Lords Sitting of 17 December 1980

Preamble
The House met at half-past two of the clock (Prayers having been read earlier at the Judicial Sitting by the Lord Bishop of Liverpool): The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.

The Lord Kagan
The Lord Chancellor (Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone): My Lords, I have to acquaint the House that the Clerk of the Parliaments has received a letter from Mr. K. Boothroyd, Chief Clerk of the Leeds Crown Court, informing him that Lord Kagan was on 12th December 1980 convicted and sentenced as follows.
On each of four counts of theft and three counts of false accounting he was fined £15,000, making a total of £105,000. Also on each count he received 10 months' imprisonment concurrent—a total of 10 months' imprisonment. In default of payment of the the fines within six months, he was sentenced to three months' imprisonment consecutively on each charge, and to run consecutively to the sentences of 10 months' imprisonment.

UK Continental Shelf: Oil Well Starts in 1981–83
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 how they expect exploration and appraisal drilling on the United Kingdom continental shelf to develop over the years 1981, 1982 and 1983 respectively compared with the years 1978, 1979 and 1980 respectively.
The Minister of State, Department of Employment (The Earl of Gowrie): My Lords, it is not the practice of Her Majesty's Government to publish forecasts of exploration and appraisal activity. However, the level is now considerably higher than when this Government took office. Our policy of encouraging private enterprise in the United Kingdom continental shelf, taken together with the increased price of oil, has improved the confidence of companies operating there. The number of exploration and appraisal wells started in the last 12 months is about 25 per cent. up on the previous year, in spite of a worldwide shortage of drilling rigs.
The Earl of Lauderdale: My Lords, in thanking my noble friend for that encouraging reply—which shows a great improvement on recent years under another Government—is he not aware that, in fact, this shows a rig activity which will be more than 50 per cent. up next year on the present year and is likely to be 15 per cent. up the year after? Is he also aware
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that the Government's unfortunate decision to try to levy another £1,000 million out of a hardworked industry by means of the petroleum-production tax is likely to be a disincentive to development?
The Earl of Gowrie: My Lords, of course I agree with my noble friend that the Government are very conscious of the need to preserve the attractiveness of the continental shelf as an area for new investment. But I would point our to my noble friend that oil companies have benefited from substantial oil price rises in the two-year period. The proposed measures do, in our view, reflect the need to strike a fair balance between the interests of the nation and the companies.
The Earl of Lauderdale: My Lords, will my noble friend assure us that the companies will have a fair chance to state their case to the departments involved and will be listened to sympathetically, because some of them have not, in fact, has the windfall benefits that are attributed to them?
The Earl of Gowrie: My Lords, I am happy to say—and I congratulate them upon this—that oil companies are not by their nature particularly reticent in their representations.
Lord Hawke: My Lords, will Her Majesty's Government join OPEC and, if not, why not?
The Earl of Gowrie: My Lords, I think that that is somewhat wide of the original Question.
The Earl of Lauderdale: My Lords, will my noble friend answer one other supplementary?—namely, whether, in so far as rig activity is greatly increasing, as his answer demonstrates, the Government would not find it opportune now to give some particular encouragement and help to British shipyards to go in for rig construction, seeing that charters are now running for more than three years, starting two or three years ahead from now.
The Earl of Gowrie: My Lords, certainly as an employment Minister I feel a particular frustration at the fact that, during a worldwide shortage of rigs and during a period of very great international demand for rigs, British industry is not reacting quickly enough. It is reacting, but we should all like to see it react much more quickly. I urge all companies who have a capacity to service these needs to get on with it.

The Community Enterprise Programme
2.35 p.m.
Baroness Trumpington: 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 are doing to involve local and private sector employers in the sponsorship of projects under the new Community Enterprise Programme.
The Earl of Gowrie: My Lords, the Manpower Services Commission has been asked, in drawing up plans for the new Community Enterprise Programme, to make provision for the private sector to participate to a greater extent than is possible at present under the Special Temporary Employment Programme. This will be achieved both by doubling the overall number of employment opportunities available and by allowing sponsors of schemes to derive a private gain from sponsorship, providing the gain is secondary to the community benefit which all schemes must provide.
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, while I thank my noble friend for that Answer and while I realise that he dealt with some aspects of this matter earlier this week following a Question from my noble friend Lady Elliot, I should like to ask him whether the trade unions have taken any initiative in this matter and, if they have not done so, have they been consulted, because their co-operation is absolutely fundamental to the success of this excellent project?
The Earl of Gowrie: My Lords, while I thank my my noble friend for her comments about the character of the project, I should like to reassure her that consultation is, of course, involved due to the tripartite nature of the Manpower Services Commission. I certainly agree with her that one needs the co-operation of trade unions, because the last thing that we want to do is to give the impression that, in helping young people, we are in some way denying other people their legitimate job.
Lord Rochester: My Lords, will the noble Earl further agree that the district manpower committees, set up under the Manpower Services Commission throughout the country, are well constituted to achieve the objective which the noble Baroness has in mind, as the trade unions are represented on them? Are not those particular committees very well placed to initiate and to concert action to increase the number of projects sponsored not only by local authorities and private employers, but also by voluntary organisations under the Community Enterprise Programme?
The Earl of Gowrie: My Lords, as I said in an earlier Answer this week, finding the money for these schemes is only half the battle. One needs the most plural, widespread approach in terms of sponsorships, whether they are private employers, district manpower committees, local authorities or the rest. We urge everybody to try to put their backs into this great national effort.
Lord Shinwell: My Lords, I should like to ask the noble Earl whether the term "local" mentioned in the Question which is being asked by the noble Baroness means "local authorities"? If it does mean local authorities, are they to be responsible financially for the organisation and maintenance of any particular enterprise?
The Earl of Gowrie: My Lords, in the main, the position is as follows: the Government provide the finance for the administration of these schemes and also the finance for the allowances paid to the young
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people or the unemployed people who are on these schemes. But they also need the co-operation of employers, including local authority employers, to try to provide the places which are necessary and the training schemes which are necessary. But the main burden of the financing is, of course, taken by the Government.
Lord Shinwell: My Lords, in that event I should like to ask the noble Earl—and I think that this is a pertinent question and by no means an impertinent question—if it involves expenditure, how consistent is that proposal with the cutting back of expenditure which has been imposed on the local authorities? Will the Government be kind enough to explain these inconsistencies and contradictions which appear almost every day and almost every minute in their policy?
The Earl of Gowrie: My Lords, I could not disagree more profoundly with the noble Lord and I hope that he will not look upon that as in any way impertinent—to use his phrase. The fact is that the cutbacks imposed on local authorities are very small in relation to the size of their total budgets.
The second point is, as I said in my previous answer to the noble Lord, that the general financing of these provisions is taken up by central Government through the MSC. The fact that local authorities have been subjected to some of the constraints which all of us are under, given the present state of the economy, does not mean that they are not still very major employers in this country and, therefore, have a part to play in providing these opportunities.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, is the noble Earl aware that the problem of unemployment is as serious in the rural areas as it is in the urban areas? Will he ensure that these projects are extended to small employers in villages and in the rural areas of the country generally?
The Earl of Gowrie: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, with his experience of rural areas, for making that point. One of the reasons for setting up the Community Enterprise Programme is that it can operate on a national level and that, of course, will bring the rural areas into its orbit.
Lord Northfield: My Lords, in the light of the noble Earl's reply to a previous supplementary question and of the fact that the Government are increasing expenditure to help the unemployed, will the noble Earl have a look at the plans of the MSC to close skill centres in various parts of the country? Is not that very shortsighted, given that many of these people—particularly young people—could benefit from training in new skills and, thus, be more readily absorbed? In many cases, this decision to close these skill centres was made before the Government's plans were announced to spend more on assisting the unemployed.
The Earl of Gowrie: My Lords, I think that there has been a certain amount of confusion over this issue, and I am glad to take the opportunity posed by the noble Lord's supplementary question to clear it up. Skill centres are to some degree related to local em-

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ployment needs, and the Government and the MSC have closed skill centres only when there has been a poverty of demand for those particular skills in special areas. Of course, we are a mismatched economy to some degree, and it is possible for there to be a considerable demand for skills in one area which is not supported by another area. We are trying to get the balance of provision roughly right.
Lord Northfield: My Lords, will the noble Earl have a look at Shropshire, where the demand is high and the closure is still going ahead?
The Earl of Gowrie: My Lords, I shall be very happy to have a look at any skill centre which the noble Lord brings to my attention.
Lord Davies of Leek: My Lords, I should like to pay a tribute to all those working in the Manpower Services Commission—it is only fair for me to do so. Will the Government look at the resurgence in the use of horses on small farms in rural areas? The trade of farrier and blacksmith in some cases is increasing again because of the expense of fuel needed to run the small farms. It is a little point which is worth consideration.
The Earl of Gowrie: My Lords, one of the pleasures of this House is that very often the supplementary questions which one expects from one's own side are expressed by the side opposite. I should be delighted to try to provide horses for any courses which the noble Lord may suggest.

Unemployed: Constructive Training
2.43 p.m.
Lord Glenarthur: 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 are doing to ensure that schemes for the unemployed include an element of constructive training to the future benefit of the individual and the country as a whole.
The Earl of Gowrie: My Lords, I am informed by the Manpower Services Commission that training and work experience given in their Youth Opportunities Programme or Special Temporary Employment Programme for unemployed young people or adults is related to the needs of both the participants and the local labour market. The training content of YOP is constantly being improved, and the Government and MSC believe training should play a significant part in the development of the enlarged special employment measures that will provide around 480,000 opportunities for young people and adults in 1981–82.
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I thank the noble Earl for that reply, but can he say to what extent it is intended
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to increase the opportunity for training under the Youth Opportunities Programme to receive off-the-job training and further education? In particular, can he say what special attention is to be paid to training in the advanced technologies, such as electronics and micro-processors?
The Earl of Gowrie: My Lords, off-the-job learning is normally available on a day-release basis with a college of further education or other competent provider. In areas where no provision can be run, my information is that the MSC will fund block or residential courses. On the second part of my noble friend's supplementary question relating to new technology, I am glad to say that this will be a major feature of the schemes. We are most anxious to break down the myth that the new technologies are open only to people with high degrees of skills. The point of a machine is that people with relatively low skills can learn to operate it, and the MSC is providing courses in computer training for those with low educational attainments.

Business of the House
2.45 p.m.
Lord Denham: My Lords, with the leave of the House, at a convenient moment after 3.30 p.m. this afternoon my noble friend Lord Mansfield will repeat a Statement that is to be made in another place on the rate support grant (Scotland).

Forgery and Counterfeiting Bill [H.L.]
Lord Renton: My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend Lord Colville of Culross, I beg to introduce a Bill to make fresh provision for England and Wales and Northern Ireland with respect to forgery and kindred offences; to make fresh provision for Great Britain and Northern Ireland with respect to the counterfeiting of notes and coins and kindred offences; to amend the penalties for offences under Section 63 of the Post Office Act 1953; and for connected purposes. My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 1a—(Lord Renton.)
On Question, Bill read 1a, and to be printed.

Marriage (Stepparents and Stepchildren) Bill [H.L.]
Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran: My Lords, I beg to introduce a Bill to enable certain courts to consider applications for leave for marriages to take place between stepparents and their stepchildren; and for connected purposes. My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 1a—(Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran.)
On Question, Bill read 1a, and to be printed.

Representation of the people Bill [H.L.]
Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran: My Lords, I beg to introduce a Bill to require every elector to be treated for the purpose of the right to vote in parliamentary and local elections as resident at his main residence only. My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 1a—(Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran.)
On Question, Bill read 1 a, and to be printed.

Scottish Local Government: Single Tier System
2.48 p.m.
The Earl of Cromartie The Earl of Cromartie rose to call attention to the need to evolve a suitable plan to revert to a single tier system in Scottish local government and to return to the cities and burghs their historic responsibilities in view of the need to reduce costs and increase efficiency; and to move for Papers.
The noble Earl said: My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper, and to move for Papers. I shall not detain your Lordships for long, as I have spoken on this subject both before and during the debate on the so-called reform of Scottish local government in 1972–73. That some changes were needed was obvious to most thinking persons, and more particularly to those of us who were actively engaged in local government, but these changes could have been accomplished within a single tier authority and without the cumbersome, expensive and unpopular regional and district set-up.
Of course, most of us realised that, in no small measure, the device was intended to introduce into local government party politics, so often quite irrelevant to good local government, and which too often results in party political dogma taking precedence over the duty of a local authority to those it is intended to serve—the ratepayer and also the taxpayer. The latter provides the equalisation grants which are of paramount importance especially to places known as "fringe areas", where the cost of living is much higher, and transport either minimal or very expensive—often both.
The single tier system as it operates in the Western Isles of Scotland could well be taken as an example; and provided that the powers—which, incidentally, were guaranteed by the Act of Union in 1707—were returned to the cities and burghs, Fife could, with advantage, be an area for an all-purpose authority. There is one suggestion that I would put forward here: that the financial accounting of the very small burghs should be dealt with by the area authority.
During the debates on this subject we heard the words "grass roots" with some frequency; but by no stretch of the imagination can anyone say with truth that the present system has in any way increased the grass root involvement. Glasgow would become, again, a self-governing city and this would do much to remove the ridiculous position of Strathclyde, where more than half the population of Scotland have their being-2½ million of them—and it is called
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local government. Many areas which, much against their will, were forced into this vast authority could be hived off and be joined to an area with whom they have closer historical and cultural links.
My Lords, I do not propose to examine other regions—not even Lothian—except the Highland Region, with its small and scattered population, but of huge size; added to which are poor communications and sometimes a difficult climate. This region should be split into two all-purpose authorities. Controlled from Inverness would be the county of Inverness and South covering the existing area and perhaps part of Perthshire. North of this, from the excellent headquarters of Dingwall—the counties of Ross and Cromarty, Sutherland and Caithness, though it is possible that the latter might feel more at home with Orkney.
My Lords, there are those with vested interests, and I am not referring to officials but to elected members, who will object strongly, and here I would suggest that it may be time for councillors to be paid. The position at present is not satisfactory. There are councillors who claim no attendance allowance; and there are those who claim what are undoubtedly their legitimate expenses, as was done in the past; but, my Lords, there are others who would seem to be making a substantial second income. Also, I feel the change might curb the too frequent jaunts to foreign parts which are of doubtful value to the ratepayer
My Lords, we have been hearing of late much talk of the "referendum"; I suggest one for the ratepayers of Scotland. I personally have no doubt of the answer—a single tier, all-purpose authority, retaining the valuable community councils; indeed, some of the money saved by the abolition of the two-tier system might go as a modest grant to community councils who might welcome more secretarial help. My Lords, I realise that the Stodart Report on our local government is not yet available, but if I were a betting man I would lay odds that it would not advance my case, but rather opt for the status quo to give more time for the present system to "settle down". We have had seven years of it, and it is too long. My Lords, I beg to move for Papers.
2.53 p.m.
Viscount Thurso: My Lords, the noble Earl, Lord Cromartie, has indeed set us an admirable example this afternoon of brevity in a short debate. He has also set us an admirable example by setting out clearly and concisely what his objective is, and given us a clear idea of what we have to talk about. I disagree with him about emphasis and I disagree with him over a number of suggestions he makes, but I certainly agree with the intent and purport of his Motion this afternoon.
There is no doubt that the reorganisation of local government, as it was carried out, was a disaster for local politics, for local government in Scotland. Whether it was done in order to introduce party politics into local government or not I do not know, but it certainly has not had that effect in, for instance, Caithness District Council where people do not particularly stand with labels round their necks. Nor, for that matter, would I think that politics particularly enter into the Highland Region. There

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you tend to get groupings of areas with like interests, all of which to my mind tends to prove the case that the needs of people in local government have not been satisfied.
The fact that they have to get together within a local authority and prove themselves to look after local needs shows that the grouping of the regions has been wrongly thought out in the first place. Indeed, I tend to think that the reason for the shape of local government in Scotland as we got it with reorganisation was really designed to act as a substitute for devolution. The argument which was really put across, certainly by some people who I know, was that if you created strong regional local authorities these would be able to compete with St. Andrew's House, to deal with St. Andrew's House on a level footing, and would therefore be able to look after the end of the local areas more effectively, and it would not then be necessary to have devolution in one shape or another.
This is just as foolish a way of going about devising a system of local government for Scotland as any other, because whether we eventually do have devolution in Scotland or whether we do not, whether we continue with the same system as we have now or whether some new system that we have not yet seen eventually comes into being and the building in Edinburgh is finally used as a Scottish Assembly, there will still need to be local government. There will still be a purpose for local government. There will still be a need that it be done in a proper manner; that it be done in a way which people understand; that people who are the electors, who vote for their local representatives, who vote for their local administrators, know what they are doing, can see their local administrators, and can see the shape of their local administration and make contact with it. There will also be a need to see that these local administrators are able to carry out effectively the job which is put into their hands.
Whether we have got the present shape of local government in Scotland to satisfy the desires of the party politicians or whether we got it to fob off the devolutionists or not, what we have got is a form of local government where the people who are governed do not necessarily know the people who are doing the governing. Indeed, the people doing the governing often do not even know the circumstances of the people who are being governed.
The noble Earl, Lord Cromartie, has drawn our attention to the happy state of the outer islands, and he hinted that as an inhabitant of Caithness I might be well aware of what goes on in Orkney. Indeed I am very jealous of what goes on in Orkney because they have an all-purpose authority, and it works 100 per cent. It works perfectly. They got rid of Stromness and they got rid of Kirkwall town councils and now run the whole of the Orkney Islands as one council. They carry out all the functions which it takes two tiers of local authority to do on the mainland, and they do it efficiently and to the satisfaction—and this is the point—of the electorate.
If one could model, as the noble Earl said, the shape of local government on this ideal, one would be going a long way towards restoring a proper, satisfying and efficient form of local government. Indeed, in a
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region like the Highland Region it has not been possible to produce the advertised savings because of the shape of the region. For instance, you cannot administer an area which is more than a day's journey from one end to the other and back without having district headquarters within the region. In Caithness, for instance, the number of people employed in the education office is exactly the same as the number before local government reorganisation. The only difference is that we now have to pay for a number of people in Inverness who are additional to those who always did the job perfectly satisfactorily in Wick. One could effect a quick and immediate saving in local government expenditure, if one were so minded, by going back to an all-purpose authority, even as much fractionalised as going back to the original counties. I do not think it would be necessary to do that, and an area where I slightly disagree with the noble Earl, Lord Cromartie, is where he refers in his Motion to returning
"to the cities and burghs their historic responsibilities".
That is not truly feasible. Some of the mergers which have taken place between Royal Burghs and the land-wood areas and small burghs and the landwood areas we would not want to reverse. I do not think that would be wise, although I am sorry to see the Royal Burgh of Wick cease to be a Royal Burgh from an administrative point of view; I am sorry to see the Burgh of the Barony of Thurso cease to be an administrative small burgh; and I am sorry not to have provosts wearing the chains of those two burghs. However, I do not think it would be feasible to ask to go back to that situation, and one would have to get to a very large size of burgh before it would be possible to think of returning it to being an all-purpose authority.
But we should think now, and carefully, of a scheme to return Scotland to a single tier system. Such a system should have as its criterion a size of unit where the electors of the unit are able to understand the structure of the unit by which they are administered, it being a size where the administrators are able to know their patch really well.
A difficulty in dealing with local government is that there are so many functions to carry out, not all of which require units of the same size. It may well be that even if we were to return to single tier all-purpose authorities, in some areas we might have to retain some wider groupings, and I am thinking particularly of the police. If one area has worked reasonably well in local government reorganisation it has been the larger grouping of police forces. There can be unnecessary local rivalry between small police forces, when one wants to have an easy passage of information, assistance and so on across boundaries for efficient police work. However, that sort of thing could be worked out. There could be groupings of general purpose single tier authorities for certain purposes; in some instances it might be the police, in others water, and so on. If there were, say, two local authorities using the same main water supplies, obviously it would be helpful for them to work out a scheme whereby they shared the responsibility and administration.
The longer we persist with the present shape of local government in Scotland the longer we shall perpetuate unnecessary cost and a continuing estrangement between the administrators and those administered and a growing rivalry between two tiers of local

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government. I therefore support the Motion and hope your Lordships will listen carefully to what is said.
3.6 p.m.
Lord Taylor of Gryfe: My Lords, my qualification for entering this debate is twofold. Many years ago I sat on the Glasgow City Council with the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, who I see on the Benches opposite. My other qualification is the fact that I live in the much-maligned Strathclyde Region, and perhaps experience of the Strathclyde Region is more relevant to the debate, with no disrespect to Caithness and Ross and Cromarty, where a very small proportion of the total number governed exist.
The noble Viscount, Lord Thurso, said that in the present situation the people did not know who were the governors and the people who governed did not know their people. In my local newspaper every week is a long column advertising local authority surgeries in the Strathclyde Region. The local councillors come once a week and invite their constituents to discuss their local problems, so it is not fair to say there is that difficulty.
When we talk about reorganising local government, we must remember that the present structure is only five years old, so inevitably there are difficulties, even disenchantment on the part of some people who had high hopes for reorganisation. Remember, too, that the reorganisation was introduced on a totally non-party basis; it arose from a close examination of the structure of local government conducted under the chairmanship of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wheatley. It was not imposed for any party political purpose. It was established because the existing arrangements in local government and the boundaries which existed had become inappropriate. For example, planning and housing problems in the City of Glasgow could no longer be solved within the boundaries of the city. Consequently, we had to reorganise the government of local authorities to provide for these requirements, the changed structure of services, the dispersal of population and the big problems of planning. All of those had to be taken care of and could not be contained within the previous structure.
The Motion calls for—
"a suitable plan to revert to a single tier system in Scottish local government".
But there was not a single tier system before 1975. Local government in Scotland consisted of four counties of cities, 21 large burghs, 176 small burghs, 33 counties and 196 districts, all with separate functions and many of those functions overlapping. So we cannot revert to a single tier system, as the Motion suggests, because that system was irrelevant; and in fact it did not exist.
We created the new system. I agree that there is certain dissatisfaction with the present arrangements. This arises for a variety of reasons. First, we destroyed traditional loyalties. People had loyalties to their own local authority or city council—organisations which had existed for centuries. There was local pride in those organisations, and difficulties can arise if centuries of history and loyalties are disturbed by the imposition of a new pattern which may be necessary
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and which in this instance has been in existence for only five years.
Secondly, the new experiment in local government has been conducted during a period of economic recession, which in turn reflects on the local authority. I understand that a Statement is to be made later today on rate support grant in Scotland, and that will announce the imposition of further restrictions on local authority expenditure. If, as a result of that Statement, certain services are discontinued in the Strathclyde Region, that will inevitably reflect on the region itself. During a period of recession local authority services need to be expanded, yet it is in that period that they are being cut back. There will be disenchantment with the pattern of local government due to reasons that are beyond the control of the Strathclyde Region, or other regions.
I agree completely with the noble Earl, Lord Cromartie, when he says that councillors should be paid. When the Local Government Act was passing through this House I moved an amendment to that effect, your Lordships divided and voted 44–44, and the amendment was not carried. That was unfortunate because I believe that the present system does not necessarily attract a wide enough range of people to public service. I also believe that there should never be built into a system an incentive to hold more meetings than are necessary. I consider that that situation could be amended without the drastic reorganisation that the noble Earl, Lord Cromartie, has in mind.
May I ask for a little more understanding about the problems of the Strathclyde Region? The region has a revenue budget of £1,161 million. It is much larger than many countries whose representatives are participating in debates at the United Nations in New York. The region has massive responsibilities for social services, housing, planning, and so on. It is in a sense a very large government. Despite all the pressures and constraints on public spending, that "government" last year achieved a variance of less than 1 per cent. on its total budget. I am engaged in a number of businesses and I wish that some of them could reflect similar good housekeeping. I regard that as a major achievement, and I consider that the local authority has behaved with a great sense of responsibility.
Despite the many demands on its services, and the fact that it operates in one of the most depressed areas of the country, the region was able to retain its rate per pound at 64p, as against 81p for the Lothian Region, and 73p for the Highland Region. So there, again, was an instance of good housekeeping and concern for the ratepayers.
I should like the experiment of Strathclyde to be given more time and understanding, and I hope that at this early stage in the reorganisation of local government we do not try to upset the existing arrangements. Those of us who lived through the last reorganisation know very well that it was a very expensive business. Local authority employees were very well protected in redundancy arrangements. During the last reorganisation terms were negotiated which were perhaps appropriate but also very favourable terms. To revert to a single tier, as is suggested in the Motion, would cost us millions of pounds in a period when we are limiting expenditure on essential public services.

