelate said. Shifting my ground a little, but not I hope very far, co-ordination is desperately needed in dealing with the education of young people—the 16 to 19-year olds. I tried hard during my time on Cambridgeshire Education Committee to get a coherent, comprehensive scheme going for that age group. But one is up against Burnham, school regulations, FE regulations, different rates of pay and conditions of service for further education and schools.
In the magazine Education on 9th November, in an excellent article headed "Too Many Cooks in the 16–19 Broth ", Fred Janes, Principal of the Yeovil Tertiary College says:
" As a nation we are slowly recognising the need to regard the immediate post-compulsory period of education as a cohesive whole. The 16 to 19s resemble a platoon on the barrack square being drilled by scores of sergeant-majors each of whom is either genuinely unaware of the presence of the others, is studiously ignoring them or, at best, breaks off momentarily for formal consultations in the manner of a delegation from the Kremlin visiting the Vatican. The entrenched interests of sixth forms, colleges of further education, sixth-form colleges, tertiary colleges, industrial company training schools and the multitude of professional societies—the latter jealously struggling to preserve their own independent form of tuition, examination and qualification—inevitably means a long drawn out struggle for survival ".
Then he said:
" An Act of Parliament, no less, prescribes that education is different from training and should, therefore, be administered by different bodies: is it surprising then that the two sets of bodies should have immediately, in self-preservation and self-justification, set about ensuring that education and training were indeed different? The difference eludes the customer, the 16-year-old school-leaver.
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" Could we not begin to structure these determining organisations into a cohesive and co-operating force, to discipline the sergeant-majors into a co-operative unit? "
I was pleased to see, in the same speech I quoted from earlier by Mr. Carlisle, that he said that he
" attaches a high priority to the needs of the 16–18 age groups, and that a group has been established under Neil Macfarlane's chairmanship to look with the local authorities at the whole field of education provision for this age group, including the relationship between schools and further education, taking into account the interaction between the education and training systems ".
This, I am glad to say, is what the TUC wants too.
Not only is the education in the schools and colleges a mix-up, a muddle and confusing, but so are the employment and support arrangements. We have grants for various educational courses; there are apprenticeships; job creation programmes; YOPs, TOPs, STEP. But there are no educational maintenance grants. This is what the last Government wanted to start in order to encourage further education and training for that very vulnerable age group. Surely, my Lords, that is more constructive than paying the dole. In all these areas—education, training, grants and pay—we need co-ordinating policies.
It is against this backcloth that the right reverend Prelate's proposals must be examined. I accept totally that young people should have at some time—perhaps many times—to give some service to the community; that they should have demands made upon them. I could not accept anything compulsory on the lines of military service as it existed in the 1950s. It just would not work today. But I do not think the right reverend Prelate is asking for that, although he wants some compulsion, and one can appreciate that there are arguments for it; reduction in unemployment, possible reduction of vandalism, helping to solve social problems and mixing people up so that they share their lives. On the other hand, there are a number of objections to a compulsory scheme; it would be extremely costly, it would need far more trained community service workers than are available and I suspect it might be difficult to find sufficient projects, at any rate quickly, although I believe that Dr. Dickson, with all his exprience, does not agree with that.

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I find from quite extensive inquiries among people experienced in voluntary youth work that they are nearly all opposed to it; they think the voluntary aspect is vital. It would be difficult to make adequate preparation. As one worker said, "Organising voluntary work for young people is a long and complex process requiring much time, energy and skill ". It is very important to match the young person to the person or people to be helped. And if it is a delicate operation suiting a volunteer to the particular job where people are concerned, how much harder will it be to plan a suitable match for a conscript? Again, a compulsory scheme might have a bad effect on the voluntary community service schemes that are now running successfully.
However, I do not want to appear negative and there are many things that could be done at much less cost than that of a compulsory scheme. There are areas of the country at the moment that are very poorly served, as the noble Viscount mentioned, and a review of the existing situation to see where needs are great would be helpful. The Secretary of State and Mr. Macfarlane have said on a number of occasions that industry could help. Then let the Government give some encouragement and incentive to industry to contribute by offering funds on a 50/50 basis. Resources of people and money could then be made available to the needy areas and more voluntary co-ordinators could be financed to search out opportunities in hospitals and so on as they have successfully been doing. And I do not believe, as somebody said, that the trade unions are objecting to these voluntary co-ordinators going in and finding what jobs could suitably be done there.
Many voluntary organisations have to spend far too much time fund-raising to keep themselves going; they could do with some cash if industry is persuaded to help. Research could be encouraged, as it was by the DES grant, in Shirley Williams' time, of £30,000 to CSV for an inquiry into what UNESCO calls "Study Service "—that is, how students as an integral part of their courses can apply the knowledge and skills they are acquiring to problems of significance to the community. To given an example, students of mechanical engineering at Queen's Mary's College
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invented a wheelchair that will mount and descend staircases, and law students at the LSE help tenants appearing before rent tribunals. I suggest that a not very great sum of money could help in the field of secondary, as that grant did in higher, education.
It is 11 years since the Schools Council paper Community Service and the Curriculum was published and times have changed, and I think are ripe for another. If study and service can be combined—if the element of service is introduced as an integral part of the course or curriculum—then that ugly word "compulsion" with all its emotive undertones simply does not come into it and those young people who are not initially motivated to help others may become so, and I believe it is better they should do it in this way.
I should like to see the consolidation and extension of much that is good in existing work. Some modifications are needed. I should like to see—perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, may not agree with this—community service for the young unemployed removed from the Youth Opportunities Programme. I believe that has not worked very well in this context, for what the young people involved are looking for are job opportunities and the MSC tend to look on community service as a last resort. The result is that it is often the least able who are directed to community service.
In the same way, I have heard that in some schools it is the children of lesser ability who are time-tabled to do community service, and that is a pity. Community service schemes should not be linked with poor ability. I know that Dr. Dickson of CSV thinks that if, as in America with the Jobs Corps and Neighbourhood Youth Corps, one has programmes specifically aimed at the disadvantaged, the participants become labelled as the yobbos and the layabouts, and we do not want labels. But if one can bring in some perhaps a little older, more privileged and brighter, they can raise the whole tone of the enterprise.
In the longer term—this is my last proposal—I should like to see the CSV full-time volunteer programme extended to give every young person between 15 and 25—a rather wider group than the noble Viscount mentioned—the opportunity to do from four to 12 months'

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community service either locally or away from home. The advantages of the scheme are that it could build on existing work, including that in schools; it would be more acceptable to community service workers and young people, and it would encourage a young person to become involved in the community. I agree with various speakers who have said that variety of choice is important, and if there is enough choice then I think it is more acceptable to everybody and there is no feeling of being compelled to do anything.
The noble Lord, Lord Evans of Claughton, said that 50 to 60 per cent. of people would like to do some sort of service, but of course there are the other 40 to 50 per cent. If one can get them in by accident, so to speak, that is a very much better way of doing it. Of course the scheme might be costly, but a rearrangement of resources could surely be made, but the good that could come out of it for both volunteers and those helped should be colossal. How much better to spend money on a constructive and imaginative voluntary service scheme, national in the sense that it would be available all over the country, that could, in five years—by 1985, UNESCO's International Youth Year—be in full working order.
Compulsion naturally appears an attractive remedy to those who are exasperated by the misbehaviour of youth. I am all for a good deal of discipline, but compulsion may sometimes be counter-productive. Over 75 per cent. of those committed to detention centres and secure units are likely to offend again. The worst of it is that while the failure of Mr. Whitelaw's short, sharp shock treatment will damage only the Government, compulsion in service will inevitably damage the service.
Lord NOEL-BAKER: My Lords, would the noble Baroness agree that even if everything she proposed were carried out—and I agreed, I think, with every word she said—would not a great contribution be made to the purposes which she and many other noble Lords have in view if the Government made a reality of their declared policy of "Sport for All "? And if they want to make a reality of that declared policy could they not do it by making a down payment contribution
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of £100 million to the Sports Council for the provision of sporting facilities, in which we are behind almost every other country in Europe, and in giving the Sports Council an annual revenue of perhaps £20 million for the provision of trainers, coaches, leaders and administrative organisers, without whose help everything else would be in vain? Is it not true that sport can provide discipline, enthusiasm, team spirit and many of the things of which noble Lords have spoken this afternoon?
Baroness DAVID: My Lords, I agree with a great deal of what my noble friend says, but I am not quite as convinced as he that it is the answer for everybody. However, I shall be interested to hear what the noble Lord is about to say on this subject. The question should really go to him.
8.30 p.m.
The PARLIAMENTARY UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE, DEPARTMENT of the ENVIRONMENT (Lord Bellwin): My Lords, with regard to the last point that the noble Lord, Lord Noel-Baker, raised regarding £100 million being given to the Sports Council, I must again ask a question which I have already asked in this House on a few occasions during the short time I have been here; namely, was the same question put—and at regular intervals—during the last five years to the previous Administration, and if so, what reply was given? I think that few people would argue about the Sports Council being a worthy recipient of funds of that kind, but unfortunately we live in a world in which, and at a time when, money is not as easily available as one would perhaps wish. Therefore, it is a matter of priorities and so long as it is a matter of priorities I suppose there will be those who will try to place them where they feel the need is greatest.
This has indeed been a fascinating debate. I have listened with great interest to the speech of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London in moving the Motion, and I have also been greatly impressed by other contributions to this important topic. All show a deep sense of concern for the well-being of young people both as individuals and because they are the future of this country, and they