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For these reasons I cannot support the Motion before the House.
3.16 p.m.
Lord Campbell of Croy: My Lords, we are grateful to my noble friend for giving us this opportunity to review local government in Scotland after about five years of the present system being in operation. My noble friend was lucky in the ballot. He came first in the first ballot of the Session, and the only mischance that I see in that, and which he could not possibly have foreseen, is that the report of the Stodart Committee is not yet available. The committee was set up to look into the subject that is before us today, and it was instructed to report in December—this month. So I would ask my noble friend Lord Mansfield, when he replies, whether he can give an indication of when the report will be published. No doubt the Secretary of State for Scotland will wish to look at it himself before it becomes public.
I believe that most of us will agree that there are some elements of local government in Scotland which are not at present functioning as smoothly as we would wish. My noble friend's solution is that there should be a new single tier system. That, I suggest, certainly should be considered. My noble friend is in a very good position, and he speaks with good reason, because under the old system he was the convener of the county of Ross and Cromarty. That county was exceedingly successful, in particular when it had to tackle the new and testing problems which the discovery of offshore oil produced.
In that part of Northern Scotland—and my own home is close to it—the defects and shortcomings of the previous system were not reflected. Due to geography and the spread of population, the ill-effects of conflicting policies of neighbouring local authorities and the lack of expertise and resources among some small authorities were not as apparent in that area as they were in other parts of Scotland. So my noble friend speaks with authority from an area where the old system was made to work satisfactorily. I am not as certain as he is, however, that the solution is a new single tier. By all means let it be considered, but I believe that we should await the Stodart Report.
Could there not also be other causes for the malaise which exists in some parts of Scottish local government? I shall give one example. When the new system was being created in 1974–75 my impression was that some of the new councils took on staffs that were much too large. There was over-recruitment. The Conservative Party had left government, and therefore I am not in a position to report because I was not a close observer of the scene. But I had the impression that there was over-recruitment. Certainly we had beforehand recognised the possibility and we had endeavoured to do what we could to prevent the expansion and empire building which we felt might take place. Indeed, we were preparing for the prospect of many redundancies among local government officials. We set up a staff commission to help steer into new jobs outside local government those who became redundant during the reorganisation. My understanding is that it was the staff commission itself which became under-employed. Indeed, the
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members of the staff commission became redundant; and I would ask my noble friend the Minister whether, when he replies, he can confirm the reports that appeared in the press in about 1977 that there were then more full-time local government officials in Scotland than there had been under the previous system, even though there were only about a quarter of the number of the councils which had been in existence before. Whatever the figures, this was certainly not what the Wheatley Commission had contemplated.
The report of the Royal Commission on Local Government in Scotland, which was presided over by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wheatley, has been much criticised. I should like to say a word or two to put it into perspective. I believe that that Commission performed a notable service for Scotland on a subject on which it is impossible to please everyone, and a subject which is bound to raise sharp controversy. There were some minority reservations to the report, but it was unanimous in recommending a two-tier system for Scotland. I would just remind your Lordships that the three main political parties were well represented. The late Betty Harvie Anderson was a member, and it is only her sad, early death which has prevented her from contributing to this debate and telling us at first hand about the Wheatley Commission's recommendations. For the Liberal Party there was Mr. Russell Johnston, a leading member of the party in Scotland and the Member for Inverness; and for the Labour Party there was Tom Fraser, a former Member of Parliament and Minister. There were also other distinguished members from Scotland. The geographical spread was there, too.
The Wheatley Commission set out their reasons for their recommendation, and I shall try to put them only very briefly. The first was that there should be larger units of local government in order that there should be consistency in policy over recognisable areas; and the second was that industry and others coming in with developments should not find themselves having to deal with a multitude of local authorities, all with different requirements and different procedures to be followed. This had certainly acted as a brake on industrial development in Scotland previously. So there was broad agreement that there should be larger units taking into account population as well as geographical areas.
One of the problems in Scotland which all noble Lords from Scotland will know is that half the population of Scotland lives in a very small area in and around Glasgow; and that, of course, has raised the particular issue of Strathclyde. On that issue I will only say that I think it was a very difficult one to decide. The Wheatley Commission were unanimous in recommending this large area. In fact, the one which came into existence was smaller than that which Wheatley recommended; but there were very sound arguments, which were put in both Houses of Parliament, for dividing it up. The Wheatley Commission felt that it was important that there should be consistent policies over what is a comparatively small area, though densely populated, rather than the previous system, where a number of authorities appeared to be adopting policies which conflicted with, and indeed in some cases militated against, the policies of their neighbours. That was one of the

1113
very difficult questions which had to be decided; but, as regards the principle, both the major parties had agreed that there should be larger units. The Conservative Party, in government, had issued a White Paper in 1963 recommending this; while statements and studies made by the Scottish Labour Party indicated that they were also broadly in agreement.
There was a conclusion, therefore, that a tier of large authorities—a dozen or so—would be appropriate for Scotland. But that would mean that councillors were too remote from the individual and from local communities, and therefore the Wheatley Commission suggested that there should also be another tier of much smaller authorities; and during the course of the consideration of that report the Government of the day added to the functions of the tier of smaller authorities the function of housing, that being something which affects individuals.
My Lords, the Wheatley Commission Report was published in September 1969. A debate upon it took place in the House of Commons on 10th and 12th February in the Scottish Grand Committee, and I think that the position was summed up as concisely as it could be by the noble Lord, Lord Ross of Marnock, who is to speak later in this debate, when he said at that time, on 10th February, at column 10:
"It is almost unanimously agreed that reorganisation of local government is necessary and that a two-tier system is desirable".
He then went on to say:
"There is no consensus of opinion about the particular form which such a system might take. This was predictable".
How right he proved to be, my Lords ! But he accurately stated to the Grand Committee the position as it was then, of virtual unanimity upon a two-tier system.
I think it is some consolation to my noble friend Lord Cromartie, or should be, that it was inevitable that, in those circumstances, the two-tier system should be adopted, if only for a trial period. A single tier system was considered by the Wheatley Committee and was firmly rejected.
But the possibility of a single tier was not overlooked in those days of 1970 and 1971. A year before the Bill for local government was presented to Parliament, the Government of the day reorganised the National Health Service in Scotland, and for that we adopted a single tier of health boards, in contrast to the system in England and Wales, where a two-tier system of health boards was adopted. In that case there was substantial support for the Government's proposal among medical and administrative opinion in Scotland, but there was no counterpart where local government was concerned; there was no such support for a single tier system. There were difficult issues, such as Strathclyde, which arose from the Wheatley Report, and I certainly will not raise them again in this limited debate—noble Lords from Scotland will themselves immediately identify the problems. They were ones where the arguments were finely balanced and it was difficult to decide which way to go. The decisions has to be taken because otherwise the whole reform would have been held up.
My Lords, when the Wheatley Commission's report was discussed in this House, which was on 9th December 1969, my noble friend Lord Cromartie himself spoke on the two-tier system and raised no objection to it at all. He drew attention to various
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points concerning the Highland Region, as it was proposed, and I am glad to say that some of them were adopted; for example, the most-purpose authority status for the three island groups, which he suggested at the time. That was not proposed by the Wheatley Commission, and, as noble Lords from Scotland will know, I was occupying the unenviable position of Secretary of State for Scotland at the time the Wheatley Commission report had to be implemented, so I in fact took that decision myself, to make the three island groups most-purpose authorities. The noble Viscount, Lord Thurso, called them all-purpose authorities, but I would point out that they do not cover fire or police, and I think for the very reason which he himself gave—that police forces, if they are too small, cannot be as efficient as they would be otherwise.
I think that we must, none the less, be ready to adjust to experience and to change. The fact that virtually nobody, including my noble friend Lord Cromartie, objected to the two-tier system when the Wheatley Commission report was being debated in 1969 and 1970 in both Houses of Parliament is a reflection of the general feeling at that time. If we are now to look at this and see whether a single tier system can be set up, or any other system in the light of the Stodart Report, there will still be two problems which must be faced in any restructuring. First, if there is to be a single tier system, the units must be small enough not to be remote from the communities they represent, and yet they must be large enough not to nullify each other's policies by adopting different or conflicting ones. The second factor that must be borne in mind is the boundaries between towns and urban areas, on the one hand, and the countryside around them, on the other. There are extensions of real boundaries when the building of houses is carried out on the edges of a town or when industrial estates are set up. The argument and the feuding which used to go on in the old days when boundaries were being adjusted, or attempts were being made to adjust them, showed that that system of trying to cordon off towns from the country was not workable.
My Lords, I will end by giving an example under the former system. This was experienced by the Clyde football team when they were playing at home at Shawfield. In the first half, their goalkeeper would be in the city of Glasgow, but at half-time, when they changed over, he was in Rutherglen. It was very difficult to adjust the boundaries in those days or to reduce the unproductive hostility which arose between neighbouring small authorities and between the country areas and the towns.
I hope that the Government will take fully into account what my noble friend Lord Cromartie has said and what others will say in this debate; but I myself should like to see the report of the Stodart Committee before making a judgment.
Lord Lovat: My Lords, before the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, the ex-Minister, ex-Secretary of' State for Scotland, sits down, may I ask whether he would not agree that the crofter counties have their peculiar problems and that surely it must have been wrong in the Wheatley Report to add the county of Argyll to the Strathclyde Region? It continues to rankle in every Highlander's mind.
Lord Campbell of Croy: My Lords, this is a problem, and we dealt with a crofting Bill at some length three or four years ago in this House. But it is even more difficult than that because the Isles of Bute and Arran have been added to the Highland Development Board area and there are a number of boundaries of that kind which do not accord fully with local government boundaries. It is one of the many complications which arise in Scotland.
3.33 p.m.
Lady Saltoun: My Lords, I should like to give your Lordships three examples of things that are bad in the present system and were very much better, in some places, before. Before the reorganisation of local government in Scotland, Fraserburgh burgh council employed general labourers except where special skills were required. Those labourers all received the same rates of pay and were taken on on the understanding that they were prepared to work in any department. Thus we never had the situation where, for example, in severe weather in winter, the gardeners were sitting twiddling their thumbs in the greenhouses while other people had to be employed on clearing the streets of snow and ice. Now everything is departmentalised and each department employs labourers for their purposes only, so that if for any reason those labourers cannot do their job, they are idle instead of getting on with a job for another department. This either means employing far more labour at great extra expense to the ratepayers or having the work less well done or even sometimes not done at all.
My next point is this. Funds are now allocated to each department for their purposes only. They cannot be switched to another department where the need may be greater. Also, if a department has not spent its entire allocation before the end of the financial year, it risks getting a smaller allocation for the following year. This does not make for good housekeeping. I should like to give you an example, again from my own district. Banff and Buchan District Council are proposing to spend approximately £70,000 on a sports pavilion for the playing fields in Fraserburgh. They have produced a grandiose design where something much simpler would have been perfectly adequate, because they must spend this money before the end of March—and, even in the present stage of Britain's finances, it cannot be diverted to necessities like housing, cleansing, repairs to pavements and so on. Moreover, they have to borrow the money and the loan has to be serviced—by the ratepayers. It is about as sensible as if a man were to tell his wife that she had to spend a certain amount on toys for the children every year, even if the family got into debt doing so, the children went hungry and the rent could not be paid.
My last point is that in towns and boroughs in the old days, if people had complaints or problems they knew exactly whom to go to—the town clerk, the burgh surveyor or whoever—and that person's office was nearby. Now nobody, or very few people, know where to go. The department concerned may be many miles away in some other town, and often people are shunted from person to person or from department to department and no one knows whose pigeon it is or who is
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prepared to take any responsibility. There is little liaison between departments.
"East is East and West is West
And never the twain shall meet"
—sometimes se ms to be their motto.
People are naturally very discontented—and not only the ratepayers who have to foot the bill. I do not know whether or not it would be possible to go back to the old system as proposed by the noble Earl, Lord Cromartie, but, whatever happens, these are the kind of things that I hope the Government will consider in future legislation.

Rate Support Grant, Scotland
3.37 p.m.
The Minister of State, Scottish Office The (Earl of Mansfield): My Lords, with the leave of the House, I shall now repeat a Statement being made in another place by my honourable friend the Minister for Home Affairs and the Environment at the Scottish Office. The Statement is as follows:
"My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Scotland is this afternoon informing the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities that the 1981–82 rate support grant for Scottish local authorities will be derived from total relevant expenditure of £2,458·5 million (at November 1980 prices). The relevant expenditure figure is 2·7 per cent. less than the figure on which grant for 1980–81 was based. That reflects my right honourable friend's allocation of priorities within the Scottish block of expenditure in the light of the Government's public expenditure decisions announced to the House by my right honourable and learned friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer on 24th November.
"The new grant percentage represents an actual reduction (compared with 1980–81) of 1 per cent.: a further 0·8 per cent. adjustment replaces an ad hoc abatement made since 1978 in respect of rates on local authority properties and will have no net effect on the cash received by local authorities. That results in a grant percentage of 66·7. Aggregate grants for 1981–82, on expenditure at November 1980 prices, will be £1,639·8 million, of which rate support grant will be £1,503·1 million.
"There will be a cash limit of £94 million on additional grant for 1981–82 towards pay and price increases beyond November, 1980. It includes provision for increases of no more than 6 per cent. on average in pay settlements in this round and provisionally for the next. It contains provision for price increases of no more than an average of 11 per cent. between 1980–81 and 1981–82. Total grant payable in increase orders may be above or below the cash limit to take account of variations in expenditure due to changes in interest rates, which are not subject to cash limits. My right honourable friend intends to make additional grants in respect of increased costs of £24·5 million for 1979–80 and £203·1 million for 1980–81. Grants for 1980–81 may be increased again in a second increase order next year.
"The main object of the grant distribution formula will be stability, as recommended by the Convention. Within this general objective, my right honourable friend will reduce the ratio of resources element to needs element from 1:7 (as in 1980–81) to 1:9 in order to restrict the additional resources element payable to authorities striking comparatively high rate poundages. My right honourable friend will lay the necessary order for the approval of the House as soon as possible, together with a report of the considerations underlying his proposals." My Lords, that is the end of the Statement.
3.40 p.m.
Lord Ross of Marnock: My Lords, my first duty is to thank the noble Lord, the Minister of State, for this Statement. I think that it is the first time that the rate support grant order has merited a Statement, so it is unique. I do not know why—I think that they are suffering from a guilty conscience in the Scottish Office, and the Department of the Environment, in respect of places where they should have made Statements and neglected to do so. I shall not mention anything about colleges, housing or anything like that.
We are grateful for the Statement. It was a much clearer Statement than the one we had yesterday. I am sure that my noble friend Lord Irving of Dartford will be glad to know that in Scotland we make no bones about it. If we go above the expected limits in respect of inflation then it is visualised that increase orders will be introduced next year, as indeed they are this year. People talk about rate support grant and do not really know what we are talking about. We are talking about education; we are talking about fire services; the police; water; road maintenance; social work; treatment of the elderly and children; and all these other services which enrich life and make life endurable for people, such as home helps, civil defence, street lighting local transport in rural areas and in towns. So, when we talk about "bashing" local authorities, we are talking about this.
The first thing that we have is a cut of 2·7 per cent. in reckonable expenditure. This is an arbitrary cut so far as I can notice because it says in the Statement that it reflects the Secretary of State's priorities—not the priorities of those who have the responsibility but the Secretary of State's priorities. That is a strange doctrine in respect of local government. The Statement goes on to say that he is cutting the percentage grant by 1 per cent.
What happens first of all is that they decide in conference what is the reckonable expenditure. Was there agreement with the Scottish local authorities about that? Regarding the cutting of the percentage by 1 per cent., there is no need for agreement, that it is just laid down by the Secretary of State. It would appear to me that there has been an arbitrary decision in respect of reckonable expenditure as well. It is cut and the Government may well argue that because it is cut then their expenditure can be cut as well.
But, within the cut of the relevant expenditure, there are expected increases. We know that. We are proud of the fact that we have more policemen than we had before; and they are far better paid and so they are more expensive. To the extent that there is an increase there, it means that that 2 per cent. cut is a
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much greater cut in all the other services. Examined them, my Lords. The one big function that is in this rate support grant is educaton. It is the biggest lump of the rate support grant. I have known Ministers of Education not realise it and vote in Cabinet for cutting the rate support grant, not realising that they were voting to cut themselves.
The noble Lord, Lord Bellwin, announced it. But Lord Bellwin has nothing to do with education. The Secretary of State for Education has to bear this. The biggest cut will be there and if there are increases in any other field, then it comes to that. What I fear is this: in the Scottish position today we are going to have fewer ratepayers. We have over a quarter of a million people unemployed. Many of these people will be applying for a rate rebate. That will increase the local expenditure rather than decrease it, because it is not one hundred per cent. met by the Government.
There are redundancies all over the place, and that means closed factories. Yesterday, in Glenrothes, Vestey's cold store shut down, leaving 200 people unemployed. That is a loss of rates from the individual ratepayers; it is also a loss from the company. They will not be paying rates on an empty factory. When one thinks about Strathclyde, spoken about by my noble friend, and the loss in valuation, the loss in income, I should like to ask this question: what assessment was taken, what valuation was taken? Was it last year's or that of the year before? It is about two or three years ago since we had a revaluation. It will be quite unrealistic, but it means that with fewer ratepayers—individuals and companies—with a cut of the Government's grant, quite apart from the reckonable expenditure (which I am sure is bound to be exceeded), it means that there are going to be massive increases of rates within Scotland. This is as a result of the Government's policy. It is a dim outlook for Scotland.
There are one or two questions that I should like to ask. Can the noble Lord, tell me what estimate is made of the increase in rate rebates? That should affect reckonable expenditure. That part has to be paid by the local authorities and is not helped. What is the increase in police costs? This will give us an idea as to whether the reckonable expenditure and a reduction of reckonable expenditure is a proper reduction of 2·7 per cent. or in respect of all the other services is very much more.
What about water, my Lords? Also, the police are not going to be kept to 6 per cent. but water in Scotland is a local authority service. What is the argument about at the moment? It is somewhere between 10·8 per cent. and 18 per cent. that they were promised. We know that that 6 per cent. is not going to be kept to. Yet, according to the cash limits, the local authority have to meet the difference. This is unrealistic. At the same time, with 256,000 unemployed—and there were another 1,000 announced yesterday at British Leyland at Bathgate—the call on the services, particularly the social services, is going to be greater than ever. I can remember cash limits and saying that the desirable would need to wait upon the essential. We are now at the point where we are cutting into the essential and the quality of living in Scotland is going to be worse as a result of the Government's policies and this bravado Statement about

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squeezing local authorities. It is not local authorities that we are squeezing, it is people.
3.48 p.m.
Lord Mackie of Benshie: My Lords, I, too, should like to thank the Minister for making the Statement, and express the hope that the calculations have been more accurate than some of the calculations that this Government have made over the money supply and one or two other things. We accept that if we are going to get real wealth back into the economy Government spending has to be cut, and the Government are trying to do this.
I agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Ross of Marnock, said about the many hardships inflicted on the people of Scotland as a result of this; but I also know that throughout the local authority area there are very large areas of waste where some cutting can and should be done, many of them relevant to the debate that we have interrupted in order to hear this Statement.
I should like to ask two questions. I should like to repeat the question put by my noble friend Lord Beaumont of Whitley to the noble Lord, Lord Bellwin, yesterday. He did not get an answer. How are we going to vary this between the good and the bad authorities? It must take into account the past record of authorities who have pleased the Government and others—whom one can name not very far from the county of Angus—who have not done so. It is grossly unfair if we are going to have absolutely flat-rate all-out cutting of both competent and incompetent authorities.
The other question I should like to ask, which is very relevant to the one posed by the noble Baroness a moment ago, is this. Are we going to relax any of the tight Government instructions to local authorities such as having to spend money in any one year if they want to get it? It appears to me that if you are going to ask the authorities to cut—and I agree they have got to cut—then you must relax some of the firmer laws which have for a long time appeared to many people to be stupid.
The Earl of Mansfield: My Lords, I must thank both noble Lords for their qualified welcome of this Statement—at least I think the noble Lord, Lord Ross, welcomed it to start with until he went into rather wider issues. Nobody denies that these cuts are going to entail difficult decisions which local authorities will have to make. Painful decisions will have to be made by the local authorities in many instances to cut, or at any rate not to maintain or not to expand, services upon which no doubt they would like to increase expenditure. But I repeat, as has been repeated so often from this Dispatch Box, and as was echoed, I think, by the noble Lord, Lord Mackie, that the national interest unfortunately necessitates for the time being curtailment of the resources which are made available for local services. Curtailment of public expenditure is an essential part of the Government's economic strategy, and our ability to finance future tolerable levels of service depends upon winning the present battle.
We need to keep in mind the fact that, even with
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the reduction of 2·7 per cent. from the 1980–81 figure, the amount of relevant expenditure proposed for 1981–82 remains above the level of actual spending in real terms in 1977–78. In that year local authority services were not widely regarded as being inadequate, and so I hope your Lordships will agree with me that there is no reason why the local authorities will not be able to serve the public as well in 1981–82.
The noble Lord, Lord Ross, asked a number of questions. First, on the likely increases in rate rebates, I am informed that 90 per cent. of these will be paid by central Government, and that is additional to the rate support grant. I think that disposes of that matter—
Lord Ross of Marnock: That still remains—
The Earl of Mansfield: My Lords, perhaps the noble Lord will just let me finish and then I am sure the House will look at him indulgently if he wants to come back—or at least it may do. He also asked what loss of valuation there may be. The valuation is estimated to increase in 1981–82 by about 2 per cent. over 1980–81: the annual increase is of that order.
Lord Galpern: My Lords, regarding the valuation increase, can the noble Minister state whether the devaluation in Scotland will take place according to statutory requirement, or is there any possibility of its being postponed?
The Earl of Mansfield: My Lords, I do not think the noble Lord has quite appreciated what I was saying. The noble Lord, Lord Ross, asked by way of a preliminary, I think, what agreements or consultations there had been so far as the Scottish local authorities are concerned, relating to cuts in relevant expenditure. I am sure the noble Lord will know very well, if he stops to think, that in a matter such as this no agreement is sought by Governments. Governments are expected to give a lead, and they give a lead and have given a lead. In such instances, in the national interest local authorities are asked to follow that lead. That does not mean to say that there is not consultation before the Government take their decision. But it is for them to decide these matters and to give a lead, as I have said.
The noble Lord, Lord Mackie of Benshie, in effect asked: How do the Government distinguish between the good local authority, of which we have at least one in Tayside, and the less good authority, of which we also probably have one in Tayside, not so very far away from where he and I live on the edge of the raspberry belt? In so far as this can be taken into account, it is so taken in relation to the needs and resources elements. The noble Lord will have heard me when I said in effect that there will be a reduction in the ratio of the resources element to the needs element from 1:7 to 1:9. This, of course, hits at (if that is the right word) the naughty authority, if I may so call it, which in order to spend money has to impose a high rate poundage. It will then be the profligate authority which will come off worst in that reallocation of resources.
The noble Lord also asked me about instructions to local authorities. I have to tell him frankly that

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this is too big a question for me to answer in the context of this Statement. I have not got the information. I will find it out and write to him.
Lord Galpern: Before the noble Earl sits down, my Lords, is he prepared to answer the question I asked, which was regarded as irrelevant at that point? Will he answer it now, please?
The Earl of Mansfield: My Lords, either the noble Lord did not follow what I said or I did not understand what he asked. Whichever may be the truth, I cannot answer his question now.
3.58 p.m.
Lord Ross of Marnock: My Lords, does the noble Earl appreciate that I have quite a lot of experience in rate support grant in respect of negotiations with local authorities? I used to have a final meeting which usually lasted all day. I used to ask a simple question: Did they accept as fair the total of relevant expenditure? Secondly, did they agree to the Government's reduction of 1 per cent. in their percentage of that relevant expenditure, which comes to just over 60 per cent.? I should tell the House that 60 per cent. is an average; if you go to Orkney it is probably somewhere nearer 90 per cent. and the Highland area is fairly high too. The reduction of the 1 per cent. amounts to very much less when you come to Edinburgh and Glasgow. Lastly, the important thing—and we seldom have disagreements about this within the Scottish local authorities—is the distribution formula. It usually is agreed. Was it agreed on this occasion?
The Earl of Mansfield: My Lords, I know there were consultations. Whatever happened in the days when the noble Lord was a thoroughly distinguished Secretary of State, my understanding of the situation is that no agreement in those terms was sought on these matters, nor was given. Indeed, my right honourable friend is meeting the Convention only this afternoon to tell them what is going to happen, so I fear that the answer to all his questions is, No. So far as the question of the noble Lord, Lord Galpern, is concerned, which the Officials Box understood if I did not—and I apologise to him for my stupidity and obtuseness—the Secretary of State will decide at the appropriate time whether and when the next revaluation will take place.
Lord Taylor of Gryfe: My Lords, in his Statement the noble Earl made certain specific assumptions with regard to, first, the level of wage settlements at 6 per cent., and, secondly, the rate of inflation in the period covered by the rate support grant of 11 per cent. I wonder whether, in his economic projections, he made any assumptions with regard to the consequences of these in relation to unemployment.
The Earl of Mansfield: I am sorry, my Lords. I do not quite follow the noble Lord. Assumptions were made on inflation, but I do not know about the rest of his question.
Lord Taylor of Gryfe: My Lords, the question is simply that the noble Earl made some assumptions in connection with the inflation rate and the wage settlement
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rate in local government. I wondered whether his economists had made any projections or assumptions about the impact on employment as a result of the allocations that are now being made. Presumably the local authorities will have to cut back to some degree on their expenditure programme.
The Earl of Mansfield: Yes, my Lords. All these matters would have been taken into account.
Lord Kaldor: My Lords, if I understood the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, aright, his question was that if real wages fall by 5 per cent., because prices go up by 11 per cent. and wages by only 6 per cent., would that not have unfavourable repercussions on consumption—hence demand and hence employment, especially local employment? That was his question.
The Earl of Mansfield: Yes, my Lords, I understood exactly that. But the question to which my right honourable friend had to address himself was the level of rate support grant. With all respect, that is rather a different matter.