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do, I believe, reflect a feeling in the country that more should be done to help them.
The basic question posed by the debate is how we can best use this formative stage to prepare the young to become responsible adults, able and willing to contribute to, and participate in, society. It is not an easy question. Young people are not a homogeneous group, and the differences between them have yet to be softened and smoothed over by society's expectations and conventions. Their problems reflect those of our whole society: changing social values, unemployment, the decay of the inner city, the need to adapt to a multi-cultural society. There is no one solution, and many differences are possible, indeed desirable, in the way objectives are interpreted and put into practice.
I find many features of the current scene encouraging. Those who are growing up in a world of ever greater complexity need to achieve a maturity of outlook at an early stage, and I believe that many are so doing. If they bring a range of social problems into focus for us, we must beware of thinking of them as a social problem. They are not a threat to our society, but are our hope for the future. The fact that they sometimes hold views which differ from those of their elders can, of course, create tensions. This is inevitable in any society with the capacity to change and develop.
This debate is part of a continuous process of review, in which it is wholly right that this Chamber should be involved. The Motion before the House today reflects a feeling that, although much useful work is going on, in a great variety of ways, and by many agencies, this work may not be reaching enough young people, and is perhaps not reaching those who are in most need. Furthermore, I believe that the debate reflects a view, which I share, about the value of service to the community. I should like therefore to look first at what is being done, at the ways in which help is already being given, and then to turn to some of the other possibilities and to the question of a national youth service. Before turning to existing services, however, I should like to put them in perspective by saying that they are among many influences—such as
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family, home, Church and school—which play their part in the development towards maturity.
I should like to turn first to the education based youth service, a service which is national in coverage and is concerned with the social education, or "coming of age ", of all who wish to use it. The statutory basis for the service is provided by the 1944 Education Act. For many years the youth service has been a partnership between local government, voluntary organisations, and central Government.
Like the educational system in general, the youth service is administered locally, taking account of the needs and circumstances of individual areas. This is a point to which I attach particular importance, both as a Minister in the Department of the Envoronment and as a former local authority member. Elected councils are there to consider the special problems and opportunities of the communities they represent, and to decide how national policies can best be applied in their areas. In doing so, they are accountable to their local electors, just as Ministers are accountable to Parliament. Sometimes it is suggested that vital local services should become the responsibility of central Government, but this would mean reducing the scope for local initiative and experiment, and it could sap the vitality of local democracy. The Government have made plain their commitment to preserving and increasing the proper discretion of local authorities. We have published proposals to remove unnecessary central controls on their activities, and are looking at the scope for putting discretionary powers in place of some of their mandatory duties. In the youth service, as in their other important functions, we look to local authorities to make a particular contribution against a background of their understanding of the opportunities, circumstances, and needs of their locality.
Despite what the noble Baroness, Lady David, said, it is significant that, so far as the Government's overall expenditure plans for 1980–81 are concerned, we did not assume any reductions in local authority expenditure on the youth service. It is not helpful to pretend that the problem is caused by overspending unleashed by the last Government on a massive and irresponsible scale. It contributes little to this debate to ignore the

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effect that this has had on the whole national spending scene and the consequences to which it has led. However, the contribution made to the youth service made by voluntary organisations and by many thousands of voluntary workers is vital, and I am glad to acknowledge the part which the Churches play in this.
I should like to refer to some of the ways in which the education-based youth service is seeking to meet the objectives referred to by the right reverend Prelate. The service encompasses a great variety of approaches. Although club activities are certainly an important part, youth workers recognise that there are many who are not prepared to use clubs, but who need help by adults in various ways. Voluntary organisations and local education authorities have appointed detached workers who make contact with some of these young people and have varied success with individuals and groups. "Walk-in" counselling services have been established, and have been well used. Also, it is recognised that young people need to be prepared for participating in their society. There is a growing trend to provide the organisational means for club members to have a say in the clubs' programme, and participative structures within the youth service are seen as a training for wider involvement.
The Department of Education and Science is supporting projects concerned with local youth councils, the development of political and social education material, increasing young people's skills in decision-making, and developing the understanding of social responsibility. There has also been growth in voluntary community service, and I will come to that in a moment. The point I want to make is that the youth service is not standing still, and its development is, I am glad to say, following many of the lines advocated in this debate.
I should now like to turn to service to the community, which is clearly a central part of the views put forward in the debate. Voluntary community service is of immense value, both to the community and to the people who give it. It can certainly help to develop character and responsible social attitudes among the young. Arrangements exist to encourage community service on a voluntary basis.
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Service to the community is encouraged locally by educational institutions of all types, by the youth service, and, as my noble friend Lord Sandford said, within the Youth Opportunities Programme of schemes for the young unemployed—an aspect to which I shall turn in a moment. The Government make financial grants to several national organisations involved in providing opportunities for, or supporting, young voluntary work. The Voluntary Services Unit of the Home Office, as part of its general remit for the stimulation of voluntary endeavour, paid grants totalling in excess of £400,000 to six such organisations during 1978–79.
One of the recipients of Voluntary Service Unit grant-aid is the Young Volunteer Resource Unit of the National Youth Bureau. This unit provides a variety of services to professional and voluntary youth workers, many of whom are active in providing opportunities for young people to contribute to the well-being of their community. Community Service Volunteers, to which my noble friend Lord Sandford also referred, is another example of the voluntary bodies receiving Government support. It is an example of the agencies which link the young person wishing to give service with the people who can make use of his enthusiasm and talents. Community Service Volunteers places young men and women, over 1,500 of them in 1977–78, with local authority social service departments, hospitals and homes for the physically and mentally ill, and national and local voluntary organisations. While most of this effort is concerned with helping disadvantaged members of society, Community Service Volunteers also provides opportunity for many who are disadvantaged to be of service themselves. For example, in 1977–78 Community Service Volunteers placed 109 young people from borstal establishments with organisations and agencies who were able to give them an opportunity, sometimes their first, to make a positive contribution to the welfare of our society.
Noble Lords have rightly drawn attention to the problem of youth unemployment, and it is true that in present circumstances there are many who need special help if they are not to remain unemployed for long periods. It is perhaps worth mentioning that the peak