Scottish Local Government: Single Tier System
Debate resumed.
4.2 p.m.
The Earl of Selkirk: My Lords, if we may revert from finance to the structure of local government, I should like to thank the noble Earl, Lord Cromartie, for raising this very important question. It is all very well to say that the system has been going for only five years, but we still can form certain judgments as to the way in which it is doing so.
I must admit that I have very attenuated experience in present local government. It is about four decades since I was last a member in local government in Scotland. However, I think I can say that at that time we covered about three times as many subjects and it cost about a quarter of what it costs today. I am not saying that we were doing it well. All I am saying is that there are different ways of dealing with local government at one time or another. May I say at once to the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, that I am delighted to think that Strathclyde is going well. I have very little personal experience of Strathcylde, though I know there are a number of people who say that there are problems in getting answers to questions.
In 1969, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wheatley, ended up his report, which I think is an extremely important document—because, whether you agree with the conclusions or not, there is a mass of wise comment on the whole sphere of local government—by saying this:
"Local government in Scotland has lost credibility and status over the years".
The real question that we ask ourselves today is: has it regained credibility and has it regained status? I am afraid that I do not think it has. I do not necessarily endorse what was said by the noble Viscount, Lord Thurso, who went so far as to say that it is a disaster, but I must admit that I have heard people

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talking about organised chaos. This is all exaggeration, no doubt, but there are certain irritations and a limited degree of pleasure.
The first point is that the division of duties between the region and the district has been quite inadequately defined. I do not know how it happened, but there is a range of what may be called grey subjects, such as highways, which may depend on the weather. There is the building of houses without control of the drains and there are various environmental health questions. I do not want to go into these matters. The noble Earl who represents the Scottish Office knows this point very well, and I am not going to enlarge on it. But the result of that, in almost all cases, is to create bad relations between the district and the region, which is not in the interests of good government.
Your Lordships may say that this is all going to be dealt with by the Stodart Committee—it may be; I do not know. But the Stodart Committee, which has rather a narrow remit, will have to make fairly radical changes if this situation is to be improved. However, I am sure it is very bad that, at the present time, there are areas where there is disagreement between the two, because they do not know exactly their responsibilities. I know that the officials are very good men and that they find ways and means of getting around a problem, but there is unsatisfactory legislation.
I want to deal with two points which should be covered. First, the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, talked about loyalties. I want to talk about the dignity of civic organisations. Your Lordships may think that dignity is a very small thing: there are local people who are pompous and so on, and that is not right. But to my mind dignity is an integral part of all political institutions. If you do not believe that, I ask you to read Walter Bagehot and, if you do not accept Walter Bagehot, read Richard Crossman's introduction to the new edition of Walter Bagehot. There you will see the necessity of a dignified element in the constitution.
A great deal of that has gone. The royal burghs have gone, the baillies have gone and the Lord Provosts are being undermined bit by bit. This is wrong. We must have heads who stand for something, and who are seen to stand for something in our local government, if they are to carry any weight. It is not for us to talk about pomposity. Is there ever such a splendid sight as the opening of Parliament, or seeing the judges in their judicial function, which is an integral element of their work?
Secondly, there is confusion as to who is responsible. The noble Lady, Lady Saltoun, made this point and she was right. I am not arguing about whether councillors do their jobs or talk to their constituents. It is the problem of getting decisions. That is not easy and it is something which is terribly important. There is a necessity in any democratic organisation to know who is responsible and where you can get a decision. Democracy means nothing unless you get those two.
There is a telling phrase in Stephen Runciman, who wrote about the white rajahs of Borneo. He said that in the East democracy means speaking to the head man. The only thing he is wrong about is that that applies in the West, too. You want to know who is making
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the decision and, if you know, whether he has got the arguments that you want to put forward. That is fudged today. I do not know whether Stodart will be able to remedy the position, but that situation must be restored.
It is quite true that the noble Lord and learned, Lord Wheatley, examined the possibility of a one-tier system, and it is important to say that the chamberlains—that is, the finance officers—the municipal engineers and, to my knowledge, a lot of the county clerks were very much in favour of a one-tier system. Of course, it was not quite a one-tier system, as the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, said. It was very nearly an all-purpose system, with offshoots in certain directions—joint committees and things of that sort. But there was one main committee or one main layer.
I am fairly of the opinion that in this report, instead of going for a one-tier system, we have sacrificed local government on the altar of strategic decisions. That is the basis on which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wheatley, worked; that strategic decisions should be made at a higher level. I am not saying that that is necessarily wrong. What is wrong is that they dangled from the strategic decisions all kinds of local matters, which ran right down to personal services, and the whole thing is out of proportion. Of course, we did not follow Wheatley entirely in this matter.
I am going to say a word about Edinburgh. Edinburgh has come extremely badly out of this. From time immemorial, Edinburgh has been an all-purpose authority, catering for half a million people and quite big enough to provide the whole range of services. It is the capital of Scotland. However, I put that aside. Today it is the second biggest tourist attraction in this country after London, and it is very important for that reason. Its functions, whether they be the Festival or what you will, are divided between the region and the town. It is not good enough. I say to the Scottish Office that the Lord Provost of Edinburgh ought to stand for something. If visitors come to the country they expect to find there somebody of civic standing. But this does not happen. I say that in passing. Edinburgh should be given a position of greater standing, although I do not want to "do down" Glasgow, since there is in this House a former Lord Provost. However, the country expects the Lord Provost of Edinburgh to be given a standing.
I am fairly confident that there is going to be a great deal of opposition, because the Scottish Office is largely responsible for the structure. It is their child. I do not think that they will willingly admit that they have done it all wrong. Nor will the office holders in the regions be extremely glad to do so. To have two organisations, theoretically of equal status, is fundamentally wrong. Whether we do or do not go back wholly to an all-purpose authority I am not sure, but we must go back to a main authority: one authority with other authorities emanating from it, perhaps with joint committees. To have two authorities, with vague relations and to say that they are of roughly the same status is near to chaos. It is not good enough. It is that which, if I may, I am asking the noble Earl to try to straighten out. Local authority is important. It will never be perfect; you will never get the boundaries perfect. However, we must try to get local authority

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clearer than it is now. It is that which I ask the noble Earl on the Front Bench to try to do.
Baroness Gaitskell: My Lords, before the noble Earl sits down, may I ask him how one can have dignity in local government if there is no fairness in local government?
The Earl of Selkirk: My Lords, I do not know quite how that comes in. I think you can have unfairness and great dignity. It may not be very just but you can have it. You can help fairness, though, by having dignity.
4.13 p.m.
Lord Boothby: My Lords, first I should like to thank the noble Earl, Lord Cromartie, for raising this debate. We should all be grateful to him. My excuse for speaking—it will be only for three or four minutes—is that I can at least guarantee a certain personal consistency. The last reform of local government, following the report of the Wheatley Commission, has been, in my opinion and as I predicted at the time, a dismal failure. I am quite uncompromising on this point. I see all the arguments put by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, and other noble Lords for and against the Wheatley Commission's report, and for and against this and that. I was always opposed to it in another place, from start to finish. I always thought it was absolutely wrong to break up the existing system of local government in Scotland and to remove the close contact between the people and their own local government which had been the pride and one of the glories of Scotland for centuries.
That reform, which was reform for reform's sake and not because it was essential, has had a disastrous effect on Scottish life in general. To give only one example, we now have in the North of Scotland two grandiose sounding authorities: the Grampian Regional Council and the Banff and Buchan Regional Council. The Grampians is a beautiful and very large range of mountains. If I wanted to get hold of the regional council, for the life of me I do not know where I should go. I should have a shot at Perth, but it would be only a guess. Let us take, for example, somebody living in a small village in the middle of Aberdeenshire who wanted to get in touch with his local authority. In the old days he would go to the "toon hoose". He knew very well where that was. Now he would have to go to Banff. How the hell is he to get to Banff? And when he gets there what is he to do? Where is he to go?
There is no close contact between the present local authorities in Scotland and the people. I knew them in the days when there was the closest contact. I give one example, a glaring case which reached me this morning. St. Fergus, as many noble Lords know, has now become the receiving centre for North Sea oil and gas. It is expanding very rapidly. An engineer has bought a house here—this is not the only case, but it is a particularly bad example because it is an expensive house—but he is not allowed to have it joined to the main sewage system, for no other reason than that the Grampian Regional Council and the Banff and Buchan Regional Council disagree with each other. So he cannot get into his house. That news reached me only this morning, but there are
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several other cases like it. These grandiose councils do not get on at all. They do not like each other. Luckily, they do not see much of each other, any more than they see the people who vote for them—or the people of Scotland see them. Some reforms are essential, I agree, but reform just for the sake of it—just for the hell of it, I would say—is nearly always bad.
I felt that very strongly during the recent interesting debate in your Lordships' House about the future of this House, in which I took no part, but which I read very carefully. It is a very odd thing that everybody knows in his heart that the House of Commons will never accept an elected second Chamber, but they will accept this one—and they do, practically without exception. They take our advice again and again. Why? First, because I venture to say to noble Lords, without any attempt to flatter, that in recent years you have been doing a frightfully good job of work; and, secondly, because the whole thing works. And when something is working well it is much better to leave it alone. There is no point in interfering with it just for the sake of interference and changing things.
My two qualifications for speaking in this dabate are, first, my absolutely consistent opposition to the Wheatley Report, much as I admired the intellectual gifts of Lord Wheatley; and, secondly, my 34 unbroken years as a Member of Parliament for a Scottish constituency. I worked through the Provosts. There was no need in my day for what are nowadays called surgeries. If action was required at departmental or parliamentary level, I was at once informed by the Provost.
In all the years that I served I never found a bad Provost. They were all absolutely first-class; they were all dignified; they all had a certain amount of pomp. They were looked up to, and the local elections were strenuously contested. Great interest was taken in them. The people got good service at reasonable cost.
Of course there were a good many local authorities. Why not? I think the more the better. Today there is bad service at inordinate cost. Very little interest is taken in the elections to local government because the people never see those whom they elect—and they never see the people once they are elected. They do not go round to consult them or to give advice. I think it is absolutely essential that we should go back to a one-tier service and to our own system of local government in Scotland.
If I may end on a personal note, I should like to say that one of the things I am proudest of in life is that I am a freeman of the boroughs of Peterhead, Fraserburgh, Turriff and Rosehearty. I want to leave to the councils the beautiful caskets they gave me. I cannot, because there is no recipient. There is no council to leave them to. I do not know what the hell to do with them! I should like them to be received after my death with due formality by the Provost in full Provost's gown, but there is no Provost, and nobody to receive them. So my message to your Lordships is very brief and very simple and based on long service and consistent views in both Houses of Parliament. It is this: bring back the town councils and the Provosts of Scotland. They should never have been taken away.
The Marquess of Aberdeen and Temair: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, may I ask him whether he would be prepared to bequeath his caskets to the National Trust for Scotland and to stipulate that they should be put on view at Haddo House?
Lord Boothby: My Lords, I should very much doubt it.
4.22 p.m.
Baroness Elliot of Harwood: My Lords, we are having an extremely interesting and very important debate and we are much indebted to the noble Earl, Lord Cromartie, for inaugurating this discussion, although I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, that with the forthcoming Stodart Report this is really an exercise in discussion and putting our points of view, but to some extent I think we must wait for decisions until we see the Stodart Report.
Like the noble Lord, Lord Boothby, I have been for 29 years in local government in the Borders and I gave evidence to Lord Wheatley's Commission when it was set up and took evidence from, I think, all the counties in Scotland. I thought then—and I still think—that there was room in those days for alterations and improvements, but I now feel that a certain amount of what was done has not worked out exactly as I hoped.
I always think—and I am sure that noble Lords will agree with me—that the great point of local government is that it must be local. Representing, as I did, a small rural area, it was my job to know everybody in that area and everything that was going on, and when the county council met one was able to speak with great authority upon what was affecting local people. The same applied when one was chairman (as I was for many years) of individual committees, like education or social services. The important thing was that you knew exactly what was happening in the area which you represented. Today, with the enlargements that have taken place, I do not believe that that happens and I would disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Gryfe, about Strathclyde, because I think that there one has a colossal area and it is very difficult to get immediate decisions or immediate help. The reason is that there are so many different compartments in local government in Strathclyde that one has to go through before one can get a decision. I think that is all wrong: decisions in local government should come as quickly and as directly as possible from the departments that cover whatever subject one is enquiring about.
Before the reorganisation took place we had a debate in your Lordships' House about the proposals in the Wheatley Report and I moved a resolution that Strathclyde should be four distinct areas consisting of Glasgow and Dunbartonshire, Argyll and the Islands, Lanarkshire and Ayrshire. They would have been four excellent regions, able to manage their own affairs and definitely knowing and being in close touch with all the people living in those areas. We passed that resolution in this House with a very big majority and I had the support of noble Lords on the Labour and the Conservative sides. Unfortunately, when it went back to the House of Commons, the Whips were put on and the result was defeat. I think that was a great mistake.
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The noble Lord, Lord Taylor, lives in the region; I do not live in Strathclyde but I do run a business in Strathclyde so I know the problems connected with trying to get a decision in connection with the running of a business. Sometimes they are quite frustrating. There is a very good case for looking again at such an enormous region as Strathclyde and dividing it, not exactly into counties but taking one area for each county. Again that would be larger than the old system which we operated for many years.
I agree with the noble Viscount, Lord Thurso, when he says that it is an improvement to have larger areas for the police, for the fire service and, I think, for planning and roads. They have been quite a success. There are matters in this new system which are a success. I do not agree with the noble Lord, Lord Boothby, that the whole thing is a failure. Some of it has been a failure but some is a success and that is why I agree with the proposals that we have been discussing, that we should not necessarily go back to where the boundaries were before but that we should look at them again with the experience of five years to see whether improvements cannot be made. I know it is extremely difficult when headquarter buildings have been built and status has been given to individual people who have the top appointment in the area and who will suddenly find that they are no longer to have the top appointment but to be one of four, if we take the division that I have suggested for Strathclyde. Nevertheless, I believe that it is possible to do these things and they should be considered.
I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Campbell, when he speaks of the difficulties of the very narrow boundaries of the burghs in Scotland. Many of those burghs did provide great difficulties, but I think some of them could have remained and I agree very strongly with those who would like to see the Lord Provosts of Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Dundee given the status that they had before. As your Lordships know, my husband was a Member for Glasgow for 40 years, and I cannot imagine what it would be like to live in Glasgow without the Lord Provost as the figurehead of the city. That does not mean to say that he had all the power in his own hands. Of course he did not; he had a formidable town council which he had to cope with, but at least there was a status there which I should like to see brought into these areas.
Lord Campbell of Croy: My Lords, I wonder whether my noble friend would give way. I think this point about Lord Provosts is important because the Lord Provost is automatically the Lord Lieutenant of the city. That is what gives him his dignity and puts him over everyone else, and that has been continued.
Baroness Elliot of Harwood: My Lords, this is a short debate, as we see on the Order Paper and there is a great deal more business before your Lordships, so I shall not speak at any length, but I hope very much that the present Secretary of State will have an open mind about these things and that when the Stodart Report comes out we shall not be told that it has nothing to do with the boundaries or with reorganisation. It must have something to do with the boundaries and it must have something to do with reorganisation

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because, whatever it recommends, it is bound to have some repercussions.
I hope very much that, after this debate and after these discussions, the Government will pay attention to what we are saying. After all, we are all speaking from experience; every single person who has spoken in this debate has been either in local government or in central government for a great many years. I hope the suggestions that have been made, including perhaps one or two that I have made, will be considered, because I am very anxious indeed that we should see an improvement in our local government in Scotland and not, as I fear is happening in some areas, a quite considerable degeneration. That sounds rather a strong word, but it is something which is not as good as before. I hope very much that the Government will consider some of our suggestions.
4.32 p.m.
Lord Polwarth: My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Mackie, for allowing me to intervene at this point without previous warning. I felt that, as the Minister responsible for piloting the Local Government Act through this House—and a pretty traumatic experience it was, I can assure you—I wanted to say just two or three things. I believe, with hindsight and in the light of experience, that our decision to go for a two-tier system was a fundamental mistake. Other noble Lords have highlighted the reasons. I should like to cite one or two: the proliferation in numbers of staffs, and the unfortunate enmity and bad blood which has resulted in a number of cases between districts of cities and their surrounding regions where different politics are involved. This, I would suggest to your Lordships, is perhaps a little warning to us in regard to what might happen were we to have a local legislative assembly in Scotland which might well be of a different political party from the Government of the United Kingdom. That is something I think we should ponder.
We have seen in some cases wasteful duplication, with the regional and district authorities seeking to carry out similar functions. There was the ludicrous case not long ago—a small one I know—at the Open golf championship at Muirfield where we had the spectacle of Edinburgh District and Lothian Region each running their own hospitality tent with the avowed intention of attracting notice to tourism and industry in their respective areas which were really all part of the same thing.
On the other hand, gaps have arisen where things have fallen between two stools. I think this applies particularly to the arts in Scotland. Prior to reorganisation, the responsibility for contributing to the major artistic bodies, particularly orchestras, opera and ballet, lay with the main cities where these organisations primarily perform. With the reform of local government, somewhere or other it was agreed that the responsibility would be transferred to the regions. What happened? It was a splendid excuse for the new bodies, not to wash their hands of the matter, but, at least in some cases, to reduce the level of support, and today they are meeting a very much smaller proportion of the total cost of those artistic bodies than they were prior to reorganisation.
What are we to do about this? I must say I agree
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with the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Gryfe, that to dismantle the entire set-up and create a new one in one swoop in the foreseeable future is too terrible a prospect to contemplate in terms of upheaval and cost, particularly in these hard economic times. As others have said, we are in a vacuum awaiting the publication of the Stodart Report. A previous report was published; we accepted it and put it into law. But that was not the first committee or commission, however distinguished, to have published a unanimous report which was subsequently proved by events to have been wrong in its main concept. So I hope that, when the Stodart Report is published, we shall examine it extremely critically in your Lordships' House and that the Government will look at it with a very open mind, whatever it recommends
I think there is very little more we can suggest in a practical way today. It may be that the right course is to experiment, and make a start by taking certain regions where the anomalies are particularly glaring and bringing them back to single tier authorities, without covering the whole of Scotland. Let us see what happens. The one thing of which I am quite certain is that something, in due course, must be done.
4.36 p.m.
Lord Mackie of Benshie: My Lords, I am very glad the noble Lord, Lord Polwarth, did speak because he made a most courageous statement. I think the House should be very grateful to a Minister for coming back and giving the facts as to what has happened and recanting on a decision, something that politicians hardly ever do. I should very much like to express my gratitude to the noble Earl, Lord Cromartie, for bringing this matter forward. This is the sort of practical and intelligent thing he is constantly doing. I know that he is extremely intelligent because we agree on several points!
The history of local government reorganisation in Scotland, I think, has been very unfortunate. To begin with, I think we had our two committees the wrong way round. We should have had Crowther, later Kilbrandon, first, long before we had Wheatley. The result is that we have got into a mess on both counts; we neither have any devolution at all, nor do we have a decent system. My own view is that in some cases many of the functions are better done. I was particularly unhappy in Caithness and Sutherland, when I was Member there, over the fact that the educational authority in Sutherland, which had 13,000 voters, was far too small and they were totally dominated by the director of education, whoever he was; he ran the thing according to his own ideas, which were mostly conventional and suburban and quite unsuited to education in a county such as Sutherland. That made me inclined to think that we ought to have bigger authorities. I must also say that despite Russell Johnston being on the committee, as Lord Campbell of Croy said, the Scottish Liberal Party, under the advice of Greenock Town Council, retracted their support for Wheatley and advocated, with good reasons, single tier authorities.
But it is no good going back and saying that at that time some of us were right, because we are in the situation now where we have without any doubt local

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government in Scotland which is held in much less repute than hitherto. I do not think one can go anywhere without people talking about the expense, the enormous increase in the numbers of employees and the lack of contact with and lack of efficiency of local government. Indeed, when it comes to the dignity of councillors, we had that famous comedian Stanley Baxter who was teaching people to talk Glasgow, and one of his lessons said, "There are a pair of cooncillors", which he translated as saying, "There go a pair of intellectuals". I never could quite see the joke, but they were Glasgow "cooncillors".
We have got away from the sort of entities that people understand. If you live in Fife at least you know that you are still in the Kingdom of Fife, because of the great fight put up by the Fife people and Sir John Gilmour, and at least you have Fife intact. But instead of having the county of Fife running all the main services, they now have the region of Fife and the three district councils, North-East Fife, Kircaldy and Leven. They do not have the town councils. I think it is more important to have provosts than Lord Provosts, because the small places roundabout certainly had an identity of their own and people knew exactly where they were. Although they did not take in any country round about them—they did tend to split authorities into town and country which was a mistake—nevertheless they were extremely valuable, and we need to get back to some sense of identity in the small towns.
I think that if we are going to reorganise back to a one-tier system it should be done as the noble Lord, Lord Polwarth, said, bit by bit. There is no reason to have a great mass of organisation of one sort. That is what we should have learned out of this. In fact the single tier authorities, where we had to have them on islands and so on, are working very well. An ad hoc reorganisation would work, I think, extraordinarily well.
In the main cases that I know of we would probably want to go back to the former counties as all-purpose districts. But certainly in some areas, such as the Borders, I understand that there is a big body of opinion who think that it would be far better if the single tier authority was the region, and that in fact has been working better than having it split up in that case.
All over Scotland we have different areas which require different solutions. So, when the Stodart Report comes out, for goodness sake do not let us accept it holus-bolus: but if we are looking at it let us determine to reform local government, to get it back to being well thought of and understood, and let us do it in a sensible and practical way, bit by bit. In that way we might get back again to a form of authority that people will understand and which will function efficiently and a great deal more cheaply than the present system.
4.42 p.m.
Lord Ross of Marnock: My Lords, I think that the noble Earl, Lord Cromartie, should be very pleased about the response to his debate. Some of us think—and it has been stated—that it is pretty well mistimed. But then those noble Lords went on to make rather interesting speeches, and not all opposing some of the ideas that he put forward. I have been involved in this
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for a long time. It did not start with me. It did not start with the establishing of the Wheatley Commission, although I have a better idea than the noble Lord, Lord Mackie of Benshie. I gave vent to the opinion that if we had had Lord Kilbrandon heading the Local Government Commisison—because he comes from a family that has for over a century been involved in local government in Ayr: his father was the county clerk, the great man himself James Edward Shaw, and his grandfather was a commissioner—we might have had a better feeling for local government, and Lord Wheatley, with his experience of the House of Commons, might have done better on the constitution.
The whole situation is so reminiscent. I am preparing myself now, of course, for the great migratory season. I am now retired and I spend most of my time in the month of January going round to Burn's Suppers and I cannot help but remember what Burns put into the mouth of the Old Brig and of the new brig when what they were talking about was the town councils that were and the reformed town councils. This was 200 years ago. I am sure that the noble Earl, Lord Cromartie, will probably agree with what the Old Brig said:
"Nae langer reverend men their country's glory,
In plain braid Scots havd forth a plain braid story,
Nae langer worthy citizens and douce,
Meet o'er a pint or in the cooncil house,
But graceless staimural corkyh heided gentry,
The heriment and ruin of the country,
Men three parts made by tailors and by barbers,
Who waste her weel hained gear on damned new brigs and harbours".
So I gather that we have spendthrift new local authorities. That was exactly the complaint in those days.
I think that the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, was right. Everyone was agreed at that time that there should be changes. Nobody was agreed about what the changes should be. I think that we could have taken a longer time about it. I remember one thing I objected to in the White Paper that he produced. I could understand his irritation. The argument has got to stop now. These are the boundaries. This is it, and there could be more negotiations about detail.
I was surprised at the Liberal Party. The noble Earl, Lord Selkirk, did not mention the fact that Betty Harvie Anderson, the late Baroness Scrimshaw, whose death robbed this House of a very, very worthy Member indeed, and Russel Johnston, had a minority report. They agreed certainly with the wider regions, but they had far more districts. This would have gone some way, I think, to meet some of the complaints. Lady Saltoun I think could put her finger on it, and indeed so did some of the other speakers, that there is a wide discontent that you cannot meet your council the way you did. In a small burgh you did not write anyone a letter, you just went down the street and met the provost, or a councillor, and you were on first name terms with them. If you wanted things done he would just wend his way up to the council house and see what he could do about it.
Not all the provosts or all the bailiffs were all good or were all dignified. I am charmed about this idea that every Provost in the country was dignified. In fact one of the things that disturbs me slightly—I am fond of local history too—is that provosts go with burghs.

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If you wipe out the burghs there should be no provosts. We did not wipe out the cities of Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dundee and Aberdeen and they still have—I do not know who misled the noble Baroness, Lady Elliot of Harwood—Lord Provosts and they are still very dignified.
Baroness Elliot of Harwood: My Lords, it was their status that I was concerned about. I knew that they had them, but I wanted them to be grand.
Lord Ross of Marnock: My Lords, their status is the same, and do not try to suggest otherwise to the Lord Provosts of Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Dundee or Glasgow. They are still—as the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy said—Lord-Lieutenants. I thought that that was sometimes a bit unfair to convenors of counties who never had the status. This is equally true of a chairman, or convenor—they can choose their own name—in relation to their regions. They do not have status, and yet their functions are far, far heavier than any others.
We must look at the situation. It is no good going back to the burghs and the historic burghs. Every small burgh was entitled to be a housing authority. In some of the small burghs a penny rate brought in £50. It just was not on. I can take the small burghs in my own constituency that was, Newmilns, Darvel and Galston—there is not a mile between each of them. Each exchange population from the point of view of people working in the one or in the other. If you go up the road from Ayr to Kilmarnock at 8 o'clock in the morning you see hundreds of cars going down to Ayr from Kilmarnock and an equal number going up the road from Kilmarnock to Ayr. It is that kind of thing that developments overtook in the community sense, in that one lived and one worked and one had all one's being within one's small burgh.
The noble Earl himself should appreciate just exactly what happened. When we decided to have a smelter at Invergordon, how could we throw the burdens of building all the houses required on Taine or Invergordon? He knows quite well that we had to establish a special working party from the Scottish Office and brine, in the Scottish Special Housing Association because the necessary local authority functions could not be done by the existing authorities in those small towns. The same thing happened in relation to the developments in respect of oil.
So let us stop this hankering after the past and appreciate that the change that was made to two-tier was right. Remember that people condemned Wheatley. We never applied Wheatley. What we have in Orkney, Shetland and the Western Isles was not Wheatley; what we have in Fife was not Wheatley; what we have in the Lothians was not Wheatley. We discarded so much of Wheatley that we should have gone the whole way. The Lords have a good record as far as Strathclyde is concerned. I agree, by the way, with the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Gryfe. I have been surprised about how well Strathclyde has gone about it. I am perfectly sure that it comes down to personalities. We were very fortunate in having Geoff Shaw there as first convenor and indeed, the continuing convenor is a very good man, too—he should be, for
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he comes from Ayr! The way matters have been conducted there have been to their credit. Scottish local government has a tremendous problem and it is probably unfair to place that problem upon them.
The City of Glasgow, Lanarkshire, Dunbarton and parts of Renfrewshire, including Greenock, have the worst problem in Scotland as regards slums, education and deprivation. To put them altogether into one was asking a great deal of those who were given the responsibility for conducting it. But they have done pretty well out of it. I live in Strathclyde and I am pleased about it. I am less pleased about the conduct of some of the districts, although not all of them. At present it is far too early to judge exactly whether it has been a success or a failure.
There can be improvements; this applies to the remarks made by the noble Lady, Lady Saltoun, about getting people to do things and getting a quick response. The noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, will remember that we raised this problem in Committee and we were assured that there would be offices in the various areas and that people would not need to travel to Glasgow. Nobody should know this better than the noble Earl, Lord Cromartie. Some people had to travel a long way to get to Dingwall for a county council meeting and had to spend a night there as well. The same applied to Inverness; people had to travel from Skye in order to get there. Remember, the Western Isles were divided into two separate counties in those days. So it was not always all that good. There were weaknesses in the past which had to be evened out.
One of the great mistakes was that we were all mesmerised—certainly from 1963 onwards they were in the Scottish Office—by the estuarial planners. I am glad to see that the noble Lord, Lord Polwarth, recognises the jargon. If you control one side of an estuary, the other side must be in the same region. This had to apply to Glasgow and Edinburgh. That was knocked silly by the decision of the Government as regards Fife. I think that we probably went too far there. I was opposed to the creation of Strathclyde. What ever else it is and no matter how efficient it may be, it is not local government. This is what is comes down to and what most of the complaints that we have heard today amount to. We have taken "localness" out of local government. How do we put it back? To my mind the community councils have not responded as the Government of the day probably thought they would to fill the gap and create that local feeling. I am still hopeful that they might, but I always have a feeling that when you get non-elected bodies like that, you will get on them those who are the most articulate; you will get a pressure group rather than a group that is representative of the whole community. So I am sorry about that.
I was interested in the facts about Shawfield and the Clyde. The noble Lord will appreciate that in those days Clyde was a far better team. It was in what was equivalent to the Premier League now. I shall not tell your Lordships what some of Clyde's supporters say today now that they are in Strathclyde. They would rather be divided into Rutherglen and Glasgow. However, I shall leave that.
The Stodart Committee has now been set up. Last week the Secretary of State answered a Question

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and said that he has already received the report of that committee. It is to be published in January. He announced that in the House of Commons in answer to a Question for Written Answer. Therefore, towards the end of January we shall have the Stodart Report; we shall return to the subject. Of course, the remit of that report was to review the situation and to make recommendations but within the existing structure. I warn noble Lords that you do not reorganise local government every five years. I think that it has proved to be the most expensive game of musical chairs in history. People were doing the same job with a new title, but at a very much higher salary. Do not start blaming me for that. I notice that the noble Lord used the phrase that we just went out of office in 1970 and 1974 and we were getting ready. It had already started. Let me warn him about this. Reorganisation in England and Wales took place a year earlier. All the staff organisations and establishments were sat on down here. Do you think that local government civil servants ignored that? The same thing happened in Scotland. It was disappointing.
Lord Mackie of Benshie: My Lords, if I may interrupt the noble Lord, people are talking about five years' experience. Surely it is true that reorganisation took place seven years ago.
Lord Ross of Marnock: My Lords, no. The Bill was seven years ago, but there was a year of preparation. Then in 1975 there was the first election. The whole thing got going in about 1976. I should have thought that a distinguished Member of the Liberal Party would have appreciated that. It was far too early. This was said at the time when we reorganised it. The previous reorganisation of local government was in 1929. In those days my father was a parish councillor. They were wiped out. I can remember the same thing being said within five years as is being said now: "It is not as good as what it was".
It is up to us, and we hope that we shall receive some help from the Stodart Committee to try to improve it and to get rid of these grey areas. The confrontation and clashes which the noble Lord, Lord Polwarth, mentioned as regards planning were a mistake. To the noble Lord, Lord Boothby, I would say that there are not two regions in the Grampians; there is only the one region. So the clash of which he spoke will be with the region, which has overall planning powers, and the tactical planning powers are those of the district. I can understand the difficulties there. It is something we looked at and it is something which will be required to be sorted out. There is no reason why we should not have co-operation on that. It is rather too early to make up our minds about this—and I say this sadly to the noble Earl, Lord Cromartie—because Ross and Cromarty are necessarily dear to my heart. I hope he will be satisfied that we have had an excellent debate so far, and I hope that he will not press his Motion for Papers.
4.59 p.m.
The Earl of Mansfield: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Cromartie for putting down this Motion today. I apologised to him in advance, by
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letter last week, because for two reasons I cannot respond today in a more positive manner. This is partly a question of timing and partly a question of principle. But I have listened with very considerable interest to what he has said, and indeed to all other noble Lords who have spoken. I am sure that we are all, as is so often the fact in your Lordships' House, greatly impressed by the range of knowledge and experience. Many Members of your Lordships' House have direct experience as elected members of local government before and after reorganisation. I myseh was a member of Perth County Council from 1971 until reorganisation took place.
On timing, as a number of noble Lords have said, this debate is taking place between the completion and the publication of the report of the Committee of Inquiry into Local Government in Scotland under the chairmanship of Mr. Anthony Stodart. The committee has been examining the operation of the reorganised system of local government in Scotland and, as the noble Lord, Lord Ross, rightly said, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State announced on 5th December that he has indeed received the report and that he hopes to present it to Parliament and to publish it early next year. So this debate comes in a way too late to influence the Stodart Committee, and comes too early to discuss its findings or conclusions. Equally I cannot anticipate what the report is going to say or what the Government's reaction to it may be.
The other matter that I mentioned as one of principle is this—and it perhaps inhibits me from giving a more positive response to some of the points raised. It is that as of now the Government are by no means persuaded that a single tier system in Scottish local government is indeed desirable. It may be convenient for future thinking and possible debates if I outline the circumstances in which the Stodart Committee was set up and consider some of the difficulties about single tier systems, and then perhaps I might pick up some of the many points which have been raised by noble Lords during the debate.
As I have said, the Stodart Committee came about as a result of my right honourable friend in December 1979 appointing a committee of inquiry, and he indicated at that time that he believed that the local government system was working relatively well although it would be unrealistic to pretend that it was perfect in all respects. He was however sure that further radical structural change in Scottish local government would be unnecessarily disruptive and expensive. Therefore, the Committee was asked to consider what improvements could be made within the existing structure through the transfer or rationalisation of functions between the regional and district tier while still fully maintaining the viability of the existing authorities. The Committee was asked to report by December 1980 because we believed that the inevitable period of uncertainty generated by the Committee's inquiries should be kept to a minimum.
The focus of much informed criticism of the reorganised structure has been that, although regional and district councils have been created, they are in a number of major areas concurrently responsible for the same functions—for example, both regions and districts have responsibilities for tourism, recreation, museums, parks, art galleries and countryside matters, and they

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have an interdependent role on strategic planning and local planning issues. Many have argued that this joint responsibility for this important range of functions has created a confused pattern of accountability and responsibility and I know that my right honourable friend was particularly anxious that the Stodart Committee would look at these areas of concurrent and overlapping functions to see what rationalisation might be possible. The extent to which they have been successful in making any such recommendations will be seen when the report is published at the end of January.
If the "grey" areas between region and district can be removed or clarified I believe that many of the popular complaints against the two-tier system may well disappear. However, given the terms of the Motion before the House this evening which calls for the need
"to evolve a suitable plan to revert to a single tier system in Scottish local government"
it might be helpful if I considered briefly the arguments for and against a single tier system, although I must emphasise that such a review was outwith the terms of reference of the Stodart Committee.
A number of noble Lords have spoken with great nostalgia for the old Scottish system of local government, and that particularly I think applies to the burghs. In fact, my noble friend's Motion suggests that the single tier system is what we had in Scotland before reorganisation. But I think it was the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, who in fact correctly produced the numbers which, to save time, I shall not reproduce. It is not, strictly speaking, correct. Of course we did have counties of cities, and large burghs and small burghs, and counties and districts.
Each of these authorities was entitled to exercise the functions assigned to it by statute together with, in the case of districts and small burghs, any functions which might be delegated to it by the county council. These functions were multifarious. The counties of cities broadly speaking were responsible for all functions; large burghs had responsibilities for all functions except education and valuation; the small burghs were responsible for housing, minor roads, cleansing and refuse collections, sewerage, libraries and museums, places of entertainment and parks and recreation; county councils were responsible outside the burghs for all functions; and within the large burghs for education and valuation and within the small burghs for education, health, social work, valuation, police, fire, planning, roads and other minor matters. Finally the district councils were responsible for the maintenance of public-ways, footpaths and had a number of concurrent powers with the county councils in relation to community centres, parks, allotments, and so on. Moreover, the burghs could send representatives to participate in county council meetings on matters affecting burgh functions.
Finally, in a number of areas county councils had combined the discharge of certain functions—for instance, in Moray and Nairn and in my county council of Perth and Kinross. Thus, the overall pattern was one of extreme fragmentation of responsibility, cross-membership of authorities, and confused lines of accountability. It was this pattern which moved the Royal Commission under the chairmanship
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of Lord Wheatley to begin its report with the following heartfelt cry:
"Something is seriously wrong with local government in Scotland … At the root of the trouble is the present structure of local government … It is no longer right and it needs to be reformed. There is ample evidence to show that local authorities on the whole are too small, the boundaries pay little heed to present social and economic realities. Services are often being provided by the wrong sorts of authorities and over the wrong areas … Friction tends to build up between neighbouring authorities because of an artificial conflict of interest created by the structure of local government and nothing else".
Therefore, those who wish to return to a single tier system will have to sail between the Scylla of Lord Wheatley's heartfelt cry at the beginning of his report and the Charybdis of the various complaints made as to the present position, remoteness, lack of dignity, and so on.
Does then an all-purpose single tier system have advantages? The Royal Commission on the one hand said in paragraph 676:
"An all purpose system has obvious advantages. It is simple to understand and to operate. It calls for only one set of elections and a single impost on the local taxpayers … functions which go together can be properly co-ordinated with one another because all services are under the one authority … there can be no wasteful competition for staff between different levels of authority".
However, they go on in the next paragraph, paragraph 677:
"Notwithstanding all these advantages … we believe that an all-purpose system is unworkable in Scotland … In order to create all-purpose authorities an attempt has to be made to find a level that satisfactorily meets the needs of both type of service. Such a level is simply not to be found in Scotland. A single tier solution … simply gets the worst of both worlds. It does not achieve the right conditions for efficient planning and administration of the major services on the one hand, or on the other hand, for the kind of local touch which the local services require … We consider therefore that the all-purpose approach for all its undoubted merits cannot meet some of the basic tests of an acceptable local government structure for Scotland and must be ruled out from further consideration".
In the light of that, the Commission concluded that a two-tier system seemed to offer the best chance of providing the right answer and striking a balance between the conflicting needs of handling large-scale services on a strategic and regional level while allowing the more local services to be dealt with at a more local level. That conclusion inevitably led to the emergence of regions and districts, although it is fair to say that my noble friend Lord Campbell of Croy—wisely, I say personally—modified the Royal Commission's recommendations in some major respects.
For instance, I would remind noble Lords who have a less than wholehearted admiration for Strathclyde that the Wheatley recommendation was for a region consisting of all the Highlands and Islands, which would have reached from Muckle Flugga to the Mull of Kintyre, and that, I am glad to say, my noble friend rejected as a method of reorganising local Scotland. Another matter where he differed from Wheatley was to decide, in effect, that to overcome the problems of the three island areas, where there were special circumstances in relation to relative geographical isolation and marked local community interest, there was justification for the creation of all-purpose authorities for each of the three island areas.
I am bound to say to the noble Earl, Lord Cromartie, and the noble Viscount, Lord Thurso, who ask why this excellent idea cannot be spread certainly to parts

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of the mainland of Scotland, that the geographical differences between the island areas and the mainland of Scotland are perhaps the most obvious. Islands have a much clearer sense of identity and community, and it was in recognition of those differences, no doubt, that my noble friend Lord Campbell of Croy acted in the way he did. I do not think those principles can be applied for the mainland. For instance, the Wheatley Commission examined the issues with considerable care and concluded that certain major functions required a population of at least 200,000 people if they were to be provided efficiently, examples being education and social work. The report therefore made clear, in my submission, that if there were gains in efficiency through increased size, there might well be a decline in local involvement and democracy. That, if it does not deal with it, causes those who would like the all-purpose system spread to the mainland at least to consider.
There have been criticisms and complaints about the present structure, and the Government accept at once that it is not perfect. We look forward to the consideration and public debate which no doubt the Stodart recommendations will create, and one hopes that the report will help iron out some of the problems which exist, particularly over concurrent functions. There are a number of general criticisms of the new structure which I will mention. These criticisms were usefully examined in a research study carried out on behalf of the Centre for the Study of Public Policy at the University of Strathclyde by Messrs. Page and Midwinter. This was published last year and looked particularly at the criticism that the new structure of local authorities compared with the old resulted in greater remoteness, reduced efficiency and increased cost.
It may be useful to the House if I summarise the main conclusions of what was generally accepted to be a detailed and authoritative study. So far as remoteness was concerned, the study found little evidence to support the assertion that the new councils were more remote, however one defined "remoteness", from their electorate than before. The noble Lord, Lord Boothby, mentioned his area in the north-east which now has one regional authority and five districts. There is no reason why those five districts should be any more remote than the old county councils. They all have local offices and local councillors, so this is something that one hopes will, with time, sort itself out. I appreciate that the noble Lord cannot go to Rose-hearty now and find it a burgh, and it may be, speaking with nostalgia, that is a pity. But for the reasons I have given, I rather wonder—
Lord Boothby: My Lords may I interrupt the Minister to ask whether he realises that the old system of town councillors and provosts had a dignity and carried a certain status which these committees do not have?
The Earl of Mansfield: I am coming to dignity and status, my Lords, but perhaps the noble Lord will permit me to finish the train of thought I had. I wonder whether the citizens of Rosehearty, leaving aside for the moment considerations of dignity and status, would accept the noble Lord's contention that
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their local government is likely to be any better or that the social services administered by the local authority would be any more comprehensive or more sympathetically applied if they went back to their old status. I very much doubt it.
May I return to the Page and Midwinter study. On the question of efficiency, they found only limited support for the argument that administrative manpower increased with reorganisation, and no support for arguments that manpower generally increased or that more was spent on administration, either in absolute or relative terms, after reorganisation than before. In other words, the researchers showed that in their view the long-term upward trend of local government manpower began to manifest itself well before 1973, when the Act was passed, and was not directly attributable to reorganisation.
Several noble Lords commented on that. The noble Lady, Lady Saltoun, to sum up, had three complaints, if that is the word. She complained in effect that there was a lack of flexibility so far as labour was concerned; that there was a lack of flexibility in relation to the capital of a local authority in the way it spent its money; and that officials in effect were remote. So far as flexibility of labour and the remoteness or otherwise of officials are concerned, I suggest that both of those are matters of management or administration which could and should be solved within the existing local government structure. It is for the elected members of the local authorities, with the help of the chief officials, to ensure that their authorities are efficient and well managed. It is also for the elected members to see that the officials behave in a way which does not make local people feel that they are remote. I believe that in places such as the Western Isles reorganisation brought the services of officials much nearer to local people in general, instead of their being very remote from such places as Inverness and Dingwall. There is now a much more cohesive local atmosphere in places such as Stornaway.
When it comes to flexibility of expenditure we enter rather different waters, in the sense that such flexibility as I think the noble Lady was suggesting needs the consent of the Secretary of State, and no doubt my right honourable friend will consider this matter, in particular after he receives the report. However, again I want to emphasise that such flexibility is not a matter of the size of a local authority. It is not a question of structure, but in that instance it is a question of the relationship between central and local government. So I suggest that what has been said in this regard is not really an overwhelming argument for returning to the old system.
While I am dealing with the question of officials and expense I would mention that a number of noble Lords suggested, or perhaps implied, that there was a great increase in the number of officials after reorganisation; and I should not try to deny that many new posts were created. However, as I have said, the Page and Midwinter Study confirmed that there had been a long-term upward trend in regard to numbers of officials which began before reorganisation of local government, and I have no doubt that the reorganisation accelerated that trend. But 1976 and 1977 saw the graph begin to go down. There were reductions of almost 12,000 in the numbers, achieved in part by,

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for example, many senior staff accepting redundancy terms. So it is not right to say that there has been an inevitable increase in the number of officials and that it has continued ever since.
Lastly, so far as Page and Midwinter are concerned, their study revealed that reorganisation did not cause overall increases in expenditure or rates. The study also found no support for the argument that service provision in larger authorities costs more than it does in smaller authorities. Some localities suffered disproportionately because high increases in rates resulted as part of the transition from merging low-rated and high-rated areas. Unfortunately for those in local government, the period of reorganisation in 1974–75 coincided with the worst period of inflation under the previous Administration, and many ratepayers observed, with some distress, their rate demand notices coming in after reorganisation, and they were only too ready to say, "This comes about as a result of reorganisation"—or perhaps they used even more vivid phrases—when in fact nothing of the kind had happened.
A number of noble Lords, headed—if that is the right word—by my noble friend Lord Selkirk, spoke about, and indeed complained about, the dignity of local civic chiefs, or the lack of it. I do not see why the lord provosts of the four cities and indeed provosts or conveners (call them what you will, and what they like) in other districts should have any less dignity than their predecessors. Before coming into my present occupation I had, commercially speaking, quite a lot to do with Glasgow, and I certainly found that the Lord Provost of Glasgow commanded great respect and carried out his duties with great dignity, which I think was appreciated by all the citizens of the city.
I believe that it takes time to accumulate dignity. Only five years have elapsed since reorganisation, and it is too early to say that no dignity, or not sufficient dignity, will develop as the councillors filling these roles learn—perhaps in a way which was known by instinct by the old lord provosts—how to comport themselves. In my own area the convener calls himself a provost and he wears the various accoutrements of his office. He is accorded every respect and behaves with every dignity. It is a sought after position. Since reorganisation we have had three holders of the office, a local businessman, a dentist, and now a farmer, all of whom in their different ways have brought lustre to their position.
The Government's belief is that the new structure is fundamentally sound, but we want to improve its performance, and we shall be considering recommendations in due course. However, to use a motoring metaphor, on the analogy that our new system of local government is a vehicle of good and roadworthy design, we want to ensure that we make the best use of the vehicle's potential for economic service and indeed effectiveness. The fact that occasionally the vehicle goes off the road, or perhaps uses too much fuel, should not of itself damn the design.
So although the Government, like your Lordships, are eagerly awaiting the publication of the Stodart Report, we consider that the system of reorganisation which my noble friend Lord Campbell of Croy brought in and which commenced in 1975, is reasonably
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effective, though no doubt it can be made even more effective in the future. At the moment, the Government's priority is to make the best use of the resources that are available within the present system of local government.
5.29 p.m.
The Earl of Cromartie: My Lords, I wish to thank from my heart all the speakers that have taken part in the debate. It has been a most useful debate, with constructive speeches from every side of the House. What has been said in the debate may prove to be extremely useful when the report comes out. We shall be interested to see what the report contains, and perhaps we shall make a noise about it if we do not like it.
When I suggested a single tier all-purpose authority I did not mean that we necessarily should go back to old county boundaries; rather I meant an authority that would carry out the duties that are now carried out by two authorities not very efficiently and not as efficiently as they were carried out when there was more or less one major authority. I know about district councils and all that, as well. However, having said that, I should like to thank everybody very much, including my noble friend the Minister, for this debate. I beg leave to withdraw my Motion for Papers.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

United Nations: Britain's Role
5.30 p.m.
Lord Ritchie-Calder Lord Ritchie-Calder rose to call attention to Britain's role in the United Nations and its Specialised Agencies; and to move for Papers.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper. This is much too big a subject for adequate treatment in a two-and-a-half hour debate, but I took the opportunity of the ballot to provide a reminder to your Lordships' House that, while we offer lip-service and, frequently, reproaches to something called the UN, we rarely consider the organisation or its institutions. In our preoccupations with the political aspects of the Security Council and the General Assembly, we tend to forget that over 80 per cent. of the resources of the UN "family" are devoted to positive practical improvements in the human condition like (and I take only one example from hundreds I could cite) the incredible achievement of the World Health Organisation in abolishing smallpox from the face of the earth. I think this is something which, 40 years ago, people would have conceived as utterly impossible in terms of public health. When we are critical and sometimes disenchanted by the shortcomings of the United Nations, we are forgetting that it is not a supranational but an international body, dependent on the loyalty, the input of high-quality personnel, the financial and material resources, the judgment and the experience of member states. Nothing short of that can serve. Hence the reference in the case of this Motion to "Britain's role".
In the debate on the Queen's Speech the Lord Chancellor referred, at col. 24 of the Official Report, to
"a rather clever American who said that Britain had lost an Empire and had not yet discovered a role".
Many, apart from the noble and learned Lord, took umbrage when Dean Acheson, who had been Truman's Secretary of State, discarded us thus in an obiter dictum. Those people included me, a life-long anti-colonialist, who in fact regarded Briain's magnanimous disengagement from an empire as a unique historical gesture, not to be compared in any terms to any part of history. I certainly did not regard myself as a pallbearer of the British Empire, but as a trustee for the heirs of empire.
Nor at that time was there any doubt at all about our role. Britain's manifest destiny was to give a lead to the world community through the Commonwealth and through the United Nations. Our late colleague Lord Boyd-Orr, when he was Director-General of FAO, insisted that the Commonwealth had a tremendous role to play because it was a complete cross-section of the world's problems and opportunities—races, colours, creeds, climate, geography and all levels of development from our industrialised dominions to our emergent colonies. We could make available our experience, and, Yes, we could make available the hard learned lessons of our own mistakes. We did then have influence and respect, and when sometimes we were treated disrespectfully we had the tolerance of our own maturity.
We also had the trained personnel—administrators, doctors, nurses, agronomists, foresters, engineers and teachers—with living experience of our colonial services, which had spread across a third of the world. And there was the back-up of our educational and research stations here in Britain.
I remember the pride and satisfaction I had, as professor of international relations at the University of Edinburgh, in being able to work with and through every department of the university—our prestigious medical faculty, our veterinary department, our forestry and natural resources department, our education department, our botany department, our agricultural department and even (I am sorry; I did not mean that pejorative "even")—and indeed the faculty of divinity as well, with all its experience of missionaries in the field.
We were then instructing our students, not only about the new kind of world which the United Nations exemplified but the relevance of their professions to the new opportunities for service. My vainglorious boast is that I was probably the only professor who ever got a standing ovation from the vets. All I had done was to remind them, with examples from my technical assistance travels, of the crucial role veterinary science and medicine had to play in succouring the multiplying millions. In fact, I just pointed out that all creatures great and small included the hungry human beings as well. I would remind your Lordships that, apart from the British students, who were training in this sense to go abroad, we had students from all parts of the world, and we were helping them to help themselves.
Britain was redeploying its imperial resources in the service of the United Nations and its specialised agencies—FAO, UNESCO, ILO, WHO, the World
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Bank, the IMF, UNICEF, UNDP and all the other acronyms. In two-and-a-half million miles of travel, mainly for the United Nations and its agencies, in unlikely places and all over the world, I have met first-class, dedicated British experts merged in the field missions under the United Nations flag.
I would remind your Lordships of the cardinal role Britain played in the origins of the United Nations and its agencies: at Bretton Woods, with Keynes shaping the World Bank and IMF; at Hot Springs, where we created FAO—with, I might point out, my noble friend Lord Redcliffe-Maud as one of the delegates—and where we gave effect to the pre-war concepts of our late colleague, Lord Boyd-Orr; at Philadelphia, giving a new remit to the International Labour Organisation; in London, fashioning UNESCO out of the findings of the Committee of Allied Ministers of Education; at Dumbarton Oaks, fleshing out the United Nations itself, with its radical new concept of the Economic and Social Council in which, as never before in history, Governments were accepting responsibility for peoples other than their own and providing the specialised agencies which were functionally to implement that concept. And there were to be the other instruments, like the Intergovernmental Maritime Organisation, now based here in London, in which Britain, notably, with all its history, has a cardinal role to play and a contemporary responsibility to bear in safeguarding the seas that Britannia once ruled.
I would remind your Lordships that the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, who I saw in the House a minute ago, was the executive secretary of the Preparatory Commission of the United Nations; and that the deputy secretary was A. D. K. Owen, who went on to become Assistant Secretary-General of the UN and chairman of the technical assistance board. Lord Gladwyn's personal assistant on the Commission was Mr. Brian Urquhart, who became personal assistant to Trygve Lie, the first Secretary-General, and then became the grey eminence and indeed the biographer of Dag Hammarskjöld. He is still there at the United Nations as under-secretary. He is the last key Briton in the higher echelons of United Nations itself. Indeed—and I hope the Minister will correct me if I am wrong—with the retirement of William Clark, whose vice-presidency coincided with the humanisation of the World Bank, I would venture to say that there is no British personality in any of the top ranks of any United Nations institution today.
Your Lordships, I hope, will not misunderstand me. I am not chauvinistic. I do not believe, and in fact I reject completely, that Britain or any country should have a statutory right to any position in the United Nations. I have even criticised "geographical preference"—which is sound enough in its principle of ensuring that cultures and countries are represented in the secretariats, but totally abused when professionalism, efficiency and integrity are subordinated to political considerations and to government manipulation. The integrity is paramount. Boyd-Orr, as director general of FAO, wanted my help as special adviser at the Washington Famine Conference in 1946. It was a very short, temporary appointment, but he insisted that I take the international oath: that I would not seek to receive instructions from any

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government or from any authority external to the organisation. That oath, which I took under 51 flags—there are now 155 flags—is embodied in Article 100 of the Charter which, conversely, forbids any member-government to influence any member of staff. I regret to say that this is something more honoured in the breach than the observance.
I am not suggesting at all that Britain should impose its nominees, but I maintain—and believe that we have been guilty of not doing it—that we should seek out and make available the best we have got. I know the bitter complaint in some of the agencies that when they know and want a worthwhile British official, the mere request makes him or her indispensable. And, by and large, we treat people who opt for international service pretty shabbily, almost like defectors or salary hunters or, just as derogatively, as "idealists". My Lords, successive Governments and successive Queen's Speeches reaffirm our dedication to the United Nations; they call it the corner stone of our foreign policy and then, to a lesser or greater degree (according to the government in power), modify their enthusiasm. We certainly pay our dues. We are a good club member; and where there is an option, as in the case of special funds or pledges such as those to UNICEF or UNDP, we have been capable of being generous and of setting a good example. And, as we know, in terms of overseas development, under Labour Governments we have made overseas development a major commitment and, indeed, a Cabinet position.
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lords who are taking part but I am especially grateful to my noble friend Lord Caradon, because he personifies the theme that I am illustrating now. He was a great British proconsul who prepared the colonies for their freedom; he was a career ambassador to the Trusteeship Council and then he was Minister to the United Nations. I do not diminish the great services of other British ambassadors to the United Nations, but his appointment, as a member of the Labour Government, was not just as a spokesman but as a policymaker and was an earnest of Britain's commitment to the United Nations. He was—and I can certify to this—more than a British representative; he was a United Nations man. He walked tall in the councils of the world.
Forty four nations in the United Nations are members of the Commonwealth. From long observation and experience I am proud of the heirs of empire. They are no longer wards of our chancery; they have emerged from political adolescence, educated largely by their experience in the United Nations, and they have produced some really outstanding international statesmen. My plea to the Government is to be more forthcoming, less grudging in their support and attitudes towards the United Nations—not just financially, but in fulfilling the British role; and I repeat, the British role. This is a critical time in history. The United Nations needs the kiss of life. It needs genuine peace-keeping functions and disarmament initiatives. It can be the catalyst to peaceful co-existence. It can create a new economic order and remove the blight of poverty and misery. But, above all, it needs the trust which Britain can help to restore. That is Britain's post-imperial role. I beg to move for Papers.
5.46 p.m.
Lord McNair: My Lords, it falls to me to be the first to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Ritchie-Calder, on his luck in the ballot and no less on a magnificent speech. I am particularly glad that he covered in his speech so many of the things which I am all too conscious of being about to leave out. In framing his Motion, he asks us
"to consider Britain's role in the United Nations and its … agencies".
It so happens that in these last nine months I have spent a great deal of my time studying one of those agencies in some detail. This happened as a delegate to the Council of Europe where I was asked to write a report on The Palestinian Refugees and the Activities of UNRWA, and the terms of reference of my committee ordained that this report had to try to be non-political—which, of course, was quite impossible.
That agency, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for the Palestinian Refugees, which we set up in 1950 is today, through the unwillingness of the world community to give it enough money, facing imminent bankruptcy. If it is to keep its relief and health and medical services running at the minimal level needed to prevent malnutrition and epidemics in the camps, then it will have to close down its educational activities, its schools and training colleges, certainly in Syria and Jordan, and possibly on the West Bank, Lebanon and Gaza, as well.
The consequences of such a failure by the world community are unpredictable but alarming in the extreme. However, that particular UN problem seems to me to be so important as to deserve a debate on its own. To that end, I put down an Unstarred Question which is due to be heard on 14th January. Therefore, I shall not say anything more about that today except perhaps this. Our country has, over the years, played its full part in its support of UNRWA. We have a good comparative record. But, as I shall argue when we come back to this matter, I believe there are compelling reasons, both of humanity and of self-interest, why we should do more—and so, of course, should all the other countries which prefer peace to anarchy.
I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Ritchie-Calder, will not feel that I am stretching his Motion too far if I spend a few moments thinking aloud, with a little help from my prepared script, about the United Nations in general. If the House will forgive a moment's reminiscence, I remember as a schoolboy how I used to go out to Geneva with my father in the vacations when he was working at the International Labour Office. I grew up, as it were, with the League of Nations. I shared my father's high hopes in the first half of its short life, and then watched it go down inevitably to abysmal failure in 1939.
Six long years later the United Nations was born, and one could not but wonder whether it would be any more successful than the League. Well, it has of course lasted longer. After 35 years it is at least still there; but is this due to any inherent superiority in its structure, any greater wisdom in its rules of procedure? I fear not. I am afraid it is due more to that most horrible of the facts of life which we have come to call the balance of terror. Surely the fatal flaw which in the end destroyed the League is to be seen, even perhaps