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in school-leaver unemployment is in fact in July, and that this year it was about a quarter of a million. This number diminishes over the summer, and this year, now, in November, it is down to 45,500. We are fortunate in having in your Lordships' House the Minister with prime responsibility for the Youth Opportunities Programme, which is making a significant contribution here—and I refer to my noble friend Lord Gowrie. I know he wished to attend this debate, but unfortunately his other responsibilities entail him being in Brussels today.
The Youth Opportunities Programme is a national programme for the 16 to 18-year-olds who have difficulty in getting and retaining regular jobs, and it concentrates its resources on areas of greatest need. The key is flexibility. The programme provides a variety of work preparation courses and forms of work experience. It involves the co-operation of local authorities, employers, unions and voluntary bodies in providing the various opportunities. So the approach is decentralised and locally based. Much of the programme's current provision is in terms of work experience on employers' premises, but there is also provision for project-based work experience and community service. The Manpower Services Commission pays the youngsters an allowance, agrees with the sponsor the sort of work experience or training needed, but otherwise leaves provision in the sponsor's hands. The measure of success is reflected in the high proportion entering permanent employment immediately on leaving the programme.
Despite the current need to stabilise national expenditure, the Manpower Services Commission is standing by its previous target of providing opportunities for some 220,000 young people to enter the programme in the year to March 1980, which is over 30 per cent. higher than the previous year's achievement. In addition, the two key national objectives will remain. The first is to ensure that no young person who left school in the academic year which ended in the summer should remain unemployed at Easter 1980 without the offer of a suitable place in the programme. The second is, by March 1980, to offer a suitable place in the programme to every young person
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unemployed for 12 months or over. The Youth Opportunities Programme combines an element of community service work with the paramount objective of helping youngsters to find permanent jobs. Many of its aims and elements correspond with what has been proposed in this debate.
My Lords, this, then, is what is being done now, and I hope I have given evidence of the Government's concern to emphasise those aspects of provision for young people referred to by noble Lords. What more, then, might be achieved by a national youth service, and what would be implied by the setting up of such a service? It has been suggested that it might involve service to the community; programmes to develop a broad physical, mental and spiritual fitness; further education and training in democracy. Also, that these activities might be undertaken for a period of time before young people enter employment, and that the main emphasis should be on the 16 to 18 age range. It has also been suggested that strong persuasion, perhaps even compulsion, should be involved. It seems to me that the activities which such a service might encompass are admirable. However, I am less happy about some of the other implications, and I should now like to consider these.
My Lords, I think it is important to be clear about the question of compulsion or persuasion. For example, I have seen suggestions that it might be appropriate to deny social security benefits to young people as an incentive to them to participate in national schemes. I suggest that this would virtually amount to compulsion, involving the same important issues of principle and practice. The issue of principle is one which I would want to underline, albeit without discussing it in detail. Suffice it to say that I believe strongly that those concerned must be free to decide for themselves in such matters, and the value of their contribution lies in its voluntary nature. I doubt if service given grudgingly would be worth having. Certainly I see real dangers in providing it to vulnerable groups, such as the sick and the old. Apart from risks of this sort, the young people themselves might well turn, in later life, against community service in any form. Secondly (to develop a point upon which I have already embarked) I

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think that it is not unnatural to want a regular job immediately on leaving full-time education, and I see no point in risking resentment by seeking to defer the realisation of this aspiration. It is quite another thing for those who wish to put in a period of community service of some kind before committing themselves to regular employment. In that case, I entirely agree that such aspirations should be given every encouragement, and so should the agencies which provide this kind of opportunity.
We should also pause to consider the scale of a national youth service, including the logistics and the cost implications. Each year, as noble Lords have said tonight, over three-quarters of a million young people reach school-leaving age. Of these, some 40 per cent. stay on in school or enter full-time further education. This means that some half a million youngsters are leaving full-time education at 16. Most of these find jobs, some of them with part-time day further education; but others find difficulty for a period in obtaining employment. The numbers are, therefore, very considerable.
The cost of organising community service opportunities on such a scale would certainly be immense, even if one gives weight to the argument that there could well be compensating savings in a reduced level of crime and delinquency. The Youth Opportunities Programme, on a smaller scale and with the specific objective of getting young people into regular employment as soon as possible, costs about £140 million a year, and that programme relies heavily on the provision of supervision by sponsors, without charge. A national youth service, to whatever extent it involved existing facilities and organisations, would inevitably involve heavy administration and supervision costs, and the appointment of additional staff at national, regional and local levels.
A further question would be the one upon which the noble Lord, Lord Evans of Claughton, touched; namely, the effect on the normal functioning of the labour market. This is a question which was considered very carefully before the Youth Opportunities Programme was pitched at its present level. It would not be possible to find community service opportunities for the numbers of which
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we are speaking without displacing existing adult employees; and to the extent that the scheme did not displace adults, it would amount to a considerable increase in areas of employment such as the social services, tending to divert resources away from the vital manufacturing sector of the economy.
My Lords, I join other noble Lords in thanking the right reverend Prelate for initiating this debate. The subject is clearly one of vital importance, and I suspect it will come up again before too long. However, for the time being perhaps I may summarise by saying that much is being done, but there is certainly no feeling of complacency: indeed, quite the reverse. The points made by noble Lords are those which are of constant concern to all those involved in services for young people. This concern has already led to changes of emphasis within the youth service and to the growth of services for the young unemployed and community service. The strategy of the Government is to concentrate scarce resources where they are most needed. This must rule out blanket schemes, and must mean concentrating on areas such as youth unemployment and urban problems. I cannot believe that this is wrong. Indeed, I believe that, particularly in current circumstances, it is the best way of helping the young people of this country.
8.50 p.m.
The Lord Bishop of LONDON: My Lords, at this late hour I do not think that there would be any profit in analysing, even if I were able to do so, all the admirable speeches made during the course of the last two and a half hours. So I would wish, first, to thank most sincerely all noble Lords who have taken part in the debate. I think there is general and universal agreement, at any rate there was in the earlier speeches in the debate, that there is a great need for new initiative and new vision. It has been, therefore, a matter of some regret that in the last speeches in this debate there has been, in my view, a narrowing of the vision which I sought to place before your Lordships. I have not thought of youth service as being something which is going to get us out of the problem of unemployment or of keeping people out of trouble or of keeping them away from borstal. I have been endeavouring to put before

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your Lordships that ideal which I quoted from the American Ambassador:
" The most fundamental purpose is to offer each generation a shared social experience of service in a common national cause without regard to birth, race or wealth ".
I cannot think that your Lordships will disagree with that view.
If that can be achieved voluntarily, well and good; but I do not believe that it can be; and I do not share the apprehensions of this House which the word "compulsion" seems to raise in so many hearts. I believe that if you are compelled to be at school, there is no reason why you should not be required to do some form of national service for other people as part of your contribution to the life of the community.
I was interested in the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, who spoke from his personal experience of the Manpower Services Commission. This is something for which we should be profoundly thankful, but I do not share his fears about extending the work that is being done there, for I think that that is precisely the experiment that we are making, and which should be made, and from which we should go out to greater and wider things. The noble Lord, Lord Bellwin, has given us a catalogue of all that is being done. It is a very impressive catalogue. Then he went on, to my distress, to voice all the difficulties that will exist if we tried to extend this and make it something of national importance. I do not share his view about the difficulties and I refuse to be daunted by the difficulties which might arise.
What I look for and hope for is a state of affairs when you can say to any young person: "What are you doing in service for your people, for your community, for your country?" Very few could now give an immediate and clear answer to such a question as that. That is the vision I would set before our people. I hope therefore that the noble Lord, Lord Bellwin, will not be content merely with the difficulties that he has voiced but also will initiate further investigation into the possibilities of extending to our young people something that would make them proud of and loyal to the things which belong to them and which are part of
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their community life. In that hope, I ask your Lordships' permission to withdraw my Motion for Papers.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