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in an accentuated form, in the United Nations. That flaw (quite unavoidable, the world being what it is) is that both organisations are based squarely on a recognition of the ultimate sovereignty of the nation state.
I am speaking of the United Nations as a would-be peace-keeping organisation, which is surely its primary purpose. Its agencies represent its acceptable face and I do not want to disparage them in any way. They can teach you how to grow this crop or that. They can show you how to eradicate malaria or smallpox, and so on. These are palliatives to the human condition which we certainly should not despise or undervalue.
Incidentally, to touch on a point which has already been mentioned—and I hope some future speaker intends to develop it fully—I find that there is some disquiet among people who ought to know as to whether we always make our maximum contributions to the deliberations of these agencies. Are we always as well represented as we could be? Do we not sometimes miss opportunities of doing quite a lot of good in the Third World at almost no cost to ourselves? Be that as it may, the United Nations was set up with even higher aims than to improve the lot of the "huddled masses yearning to breathe free". It was set up to keep the peace. If it cannot keep the peace and give us confidence that it will go on keeping the peace, then it must be judged a failure and poor old homo sapiens will have to try again—if he gets another chance.
We have to ask ourselves whether we can possibly be satisfied with a world order in which each one of about 150 nation states retains control of its war-making potential, limited only by a feeble sort of "gentlemen's agreement" which many of them—ourselves, alas!, included—have already shown themselves willing to break when national interests, subjectively interpreted, are thought to be involved.
My Lords, even if one has no cure to offer, it is sometimes a good thing to be able to diagnose the cause of a morbid condition—as it were—to isolate the virus. I suggest that the federalists have done at least this in pointing to national sovereignty as the virus, perhaps the deadliest virus at large upon the planet Earth. As one of them has written:
"War is the structurally inevitable consequence of armed tribalism. It will be abolished when the cause has been abolished".
Federalists come in all shapes and sizes, with varying blueprints, everyone of which seems to contain insurmountable obstacles to its achievement. Perhaps we are waiting for a genius such as we have never yet seen, some super-Rousseau who will show us the way out of this labyrinth. Ariadne found her way out of the Cretan labyrinth by ingeniously noting how she had got into it. Perhaps that may be the way, the study of palaeo-anthropology or ethology. I do not claim to know.
At a political animal, homo sapiens, it seems to me, has not yet learned to walk. He is still in the crawling or perhaps toddling stage. And, playing precociously with terribly dangerous toys, he crawls and toddles at the top of a precipice—Beachy Head without a playpen. We have been doing it for so long and we have so often got away with it by the skin of our teeth,
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as Thornton Wilder observed, that we have acquired a protective layer of complacency. But when I force myself to pierce that layer of complacency and look hard at our human condition, then I seek comfort in the myth of Pandora's Box. It is a feature of the great myths that they are continually acquiring fresh relevance, and I suppose the most recent opening of Pandora's Box was performed by Rutherford in the Cavendish Laboratories in my native town. To return to the original, however, your Lordships will recall that when the box was rashly opened and all the horrors and miseries spread across the globe—which of course was not even known to be globular in those days—there was one thing which remained in the box. The only thing which did not emerge and fly away was Hope. Hope stayed behind.
Now, I must belatedly try to wrench myself back to within hailing distance of Lord Ritchie-Calder's Motion, and I sincerely apologise to him for having taken such liberties with it, How can we marry hope with Britain's role in the United Nations? If there is any validity in my main thesis that national sovereignty is the name of the disease from which the world at present suffers, then perhaps we can at least discern the direction in which our policies towards our fellow men should try to point. Any avoidable assertion of our sovereignty must be wrong and any tendency to merge our sovereignty with that of others, the more the merrier, that must surely be right. If we, and others, can follow that path, then perhaps we have the right to hope. Perhaps we can hope that homo sapiens, as a political infant, will learn to walk; and perhaps my super-Rousseau will arrive in time to show him how to walk away from the abyss.
6 p.m.
The Lord Bishop of Rochester: My Lords, in rising from these Benches to support the noble Lord, Lord Ritchie-Calder, I am sure that in the same way as he co-operated with the divinity faculty in Edinburgh University, he will be ready for me to say that I believe that there are many Christians of all traditions, and not only within the Church of England, who are concerned that the nations which together make up the United Nations—which has no existence apart from them—shall together enable it to rise to its full potential as an instrument for promoting the long-term interests of Governments and peoples.
Some of us who, like the last speaker, lived through the days of the League of Nations between the two great wars, had high hopes of the United Nations, with its charter that indicates so clearly what potential the organisation could have if it were used to the full. It is fashionable, as your Lordships know, to decry the United Nations and all its works and to point only to its failures in a world where, as the BBC news reminded us this morning, several wars are being waged simultaneously as the Christmas festival approaches; a world where two out of every three persons go to bed hungry each night.
As the risk of being pompously dismissed out of hand by the leader writer of the Sunday Telegraph for responding to what he is pleased to call "noble claptrap", there are many within and without the Christian churches who thank God for the very real successes of the United Nations in the last 35 years, both in

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resolving conflicts and in assisting development in the third world. These successes would undoubtedly be greater if all the member nations fulfilled their obligations under the charter and put the long-term interests of the whole world before short-term national advantage, as the noble Lord, Lord McNair, said so movingly just now.
While we must be grateful for the part that successive Governments in our own country have played since 1946, I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Ritchie-Calder, is right in emphasising the special and important role there is for the United Kingdom to play in the United Nations today. I believe it is important that we should be undeterred by the attitudes and actions of others, that we should be loyal ourselves to the objects of the charter, and make available our best people in the service of the United Nations and as participaters in its special consultations.
It was encouraging to hear that in the debate on the Brandt Report in another place on Friday the Government spokesman took a more positive line than has sometimes been the case. After spelling out the procedural difficulties inherent in some of the suggestions made for further international co-operation, he indicated that if a summit meeting of the kind proposed in the Brandt Report is held in Mexico next June, the Government will accept an invitation and, moreover, the Prime Minister will herself be ready to attend. This, I believe, is greatly to be welcomed, as are all the indications that the recommendations of the Brandt Report are being actively considered. These include in chapter 16, I would remind your Lordships, the recommendation that the United Nations "system", as it describes it, in facing expanding tasks, should be strengthened and made more efficient.
The authors of the report are at pains to emphasise that for all the weaknesses and compromises of the United Nations, it is the only system that we have for co-operation and communication between the nations, and that we all have a stake not just in keeping it alive and active but in strengthening it as an indispensable force for peace and for development. I have been impressed by the extent of the interest in the Brandt Report in many local communities. A seminar, organised at Church House, Westminster, at which the Minister for Overseas Development and the Archbishop of Canterbury were among the speakers, received widespread coverage, and rightly so. But more impressive in many ways are some of the unreported consultations and discussions held at a much more ordinary and local level.
I have in my hand the report of a day conference held in one of the parishes of my diocese, where the elected members of the parochial church council spent a whole Sunday, between their morning and evening services, considering the Brandt Report. They wrote afterwards to their Member of Parliament and to their bishop, saying they were persuaded that the world faced disaster if there is not much more determined practical action, particularly in making the United Nations agencies more effective. As an earnest of their sincerity, they have recommended to their parish that it should increase the percentage of its giving to relief and development agencies. A drop in the bucket?—yes, maybe; but surely also a clear
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indication of what ordinary but responsible people are thinking at the present time.
The fact that the world is now interdependent is much more widely understood and accepted than was once the case. If the deadlock in North-South negotiations at the United Nations is to be broken, it will happen only if a Government such as our own Government responds positively and energetically to some of the recommendations of the Brandt Report dealing with world development.
In answer to a Question which I asked in this House in August about our support for the United Nations Children's Fund, the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor said that the United Kingdom's support for UNICEF had been rising rapidly in recent years but that in the present financial situation we could not always do as much as we would like. I would make a plea that as soon as the change in our fortunes for which Her Majesty's Government are striving comes about, we should have as a top priority the granting of substantial increases in our support for the United Nations Development Fund and for such agencies as UNICEF. In the meantime, I would support the noble Lord, Lord Ritchie-Calder, in his own plea tonight that this country should give equally high priority to giving moral support to the United Nations and that we should send our best people to take part in its deliberations.
6.8 p.m.
Lord Collison: My Lords, I join with the noble Lord and the right reverend Prelate in thinking my noble friend Lord Ritchie-Calder for introducing this short debate. As we know, it is concerned with Britain's role in the United Nations and its specialised agencies. I will devote the short time at my disposal to saying something about one of the agencies—that is, the International Labour Organisation.
The ILO is the oldest of the specialised agencies of the United Nations and it is an agency with which I personally had the honour to be associated as a member of its governing body between 1960 and 1969 and as chairman of the Workers' Group in the 1965 conference when we celebrated the 50 years' life of the ILO. It is the only United Nations agency to survive the demise of the League of Nations. The Treaty of Versailles, which has often been vilified, nevertheless produced through its labour committee Article 13 of the treaty, which established in 1919 an international labour organisation associated with the League of Nations.
It is to me, and I hope to my noble friend Lord Ritchie-Calder and to others, satisfying to recall that the main driving force in the creation of this new organisation came from this country, in the person of George Barnes, the wartime Minister of Labour, who took a great part in promoting the idea of such an agency. But it was also largely due—and I can only say that it was typically and precisely British—to British initiative that the organisation broke new ground and established a tripartite basis, so that employers' and workers' representatives could have a vote and an equal voice with Governments. This is a unique structure in international organisations, and I believe it is the source of the ILO's strength and effectiveness. I also believe it is the reason why the

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ILO survived when everything else went with the League of Nations.
I was in the ILO for quite a long time, not only as a member of the governing body, but after 1953 as one of the advisers to Sir Alfred Roberts, and I saw the ILO grow from a relatively small group of nations to its present size. At the moment—I rang the office today, so that I should be up to date—144 nations are members. The primary object of the International Labour Organisation was, and still is, the creation of international labour standards and the monitoring and supervision of each member country's performance. The impact of this on the conditions of life and work of the millions of workers throughout the world has been enormous.
Some people may think that after 60 years that work should be pretty well completed, but of course it is not and it cannot be completed. As we know, all the time more needs to be done. As higher standards are made possible and, indeed, are demanded in developing countries, the ILO will have a job to do in formulating conventions and recommendations to cover the aspirations and the needs of the people. So of course the work goes on.
For example, only last Friday the United Kingdom Government became the tenth Government to ratify International Labour Convention No. 147, which establishes improved safety and working conditions in merchant ships. Again, only a few days ago, through the ILO's international occupational safety and health hazard alert system, the authorities in this and other countries linked to the system were warned of a new potential cancer-forming chemical solvent that is in wide use. When one thinks of the thalidomide babies, one wishes that there had been an agency which could have explained the dangers involved in the use of that drug, and perhaps in the use of others, too.
I must say it is unfortunate that Britain has yet to ratify International Labour Convention No. 139 for the protection of workers against carcinogenic chemicals, though we were told no less than five years ago—I think it was a Labour Government at the time, and that Mr. Foot made the statement—that it was the Government's intention to do so.
Altogether, 153 conventions have been produced. They have not all been ratified by all the 144 nations involved. Some have been ratified by the majority, others have been ratified by a considerable number and others have been ratified by only a few. Nevertheless, over the whole field, the result of the work of the ILO—the production of these conventions and, indeed, recommendations, too; but conventions in particular—has been notably to improve the standard of living of the peoples of this world.
It has always been the aim of the British TUC and the international trade union movement to seek ways and means of ensuring that workers in the developing countries, most of which export foods to us, should work and enjoy life under humane and fair conditions. To that end, they have sought the inclusion in trade agreements, such as the Lomé convention, of fair labour clauses, to be monitored by the ILO. It is regrettable that these efforts are not always successful, but a large number of them are and, as I said, this has done much to improve standards on a world-wide basis.
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It is no accident that two countries where labour conditions have been much criticised in recent times—Taiwan and South Korea—are not members of the ILO and are not, therefore, subject to close examination of working conditions, as is the case with states which are members.
Against the background of recent events, I am sure that this is the time to speak of the ILO's profound influence in the field of human rights. In particular, speaking as I do as a workers' representative at the ILO for so many years, there is the protection of workers' organisations. It is a sad commentary on our times when one reads of dreadful things happening. In the trade union movement with which I have been concerned for so long, one hears too frequently about the dissolution of workers' organisations, the occupation of trade union premises, the repression of the right to strike, the arrests, the torture and the disappearance, or even death, of trade union leaders. I know these things to be true, horribly true, because, for more years than I was associated with the ILO, I was President of the International Federation of Plantation and Agricultural Workers and I know what happened to some of our associates abroad. I am also a member of Amnesty International and, where cases of oppression are brought to my attention, use whatever influence I may have in writing letters to heads of state.
The kinds of cases that I have been talking about—the suppression of trade union activities and of the right to strike, the torture and the disappearance of trade union leaders—are the ones which go to the ILO, and since April this year more than 40 new cases have been submitted to the ILO—three times more than in a comparable period in previous years. In some measure, this reflects the confidence which workers' and employers' organisations have in the ILO's procedures for examining, testing and taking action on complaints.
We welcome the continued strong support given to the ILO by the British Government, by the TUC—whose delegate I was, though I have now been followed by my noble friend Lord Plant—and by the CBI. All in all, Britain has played a valuable and constructive part in the creation and development of the ILO, although I agree with my noble friend Lord Ritchie-Calder about the paucity now of top people from this country in the ILO establishment. I should like to see more of them.
When speaking of the people who have given such great service, one must remark on the tremendous contribution made by Wilfred James, who I think was the world's greatest international lawyer for many, many years, who became Director General of the ILO from 1970 to 1973 and then tragically died at a comparatively young age. He was a very great man. I knew him well. He was a great diplomat and could handle difficult situations with a touch of genius.
In 1944, the International Labour Conference in Philadelphia adopted what has become known as the Declaration of Philadelphia. This was printed on the walls of the old ILO building. I think it is on the walls of the new one, too. This declaration embodies the basic principles which guide the work of the ILO, and in these troubled times they are worth repeating. Stated quite clearly they are, first, that labour is not a commodity; secondly, that freedom of expression and

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freedom of association are essential to sustain progress; thirdly, that poverty anywhere constitutes a danger to prosperity everywhere; finally, that all human beings—one's heart rises to this—irrespective of race, creed or sex have the right to pursue both their own material well-being and their spiritual development in conditions of economic security and equal opportunity. That is a magnificent target for us to aim at. Some more fortunate countries have marched further along that road than many others. It is our duty, because we ourselves have been so successful, to do whatever we can to help and to serve those others. Our contribution to the United Nations, the ILO and the other agencies is our intent—sometimes not good enough—to do that.
Finally, in January 1945, at a meeting of the governing body Ernest Bevin said this:
"The British Government desires to rut the ILO as high in the scale of world organisation as possible".
I believe that this should still he the continuing policy of the Government. It is a magnificent organisation, truly democratic, although I personally regret that the dear distinction between workers, employers and Government tends now in some cases to be clouded. One gets people forming groups: the French-speaking Africans against the English-speaking Africans. In the Communist countries one often finds workers, employers and Governments all voting together.
Despite these flaws, which I hope will be cured, I am very happy indeed and have been greatly honoured to have been associated with the ILO for so many years. I commend noble Lords to give some thought, as I am sure they will, to the contribution made to such a unique body because of its tripartite nature.
6.25 p.m.
Lord Caradon: My Lords, I, too, shall declare my interest. I do not forget that for a matter of nearly two decades I have worked in and for the United Nations. With the limit of time in mind, I shall try to restrict myself, first to a general question on policy and then to a particular appeal regarding matters of world development. As I look back over a good many years, I am bound to say that I am deeply depressed by my recollection of the circumstances in which the main issues of the present word have been discussed and decisions have been taken. I speak to the text that there is nothing wrong with the United Nations except the members. The fact is that through the United Nations we have had a growing development of ideals and purposes, widely accepted and forcefully presented, usually to be obstructed and particularly to be delayed by the principal powers, including the United States and the western world. My own experience goes back to 1962, when I remember a vote of the General Assembly that the people of Rhodesia should be allowed to settle their future by free election in their own country, from which no one would be barred. At that time the Government instructed me, as I was ambassador and speaking for my Government on this issue in the United Nations, that we should not take part even in the vote. I resigned and went away. Then 17 years later, the people of Rhodesia were allowed to decide their own future by a free election. I think sometimes of the bloodshed, the suffering, the increase in danger which took place in those 17 years because
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of the countries which had stood in the way of that advance which was universally recognised by the poorer or the third world countries. Thinking of the high priests of procrastination performing their ceremonies in the capitals of the great world, that seems to me to be an example of delay in order to stop action which the world has already recognised is essential. I see it wherever I look.
Years ago it was decided in the United Nations, by a universal vote, that the people of Namibia should be given their freedom and should be allowed, by free election, to decide their future. Since that time, there has been opposition and obstruction from South Africa. The great powers of the world have gone to the United Nations to plead, to beg, to urge, but not to achieve the purpose which the world had long ago declared to be right and necessary.
A case familiar to me is Cyprus. By a unanimous vote, which is practically unknown there, the United Nations General Assembly decided many years ago that the right answer was the withdrawal of foreign troops and the resumption of the unity of the island, with proper respect for both communities. We accepted the vote, but the great powers have stood aside and refused to take the necessary action to carry out the declared aim. Particularly in all our minds is the fact that on the Middle East the United Nations have declared repeatedly that there must be a recognition of the rights of the people of Palestine: that they must be given their freedom, and that the security of Israel can be achieved only by a reconciliation in which both sides can live in mutual respect and security. But the action is lacking. The great powers hold back, the delays take over, and when we look back on this first decade or two of the United Nations we see that the principal factor is that the world could see and could declare what was necessary but the great powers (including ourselves) knew better! We do not dispute the principle but by various means we delay the action.
So it seems to me that the basic principle of international affairs should be that when a decision is reached, when a purpose is agreed, there must be a readiness of the great powers to take the necessary action. I believe that applies to also the Brandt Commission, where a similar situation is developing. The world knows what must be done but one country after another—including our own, I am sad to say—shows no initiative, no enthusiasm, no readiness to take the lead.
I remember going to call on my friend, the present British Ambassador to the United Nations a little while ago. I used to know him when we worked together in New York and I asked him, "What is the main difference between now and the 'sixties, when we worked together?" He said, "Clearly the main difference is that now the concentration of concern is in economic matters. That is the main change that has taken place since we worked together 10 or 15 years ago". I think that is so. So here again we have a clear purpose stated by people of international reputation but with no readiness to act. Instead of that I believe that in the western world there is a disinclination to face up to the issue which is now before us.
I might also add that in the matters of Namibia, of Cyprus, of the Middle East, I do not find that Soviet opposition is the difficulty. On the contrary, in all

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those issues it seems to me that they present no obstacle. They have indeed voted—as they did regarding the Middle East particularly, showing courage and concern—to provide for the necessity for a withdrawal of occupying troops.
That is the general factor which I believe we must all recognise. There has been a lack of readiness to act and in many respects our Government stand at fault, with the United States particularly and, I would add, the Soviet Union owing to the confrontation that exists between them; but I do not believe it is a fact that the Soviet Union stands in the way of action that we believe is necessary.
I turn from that general question to a very important particular one. When I had finished my time representing this country at the United Nations, your Lordships may remember that in 1970 there was an unfortunate lapse of the British electorate which led to my removal and I went to work for the United Nations development programme, for the United Nations population fund, in Africa and in Asia. They go together, I may say. It is sometimes said that if you attempt to deal with population without the participation of development that is a delusion, but to attempt to do it the other way round is a deceit. They have to be dealt with together. Therefore I was glad that I had opportunities to work in Africa and Asia for both those organisations.
I mention first the United Nations fund for population. Fifteen years ago, when I was first at the United Nations, it was positively decided in the General Assembly that the United Nations must do nothing in the matter of population. That was 15 years ago. But in the interval one of the most remarkable advances has been made. Under the leadership of Rafael Salas, the head of the United Nations Fund, an organisation is now created, backed by most countries in the world, and it is now a fact that any country in the world can immediately obtain the best conceivable advice on these difficult matters of population. This is a complete and vital change, making, in so many countries, a fundamental difference for the whole future of development.
The amounts subscribed were not very large and in 1948 the British Government gave a pledge that they would subscribe £4 million a year for this purpose. Subsequently they have failed to carry out their pledge and have now said that they will subscribe only £2 million a year. When the population of the world increases at the rate of a million a week it seems to me that £2 million a year—a reduction by one half of the sum we pledged in 1948—is a miserable contribution.
I turn now to the United Nations Development Programme, which is longer in experience and success, and I see now, after the very difficult years in the third world following the oil crisis and the rest, we have come through that difficult period and Mr. Bradford Morse, the director of the United Nations Development Programme, has achieved a worldwide reputation for the vigour and efficiency of his direction. Some time ago the United Nations development programmes said that they would wish to work to a 14 per cent. increase year by year. Many Governments agreed, including our Government, and the increases went on until 1980. In 1980 it was decided that, instead of the increases
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which would be provided by that agreed advance, we should reduce our contribution to the United Nations Development Programme from £28 million a year to £15 million a year.
Nearly every other country increased its contribution in accordance with the agreed advance. Twenty-five countries increased their contribution, only three reduced it, and two others by a very small amount; but it was the United Kingdom which showed the greatest reduction, by nearly half when one takes into account the various financial considerations. We reduced by nearly half our contribution to the United Nations Development Programme. That in a year when Brandt has called for a massive contribution to the saving of the third world, and to the benefit of everyone.
There is a point I should like to mention in passing. Sometimes it seems that our Government fail to understand the immediate advantages. We do not want to go into it now. We have all dealt with the question of student fees. The Government have decided on these destructive increases in student fees, forgetting that the students bring money to this country. If we calculate all the factors together they are a financial asset. And in regard to the United Nations Development Programme, the benefits of the programme in this country, in contracts, in exports, have been greater than the total contribution we have made; and with the reduction that has now been proposed the amount that we receive from the UNDP will be double what we are contributing. It seems inconceivable. I cannot understand the motive for these drastic reductions in enterprises which bring us financial advantage.
So I believe it is necessary, in regard to support for the United Nations development programme, support for the United Nations Fund for Popualtion, that there should be revision. Surely the £15 million we have taken away, showing ourselves to be the most reactionary Government in these matters in the world, should be restored.
I should like to finish on a slightly more cheerful note. I referred just now to our present Ambassador to the United Nations. I have worked with him and I have the utmost respect for him. He is a man of very wide experience and he is greatly respected throughout the United Nations and beyond. I believe we could not be better represented in New York than we are now. Then, I do not claim to know him personally, but I understand we have a Minister in another place who is said to be capable of learning. I hope that he may be prepared to learn some of the lessons in these matters of which he may have been previously ignorant. And we have in this House the Foreign Secretary, in whom many of us place our hopes and faith in the future. I believe he must see the harm that is done by these narrow decisions, in regard to the students, in regard to the third world; I would hope that when he has time from all his many other preoccupations he will be able to restore our good name in the whole field of international development.
Viscount Massereene and Ferrard: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, may I ask him, because I am rather ignorant in these matters, what is the Soviet Government's attitude to supporting the United

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Nations agencies as regards development and such matters? Have they increased their grants or do they give grants?
Lord Caradon: My Lords, if I understand the question, I would certainly say that we are very greatly respected, as Lord Ritchie-Calder has pointed out, for our past contributions, and other speakers have given deliberate evidence to that effect, What I am saying is that in regard to recent decisions, in regard to the main political problems of the world at this moment, and in regard in particular to the question of development, we are in danger of throwing away the good reputation which we have earned.
6.41 p.m.
Lord Kilmarnock: My Lords, I wanted to talk briefly about population. Of course, it is difficult to follow the noble Lord, Lord Caradon, on this subject, but I venture to hope that possibly one small voice may also be added. I should almost certainly be able to do this better six weeks hence than now. Some of your Lordships are no doubt aware of the British Parliamentary Group on Population and Development under the chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Boughton of Sowerby, whom I see in his place, which has members from both Houses and all parties. I have been fortunate enough to be asked by the International Planned Parenthood Federation, along with four Members of the House of Commons, to join a trip to India and Bangladesh early in January. I hope to return far better versed than I am now in this very sensitive question of family planning in some of the most populous areas of the world.
The background is quite simply that the present world population of some 4·3 thousand million souls is inevitably on course for something in the region of 61½ thousand million within 20 years. If the current rate of natural increase—that is, the credit balance, if you like, of births over deaths—is maintained, there will be 8 thousand million people on the earth by 2015. According to Mr. Raphael Salas, director of the United Nations Fund for Population Activities, the world's population could grow to three or even four times its present size before it levels off. Any such numbers, assuming that the world's eco-system will stand them, would certainly spell the end of civilisation as we know it.
Concern about population growth was not always that it would get out of hand. Mediaeval princes wanted larger populations to man their expanding frontiers. It was believed that fertility itself added to natural wealth. As recently as the 1930s the American economist Alvin Hansen, who became a convert to Keynes, was worried that a static or declining population in the United States might seriously undermine the market for manufactured goods and thus the capitalist system as a whole. Even today there are some Governments in the world which are "pro-natalist", to use the jargon term, on the grounds of reclaiming unoccupied territory, defending natural frontiers, creating new markets and so forth. Some of the Latin-American Governments are among them, but even they are showing some signs of faltering in this dangerous course of what might be called nationalistic machismo.
I say "dangerous". Where is the danger? What
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is wrong with letting nature take her course? Malthus himself, who first published his essay on The Principle of Population as it affects the Future Improvement of Society in 1798, the first edition, went no further than suggesting that population would always expand to the limits of subsistence and be checked there by famine, war or ill-health. But even these checks are now being overwhelmed. There are famines, wars, diseases and natural disasters in abundance—we have the daily evidence of them before our eyes—but population, none the less, has taken off to an extent that is likely to exhaust the finite resources and political adaptability of the planet unless it is brought under control.
Many of the children born into the world today are, in relative terms, going to be far poorer than they ever would have been at any previous time in world history, and far hungrier, and this the age of micro-technology and man-made satellites in space. Here is a quotation—I will not quote it in full—from a report prepared, not by any lunatic fringe body but by the American State Department and the Council on Environmental Quality in July 1980 for the President of the United States:
"If present trends continue, the world in 2,000 will be more crowded, more polluted, less stable ecologically, and more vulnerable to disruption than the world we live in now. Serious stresses involving population, resources and environment are clearly visible ahead. Despite greater material output, the world's people will be poorer in many ways than they are today".
Imagine that: poorer than they are today, when we think of the present condition of one-third of the world's population.
There has been much talk during the past decade, or a rising tide of talk, of a new world economic order, which has been received in some quarters with, I was going to say derision, but anyway less than enthusiasm, I must confess that I do not much like these bland, high-sounding phrases which ride on the surface of a multitude of practical difficulties, but that does not mean that behind the rhetoric there is no substance. The idea has been given a fresh wind by the Brandt Report, with particular reference to the recycling of the OPEC surpluses and the relief of the growing burden of debt of the poorer nations.
Our somewhat complacent response, it seems to me, is that the present system is well tried and not working too badly and that when the upswing comes all will be well again. Well, everyone is entitled to his opinion, but I wonder whether those who think this way will stick to their guns when a starving, bankrupt, overpopulated sovereign state out of sheer desperation holds the so-called civilised world to ransom with a fairly simple nuclear device, not for the 0·7 per cent. of GDP that the UN recommends as the aid contribution of advanced nations—which we do not meet—but for, say, 10 per cent. or 20 per cent. of our GDP. Science fiction? No, not at all. That is all clean-limbed, silver-uniformed stuff in outer space. This would be a messy affair on earth.
Who is doing what to avoid such an outcome? Well, there is bilateral aid and multilateral aid, both inside and outside the United Nations. We have heard from several speakers about various aspects of it. I simply wanted to refer to the relatively new and relatively small parish of aid concerned with limiting the runaway growth of population, to which Lord

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Caradon referred. The agencies, or funds, concerned are the United Nations Fund for Population Activities, the International Planned Parenthood Federation and the World Health Organisation, of course. We know the present Government's preference is for bilateral aid as against multilateral aid. There are a number of reasons for that. Bilateral aid is usually tied to procurement in the donor country and it is thus domestically more popular. It is also a means of making or keeping friends and influencing people—that is to say, there is a large political element in its motivation. There are, of course, areas where bilateral aid can serve both political and developmental purposes to the mutual satisfaction of both parties. There is plenty of room for both types of aid.
Bearing that in mind, let us look at the record on population activities. Our contribution to the three multilateral bodies concerned—the UNFPA, the IPPF and the WHO—stood at £6,875,000 in 1978. It shrank to £5·6 million in 1979, it has been fixed at £5·5 million for 1980 and is due to contract to £4·5 million in 1981, or so I am given to understand. The figures which I have given incidentally discount £1,875,000 on account of 1978 which was, in fact, paid in 1979.
Whatever one may think of the rival merits of bilateral and multilateral aid, there is not much doubt that there is some particularly sensitive areas where the receiving countries are much more at ease with the multilateral variety. Family planning comes very much under this heading. After all, it does penetrate to the very core of a community's customs, ritual and self-respect. It is mildly reassuring that the 1980 contribution to the IPPF—the International Planned Parenthood Federation—remains the same as for the previous year at £2 million, although I believe that a decrease is projected for 1981, and perhaps the Minister will comment on that when he comes to reply. Of course, he may not have the answer off-the-cuff, in which case I shall fully understand, but I should be very grateful if he would write to me. It is very important that this contribution should be maintained. It is extremely alarming that the World Health Organisation's special programmes contribution is to slip from £1·5 million in the current year to only £600,000 in 1981, particularly as the very difficult work undertaken by the WHO in the field of abortion—a particularly difficult area—is far too sensitive to be handled bilaterally.
I believe and understand that the ODA rightly prides itself on the flexibility of its approach to population activities, so one could hope that the bilateral component at least would balance out any losses from cuts on the multilateral side. I should also like to ask the Minister to confirm that when he comes to reply, particularly in relation to India, Bangladesh and Pakistan. While certain activities, as I have indicated, are better handled multilaterally, there are others which are perfectly susceptible to bilateral aid, notably census and survey work and educational programmes. There is also the question of institutional support. The ODA has provided support for various bodies, among them the Centre for Population Studies at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the Centre for Population Growth Studies at University
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College, Cardiff.
There is the further question of joint funding with voluntary agencies and there is also the question of research projects, some ofwhich can be carried out in the United Kingdom. I should like to give, as an example, the cross-cultural study of the effects of oral contraceptives on women of different ethnic origins which was carried out between July 1976 and January 1977 in London. The whole question of the relationship of oral contraception and heart disease must be researched with great thoroughness, to the hilt, and it would be a great pity if any funds were lost for this purpose.
Finally, may I quote from the Minister, Mr. Neil Marten, in the foreword of the ODA Paper No. 21 entitled Report on Population Activities, where he says:
"In response to approaches made to me by British Parliamentarians following the International Conference of Parliamentarians on Population and Development in Sri Lanka last year I have instructed that a population component should wherever possible, be incorporated in new development projects financed by ODA".
It was the noble Lord, Lord Caradon, who made the point that these two are inextricably entwined. That is good news as far as it goes, but I hope that it does not mean that existing activities of proven value are going to suffer. If cuts are to be made, there is bound to be a temptation to cut voluntary contributions, such as these are. These do not come under the main budgetary provisions of the United Nations; they are voluntary contributions, and this temptation must be resisted. I venture to suggest that every penny spent in this field is good value for money. If population growth is not stemmed somewhere short of saturation of our planet and its resources, most of the other problems we discuss here will seem trivial and academic by comparison.
6.55 p.m.
Lord Brockway: My Lords, it is much more than in a formal way that I want to thank my noble friend Lord Ritchie-Calder, for opening this debate and for his informed, constructive and inspiring speech. I say that because all of us who know the work of the noble Lord appreciate how, over the years, he has been contributing to the welfare of the world. I do not know how many years ago it was that I read his Man Against the Desert and Man Against the Jungle which first made me realise the enormous economic possibilities in the world if international action were taken. His initiation of our debate today is only typical of the service that he has rendered.
Those of us who believe that we must have an international authority to maintain liberty in the world, to maintain justice in the world and to establish peace in the world, have been a little depressed during the last few years by a lessening of support for the United Nations that has taken place among politicians, as indeed has been expressed in this House. It has also found expression in the media. There has been some justification for that view in the long delays that have taken place in realising decisions which the United Nations has reached. That situation is largely because the world is now divided between great powers of military and economic strength. The great powers—the United States of America and the Soviet Union—appear to be more effective in controlling the events of

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the world than the United Nations can be. Now we have the emergence of a third great power—China—and there is the feeling that the United Nations, representing so many of the smaller nations of the world, will be ineffective in controlling events because of the power of the great nations.
There is another and contradictory development in the world. It is the development of the unaligned nations. In a world where the two great super-powers seem able to impose their views, the unaligned nations are now proving that they can be a bridge for peace between them. I take recent events. The Madrid Conference, which is now proceeding and which, after a difficult beginning, may move towards a European disarmament conference, was saved only by the unaligned nations of the world. It was only saved when the difference between the two great powers threatening the end of the conference was resolved by the unaligned nations coming forward with proposals which enabled it to continue.
I take the Law of the Sea Conference which has recently been held; it was the contribution of the unaligned nations, carrying out the principle that the oceans of the world are the heritage of mankind, which secured the adoption of an international authority which in the future will control the use of the oceans and all the great mineral resources that are underneath them. Take the war that is now occurring between Iraq and Iran. The only hope of ending that war will be by the conciliatory measures which the unaligned nations are taking. To those three contributions many more could be added.
I turn to the two great international issues that are now before mankind. The first is the threat of a nuclear weapons war, destroying the whole of mankind. Who is taking the initiative to prevent that war? The United Nations Special Assembly on Disarmament which met two years ago, was the result of the initiative of the unaligned nations of the world. One had the extraordinary result that, at the end of that assembly, the Prime Ministers, Presidents, Foreign Secretaries and Defence Secretaries of 149 nations declared in favour of ending all nuclear arms, declared in favour of ending all weapons of mass destruction, declared in favour of phased progress towards ending all conventional arms, and declared in favour of moving towards general and complete disarmament. Again, those recommendations were the result of the initiative of the unaligned nations of the world.
In addition, there is now in Geneva a committee which has been instructed by the United Nations to carry out those recommendations. Fortunately, a majority on that committee—21 out of 40—represent the unaligned nations, and, despite all the obstruction that is taking place at Geneva by the great powers, they have formed the Committee of 21 to carry out and implement the recommendations of the United Nations' Special Assembly. That is the contribution which the unaligned nations are now making to the peace of the world.
I turn to the other great issue that faces the world today—the gulf between the South and the North; the fact that one third of the population of the world is now living in hunger. Who is making a contribution towards a solution to that problem? Again, it is the unaligned nations. Seven years ago they put
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forward their proposal for a new, international economic order to end the hunger and starvation in the world and to bring about co-operation between the North and the South. It was that initiative which led to the creation of the Brandt Commission and its report. It does not go so far as the demands of the group of 77 unaligned nations (now a group of 120), but it goes very far indeed. Once more it is not the great powers—it is neither the United States of America nor the Soviet Union, and unfortunately it is not our own Government which in a disgraceful paper denounced the Brandt Report—no, it is the unaligned nations of the world which are now forward-looking and are urging a solution to the problem between the North and the South.
I emphasise this because all this indicates that today one need not have great military or economic power to be determining the progress of the world. It is immensely significant that it is the smaller, unaligned nations—those without military power and with little economic power—which are now the creative force in the world, with ideas and with constructive proposals which give us hope about the future of the world. If that can be the contribution which the unaligned nations can make, then again we may have hope in a United Nations which does not merely represent the great powers, but which represents the middle and smaller nations in the discussion of ideas and in co-operation for liberty, justice and peace in the world.
Therefore, we must not be depressed by the attitude of the last few years towards the United Nations, but must begin to understand that an international authority, representing the co-operation of the nations of the world, is the hope for the future. Our Government and all Governments should give it support.
7.9 p.m.
Lord Noel-Baker: My Lords, the scientific and technical achievements of our century have been very remarkable indeed: conquest of the skies by aircraft, colour television, the release of atomic energy—the greatest miracle of all—and man's journey to the moon. But the historians of the future, if there is a future and there are historians, will not be mainly concerned with our scientific advances. They will regard as vitally important in our century the evolution of international institutions.
I pay a warm tribute to my noble friend Lord Ritchie-Calder and his fundamentally important speech this afternoon, and I express my full agreement with what my noble friend Lord Brockway said about the non-aligned nations. I want to speak briefly about the history of the evolution of international institutions since I was born. I deal with history because I think Sir Winston Churchill was right when he said, "If you say that the past is the past, you surrender the future". We have to learn from the mistakes of the past, which have been very grievous indeed.
I first became familiar with the evolution of international institutions when my father led a deputation of churchmen to the second Hague Peace Conference in 1907. His deputation demanded the stopping of the arms race, drastic reduction of the then growing armaments, and the international obligatory arbitration of international disputes. I think that no one who went on that deputation believed that it was possible that

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the conference, having met to deal with the arms race, would separate without a positive result. They forgot the militarists. The militarists destroyed the conference.
In the following year, a British manufacturer of arms, Mr. Mulliner of Coventry, came back from Germany with the story that the Germans were building secret dreadnought battleships to overwhelm the British Navy. Here I address particularly members of the Conservative Party. There was not a word of truth in Mr. Mulliner's story. Sir Winston Churchill, in his record after the war, said that there were no German secret dreadnoughts and no German had said anything that was untrue. But the Conservative Opposition in the House of Commons, without inquiring into the facts, took up Mulliner's story, proposed votes of no confidence, and started a panic in the country, "We want eight, and we won't wait!" They demanded eight battleships a year, and created a panic and a dreadnought race, for the Government gave way and built the eight.
They started a dreadnought race with Germany which Sir Edward Grey, our Foreign Secretary, said in 1909 was the most dangerous factor in creating international tension in the world, and which Sir Winston Churchill, as First Lord of the Admiralty, said in 1912 would lead to war if it were not stopped before 1914. The war broke out in the very year which Sir Winston Churchill—and, as was also the case, Bethmann-Hollweg, the German Chancellor—had predicted. The Conservative Opposition took a very heavy responsibility when they took up Mulliner's false alarm.
After the war, the League of Nations was created. I had an astonishing experience. I was four years at the front. On 30th November 1918 I was still at the front. On 1st January 1919 I was in Paris as one of the secretaries to the commission which drafted the Covenant of the League of Nations. It was to me a vision of radiant hope. An experience that no man of my age could possibly forget. I was at every meeting of the Commission which drafted the Covenant of the League.
I knew what its authors expected and hoped for, and I say without any hesitation that by 1931 the League had achieved results far beyond the hopes of any of its authors. It had stopped four wars. It had settled innumerable international disputes. It had done so by the method of public debate between senior statesmen, to which I shall refer again. It had made astonishing advances in administrative matters; the repatriation of prisoners of war; the rehabilitation of the finances of Austria and Hungary; the development of a world health programme; and the development of a world education programme.
When the disarmament conference met in 1932 and the arms race was brought to an end—always, as the Covenant laid down, an indispensable condition of the long-term success of the League of Nations—it seemed that the path was opening to a period of long and happy human progress. But, alas, again we reckoned without the militarists. Before the conference met, the Government which had secured its summons—Arthur Henderson was the British Foreign Secretary who achieved this result; I was his Parliamentary
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Private Secretary—had fallen, and a Government with militarist Ministers came to power.
The problem was to make a disarmament treaty which would give Germany equality. Germany had been totally disarmed by Lloyd George in 1919. She had been forbidden to have large armed forces and any of the weapons which were classed as offensive because they had enabled the victors in the First World War to overcome the long defensive stalemate of the first four years. The offensive weapons were battleships, aircraft carriers, submarines, all military aircraft, tanks, heavy mobile guns, and poison gas. The President of the United States, President Hoover, proposed a treaty under which virtually all those abolitions should be made effective for all the nations of the world. The only exception was that he would allow the retention of some small fighter aircraft.
The Germans said yes; the Russians said yes; the Fascist Italians said yes; and the small and middle powers said yes. But Britain said no. We had a First Lord of the Admiralty who said, "We must keep battleships". We had a Secretary of State for Air who said, "We must keep bombers". We had a Secretary of State for War who said, "We must keep tanks and heavy mobile guns". The Germans of course would not agree. The Foreign Secretary, Sir John Simon, said in the House of Commons, "The choice is plain before us. Shall we disarm ourselves, or shall we allow Germany to rearm?" The hawks in power chose to allow Germany to rearm. It was a terrible responsibility, for it led—with the subsequent betrayal of the League over Manchuria and Abyssinia, in which our Government played far too large a part—to the Second World War, and when the war came the battleships were really useless, more of a burden than a help. Bombers and tanks were the weapons with which Hitler conquered Europe.
We had six years of world turmoil and 53 million dead, an appalling disaster, and all the time a great number of people in this country were agitating that the League should be upheld and that the Covenant should be supported over Manchuria and Abyssinia. If I had the time I could go into it in great detail. All the time Sir Winston Churchill was following those who worked for the success of the League of Nations, those who organised the peace ballot, and Sir Winston took an intimate and active interest in the result of the peace ballot and congratulated Lord Cecil on its great triumph. There was overwhelming evidence that the British people wanted the League to be used to stop the aggressors in Abyssinia, Spain and Czechoslovakia, and there was ample evidence that sanctions would achieve that result.
When the war was over—this is something I hope noble Lords will remember; I have quoted it before and I shall quote it often—Sir Winston Churchill gave his long-considered verdict on what had happened in the 'thirties. The Second World War, he said, could easily have been prevented if the League of Nations had been used with courage and loyalty. That is the great lesson we should learn from today's debate. The international institutions must be upheld against those who have wanted, and those who still want, to destroy them. The United Nations has had some startling successes; the Suez war I regard as an immense service to our

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country as well as to the world; my noble friend has spoken of the magnificent work of the ILO for the workers of the world; and my noble friend Lord Ritchie-Calder spoke of the World Health Organisation which, if it had a few more million pounds, could wipe out many other diseases and save the third world from an appalling sum of suffering and hardship.
I have used up my time and I must sit down. I appeal to noble Lords opposite not to allow their Government to do again what was done before the First and Second World Wars; namely, not to allow the negotiations for disarmament in the United Nations to fail. I appeal to the Secretary of State, to whose personality and great abilities I have often paid tribute, to play a personal part in public debate in the organs of the United Nations, perhaps in the Disarmament Commission, to secure that the greatest of all world reforms shall be carried through—the reform of which my noble friend Lord Brockway spoke—the abolition of armaments and of world hunger, the twin evils which must be dealt with together if they are to be dealt with at all, because only the wealth now given to armaments can abolish the appalling hardship, poverty and hunger that so many nations now suffer.
7.25 p.m.
Lord Goronwy-Roberts: My Lords, my noble friend Lord Ritchie-Calder deserves our warmest thanks for introducing this important debate and for the manner in which he did so. It is right that we should from time to time attempt an assessment of the role and contribution of the United Kingdom in the work of the United Nations, in the General Assembly, in the Security Council, of which we are a permanent member, and in the special agencies and similar institutions which carry on what I think sometimes is the major and possibly some of the best work of the United Nations. As my noble friend Lord Noel-Baker said, it is easy to decry the United Nations for its many mistakes, but we need only envisage a situation in the world in which there were no United Nations; and indeed if there were not, like Voltaire's God, I suspect it would have to be invented.
In assessing our role, it is right that we should be constructively critical, remembering of course that, while Britain is not a major power, it is still a very considerable power. Indeed, my experience, which extends over quite a few years now, at the Foreign Office is that despite our size and paucity of our resources comparatively speaking, we are always listened to with respect and attention by the wide range of countries which now belong to the organisation, some of them friendly to us and some of them somewhat critical.
My first question, therefore, is whether we are satisfied that in the last few years—I make no point about any particular Administration—we as a country have been contributing to the United Nations and its agencies not only the money but the manpower and womanpower that in the first enthusiastic years after 1945, in the wake of the work of Stettinius, Vandenberg and the late Lord Avon—Sir Anthony Eden as he then was—inspired a good deal of practical idealism, particularly in the United Kingdom. I was part of it, as were many other Members of this House and the other place. One has a feeling that that first enthusiastic
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devotion to the United Nations has somewhat fallen away in the last few years. It may be that our dwindling resources, soon to be improved we hope, have had something to do with it. Nevertheless, let us constantly question whether, within our capacity, we are doing all we can and should, for instance, to help the developing world, to alleviate dreadful disasters like the Italian earthquake, and to bring succour to the 16 million refugees who are a standing reproach to our world. We cannot do it all ourselves, but we are doing all we can in our contribution in this respect?
We have made a very creditable contribution, as we heard from my noble friend, to the work of the World Health Authority, the Food and Agricultural Authority, UNESCO, UNCTAD and in the Disarmament Commission and its predecessors. Indeed, the British initiative and the results flowing from quite a number of British initiatives in the sphere of arms control reflects very creditably indeed on successive Governments in this country. I need mention only the 1963 comprehensive test ban treaty, negotiated by the noble Lord, Lord Home of the Hirsel, in Moscow, followed by the Labour Government within a few years, the agreement on biological warfare, and the British draft treaty, which a year or so ago looked hopefully to the future for implementation, on chemical warfare.
So there have been achievements that rarely hit the headlines, and when we become a little discouraged about the progress of affairs in the United Nations let us remind ourselves that this is probably the greatest task that the human race has ever given itself, a greater task than the waging of any war. This is the real revolution—what the United Nations was set up to achieve. The magnitude of the task is what we should remember, not the extent of our own failure to carry out all of it at once.
I agree entirely with the noble Lord, Lord McNair, that the overriding priority is the maintenance of peace and stability. Without that we can of course do nothing for the third world. We can do nothing about the Brandt Commission. Here I wish to join with my noble friend Lord Brockway in hoping for a much keener, more enthusiastic approach by Her Majesty's Government to the Brandt Commission. Nevertheless, we must remember—and the commission's report itself admits this—that there is there a deficiency: the totalitarian countries are not included, and it is very difficult to advance at the right speed in this matter hopping on one leg. If we are to be effective in terms of the Brandt recommendations, it must be a joint action, a common action in which the democratic West and the totalitarian East take part equally. But I agree with my noble friend; we need a bigger thrust in favour of the general import of the Brandt recommendations.
However, we can do nothing about these things unless we achieve peace and stability. The task, as I see it, is not so much to avert a third world war—I hope that I am not putting it too highly. Many of us feel that the immediate task, and possibly the final task, is to contain the areas of danger, to prevent the many areas of friction in the world from becoming so inflamed as to cause a third world holocaust. The Middle East, which has been mentioned by a number of speakers, is obviously the area in which the situation is the most pressing. It is an area of violent instability which is a constant threat not only to itself but to the

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rest of the world, geographically, strategically, and economically. It is probably the most significant of the areas of friction with which we have to cope. So, as the Foreign Secretary reminded the General Assembly a few weeks ago, our best efforts must be addressed to a solution, by negotiation, of the Middle East problem. The House will know what is the basis of this. It is contained in the resolution successfully negotiated in the United Nations by my noble friend Lord Caradon: I refer to Resolution No. 242, followed by Resolution No. 338. It is all there; the machinery, the resolutions, the policies are there. It is for the members of the organisation, governments backed by their peoples, to express a will to carry the intentions into practice.
There is no need to fashion a policy for the solution of the problems of the Middle East. The need is to move corporately, to substitute conference for conflict; and "conference" means that everybody concerned with the problem should be called in—Arab and Jew, Israeli and Palestinian, Russian and American. Everybody concerned with the problem should come into the conference; otherwise there will be no solution. In the way in which the Foreign Secretary, with brilliance and courage, solved the Rhodesian problem we found an example of this technique of bringing in everybody, no matter how obnoxious one group of attenders may be to another group. This is the key to the solution of the problem of the Middle East and indeed other problems which beset us in other parts of the world.
On the very perimeter of the Middle East the area of friction, of uncertainty, has been added to by the Russian occupation of Afghanistan. The Soviet Union may well claim an interest in the stability of Afghanistan as one of its neighbours, particularly as a neighbour bordering on a very big population of Moslems in the Soviet Union itself. Very well, the Soviet Union has that interest. But unilateral action to safeguard an interest never succeeds in an enduring way, and I welcome what Mr. Brezhnev said last week. He said that as soon as there is stability, as he sees it, in Afghanistan, the Russians will withdraw. Presumably a modus vivendi for Afghanistan and therefore for the area would be negotiated. Let it be a multilateral settlement of the problem of that area, of the outer Middle East. I say that because not only Russia but the Indian sub-continent, South-East Asia, as well as the West, have a very great interest in such a solution.
I must truncate my remarks because the beneficient operations of the rules of order require that a short debate shall be a short debate. I end on this note. The task for which the United Nations was set up was to define the common interest binding its members, to get away from the adversarial relationship among nations. This is the real change for which we are working—to approach one another, not in a spirit of manoeuvre, of suspicion, of attempting an advantage, of driving a hard bargain, "doing down" the other chap, but rather in a desire to assess together a common interest and to work together to achieve that interest. It is the interest that binds all countries, all systems, since no country, however large, and no system, however entrenched, can long survive the present persistence of the old-fashioned mood of adversarial argument. That is the heart and centre of the United
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Nations purpose and, I very much hope, of the foreign policy of Her Majesty's Government.
7.38 p.m.
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, first, I wish to thank the noble Lord, Lord Goronwy-Roberts, for keeping his remarks so commendably short at this rather awkward moment when the time is running out. The noble Lord, Lord Ritchie-Calder, has done your Lordships another valuable service in providing this opportunity to take stock of the activities of the institutions within the United Nations system. Many of your Lordships, having achieved distinction in the professions or in diplomacy, have close knowledge of the work of one or other of the organisations that we have been considering today.
In recent years the membership of the United Nations has greatly increased. With the accession of the two Germanies and of Vietnam, and with the virtual completion of the process of decolonisation, the total membership is now 154, and bearing in mind the transfer of the Chinese seat a few years back to the Government of the People's Republic, the UN is now near to being a universal institution. The admission of Zimbabwe was the latest major step in this evolution. For all its imperfections, the UN is the parliament of the world, and every member state, in this age of inter-dependence, both political and economic, must take it into account and seek to work through it in the search for solutions to the problems that beset us.
The institutions of the UN system are numerous and wide-ranging. It is scarcely possible in one comprehensive phrase to sum up the Government's view of them, or to state how we see our own role in them. Nevertheless, against the background of the grave problems which the world community faces in almost every area of human activity, the Government are anxious to play a positive role whenever there is evidence of a general will to seek common ground and practical advance.
The prime original purpose of the United Nations proper—that is to say, the political institutions in New York—was the maintenance of peace and the promotion of the peaceful settlement of disputes. Some disparage the institution on the grounds that the peace has been frequently broken since 1945 and that disputes between states continue to rage. But the United Nations has also had many successes; and the criticism is based on a fundamental misunderstanding. Whatever the powers ambitiously conferred upon the Security Council by the war-time allies, it is not practical politics to expect the United Nations to impose solutions by coercive means.
The Security Council—and the General Assembly, too—are committees of states, not supranational institutions, and their ability to act and to influence events is a function of the willingness of states to work out common positions and strive for common goals. If that will is not there, then it is the policies of the states concerned that should come under attack, not the forum in which they meet. To suggest that it is not worth their meeting, or having a United Nations at all, is a real counsel of despair. The United Nations provides means for the international community to inform, to persuade and to exert pressure. It provides an extra armoury of devices that diplomacy can use in