CHIROPRACTIC AND THE NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE
8.55 p.m.
Lord FERRIER Lord FERRIER rose to ask Her Majesty's Government what plans they have to integrate chiropractic into the National Health Service. The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Unstarred Question in my name on the Order Paper. The campaign of which this debate is a part began five years ago with a Question and Answer about the exchange of X-ray photographs between chiropractors and National Health Service hospitals. The campaign continued with a debate in May 1976; and, as my intention is to be brief, I will not repeat the stories of the debt that my family and many others known to me owe to chiropractic. Suffice it to say, that all these have inspired in me the compassion that I feel—and many of your Lordships share it with me—for people who suffer from pain and have no recourse to manipulative therapy.
My immediate concern is for sufferers from back pain. I quote from the Industrial Relations Services Bulletin for July this year, which, on the first page, says:
" Back pain costs British industry 18 million lost working days last year compared with 9·3 million lost from strikes. It cost more than £900 million in lost production and cost the State £90 million in social security payments. Some 50,000 people are estimated to be off work every day because of back pain. It represents one of the major causes of sickness absence in industry today ".
These statistics cannot include a large number of women because it is not possible to estimate the magnitude of the problem as it affects housewives, mothers and the self-employed. I think, for instance, that hospital nurses who are probably numbered in those figures are included, and they are particularly prone to back strain. And, of course, there can be no calculation in financial terms, no factor to cover pain and distress.
The story of the campaign unfolds. After our debate in 1976, the Minister of

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Health appointed a working group on back pain which we shall call the Cochrane Committee. Professor A. L. Cochrane was the chairman. By this time the sterling work of the Back Pain Association, which I know we shall hear more about tonight, was making its impact on local authorities and public opinion. But why do I confine my Question to chiropractic? It is for various reasons, the chief of which is that this science—for such it is—has achieved recognition over almost all of the world. I say "almost" because this country is far behind the international level. If one looks at the figures of qualified doctors of chiropractic related to population, one compares the USA with one chiropractor for 13,000; Canada, one for 20,000; New Zealand one for 45,000; Denmark, one for 47,000; Switzerland, one for 81,000; and so on, until we come to the United Kingdom with one for every 635,000. That is why I say "almost universal ".
As a matter of interest, the British Chiropractic Association submitted, on request, a case to the Cochrane Committee and an effort was made to get a doctor of chiropractic included in the Committee's personnel. But this was unsuccessful. Of course, one must accept that the medical profession in the ordinary way do
"… not look kindly on people who practise the healing art without having received the traditional education of a teaching hospital, an attitude partly excused by the sincere wish to protect the public from quacks professing to cure disease ".
This quotation is from the Dictionary of National Biography, in their entry on Sir Herbert Barker. Your Lordships will recall the dramatic story of his life, before, during and after the First Great War, and it can be followed by anybody who cares to do so by reading this entry in the DND. In that entry it says:
" What is a quack? ', The Times was asking in 1912 ".
However, my Lords, much water has flowed under the bridge since then. Modern chiropractic is far from being an unscientific cult. It has its own training colleges; there is one, the Anglo-European College of Chiropractic in Bournemouth. It runs a four-year course and last year qualified some 38 students, two-thirds of whom were for Europe.
The struggle for recognition has been an uphill one, even today. For instance,
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the profession applied for inclusion under the Professions Supplementary to Medicines Act, but was refused. No reasons were stated. There was an absolute refusal to this apparently reasonable request. This induced an appeal to the Privy Council, which said it could not compel the PSM Council to disclose its reasons. I understand the matter is being proceeded with. Be that as it may, my personal view is the PSM Council's refusal to state their reasons can only spring from a guilty feeling that it is founded on bigotry, the nature of which led to the persecution of the late Herbert Barker and his associates.
If the contrary is the case—and I hope it is—I shall be the first to rejoice because I have, save in this respect, the greatest faith in the medical profession and their very proper concern for the protection of the public. However, to return to the Cochrane Committee, their report was submitted early in 1978. For some unexplained reason, it did not emerge from the Ministry of Health until the autumn. The committee have gone into the back pain problem in a painstaking way—and I am not trying to be funny, my Lords—contending that further study and action should command high priority. Accepting as it does the seriousness of the situation, it urged that
"… basic research inquiries should involve multi-disciplinary contributions ".
That is a quotation from the Cochrane Report.
I think I am right in saying that the massive report of the Royal Commission on the National Health Service makes no reference to manipulative therapy at all, which surprises me. There is an organisation called the Health Education Council to whom I wrote and asked their views, but they replied that it was
" not this Council's responsibility to have attitudes about such problems as that of manipulative therapy ".
Do I hear a distant "quang quang", my Lords?
Only the other day came the news of the report of the New Zealand Government's Commission on Chiropractic tabled in their Parliament on 23rd October. I do not have a copy yet, but I can quote from the New Zealand Press Association's coverage:
" Chiropractic is far from being an unscientific cult ".

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I have already quoted that.
" Chiropractors are the only health practitioners who are necessarily equipped by their education and training to carry out spinal manual therapy … In the public interest and in the interests of patients there must be no impediment to full professional co-operation between chiropractors and medical practitioners ".
At the same time it also says that there is no reason why any of the findings of the report should lead to any lack of faith or confidence in the medical profession. "Hear, hear,", say I.
I for one and, I have no doubt, many of your Lordships, look forward to studying the report when it comes to hand. But—and it is a big "but "—what is this proposal, which underlines my Question, going to cost? My contention is that it holds out, on the contrary, a financial saving. If the proposal involved an increase in expenditure at a time like this, when we are straining every nerve to cut down our outgoings, I would not have put this Question to your Lordships' House. The fact is that an acceptance of this therapy should represent a marked saving to the nation as well as a boon to sufferers: less days of work lost; less social security benefits to pay; less drugs to be consumed; less burden on overworked physiotherapists; less hospitalisation; and less surgery.
My Lords, as I began, so I shall end—less suffering, less incapacity. These facts tempt me to quote the words of Robbie Burns, my national poet:
" But Facts are cheels that winna ding,
An' downa be disputed: ".
It remains for me to thank in advance other Peers who will be contributing to this debate, and I thank them in advance because I shall have no opportunity to reply at the end. In view of the lateness of the hour, which is not of our seeking, I have cut my speech to the bone, leaving out much that could be said, I look forward to the contributions of other Peers and especially to that of the noble Lord who will be replying from the Front Bench. His task has been complicated by this news from New Zealand. However may I ask that he will at least give an undertaking that the Government will lose no time in studying the report from Down Under, and perhaps write to me regarding the Department's reactions to it?
9.10 p.m.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Ferrier, for introducing this Question, for I find it a pleasant relief not to be engaged in a matter involving political beliefs. This is the first occasion for some considerable time that I have been at the Dispatch Box when I have not got to worry about political philospohy.
The noble Lord reminded us that in setting up the committee on 26th July 1976, my right honourable friend Dr. David Owen, then Minister of Health, said—and I think it is important that we should have his reasion for setting up the Cochrane Committee:
" Back pain is a major source of discomfort and disability to many people and a serious problem in terms of lost production, sickness benefit and cost of treatment ".
I do not propose to repeat the statistics which the noble Lord was good enough to give to your Lordships but I wish he had repeated them, because it represents not only an enormous sum of money hut indicates a tremendous problem of personal suffering. When he talks about the 18 million lost working days and the enormous number of people—I think he said 50,000 a day—who are suffering and receiving treatment, let us remember that we are talking about the tip of the iceberg. We are not talking about the problem as a whole, for the simple reason that we do not know the extent of the problem.
I was interested to look at a piece of research undertaken by Dunnell and Cart-wright in 1972, and it is interesting to note that in their research they indicated that 21 per cent. of the adults had experienced back pain in the 14 days preceding their survey: I repeat, 21 per cent. of the adults whom they interviewed had experienced back pain in the 14 days preceding their research.
A conservative estimate of the cost to the community can only be evaluated in terms of sickness and absence from work. It does not take into account the vast army of women who experience—some continuously, others almost continuously—very acute pain. One of the regrettable features, I think, in our society has been the fact that it has been generally accepted that women, on reaching middle age, can expect