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the effort to avert conflict or to bring it to an end. As Churchill said, "'Jaw-jaw' is better than war-war'." Through the UN, "jaw-jaw" can be made to continue beyond the point where the processes of the old diplomacy might have been exhausted.
One of the hopeful developments has been the growth, without much in the way of formal principles or guidelines, of UN peace-keeping. It has also been notable that governments have been increasingly willing to have recourse to the good offices of the Secretary-General. These are trends we wish to encourage. The recent trend towards informal consultation among Security Council members also has value. As a country which continues to have worldwide interests, and as a permanent member of the Security Council, we have both a need and a duty to contribute to the United Nations' work for peace. We shall continue to play our part.
Many of your Lordships will agree that one of the key elements in the political work of the United Nations is the search for greater security through arms control and disarmament. Not everyone appreciates that wide-ranging negotiations take place under UN auspices on disarmament matters virtually throughout the year. The search for balanced and verifiable measures of arms control is a painstakingly difficult one, but no one should doubt the effort that is put into it, or the high priority the British Government attach to it. It is disappointing that there is so little to show for these efforts, but the fact is that arms control discussions, whether conducted under the auspices of the UN or elsewhere, cannot be divorced from the wider political context; the prospects for agreements are closely related to renewed progress in building up international confidence and security.
Nevertheless, the Government are committed to the search for multilateral arms control measures. The United Kingdom is a party to all the multilateral arms control treaties negotiated since 1945; and we shall continue to play a full part in the work of the Committee on Disarmament in Geneva and in other UN disarmament fora. We have also, of course, given our strong support to key bilateral negotiations, such as SALT, and we welcome Mr. Reagan's statements about the importance of continuing the SALT process.
Another key role of the United Nations is its contribution towards the development of international law. In addition to other considerations, our position as the source of one of the main legal traditions of the world makes it appropriate that we should play a leading role in this sphere. Among the major achievements of recent years has been the codification under UN auspices of the Law of Treaties and the law relating to diplomatic and consular relations. I hope we shall soon witness another: a comprehensive review of the earlier codification of the international law of the sea, together with a new international régime for the deep seabed, to which the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, referred in his speech. Progress was made at the last session of the Law of the Sea Conference on the composition and voting arrangements for the Council of the International Seabed Authority. The next session, due in March and April, will have to concentrate on the important issue of participation, which we hope will be resolved so as to enable the European Community
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to be a party, and on the preparatory commission and preliminary investment protection.
Another welcome development in the United Nations is the growing acceptance that, despite the provision of the Charter which rules out interference by the organisation in the internal affairs of states, human rights questions are the legitimate concern of all members. It is satisfactory to note that in recent times such subordinate organs of the General Assembly as the Commission on Human Rights have been able to debate human rights subjects concerning various parts of the world without becoming ossified on ideological lines. There has also been some move away from the selectivity that marred much of the United Nations human rights work in recent years. We and other like-minded countries must play our part in using the United Nations system to promote the fundamental values on which not merely western civilisation but civilisation in general must rest.
My reference to like-minded countries makes this perhaps as good a moment as any to refer to the importance we attach in the UN context to our close contacts and collaboration with western and other countries who share our interests and pre-occupations. This is particularly true in the case of the European Community. As your Lordships know, the member states of the Community seek to harmonise their political positions on all the problems that concern them, not merely those that fall within the scope of the treaties. Co-operation at the United Nations has been one of the most successful aspects of this effort. At the last Assembly our delegation in New York joined in more than 300 meetings to harmonise Community attitudes, and a common voting position was achieved on the great majority of the resolutions. The Community has already achieved a cohesion which is widely respected in the UN organisation. We welcome and will continue to foster this trend.
The Motion put down by the noble Lord, Lord Ritchie-Calder, brought in the specialised agencies as well as the UN proper. This is obviously right, as these important institutions account for more than three-quarters of the resources of the UN system in terms of staff and funds. Not enough is generally known about the practical work that the agencies conduct and the services they provide to the world community. We attach high value to this work. As your Lordships are aware, there has in recent years been a regrettable tendency for political matters, which are properly for the General Assembly, to be brought up in the agencies. We shall continue to resist this, whatever view we may take of the political issues involved.
There is one issue, however, which is both political and also properly the concern of an agency, which I should like to mention. This is the pressure in UNESCO for a new world information order, pressure for which was renewed at the recent general conference in Belgrade held in October. The Government understand the wish of the developing countries to reduce their dependence on the western media, and are willing to play their part in assisting with the training of journalists and the development of communications in developing countries. But we are determined to resist any further encroachment on the freedom of the media to gather and disseminate information;

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and we are determined to see that proper weight is given to the rights of individuals in UNESCO's negotiations, and not merely to the rights of countries, which is to say, governments.
May I turn now to some of the points that have been raised during the course of this evening's debate? Again, if time prevents me from dealing with all of them I hope your Lordships will forgive me and allow me to deal with them in correspondence subsequently. The noble Lord, Lord McNair, referred to the peacekeeping role of the United Nations, to which I, too, referred earlier. The United Kingdom has of course consistently supported peace-keeping operations. We currently supply the largest national contingent to the United Nations peace-keeping force in Cyprus, together with the logistic support for the entire force there; and, indeed, we provide facilities and supplies for the UN interim force in Lebanon. I hope that will indicate the support that we show for that activity.
The noble Lord, Lord McNair, also referred to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine. The agency is of course vital to stability in the Middle East. The importance that we attach to it is reflected in our own contribution of £4.5 million for the current year. We have been the second largest contributor to the agency overall since its inception; and, indeed, we have just pledged £5 million for 1981, which is, of course, subject to parliamentary approval. However, like the noble Lord, we are seriously concerned at the agency's continuing financial problems, but I fear that these can be solved only in an international context.
My Lords, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Rochester and several other noble Lords referred to the Brandt Report, which perhaps falls a little outside the scope of this debate. My honourable friend Mr. Hurd dealt with our views on the Brandt Report very fully in the other place quite recently. Perhaps your Lordships would care to read what my honourable friend has said. We have discussed that report in this House before today and doubtless we shall do so again; but in view of the time I hope your Lordships will forgive me if I do not dwell further on this point now.
The noble Lords, Lord Caradon and Lord Kilmarnock, referred to the United Nations Fund for Population Activities. The present Government, recognising the importance of population programmes in the development process, continue to make every effort to provide assistance to population programmes commensurate with other priorities in the aid programme. Because of the diversity of population programmes and their complex links with development, the ODA supports a number of multilateral organisations working in this field. The United Nations Fund for Population Activities is the focal point of thes activities. I can assure both noble Lords that their views will be taken into account, and if I may I will write to the noble Lord, Lord Kilmarnock, about his point concerning our contribution to the International planned Parenthood Federation.
The noble Lord, Lord Collison, referred at some length, and convincingly so, to the International Labour Organisation. As he said, the organisation is not only considerably older than the United Nations
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but is unique for the tripartite structure of government, employers and workers. Thus, in a sense, it is the most widely representative of all the United Nations institutions. There was a time, not so long ago, when the ILO's future as an effective forum for setting and maintaining international labour standards seemed in doubt. Failure scrupulously to observe established procedures led to the withdrawal of the USA in 1977. Happily, the danger has receded and I am sure that noble Lords will share the Government's satisfaction at the United States decision to return to the organisation in February this year.
The noble Lord, Lord Brockway, referred at length to the role of the non-aligned movement in its various activities related to the UN. We respect the original principle of non-alignment and acknowledge the important role played by many non-aligned countries in international affairs. Partisan Cuban chairmanship, however, has affected the credibility of the movement's claims to genuine non-alignment. The noble Lord, Lord Brockway, also dealt at some length with disarmament matters. I will not refer to those again now, but, as I said a week or so ago, it might be posssible to have a special debate on disarmament in this House in the not-too-distant future. The noble Lord, Lord Noel-Baker, in his usual convincing and moving way, spoke as always, from the depth of his considerable experience in these matters. I must say that I listened with fascination to his recounting of the 1907 conference at The Hague, which I think he said he attended with his father, and the 1919 conference in Paris, by which time he was a fully-fledged delegate in his own right.
I must refer briefly to some of the other main agencies. We could justify the existence of the World Health Organisation with the single word "smallpox"—for the WHO has succeeded in eradicating one of the greatest scourges that man has had to suffer since time immemorial. I would also mention the work of the UN bodies devoted to relief and development. Among these are the Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees, UNICEF and the United Nations Development Programme. We are major contributors to each of these. At last month's UN pledging conference in New York we announced, subject, again, to parliamentary approval, increased pledges for 1981 to each of these organisations. The reduction this year to UNDP, which the noble Lord, Lord Caradon, so regretted, was part of an overall reduction in the aid programme which, like other Government programmes, had to bear its share in the public expenditure cuts necessary to reduce inflation and to strengthen the economy. We are still among the 10 major donors to UNDP.
I must pay particular tribute to the High Commissioner for Refugees who has responded with great dedication and efficiency to the terrible increase in the number of refugees in recent years. Nor should we overlook the vital food agencies, the largest of which, of course, is the Food and Agriculture Organisation. Perhaps I may take this opportunity to announce that we have decided to offer a further 30,000 tonnes of cereals for four countries who are facing serious food shortages: Somalia, Mozambique, Zambia and Kenya. This will be in addition to the nearly 40,000 tonnes we have already supplied this year under our

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bilateral food aid programme to needy African countries. We are also paying about 20 per cent. of the cost of the food-aid supplied by the Community as deliveries of cereals to African countries, which, in the last harvest year, totalled almost 400,000 tonnes. I am sure that noble Lords will agree that, while we must help to relieve the suffering of those afflicted by famine or disease, we shall never solve their problems unless energies and resources are channelled into projects that will yield lasting results. We cannot ignore the need to feed the starving, but we must prevent starvation by helping organisations like FAO to invest in programmes designed to produce sufficient food for all.
A debate on UN agencies would be incomplete without a reference to the only one with its headquarters in the United Kingdom. The Inter-governmental Maritime Consultative Organisation is of fundamental importance to us, since we are both a major shipping nation and a country with a coastline greatly exposed to risk of marine pollution. IMCO has a crucial role to play in providing a forum for negotiation on a large number of international conventions and in drawing up detailed recommendations and codes of practice over a very wide range of technical matters affecting ships. It is vital not only that high standards be set in this field but that they should be set by international agreement. Unilateralism in the technical regulation of shipping would interfere with the freedom of navigation, create inefficiency and possibly result in lower standards.
Successive governments have encouraged Britons to become international civil servants, and over the years the secretariats of the United Nations and the specialised agencies have benefited from the disinterested work of a number of distinguished British nationals. There are some 123 Britons occupying professional, senior posts in the UN secretariat compared with the 96 to which we are entitled under the complex formula for deciding equitable geographical distribution. The position is not quite as unsatisfactory as the noble Lord, Lord Ritchie-Calder, has suggested. It is a measure of their quality that, despite intense pressure for jobs within the UN system from all parts of the world, the United Kingdom should be technically over-represented in the UN. A similar proportion of Britons work for the specialised agencies. By contrast with their colleagues from some other countries, British international civil servants attach great importance to loyalty to the UN rather than to the country of their birth, and I should like to pay tribute to their devoted efforts. Although it would be invidious to name those who are still serving, perhaps I can single out one well-known to noble Lords, who has already been mentioned tonight, the late Lord Boyd-Orr, who was the first Director-General of FAO and who did so much to set that agency on its present course.
I am conscious that in attempting to respond to this debate I have touched only cursorily on some of the numerous aspects of the UN system and have left unsaid much that could have been said in response to the varied and instructive interventions of so many noble Lords, but I hope I have been able to give your Lordships some idea of the positive and practical spirit in which the Government approach their responsibilities as partners in the UN system.
7.59 p.m.
Lord Ritchie-Calder: My Lords, I will not detain your Lordships, apart from thanking very much everyone who took part and thanking also the Minister for his response, supplementing very constructively what we have been talking about. I would say that what we have done here tonight is a bit of fly-casting and simply alerting, I hope, everyone concerned in this House to the fact that we must pay more attention to the United Nations and its agencies. We do not want to go through this performance again in the sense of simply having a quick look round the shop, as it were. We ought systematically to ask ourselves what is really happening. We know little about it, as the noble Lord has said. Some of us know more than we are able to impart. The fact is we must do something about it. I accept what the Minister said about the figures in the United Nations; but what I want to see far more is in this country a regeneration of that vitality that we had in the 1930s. The noble Lord referred to IMCO. I am serving notice that I want a debate on the implications of the Law of the Sea Conference and I hope that we can find time for its full discussion. I thank your Lordships very much, and I beg leave to withdraw my Motion for Papers.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

Criminal Justice (Amendment) Bill [H.L.]
8 p.m.
Lord Wigoder: My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. As your Lordships are aware, this is the second occasion upon which I have moved that this Bill should be read a second time. During the last Session this Bill passed through all its stages in your Lordships' House but there was no possibility of it going further in the other place partly because of the extreme pressure of legislation during that Session. The position now is that I venture to reintroduce this Bill because some of my legal colleagues (rather than my political colleagues) in another place are anxious to see whether they can find an opportunity for this Bill to go forward in another place if your Lordships decide to take the same course on this occasion as you did last Session.
This is a very modest little measure which was greeted with substantial support from a number of distinguished legal figures both inside and outside your Lordships' House. It deals with the question of the lifting of reporting restrictions where there are committal proceedings and where there is more than one defendant.
Your Lordships will recall that the present position is that there can be no reporting of committal proceedings unless there is an application on behalf of the defence to lift those restrictions. If all the defendants agree that there should be no reporting, then there will be no reporting and this Bill does not affect that position. Similarly, if all the defendants agree that the restrictions should be lifted, then the restrictions will be lifted, and again this Bill does not affect that position.
This Bill is only concerned with the situation where there is more than one defendant and where there is a dispute between the defendants as to whether the restrictions shall be lifted or not. The present position

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there, which appears to be unsatisfactory, is that any one defendant, for however trivial a reason and however trivial a part he may be alleged to have played in the matter that is being investigated, can as of right demand that reporting restrictions should be lifted, even though this may be to the very real detriment of the other defendants who are involved in the case.
The Bill recognises that there is a genuine conflict of interest on occasions. There can be the occasion when a defendant is entitled to have the reporting restrictions lifted because by means of publicity it is just possible that some essential witness might be traced. This is an unusual occurrence but it can happen and one would not want to seek to deprive a defendant of that opportunity where there is a bona fide application to that effect.
On the other hand, in a great majority of cases, there is very real danger that the reporting of committal proceedings may gravely prejudice the position of some defendants. That can happen in four obvious ways. First, the lawyer concerned who appears for the prosecution may open the case in very dramatic terms which are reported in the press but the evidence may fall far short of the opening. Secondly, defendants who will be pleading guilty at the trial may have made long written statements implicating other defendants. Those can properly be read out during the committal proceedings, but if they are published it may very well prevent a fair trial of the other defendants involved. Thirdly, inadmissible evidence may well be put in at the magistrates' court to the prejudice of other defendants, whereas at the trial that evidence may not appear at all. Fourthly, the whole nature of our committal proceedings is such that they give the impression of being uncontested by the defence, and a report of those proceedings may appear to indicate that there is only a prosecution case and no defence case at all.
I should stress that I am not primarily concerned with the very occasional notorious case in which this issue has arisen in recent years. I am much more concerned with the very large number of small cases where the local press in particular may at the moment find themselves as a result of an application by one defendant free to report committal proceedings in the local newspapers to the possible grave prejudice to the jury which will hear the case in due course.
In that situation, all that this little Bill provides is that, where there is disagreement among defendants as to whether the restrictions shall be lifted or not, then representations shall be made to the magistrate and the court shall decide what is the proper course "in the interests of justice". That is the phrase that is used in this Bill. Your Lordships may recollect that during the last Session at the various stages of this Bill there was considerable discussion as to what the precise criteria should be. In the course of the Report stage, after much very valuable assistance from the Home Office, your Lordships decided that rather more specific criteria should be written into this Bill.
The Bill as at present before your Lordships goes back to the original Bill as introduced last time. This will give the opportunity for your Lordships to express other views on further reflection as to what are the appropriate criteria at a later stage in the progress of
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this Bill, should you be good enough to give it a Second Reading today. Your Lordships may perhaps remember that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Widgery (then Lord Chief Justice), expressed very strong views in the course of the progress of the Bill last Session that the phrase, "in the interests of justice", used in the Bill today was perhaps the most satisfactory of the various alternatives available.
If your Lordships wish at a later stage to suggest amendments to the criteria, I shall of course be very happy to consider them and to seek the decision of the House upon them. I am fully aware of the fact that various technical formal amendments are necessary to the Bill in its present draft which would follow the lines of the various formal amendments suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Belstead, in the course of Report stage during the last Session. I shall be very happy to reintroduce similar amendments at Committee stage if your Lordships are kind enough to give this Bill a Second Reading. With those short observations, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Lord Wigoder.)
8.9 p.m.
Lord Boston of Faversham: My Lords, we are all grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, for introducing his Bill and providing us with this further opportunity to consider the changes proposed. It may be, as he has said, a modest measure, but I think that the amendments of the law that it proposes are in fact significant and important. I must congratulate him in having got off the mark so swiftly after the start of the Session. Last Session he was not exactly slow; the Bill received a Second Reading eight weeks after the State Opening. This Session this Second Reading debate is taking place just under four weeks after the State Opening.
I did not take part in the proceedings on the Bill last time but I have read all the debates which took place. What strikes one most is the unanimity of view that the present law is wholly unsatisfactory and needs to be changed. With that, with respect, I completely agree. The second thing that strikes one about those debates is the fairly wide agreement that change is needed as a matter of some urgency.
One thing which I think was very much in everyone's mind last time and perhaps is again somewhat to the fore tonight, is the unsatisfactory state of the present law as revealed particularly by the committal proceedings at Minehead in 1978. Almost another 18 months have gone by since this Bill was first given a Second Reading and the problem was urgent then. I believe it is even more urgent now.
The problem itself is clear and has been explained with, if I may say so, his customary clarity by the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder; so there is no need to go over that ground again. I would just add that I believe it is plainly wrong that on the basis of a whim or fancy, or for no reason whatsoever, a defendant should be able to foist a particular course upon another defendant or indeed upon other defendants.
Your Lordships will be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, for having emphasised that presenting the Bill as it was originally presented last time gives an opportunity for reconsideration of amendments which

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were put forward last time and perhaps of others which might be put forward this time.
I must confess that I am not over-concerned about which particular choice of words from among the alternatives so far considered whould be used to achieve the basic aims of this Bill. On the whole, I would go for simpler version as the better. Like the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, I, too, was impressed by the support given during the Committee stage in our previous debates last time by the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chief Justice to the original version of the Bill, which is again before your Lordships' House, rather than the alternatives adopted on Report last time—though I think it is also true that the noble and learned Lord indicated that he would not oppose the amendments proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, at that time.
There is only one other matter I would wish to mention and that is this: this is a matter which, among many other perhaps more major matters, is being considered by the Royal Commission on Criminal Procedure. I think it is right that so far the commission has not reported on this matter. I do not know whether the noble Lord, Lord Belstead, is able to give us any information tonight about the course of events in connection with that and indeed about the course of events that might follow it: that is to say, any legislation which might be forthcoming. But, even if there is a positive answer on both those points—that is to say, even if we can look forward to receiving the report soon and also to receiving proposed legislation shortly thereafter—this matter is an urgent one. Clearly, there would have to be a fair amount of time before the report and any such legislation could be considered. Therefore I would suggest that perhaps the best course in any event would be to seize this opportunity now presented by the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, to deal with this very necessary and urgent problem. I certainly hope very much that your Lordships will give this Bill a Second Reading tonight and I hope, too, for a speedy passage thereafter.
8.14 p.m.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord Belstead): My Lords, we are indebted once again to the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, for bringing this matter before the House. As the noble Lord has explained, this Bill is identical to the one that he introduced last year, which passed through all its stages in this House but made no further progress in Parliament. While there was general agreement last time (and it has been echoed in the speeches made by the noble Lords, Lord Wigoder and Lord Boston) that the present position on the reporting of committal proceedings gives cause for concern, there was rather less agreement during our previous debates on this Bill about the best way of curing it. The noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, proposed then, as indeed he has again, that in cases of dispute between multiple defendants in committal proceedings the court should decide whether or not to lift reporting restrictions by the test of the "interests of justice".
A number of noble Lords expressed reservations about the adequacy of that test and in our debates we considered a number of alternative approaches, in the hope of establishing clear guidelines for the magistrates.
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In its final form as it left the House, the Bill contained a formula which was certainly more specific. Whether it was a clearer statutory guide than the original words "interests of justice" was a question which the House had debated at some length. In the months since the House last debated the matter, clearly the noble Lord has been reconsidering the matter. Against the background of our debates in the last Session, I wonder whether there is not something to be said for taking a fresh look at the words, "interests of justice" as a test. Upon reconsideration it may turn out to be a more serviceable formula than it was previously credited as being. At any rate, we now have the opportunity for the House to look at it again.
If this Bill again commends itself to the House, there are just three points I should like to make before it comes to us in its later stages. The first has been referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder. There are, so we believe in the Home Office, technical amendments which need to be made, and we await those amendments for the Committee stage.
Secondly, Section 3 of the Criminal Justice Act 1967, which this Bill seeks to amend, is itself under sentence of death, having been consolidated as Section 8 of the Magistrates' Courts Act 1980. When that Act comes into force, which we expect to be in the spring, Section 3 of the 1967 Act will be repealed. The noble Lord may perhaps wish to give some thought, therefore, to the Long Title of the Bill.
Finally, the whole subject of committal proceedings, as the House will know, is within the terms of reference of the Royal Commission on Criminal Procedure. The noble Lord, Lord Boston, specifically mentioned this and my reply to him is that I understand that the report of the Royal Commission is expected to be published early in January. I cannot, of course, go further than that this evening so far as any possibilities of legislation arising out of the report will be concerned; but the noble Lord is absolutely right in saying that, first of all, the digestion of the report and then the possibilities of legislation will take time. It is certainly not my purpose, as it was not the noble Lord's, to suggest that the reason for the existence of the Royal Commission is reason for opposing this Bill today. However, I am sure that if this Bill makes progress your Lordships will want to examine it very carefully in the light of whatever the Royal Commission has to say on this topic.
Lord Wigoder: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Boston, and to the noble Lord, Lord Belstead, for their encouraging remarks, and I take on board, of course, the detailed points made by the noble Lord, Lord Belstead.
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

ECC Report on Biotechnology
8.19 p.m.
Lord Sherfield Lord Sherfield rose to move, That this House takes note of the report of the European Communities Committee on biotechnology (66th Report, Session 1979–80, H.L. 350).
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I rise to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper. This is the fashionable hour at which to begin a debate on a report from the Select Committee on the European Communities. Unfortunately it is also an extremely inconvenient hour, and several members of my subcommittee who would have liked to take part are just unable to come so late in the evening, so we are, I fear, a rather diminished band.
The subject of biomolecular engineering is a vast one, highly topical and of major national importance. But your Committee, under its terms of reference, can deal with only one aspect of it—a proposal put forward by the European Commission for a five-year Community programme of research and development in this field. Your committee was alerted to the significance of this programme by a paragraph in the report from the Advisory Council for Applied Research and Development—ACARD—on Biotechnology, under the chairmanship of Dr. Spinks. Dr. Spinks was good enough to give evidence to the sub-committee, who are much indebted to him. We are also indebted to Professor Bull, of the University of Wales Institute of Science and Technology, who is the chairman of the British Co-ordinating Committee for work in this field. He gave evidence to the committee and also specialist advice.
The proposal is naturally couched in technical language and a glossary is provided. But, put simply, the programme covers six subjects, two in the general field of enzyme engineering and four in the general field of genetic engineering. These are set out in the report and I shall not describe them in detail. These six projects would be funded on an indirect basis—that is to say, the Community puts up some money and the national Governments put up some money—by cost sharing contracts between the Commission and private or public organisations in the member states. Each project would be controlled by a small research group. The total cost over five years would be 49 million European units of account, of which 26 million European units of account would come from Community funds.
This is an area in which, at the end of the 'sixties, the United Kingdom was a world leader. Since then, as described in the report, Japan and the United States, in particular, have made great strides, while Europe—and, in Europe, notably the United Kingdom—is falling behind. The ACARD report has, it is hoped, given a fresh impetus in this country. The Commission's initiative is intended to give a similar impetus in Europe as a whole. As such, it is to be welcomed. This is a field which, if properly developed, can bring striking benefits to industry, to agriculture and to society in general.
The departmental evidence was to the effect that work in all six areas—that is to say, all the six topics selected by the Commission for work—was being done in the United Kingdom. They would prefer to support some parts of the programme rather than others and accept an overall commitment which, while worthwhile in the European context, will not unduly divert the national effort. Your committee consider that the case for a fresh impetus in Europe is made out, and that Her Majesty's Government should give the Commission's
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programme general support. But the committee also recognises that there are problems to be surmounted, some of which will require careful handling and watching.
One problem which gave some members of the committee particular concern was the protection, in such a Community programme, of patents and intellectual property. The Commission intend to attempt to safeguard patentable discoveries by the application of an existing Council regulation, which deals with the protection of intellectual property. Nevertheless, the efficacy of this cannot be fully relied on and, in view of possible effects on the United Kingdom's competitive position, this is a sensitive area which will need to be carefully watched.
The committee also felt that the programme was wide-ranging and that the butter would be spread rather thin among the European laboratories in nine, or perhaps even 10, countries. They felt that more attention should be paid to the question of priorities within the programme. Then there is a further question about the supply of skilled engineers and technicians.
I need mention only one other problem; the conjectural hazards associated with genetic engineering on which the Commission has published a proposal for a draft directive. This was scrutinised in the Thirty-Ninth Report of the Select Committee last year, which concluded that this directive was too restrictive, and was ill-suited to the rapidly developing techniques of recombinant DNA. They proposed that its place should be taken by a recommendation which would allow a significant degree of harmonisation, and permit member states to protect the confidentiality of their emerging industries, without inhibiting the exchange of research information. In view of this report, your committee relied on it and did not consider the subject of safeguards and hazards further. I can, however, inform your Lordships that the Commission has now issued a draft recommendation on the lines of the Select Committee's report. So that is a satisfactory development.
The difficulties notwithstanding, your committee were, on balance, in favour of participation by the United Kingdom in the proposed programme. They were, however, informed that one country, France, was not in favour of Community research funding and had suggested a training programme only. They were further informed that Germany was also reluctant and wanted the programme limited to areas of agricultural interest, to training also and to safety measures. In the meantime, the European Parliament has given the programme its blessing, subject to a number of conditions.
That was the situation when this report was published. I now understand that, as a result of negotiations which have taken place since the committee's report came out, a compromise proposal has been formulated. There has been an allocation of funds to training and education in the areas covered by five of the six projects in the programme; the programme of research and development has been reduced from six projects to three; and the total cost to the Commission cut from 26 million to 11·8 million European units of account, which amounts to about £7 million, over 4½ years. The compromise proposal is now under consideration by a Council working party.
This development obviously puts a different complexion on the Commission's proposal; and I can say with some confidence, since I was able to check with the members of my sub-committee this morning, that the tenor of the report before your Lordships would also have been different if the compromise had been the proposal under scrutiny.
First, I understand that only £5 million of the £7 million is now allocated to cost-sharing contracts over 4½ years, the balance going to training and safety measures. The amount earmarked for the training of engineers and technicians seems to me to be questionable, since this is an activity which would normally be taken care of by member states and should have rather a low priority in terms of Community funding. Secondly, the amount allocated to projects is correspondingly smaller than in the original proposal. It is true that the number of projects has been halved, but the butter will now be spread even thinner than before. It might have been an improvement if approximately the same amount of money had been made available for a smaller number of projects, but this course has not been taken.
Finally, projects 2, 3 and 4, to which our witnesses gave higher priority than to projects 5 and 6 have been dropped altogether from the programme.
There is a general disposition to support a constructive and well-intentioned proposal for co-operative community action in the field of advanced technology. Such support was encouraged by most of the evidence which we received. It is in principle most desirable that the United Kingdom should, as it were, stay in the game but, given the risks in terms of sensitive information and so on and the administrative and scientific effort involved in taking part in such a programme, participarion in these whittled down compromise proposals appears to have lost some of its attractions. I hope the Minister will be able to say what he thinks of this revised programme; state whether he considers it to be properly balanced; and whether—and, if so, to what extent—the Government will support it.
There is perhaps one general point. This report deals with an attempt by the Commission to organise a Community-wide research and development programme of the indirect type in an area of advanced technology. It is not their first effort. Nuclear fusion is a well established precedent of the direct type of Community funding, and there are many examples of the indirect type. But the Commission are now seeking to establish uniform policies which would be applied generally to further projects of this kind. It is important that these proposed policies should be carefully looked at, and it is the intention of the Select Committee to scrutinise the Commission's proposals in this regard in the very near future. I beg to move.
Moved, That this House takes note of the Report of the European Communities Committee on biotechnology (66th Report, Session 1979–80, H.L. 350.)—(Lord Sherfield.)
8.32 p.m.
The Earl of Bessborough: My Lords, we are all—the few of us, the two or three gathered together—grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Sherfield, for his expert presentation of what, to many of us, are highly
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complex and technical matters. It is a privilege to be serving on his sub-committee. The programmes for research and development—as the noble Lord, Lord Sherfield, has said, some six in all—fall naturally into two groups: the first concerning enzyme engineering and the second genetic engineering.
These programmes have been the subject of detailed consultation between the technical advisers of the member states. I do not intend, any more than did the noble Lord, Lord Sherfield, to go into the details, but what we have to decide is whether the projects are to be generally recommended; what their effect would be on the competitiveness of the European Community's industries; and in particular whether they would allow us to make good the ground which, from all accounts, our industries may have lost in recent years.
At national level it is necessary to determine whether those United Kingdom industries which are known to be well advanced in research and development will be significantly assisted by the programme. The answer which came through quite clearly during our inquiry was that the effects, subject to certain safeguards, could only be beneficial. Even if we have to accept that the figures of patent applications drawn on by the Commission and listed in the Committee's report do not tell the whole story, the picture which emerges is that the United Kingdom, as has happened in the past in other fields, having done excellent pioneering work, has missed out or is missing out on subsequent developments. This can be remedied in a number of ways: either by greater national endeavour, as outlined in the Spinks Report, or by joining with other member states in a joint programme, as is now suggested, or by a combination of the two. It is the latter course, a combination of the two, which I commend to your Lordships' attention.
We have it on the evidence of Dr. Spinks himself that the United Kingdom is one of the three strongest countries in the EEC in biotechnology, the other two being Germany and France. Within the United Kingdom, the establishments which could well attract contracts under the Commission's programme—they are enumerated in Question 17 on page 8 and in Questions 40 and 41 on pages 15 and 16 of the evidence—include the famous MRC unit in Cambridge, which is pre-eminent in the work of recombined or, as is said, recombinant DNA, cell fusion and the like; Imperial College, which the noble Lord, Lord Sherfield, knows so well; University College, the University of Wales Institute of Science and Technology, with which the noble Lord, Lord Peart, is familiar; the Manchester Institute of Science and Technology—I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Bowden, is not here—together with units in Edinburgh, Leicester, Sheffield and the University of Kent. And since the noble Lord, Lord Kings-Norton, is here, he will no doubt be mentioning Cranfield. There is no lack, therefore, of centres of excellence where the necessary work can be carried out.
It may be that co-ordination of activities may present problems, both nationally and even European-wise, but there is already in existence a British coordinating committee for biotechnology, with a European counterpart. The influence of the latter,