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back pain, and that we, as a community, have unfortunately accepted it and done very little about it. Those who are engaged in professional social work, and certainly members of the medical profession, know very well that it is not just a question of the person who is suffering the pain, particularly if it is a wife or a mother: it affects the whole family, and the whole family suffers as a consequence.
The report states that an increased frequency of back pain in boys is found today, and that the position as far as the elderly is concerned is under-estimated. So whatever figures we have, there is an under-estimation of the problem. This complaint makes a disturbing inroad into the lives of a vast number of people, and it not only stays with them and, directly or indirectly, affects everyone close to them, but makes everybody around feel completely helpless. I notice that the report goes on to say:
"… no age group appears to be exempt ".
Turning to page 11, the report states:
" The Working Group "—
that is, the Cochrane Committee—
" is … concerned that current expectations in this field are unreasonably high, and also that the potential to help is reduced as long as nearly all involved are misguided by what appears to he ill-substantiated notions ".
I have to confess that I do not understand what that means. I do not know whether it means that the expectations of people who suffer from back pain are unreasonably high. But the Group went on to say that they were,
"… exercised by the suggestion that the majority of the medical profession do not make use of the most appropriate techniques of examination in their assessment of patients suffering from back pain ".
Perhaps one of the most useful things they said was that,
" All these considerations reinforce the conclusion that action to improve the present situation should command high priority ".
I was interested to note that the Working Group stated that back pain is a symptom and not a disease. It would seem that the causes are known in some cases, but not in others.
Reference was made to the 18 controlled studies that have taken place, and the report went on,
" There is little to suggest that any of the reported trials have materially influenced clinical practice on any wide scale ".
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If that is so, I suggest that this matter needs to be looked at very carefully. Does this mean that almost total reliance is placed on relieving pain by drug treatment, with little hope of effecting a cure? I think we have to keep in the forefront of our minds the fact that when back pain moves in it may become a permanent lodger. Does it mean that nothing can be done, except to offer some relief by drugs? I often feel that the treatment of back pain is the Cinderella of the medical profession. It is not spectacular, nor glamorous, nor has it the drama of open heart surgery and the like. Yet the contribution of the back pain consultant is of supreme importance to the sufferers, because it is something that they may have to live with day after day, week after week, month after month or year after year.
I ask the noble Lord the Minister—and I do not expect a reply tonight, because this matter would need looking into—how many of these consultants who specialise in back pain receive a merit award? My guess is very few of them. I should be surprised if many of these merit awards—and I think there are four or five groups of merit awards, starting at around £2,000 a year and rising to £10,000—went to back pain consultants. At the Radcliffe in Oxford, we have an exceptionally able and competent person who I know does not get a merit award. He is well qualified and has written quite a number of papers on this matter. How can we hope to improve this form of consultancy, if the same rewards are not being given to such consultants as are given to those who are involved in the more glamorous and dramatic forms of nursing?
I am glad that the Cochrane Committee—rather, the chairman, to put it more accurately, of the Working Group—held discussions with the secretary and registrar of the General Council and Register of Osteopaths, with the principal of the British College of Osteopathy and with the representatives of the British Acupuncture Association. I myself was in New Zealand on an official visit when I was a Minister. I know what the opinion of chiropractors in New Zealand is. As the noble Lord has quite rightly pointed out, recently they decided to incorporate it into their national health service. I sometimes

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wonder what China would do, with its teeming millions, where there is a tremendous amount of back pain. I was in China some four years ago. There they depend, I would say almost entirely, upon acupuncture—and, I heard from those I talked to, very successfully.
The problem is so acute in this country that we cannot afford to disregard the contribution which these non-medical groups can make. In this field we need to think more about co-operation between the medicals and the non-medicals. The time has gone when there should be this very rigid dividing line between the medical side and the contribution which can be made on the non-medical side. It has got to be done for the benefit of those who suffer. The suffering must, I think, take precedence over professional jealousies; it is no good closing our eyes to the fact that this has been the position for a good many years.
I am very glad that the working party, under the chairmanship of Professor Cochrane, has made some progress. Professor Cochrane has had discussions with these three non-medical groups. I understand that there has been agreement in principle by the organisations representing the chiropractors, the osteopaths, the acupuncturists and the General Medical Council—which is important—that trials should take place, presumably with a view to using the skills of these three organisations. All I hope is that the expressed intention will materialise quickly, for in the last analysis it is the patient who really matters, not sectional interests.
I want to conclude by asking the noble Lord the Minister just two questions. Again, I am not necessarily asking for a reply this evening. If the Minister is unable to reply tonight, I should like to have an answer in writing at a later date. First, may I ask him what the Government are doing, or are proposing to do, by way of implementing the recommendations of the Cochrane Committee, because this report is now with the Department of Health and Social Security? I believe that it is for them to take the next step. Secondly, may I ask the Minister whether he can give an assurance that the Government will watch very carefully the particular recom-
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mendation that the three non-medical organisations, with the co-operation of the General Medical Council, will undertake trials and that they will see that it is carried into effect without too much delay?
9.25 p.m.
Lord COLWYN: My Lords, in view of the late hour I intend to be very brief on this subject. Before I commence my remarks I feel that I must express some admiration for my noble friend Lord Ferrier for his persistent championing of the needs to integrate chiropractic, or as I would probably rather see it, some form of physical medicine, into the National Health Service or to make it more generally available to the public. Figures from the working party report are quite astounding. I must repeat the figure quoted by the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell—21 per cent. of all adults in a fortnightly period. That is quite fantastic. My intervention tonight is because the figures are far worse for the members of my own dental profession. Thirty per cent. of us suffer from some sort of muscular skeletal disorder from our working position—and I am one of them. Because of the size of the problem it seems to me to be economically sensible to take steps to get the sufferers back on their feet and back to work. At present the resources of the National Health Service are inadequate to deal with this problem and many more trained personnel are needed.
The working party told us that many sufferers either do nothing or perhaps they treat themselves or eventually consult their general practitioners before even considering unorthodox treatment. Those who see their doctors probably end up as out-patients at the local hospital and usually undergo some form of physiotherapy, having first been through the radiographic X-ray department. In many cases this is the only treatment provided and time is the actual healer of the back complaint.
We need positive treatment for these complaints. Although I am only a dental surgeon I have personally referred many patients to practitioners of physical medicine and I could recount many cases of dramatic and instant relief. Since deciding to take part in tonight's debate I have visited both osteopaths and chiropractors and discussed the problem with that

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well known orthopaedic physician, Dr. Ronald Barber. Despite some personal medical knowledge I find it difficult to distinguish between the osteopathic and the chiropractic form of diagnosis and treatment. Although the question tabled by my noble friend Lord Ferrier refers specifically to chiropractic I feel that both skills must be considered and collectively referred to as "physical medicine ". I am disappointed, after my meetings with these practitioners, that both chiropractors and osteopaths still tend to belittle each other, and during my talks I got the distinct impression that each consider themselves to be superior operators. There is no doubt that practitioners of both types of physical medicine must undergo a period of training and become registered after passing the necessary examinations. Great emphasis must be placed on correct diagnosis. We have heard tonight and in the past about the importance of radiographic examination. This is admittedly an aid to diagnosis, but even well-known orthopaedic physicians find it difficult to diagnose from X-ray plates. It is knowledge and experience that influence the final decisions as to the correct forms of treatment.
There is no doubt that positive treatment by trained practitioners of physical medicine, whether they call themselves osteopaths or chiropractors, has much to offer the public and the overworked National Health Service. I should like to see more co-operation and more co-ordination. I feel that osteopaths and chiropractors should combine their skills, perhaps first training at a college teaching a combination of the sciences over a four-or five-year period, the resultant graduate becoming a doctor of physical medicine. Such a doctor could then be involved in the orthopaedic departments of hospitals and with help from physiotherapists treat the majority of cases of back pain, leaving the orthopaedic surgeons to concentrate on the job for which they have been trained; namely, that of bone surgery.
9.30 p.m.
Viscount HANWORTH: My Lords, I shall also be extremely brief tonight. I think that, on this question, we should ask ourselves why the use of largely unmedically qualified chriopractors has grown to such an extent. The answer must surely be that they provide a service which is not
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available from hospitals or the medical profession in general. As I understand it, chiropractors concentrate on back pain and manipulation, and we have heard some impressive statistics on this. But it is only one of a wide range of pain affecting all moving parts of the body which may be classified as soft tissue lesions, much of it being covered by the layman's term of rheumatism. We have already heard the DHS figures which are those of 13 million working days a year lost through disorders of the lower back, and this represents only about 50 per cent. of the total of soft tissue lesion cases.
In fact, almost no one escapes some trouble of this sort during their lives. So far as I can gather, conventional medical education in the United Kingdom provides almost no training in the diagnosis and logical treatment of these disorders. Methods for doing this were pioneered by Dr. Cyriax of St. Thomas's Hospital many years ago. They have been adopted and are taught in Holland and in Belgian medical schools. They are institutionally available in Germany, where hospital stay times have been reduced by over 80 per cent. and visits which frequently covered several months often cut to a single session. In England, if you hurt your shoulder or back, or suffer from referred pain in, for example, your leg as a result of a slipped disc the outlook is very bleak. The surgeon will say that there is nothing wrong with the bone structure, and of course the X-ray hardly shows up at all the question of a slipped disc. You will then be passed to the physiotherapy department. Although they cannot give a diagnosis, except in general and often unmeaningful terms, they will do their best but with treatments which are almost wholly ineffective.
In effect, my Lords, there is a department or section missing in every United Kingdom hospital. It should cover all soft tissue lesions, and abroad is called the Department for orthopaedic medicine. To create this facility it is only necessary to extend the physiotherapy syllabus, but if their chartered society continue to resist such change there are other administrative ways of achieving the same end.
I am afraid that I cannot wholly agree with the noble Lord, Lord Ferrier, on the role of the chiropractors in providing a solution to the problem. First, I do not

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think they should officially work without qualified medical liaison, and it would be difficult to arrange this. Moreover, their own organisation for vetting practitioners would need careful examination. Secondly, and most importantly, they cover only about 50 per cent. of the type of cases I have mentioned in the field of soft tissue lesions.
Dr. Cyriax's methods have been tried out and proved, not only in his own hands but in other countries. Basically, they are methods for accurate and useful diagnosis and treatment. The latter in most cases consists of manipulation, heavy traction, and injection of the seat of the trouble.
I have already referred to what is known as "referred pain" where one gets pain somewhere which has no relation to the seat of its cause. Why is it, therefore, that, with the enormous suffering of patients from inadequate treatment, nothing is done to validate these methods here in the United Kingdom? It is not even a question of danger to the patients which would make the inertia of the establishment more understandable. After what has been said this evening as regards the importance of this matter, I am appalled by the nature of the reply that I received to a Written Question on this subject. I think that it was one of the most unhelpful replies that have been written for a very long time.
9.36 p.m.
Lord WALL: My Lords, I also welcome very much the opportunity which the Question of the noble Lord, Lord Ferrier, gives us of discussing that major and much neglected scourge—back pain. Back pain causes intolerable pain to very many people and places an unacceptable burden on the community and the Health Service. Although the Question of the noble Lord, Lord Ferrier, is specific, I intend, with your Lordships' permission, to devote most of my time to discussing back pain in a more general way as a background to the Question.
First, may I declare my interest. I have been associated with the Back Pain Association for a number of years. I was its chairman for some years, and more recently became its honourary treasurer. The Back Pain Association is a registered medical charity whose objectives are:
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" To encourage research into the causes and treatment of back pain; to help to prevent damage by teaching people to use their bodies sensibly; to form groups which would help disseminate useful information, provide neighbourly help to sufferers "—
and last, and by no means least—
" to raise money to further their aims ".
The Association is unique in this country and we believe that it is unique throughout the world, because it concerns itself solely with the problems of back pain. It is multidisciplinary since back pain knows no frontiers, and it seems to me a pity that we should ourselves seek to erect professional frontiers.
I have said that back pain causes intolerable pain to very many people and is an unacceptable burden on the Health Service. I should like to quantify those remarks, and I apologise for repeating some figures which your Lordships may have already heard. It is known that 80 per cent. of the people of this country will have back pain at some time in their lives, and, as the Cochrane Report said, no age group seems to be exempt. Every year some 1·5 million people go to their doctors with back pain. It has been estimated that 7 per cent. of the time of a GP is taken up with back pain—that is to say, one patient out of 14 who goes to his doctor, goes to complain of pain in his back. Every day some 56,000 people are away from their jobs because of back pain. The resultant loss of production has been put as high as £700 million. It could easily be £500 million, and that takes no account of losses due to people going to work in pain and not doing a full day's work. In addition, the cost to the Health Service itself must be of the order of £100 million. As has already been said, those figures pay no attention whatever to the disruptive effect in the home due to the widespread incidence of hack pain among housewives. That is most serious.
So, back pain is undoubtedly a major scourge. Fortunately, there is a rather brighter note: much of back pain goes away. There seems to be a natural tendency for recovery without professional help. But far too many people seem to be chronic sufferers. Equally important, much back pain can be prevented. Thus, in addition to research into the causes and treatment of back pain it is essential that we educate people to look after their backs and avoid pain.

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I said in my opening remarks that back pain has been neglected. Dr. Owen was the first Minister concerned with the Health Service to emphasise the serious problems caused by back pain. He set up the Cochrane Working Group, as we have heard, in July 1976, its report being published in May last. I shall quote again the first sentence of its terms of reference:
" Back pain is a major source of discomfort and disability to many people and a serious economic problem in terms of lost production, sickness benefit and cost of treatment ".
Let me also quote one sentence from the report which says:
" There is profound and widespread dissatisfaction with what is at present being done to help people who suffer from back pain ".
That sentence alone justifies the Working Group. I am very pleased to say that Dr. Vaughan has also shown a keen interest in the problem. Recently he was good enough to attend the annual general meeting of the Back Pain Association, which was held in a Committee room in another place and attended by many sufferers. He now has the task of implementing the recommendations of the Working Group.
But some of your Lordships may well ask—as do many people when we try to interest them in these problems—if back pain is so serious and so widespread, why has it not been tackled before in the way that other ailments are being tackeld? Why has it been neglected for so long? I do not claim to know, but I make these suggestions. First, it is a highly complex matter. We know far too little about its causes and it follows that we know far too little about its treatment, as so many sufferers know to their cost. It cuts across many disciplines—rheumatology, neurology, orthopaedic surgery, anatomy, biology, biochemistry and psychiatry, quite apart from other disciplines, such as ergonomics, chiropractic and osteopathy. Therefore, back pain has been the concern of no one discipline; it seems to fall between every stool. This must raise special problems for general practitioners who have been taught little or nothing about back pain when studying for their exams, and who do not know where to turn when one patient out of 14 comes to the surgery in pain.
As my noble friend Lord Wells-Pestell said, back pain is not emotive; it does
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not kill; it makes no dramatic appeal. Indeed, it is too often a matter for ridicule, except for the people who suffer from it. Far too many people, especially women seem to regard it as inevitable. It is almost too widespread. So there has been no incentive for a nationwide, dedicated attack upon the problem. Research into back pain has been extremely small. It may well not exceed £250,000 a year, much of which is spent by the Arthritis and Rheumatism Council within its own terms of reference.
But research is a primary objective of our Association and the research projects that we have been able to finance have been very important. I can give many examples, but time is short. I believe that the Government themselves must find some means of supporting more research. The amount of money required is small—£250,000 a year would go a long way. In his report Cochrane says:
"… sustained and increased support for research … is not only essential but should also command high priority ".
I hope that the Government will heed those wise words.
I have also referred to prevention. Much back pain arises because people do not use their bodies sensibly; nor does the equipment we all use in the factory, the office and at school, quite apart from motor cars and beds, pay regard to the risks of back pain. So there is room for a real drive to educate people on the avoidance of back pain and the promotion of self-care. Here again, the Association has made a good start through its education committee.
Then there is the problem of Samaritan work. How can we expect a young housewife with severe back pain to look after her young children? To where does she turn for help? I suggest that it is not good enough, as happened in one case we know of, for a young housewife in great pain and with two young children, to be told by her doctor that she must "learn to live with it". The Association is encouraging the formation of local groups where back pain sufferers can meet, learn about one another's problems and hear from experts about what is going on as regards research into the causes and treatment. "Prevention" is the key word, and so is Samaritan work.