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the European committee, suggests that such organisations can be effective.
We know that the Federal Government of West Germany, assisted by the German Research Society, has contributed effectively to development in that country, development which includes a complete centre devoted to such work at Braunschweig-Stockeim. It can be done. However, as an article in the Times Educational Supplement of 12th December said, one wonders whether these large centres are necessarily the most effective ways in which to deal with these matters. It may be that it is better to make use of all the existing, perhaps semi-independent research establishments.
The importance of work in biotechnology is becoming more generally known. It can produce energy savings. I know that my noble friend Lord Trenchard will agree. For example, it was reported recently that the production of soy sauce in Japan takes two years by conventional methods. Now scientists at Glasgow University can do it in three weeks. Enzyme engineering can produce fruit syrup from corn starch at one tenth of the cost of conventional methods. The production of substances useful to man, such as insulin, can now be effected in marketable quantities, a most important development, since it is estimated that supplies of insulin from natural sources will be inadequate by the turn of the century.
But it is all slow, painstaking work, which requires experts from many disciplines working together and supported by adequate finance. There are problems of co-ordination to be resolved and difficult areas of patents and the protection of intellectual property to be safeguarded. It is therefore to be regretted—at least I regret the fact—that, due to pressure from other member states, the initial projected funding by the Commission has been reduced from £15½ million spread over five years to £7½ million spread over four and a half years. This has resulted in modifications to the programme, which it is now proposed will have a higher education and training content.
I am sorry that other engagements prevented me from being present at the sub-committee meeting this morning on this subject and I appreciate very much what the noble Lord, Lord Sherfield, has said on this point. That might modify our views. However, no doubt my noble friend Lord Trenchard in his reply will comment on the modfied programme and will say whether Her Majesty's Government consider that it was necessary to scale it down so radically. The member states which took the initiative in this latter operation no doubt had good grounds for doing so. I wonder whether my noble friend will be able to enlighten us in his reply. However, that may be, the programme, whatever its size, will, I hope, provide an added impetus both in the United Kingdom and in the Community generally in areas of advanced technology where we cannot afford not to be actively involved.
Finally, my Lords, in regard to a matter which was not discussed in our report—that is, recombinant DNA as applied to cloning and in humans as apart from vegetables and the creation of the so-called "monster man", or the deus ex machina,—I think the dangers and the hazards have been greatly exaggerated. In this connection, I was glad to read the Select Committee's
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39th report, to which the noble Lord, Lord Sherfield referred and which was produced by the sub-committee chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Wolfenden—the report on genetic engineering and genetic manipulation. Personally, I think that the controls already in force or proposed in other countries should be effective and we should not have undue fears.
This evening, travelling back from a sublime service in Chichester Cathedral, I was wondering which of my noble friends I would most like to see replicated or multiplicated in this House. I certainly think that the noble Lord, Lord Sherfield, and my noble friend, Lord Trenchard are among them, to say nothing of other noble Lords sitting opposite me here. I think that they would be among my first choices. I support the Motion and the opinion of the Committee contained in the report.
8.45 p.m.
Lord Adrian: My Lords, I should like to begin by saying how glad I am that we can consider this report and how grateful we are to the noble Lord, Lord Sherfield, for introducing it so clearly. As the noble Lord said, the subject of the report is of the greatest importance to our future, and that must be my excuse if I stray a little beyond the strictly European context of this discussion. I am sure we should welcome this report. Its conclusions seem to me to be nicely balanced and it does not conceal many of the very real problems involved in this kind of jointly-funded European research.
I must declare an interest, or at least a point of view, as a biological scientist with some research experience. So, with a little inside knowledge, I read the report with a great deal of interest and enjoyment and I looked at the list of scientific problems posed in paragraph 13 of the report. At first sight they seem to be much more related to the technical aspects than to the funadmental aspects of bio-technology, but, as I read the evidence, I sensed an uncertainty in the proposals themselves, about the nature of the problems that were proposed to be addressed. I think the uncertainty is reflected in the evidence presented to the committee. On the one hand industry hopes for exploitable processes and know-how—very naturally—to the extent that ICI proposed a role for industry in the direction of the project and indeed a vetting procedure to ensure all patent rights before the publication of any results.
On the other hand with just those problems of patenting in mind, the chief scientist to the Department of Trade and Industry expressed the hope that exploitable inventions would not result from the research programme. So it is probably impossible at this stage to say what mix of technical and fundamental work would emerge; but it is my own opinion that the mechanism of European initiatives, of joint funding and cost-sharing contracts, are an expensive and probably indeed a clumsy way of doing fundamental science, if that is the aim. So often important advances come in unexpected places and to people who may be looking for something else. Besides, we already support the European molecular biology organisation, EMBO, at Heidleberg for large-scale and expensive molecular biology. However, if exploitable development work is the planned outcome of the programme, I share the misgivings which I detect in the report about

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the complexities introduced by patenting, by the necessity to assess the property which will lie with the NRDC, with the national source of funds, the research worker and the European Community under Council Regulation No. 2380.
Indeed, I believe these very complexities may not be unconnected with the question that is asked by this report: why is so much of the fundamental work clone in this country then exploited abroad? Can it actually be that our own existing mechanisms for patenting and for protecting the national interest actually inhibit the exploitation of scientific research done in this country? I think this is at least a legitimate question to ask, and the joint working party's report on biotechnology contains a great deal that is relevant to this question. Do the research councils and the NRDC sometimes serve to keep apart—unintentionally, to be sure—the drive of venture capitalists and the enthusiasm and special knowledge of research scientists?
Success in the industrial application of new science in the United States of America, both in microelectronics and latterly in biotechnology, it seems to me has depended on the very close entrepreneurial combination of venture capital and scientific enthusiasm. If they are in some way kept apart in the interests of protecting the scientists and the national interest, nothing much in the way of development is likely to happen, and I feel that the addition of a Brussels dimension to this existing protection, makes one wonder whether any application would actually emerge from this programme. I recognise of course a number of notable successes which have been masterminded by the NRDC, but in the special field which we are considering today I think many would agree with the opinion expressed in this report, that the exploitation of research, much of it done under the generous provision of the Medical Research Council, has indeed lagged behind that of our competitors.
I believe half of this problem may lie in size, in large firms, in large corporations and in large research councils. So often as a new scientific idea, which may itself be in a state which is not immediately exploitable, passes across each successive desk and through each successive head it loses its force and appeal, and successive heads sometimes may not have just that special knowledge which is the context that gives the idea its importance. I am afraid I doubt whether we shall increase our success rate for exploitation unless we can somehow shorten the desk distance between the man who wants to take risks to develop a business and the scientist who knows how to do something and has the knowledge to see how that something can be done.
I have to confess a good deal of ignorance about the world of Brussels and of CREST and of Coreper, but in my bones I am unconvinced that these proposals will do anything very much to increase our collective or our national ability to exploit biotechnology. I am not, therefore, much grieved to learn that a reduction in the scope of these proposals is currently under consideration. But whatever the outcome of these European proposals, I am sure we can wholeheartedly endorse the opinion of the committee in paragraphs 27 and 29, where they would like to see an increased United Kingdom effort in this field and much more and much earlier liaison between universities and industry.
8.52 p.m.
Lord Kings-Norton: My Lords, I, too, should like to express my gratitude to the noble Lord, Lord Sherfield, for his very clear exposition this evening of this extremely specialised and now much modified and diminished proposal from the European Commission. A great deal of what I had notes to speak of this evening has already been spoken of by previous people, but I think I should explain that I decided to take part in this debate this evening chiefly because, my interest in biotechnology having been very much enhanced by the work of the sub-committee on it, I have, since the conclusion of our exercise, found out a little more about what is going on biotechnologically in this country. My broad conclusion, which is very much the same as conclusions we have heard already this evening, is that while not enough is going on for us to be satisfactorily competitive with other major countries (and their names are on page viii of the report before you) there is rather more going on than some of us, I think, had realised. Noble Lords will appreciate that while projects which are the subject of the Commission's proposals are very sophisticated in character to most of us, and have for most noble Lords an air of unfamiliarity, the subject of biotechnology is not new; it is in fact very old. Brewing is biotechnology, sewage treatment is biotechnology. But what is new is the recognition of fresh fields for biotechnological research and development, and the rapid expansion, particularly in Japan and the United States of America, of knowledge leading towards profitable commercial development.
As the noble Lord, Lord Sherfield, said, 10 years ago there seemed little doubt that in this country we were in the lead, but now we are not in the lead. The figures on the patent position, on page viii of the report before your Lordships, are most disturbing. On the other hand they are figures relating only to enzyme technology, not to the whole biotechnological field. Enzyme technology is, of course, extremely important and a large part of the field, but it is not the whole picture. From what I have discovered in the last week or two, if figures for the whole field were available to us—I do not know where to get them—our position would indeed look rather better; but it would not look good enough. Although I believe we could make a good showing in the pharmaceutical area, and probably other areas of research activity, the total investment from Government sources, in the universities and institutes, is small compared with the official support in the USA, Japan, West Germany and France. I was surprised to find that even the Australian Government is spending rather more than we are on biotechnological research and development.
Nevertheless, my Lords, there is not the least doubt that we have a very sound base on which to build the expansion of activity which I, and I think all who have been looking into this subject, believe is essential. Some of the centres of activity are mentioned in the report, and the noble Earl, Lord Bessborough, mentioned several more. In fact, it is quite surprising in how many places in the United Kingdom work is going on. May I, as the noble Earl, Lord Bessborough, prophesied, declare my interest as Chancellor of the Cranfield Institute of Technology? We have there just appointed to a new Chair a professor in biotechnology, and we have begun to build up a new

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department under him. This new activity, my Lords, will have two interesting characteristics. One is that it will be a joint venture with the University of Compiégne in France, where there is already a well developed biotechnological department. The other is close collaboration with industry on objectives designed for commercial success.
Noble Lords may think that this second characteristic is so obviously necessary as scarcely to be worth mentioning: but that is not so. That is what is behind paragraph 27 in the report before you, and it really is relevant to what the noble Lord, Lord Adrian, has been saying. I think that while there are notable exceptions, the collaboration between industry and academy is not good—perhaps I should say, not good enough. I should like to feel that industry, as well as government, is fully behind the academic effort, and I would support very strongly what the noble Lord, Lord Adrian, was saying about the distance between the scientific discovery and its exploitation by venture capital. I have many experiences in that field and in several of them I have felt that we have spent far too much of our time finding money and not enough of our time on research and development.
What the United Kingdom industry's own effort is like is difficult for anyone in my position to determine, because obviously a great deal of industrial activity is cloaked in commercial secrecy. But the patent counting exercise, where it can be done, suggests that if we in the United Kingdom are to play a significant part in multinational projects, be they projects that the Commission proposes or others, and if we are to be competitive internationally, both our academic and our industrial efforts have to be greatly increased and collaboration between them improved. I sincerely hope that when the noble Viscount the Minister replies he will be able to encourage us to believe that these improvements will be possible.
My Lords, there is one other aspect of this great and developing technology about which I am disturbed, and I fear that my colleagues are not as disturbed as I am. That is the use in various contexts of the word "engineering". I believe that this is a misuse of language. I know that "to engineer" is to arrange and to contrive, but this is a figurative usage deriving from the earlier and unambiguous meaning with which we are all familiar in such phrases as "mechanical engineering", "civil engineering", "electrical engineering" and so on. I believe that, to take the examples on page VII of the report, we could replace "enzyme engineering" and "genetic engineering" by "enzyme technology" and "genetic technology". We could indeed replace the title of the report of your Lordships' Select Committee; namely, "Biomolecular Engineering" by "Biomolecular Technology". Is it too late to make the change, not only to avoid inaccuracy, but to avoid introducing into the lay mind false pictures of the processes with which biotechnology is concerned?
9 p.m.
Lord Peart: My Lords, I should like to say how fascinating this debate has been. What a tragedy it is that there are only about half a dozen of us present. This debate is important from the point of view of our application
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to a science which is still in its infancy. I should like to pay tribute to those who produced this report on biomolecular engineering. One of the great aspects of the House of Lords is that we often play our part and lead the world in thinking in many ways. I hope that, as a result of this debate, even though it is so-sparsely attended, it will be on record that we believe very much in the development of biomolecular engineering.
I have carefully read this marvellous report all the way through and I agree with the noble Earl, Lord Bessborough—who spoke as a European—that this is not an easy document. I am academically a scientist. I did a geology Bachelor of Science degree. I find this subject extremely difficult, and I wonder what laymen will say when they read the report of this debate. Basically, we tried to show how important it is that there should be a link with industry affecting also our sciences in the universities and also links with the European Community. Indeed, I am very proud because I was responsible for the setting up of ACARD and the document which I have here in my hand is now in the Vote Office. It is concerned with biotechnology and we produced it a long time ago. Apart from that, very few people have talked about the influence of biotechnology. It is of major concern in the area of agriculture and there is a special chapter on that in the report.
I shall not make a long speech tonight. My goodness!—why should I? I merely wish to say that this matter is important. I want to know the Government's priorities. I believe that more money should be spent in this area. I shall not go into all the details of the committees, and so on, that have been set up. I know that the noble Viscount who is to reply has a tremendous liking for new developments in the food industry in particular because he was very much involved with that aspect. I hope that we can say that we shall develop this and regard it as a priority. I am not asking for much. We should not lose the way in this field. Germany, France and Japan are playing their part and we must catch up. So I hope that the Minister will tell us what is happening and give us the favourable report that the Government will encourage this, because it is so important.
9.6 p.m.
The Minister of State, Department of Industry (Viscount Trenchard): My Lords, may I add the Government's thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Sherfield, and his sub-committee of the Select Committee on the European Communities for this excellent report and for all the work that they have done. I should also like to thank him and all those who have taken part in tonight's debate.
I, too, find the time at which this debate came on to be inappropriate to the importance of the subject. I shall probably get into trouble for saying that because I later want to make it quite clear that Her Majesty's Government do regard this matter as one of very great importance indeed. I think that perhaps that indicates part of the problem which noble Lords have touched upon already tonight. It is a very difficult subject to describe to a layman, and I think that I am probably the most lay layman taking part in this debate. We have not managed to describe in words what we believe

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bugs may be able to do for us and for industry generally. We have not yet managed to mention the kind of products in lay terms, in the varying fields, that can be conceived.
I should also like to begin by agreeing with the noble Lord, Lord Kings-Norton, in that I too, as a laymen, regard the use of the word "engineering" as particularly unfortunate. Genetic engineering as a combination fills the layman with thoughts of, not Dr. Who, because he is a good man, but the wicked scientist and what he will do to us in the future. So I believe that there is a public relations job to be done and perhaps it needs to be done even in regard to the Government and to many people dealing with this subject.
Before turning to the European programme, let me deal first with the subject in general. We are working very actively on a full response to the report of the Joint Working Party, of which ACARD was one part, and the Royal Society and the Advisory Board to the Research Councils were the other two parts. This very broad-based working party of many experts of great wisdom has put a great deal of thought on paper and has been read with care right up to the Prime Minister. As noble Lords know, she has a particular interest in research stemming from her original training. I offer noble Lords this one slight reward for coming to a debate so late in the evening. You are the first people to hear that we shall respond to that report of the joint working party in the form of a White Paper. We regard the subject as being of sufficient importance to warrant a White Paper of its own. We shall respond to that as early as we find practical in the New Year.
While still on the general subject, I think that I am a little less alarmed than a number of noble Lords. Many of those who have taken part in the debate have pointed to the research and scientific knowledge that we already have in this field. I believe that the patent picture may not fully reflect what is already going on. In total, we are already helping research in this whole area by a Government spend of a total of some £5 million per annum. More recently, we have supported the NEB initiative to encourage four companies to join together, with a 40 per cent. holding being retained by the NEB, to develop a large part of this area and to apply it. This is the enterprise called Celltech. This will cost the NEB some £5 million and it is a new initiative. It is, of course, aimed at the subject which the noble Lords, Lord Adrian and Lord Kings-Norton, both mentioned—the application of these sciences to produce products which can really be exploited.
It is certainly true that over the whole field of science and industry there has been criticism of whether our fundamental research is kept too far apart from our commercial research. America is constantly quoted as an example of a country where this does not happen to the same extent.
Lord Davies of Leek: My Lords, will the noble Viscount give way? I know that expression about America's attitude, but in the pharmaceutical industry, about which I know a little, the work that we have done in Britain is second to none. We do not want to be faced with another thalidomide problem because of slackness about checking or playing molecular roulette in the laboratories. Consequently, I am very proud of the English attitude towards the research that is
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done in our pharmaceutical laboratories. I am proud to say that it is second to none. I agree that the word "engineering" should be left out, because it has something of cloning or science fiction about it.
Viscount Trenchard: My Lords, that is one reason why I said that perhaps more is going on than we are given credit for. When we respond to ACARD I think we shall point out that in private industry and in Government more is probably going on than is realised.
Lord Peart: My Lords, on the matter of ACARD, do the Government have any priorities which they can indicate to us this evening?
Viscount Trenchard: My Lords, I am afraid that I cannot this evening. Clearly, if we are to publish a White Paper, we must publish a White Paper. I have said that we are actively discussing the contents of it between all departments at present.
Lord Peart: My Lords, I am quite happy with that, thank you.
Viscount Trenchard: My Lords, there has, however, been this criticism that, except in some fields where a great deal of private research is done, we do not use our fundamental research and do not apply it commercially. In fact, I tend to believe that the failure to apply is very often post-development. In that context, we must realise that the profit levels of our industry are only about one-quarter of those in the United States in real terms, and that that has been so for a good many years past. To get enough private effort on long-term risk projects, when the general level of return is so low, is a problem. Therefore, this whole area is bound up with the eventual return which we must achieve to a highly efficient, competitive and profitable industry. Meanwhile we have as usual—if I may say so to the noble Lord the Leader of the Opposition—shown ourselves pragmatic by the encouragement of the formation of Celltech. I would end on the general theme with the remark which I believe is correctly attributed to Lord Rutherford, which probably applies to this area—that is, "We have not got much money, so we must think".
Let me turn to the subject matter of this debate, and I make no apology for digressing and I hope that what I have been able to say already will be some consolation to the members of Lord Sherfield's committee. On the question of the European programme and European co-operation, of course we are in favour of European co-operation, and I suspect that everyone in this Chamber at this moment is. Therefore, there is general goodwill towards the idea of trying to ensure that the technology of Europe matches the technology of the United States, and trying to think European to a greater and greater extent.
We are also clearly in favour—but it must be entirely up to private enterprise to achieve it—of private co-operation between firms in different countries in Europe, which gets over the problem of commercial exploitation and the competitive problems which the noble Lord, Lord Adrian, and others have mentioned, because

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individual firms working together in the same, or closely related, fields may well find areas where they can co-operate fully to produce a greater degree of commercial exploitation at home and abroad in a way which will meet international competition. So all these things we are in favour of.
It follows that we are therefore in favour of a background programme in Europe in certain areas, which I shall come to in a few moments. We, too, the Government, have been asking ourselves whether the revised programme as suggested today and as it has been described by the noble Lord, Lord Sherfield, will add appreciably to the European effort and to European co-operation, and will have benefits. I have to say before commenting in more detail on it that we were among the countries that suggested that the original programme was perhaps a bit ambitious both in scope and in expenditure. So we have to be careful that we are consistent in our attitude.
We suggested that it should be cut and concentrated, but what we did not suggest was that about half the funds should be spent on training so that the programme has now been cut to a major extent, and only half of it is left for research. I shall not repeat the figures that have been given in this debate, which are correct so far as I know them, but the research element of the revised programme is about five million units of account, if you take out the training content, over four and a half years and spread over nine countries.
We know that some of the research centres which have been mentioned by noble Lords taking part in the debate and by my noble friend Lord Bessborough are wondering whether participation contracts for this amount of money are really worth the problems which will be entailed, the work, the administration, and the restraints, which again the noble Lord, Lord Adrian, mentioned so clearly. I have to tell you that the Government are uncertain whether the programme as recommended is really worthy of European support. We shall be discussing it further in the spirit of cooperation to see whether a programme that would be more worthy of support could be produced.
If we turn to the general area of where we do feel that a collaborative European effort might be valuable, let me quickly mention three areas. First, there is the whole question of safety, where I note that apparently the Select Committee's report has been to a large extent accepted in Brussels. We believe nevertheless that it is important that we have eventually, if it is needed, as it probably will be, a well thought out EEC recommendation on health and safety which has the sound support of scientists, and industrialists perhaps, in all countries, so the area of safety is one which we think could feature in common research.
The second area which we believe is less encumbered with problems of potential commercial conflict is that of agriculture, particularly where new types of wheat perhaps may be required to be tested in a large number of countries and different climates simultaneously. There tends to be more research there which is needed to be done on behalf of all farmers and which has less conflict with brand marketing and that kind of thing in the more sophisticated industrial areas of development. The third broad area is some of the fundamental research questions, further removed from the market
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place but nevertheless with an eye upon it.
Those three areas we believe could form the base for modest co-operation between the countries of Europe in terms of Government funding of joint work. We believe that if a programme on that basis were put together it would also have the benefit of being an additional stimulus to Community scientists to contribute their knowledge to each other and to push forward the prominence of Europe in relation to other parts of the world. Those are the areas where we would still like to see a modest programme. We frankly do not believe there is a need to spend Community money on training, an area which we feel should be left to individual countries.
I think I have touched on the main areas, in a very lay way, which all those taking part have raised in much more scientific and erudite terms than those of this slightly muddled reply. I conclude by saying that we are very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Sherfield, and all the members of his committee. We hope that, notwithstanding the time of this debate, they will continue to keep up their interest in the subject, and if they feel when we publish our White Paper that our plans can be improved, bearing in mind the remark of Lord Rutherford, we shall be pleased to see whether we can do so.
Lord Davies of Leek: My Lords, before the Minister leaves the subject of the White Paper—and it will be fascinating to see it—may I raise a point, in view of his remarks emphasising research on the agricultural side? For years the Ministry of Agriculture was the finest breeder of horses in the world, including racing horses. Much research needs to be done, but it seems to be neglected, particularly in relation to venereal disease which is spreading in breeds of horses as never before. I hope that when the White Paper is brought forward the area over which the problem will be approached will be wide enough to draw in veterinary surgeons and others in that field of activity.
Viscount Trenchard: My Lords, the noble Lord's remarks will be drawn to the attention of those concerned.
9.25 p.m.
Lord Sherfield: My Lords, I think we have had a really useful short debate. It has enabled the speakers on the ECC report to take account of a significant change in the Commission's programme of research and development since the Committee's report was published.
We have had a valuable and interesting statement from the Minister on what is proposed as regards the United Kingdom programme. I am not in the least surprised at the cautious approach which he is now taking to the revised European programme, but I am glad that the Government are still looking for a positive and constructive outcome of the European discussions.
I think, too, that the course of the debate will confirm the decision of my committee to scrutinise the Commission's proposed general policy in regard to European schemes of research and development.
I wish to thank my colleagues on the committee and the noble Lord, Lord Adrian, whose speech was

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both authoritative and constructive, for making the not inconsiderable effort needed in taking part in postprandial debates. I thank too the noble Lord, Lord Peart, for his speech from the Opposition Benches. The hour is late, my Lords, and it only remains for me to resume my seat.
On Question, Motion agreed to.