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One of the disappointments that we have had in dealing with these problems is the virtual impossibility of persuading industry to take these problems seriously. For example, we recently wrote to 1,400 top trading firms in this country asking for their help and telling them about the problem. The response was lamentable. We have received 175 replies and 30 companies have offered £2,800. More than 1,200 companies did not even bother to reply. So there is something more that the Government could well do; as, after all, health and safety is recognised as a matter of importance, and this neglect of back pain by industry we find most surprising. Oddly enough—perhaps not oddly enough—the nationalised industries have been more far-sighted. The railways, the docks, the coalmining industry and the Post Office are all taking the problem seriously and doing something about it. I am also bound to say that we have fared little better with the trade unions, who seem to disregard the fact that tens of thousands of their members are chronic back pain sufferers.
I should like to turn briefly to the specific Question which the noble Lord, Lord Ferrier, has tabled. May I say from personal experience and from the experience of our Association, that chiropractors are making a real contribution towards solving back pain problems. We have had more than 20,000 letters from sufferers, most of which amply confirm the comments of Cochrane that there is profound and widespread dissatisfaction with what is at present available to help people who suffer from back pain. If the Health Service cannot help people have to turn somewhere else, and many of them have turned to chiropractors and osteopaths, and not in vain. So I hope very much that the DHSS will consider how chiropractic can be recognised.
This brings me to one specific point. In my view it is disgraceful that 15 per cent. VAT should be levied on patients who go to chiropractors and osteopaths for relief of suffering. The sum of money involved is tiny but I suggest that the principle is totally wrong. Lastly, may I join the noble Lord, Lord Ferrier, in asking the Government to tackle back pain as a matter of real urgency. Cochrane was published in May. As my
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noble friend Lord Wells-Pestell said, time is passing. What is being done? As I understand the general views of this Government, they believe in individual initiative, increased efficiency, saving of waste, reduced public expenditure and sound investment. Let them look at an attack of back pain. Individual initiative seems to have done more than the Health Service. So why not give it more support and encourage self-care? Efficiency can be increased and public spending can be cut.
What a splendid investment! If the cost of back pain to this country could be cut by only 10 per cent. we could save £60 million a year. And the cost of the investment? Probably about a quarter of a million pounds a year. Where would you find a better investment? And just think of the suffering you can save people. The Working Group said that back pain was a subject of great public interest, and
" all these considerations reinforce the conclusion that action to improve the present situation should command high priority ".
Here is a golden opportunity for the Government to show that it has regard to the public interest and to the suffering of many people.
Lord FERRIER: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, he mentioned the question of incidence of back pain among children. Would he agree that one of the allied problems is that the size of children is increasing as years go by which means that increasingly primary school furniture is getting too small?
Lord WALL: My Lords, I could not agree more. I do not know whether any of your Lordships have been in a school room recently. Children do not just seem to get bigger; their variation in size seems to get greater. There seems to be no desk that can fit every child.
9.48 p.m.
Lord HARRIS of HIGH CROSS: My Lords, I am also much obliged to the noble Lord, Lord Ferrier, for the opportunity to repay a great debt of gratitude. I have gained lasting relief over many years from the ministrations of chiropractors, and I know of many more who have gained relief from more acute distress. I have a modest interest to declare as a recent patron of the

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Chiropractic Advancement Association, but alas it offers no remuneration and only immense psychic satisfaction.
I assume that the noble Lords still present owe their remarkable vigour and liveliness to having discovered the boons of chiropractic and related therapy. If that is so, I wish it were more widely understood and enjoyed. We have heard that chiropractic manipulation can relieve back pain, but after my intensive inquiries I discover that it can often also relieve pain in the leg, neck, shoulder and arms, and it can frequently assist with pain ascribed to rheumatism or arthritis, or so-called slipped discs, and even in the extremities to troubles attributed often to sinusitis and migraine.
The credentials of chiropractic are no longer in doubt. If we go back to the debate in 1976, the late Lord Platt, whom we miss so much, acknowledged from his very migh medical eminence:
" The medical profession is not very good at treating many things, including back ache, and people who have been brought up to study these conditions, even in a somewhat unorthodox way, can effect cures where the medical profession has signally failed to do so ".
May I take you back to 1975 when the Chiropractic Association applied for registration under the Professions Supplementary to Medicine Act 1960. They were cavalierly thrown out without even the courtesy of an explanation. How can this be so?
I am a professional economist, and I frequently find that Adam Smith throws light on many strange situations. My favourite quotation from Adam Smith for this occasion:
" People of the same trade seldom meet together even for merriment and diversion but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public ".
What Adam Smith was referring to was the widespread tendency of sectional interests to exclude competition. If I may say so, the Council under the 1960 Act, though it does not seem to have much to do with Adam Smith's merriment and diversion, seems to me to act in the spirit of a monopolist, the mean, narrow, exclusive spirit of a medical trade union, slamming the door on specialists who might tackle some infirmities better than general practitioners or even surgeons themselves.
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If there were time I would tell your Lordships of the terrible complication arising from the fact that treatment under the NHS is so-called free. It may come to many patients as free, but it does little good because it does not have the remedy for their particular problem. But they may be attracted to take a free non-remedy rather than seek out the chiropractor who will make his modest charge, who does not advertise and who relies entirely on recommendation.
I have no doubt that chiropractors could relieve an immense amount of daily continuing distress among all ages, from the young to the very elderly. The great problem about Lord Ferrier's proposal that it should be incorporated in the Health Service is that there are only about 100 chiropractors available in this country. I want the Minister to address his mind to the fact that the action of the Council for the Professions Supplementary to Medicine, in rejecting chiropractic, makes more difficult the possibility of building up the number of chiropractors and attracting students by treating them as beyond the pale. By ostracising them and by denying them even access to the maintenance awards which they would get as students practising other callings which may be less effective for many purposes, the numbers of students are reduced below what they might be.
I am not practised in the limits of parliamentary language, but I would hazard a description of the attitude of the council under the Act as outrageous, as scandalous and as a conspiracy against the public welfare. I have read that a number of Ministers of both parties have said that they would see how far they could go in the disclosure of the reasons, or encouraging another appeal through the Privy Council. I therefore ask the Minister if he might hold out some hope that a further renewed application to the council by the chiropractic profession will not be treated in such a disgraceful manner.
9.54 p.m.
Lord CULLEN of ASHBOURNE: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Ferrier, and I, as he well knows, have something in common: We both believe that there are, outside the medical profession, common law practitioners who have proved to the satisfaction of their patients that the therapies they offer are extremely

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effective in the treatment of back pain, spinal disorders and related conditions. It would be wrong of me, in speaking in reply to his Question on behalf of Her Majesty's Government, to seek to conceal the fact that I have long had an association with the General Council and Register of Osteopaths and the British School of Osteopathy which cannot be greatly dissimilar from that he must have with the British Chiropractors' Association, the Anglo-European College of Chiropractic and the Chiropractic Advancement Association. I have been interested during the course of the debate to hear a great many things that I have heard over many years from osteopaths, and I now find myself in the slightly complicated position of having to give the standard reply to what has been raised.
If chiropractic has proved efficacious in the treatment of conditions which, in the experience of many, doctors have failed to treat equally well, then it must seem unreasonable that those who cannot afford to pay for it at the hands of private sector practitioners should be wholly deprived of its benefits. I therefore sympathise with the noble Lord when he asks what plans the Government have to make chiropractic available on the National Health Service so that all may have access to it, as they do to medical treatment. Unfortunately, there are difficulties which make it impracticable for the Government to meet the wishes of the noble Lord, Lord Ferrier, and of those who share his very reasonable point of view.
First, let me seek to explain the legal position. Section 29(1) of the National Health Service Act 1977 states:
" It is every Area Health Authority's duty, in accordance with regulations, to arrange as respects their area with medical practitioners to provide personal medical services for all persons in the area who wish to take advantage of the arrangements ".
This means that a citizen who wishes to take advantage of these services under the National Health Service must first register with a doctor in general practice who is under contract to provide primary medical care in the Health Service. If such a person then becomes ill—except in such urgent circumstances as might take him directly to the casualty department of a hospital—he must call on, or call in, his
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NHS general practitioner to prescribe his treatment. The law excludes the general practitioner from referring his NHS patients to a private practitioner of whatever discipline or profession at the expense of the National Health Service.
Once the NHS patient has been referred to the hospital consultant, then it is for the consultant to treat the patient himself or to prescribe his treatment, under his own supervision to the extent that he remains responsible for the patient's well-being, by another doctor or by some other member of the staff of the hospital, such as a physiotherapist or an occupational therapist, or a member of one of the other State-registered professions supplementary to medicine working in the National Health Service.
If a NHS patient, having seen his doctor, decides not to go to the hospital and keep the consultant or other appointment made for him, but instead to seek treatment from a chiropractor, or an osteopath, or an acupuncturist, in private practice, then the patient must pay for that treatment himself, even though his doctor may have agreed to his seeking it. The position is the same if the patient does not go to his NHS doctor at all, but decides to go instead to a chiropractor, since, for the purposes of the treatment he thus seeks of his own volition, he is opting out of the arrangements offered by the National Health Service.
Noble Lords may argue that not all primary health care in the NHS is provided by medical practitioners, that patients can go directly to dentists, to opticians, and, if they qualify, to chiropodists and obtain NHS treatment by paying no more than such charges as law and regulations permit and prescribe. Why, therefore, cannot they also go to chiropractors? The answer is that chiropractors provide medical treatment, or some aspects of medical treatment, for the same conditions as are treated by the general practitioners with whom the patients are registered for NHS treatment. Our National Health Service legislation does not offer (as, to a minor extent, the health insurance systems of some countries do) the opportunity for the patient to exercise a choice in how he shall be treated and in who shall treat him. The NHS patient cannot decide that for this condition he will seek treatment from his doctor, but that for another he will seek treatment from a chiropractor. To

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make such a choice of practitioner available to NHS patients would require an amendment to the law. It would have to be made the responsibility of the Area Health Authority to arrange with other practitioners, as well as registered medical practitioners, to provide treatment on the National Health Service for all those persons in their areas who wished to take advantage of the arrangements. Need I say that this could be pretty expensive, as all these alternative practitioners would have to be paid without any diminution of what is paid to the general practitioner doctors under the terms of their NHS contracts.
However, let us suppose that the law was amended and the money found to make this choice of practitioner and treatment possible. Where, then, should we find the practitioners? On 1st October 1978 there were 2,363 general medical practitioners providing personal medical services in the National Health Service in England and Wales. At the same time—I take my figures from a count made in the Register of Members of the British Chiroporactic Association for 1978—there appear, as the noble Lord, Lord Harris, has just mentioned, to have been only 91 chiropractors practising in England and Wales, and their distribution was very uneven. Had all of them been employed full time in providing services for NHS patients, how could they possibly have coped should there have been a substantial demand for their services? No more patients would have been treated than were already being treated as private patients; or, if the number had been greater, the treatment would inevitably have been more perfunctory. And is it not to escape from the little personal attention that their hard-pressed general practitioners can give them that many patients do in the first place decide to seek private treatment, whether it be from a doctor, a chiropractor or an osteopath?
This problem of inadequate numbers would still remain if the chiropractors were retained under contract with the Health Service to provide treatment on a sessional or fee-per-treatment basis for NHS patients in hospitals or in their own surgeries, with the patients having first had to be referred to the chiropractors by their general practitioners or by their hospital consultants. Furthermore, would the chiropractors accept such a
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role, with the medical practitioners determining which patients and what conditions they were competent to treat? Might there not be many doctors, unconvinced of the validity of the principles on which chiropractic is based, who would not refer their patients to them? Might there not be many health authorities, equally unpersuaded of the efficacy of chiropractic, who might well not employ any chiropractors even if they could find some to employ? The Government could not dictate to the doctors or to the health authorities in this regard.
I am aware, as has been mentioned by several noble Lords, that the chiropractors have sought to secure state registration as members of a profession supplementary to medicine under the provisions of the Professions Supplementary to Medicine Act 1960. I am equally aware that, when the Council for Professions Supplementary to Medicine rejected their application, it declined, and could not be compelled by the Privy Council, to give its reasons for doing so, and that the chiropractors and the Chiropractic Advancement Association are aggrieved. However, I believe that, if the chiropractors sought by their application to achieve a longer-term acceptance by the medical profession of what they have to offer and their own ultimate integration into the National Health Service, then their action in making the application was correct. My right honourable friend the Minister of Health has already commended to them that they should seriously consider making a further application.
The Working Group on Back Pain—the Cochrane Working Group—recommended in its report, published in May of this year, that there should be comparative trials of manipulative treatment for back pain, and that these should include both orthodox (that is, medical) and other means of treatment. The chiropractors have been assured that soundly-based proposals for such trials, which need not be limited to comparisons of their own manipulative treatment with medical manipulative therapies alone, will be considered sympathetically for financing from public funds; and I understand that the chiropractors' own research officer is already considering with others the protocols for such trials, and that the chiropractors have expressed willingness to participate in them. This I consider encouraging.

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My Lords, I was asked one or two questions. I was asked by the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, what the Government are doing about the report of the Cochrane Working Party on Back Pain. Most of the recommendations in that report were about research. In a Written Answer to a Question in another place, my honourable friend Sir George Young said
" Research into the causes of and treatments for back pain is already given high priority by the Department. My right hon. Friend is satisfied that adequate resources are available to the Department and to the Medical Research Council for support to be given to any soundly-based research proposals in this field, including comparative studies involving heterodox therapies ".
I understand that the British Chiropractic Association is shortly to seek the views of the Department of Health and Social Security on the protocol for such a comparative study. As the rest of the same reply states, the other recommendations in the report on back pain research centres, on the issue of questionnaires to ascertain present treatment for back pain and the establishment of a panel for proper ongoing advice were still under consideration and a statement will be made in due course.
I was also asked a question by the noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, who kindly let me know beforehand what he was going to ask. He mentioned that medical education in this country provided almost no training in the diagnosis and logical treatment of soft tissue lesion cases and referred to the method of treatment pioneered by Dr. Cyriax. It is not for me to say how soft tissue lesions should be treated. This is a matter for medical judgment, and so is the matter of how doctors should be taught to treat them. The content of the training of medical students is the responsibility of the education committee of the General Medical Council as imposed upon it by Section 15(1) of the Medical Act 1978. Whether Dr. Cyriax agrees with the principles of chiropractic or how his own views diverge from them, I am not qualified to say; but we should not overlook the fact that during all the years he worked as a consultant physician to the St. Thomas' Hospital, Dr. Cyriax had what might be described as a capitve audience of medical students who must have learned from his ideas and practices; and he was also involved in post-graduate training.
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Dr. Cyriax's associates recently formed the Society of Orthopaedic Medicine and, what is more, my honourable friend Sir George Young attended on behalf of my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Social Services, the Press conference which launched it. It is now for the medical profession to decide whether what that Society calls for—a separate specialty or orthopaedic medicine—is what is needed. Certainly, it is not for Her Majesty's Government to dictate to it, nor for it to tell the physiotherapy board or the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy what physiotherapists need to know and should be taught to do.
Finally, coming to my noble friend's Unstarred Question, for reasons which I have sought to explain the Government have no present plan to integrate chiropractic into the National Health Service. However, they recognise that in the private sector and in those places where there are chiropractors in practice, the regard in which their patients held them and the results obtained from their treatment of certain conditions are obvious evidence of the contribution chiropractors are making to health care generally. The Government also welcome the very obvious efforts which common law practitioners in the field of health care—not just chiropractors—are making to organise their professions and their training courses in such a way as will achieve for them the increased respect of parallel professions.
In the fullness of time there may be achieved what my noble friend Lord Ferrier and others so much desire. Speaking purely personally, I hope that in due course arrangements may be made by which qualified chiropractors, osteopaths and acupuncturists could if they so wished, make their skills available to National Health Service patients. I understand however that there are many osteopaths who would not wish to be deprived of their right of diagnosis and choice of treatment, and that the General Council and Register of Osteopaths has no present intention of making an application to the CPSM.

CHARGING ORDERS BILL [H.L.]
Returned from the Commons agreed to with amendments: the said amendments to be printed.